by A. G. Howard
I run to him, arms trembling as I settle my board into place. He expects us to ride down on the boards—like sand surfing. But doesn’t he see the chasm between the desert and the valley?
The end of the slope slants upward, like a launch ramp. He can’t possibly expect us to …
“Today you master an ollie,” Jeb says, finishing my thought.
My pulse drums in my neck. “No way.”
“No choice.” He reaches out his hand. “If we start to fall, use your magic trick. Make the boards float across the chasm.”
“What if I can’t? I broke the curse, fixed all of Alice’s mistakes. Maybe I’m me again.”
“You still look like one of them. I’m betting you don’t go back to normal until we get through that portal. At this point, what do we have to lose?” His hand waits for me.
I grasp it and glance behind us. Clouds of dust consume the slope as the army overtakes the hill. They’ll be at the plateau any second now. I squint against the swirling grit.
Close up, the incline is about three times steeper than the skate bowl’s highest drop in Underland, and I’ve never even scaled the top of that one. We’re so high, my vision swims, and my knees go all buttery.
“Whoa.” Jeb wraps an arm around my waist to balance me.
“Jeb …” I hold his wrist. “We’ll get separated.”
“Won’t happen.” He unclips one end of the metal chain hanging from his belt loops. He unwinds it, leaving the other end still locked on his pants. By latching the chain to a ring on my belt, he forms a lifeline. When stretched out, the links allow a three-foot span between us while still providing security.
“Ready?” he asks, looking over his shoulder at our impending captors.
“Yeah.” But my pitching stomach screams, “No.”
Every part of me begs to turn back … to run in the opposite direction. But the Jubjub birds screech from behind—as earsplitting as giant pterodactyls from some prehistoric soundtrack—and raise the hairs on my neck.
I slide my foot on top of the wood.
“Now!” Jeb shouts.
My stomach falls as we shove off together and plummet into the checkered depths.
The first half of the drop swoops by in a blinding rush. We stay ahead of our attackers, the wood gliding smoothly over the sand. By tweaking the pressure with our feet and legs, we control our direction and speed. My muscles fall into a familiar rhythm, distracting me from how high we are.
The rush of wind lifts my braided hair to flap behind me. Beneath my erratic pulse, a sense of hope nudges—quiet, easy, and strong. Is this what Morpheus meant by finding tranquility amid the madness?
My tentative smile stretches out to Jeb, and he winks in encouragement. His hair thrashes in black waves around his head. Sunlight glows through the strands like a halo. He’s like some rebel guardian angel.
“We’ll launch at the same time,” he says across to me. “When we hit the other side, we’ll unsnap the chain so we can roll into the landing without getting tangled.”
I nod. A yank at my belt reassures me I’m safe … that we’re locked together.
Behind us, the gallops and screeches escalate. Nervousness tugs against my chest. I breathe in dust vapors and stifle a cough, watching the chasm come into view.
The valley on the other side has a clearing of plush grass before the thicket overtakes it. That should cushion our landing and slow our momentum enough that we can get to our feet and scramble to safety.
We can pull this off without any magic. We just have to make our acceleration count this last half … gather enough velocity to launch into an ollie that will carry us across the space.
Which means it has to be a straight shot from here on out.
I prep my feet, positioning my back heel to smack against the tail of the board and my front toes to pull up on the nose when it’s time. A bump knocks the bottom of my board, and I bounce slightly, veering off course and losing precious speed. Jeb skirts toward me to coach me back on route. Then the same thing happens to him, his board bucking hard enough that he almost loses his balance.
He guides himself back into place. “Something’s moving under the sand!” he shouts.
Another thump jolts through my feet. Morpheus’s warning of shifting sands whispers in the back of my mind. As Jeb and I struggle to stay on our boards, the black-and-white squares we’ve been sliding on shift, collide, and converge—snapping the terrain into a jagged jigsaw puzzle, as if a thousand tiny earthquakes have buckled the landscape. Déjà vu hits me. It’s just like my dream.
