Alice

by Christina Henry

  Someone’s boots blocked the view. The boots were twined with a woman’s bare feet, very dainty feet with shell-pink nails. Someone banged away at a piano, a discordant tune that made Alice’s back teeth ache. Then the boots and feet moved away, clearing the view.

  There was a very large room behind that little door, a room with many tables. Men sat at the tables, and they appeared to watch something that Alice could not see. Some of the men had women with them, and what they did to those women made Alice shudder and turn away. Decent folk should not do such things where others could see.

  Hatcher nudged her aside so he could have a look. Alice gladly ceded the space to him. She had no wish to see any more.

  He stood up. “There’s nothing for it. We’ve got to get in there.”

  A hundred objections were on her tongue, but he shook his head before she could voice them.

  “That’s the only door that opened. I could break down the others. I got out of the hospital room. But I don’t think that’s what we’re supposed to do.”

  “How do we know what we’re supposed to do, Hatch?” Alice asked, slumping against the wall. “Every time we stop to talk to someone or catch our breath, a trader tries to take me or a street soldier tries to kill both of us. We came to this place because Cheshire told us to, but he hasn’t exactly been helpful.”

  “He told us to come here, and he made sure we did,” Hatcher said. “I only know how to go one way, Alice. Forward. I don’t know how to turn back, retrace our steps, start over. I don’t even know if we can. Our past was padded and drugged. At least out here we’re free.”

  “We’re not free. We’re still dancing to someone else’s tune,” Alice said, but softly.

  Hatcher rummaged in the bag and pulled out the cake that he’d presented to Alice earlier. The cake was as pristine as if it lay on a table, fresh from the cook’s kitchen.

  It should have crumbled, Alice thought. It should have been smashed to bits in that bag.

  “This is what Cheshire gave us,” Hatcher said. “He told us to come here, and he gave us this.”

  “Maybe we’re supposed to give it to the Caterpillar,” Alice said.

  “No. You know that’s not who it’s for.”

  She didn’t want to eat it, and she knew that was what Hatcher was saying they should do.

  “What if it makes us sick?” Alice asked.

  “Alice, my grandmother told you I was a Seer,” Hatcher said.

  She frowned at him. “You’re claiming Seer powers want us to eat the cake that Cheshire gave you?”

  “Well, no,” Hatcher admitted. “I just wanted you to go along with me and stop arguing.”

  “Hatch, I was the one who knew something was going to happen at the tavern, not you,” Alice said. “Why should we trust your instincts more than mine?”

  She didn’t have time to stop him. He lunged for her, and since Alice trusted him implicitly it did not occur to her that he might hurt her. By the time she realized what had happened the piece of cake was in her mouth and she’d swallowed it.

  “You—” she began.

  Then everything was spinning, spinning, spinning, like she was swirling down a drain. When the spinning stopped she was in front of the little red door, and Hatcher was next to her, grinning.

  “If we see that centipede again I’m going to feed you to it,” Alice said.

  She opened the door—the knob fit perfectly in her hand now— and marched through it.

  Hatcher jerked her out of the way just as a shiny pair of men’s shoes nearly crushed her. They huddled close to the wall, so far unnoticed by the revelers in the room.

  “Now what?” she hissed. “We’re not going to get anywhere while we’re the size of beetles.”

  He pulled a small bottle from his bag and presented it to her. There was a label with a pink rose on it. Pink liquid sloshed inside. Alice sighed. She would have liked to ask why Hatcher thought this would make them big again, or why he was so certain of their path. If she asked too many questions, though, he would find some other way to make her drink what was in that bottle. She knew that now.

  She knew, also, that even though he loved her, he was not entirely trustworthy.

  He’s killed people, Alice. Why did you think he was trustworthy in the first place?

  He waited, holding the bottle patiently.

  She took it from him and unstopped the cork. The liquid tasted like rose petals, and she nearly spit it out. It didn’t seem to want to go out, though, sliding down her throat and into her stomach before she could expel it.

