by Frank Beddor
In the Jardin des Tuileries, he placed his easel next to an oval pond, with a view across its surface to a stand of chestnut trees. Normally a quick painter who finished canvases in a matter of hours, this one gave him trouble for some reason. He tried to empty his mind, to forget the morning’s fret and lose himself in the ecstasy of creation. But when he put away his brushes at the end of the afternoon, his canvas boasted little more than the clouds of color that comprised his background tones, in the middle of which he was surprised to see daubs of black paint.
“Let’s have a look at what you’ve done,” his wife commanded when he returned to the apartment. She reached for the canvas. Her lips pursed in perplexity, her brow collapsed. The baby, whom she held absently in one arm, began to cry. “What are these?” She pointed to the spots of black paint.
“I will correct them tomorrow,” he said.
“You’d better or you won’t get paid, and then where will we be?”
The next day’s painting went much like the first. He struggled to tap the vein of inspiration, to let himself become hypnotized by the wonder of nature, the rhythmic dipping of his brush in oils and the feel of its bristles on canvas. When he packed up his supplies in the late afternoon, he was stunned to see, amid the rough contours of pond and trees he had produced with hours of effort, that not only were the daubs of black paint still there, they were larger and more detailed—not daubs at all but the crude beginnings of human figures walking over the pond’s surface toward…him. Nor were they strictly black in color. One of the figures had taken on a decisively reddish hue.
He covered the painting with his jacket to avoid looking at it and, full of a foreboding he couldn’t explain, started the walk home, passing squalid brasseries and dingy apartment houses he had never noticed before. His usual route was blocked off, clogged with onlookers of some police activity—the crowd so greedy for a glimpse of others’ misfortune that he became frightened and turned off into the nearest lane. He took an unfamiliar course home and was hiding in his studio when his wife burst in.
“I want to see it,” she said.
“I don’t…It’s not…” he stammered.
She noticed his jacket hanging over the easel. “Is that it?” “No.”
She stepped to the easel before he could stop her, yanked the jacket off and—
“You said you were going to fix them!” she protested when she saw the strange figures. “Do you want your son to starve? Are you trying to kill us through hardship?”
After three full days in the Tuileries, there was hardly any landscape to speak of; the pond, the chestnut trees—the painter had buried all beneath streaks and daubs of paint that formed the two figures who had so hijacked his imagination. The palette he had used to render them was more primary than usual—consisting of heavy reds, blacks, and browns—but, as in all his paintings, the hard lines of the figures were blurred to suggest the constant movement of things. One of the figures wasn’t human but a broad-chested creature with overmuscled arms and legs and, where its hands should have been, thick paws with claws as glittering and long as polished carving knives. What’s more, it had the face of a cat, complete with whiskers and a menacing set of fangs. The other figure was probably a woman, though nothing about the thick bramble of red hair or the sneerful face with its wrinkles of disgust and eyes steeled with condescension suggested femininity. No, it was the couture that made the painter think the figure was a woman—a dress made entirely of thorny roses and their long, twisting vines. The blooms on several of the roses faced him, their innermost petals baring teeth like eager mouths hungry for a bite of…he didn’t like to guess.
In his studio, hiding from his wife, he threw the painting on the fire. The haunting figures were gone, cinders and ash; burning them had been for the best. But by noon the following day, among the background tones that had been all he’d managed to set on canvas, were two black splotches of paint he didn’t remember making. He painted over them immediately. Paint a landscape, any landscape. But they were already back by the time he was packing up to go home: the humanoid feline and the cruel woman in her dress of roses, taking up his entire canvas.
His next attempt turned out exactly like the others. As did the one after that. He could paint nothing but the cat-beast and the snarling woman. Bitter and depressed, he welcomed his wife’s scoldings. He deserved them; he was a failure. He carried his failings to a nameless alley. He entered a nameless establishment where neither beauty nor virtue were to be found—just cheap wine, which he slung down his throat until he could see nothing clearly, until everything inside and outside his head was a tilting carousel, spinning around in a blear of colors and textures. He had to dull his senses, had to keep himself from envisioning the cat-beast and its female companion.
