"Jeb?"
"Take it slow, luv." Morpheus sits beside me—licorice-scented skin, wild blue hair, tattooed eyes with jewel-tipped points. I remember now. He carried me here from the mushroom lair. I woke up midflight before passing out from my fear of heights, then woke again for an instant as he tucked me in his bed.
The blue haze is actually sheets of falling water, drizzling from the elegant canopy attached to the bedframe. Liquidized curtains.
Morpheus's wings slice through the waterfall, which curls back and leaves him dry. Each time he shifts, the watery curtain moves with him, as if some sort of invisible barrier stands between him and the downpour.
I try to sit up, but the pile of blankets is too heavy. Claustrophobia makes my heart pound.
"Morpheus?" My voice cracks, rough and gritty, as if I've been sucking down dry saltines. It must be from all the tears I swallowed in the ocean.
He lies beside me on the mattress, leaning on his elbow. His fingers weave through the strands of platinum hair splayed out on the pillow around my head. "You were crying in your sleep. Are you in pain?"
I nod, working my hand through the blankets to touch my throat. "Jeb," I murmur.
Morpheus frowns. "Your friend's safe and resting in the guest chambers. Which means you are mine for now." He starts to pull the blankets back.
What felt like bindings a minute ago now feels like armor being peeled off. I'm not sure what I'm wearing underneath the covers, so I clamp the last remaining blanket in place at my collarbone.
Morpheus leans close. His hair brushes my exposed shoulder, tickling and soft. "Shy little blossom," he whispers, his sweet breath cloaking me. "We're simply going to meld your pain away."
Meld… that doesn't sound like something my dad would approve of. Jeb, either, for that matter. I start to push Morpheus back, but the blanket slides down my body in the curl of his pale, elegant fingers. I'm left in a long, strappy nightgown of champagne lace and satin. It covers all the right places, yet I feel exposed. Morpheus had to see me naked to put me into this. I cross my arms over my chest, cheeks hot.
He smiles. "No worries. My pets undressed you. When they took your clothes to be burned."
"Burned? But… I don't have anything else—"
"Hush now, and be still."
"You said something about a banquet. There's no way I'm wearing this." I tighten my arms around myself.
He shakes his head, then pushes the hem of my gown until it's just above my ankle, exposing my birthmark. I sit up, about to jerk my leg away, but his deep, dark eyes turn to mine. "Trust me."
The fluttery sensation in my mind prods me to listen. Here in this place, where I no longer have the white noise of voices distracting me, I can hear my thoughts distinctly for the first time in years. I can understand that beating in my mind. The fluttering feeling—that's me. I have another side, beyond good girl and obedient daughter, that's instinctive and wild.
It's that side that chooses to trust him, despite our bizarre past… or maybe because of it.
Rolling his shirt's cuff to his elbow, Morpheus exposes that matching birthmark at his inner forearm—the one I remember from my dreams. Intrigued by our likenesses, I grasp his wrist with one hand, tracing the lines with my other. The maze glows beneath my touch. His features shift, and a rumble escapes his throat—something between a purr and a growl. His arm tenses, as if it takes his full concentration not to move while I appease my curiosity.
He's a contradiction: taut magic coiled to strike, gentleness at war with severity, a tongue as sharp as a whip's edge, yet skin so soft he could be swathed in clouds.
Holding his gaze, I remember what meld means. I take the lead and press our birthmarks together. Heat sparks the joining like when Alison healed my ankle and knee, though this is a more volatile reaction. Warmth simmers through my entire body, leaving me flushed from head to toe.
Morpheus coaxes me to lie back and draws down the gown's hem before spreading a blanket up to my chin. He places his hat on his head at an angle. His wings sweep high as he stands, and the water curtain lifts in an arch around him.
"Don't budge from that spot until I return with something for your throat." There's a raw edge to his voice that makes my body even warmer.