  Hatcher snatched the bottle back from her just as the room spun again. This time she could feel her arms and legs stretching, the muscle snapping back into place around her crackling bones.

  No one seemed surprised by their sudden appearance. No one seemed to notice at all.

  Now that they were taller, Alice could see what everyone stared at. There were several platforms set up around the room. Each of the platforms was boxed by glass walls, so it was almost as if you peered into a little room.

  In these rooms were girls, naked girls with butterfly wings strapped to their shoulders. The girls posed in various positions, all of them suggestive and obviously pleasing to the crowd. The platforms were brightly lit, though Alice did not see how. The rest of the room was dim.

  The air was thick with smoke, but it was not the comforting pipe-tobacco smoke that Alice remembered from her childhood. This smoke was spicy and somewhat sweet and made her nose wrinkle.

  The few men who were not entranced by the posing butterflies had naked women with them. These women had elaborate tattoos of butterfly wings on their backs, and equally intricate paintings around their eyes and cheeks. The men fondled these girls while they sat in their laps. Some had pushed their girls to the table and pounded away between their legs, right out in public.

  Alice didn’t know where to look except the floor. Her legs shook and her hands were knotted in tight little fists. It was horrible, horrible what was happening. Those women made loud noises, as if they liked what the men were doing to them, but how could they? How could they like it when it hurt so much, when these men used them and left them here for another man to take?

  (she was screaming, and hot blood ran down the insides of her legs, and she was trying to keep him off her but he was stronger, so much stronger) Someone touched her shoulder, and she looked down to see a tiny girl whose head would come to just the top of Alice’s throat. The girl took Alice’s hand in hers and guided that hand to her very large breast.

  “You’re shy, I can tell,” the girl said, rubbing Alice’s hand all over her chest. The swirls painted on her face sparkled in the low light. “Don’t be shy. Come with me. I know what to do with shy boys like you.”

  Alice yanked her hand away as if the girl were on fire. The girl pouted, looking insulted. Alice noticed her eyes were glazed and strange, and she wondered whether the girl really knew what she was doing.

  “Am I not pretty enough for you? What about your friend?” the girl asked, sidling around to Hatcher.

  Alice grabbed the girl’s hair before she could do to Hatcher what she’d just done to Alice. Her hair was long and red and beautiful and knotted in a braid down her back so you could see the butterfly wing tattoos carved there.

  And the tattoos were carved, Alice realized. It was not ink or paint but scarring. She touched the girl’s back, felt the ridge built up there and the scab that meant the design had recently been retraced.

  Horrible, Alice thought.

  The girl interpreted Alice’s tug on her braid and the touch on her back to mean something Alice had not intended. She snuggled into the curve of Alice’s arm.

  “Not so shy after all?” the girl asked, rubbing her body against Alice’s side.

  Alice looked at Hatcher helplessly, hoping for assistance. He stared at the girls under the glass with an odd, hungry look on his face.

  He is a man, Alice, she thought. And even the best of men mig
ht be lured by flesh dangled so willingly before them. Though you are not, whatever this poor confused creature might think.

  Alice carefully put her hands on the girl’s shoulders and pushed her away. She kept her eyes right on the other girl’s eyes because there was nowhere else decent to look.

  “You’re very pretty,” Alice said. “But I am not looking for a pretty girl tonight. I am looking for the Caterpillar.”

  “Are you sure?” the girl asked, and tried to grab at Alice again. “Quite sure,” Alice said firmly.

  “The Caterpillar won’t have any truck with you,” the girl said, giving Alice an up-and-down look. “You don’t look like you have any flash, and he only takes the ones with flash in his special room.”

  “Let me worry about that,” Alice said. “Where is his ‘special room’?”

  The girl pointed to another red door on the far side of the long room. A large man who bore a distinct resemblance to Theodore, Cheshire’s guard, stood there glowering at everyone who approached.

  “I can suck you for twopence,” the girl said as Alice tried to move away. “If you don’t want a tumble.”

