I’ve no idea if he’s telling the truth or not.
For a long moment, no one breathes.
Smrt glares at him and then at the pouch, and back again. He licks his buggy spring lips. “How do I know it can do what you claim?”
“Because, unlike you, I speak the truth. Now, take it. Take it now.”
The Queen’s hot breath burns my shoulder.
“Here. I’ll show you,” Urlick slowly unravels the leather straps. “See, powder—just as he used on Eyelet.” He shows both Sir Hatter and the Queen, then shifts a wary gaze in my direction, and I think I read the message in his eyes.
“Are you ready?” he says, glancing back at Smrt.
I brace myself, prepared to run.
In one fluid motion he whirls around, hurling the powder into Smrt’s face. Then he continues the arc, striking the Queen.
The powder explodes into flash when it hits its targets, then breaks into sparkling particles that expand ten times their size. They whip around the room causing the perfect smoke screen. The Queen drops his axe to grab his face, and I bolt away, then double-back around him for the necklace.
Urlick does the same, diving for it across the metal table. The table tips slightly under his force, and the necklace shimmies and rolls, and then topples from the table.
It shatters on the chequerboard floor.
All the blood in my body stops.
“No!” Urlick shouts. He falls to his knees, cupping his hands around the broken pieces, frantically sweeping them across the floor and trying to collect the liquid back up in them. “No, no, no, no, no…!” The liquid seeps through his cut and bloodied fingers, through the joints in the tiles.
I stand there, unable to move, unable to breathe.
My father’s precious antidote.
Gone.
“I’m sorry.” He lifts his head, tears streaming from his eyes. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I grab him by the hand and yank his to his feet.
Together, we scramble from the building.
“Bleed her!” Sir Hatter shouts at the Queen. “Cut her down and bleed her body out!”
Chapter Forty
Urlick
WE RACE DOWN THE stairs and out the main doors, past the fang-snapping doors, and the wiry, long-faced guard, slinging a bumbershoots holder and parlour tables into the paths of our pursuers.
Eyelet smacks a panel of buttons, springing open the front gate. We rush through and I immediately lose sight of her. She’s bolted off in the opposite direction, toward the centre of town.
I give chase. “Where are you going?”
“To find where that buried capsule’s kept, and disarm it!”
“Oh, God.” I suck in a breath and run like thunder after her, shouting, “Though a noble quest, I don’t believe there’s time.”
I catch up with her at city square, where a scaffold of pipes projects up from where they are buried in the ground. Beside them, familiar gauges flutter, measuring, what we now know to be suspected amounts of radium.
“What are you doing?” I shout to her.
“Destroying. This.” She kicks at and pounds, trying to smash the pipes. “That’s, what!”
“You’re never going to win this. Now, come on!” I grab her arm as she kicks one of the smaller valves, denting it.
“We can’t just leave knowing what he has planned.” She yanks her arm away.
A whistle blows just beyond the fog. “Stop!” someone shouts.
My head cranks around. So does Eyelet’s.
“We either leave now, or we never leave here.” I implore her to reason with my eyes. “I promise you, we will return, but first we must get home in time to warn them.”
A second whistle blows. Boots tromp the ground.
I scoop her up by the middle, toss her over my shoulder, and run, guards closing in.
“Let me down,” she shouts from above.
“I’ll put you down, when at last we’re safe.”
“But the capsule—”
“We’ll have to come back for it.” I high step it through the streets toward the outskirts. “And we’ll bring an army.”
I race on, not quite knowing which direction is the right to run, considering how we got here. The wind is wild. It whips at our backs, sending black smoky soot spiraling around us. The trolling grey cloud cover moves like a coiling snake. The atmosphere has suddenly become angry.
“It must be Smrt,” Eyelet shouts. “He must be at the controls.”
My heart falls to my stomach. “If he is, we’ve no time to waste.”
Metal leaves break loose from the trees, pelting our bodies and nicking our skin. One becomes lodged in my forearm. I tear it out and continue running.