As he backs up, the water curtain drops, blinding me to my surroundings. The minute I hear the door to the room shut, I scoot out from under the covers, press my spine to the headboard, and curl my knees under my chin, shivering as the cool air hits me.
I close my eyes and think of how it felt—the pulse of his magic against my finger, his flesh against mine. Rubbing my birthmark, I shake off the euphoria.
The more I remember of Morpheus and this place, the more I forget myself… or the self I thought I was.
Why didn't Alison tell me? If she'd just been honest, I wouldn't be confused out of my mind while Jeb's locked up in another room.
Guilt stabs my heart. No. She was trying to protect me. She's going to suffer unnecessary shock treatments if I don't break the curse and get back soon.
Instinctively, I reach a hand toward the liquid curtain and will the water to react to me as it did to Morpheus. It lifts back like a living thing and leaves me dry. I grab a blanket, tie it around my shoulders in a makeshift cape, and leap through, landing on a plush rug. An echo of soreness remains in my muscles. Other than that, I'm pain-free.
I turn on my heel. The room's decor feels vaguely familiar—wild and stunning, just like its owner. There are no windows or mirrors. Soft amber light falls from the giant crystal chandelier that takes up most of the domed ceiling. Gold and purple velvet hangings drape the walls, intertwined with strands of ivy, seashells, and peacock feathers.
A set of multitiered crystal shelves occupies the wall to my left. Half of them hold hats of all shapes and sizes embellished with dead moths; the other half holds what first appears to be clear glass doll-houses. Then I realize they're terrariums.
Within the terrariums, moths fly from side to side and perch on leaves and twigs. Thick webs coat the glass panels in places, similar to the webbing in my Alice nightmare. They're cocoons—caterpillars transforming into moths. Listening to the waterfall, I think of how Morpheus's wing cut through the liquid earlier, and compare it to my dream in the rowboat, when a black blade was about to slice through the web.
It wasn't a blade at all.
The door creaks open and I spin around, heart pounding.
Morpheus steps across the threshold and shuts us in. "Up and about, aye? And not a drop of water on you." He carries a tray with a teapot and matching china cups. "Well done."
"You." I point a shaky finger toward the cocoons. "The nightmare I've been having for years. You put it into my mind, didn't you?"
His jaw tightens as he sets the tray on a glass table. "What nightmare would that be? I've not been mentally connected to you since your mother was committed… not until yesterday." He pours tea into a cup. Wisps of steam fill the room, carrying notes of honey and citrus.
"I'm Alice," I say, "searching for the Caterpillar. They're going to take my head. He's my only ally." I rub my neck. "Wait, no. There's the Cheshire Cat, too. But neither one can help me. The Cat's lost his body, and the Caterpillar…" I look at the glass cases. "It's you, stuck inside the cocoon."
Morpheus fumbles the teapot's lid with a loud clatter. When he turns to me, his eyes are wide. "You remember. After all these years, you retained the details."
"The details about what?" My legs waver, and I clutch the blanket tighter around my neck.
Morpheus motions to the chair beside him. "Sit."
When I don't move, he takes my hand and leads me. He's wearing black gloves now, reminiscent of the ones I dreamed of in the rowboat. I'm about to point that out when he hands me a cup.
"Have some tea, and we'll revisit the story."
Revisit?
While he pours a cup for himself, I sip mine. The hot, sweet liquid soothes my throat. I slide a finger against the table beneath my saucer. The surface is a chessboard, black and silver. A glass sheet covers it to protect from spills and scrapes. Jade chess pieces—pawns, rooks, knights, and more—are arranged in an unusual pattern. Sentences hover over three of the silver squares as if by magic, in tiny glowing script. I lean in to read them, catching the words ocean and palm before Morpheus sweeps his glove across the glass and smears them.
"What was that?" I ask.
"It's how I keep track of your accomplishments."
"'Accomplishments.' Mind explaining?" I take another sip of tea.
