by Eva Chase
All around me, the other dancers churned with total abandon, some of them flailing more than dancing, not looking as if they cared what anyone thought of that at all.
A rush of exhilaration shot up through me. I moved faster, weaving my limbs with the beat, letting out all the panic I’d felt arriving in this world, all the anger and hurt of Brian’s betrayal, all the weight I’d been carrying.
I couldn’t leave the weight of my responsibilities completely behind. I had plenty to still worry about in the real world. But right here, right now, I was no one but Lyssa Tenniel, a dancer in the crowd. The realization was so freeing that tears sprang to my eyes. I swiped them away and threw myself into the next song.
A few figures circulated through the throng wearing white shirts with a black graphic like the club symbol in a deck of playing cards emblazoned on the front. Clubs in a club? I laughed, watching one server hand out tall glasses of a pearly liquid, another extending a platter covered with slices of pink and purple mushroom.
Chess had told me to avoid those. I wasn’t sure having one of the drinks was a good idea either. A guy near me knocked one back and let out a whoop so loud it split the music. A little of that pearly gleam washed over his eyes as he bounced on his feet. There was wild, and then there was right over the edge.
Speaking of wild… One of the dancing couples near me was going at it with tongues and hands all up in places I wasn’t used to seeing exposed in public. Along the walls, other couples—and a few trios and quartets—were undulating against each other in movements that set off a flare of heat between my legs even as the voyeurism made my cheeks flush with embarrassment. Discretion obviously wasn’t a common concept around here.
Toward the other end of the vast room, a bunch of the dancers were clambering into a human pyramid, somehow continuing to bob to the rhythm while they balanced on each other’s shoulders. I swayed toward them with a laugh and found myself face to face with someone I knew.
Hatter wore the same violet suit and top hat as before, and he wasn’t dancing, just drifting through the crowd with a stiff expression. When our eyes met, he stopped in his tracks. I grinned at him automatically, high on the feeling of freedom, and his mouth curved into a full-out frown for a second before he forced it flat again.
I sidled close enough for him to hear me. “What are you doing here?” I shouted over the music. He didn’t look like he was enjoying himself.
“I should ask you the same thing,” he said. “Decided to go local, did you?”
“This place is apparently my ticket home,” I said. “At least I’m trying to blend in. Why’d you come to a club if you don’t want to dance?”
“Because everyone comes,” he muttered, low enough that I barely made out the words. Then he added, “I’m trying to keep an eye on Doria.”
Oh. Yeah, it was easy to picture that girl with her flyaway hair and her goth-y dress cutting a rug in this place. And easy to imagine Hatter going all Mr. Protective on his daughter like he had when she’d interrupted us in his apartment. Though what he’d been protecting her from then I wasn’t really sure. Maybe Otherland-ness was contagious?
Even if he was being a wet blanket, I didn’t want to just wander off. Now that I’d met a whole lot more Wonderlanders, I could tell there was something different about Hatter. His presence didn’t overwhelm me the way everything and everyone else here, including Chess and Theo, did. For a second, I didn’t feel off-balance. Even though he was still hot in his scruffy be-suited way.
That must have been what gave me the courage to grab his arm. “Let’s dance, then, and maybe we’ll run into her,” I said. “You can’t know fewer moves than I do.”
Something about that comment made his lips twitch in the other direction this time. Not quite a smile, but close—and a real one. “Oh, I do know a few,” he said. He shifted his arm to clasp my hand. Raising it in the air, he spun me with a graceful flick of his wrist. My hair fanned out around me.
I didn’t know how to top that, at least not by dancing. A glint of mischief lit inside me. I snatched the hat off his head by the brim, set it over my own hair, and shimmied away into the crowd.
“Hey!” Hatter protested, but he sounded at least as amused as he did annoyed. I’d count that as a win.