Our boards come to a complete halt where the squares intersect and fold. We slump in place, panting. The queen’s army makes its way toward us, the giant birds picking paths around the uneven surface.
The sun beats down. We’re totally exposed with nowhere to run. Above is the army … below a chasm too wide to leap across from a standstill. The first row of riders tops the ridge and stirs a whirlwind of sand, which plumes into a mushroom cloud, then puffs down to envelop us. I cover my nose and mouth. The birds are close enough that their powerful gallops thunder through the wood under my soles.
“Pick up the board and use it for a weapon when the dust clears!” Jeb’s command barely leaves his mouth before I remember the flute. Morpheus said to use it if we needed to gain ground.
He knew this would happen …
He’s behind the scenes and pulling strings like he’s always been.
I take the instrument out and lift the mouthpiece to my lips, blowing as I tap my fingers across the holes in a pattern that plays out the melody of his lullaby. Though I’ve never attempted to use a flute—and wind instruments are a completely different animal than string ones—the notes come to me effortlessly.
Jeb gawks, as shocked as I am. If he only knew the half of it … how long this song has been dormant inside me.
The tune echoes over the chaos—loud and magical. As soon as the last note fades, a clatter explodes behind our pursuers. In a sweep of dingy gray, a thousand clams come rushing like a landslide over the ridge, carrying the queen’s army on the surge.
The flute slips from my hand and gets whisked away. Jubjub birds who’ve lost their footing, and fallen guards attempting to scale the clams like mountain goats clambering for ledges, are also caught up in the rattling flood. The shells part like the Red Sea on either side of Jeb and me, leaving us untouched. They still remember what we did for them.
We’re not going to be captured, but we’ve already lost our chance at acceleration. We’ll never make it across the chasm now, and the climb back up—with the terrain so jagged—could take hours. I’ve lost track of time in all the excitement. We might’ve been here for hours already.
“Get on your board!” Jeb positions himself in front of me, shouting over the cacophony. “We’re going to jump onto the clams; somehow they’re clearing the chasm … we’ll hitch a ride to the cemetery.”
I watch the clams as they fly across the rift to safety by using the jacked-up Wonderland physics to their advantage. They catch the Red army in their momentum and forcibly tilt their shells to chuck the Jubjub birds and guards into the depths like trash from a car window. For a split second, I worry they might do the same to us. But I have to believe they won’t. They came in answer to the flute and are here to help.
Jeb bends his thighs like he’s doing squats. He’s getting ready to jump on. “At the count of three,” he says. He levers his board several inches above the clams and props his left foot atop it while balancing his right on solid ground.
“One …” His voice spurs me into action. I hold my slab of wood aloft in one hand and mimic his stance, balanced on one foot and ready to drop my board when he does. “Two …” My free hand curls around the chain hanging from Jeb’s belt loop. “Three!”
Simultaneously, as if we’ve practiced the move a hundred times before, we slap our boards onto the advancing shells with our one foot already in place and shove off with the other to blend i
nto the flow. This ride isn’t nearly as smooth as the sand surfing. My board bumps from one clam to another, hurdling over a card guard here and there. Each impact jiggles the chain and juggles my bones. My skeleton will be as cragged as the landscape before long.
Our speed picks up as the chasm draws nearer. My heartbeat is in my throat, drumming against my larynx.
“Grab the board, and don’t look down!” Jeb yells over his shoulder.
I grip the wood with my free hand and draw up my knees as we launch. I’m holding so tightly to the chain links that my fingers feel like they’re made of metal, too.
Eyes closed, I gulp the fishy air surrounding us, trying to ease my fear.
“Wooooo-hoooo!” Jeb’s cheer forces my eyes open.
For one instant, I believe in the impossible. We’re soaring—crouched on our boards—just a few feet away from the valley’s edge, and it looks like we’re going to clear. I’m not even using any magic. It must have something to do with the curve of the shells and the curve on our boards, because the same bizarre gravitational lapse that’s allowing the clams to soar is working in our favor, too. The wood is actually floating on its own. Wind rushes through me and I lift my chin to the sky, drifting into the blueness that surrounds us. I’m buoyant, and it’s amazing.