His wings hang wide on either side of his chair as he sits opposite me, placing his hat on the table. "I would prefer to show you."
He retrieves a small brass box from a drawer on his side of the table. Its hinged lid pops open, and Morpheus tilts it. The contents scatter onto the chessboard, a whole other set of tiny game pieces. These are also carved of pale green jade: a caterpillar smoking a hookah, a cat with a bold smile etched into place, a little girl in a dress and pinafore. There are other characters, too, all familiar. Morpheus and I played with them when I visited in my dreams.
I reach for the Alice figurine and hold her up, trailing a finger along the lines of her pinafore. With her marbled, green-tinged exterior, she looks different than in the pictures—more fragile. Precious and rare, like the stone she's carved of.
Morpheus lifts his cup and regards me over the edge while drinking, then sets it on his saucer with a clink. "She always was your favorite."
I'm both flattered and frightened over the expression of adoration that crosses his face. A nostalgic fuzziness swells inside my chest. "You used to tell me a story with these."
"I did indeed. Or, rather, we used to watch it."
"Watch it?"
The jewels under his eyes sparkle, flashing to a calming blue. "How are you feeling, Alyssa?"
Puzzled by the question, I frown. "Fine. Why do you ask—" No sooner do I speak, than the room starts to spin, the chess pieces along with it. My teacup topples, half of its contents spilling upward. I clasp both hands to my throat. "You put something in my drink…"
"Simply cleansing the palate of your mind. You must be relaxed and as light as a feather to channel your magic in the beginning stages. Otherwise, it will come in bursts and fits and be unruly, like it was at the asylum." Morpheus's disembodied voice floats around me as the chandelier blinks—dark to light, dark to light.
"Are you saying…?" No, it's not possible. "I was in control of that magic?" To think I had anything to do with Alison's near choking makes my insides quake.
"Out of control is more like it," Morpheus scolds. "You were too distraught for it to work properly."
I struggle to find him amid the chaos, needing to see his face so I'll know if he's serious. "But how?"
"The moment your mind accepted the possibility of Wonderland being real, it released the vacuum of doubt that once held you trapped," he says from somewhere above me. "Now, stop thinking like a human. Netherling logic resides in the hazy border between sense and nonsense. Tap into that logic, visualize the chess pieces coming alive; see it, and it will be."
Skeptical, I twirl in a circle of weightlessness alongside everything else: the glass shelves, the hats, the table, and the chessboard. The bed's watery curtain forms a funnel around us, swaying and swirling in an effort not to touch anything. The Alice carving slides from my grip as I try to keep my balance in the swimming room. Halfheartedly, I pretend she can reach for me, take my hand, but she falls out of my sight.
"There once was a child named Alice," Morpheus says with a voice of soothing liquid. I still can't see him. "She was innocence and sweetness, happiness and light. Perhaps her only flaw was that she was very—"
"Curious," I finish for him, and in that instant, the chess pieces grow to human size. I try harder to imagine them alive: visualize blood pumping through their carved bodies like clear mountain streams, envision their lungs expanding and sending oxygen to beating hearts of stone.
I'm concentrating so hard that I'm startled when the caterpillar, his hookah smoking in one hand, snags my wrist. "You look like a girl I once knew. Her name started with an A. Perhaps yours does, too?" The greenish smoke stretches into a thick, fragrant sheet around me, matching his jade sheen.
The cat floats up beside us. He holds out the sheet of smoke and, using his claws like scissors, cuts eight vaporous letters to spell the word: Allegory. He spreads the letters out like a strand of paper snowflakes. The smile on his green-tinged face widens.
"Ah," the caterpillar says, his tobacco puffs making clouds around us, "she's a figurative figure. She shall play on my side, then, as I'm the academician."
The cat shakes his head, his smile vanishing. They start a tug-of-war, jerking me back and forth. I yelp, my arm sockets stretched to the limit. "Let go!"
