by A. G. Howard
He tightens his arms. His nose roots through the hair at my nape, like he’s losing himself in the tangles. Our heartbeats thunder between us. Nervous shivers assault me until my limbs quake.
“Jeb,” I whisper. He mutters something indecipherable, and my trembling hands clutch his neck.
A groan escapes his throat. I catch my breath as he clenches my hair in his fingers and draws back, eyes intense. He’s about to lean into me when a cacophony of clicks and clatters interrupts.
We turn in circles. Thousands upon thousands of clams tunnel out from the sand. I clutch Jeb’s hand, worried they’re going to attack us for destroying their home. Instead, high-pitched cheers break loose.
Glancing over Jeb’s shoulder, I gape. “Behind you.”
Beside the clifflike wall, tons of shells pile one on top of another—tumbling in and out, over and over—to form a living escalator.
“We defeated their enemy,” I whisper. “They want to help us.”
Jeb doesn’t hesitate. He takes my hand and leads me toward the ascending steps, snagging the backpack on the way. Together, we ride toward the sparkling black sands of the island.
Once we reach the top, I wave to the clams as they disappear into their ocean bed far below.
Jeb opens the backpack to check on our things. “Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that nothing’s wet in here.” He opens the pencil box before I can stop him. His jaw twitches. “What’s this?”
“It’s my … savings.” Great. Not only did I throw myself at Taelor’s boyfriend, but now I’ve lied about the money I stole from her.
Jeb looks up from counting it. There’s something unreadable behind those thick lashes.
“You look different,” he says, stashing the money back in the box and shaking wet droplets from his hair.
“Do I?” I rub the skin around my eyes. Are all my secrets blinking across my face like neon signs? “My makeup must be running all over the place.”
“You’re sparkly—everywhere.”
“Oh. Probably just salt residue.” I slip off his tux jacket, wring out the water, and hand it over.
“Huh,” he says, still intent on me. “So … should we talk about it?” He shoves the jacket into the pack.
“About what?”
“What happened down there, between us.”
Heat prickles my cheeks. He regrets it. Or maybe he’s afraid I’ll tell Taelor. Either way, I end up looking like a jerk. “It was the adrenaline. That’s all. We were just happy to be alive. No worries. What happens in Wonderland stays in Wonderland, right?”
He doesn’t even crack a smile. Just holds my gaze, then shakes his head. Lips drawn into a tight line, he puts all his attention into zipping up the backpack.
I want to believe he felt what I did … these things that I shouldn’t be feeling at all. But how can that be true? I’m not the one he’s going to be living with in another country.
I try to concentrate on something else, like how the water in my boots squishes between my toes, or how I have gaping rips the size of silver dollars all over my leggings.
“Where to now?” he asks.
It’s possible he’s talking about more than our physical destination, but I’m too scared to take a chance I’m wrong. Instead, I focus on our whereabouts.
The shore stretches as far as I can see … an endless, inky desert of shimmery soot. It’s not at all what I expected the heart of Wonderland to look like, if that’s what this really is. There’s no flora or fauna anywhere except for a lone tree standing taller and wider than a redwood just a few feet ahead of us.
Familiarity lures me closer. Jeweled bark covers the entire tree, from the gnarled trunk to the branches that twist hundreds of feet into the air. It glimmers in the sun like a million white diamonds. At the end of each branch, rubies well up like liquid and dribble to the ground, as if the tree is bleeding jewels, the way elves do when their skin is pierced. With the black sands as a backdrop, the scene reminds me of my cricket mosaic back home—a beauty both mesmerizing and bizarre. I tamp down a surge of panic, remembering how the crickets seemed to be alive and kicking the last time I saw it on my wall.
“Winter’s Heartbeat,” Jeb says from beside me.
I nod. “You see the resemblance, too?”
His jaw spasms. “You’ve been here before.”
I shake off my unease and step up to the tree, kicking a path through the fallen rubies. A spot at the base of the trunk pulses behind the diamond-bark like a heartbeat. With each thrum, it lights up in red lines the same shape as the birthmark on my ankle. The image sparks a memory of me and the winged boy, fuzzy yet unmistakable.