“Woo-hoo!” I mimic Jeb’s triumphant cry. He casts a glance over his shoulder, grinning.
I smile back, no longer scared, until Jeb breaks our gaze to look ahead and my attention drops down.
The chasm isn’t endless. That would be so much better than seeing the corpses below us. We’re about twenty stories up, a front-row seat to the gore and carnage. The remnants of our pursuers hang in bits and pieces along the spikes of rock that jut out where the sides of the canyon narrow toward the bottom.
Wooziness bleeds into my periphery. My balance careens out of control and I topple off my levitating board.
I inhale a soundless scream. Jeb hasn’t noticed yet. A whimper lodges in my throat as I fumble to unhook him from my belt, determined not to kill us both. The chain’s latch won’t budge, and he’s jerked down. He passes me with a shout.
I attempt to yell back, but my lungs suck all the sound inside me. Jeb’s weight tugs at my waist, and the sides of the canyon pass in a rush of jagged stone. He drops the backpack to try to delay our descent.
It feels like we’re falling in slow motion. I see our deaths in excruciating detail. Jeb will be the first to hit, his limbs and torso ripped apart as he bounces from one craggy outcropping to another. Then my head will hit a stone and burst like an overripe melon.
Outrage and regret almost incapacitate me, until something clicks inside … an indescribable knowing.
I. Can. Fly.
The memory of my grandmother Alicia’s leap through a hospital window blinks on in my mind. Maybe she didn’t jump from high enough. Her wings didn’t have time to burst through her skin.
As if triggered by the thought, there’s an itch at my shoulder blades. Then a sensation like razors slicing my skin. The screams earlier clogged in my throat break loose as something erupts from behind each shoulder, like umbrellas popping open.
Jeb tugs on the chain and shouts, “Al! You’ve got wings! Use them!”
I recall Morpheus’s words from the feast. “Stop thinking with your head, Alyssa.”
So instead, I think with my gut. By clenching my shoulders and arching my spine, I control the thrust of my new appendages. Two seconds before Jeb reaches the first jutting rock that would’ve torn him to shreds, we stall in midair.
Wow.
Jeb whoops his gratitude from below. “You’re beautiful, baby!” He’s so relieved, he laughs. I do, too, until I start to lose altitude. I hold the chain with both hands and flap harder to counteract Jeb’s drag. My waist feels like it might break in half.
“Lower me.” His voice sobers and carries on the wind. “I’m too heavy for you.” Dust coats his pants and the cross on his thigh has lost enough jewels that it looks more like an inverted L. The fabric of his shirt gapes at his elbows, where there are bloody cuts and welts from pushing himself off the canyon’s walls to miss jutting rocks.
The chasm narrows, and it’s obvious my wings won’t fit. We’d have to separate before his feet even touch bottom. It’s no higher a drop than from the trees we used to climb as kids, but I can’t leave him. I won’t.
“I can fly us up,” I stall, trying to envision that the chains are alive … that they wind around him and lift him on their own. Either I’m too nervous for the magic to work or he’s too heavy, because I can’t make headway.
“Uh-uh,” Jeb says. He sways to the left and props his feet on a boulder to help support his weight. “I dropped the backpack and the money. We have to get it. My girlfriend’s not spending summer break in juvie.”
His girlfriend. Just hearing that makes me push harder. I try to grasp the boards floating above with my mind. If I could snag one, I could guide it down for Jeb to use as a ride back up.
They drift across to the valley, as if purposely ignoring me. My new wings strain with the effort to catch them, and my spine tilts and stretches. I yelp.
“Stop hurting yourself!” Jeb loses his balance and swings below me, side to side, like a pendulum. “Either you lower me, or I take off this chain and free fall. Your choice.” His fingers hover at his waist.
“But I can’t come with you!”
