He averts his eyes. “Some people have no business attending a dignified tea. Gawking as if I belong in a zoo, when they’re the ones who have all the manners and fashion sense of a monkey.”
“Sorry.” I smooth my ragged clothes and reach for an apple the size of a plum. I’m starving but still nervous about the food. “What will this do? Make me invisible? Or maybe make me sprout a stem and some leaves?”
“Ungrateful little twit.” The egg-man scowls at me. “Looking a gift spider in the fangs. See if you’re invited to tea again.”
Sister One smiles. “I do not play games with my food … unless it’s wrapped within my web,” she says.
I cringe at what I hope is her attempt at a joke, then bite into the crisp fruit and chew while glancing down at my grass-stained feet. It’s only a matter of seconds before my gaze creeps upward again. I can’t resist. “So, you’re Humpty, right?”
“Humphrey.” He sneers. “Youth these days. Can’t even manage a proper introduction.”
I take another nibble of fruit, encouraged that it tastes like the apples in my world. “Your shell. Did you fall from the—”
“Wall?” Humphrey snaps the ending to my question. “No, actually. That was the first time. I tripped over Chessie’s rolling head the second. Kind Queen Grenadine glued me together again, when all the king’s horses and men failed. And if there be any other questions on the subject, I would bid you ask them with a mouth less filled with apple.”
I swallow my bite. “The king tried to help you? I thought he was a greedy dictator.”
“Greedy?” Sister One clucks her tongue, cinching an apron around her waist, then pulling a pan of fragrant cookies out from the stove. “Utterly ridiculous. He’s very sympathetic. He brought this one to me so I could keep him in cushions to prevent further cracking, in case the glue doesn’t stick. We can’t have Humphrey’s spirit leaking out to wreak havoc in Wonderland’s commons.”
Wonderland and common … two words that should never be in the same sentence.
“So, Humphrey’s here because he’s partly dead,” I say after finishing the rest of the apple. “Partly dead like Chessie.”
“Yes.” Sister One scrapes the cookies onto a plate. “In fact, Grenadine herself brought Chessie’s head here. Many years ago, when her stepsister, Red, was on her bloody rampage. But she’s no doubt forgotten by now that he’s here.”
Wait. Morpheus made it sound as if Chessie came to this place on his own … found solace here. He never mentioned that Grenadine tried to help keep the cat alive. I dab my mouth with my napkin. “Partly dead …,” I mumble, mind whirling in confusion.
“What business is it of yours how much dead I am?” In a fit of temper, Humphrey slams his spoon to the cushioned floor. The utensil bounces back like a boomerang and thumps his side. Following a crackling sound, the fissures in his shell branch out to form new ones. Slimy, clear liquid drizzles from the fissures. His cheeks turn a deep pink and he glowers at me. The slime starts to sizzle and harden to cooked egg whites.
“You’re hard-boiling your innards again,” Sister One scolds.
“Now you’ve gone and done it!” Humphrey aims the accusation at me. “What glory is there to be had in bettering an egg, hmm? Will you make of me a soufflé or perhaps have me coddled?”
“Coddled?” I ask, confused. “You mean like a parent coddles a child?”
He wriggles in the chair until his short legs almost dangle over the edge, causing the new cracks to stretch farther yet. “Coddled in water, you speck. Cooked just below boiling until my brains are scrambled. What sort of empty-headed rot are you? Do you not have a proper vocabulary? And why are you even here? Don’t see any cracks in your shell.”
Sister One clucks her tongue again and reaches into her apron pocket, proffering a tube of glue. “You should be gracious to her. She’s the One.” She gestures her chin toward me as she helps him apply the adhesive. “She woke the dead.”
He stares, wide mouth gaping almost to the floor.
I can’t stop the blush rising through my face. “Morpheus said that the king is bad. That he wants the crowns to both kingdoms for his wife, Grenadine, and will do anything to get them.”
“Ha!” Humphrey says. “As seen through the eyes of a murderer.”