"Tut-tut. The only things figurative here are you two idjits." Morpheus breaks their hold on me, then folds one hand around my waist while snatching the caterpillar's hookah with the other. "Now, take your places."
At that, the animated chess pieces descend with the others through the funnel of water. Morpheus floats us up, up, up toward the huge chandelier in the domed ceiling—the one part of the room that's still stable. The lightbulbs are as big as we are, and the dizzying height makes me nauseated. I wrap my arms around his neck and tuck my face against his smooth chest as he settles us on the brass fixture. "This isn't happening," I say. But it is, because I can remember it happening before, years ago.
"Find your courage. Look down. Your show is about to begin."
I shake my head, eyes clamped tightly. "We're too high… it makes my stomach kick."
He laughs and inhales a puff off the hookah then blows the smoke over me, saturating me in the comforting scent. "That's how you know you're alive, Alyssa. The kicks."
Before I can respond, a loud rapping makes me brave a peek.
The funnel of water forms a curtain, which parts to reveal a stage. Morpheus's bedroom has transformed. The living chess pieces dominate the scene, their milky-green bodies vivid atop a glossy black and silver chessboard that stretches the length of the floor. Everything is arranged in a large circle that reminds me of a circus's center ring.
The queen's husband, king of the Red Court, lounges upon a velvet throne. Another woman in royal robes stands at his right hand, crimson bows tied on every finger. There are bows on her barefoot toes, too. She keeps shushing the ribbons, as if they won't be quiet. Queen Red stands before them both, locked in chains. The jurors' box, which is actually a cage filled with jagged-toothed tigers and bubble-headed seals, sits on the right. Card guards line the walls.
Seated in the witness chair is little Alice, fussing with the hem of her carved dress.
Rabid White stands behind her, his antlers low and his shoulders slumped, looking drained and miserable. His jacket and boots are the same marbled hue of his shiny, bald scalp. A strange assortment of creatures sits upon wooden bleachers and snacks on peanuts and popcorn. Even the Ivory Queen and her elfin knights are in attendance.
A toad-faced creature stands behind a podium, though he's dressed more like a ringleader than a judge. He bangs a gavel. "The Red Court is now in session!" His plumed wig wriggles. Only when it stands on long stick legs do I realize it's a stork. After preening its jade feathers, it settles into place again, and the judge continues. "Queen Red, because The Alice entered our world through the rabbit hole, which is in the Red province, and because you failed to capture her before she unleashed her mortal mischief over all of Wonderland, you have been accused of gross negligence and havoc by association. How do you plead?"
Queen Red's wings droop behind her. She glares at the king and the woman with the bows. "I plead temporary preoccupation brought on by a broken heart. My husband left me for Grenadine… I was too distracted by his betrayal to note something so insignificant as a mortal child in our midst."
Murmurs explode from the jurors' box. Grenadine looks remorsefully at the ribbons on her feet. The king shifts atop his velvet cushions.
"You're the one who should be in shackles," Queen Red says to her husband. "Wasn't it enough that before his death, my father favored her over me, an amnesiac little brat not even of his blood? But your betrayal is so much worse. My simpering stepsister can't remember what day it is unless one of her chatty ribbons catches her attention. She certainly can't remember whom she's supposed to love. You're responsible for wooing her and distracting me from my duties."
The judge leans over his podium, hugging it with his webbed hands. "Perhaps you should be grateful to your royal husband for bargaining with this court to waive the harshest sentence. Should you be guilty found, you will be exiled to the wilds. Preferable to losing your head, I should say."
"And as to The Alice?" Queen Red shoots a scathing glance at the witness box. "What of her sentence?"
The judge points his gavel at Alice. "She has chosen to read her written confession in exchange for being sent home with the promise never to return and to forget everything she's seen." He nods at the child, urging her to stand.
