by Eva Chase
“How often does the train come by the city?” I asked. “And how big are the Checkerboard Plains anyway?”
“The squares are always shifting,” Theo said. “It could take anywhere from hours to a day to circumnavigate the entire area. But the train has a habit of arriving when passengers are waiting to board.”
That made about as much sense as anything in Wonderland did.
After a while, we veered off the main road onto a narrower dirt one that wound through a stretch of scattered trees. Theo motioned us deeper into the sparse woods to avoid a stand of enormous flowers like the ones I’d chatted with before near the pond. The fewer witnesses, the better.
We came out onto a flat stretch of land with shimmering neon-green grass. A dark haze hung over the landscape in the distance like a thundershower, which maybe explained the ozone-y scent that laced the crisp breeze. And just a short walk ahead of us curved an arc of train tracks, gleaming with a coppery tint over black mica-laced pebbles.
There was no sign of anything like a platform or a station. I squinted along the line of the tracks. “Where does it stop?”
Chess chuckled. “It doesn’t. Ever. If you want to ride the Plains train, you’d better be ready to hop right on.”
Oh. This was going to be… interesting.
One of the twins pointed to a streak of violet smoke that was streaming across the sky in the distance. “Looks like it’s on its way.”
I adjusted the straps of my bag on my shoulders, making sure my cargo was secure. Doria bobbed eagerly on her feet as she peered off in the direction the train was arriving from. The other twin pulled a dumpling out of his vest pocket and ate it in a few quick bites.
The rumble of an engine and the rattle of wheels moving over the tracks reached my ears. A dark brown shape came into view, speeding toward us. The engine looked as if it’d been carved out of mahogany and then polished. The cars behind it, all four of them, were made out of the same material, I realized as it barrelled toward us.
It was coming awfully fast. A nervous shiver ran over my arms. The most dangerous part of this journey might be setting off on the journey in the first place.
“Get ready,” Theo said. “Dee and Dum, you can handle yourselves—and make sure you catch up Doria along the way. Hatter, you’re the fastest. You and I can make our way on first, and then—”
“Look what we have here,” a sharp hiss of a voice interrupted.
The seven of us spun around. My heart lurched against my ribs.
The Knave of Hearts, with his blunt shark-like face and heart-shaped helm, was emerging from the forest with three of the Queen’s guards behind him. All of them carried swords or daggers. My arm twinged in memory of a blade like that slicing through my flesh.
The Knave sneered at us, revealing several jagged teeth. “I heard Hatter was interested in the Checkerboard Plains. And how much company you’ve brought with you!”
Hatter muttered a curse in which I thought I caught the name “Carpenter.” His former friend must have reported their conversation to the palace. I braced myself, not sure what to do. I wasn’t equipped to fight, but there wasn’t anywhere to run to.
At least we could be glad the Knave hadn’t anticipated running into a group this large, or he might have brought even more guards with him.
“I wasn’t aware it was a crime to take a ride on a train,” Theo said, stepping forward with an air of total authority. “Or were you simply meaning to see us off?”
The Knave waggled his sword at Theo. “I knew I’d catch you at something eventually, Inventor. You think we can’t suss out there’s treason afoot?” His gaze shifted to me, chilling my skin. “And who is this? Not a face I recognize. She wouldn’t be an Otherlander, would she? The one the Queen has expressly demanded be turned over to her care?”
A whistle shrieked, almost right behind me. I flinched. The train roared toward us, and Theo shouted over its racket.
“Dee, Dum, Chess!”
The three of them sprang forward without a second’s hesitation. Chess blinked out of view and back into it right behind one of the guards, knocking the blade from his hand with a powerful blow. Dee lunged for another and hurled him with his elastic arms, sending the man tumbling head over heels into the forest. Dum aimed a kick at the third soldier that propelled him up into the branches of a tree.
Hatter tugged me toward the train, waving to Doria too. “I’ll get you on,” he said, and dashed ahead, down the length of the train.
Apparently he was as quick on his feet as he was with his hands. In a few swift strides, he’d reached the car second from the end, which had an open walkway along its side. He caught a hold of a rung, swung himself up, and leaned over the railing with his arms outstretched.
The Knave was letting out a furious shout behind me, and someone else yelped in pain, but I couldn’t risk looking back. Doria reached Hatter first as the train propelled him past us. He grasped her hand and heaved her onto the walkway beside him. I threw myself forward just in time to snatch hold of his reaching fingers.
My grasp wasn’t solid. Hatter yanked me up, but my feet only landed on the walkway’s edge. I teetered for an instant, and then a hook snagged the railing beside me.
Theo had tossed an odd jointed rope at the train. At a jerk of his arms, it contracted, launching him toward the train with the same elastic spring as Dee’s arms. He caught me against his body just before I might have fallen. His momentum carried both of us into safety. With his arm around me, he looked back toward the fight.
The twins were already hurtling toward us. Dum bounced into the air on his flexible legs and landed at Hatter’s other side. Dee flipped over and pushed off his arms with a similar effect. He soared right over the railing.
