3
Memory Two: Carnage
Jeb wiped sweat from his brow. Morpheus had been right about the climb out of his gilded prison being difficult. But that was nothing to the trek through Wonderland he and Alyssa had taken since then. The entire day had been one crazy challenge after another, with danger and death around every turn. And now he’d lost Al. They’d become separated just before accomplishing the final test. She was facing the Twid sisters’ cemetery alone, and he was stuck here in the bottom of a chasm.
Night had fallen the instant he’d hit the ground—such a fast transition, it was as if someone had flipped a light switch.
The kinks in his muscles tightened. He hated the thought of Al being alone in this wacked-out world after dark. Then again, she’d proved herself strong enough to face almost anything. It had been she who’d ended up saving him, in more ways than one …
He thought of how she’d looked—hovering overhead, glistening and wild, fluttering with the grace of a dragonfly. Seeing her sprout wings had been both terrifying and miraculous at once. He couldn’t breathe while watching the transformation.
If he were honest, he still hadn’t recovered his breath from when she had lowered him into the abyss and he’d shouted “You’re my lifeline!” before she shot up higher into the sky. He shouldn’t have put so much pressure on her to save him. He had to do what he could to get out of here himself—meet her halfway. Otherwise, she’d never forgive herself if something went wrong.
A jubjub bird’s carcass had broken his fall. He wiped sticky goo from between his fingers onto his pants, turning up his nose at the rank remains of the army that had been chasing them and tumbled into the chasm. He pushed himself to stand in the pitch-dark gloom. His boots made sucking sounds as he walked. He’d never been squeamish; any aversion to blood and gore had been beaten out of him—a gradual desensitization reinforced each time he’d look in the mirror to find his cheeks and eyes swollen up, fat and bloody like raw steak.
But without a speck of light to go by, the carnage at his feet felt more alive than dead. His imagination pulled out files on everything from zombie movies to demons and hauntings. Nausea burned his stomach. He took solace that only the wind whistled through the chasm. He couldn’t hear any ghostly chains or undead moans.
Besides, time was the actual foe here, more dangerous than anything he could imagine. Al still had to complete the final task in the cemetery. And then they had to find each other again.
He forced himself blindly forward until his palm skimmed the chasm’s wall. Before he’d dropped all the way down, he’d caught a glimpse of Al’s backpack snagged on a rock outcropping about a yard north. If he could find it, he’d have a flashlight. Hands scraping the crusty surface of the stone, he lifted his feet over obstacles, patting his toes across corpses to assess how wide each step should stretch.
Rubbing the scrapes on his elbows, he studied the sky. A shy smattering of stars wrestled the clouds and broke through to dimly light his surroundings, enabling him to wend his way around the queen’s dead army. A damp breeze spun dust like tiny tornados. It was going to rain. And in this place, it was possible it would literally rain cats and dogs—the hissing and barking variety.
A chill that had nothing to do with the impending storm crept across his soul and shadowed any humor he might’ve found in the thought. What was with all of Morpheus’s “tests”? Each time Al successfully completed one, her netherling form became more prominent. Was the goal to alter her completely, so she couldn’t go back to the human realm?
Strands of hair blew into his face, and he shoved them aside.
Morpheus had said that all he ever wanted was to return Alyssa to her proper place. Her home. Jeb had hoped that meant back to their world, the human realm. But what if Al didn’t have a curse on her at all?
He remembered from his fairy research that there were creatures called changelings—the offspring of fairies secretly left in the place of stolen human babies. Had Al’s great-great-great-grandmother, Alice Liddell, been a changeling? Maybe that was how she’d found the rabbit hole as a child—by instinct. That would mean that this was Al’s home, in some warped way.
Jeb shook off the speculations. They only dredged up more questions.
He’d reached the backpack. Opening it, he fished out the flashlight and flipped it on.
As he zipped up the bag, he brushed the landscape with swaths of light. The tattered guards looked like crumpled playing cards. Discarded playthings. Even the busted-up jubjub birds could pass as children’s toys with the stuffing pulled out.