“So you’re going to drop me here, and then find something. Rope, vines … an extension for the chain that can pull me out. Okay?”
“All right,” I say, wishing it really was all right.
He nods, and I ease him down along the canyon wall, offering an anchor line from the sky, just like the times we went rappelling.
Lowering him is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Not only because of the icy dread winding inside my chest, but because my wings have to alternate between the rigidness of a hang glider and the relaxed swoops of a bird to pilot us through the maze of rocks.
“How’re you holding up?” I attempt to sound lighthearted.
“Other than a colossal wedgie?” he squeaks out in a deliberately high-pitched voice. “My boxers have stretched five sizes.”
I snort halfheartedly. “Karmic payback for those Boy Scouts you hammered in seventh grade.”
He laughs, though it echoes hollowly in the chasm.
My wings stutter as I clench the chain with both hands to counteract his drag.
“We’re almost there.” His words have a serious edge to them now. “Am I getting too heavy?”
“I’m good,” I manage. Sweat dribbles from my hairline as I feed him through to the narrow opening at the bottom. He’s collected a few more scrapes along the way but doesn’t complain.
We’ve made it as far as we can go together. Even though there’s only a three-foot span between us, it might as well be a football field. We can’t touch. I can’t hover any lower without scraping my wings against the cliff walls, and he’s balanced between two rocks holding him centered above his drop. From here, the fall looks less intimidating. But it’s not the drop I’m worried about. What if I can’t find a way to pull him out?
“Al …” We meet gazes, and I see something new in his eyes. Astonishment mixed with reverence. He shakes his head. “Your wings are amazing. Do they hurt?”
“No.” Fluttering in place, I reach back and touch a shoulder blade through the blouse’s slit. “I’m not even bleeding. They just feel heavy. Like I’m wearing a huge backpack.”
“But you look like you’re in pain.”
I grip the taut chains, our one solid connection, wishing it could be his fingers interlocking with mine. My eyes sting. “Jeb, what if I mess up your rescue?”
“Not gonna happen.” He loops his fingers through the links on his end. “You remember when my father died … that night?”
I nod.
“We came over to your house. Your dad made us hot chocolate. He went to bed after a while. Jen and Mom fell asleep
on the couch. But you and I sat up in the kitchen and talked until five in the morning.”
I’m not sure where he’s going with this. It’s not making me feel any better about leaving him. To be reminded of how much he was hurting makes my insides feel as heavy as bricks.
“You lifted me out of the darkest night of my life,” he says. “Even after, you were the one who kept me going. You went skateboarding with me every day, texted me all the time.”
“Came over to watch you work on your bike and paint.”
Our gazes touch in a way we can’t, and rough and sturdy Jebediah Holt looks vulnerable. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. Even if things get screwed up, you’ll still find a way to help me.”
His faith makes me sob. “I don’t want to do this without you.”
He glances at my wings, and his mouth tightens into a stern line. It’s obvious he’s fighting the urge to pull me down to him. “One thing Morpheus didn’t lie about … you can take care of yourself. I should’ve already realized that, since you’ve been taking care of me for years. So, be tough, Alyssa Victoria Gardner.”
My chest swells with hope. He actually makes me believe I can do it. “Okay.”
“And Al,” he says, his jaw tight. “No matter what happens, we’ll find each other again. You’re my lifeline. You always will be.”
The sentiment spurs the strangest reaction in my heart—breaks it and heals it all in the same breath. Before I can respond, he releases the chain. I’ve been flapping so hard to hold us both steady that, with the lessened weight, I catapult up from the chasm as if on a bungee cord.
The propulsion forces me against the wind. My braids whip around my face, bringing back the image of Alison fighting her hair in the asylum’s courtyard. But I won’t be the victim she was. I’ll embrace the power she kept running from. It’s the only thing that can keep me alive and get me back to Jeb.
I slap my hair aside and angle my wings to steer a turn toward the valley. My fear of heights returns, and I dip too low, too fast. The grassy ground races up to meet me, and I scream.