I moved with the beat, the basic shuffle and sway I’d been doing before, scooting just a little to the side when Hatter caught up with me, slipping this way and that as he followed. I didn’t have to move too quickly, because he obviously didn’t want to make a big scene out of his chase. His gaze tracked me, his eyebrows raised as if to say, Really?
I risked whirling around, and he caught me by the waist from behind. “I’ll be taking that back,” he said by my ear, lifting the hat from my head. His breath grazed my cheek, and the heat of his hand bled through my top. I resisted the urge to lean back into his body. I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t jerk away.
“If you’ve got no hat, do you stop being Hatter?” I asked instead.
“Only if I lose my shop as well, I suppose,” he said. His fingers adjusted against my side, sparking a tingling that spread to my core, and suddenly I wanted more than anything for him to move that hand—upward or down, either would do. We’d fit right in, wouldn’t we? A fresh blush flooded my cheeks just as he continued, “Your grand-aunt once asked me the same question, you know.”
A cold smack of shock shattered every other emotion I’d been feeling. I whipped around to face him. “What?”
Hatter’s expression shuttered. He gazed back at me blankly, like he was going to pretend he hadn’t just said that. I grabbed the lapel of his jacket before he could consider retreating. “You talked to Aunt Alicia?” Something clicked in my head. He’d said I wasn’t the first person who’d fallen into Wonderland through a mirror. If the one in her attic had worked as a doorway before… “She came here?”
“It was a long time ago,” Hatter said, in a way that made me wonder just how old he was. He didn’t look past thirty.
I’d thought he’d reacted a little oddly when I’d mentioned Aunt Alicia’s death, but I’d assumed it was just the awkwardness of dealing with my potential grief. It hadn’t been that at all. He’d known her.
I opened my mouth to demand more details, and the booming of a gong echoed through the room. The dancers jostled toward the bar that had just lit up by a distant wall. My pulse hiccupped.
This was the cue Chess had told me to wait for. The club delivered the night’s special drink at a specific time, and while security was busy managing the line for a sample, they’d be more lax around the doorway I needed to get through.
Chess himself materialized beside me. I let my hand drop from Hatter’s jacket. He shot me a look that might have been a little apologetic and said, “Safe travels.” Then he let the crowd streaming past us carry him away.
“And he thinks he’s already gotten where he’ll never get,” Chess said with a smirk. He held out his hand to me. “Now’s our chance. Are you ready?”
CHAPTER SIX
Chess
L yssa looked so out-of-sorts that I had to wonder what in the lands Hatter had said to her. He could be provoking with people he didn’t feel the need to hold his tongue around, but I wouldn’t have thought our Otherlander had reached that point of familiarity yet. She accepted my hand, but her brow stayed knit.
"Did you ever talk to an Otherlander who came here the way I did, through a mirror—someone named Alicia?" she asked.
Was that one of the earlier girls? Had Hatter said something about that phenomenon? The name sounded familiar, but then, so had Lyssa's for the exact same reason, and I'd never spoken to her before.
I could certainly say with all honesty, "I have not, but I'm not always present wherever I am, so that says little about whether she's been here."
That answer appeared to satisfy Lyssa enough that she let the subject go. She shook herself as if casting something off. “I guess this isn’t a great time for twenty questions.”
&nb
sp; “We’ll keep dancing,” I said, stepping closer. “Pretend we’ve already drunk our fill, hmm?”
A poppy song with an underlying wail of wordless vocals swelled around us. I bobbed with the beat, pulling Lyssa a little closer and letting her ease away, then whirling us both around. The sparkle I’d seen when I’d caught glimpses of her dancing in the crowd came back into her bright blue eyes. A flush of exhilaration colored her pale cheeks.
Her clothes were far from spectacular compared to the other dancers, but lit up from the inside like that, she was striking in her own way. Maybe more so because she wasn’t quite like any of the others, and their flashy fashion statements all blended together after a while.
It’d been a long time since I’d seen anyone in the club who appeared to be finding something they needed rather than trying to lose everything they could.
