“Yes, that’s just what I shall do,” Elizabeth said.
She took a few steps into one of the paths, cocking her head to one side to listen. It was certainly very strange, the way she couldn’t hear anything from the other end of any of the tunnels. It would be easier to make a choice if all the choices weren’t precisely the same.
But they aren’t all the same, Elizabeth thought. Each tunnel leads to a different place. I just don’t know what that place is yet.
Elizabeth realized that if she considered it properly this was all just an adventure, and there was really no need to be frightened at all. When she got through the tunnel—whichever tunnel she chose—she would find someone who would help her find her way home.
That’s how things worked in the New City, after all. Everyone was part of the same community, even if you’d never met them before. And she knew for certain that if she mentioned Papa’s name people would hasten to assist her. It always happened whenever they went out shopping or to a restaurant or some such thing. There would always be a bowing or curtsying worker eagerly saying, “Yes, Mr. Hargreaves. Whatever you would like, Mr. Hargreaves.”
Elizabeth could just imagine someone holding the door of a cab open for her, saying, “Please take care, Miss Hargreaves.” The driver would gently settle a rug over her knees and just as he climbed up onto his seat someone would run up and hand her a cake from a tea shop and say, “I would be ever so grateful if you would take this, Miss Hargreaves,” and Elizabeth would nod and ask what shop it was from so that her family could return and patronize it at a later time.
The thought of the tea cake made Elizabeth’s stomach rumble. She really ought to be in her own carriage right now, nearly home and ready for the feast.
“Well, Elizabeth Violet Hargreaves, the sooner you choose the sooner you’ll be home.”
She stood in the center of the circle, closed her eyes and pointed her arm straight out like the hand of a clock. Then she spun in a slow circle for a few moments before coming to a stop. Elizabeth opened her eyes.
The tunnel she pointed at looked the same as the others. Elizabeth shrugged and went inside.
Be careful now, sister of Alice! Be so, so careful!
Elizabeth wasn’t certain if she actually was hearing the Voice now. It would sound tinny and far away and then somehow close and clear.
Besides, she didn’t need the advice of a mysterious Voice to know that she ought to be careful. She was going into a dark tunnel and the possibility of falling and hurting herself in the darkness was very great.
She strode forward confidently, certain that she would see light at the other end of the tunnel any moment.
Elizabeth was already looking forward to sitting in a cab. Her patent leather shoes, which had looked so smart that morning, pinched her feet. They weren’t meant for running. They were only meant for sitting at tea and standing in line to meet the City Fathers. If she looked down she could see the shoe that lost its color faintly glowing in the light from the entrance.
I wonder how I will explain to Mama what happened to it, she thought. Elizabeth knew she could never tell her mother the truth. Mama would never believe—not even if Elizabeth demonstrated with the other shoe right in front of Mama’s eyes.
Mama only saw what she wanted to see, and everything else resulted in “Run along, Elizabeth.”
It didn’t matter, really, if Mama was upset about the shoe. What mattered was Elizabeth’s wish. When she thought of Mr. Dodgson and that terrible fear on Papa’s face she felt a fierce delight that Dodgson would spend the remainder of his days on his knees, scrubbing at a stain that could never be cleaned. That would be worth any scolding she got from Mama about her shoe.
Elizabeth was so caught up in thinking of Mama and Mr. Dodgson and her shoe and the anticipated relief of a cab and a cake that at first she didn’t notice just how dark it was inside the tunnel. And it was very dark, much darker than she’d expected. There was no light in the direction she was heading, and when she looked behind, the entrance of the tunnel seemed to have shrunk to just a pinprick.
“But that can’t be,” Elizabeth said, frowning. “I haven’t come so far.”
She started back toward the entrance, determined to prove the truth of this statement, but the pinprick shrank even more as she looked at it.
And then it disappeared entirely.
There was no exit that way.
Cold fear washed through her.
Just what sort of mess have you gotten yourself into, Elizabeth Violet Hargreaves?
How very foolish she’d been, chasing after some strange man because she wanted to see his face. At the time it had seemed like a harmless lark, a moment’s diversion.
Now she was trapped in a tunnel far from home and the way back was closed.
The only possible direction she could go was forward.
But what if she reached the other side and found that it was closed, too? Would she die in this place, a brick mausoleum, withering without light and air?
Elizabeth clenched her fists. “No, I will not.”
She marched forward, her heels ringing on the pavement. She was going home to Mama and Papa and when she got there she vowed she would be very sensible from now on.
“I shall be so sensible I might even be called boring,” she said.
Her voice echoed off the walls and returned to her, seemed to press up against her ears and make her shiver.
Sensible, sensible, sensible, boring, boring, boring
“That’s right. I shall be eminently sensible. I shall always do what I am told and I won’t take any extra marmalade at breakfast. I’ll discreetly refuse sugar cubes when Hobson tries to hand them to me. I’ll never make a fuss about anything again.” She paused, thinking hard. “Well, perhaps about sitting in the Beadle’s lap. I don’t think that’s something I should have to do.”