Jeb moves closer and I turn to hold his shoulder for balance, lifting my left leg to unlace my boot.
“What are you doing?”
“Following instructions,” I answer, peeling off the boot and hiking up my leggings to expose my ankle. Jeb grips my elbow as I crouch down, pressing the maze on my ankle against the glowing lines of the tree.
A shock of static electricity leaps from me to the trunk; then a loud cracking breaks the hush. Jeb yanks me back as the trunk splits, the glittering bark rolling open like a scroll to expose a doorway. A soft red glow throbs and beckons from within.
“The pulsing heart of Wonderland,” I whisper, shoving my foot into my boot again.
The red light reflects off Jeb’s labret. “Okay, I’ll buy that you came here as a kid and are having some kind of repressed memory flashes. But how is it you have a mark on your body that unlocks anything in this place?”
I hesitate, then tell him what I read about netherlings talking to bugs, and what I suspect about my family curse: that we share some characteristics with the creatures here, including freaky magical marks on our bodies.
Jeb stares at me, and I wonder how much more of this he can take without going crackers.
“You okay?” I ask, biting my lip.
Swallowing, he slides his fingers through his hair. “It’s you I’m worried about. So how do we break this ‘curse’?”
My heart bounces when he says “we.” He’s in this with me to the end. Not just because he’s stuck here, but because he’s the Jeb I grew up with. My Jeb. “I have to find someone inside. The one from my past … the one who used to bring me here.”
Jeb frowns. “Okay. According to the flowers, this is also where the portals are. Right? The doors that will take us home?”
“Yeah,” I answer, half expecting him to try to talk me into waiting outside while he checks things out. Instead, he holds me back only long enough to get out the flashlight, reposition the backpack, and take the lead. We descend a winding stairway through a dark tunnel that seems to spiral down forever.
“Don’t look down,” Jeb says.
Why do people say that? It only makes it impossible not to. My gaze sinks to the steps thudding beneath our boots. Bones, interlocked and bound with some kind of shimmery gold twine, make up the stairs. Most of the bones are deformed in size and shape. Others look humanoid. I press my palm over my mouth.
“What are they from?” Jeb whispers. “Ancestors? Human captives?”
I scan my foggy memories. “I don’t remember ever learning about this …”
Jeb picks up his pace. We leap off the last step and duck through a curtain of vines. Instead of finding ourselves deep underground, a vista opens in front of us underneath a dark purple sky. The sun and the moon are twisted into one, the moon a blue tinge next to its brighter brother.
The combined light turns everything an ultraviolet hue. Plants of all kinds—bushes, flowers, trees, and ground cover—are neon beneath the blended rays: pinks, purples, greens, yellows, and oranges.
The paler shades of our clothes glow, too. No wonder I always felt so at home in Underland’s activity center. On some subconscious level, it reminded me of this place.
A cool gust, thick with the scent of loam, greenery, and flowers, blows across us. Then I catch wind of something else—a fruity incense d
rifting our way. I know that smell. “Follow the smoke,” I say, abandoning the path.
Jeb takes my hand and helps me over a bed of fluorescent marigolds. I squeeze his fingers in gratitude. My body is starting to feel the effects of our insane water ride. I have bumps and bruises everywhere.
As we lumber ahead, I can’t stop thinking of the way he came back for me in the water, the way he wouldn’t give up, the way he jumped into the mirror in my bedroom without a thought for his own safety. Maybe we should talk about what’s going on between us, because something is definitely changing on my end. I run my tongue along the roof of my mouth nervously. I’ve been holding on to this secret so tightly for so long.
“Listen, Jeb.” I gulp twice. “About what happened back there on the ocean floor. I—”
“Later.” Glancing behind me, he catches my shoulders. “We have company.”
He forces me to duck as a glowing cloud swoops over us, glimmering like fireflies.
“It’s her!” a tiny voice squeals over the hum of many wings. “It is!”