Smrt’s terror-slathered voice loops through the trees, his laughter crackles thick. His wickedness pours through the hidden gramophonic speakers. I look, searching the treetops.
“Go ahead, run,” his voice calls out. “I love a good chase.” He laughs again, and the sound snakes across the sky like low thunder.
I drop Eyelet to the ground and grasp her hand. “Come on!” I tug her forward. We run. I head toward the only gate. Eyelet stops and bends over, coughing.
“What is it? Are you all right?” I double back.
“I don’t know,” Eyelet gasps. “Something’s suddenly changed.”
The powder. I wasted the powder. Worse than that, I told the secret. The Alchemist’s secret. He warned me never to share what happened there, or everything would change. “This is my fault. All my fault.” I rub her back.
“Don’t be silly.” Eyelet clutches her knees. She looks up, searching the grounds. “We need the path to lead us back. And quickly.”
Another round of Smrt’s pursuing laughter shakes the ground beneath our feet.
I scan the horizon, but see nothing. Nothing but black, whirling, angry wind, and bending metal trees.
The sound of their clacking leaves grates my bones. I duck as a giant mechanical flower crashes over nearly swiping close to my head.
Eyelet bursts into another fit of coughing and falls to her knees.
I drop beside her, patting her back. When she stops choking, her palms are trickled with blood.
My heart slams against my chest. It’s happening again. I suck in a breath, reality dawning.
It’s me. I’ve done this to her.
I broke the Alchemist’s promise.
Her coughing quickly worsens, and I use the heel of my hand to pound her back. “No.” I turn my eyes to the sky, searching. “No, please.”
Frantic laughter crackles through the speakers again.
Eyelet sucks in her breath, her windpipe wheezing.
“Come on,” I say, pulling on her hand.
“I can’t.” She looks up with desperate eyes, then hangs her head, again coughing. The chambers of my heart contract. “Eyelet?” I turn her face to me.
Her skin is a sickly grey. She gasps, coughs, and gasps again, trying to draw in breath. I think about our pack of supplies with Bertie J. back up on the ridge, the gasmask among them. Why hadn’t I thought to bring one?
I scoop her up into my arms, feeling her heave, her lungs seizing, and run. The metal trees tumble around us.
“I’ve got to get you out of here.” I race onward, neck bent against the storm. “And fast.”
A boom goes off. The earth around us crumbles. The assault is coming from beneath the earth. It’s as if someone has tugged a rug, and flipped us from it. I feel the energy building again under my feet, rumbling toward us underground. The metal earth swells—and then it tears apart, blowing the guts of the earth out high above our heads. A shower of rubbish falls—bits of broken this, and severed that—gears, tools, wheels.
I duck under a tree for cover, but the tree threatens to give. So I stumble on through the carnage, my boots slipping on the discards, the bizarre new earth melting beneath my boots. Everything has become oily, slippery. Smrt’s horrendous laugh
ter chases after us, increasing in both volume and intensity.
Eyelet claps her hands to her ears. I duck to the left and then the right. Around us, the limbs of metal trees snap and crash, sticking into the ground. I don’t know where to run.
Eyelet shrieks, struck by a flying stray bolt.
“Are you all right?” I holler, running.
She nods and rubs her arm. “Look!” She points ahead. A black wall materializes through a break in the toxic plume. “The escarpment!” she shouts, launching forward, nearly flipping out of my arms. I bend my head and charge toward it, as another boom strikes. The ground divides and I race right of the split. The land behind us rises up and flicks, knocking me off my feet.
We roll together down a hill toward an oily river. It bursts into flames. We slide to a stop at the river’s edge. I scoop Eyelet back up and start running. Smrt’s laughter rages.
Beyond the river, a storm roars. Or is that an engine?
Out of the roiling smoky mist, a new monster rises. A steaming, belching, metal beast. “Oh, good Lord!” Eyelet gasps.
I keep running, glancing back over my shoulder through the whirling, mysteriously darkening wind, struggling to make out what the monster is.
A massive glass bubble rises up on a pair of expanding accordion legs.
“What is that?” Eyelet shudders.
