Another thump jolts through my feet. Morpheus’s warning of shifting sands whispers in the back of my mind. As Jeb and I struggle to stay on our boards, the black-and-white squares we’ve been sliding on shift, collide, and converge—snapping the terrain into a jagged jigsaw puzzle, as if a thousand tiny earthquakes have buckled the landscape. Déjà vu hits me. It’s just like my dream.
Our boards come to a complete halt where the squares intersect and fold. We slump in place, panting. The queen’s army makes its way toward us, the giant birds picking paths around the uneven surface.
The sun beats down. We’re totally exposed with nowhere to run. Above is the army … below a chasm too wide to leap across from a standstill. The first row of riders tops the ridge and stirs a whirlwind of sand, which plumes into a mushroom cloud, then puffs down to envelop us. I cover my nose and mouth. The birds are close enough that their powerful gallops thunder through the wood under my soles.
“Pick up the board and use it for a weapon when the dust clears!” Jeb’s command barely leaves his mouth before I remember the flute. Morpheus said to use it if we needed to gain ground.
He knew this would happen …
He’s behind the scenes and pulling strings like he’s always been.
I take the instrument out and lift the mouthpiece to my lips, blowing as I tap my fingers across the holes in a pattern that plays out the melody of his lullaby. Though I’ve never attempted to use a flute—and wind instruments are a completely different animal than string ones—the notes come to me effortlessly.
Jeb gawks, as shocked as I am. If he only knew the half of it … how long this song has been dormant inside me.
The tune echoes over the chaos—loud and magical. As soon as the last note fades, a clatter explodes behind our pursuers. In a sweep of dingy gray, a thousand clams come rushing like a landslide over the ridge, carrying the queen’s army on the surge.
The flute slips from my hand and gets whisked away. Jubjub birds who’ve lost their footing, and fallen guards attempting to scale the clams like mountain goats clambering for ledges, are also caught up in the rattling flood. The shells part like the Red Sea on either side of Jeb and me, leaving us untouched. They still remember what we did for them.
We’re not going to be captured, but we’ve already lost our chance at acceleration. We’ll never make it across the chasm now, and the climb back up—with the terrain so jagged—could take hours. I’ve lost track of time in all the excitement. We might’ve been here for hours already.
“Get on your board!” Jeb positions himself in front of me, shouting over the cacophony. “We’re going to jump onto the clams; somehow they’re clearing the chasm … we’ll hitch a ride to the cemetery.”
I watch the clams as they fly across the rift to safety by using the jacked-up Wonderland physics to their advantage. They catch the Red army in their momentum and forcibly tilt their shells to chuck the Jubjub birds and guards into the depths like trash from a car window. For a split second, I worry they might do the same to us. But I have to believe they won’t. They came in answer to the flute and are here to help.
Jeb bends his thighs like he’s doing squats. He’s getting ready to jump on. “At the count of three,” he says. He levers his board several inches above the clams and props his left foot atop it while balancing his right on solid ground.
“One …” His voice spurs me into action. I hold my slab of wood aloft in one hand and mimic his stance, balanced on one foot and ready to drop my board when he does. “Two …” My free hand curls around the chain hanging from Jeb’s belt loop. “Three!”
Simultaneously, as if we’ve practiced the move a hundred times before, we slap our boards onto the advancing shells with our one foot already in place and shove off with the other to blend into the flow. This ride isn’t nearly as smooth as the sand surfing. My board bumps from one clam to another, hurdling over a card guard here and there. Each impact jiggles the chain and juggles my bones. My skeleton will be as cragged as the landscape before long.
Our speed picks up as the chasm draws nearer. My heartbeat is in my throat, drumming against my larynx.
“Grab the board, and don’t look down!” Jeb yells over his shoulder.
I grip the wood with my free hand and draw up my knees as we launch. I’m holding so tightly to the chain links that my fingers feel like they’re made of metal, too.
Eyes closed, I gulp the fishy air surrounding us, trying to ease my fear.
“Wooooo-hoooo!” Jeb’s cheer forces my eyes open.
For one instant, I believe in the impossible. We’re soaring—crouched on our boards—just a few feet away from the valley’s edge, and it looks like we’re going to clear. I’m not even using any magic. It must have something to do with the curve of the shells and the curve on our boards, because the same bizarre gravitational lapse that’s allowing the clams to soar is working in our favor, too. The wood is actually floating on its own. Wind rushes through me and I lift my chin to the sky, drifting into the blueness that surrounds us. I’m buoyant, and it’s amazing.