A swarm of humanoid creatures the size of grasshoppers and the color of lima beans hovers around us. They’re all females, naked with glittery scales that curve around their breasts and torsos in swirling designs. Their pointed ears and flowing hair sparkle, and their eyes are bulbous and metallic like a dragonfly’s, as if they’re wearing copper sunglasses. Wings flutter next to my cheek, milky white and furred with something resembling dandelion fuzz.
One of them gets close enough to pat Jeb’s temple, her palms no bigger than a ladybug’s body. “I found him. He’s my prize!”
“Mine!” three others screech, tunneling into his hair.
Jeb clenches his hands around the backpack’s straps.
“No, sister sprites,” one answers with a voice like a chime. She hovers in front of Jeb, as enthralled as the others. “Our master said they shall be in my keep.”
The others grumble and pull back.
Suspended in midair, the tiny victor bows while flapping her wings. “I am Gossamer. I shall lead you to the one you seek.” Her dragonfly eyes glimmer in my direction and brighten, as if she’s angry. “To the one who seeks you.” My stomach flips at her implication.
Then she turns to Jeb. “Elfin knight, do you wish for pleasure on your quest? I can provide it, if you so desire.”
Rubbing his labret with his thumb, Jeb glances at me, adorably bewildered. “Um. No thanks. I’m good.”
Giggling, the sprite flutters ahead, joining the others.
We follow our luminous guides into a thick forest, weaving through tall, neon grasses until we reach a clearing of lime green moss, bright yellow lichen, and glowing mushrooms. A circle of trees reaches overhead, branches stretched and twisted together to form a domed roof. Slivers of the purple sky break through, just enough to cast shadows.
Each of the sprites takes her place inside the canopy, dotting the branches like lit candles. Their luminance adds a soft, glowing haze to the surroundings. Gossamer motions for us to follow her to the middle of the clearing, where a giant ultraviolet-striped mushroom awaits, wreathed in a fragrant cloud.
An unmistakable sense of knowing curls through me. I recognize this place from my Alice nightmares. We’re in the lair of the Caterpillar—the wisdom keeper of Wonderland.
“She doesn’t look like anything special, my lord.” Gossamer hovers over the thick smoke that cloaks the mushroom’s cap, hiding whatever sits atop. “She’s covered in mud and reeks of clams.”
“That would be because she just drained the ocean, pet. Had to be a rather laborious feat, don’t you think?”
My entire being shakes at the sound of that deep accent. Liquid, masculine, and sensual. It’s him. My netherling guide. If only I could see past the smoke.
“Her apparel appears to be that of a scullery maid,” Gossamer says, shooting me a disapproving glance. “Perhaps you should send her home and wait for another. Someone more acceptable.”
“One who’s naked shouldn’t judge apparel,” that familiar voice answers. “You well know that clothes do not the lady make.”
Humbled, Gossamer joins the other sprites overhead. At last, the smoke clears, revealing a hookah pipe and the crow-size moth—black wings and luminous blue body—perched atop the mushroom like a butterfly on a petal.
It inhales smoke from the hose and releases plumes into the air. Some are shaped like birds, others like flowers. One of the vaporous designs pulls away to form a woman’s head—like the carving in a cameo. As it slowly dissipates, it starts to look like a five-year-old girl. A five-year-old me …
“So good to see you again, little luv. How I’ve missed you.”
Gasping, I fall to my knees. The Caterpillar and the moth and the winged guy. They are all one and the same. They have been all along …
“I’ve seen that bug,” Jeb says. “In your car. On the mirror.” He drops the backpack and grips my shoulders, trying to drag me to my feet. My legs won’t cooperate.
“Tut-tut. You are never to bow to me, lovely Alyssa.” The voice drifts from the moth’s proboscis on gray puffs of smoke. His attention shifts to Jeb. “You, on the other hand, will bow to her.”
Smoke streams toward Jeb and transforms into a net in midair, cloaking him. The weight brings him to his knees. A stick slices his kneecap where the hole gapes in his pants from the octobenus’s tusk. Blood drizzles out.
“Aha! He’s no elf. He’s a mere mortal.” The moth flaps his wings as if he’s made some great discovery.
“A mortal man!” the sprites screech in voices as dulcet as tinkling bells. They plummet from the trees like radiant snowflakes, swarming around Jeb as he slashes at his smoky restraints. The sprites knock the knife from his hand, then wriggle through the net, covering him like ants on a sugar cube.