“I don’t know,” I shout.
My heart jags as the thing pushes up from the surface, rising, ever rising, tearing out of the ground.
I don’t wait to see it fully emerge; I snap my head back and run like hell.
Eyelet bounces along in my arms, clinging to my neck. I stumble and she nearly spills. Struggling to right myself, I push on for the wall.
“Alle, alle, auch sind frei!” Smrt’s voice explodes behind us, crashing up my spine.
I clutch Eyelet hard and hurtle a log, stretching my legs as far out in front of me as possible. I land on the pathway we were on before, worried it’ll come to life again and spin us backward.
“Turn back!” The metal centipede leaps out into the middle of the road. It stands on its hind feet. “Turn back! You’ll miss the party!” It hisses at me.
I gather up speed, fake right and dodge left.
“You can’t leave,” he shouts in a demonic voice after me. “No one ever leaves!”
The spider appears next, legs extended, steely fangs bared.
Eyelet shrieks as I duck my head and slide through the creature’s legs and out the other side.
I scramble to my feet and race on, my heart a mad-dog thumping.
To the right, a geyser blows.
“The wall!” I shout as we approach, dropping Eyelet to her feet when we finally reach it, running my hands along its sides. “It’s too smooth,” I shout back. “We’ll never be able to climb it.”
Eyelet balls her fists, and pounds it. The wall conks. “It’s hollow. It’s not real.” She turns. Her eyes are desperate. “It’s not the right one. There must be another.”
“It has to be.” I pound again.
“It doesn’t have to be anything,” a smoky voice says. “Not here, anyway.”
Eyelet turns. She narrows her eyes.
The lady-of-the-night automaton slinks out from behind a rock. She clanks, and squeaks and folds her legs, crossing them leisurely at the ankles. She gazes at me, eyes smouldering. “You’ll find a ladder over there.” She flicks her cigarette ashes to the right. “It’ll take you to the top. Or so they say.” She takes a long drag of her cigarette. “No one’s ever tried it.”
“Why haven’t they?” I step toward her.
“Death,” she says, puffing out four perfect, mushroom shaped-clouds.
“But aren’t you already—Isn’t everyone already—” Eyelet doesn’t complete her sentences.
“It’s all a matter of perception, isn’t it?” She winks a sultry eye.
“She’s lies.” Eyelet turns. “It’s a lie. Don’t believe her. It’s some kind of trick.”
“Fine, then. Don’t believe me.” She flicks her ashes. “Stay and burn with me and the others for all eternity, for all I care.”
The tree behind her explodes into fire, slowly melting into a puddle. Grasses burn and seep down the hill.
“It’s begun. You’d better leave.”
The automaton slinks behind the rock again, without flinching, puffs her cigarette and fades away, as ghostly as she appeared.
The earth rumbles beneath our feet, another sonic-warping boom.
I grab for the wall to steady myself, and catch hold of Eyelet. “Come on!” I scoop her up and charge up the rock face, jumping over the crevasse that’s just torn open, slamming down on the rock on the other side. The end of a rope dangles down the rock face through the black curdling mist. I race toward it, dropping Eyelet to her feet.
“Please, Urlick, don’t do this,” Eyelet gasps, chasing after me. “She lied to us once before. She’d do it again. She put you under a spell, remember?”
I loop the end of rope around my arm, preparing to climb, and it frays in my hands. Sick invades my stomach. “What do you propose?” I snap at Eyelet. “We stay here and let you become Smrt’s personal serum?”
I yank on the rope again. This time it holds, so I risk it and throw myself up. Eyelet scowls, and I try to mask my reservations, drawing her reluctant body into my arms. She’s right: this plan is not optimum. But it’s the only one we’ve got. And very little time to implement it.
“Let’s go.” I draw her to me, crushing her tight to my chest, and stare her hard in the eyes. “I vowed to get you out of here, and I’m not going to stop until that’s done. Now, prepare yourself to climb this rock face with me, before the very ground we stand on crumbles to nothing.”