Somehow, in the early dawn, and despite lampposts frequently darting into his path, he made it back to his apartment. In the unlit studio, he couldn’t see his latest attempt at a landscape, but he sensed it—a large canvas as tall as himself covered with a bedsheet and leaning against a wall in the corner.
“What’s that?” he said aloud because he thought he’d heard…was that the sheet rustling? Did he hear breathing? Purring?
“Ngah!”
He gasped awake, still in his suit. He lit the lamp and gazed around, trying to focus his thoughts, to understand what had—
“My God!”
The studio door was in splinters. The sheet that had been covering his painting lay on the floor. He started to lift his glance. He didn’t want to look; he was afraid. But he had to: Slowly, he raised his eyes to what was left of the canvas, too horrified to cry out at what he saw. Where the cat-beast and woman had been there was nothing, just a hole exactly the shape of their outlines, as if someone had cut them out of the picture or—
“Impossible,” the painter breathed.
Because things like that didn’t happen. A pair of painted figures escaping their canvas? It was a joke. Inanimate figures did not come to life as in some fairy tale. It was one thing for his paintings to suggest vitality and life, but to have actually created them? With nothing more than brushes and oils?
“It’s impossible! Impossible!” he kept repeating.
But if it was impossible, why did he have a dream-fuzzed memory of the ferocious woman and cat-beast standing over him as he curled in his cot, sleeping off his drunk, a memory in which he was both participant and observer?
“The only reason I don’t kill him,” he remembered the woman saying, her voice sounding like the scrape of iron against iron, a corrosion of vocal cords, “is because he’s not important enough.”
CHAPTER 17
MOLLY’S HEAD felt like it had been cracked open and poorly fit back together. Her shoulders ached. Her forearms tingled raw, as if skinned. Her swollen hands were so sensitive that it hurt to make a fist. It hurt to do most things—including blink, so she lay with her eyes closed, remembering what had happened: the Lady of Diamonds; the carved wooden chest that was supposed to have gone to Queen Alyss; her suspicion of a plot to upset Alyss’ reign (which, judging by her present pains, had not been ill-placed). But an attempt on the queen’s life? The Lady of Diamonds was bolder than she had supposed. Alyss had to be informed.
Molly forced herself to sit up and open her eyes. What the—? King Arch was sitting in a chair next to her mattress. What was Arch doing in Wonderland?
“She lives,” he said.
A minister scurried in on silent feet and whispered in the king’s ear, which was when she realized: Arch wasn’t in Wonderland; she was in Boarderland. But how had she ended up in Boarderland? Where was her gear? And what was she wearing that encased her like a second skin? Instead of her usual pants and belt, she had on a formfitting one-piece made of some unfamiliar pink material, and there were no visible buttons or clasps by which to remove it. The collar fit tightly about her neck, the leggings tightly around her ankles, and the cuffs of the long sleeves came close to choking off the blood supply to her h
ands. She hated tight-fitting clothes. Worse, she hated pink.
“Send her in with the dumplings,” Arch told the minister, who left as quietly as a curl of smoke. The king smiled down at Molly. “And how are we feeling after our much-needed nap?”
“Where are my things?”
“Right there.”
He pointed to a table across the room, on which her homburg, Millinery coat, backpack, belt, and wrist-blades were neatly arrayed. Standing on either side of the table were two creatures from a species she had never seen before.
“You underestimate me,” she said, and lunged for her gear.
Her legs gave way as if they’d been shorn of all muscle. Her arms were useless and she was unable to steady her vision, as if her eyes were swirling in their sockets independently of each other. She fell to the floor. Far, far away she felt someone pick her up and set her back down. Her head began to settle and she found herself on the mattress.