I lean forward to get a better view, so invested in the outcome I no longer care how high I am, relying solely on Morpheus's arm around my waist to keep me anchored to the chandelier.
Alice curtsies before taking out a piece of paper from her pinafore's bib. She coughs twice, delicately, then reads aloud: "Perhaps my first mistake was whom I chose to befriend. Or did they choose me? The smiling cat and the smoking caterpillar… oh, they hatched such fine schemes!"
I glare over my shoulder at Morpheus, who coughs up his puff of smoke and smirks sheepishly.
Below us, the judge waves his gavel, disturbing the stork upon his head. It makes a clucking sound and snatches the gavel's handle with its beak. "Descriptions of the schemes, if you please!" the judge screeches, wrestling the bird for its prize.
Alice clears her throat and inhales deeply. "We put an untimely stop to a tea party, spilled soup over a duchess so we could make her sneeze and steal her gloves and fan, unleashed an accidental ocean, and helped a hungry artisan trick his walrusy friend out of a bevy of very vocal clams, thank you."
Several bivalve audience members throw their popcorn at the witness and squeak out the word, "Scandalous!"
Alice dodges the rain of kernels by ducking behind her chair. The judge—who's managed to salvage his gavel with the loss of his wig and dignity—waves her to stand up straight. "How did you come to hide at the Ivory Queen's castle?"
"I wasn't hiding, in fact. Chessie Cat and Mr. Caterpillar insisted I visit the Ivory Queen and ask her to send me home, as she is more agreeable than Queen Red." Alice slides a pointed glance in Red's direction.
The shackled queen snarls, and her chains move as if alive, nearly catching Alice's ankle before she scrambles onto her chair.
Hammering his gavel, the judge demands order. "Would Queen Red's royal advisor please step forward and wrangle her chains?"
Rabid White moves up to take the metal links and holds them taut.
"Continue," the judge says.
Kneading her gloved hands, Alice clambers down and recites the rest of her confession from memory. "Ivory seemed pleased to have guests. She was, in fact, very fond of Mr. Caterpillar—who is debonair, in his own squirmy way. Just as I was preparing to follow the knights to the highest turret of the castle, where my doorway home awaited, an invitation arrived from Queen Red's court—a croquet match. But it was a trap, so you could imprison me and force my confession for this trial." She curtsies once more. "I'm sincerely sorry for the trouble I've caused. May I please go home now?"
"You will never go home, cancerous little polyp!" Queen Red screams.
I almost don't catch what happens next. Rabid's hands move faster than a shock of lightning, slipping out a blade that magically slices through Queen Red's metal chains. It happens so quickly, no one else even notices until the queen flaps her wings and grabs Alice by her shoulders, lifting her into the air. The judge's stork snatches the blade from the floor and follows Queen Red as she flies with Alice out the courtroom door, along with everyone else.
The minute they're gone, I strain against Morpheus's hold. "Follow them!" I demand.
"Follow them yourself," he says, and releases me. I scream, somersaulting in midair, my stomach bobbing into my throat. An itch begins behind my shoulder blades, as if something is scratching to get out; then it's gone as soon as it started. Inches away from striking the floor headfirst, I flip around and drop into my chair, teacup in hand. The chess pieces lie scattered on the table's surface, as if the re-enactment never happened.
I know better.
Morpheus sits across from me, spinning Queen Red's chess piece as my stomach sinks back into place.
"How does it end?" I ask.
"Your nightmare knows."
I place the Alice figure upon a black square. "The stork and the queen fought in midair. Alice escaped and came looking for you."
"But I couldn't do a bloody thing for her because I had already begun my metamorphosis. I was locked in that cocoon for seventy-five years."
"So how did Alice win?"
Morpheus rolls the statue of the red queen across the board, knocking over Alice. "She didn't. As you know very well, her lineage was cursed."
"And that's why you brought me here."