She opens her mouth as if to object and I kiss her, rendering her speechless. Then I begin to haul us both up on the rope one tug at a time, securing my legs around it for extra leverage. Eyelet buries her face in my chest as I shinny us up.
“Whatever you do, whatever happens, don’t let go!” I whisper.
Another sizeable boom goes off, cutting a jagged path up the rock face.
I leap up the rope at breakneck speed, hands, knees, feet, hands, knees, feet, looking back over my shoulder as the burning ground beneath us.
Trees and earth and rocks fall away, giving way to a bottomless pit. A veil of smoke belches up from the cut. Trees tumble in.
We’re thrust aside by the wind. My boots slip off the rock face, and we swing out wildly. “Hang on!” I shout to Eyelet.
I kick and squirm and fight my way back, struggling not to lose my grip. The rope frays and begins to unravel. We drop down a body’s length.
“Urlick?” Eyelet screams, her grasp around my neck slipping.
I risk all, letting go of the rope with one hand to haul her back up.
She clings to me, a new and desperate clutch to her grasp.
I kick out, digging the toe of my boot hard into a channel on the rock face, and lurch up. My boot slides. I can’t find traction.
It’s no use. We’re stuck.
A black swirl of cloud cover closes in. It wreaths our heads, impairing our vision.
“What now?” Eyelet whimpers.
We slip again, dangling precariously.
Eyelet coughs violently. Something has changed. I feel it. The air has grown suddenly thin. It tastes of stannic oxide.
The strum of a frightened heart beats next to mine. Her lips brush my ear.
“When we get back to the castle, I will fix you,” I say. “I will conquer the formula and create the serum to fix you.”
“First, you must save the people. Now that we know, what we know. That must come first.” Eyelet’s breath is slow and measured. Her skin has turned an icy blue. “Then you will come back for me.” She smiles, then gasps and presses her face to my chest, wheezing uncontrollably.
Her lungs labour against the palm of my hand. I’ve got to get us out of here before she stops breathing all
together. I stretch out, grabbing hold of the rope, and find it tethered tightly to a net. I dig my feet into the weave and climb.
Smrt’s distorted laughter shoots up the rock face behind us. I look back to see the machine is gaining.
What are we to do? It’s not like we can grow wings and fly out of here.
Wait….
I peer up through the roiling black mist.
“Bertie Junior,” I gasp.
“What?”
“Bertie Junior. Didn’t C.L. say he’s equipped with a memory?”
Eyelet nods.
“Didn’t he say he would come to his name?”
“Yes! Yes, he did.”
“So, theoretically, if we’re even halfway to the top, he might be able to hear us.”
“It’s certainly worth a try!”
Both ours chin snap up together. “Bertie J.!” I shout.
“Bertie J., Bertie J., Bertie J.!” Eyelet joins me.
Our voices echo off the walls, streaming all through the ravine.
“He’ll never reach you,” Smrt’s voice shouts. “I’ll see to that.”
“Bertie J.! Come quick!”
The monstrous glass bubble pops out of the black mist below us.
“Oh, good God?” Eyelet gulps. “It’s right behind us.”
I tip my head back and holler again. “Bertie J. Come to me NOW!”
My voice booms throughout the canyon, piercing both our ears. A high-pitched squeal takes over where it leaves off. The persistent sound of a sticky flywheel.
Eyelet’s eyes flash. Her breath quickens.
The winds pick up again, and we flutter on the threadbare rope. I pump my way back to the sidewall. The wind increases, drawing us downward. The strength in my arms is no match for the force.
Something descends upon us, spiralling around us at whip speed.
“It’s him,” Eyelet shouts, gawking up through the wind. “Bertie J.! We’re here!”
The cycle dips soaring toward us, slicing through the turbulent air like a giant machete. The great whoosh of his wing ruffles the shirt on my back. I duck, feeling the pressure of him moving next to me.
He angles his wings and circles over us, his giant, black, bumbershoot-covered-wings floundering, as he struggles to keep upright in the violent wind. He bobbles on a gale and is sucked downward, and my stomach sinks.
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