Of course, right now what Lyssa most needed was to find her way home. I kept a sliver of my attention on the door at the opposite end of the room from the bar, where a couple of Caterpillar’s goons were still standing. There’d been four earlier, but two of them had gone over to keep order as everyone grabbed their nightly special. Bit by bit, never in a straight line and never quite facing them, we made our way toward that exit.
I switched hands, drawing Lyssa to me for a quick dip as we scooted over one of the rises on the rippled floor. Her hair swished past my face, a delicate scent like a spring breeze there and then gone. She wasn’t the steadiest on her feet, but she followed my lead well enough. A little smile came over her face. She slipped under my elbow and spun out to the farthest length our arms would allow, as if daring me to bring her spiraling back to me. I did it with a grin.
“You dance better than you explain things,” she told me, and I laughed. The spin back had brought her right in front of me, just an inch of space between us. I deliberately didn’t close that gap, but I couldn’t say I wasn’t thinking about it. Hatter wouldn’t have shown her that good a time. I could manage to leave an impression before she left Wonderland.
“You only say that because the explanations of how things are and how we’d like them to be are so seldom lined up,” I said glibly, and sidestepped, turning us in a slow circle. Lyssa rolled her eyes, but her smile had widened.
It really was refreshing having a new face around here—a new face and a new personality that hadn’t already been bent by the circumstances we all lived within. I had to say I rather regretted that she had to leave us, at least so soon. But keeping her here would have been purely selfish, especially when she’d have no idea what she was truly getting into.
No, selfishness wasn’t my aim at all. I released any regret I felt about her departure with the fall of her hand from mine. Then, on an impulse to extend the moment just a few seconds longer, I snatched her fingers up again and pressed a quick kiss to her knuckles.
“It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Lyssa. May the path you take lead you to where you’re meant to be going.”
The flush in her cheeks darkened. I took one last good look at her for my own collection of impressions before I swayed around and stumbled into the nearer of the guards by the door.
“Hey there,” the boxy man said in a stiff voice, clapping his hand on my shoulder. “Keep your feet, friend.”
“Are you my friend?” I asked, gazing back at him as if in a daze, amusement tickling in my belly. “Well, if you say you are, then you must be until you say you aren’t again. Friend, I have something wonderful to show you!”
I clutched his forearm and made to drag him with me. "That's enough of that," the guard said gruffly. He didn't know I already had him.
He moved to detach my hand, and I tripped over my own feet in a spectacular explosion of limbs, so powerful I hauled him right over with me. We collapsed onto the ground, him face down and me sprawled across him.
Completely by accident, of course.
I thrashed in dramatic fashion as if trying desperately to recover myself and failing epically, sputtering a vapid line of apologies at the same time. The guard beneath me cursed and struggled. The second guard dashed over to haul me off of him. As he yanked on my wrists, Lyssa grasped the doorknob and ducked through the exit I’d distracted them from.
In an instant, with a flash of her flaxen hair, she was through. I coughed and sputtered to cover the click of the door closing behind her. This whole escapade really was one of my finest performances. The goons hadn’t had any idea how much that oddball Chess was capable of.
I staggered on my feet for good measure, since it wouldn’t do for them to see me suddenly steady.
“Sorry, so sorry, every apology I could possibly mean and then make,” I said, although I couldn’t mean any. As long as they didn’t know that, I could say it truthfully. Then I bounded off with a sway here and a wobble there to join the crowd that was flooding back across the dance floor. A more frenetic energy than before coursed between my fellow dancers, spurred by tonight’s beverage of choice.
My gaze slid back to the door Lyssa had disappeared through. It remained closed, the guards stationed as they’d been before, no sign that they’d realized anything was amiss. A grin curled my lips.
My work here was done. Now I could party with everyone else like nothing in the world mattered.
I wove between the bodies across the dance floor, flickering in and out of visibility, sometimes flashing just my smile when someone stared. Eventually I made my way to the bar and grabbed one of the frothy red drinks that remained. I tipped it down my throat, and a jittery tingling rushed through my chest.