“It seems, Molly, it is you who underestimates me,” Arch said. “I should’ve perhaps told you the item you’re wearing is a drug-delivery system. When you make any sudden move, it will secrete through your skin a certain something that…Well, I hope you’ll never succumb to the illusory charms of artificial crystal, but let’s just say that this certain something produces an effect similar to a night of overindulgence with such unhealthy ingestives.”
“What do you want with me?” she asked.
“You had an unpleasant tumble.” He nodded toward the unfamiliar creatures. “My Ganmede friends and I are nursing you back to health, that’s all.”
“By drugging me?”
Molly tried to intimidate him with her most vicious glare, but not getting much of a response, she fell to pulling at her collar and the cuffs at her wrists.
“You might as well try to remove your own skin,” Arch said. “Please understand, Molly. I have no intention of harming you. The Lady of Diamonds has caused you enough inconvenience, I think. Your flattering outfit is simply a precaution in case you overreact at finding yourself here. I hope that soon you’ll choose to stay here as my personal guest.”
Molly rose to her feet—slowly, steadily. “I have a duty to my queen, who will be missing me. I would like to go home now.”
“I wouldn’t be so hasty. The queen you left might not be the one you return to.”
He was trying to trick her into something. She would be smart. She would keep her mouth shut, learn as much as possible, and report back to Alyss.
“I want you to know that I find it appalling how the Lady of Diamonds attempted to deceive you,” the king said. “You’re to be commended for protecting the queen from opening the Lady of Diamonds’ ‘gift,’ however much your doing so has jeopardized the queendom itself.” Seeing Molly’s questioning expression, he explained: “Yes, it seems your little adventure in the Crystal Continuum has limited the mobility of Queen Alyss’ army, a circumstance the Diamond clan has taken advantage of to try and gain the crown.”
Molly didn’t believe him, refused to believe him. Besides, the Lady of Diamonds could never defeat Alyss Heart.
Arch rose from his chair and paced about the tent. “The Diamonds came to me for support, but as you can see, my loyalty lies with Queen Alyss rather than with a scheming lady of rank in her queendom.” He was at the table, picking over her wrist-blades and coat and backpack as if they were a merchant’s untidy wares. “I should never have been so dismissive of you when we first met at Heart Palace. I should have realized that you possessed formidable skills, since it’s not anyone who can take Hatter Madigan’s place.”
Molly said nothing.
“Your parents must be extremely proud of you.” He turned abruptly to face her. “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot that you don’t have parents.”
King or not, he was lucky she didn’t have access to her homburg.
Arch sat back down in his chair and, with practiced nonchalance, asked, “Do you know much about the people who brought you into this world?”
“I know enough.”
“Really? Is that why you don’t seem very curious about them?”
“There’s nothing to be curious about,” she said.
“Nothing to be…? But don’t you want to know why they gave you up?”
“They didn’t give me up!”
She flung herself at him, but her legs refused to obey her, her arms belonged to somebody else, and her head filled with kaleidoscopic jelly. When her wits were again hers, she was back on the mattress.
“I apologize,” Arch said. “I should have taken into account how the trials of life can break a family apart for reasons that have nothing to do with ill will or a lack of love in any of its members. With Redd in control of Wonderland as she was, the actions of your parents might have only appeared uncaring, when in fact they were just the opposite—necessary to your survival.”
“Uh-huh,” Molly said, hating him.
“Do you, by chance, remember how old you were when you last saw your mother?”
She wasn’t going to answer. She would tell this man nothing, especially not that she’d been just three lunar years old when Weaver left the Alyssian camp in the Everlasting Forest and that, if not for the holographic crystal of her mother posing in front of the Unnatural History Museum shortly before Redd’s coup, she wouldn’t even know what the woman looked like.
“Her name was Weaver, wasn’t it?”
Molly was startled. “How’d you know that?”
He waved off the question. “I’ve hardly begun to astound you, Molly. Not only do I know your mother’s name, I know who your father is. And what’s more, so do you. You’ve already met him.”
Molly was so taken aback by all of this that she didn’t hear Arch call for his bodyguards. Shadows fell over her as Ripkins and Blister entered the tent.