  Alice did not even know what “sucking” meant, though she was certain she didn’t want it. “No, thank you.”

  The girl walked away, muttering under her breath about pocket money. Alice wondered where the girl would have put the twopence anyway.

  She stood in front of Hatcher so that she blocked his view of the butterflies and waited for his eyes to see her again.

  “Alice,” he said, like he only just remembered who she was. His look sharpened, seemed to focus on her mouth. “Alice, I haven’t had a woman in such a long time.”

  She feared then that he might give her away, that he might try to kiss her. Worse, he might try to kiss another girl, or take what was so freely offered throughout the room. She couldn’t bear the thought of Hatcher acting like these other men, these animals so insensate of their own surroundings.

  “It’s not the time, Hatch,” she said.

  She didn’t know what else to say. They needed to see the Caterpillar. They needed to leave before Hatcher did something he couldn’t take back.

  As they picked their way through the cheering, drinking, smoking crowd, another terrifying thought occurred to Alice. Had Cheshire sent them here to prove that she was nothing but a man’s toy, as he said? Had he expected Hatcher to lose his mind, to treat her as the Rabbit had done?

  If so, it was all the more reason to escape this place as soon as possible. Hatcher would regret anything that happened here. She was certain of that. But she was not confident she would be able to stop him.

  The door to the Caterpillar’s special room was just beside the last platform. As they reached it, the butterfly inside pressed herself against the glass and pushed one of her fingers inside her body. Alice resolutely turned her head away. She would never be able to sleep well again. Some might think this place full of wonder, but to her it was a house of horrors. Hatcher closed his hand around her elbow just for a moment, squeezing hard. She didn’t know whether he was trying to reassure her or to keep himself under control.

  The guard at the door gave Alice and Hatcher the same disdainful look as the naked girl who’d solicited Alice’s attention. He was built on the same large scale as the guard at Cheshire’s cottage. There was a resemblance in the face as well.

  “Off with you,” he said.

  “You even sound like Theodore,” Alice said, though she had not meant to say it. She hadn’t really thought about what words she would use to convince him to let them in.

  The guard’s brows drew closer together, if that was possible. “Theodore? You know my brother?”

  That explains many things, including how Cheshire knows so much about the Caterpillar, and perhaps how he knows of others as well. Anyone who enters this room is under this man’s eye, Alice thought.

  “Yes, we met him at Cheshire’s cottage. What is your name?” Alice said, just as if she were in her parents’ drawing room making a new acquaintance.

  As long as she kept thinking like that, it was easier to ignore what went on behind her, to shake away the sight of girls on display like slabs of meat at the butcher’s shop. She didn’t look at Hatcher, but she hoped that he was not staring around like a wide-eyed child. She would prefer the dangerous Hatcher, the one who killed a man because that man touched his shoulder.

  The guard narrowed his eyes at her. “Theobald. Are you friends of Cheshire’s?”

  Alice wished she knew what the correct answer was. Did this man like or dislike Cheshire? Would he be more likely to allow them to enter if she said yes or no?

  “I would not precisely call him a friend,” Alice said. “We went to him for advice.”

  “He advised you to see the Caterpillar,” Theobald said. He seemed smarter than his brother.

  “Yes,” Alice said. She sensed that the less she said, the better. Let Theobald draw his own conclusions about their business.

  “The Caterpillar doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s entertaining guests,” Theobald said. “However, there is no one special with him this evening.”

  He did not immediately move aside, so Alice waited expectantly. “Your names?” Theobald asked. He held his hands crossed together in front of him. As he said this, he opened one palm and held it flat.

  Alice stared at his hand, confused for a moment. Fortunately Hatcher knew what to do. He drew a single piece of gold from his pocket and put it in Theobald’s hand. The guard’s eyes gleamed.

  “Tell the Caterpillar my name is Nicholas,” Hatcher said.