I spun around, not minding if I got dizzy. This was what the Caterpillar Club was for. Shed it all like so much loose fur, feel it wisp away. I didn’t know how anyone survived otherwise. We all lost ourselves here.
Except Lyssa.
As I merged with the sea of dancers, I found myself wondering what exactly it was she’d found here. Whether it was anything worth finding, or only what we’d already discarded. Then I grabbed another drink and a slice of mushroom, chewing it until the room seemed to shrink around me, and the rest was a blur until that final inevitable fall of darkness.
I woke up on my back on the flattened grass, the thicket looming around me. It wasn’t the most comfortable surface I’d ever slept on, nor the most appealing shelter, but I supposed I could have had a lot worse the day when everything got stuck. If you could look on the bright side or the dark, why in the lands would you choose to fall down into the depths?
A twinge shot through my side as I sat up. My heart skipped a beat. It couldn’t be anything left over from times past—that was impossible. Sometimes I got odd aches and pains if I ended up turning over oddly in my sleep. But that spot, right between two of my lower ribs—it brought back too clearly the way the pain had seared through my flesh and my lungs had heaved and blood had dabbled the ivory tiles—
I jerked myself away from that memory and onto my feet. With some careful prodding, my hands opened a gap in the thicket so I could make my way out into the park.
Everything looked as it always did at this time in the morning. The red and white chess pieces were toppled and scattered across the painted board as if someone had given in to a temper tantrum last night over a loss. A torn strip of sapphire-blue silk drifted in the breeze where it had snagged on the low branch of one of the looping trees. The warble of chipper voices drifted from the patio tables by the gazebo, a lusty moan from near the fountain. Morning people.
Hmm. Not everything was quite the same. Hatter was striding across the lawn looking aghast. I couldn’t remember him ever coming to call quite this early. He must not sleep as well as I did.
He came to a halt, breathing hard as if he’d run most of the way. The precarious angle of his hat—a bowler today, and the same persimmon hue as his suit—added proof to that impression.
“Why, Hatter,” I said, “are you in an awful hurry to see me, or am I just seeing you in an awful hurry?”
He grimaced at me and made a brisk b
eckoning gesture. “Come on.” Then he spun on his heel and started hustling back the way he’d come.
I kept pace, eyeing his angular profile, curiosity tickling up my spine. This was all rather bizarre. What excitement had Hatter somehow gotten himself into so early in the day? He certainly appeared very worked up about something. And that bright suit—from my observations, he always went more garish the more out-of-sorts he was feeling.
“I believe it’s customary when requesting someone to attend to you that you give them the gist of where you are taking them and what for,” I remarked.
“I’ll show you everything when we get there,” Hatter muttered. “We can’t talk about it here unless you want us both losing our heads. Besides, it’ll be clearer if you see.”
After he turned onto the street, it soon became apparent that we were heading toward his shop and home. My gaze skimmed over the displays of hats as he hustled me through the main floor and up to his apartment. He lifted his hand toward the table without a word.
A teacup and a scattering of crumbs sat at the end where the beach chair squatted. I looked from them to Hatter, wondering if he’d already lost his head in the metaphorical sense.
“You brought me along to show me you’ve made a bit of a mess with your breakfast?”
“I haven’t eaten yet,” Hatter said. “That’s— Yesterday, before I brought Lyssa to you, we came back here. She was hungry, so I gave her some tea and a couple of scones. I didn’t bother to clean up because, well, I never do. You know how it is.”
I did. No matter what we did, no matter what changes we tried to make to the world around us, no matter where we ended up, when the clocks reached midnight everything snapped back to exactly where it had been the minute past the midnight before. I could have gone to sleep amid the queen’s rose bushes and still woken in the city park. Hatter could have smashed every dish he owned, and the next morning they’d all be back in the cupboards.