“Molly wants to know her father’s name,” Arch said to them. “Why don’t we give her a hint?”
“His first name rhymes with ‘splatter,’” said Ripkins.
“And ‘matter,’” put in Blister.
“Also ‘fatter,’” said Ripkins.
“Likewise ‘chatter,’” added Blister.
“And his surname?” Arch asked.
“It rhymes with ‘that again,’” said Ripkins.
“And ‘Flanagan,’” put in Blister.
“Also, um…‘pad a fin’?” offered Ripkins. “Or ‘pan a tin’?”
Arch and Blister looked at him.
“‘Pannikin’!” he said proudly.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Molly screamed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Perhaps not,” Arch said. “But I can think of at least one person whose knowledge you’ll trust.” He got to his feet as a strange aroma wafted into the tent. “Here she comes now with a plate of DoDo dumplings, one of my favorite Boarderland delicacies, to help you regain your strength.”
Ready to deny all, to denounce Boarderland as a nation of liars, Molly turned and saw the last person in the world she had ever expected to see alive.
“M-Mom?”
CHAPTER 18
REDD FOUND her usual bitterness amplified by her passage through the Heart Crystal. The roses of her dress gnawed the air, their petal-mouths mutely opening and closing in echo of her black melancholy as she stalked the predawn streets of this alien city and lashed herself with gloomy thoughts.
“If anyone tells you it’s painless to be turned into pure NRG and formed again from the muck of some Earth person’s imagination,” Redd hissed, “don’t believe them.”
“I won’t, Your Imperial Viciousness.” The Cat glanced side-long at his mistress, licked a paw and rubbed it over his eyes.
“If I’m not powerful enough to defeat Alyss…” Redd murmured, and dropped into a depressed silence.
The otherworldly pair walked the length and breadth of Montmartre, not knowing what else to do. Few people were out and about, and none had passed within twenty yards of them when Redd stopped as if slapp
ed.
“I am more powerful than that disgustingly well-intentioned niece of mine!”
But what if her journey through the crystal had weakened her power, diluted it to a laughable remnant of what it used to be? What if what if what if. She would test it, flex the muscle of her imagination, and it would tell her all. She reached a hand out to nothing. A stick as long as one of The Cat’s claws formed in her palm, extended lengthwise until it resembled the twisty, knobby thing she’d used as a scepter in Wonderland.
“You try,” she said to The Cat, who morphed from humanoid to kitten and back again, testing his own powers.
“Good.”
But Her Imperial Viciousness wasn’t done. She banged the end of her makeshift scepter on the pavement and, from the point of impact, cracks branched out in all directions, widening enough to let vines of flesh-eating roses slither out of them. Growing at a rate never before seen in nature, the vines methodically covered the entire block—buildings, lampposts, street, and sidewalk. It was then that an unfortunate butcher, hurrying to his shop at this early hour as was his custom, emerged from his apartment. He saw the roses and the menacing figures of Redd and The Cat and he tried to run, but the thorn-laden vines wrapped around his ankles and held him rooted. Thorns dug into him as the vines wound up and around his legs, torso, and arms. He opened his mouth to scream and a vine stuffed itself down his throat.
“It’s like watching an enjoyable narrative on an entertainment crystal back on Mount Isolation,” Redd said as the roses finished with the butcher. She motioned with her stick—a conductor leading her orchestra—and the roses retracted into the pavement’s cracks. “You’ve been to this world before, Cat. Take me to where I can sulk and complain in peace. Someplace suitable to my delicate temperament.”
“Yes, Your Imperial Viciousness.”
The Cat preferred not to admit his ignorance. True, he had recently plunged through the Pool of Tears and traveled to Earth in his hunt for the exiled Alyss Heart, but nothing looked familiar to him and he was certain that he had never been in this city. He led Redd through a series of turns and along countless blocks. They rounded a corner and came upon the dead butcher. They had traveled in a circle.