Chess was still flickering in and out of sight. He ducked under the sweep of the Knave’s sword and dodged the jab of a knee.
“Chess!” Theo hollered. The train was rushing onward. We were leaving him behind. The other soldiers were scrambling back to help their commander.
Chess glanced back at us with a wild grin. He vanished and reappeared just long enough to slam his fist into the Knave’s face. The Knave stumbled backward, and Chess slipped away into the air.
When he popped into view a second later, he was sprinting after the train. He was already a full car-length behind, and the gap was growing with each thud of my pulse.
Theo whipped out the rope he’d used to pull himself on, but the end pattered to the ground just out of Chess’s reach. Shit. My hands clenched around the railing, and suddenly the jolting of the walkway beneath my feet and the thick smell of polished wood and metal flooded my senses. I clenched harder.
Just slow down. Just for a second. Please, slow down.
Heat flared beneath my shirt. The ring felt as if it were burning my skin. I winced, but I held on—and by some miracle, the engine eased off. The rumble faded.
Chess closed the distance between him and the final car in the space of a breath. He sprang onto the back with a whoop of victory.
The Knave and his men were charging after him. I jerked my hands from the railing, shattering the pressure that had been building inside me. The train lurched forward at its previous speed. And I realized everyone around me was staring at me. Well, at my chest.
I glanced down in time to see a faint reddish light glowing through the fabric of my dress. In a blink, it had dulled, at the same time as the ring had stopped burning. I let out a shaky breath.
Chess strolled out of the car behind us onto the walkway. “That was a bigger trick than I expected you could pull off, Inventor,” he said with his unshakeable grin.
“I can’t take any credit,” Theo said, his gaze still fixed on me. “It was all Lyssa.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lyssa
“Dee!” Doria said as we filed off the walkway onto the much less precarious floor inside the train car. “One of them got you.”
A thin gash ran across the one twin’s bicep jus
t below the short sleeve of his shirt. He shrugged with an easy smile. “Just a nick. Nothing to worry about.”
“It’s still bleeding,” Dum muttered, checking his brother’s arm. “Good thing the White Knight asked me to bring the rest of that salve I picked up.”
“It’s totally fine,” Dee said, but Dum ignored him. He produced a tube from his pack and dabbed the cut with the same green-and-white gel Theo had used on my wound. So he’d been the one to find that for me—on Theo’s request.
And now I knew how to tell the twins apart even when they weren’t using their super-powered limbs. Dee was the friendly one, and Dum was the standoffish one.
The other guys had started to amble through the train car. High-backed seats lined both sides of the space, wide enough to seat two or maybe three very skinny people, although no one was sitting in any of them right now. They were made of the same mahogany as the outside of the train had appeared to be, with padding that looked like moss in both color and texture. The smell of wood polish tickled my nose. The rattling of the rails beneath us sounded ominous in the quiet.
“Is it just us?” I asked. “There won’t be any other passengers?”
“No one in the caboose,” Chess reported.
“We might as well check the other two cars,” Theo said. “But few have much use for the Plains train these days.”
That fit what Hatter had said about it. We ventured across the short bridge of wooden slats between our car and the next, passed through another space identical to the one we’d left, and then moved on to the one right behind the engine. I picked up a lacy pink scarf that had been left behind on one of the seats. From before the Queen had trapped time, I had to guess, or it would have vanished back to its original place with the passing of the day. Did the original owner even remember she’d lost it?
Something Theo had said came back to me, about the train arriving when passengers were waiting. “Will the Knave be able to catch up with us?” I asked. “Is there some kind of magic that’ll let him hop on this train before we’ve come all the way around?”
“I don’t think he can contrive to end up on this one,” Theo said. “But there may be echoes of this train running along the same track—and the palace has other resources for traveling. We’ll need to stay on guard. I don’t think he’s likely to give up the chase.”
All at once, the sunlight that had been shining through the windows blinked out, leaving us in darkness. Lights crackled on overhead along the length of the ceiling. Beyond the windows, I couldn’t make out anything but black.
“What the hell was that?” I said.
Chess dropped onto one of the seats and stretched out his legs. “We’ve passed into a new square. They switch between night and day all the way across the plains—like a checkerboard. The way we name things here may not always sound sensible, but there’s still plenty of sense to the names.”
We were going to keep jumping from light to dark and back again, then? That should be… interesting. I slid onto the seat across from him and peered outside. It was hard to make out anything even up close with the inner lights reflecting off the glass. How was I supposed to tell whether any location out there looked promising?
Well, I guessed Aunt Alicia would have had the exact same problem when she’d come out here, and she’d found the ring anyway.
Dum frowned and leaned his arm against the back of a nearby seat. “Are we going to talk about the way the Otherlander messed with the train? It doesn’t normally slow down like that.” His eyes settled on me warily.
Oh, right. I guessed I couldn’t blame him for wanting answers even if I didn’t have any.
“I don’t know what I did,” I said. “I just wanted it to slow down enough for Chess to catch up, and it… did. It felt like this ring might have helped.” I pulled the ruby ring from under my shirt to show him and anyone else who hadn’t seen it before. “This ring is the whole reason we’re out here—I think my grand-aunt, Alicia, found it out here, and maybe something else. It’s obviously got some magic of its own.”