A voice said out of the darkness, a voice that scraped like grain in a grindstone, “He only wants you to do that because he’s a dirty old man. When you sit there and wriggle, his dead staff comes to life again.”
Elizabeth screamed. She couldn’t help it. She’d had no notion that she wasn’t alone in the tunnel. Then she was angry because she’d screamed—angry at herself and more angry at the person who startled her.
“Who’s there?” she demanded, using her best Hargreaves voice. People generally obeyed the Hargreaves voice.
“Yes, he likes it when you wriggle this way and that, and he can smell the sweetness of your hair and think about what he would do if only your parents would leave the room,” the voice said again. “He would like that very much, although I expect you wouldn’t. Most girls don’t, you know.”
The voice sounded closer this time, though Elizabeth hadn’t heard any movement in the darkness.
“Who are you?” she repeated. “If you’re not going to introduce yourself properly I don’t want to speak to you. I don’t need to stay here and listen to you speaking about filthy things.”
The things the voice said made her skin crawl, made her feel like hideous bugs marched inside her ears with the words.
Of course she’d known, deep down, that what the Beadle did was wrong. She didn’t completely understand what was wrong about it but she knew that it made her feel ill and that was enough.
The voice cackled, and Elizabeth started away, for it had been just at her right shoulder—close enough for her to feel its breath. This wasn’t like the other Voice, the mischievous one in her head. This voice was a cruel and malignant thing, harsh and grating. This voice had never seen sunshine.
“But filthy things do happen here, Miss Hargreaves. Filthy things done by filthy people.”
Elizabeth didn’t turn around, though the owner of the voice stayed very close to her. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of her attention. Whoever it was obviously wanted to terror
ize her and she was not going to be terrorized and that was that.
“I’m not interested in filthy things. Filthy things only happen in the Old City,” Elizabeth said primly, marching forward.
“And just where do you think you are then, little Alice?”
She couldn’t see him because the dark was an absolute thing, a cloak over her eyes but she could feel him, so very close, close enough for his long fingers to scrape over her upper arms.
The terror erupted then, made her heart pound and her hands shake, made her want to run and scream and cry and call for her papa to save her, but she kept her voice as clear and even as she could make it.
“I’m afraid you are mistaken,” she said. “My name is not Alice.”
“Oh, you’re an Alice, all right. Too curious by half, and foolish with it. So full of magic that you practically glow in the dark, so full of it that you’re calling all the hunters to you without even knowing it, little rabbit. And rabbits who wander from their warren get caught by foxes.”
He did grab her then, closed his fingers around her arms and squeezed hard enough to bruise. He had long, long fingernails that tore the sleeves of her dress and cut into her skin. She felt like he’d branded her there, marked her as his own.
Elizabeth was scared, she was more scared than she’d ever been in her life, but she was angry again, too. Angry because there was that name again and somebody insisting that she was someone she was not.
“I. Am. Not. ALICE.”
The last word was not a scream but a yell, a primal thing that came from her heart instead of her throat. The man holding her jerked away, releasing her. There was an awful smell of burning flesh, sour and smoky.
“My hands!” he screamed. “What have you done to my hands?”
Elizabeth didn’t know what she’d done, but since she couldn’t say she was sorry it happened, she didn’t stop to investigate. She ran, harder and faster than she’d ever run before, ran until the howls of pain and rage faded away into the shadows of the tunnel behind her.
“How long is this horrible place?” she said, stopping to try to catch her breath when she thought she was far enough away from the man with the long nails and the grating voice.
For all she knew the tunnel might not be a tunnel at all but a labyrinth, or a circle. She might run forward only to crash right into that man again from the other side.
Think, Elizabeth. Think, think.
“There has to be a way in and out. Otherwise that man would never have gotten in here in the first place. So there are exits, but they must not be very obvious ones.”
She hesitantly reached out to her left, waving her hands in the blackness until she felt the rough scrape of brick under her fingers. She had an idea that there were openings in the wall, if only she could find them.
But what if I’m walking along here, searching for a door, and it happens that the door is on the opposite side and I never notice it?
Elizabeth shook her head. If she worried about all the possibilities, then she would never get anywhere—she’d just stand there like a frightened goose until that man caught up with her again. She rather thought he would be more determined to catch her the second time, too, and she wasn’t certain she could duplicate whatever it was that hurt him the first time.
Elizabeth crept along, sweeping her arms up the wall as far as she could reach and then down again in big half circles. Every few moments she would stop and listen for the sound of someone creeping up behind her. She wasn’t going to be taken by surprise again.
After several moments (in which her stomach began making extremely noisy groans that were loud enough to drown out the possible presence of another person) she halted in frustration. There wasn’t any door in the wall. At this rate she’d just go on creeping forever and the only thing she would detect would be plain brick wall.