  He didn’t offer a name for Alice. The gold piece must have been sufficient not to warrant further pursuit, though, for Theobald nodded at them and slipped into the room. He moved so quickly and efficiently that Alice did not catch a glimpse of the room behind.

  Now that the guard was out of sight she realized her heart pounded in her chest and her legs trembled. She was scared, scared that the Caterpillar would realize she was a girl and put her under glass like his other butterflies. Alice would never get away, not without Hatcher and the things Cheshire had sent in the sack. Her boy disguise had fooled only those who didn’t look at her very closely.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Hatcher said in a low voice.

  She glanced at him. He seemed much more alert than before, more like the Hatcher he’d been since their escape. Hatcher always had changeable moods. Alice never realized when they were in the hospital how difficult those changes would be for her. In her own room she could let him rant or walk or pound the walls and it wouldn’t really affect her, particularly since she took the powders, which made everything dull around the edges.

  Out here the world was bright and sharp and full of hungry mouths waiting to eat her up. She couldn’t afford Hatcher’s instability, and she wouldn’t leave him either. They were bound together by love and need and other feelings she didn’t entirely understand.

  I’ve never been a woman, she thought. She didn’t mean it like a woman who is a wife and performs wifely duties (like the ones the butterfly girls offered the men who entered the club), but a woman who sat in adult company, who saw the world through an adult’s eyes. Her body had grown older but her mind was still trapped at sixteen, still unsure of how to act and how to be. She loved Hatcher, but it was a girl’s love for her savior.

  Would she have loved him if they’d met at a garden party, or at a ball? Would he have worn a high collar and starched cuffs, like her father, and told her about his work as a clerk in his father’s law office? And would she have laughed at all of his attempts at humor, even when he wasn’t very funny, and looked up at him with shining eyes when it was time for dancing? For a moment it was almost as if she could see them there, dressed like they belonged in the New City, spinning in circles together, like it was a memory of the past and not the ghost of a future that never was or could be.

  Theobald returned then, and beckoned them inside. He returned to his post outs
ide once they closed the door.

  Like Cheshire’s cottage, the Caterpillar’s special room was extraordinary. It was long on two sides and short on the ends, and so stuffed with objects that Alice was surprised anyone could walk through the space.

  The walls were lined with shelves from the floor right up to the ceiling. Every shelf teemed with things. There were boxes made of gold and silver and iron, encrusted with pearls or rubies or emeralds or sapphires or diamonds. There were chalices and cups and leather-bound books, fabrics that glittered and shone, tall glass jars filled with powders and unguents of various colors and consistencies. Caps of different shapes were stacked messily next to piles of exotic-looking feathers, taken from the tails of birds that never lived in the City. Every type of sword, dagger, axe, mace or hammer imaginable was there too, and brightly colored rugs were piled all around, strewn with fat, tasseled cushions.

  It looks like the room of a sultan, Alice thought. Her mother had told her those stories when she was young, adventures in the faraway desert with magic lamps and flying carpets. At the opposite edge of the room lay a man in repose on several of the cushions, further adding to the impression that they were in the room of an eastern prince.

  The man—who could only be the Caterpillar—inhaled from a long hookah, occasionally expelling smoke in thin clouds from his nostrils. There was something of the caterpillar about him, though Alice thought the name must have come from his use of “butterflies.” He was long, very long and lean, and completely relaxed, his eyes drowsy. He stared at two large glass enclosures before him, and did not indicate he noticed their entrance at all. Hatcher moved a little ahead of Alice. His hand was tucked inside his coat, though he did not take a weapon out. Alice patted her pocket, assured that her knife was still there. The Caterpillar did not appear threatening at all, but something had raised Hatcher’s hackles, else he would not be so ready to swing the axe. Alice could not clearly see what the Caterpillar was so interested in, though she imagined it must be more “butterflies.” She heard a splash of water, and a fluttering noise like the beating of wings. Her curiosity was roused, and she peeked through the glass as they approached the Caterpillar, ready to look away quickly if she saw more of what she’d seen outside.