I leap up to fend them off. “Get away!”
“Oh, don’t stop the fun,” the moth croons in my direction. “We won’t break your toy soldier.”
I grab the knife and try the scissor attachment on the net, but the ropes keep disappearing in my hands. I’m so preoccupied, I almost miss the transformation happening atop the mushroom. The moth laughs, and I look up just in time to see his wings fold over his body. The satiny appendages expand to the size of an angel’s wings, then swoop open to reveal the guy from my mirror’s broken reflection—the one from my memories—all grown up.
The knife slips from my hand. I’m mentally trapped between the past and present.
He’s close to Jeb’s height and age. He wears a black leather suit with utilitarian boots and lounges on the mushroom’s cap with the hookah’s hose perched elegantly between two fingers, ankles crossed. Weathered pants cover his toned legs. He’s lankier than Jeb but in great shape. His jacket, unzipped almost to his abdomen, reveals a smooth chest, milky white like his clean-shaved chin.
The sprites steal our knife and abandon us to rush to their master. They preen his hair and smooth his clothes, cooing and laughing.
No wonder Persephone’s movie poster always seemed so familiar. My netherling companion grew up to look just like the hero, except his shoulder-length hair is blue and glowing, and he wears a red satin half mask. Other than that, he’s the spitting image: porcelain-pale skin, eyes as black as the makeup lining them, lips full and dark.
With the gray smog swirling around his sooty wings, he also reminds me of Jenara’s window display: a dark angel.
Although he’s more of a devil.
I know, because my childhood memories return in a crashing wave—slamming me with the name I haven’t spoken in eleven years.
“Morpheus.” I say it more as an accusation than a revelation.
The winged devil flashes his white teeth in a stunning smile that draws me in as it puts me on guard. “Mmm.” He moves his hand along the hookah as if it’s a violin. “Your voice is a song. Say it again.” He takes a drag of smoke from the pipe.
I’m so entranced by seeing him alive and real, I don’t even tr
y to resist. “Morpheus.”
“Beautiful. Your mum should’ve known it would take more than a pair of pruning shears to snip me out of your life. Though it appears she managed to cut me from your memories for a bit.” He puffs out circles of smoke. “I’m wounded, Alyssa. It shouldn’t have taken this long for you to find me.” Catching the smoke rings on his finger, he tosses them into the air, where they burst into vaporous stars.
Jeb struggles under the net next to me. “This is the joker you’ve been looking for? The one from the website?” he asks.
“More than that,” I answer, not even sure the words I’m forming are coherent. “We grew up together, somehow. He was the one in my dreams when I was little. That’s right, isn’t it? You came to me in my dreams … brought me here. Told me things.”
“Taught you things, rather. Oh, but we made time for recreation as well. I shall have to see that we continue that tradition.” Morpheus hands off his hookah to some sprites with his pale, elegant fingers. I close my eyes, remembering glimpses of us as children, leaping across rocks as Morpheus took flight and lifted me under my arms—a gentle security. When my eyes open again, I blush, remembering how different his touch felt in my bedroom last night. He stands up on the mushroom, wings draped in a flowing arch behind him as he steeples his hands beneath his chin.
“Hospitality Hat!” he shouts, completely off topic.
Several of his attendants flutter over with a black velvet cowboy hat and place it on his head. He tilts it cockeyed. The velvet is accented with a band of decomposing white moths, making him appear both suave and savage.
“She had no right to interfere.” He runs a long forefinger across the hat’s brim. Lengthy wisps of blue hair touch his shoulders. “It wasn’t her place.”
It takes me a minute to realize he’s on the subject of Alison again. “You knew her?”
“Yes. Of all the other candidates, of all of your ancestors, her mind was the most receptive to me. We connected when she heard the nether-call at age thirteen. But she turned her back on her responsibility the moment she met Tommy-toes.” He sneers at my father’s nickname. Then he composes himself, smoothing his jacket. “Never mind all that. I see you wore the gloves. Did you bring the fan, as well?”