She put her back to the wall and lowered herself until she was sitting. Her feet hurt so badly that she wanted to take off her shoes, but she knew that wouldn’t be a wise thing to do. She might step on a nail or a piece of broken glass, and if her foot were hurt or bleeding she wouldn’t be able to run if she needed to run. And she might need to run, though she hadn’t the faintest notion where she might run to. There wasn’t anything here except shadows and brick that went on and on and on.
But how did that man get in here? The exit behind me is closed, and the way ahead is dark.
A tear slid out of her right eye, and she knuckled it away impatiently. Crying wasn’t going to solve anything. And no one was going to come and save her, because no one had any notion where she’d gone.
Except the Voice. That Voice knew where I was going, somehow.
It felt very lonely there with the dark pressing all around her and her feet hurting and her stomach growling. She would have welcomed the presence of a bossy Voice just at the moment. At least she would have felt less like she’d fallen into a hole with no bottom.
You have to stand up again, Elizabeth. You have to keep going.
But it was very difficult to feel that going forward mattered at all. Why tire herself out if there was nowhere to go?
Just then she felt something furry nosing around the fingers of her left hand. It was only a tiny thing, making equally tiny squeaking noises.
She lay the palm of her hand flat and felt its paws as it climbed on, and then when it scurried off again quickly. A mouse.
“Hello there, Mr. Mouse,” she said. “Don’t run away. I won’t hurt you.”
She heard the mouse hurrying back. Its forepaws climbed onto her palm again. Elizabeth couldn’t see the mouse, but she imagined it perching there, half on and half off, staring up at her with bright little button eyes.
“That’s what Big People always say, that they won’t hurt us, but then they set out traps that catch or hit us with great brooms or put the cat on us,” the mouse said, in a rather squeaky little voice.
“Well, I haven’t got any traps or brooms or cats in my pocket,” Elizabeth replied, and then a moment later she realized she was talking to a mouse. She was talking to a mouse, and the mouse understood her and she understood the mouse.
She’d thought the day couldn’t be any stranger, but she supposed one must be prepared for strange things to happen on a day when one chased a bird-man into an endless tunnel.
“You could still stomp on me with your feet,” the mouse said.
“I would never do such a thing!” Elizabeth cried, insulted at the very thought. Then she amended, “Leastways, not on purpose. I might accidentally tread on your tail in the dark, but I wouldn’t mean it. It’s very dark in here, you know.”
“Not for me,” the mouse said, and Elizabeth noted the pride in his voice. “I can see everything just as clear as sunshine.”
“Might you help me, then, little mouse? I want to get out of this place more than anything. Have you seen an exit large enough for a person to pass through?”
The mouse made a series of little squeaks that trilled up and down, and Elizabeth realized he was laughing.
“Silly little girl,” the mouse crowed.
“I’m not a silly little girl,” Elizabeth said, stung. “And that’s certainly not a polite thing to say to someone you’ve only just met.”
The mouse sobered immediately. “No, you’re right, of course. I’m terribly sorry for laughing. It’s only just that you don’t have to stay in here if you don’t want to.”
“What do you mean?” Elizabeth asked.
“Well, you’re a Magician, aren’t you?”
“Am I?”
What on earth is a Magician? Elizabeth thought. She didn’t like to ask, though, for she felt the mouse might laugh at her again and she wasn’t in the mood for feeling a fool.
“I can smell the magic on you,” the mouse said. “Don’t you know that you have it?”
“Well,” El
izabeth said slowly. “I know that I can do certain things, things that other people don’t seem to be able to do. Like change a rose into a butterfly.”
“Then surely,” the mouse said, with infinite patience in his voice. “You can change a wall of brick into a door.”
When he said it like that she felt very silly for not thinking of such a thing in the first place. Her only excuse was that she was tired and hungry and confused and she’d had a rather bad fright, which might make anyone silly.
“Thank you, Mr. Mouse,” Elizabeth said. “I’m going to do just as you suggest.”
“I don’t suppose,” the mouse said with a touch of wistfulness, “that you have a crumb or two in your pocket?”
“I’m terribly sorry,” Elizabeth said. “I haven’t got anything today. Mama said I wasn’t to put toast in my pockets as I usually do, else I would ruin my splendid dress.”
“Ah, well. No matter. I can find a crumb here and there,” the mouse said.
“Do move away now, so I don’t accidently step on you. That would be a poor repayment,” Elizabeth said. “Unless you’d like to come out of the tunnel with me? If you do, you could go in one of my pockets.”
“I suppose I’d better,” the mouse said. “You seem like the sort who might need advice again, and I’m just the mouse to give it.”
“Very well,” Elizabeth said, though she didn’t think she’d need the advice of a mouse again. Still, once she left the tunnel she might be able to find some food to share. It would be a nice thing, since the mouse had been so helpful.
She gathered the mouse up and carefully slid it into the large pocket on the front of her dress. The mouse wriggled around a bit and then seemed to settle down at the bottom of the pocket.
Elizabeth stood and faced the brick wall again. She put both hands on the wall and thought, I wish there was a door, just here.
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