“A magic I highly appreciate,” Chess said, beaming at me.
“That’s so cool!” Doria took the seat beside me. “Can I give it a try?”
“Doria,” Hatter said with a warning note.
She rolled her eyes at him. “I won’t do anything crazy.”
“I think it’s better if we don’t experiment with the train’s speeds any more than we already have, unless it seems necessary,” Theo said, gently but firmly. “Especially when we don’t know how close the Knave and his men may be at our heels.”
“I don’t have any idea how it works anyway,” I told Doria when she crinkled her face with disappointment. “It might not have done anything if I hadn’t been so worried.”
“Still pretty amazing,” she said.
Hatter opened up his bag. “Why don’t we have lunch while we wait for the next daylight square? The way things are going, we may not get many good chances to refresh ourselves.”
He passed me and Doria sandwiches he’d put together, and the others dug into their own supplies. My stomach churned around the bites of fresh bread, cheese, and ham.
What if I couldn’t figure out where we should go from here even when we were in daylight again? I’d dragged six people off on this uncertain mission, and now we had the most vicious of the Queen’s guards after us too.
Chess nudged my calf lightly with his foot. “Cheer up, lovely. Focus on the fun parts of the adventure, and the rest can be an afterthought.”
I didn’t think my brain was programmed to work like that, but I shot him a small smile anyway.
Not long after I’d finished my sandwich, the view outside the window snapped into full daylight just as quickly as it had turned to night. My chest loosened a little as I studied the landscape outside the window. The “square” we were traveling through was all grassy hills, each with a single tree at their peak. Weird. Beyond the hills lay another dark haze I realized must be a patch of night.
The train jostled us as the tracks veered up one of those slopes, and then I could see across what might have been the entire Checkerboard Plains, all laid out in squares of light and dark. Some of the bright squares held thick forests, some massive lakes, others fields as flat as a pancake. Far off in the distance, several squares away, I spotted a taller hill that curved over on itself like a wave frozen just before it crashed.
The moment my gaze caught on it, my pulse stuttered. There was something so familiar about that odd image…
Aunt Alicia’s pictures. She’d hung her framed sketches all around her house. I hadn’t known what to make of that shape when I’d noticed it before, but I could picture the delicate charcoal lines where that drawing was mounted in the upstairs hall.
Only the angle had been a little different, hadn’t it? As if she were remembering looking up at it from much closer.
“That hill,” I said, pointing so energetically that my finger tapped the window. “Is there something special about it?”
Theo leaned over to consider it. “Not that I’m aware of. Why?”
“Aunt Alicia drew it. I saw it in one of her pictures in the house. I think she must have gone all the way out there before, or at least gotten pretty close. And it must have stuck in her memory.” Because something important had happened out there? My heartbeat had evened out, but it was still thumping along faster than before with a quiver of hope. “We have to go there. Will the train take us that far?”
“It’ll loop around the plains. I’d imagine we can get off fairly close to that spot. It’ll just take some waiting.” Theo smiled at me, but I thought his shoulders had tensed a little. Was he worried that I was wrong—that I really was leading them on a pointless mission?
The train rumbled across the countryside. We passed through another stretch of night, but this time I could make out stars glittering in the indigo sky overhead. A few of them swayed back and forth as if in some sort of dance. I felt a little proud of mysel
f that I didn’t even stare. It’d take more Wonderland weirdness than that to catch me off guard now.
We emerged from the darkness into a sunlit stretch of tall waving grass. The train’s rattling intensified as the tracks led it over a bridge across a wide river lined with cattails that… looked like they might be actual cats’ tails, striped or spotted fur and all. Okay, I might have stared a little at those. Then my gaze traveled along the rippling blue water to the hump of an island barely visible near the night haze of the next square.
A sudden burst of heat against my chest made me bite my lip. The ring was burning against my skin again. I tore my gaze away from the island, and the sensation faded. The second I looked toward it again, a fresh spot of heat seared my skin.
I’d been sure the wave-like hill was important, but how could I argue with the ring’s reaction? The train was already whirring off the bridge and away. If we were going to investigate, we had to go now.
“There’s something by that river,” I said quickly, pushing out of my seat. “We have to get off.”
Chess leapt to his feet immediately. On the other side of the aisle, the twins glanced at Theo. When he motioned them up, we all hustled to the car’s door. This quest might have been my idea, but some of our companions still saw their White Knight as the leader. That was fine by me. I knew I wasn’t exactly an expert on anything Wonderland.
“No hesitating; just jump!” Chess said, and did exactly that an instant later. Doria sprang after him. I took a deep breath and threw myself toward the tall grass.
My momentum slowed as I left the train behind, as if my body were moving from one plane of reality to another. I landed amid the grass with only a faint jolt through my knees. Four more thumps followed me.
“Where to from here, lovely?” Chess asked.
I motioned toward the far end of the square. “There was an island in the middle of the river, pretty far down. The ring reacted when I was looking at it, so I think that’s where we need to go.”