He nods once. "To set your family free and reopen the portals back home, you must fix all the messes that caused Queen Red to be exiled and lose her crown: drain the ocean, return the gloves and fan to the duchess, make peace with the clams and the tea party guests. Only you can break Red's magic bonds."
A weighty silence follows, broken only by the sound of the cascading waterfall around the bed. I reach for the caterpillar figurine, but Morpheus's hand catches mine. Warmth seeps through his glove and into my bones.
For an instant, I see him so clearly as the teasing child he was when we spent time together in my dreams. I understood him then, why he collected moth corpses, because their wings represented freedom, something that he'd been without while locked inside his cocoon… why he loved flying, especially in storms, because outrunning the lightning gave him a sense of power. Just like he understood my quirks: my fear of heights, my hunger for security. But here, he's tortured, seductive, and unreadable. All grown up with just as much baggage as me.
"That's why you're involved," I mumble, testing a hypothesis. "To appease your guilty conscience for failing Alice."
Hissing, he stands in a rushed flurry of wings and leather. Gusts from the movement flit through my hair. "My guilt for what happened with Alice can never be appeased." He snatches up the Cheshire Cat figurine and paces the rug. Despite his impressive height, he's as graceful as a black swan. "And don't delude yourself. I'm not quite that unselfish."
"I know you too well to think otherwise." I lift an eyebrow, toasting him with my teacup.
He looks at me briefly, almost smiling. "In her fight with the stork, Red managed to get the blade. I might've been unreachable in my cocoon, but Chessie was there. He dived for Alice before Red could behead her. He took the strike that was meant for the child." Morpheus balances the cat figurine on his fingertip, holding it up to the light. "Chessie is of a rare strain—not one part spirit and one part flesh but both at once. He can vanish and reappear in midair and twist himself into any shape. Such a being is nigh impossible to kill. When Red cut him with the vorpal sword—the one blade that can slice through any magic in the nether-realm—it cleaved his magic in twain. Split in two, but still alive."
"So he didn't die?" I set my teacup aside.
"Not exactly. His head rolled toward the bushes where Alice was hiding. He managed to catch the vorpal sword in his mouth and spat it at her feet. Chessie's bottom half was captured by Queen Red, and in one last act of defiance, she fed it to her pet bandersnatch before she was captured and banished from the kingdom."
Morpheus shakes the box that earlier held the chess pieces. Out falls the biggest figurine of all: a grotesque creature with dragon's talons and a spiked tail. Its gaping mouth and jagged teeth send a shudder of terror up my spine. When I was little, I used to hide this one while we animated the other pieces.
Morpheus tosses the cat into the air, then lets it plop soundly on his palm, squeezing his fingers around it. "What did I teach you about the bandersnatch?" he asks, testing me.
"It's bigger than a freight car. It swallows its food whole so the victim decomposes slowly in the dark void of its belly—a death that can take over a century to complete."
That glint of pride shines back at me. "Correct. For Chessie, who cannot die, it's like being exiled on a desert island, without any sun or moon or stars. Or wind or water. Just death, all around you. There, half of him resides to this day, trapped and longing to be reunited with its head once more."
A nudge of sympathy knocks at my heart. "You want me to help free Chessie from the bandersnatch, so he can find his head again."
Morpheus turns on his heel to face me, wings drooping. "All I need is the vorpal sword. Only its blade can cut through the hide of the bandersnatch. Alice hid the sword in the one place she knew it would be safe. Somewhere so ridiculous and mundane, no one would look for it there." His gaze falls on the figurines in front of me, and I pick up a character with an odd, cagelike hat.
"The tea party. The Mad Hatter has it," I guess.
"You've forgotten. That is strictly a Carrollism—the name Lewis used in his tale of fiction. His true name is Herman Hattington. And there's nothing mad about him. He's rather jolly, in fact, when he's awake."
I tap the carving's head, waiting for an explanation.
"Alice left the tea party guests beneath a sleeping spell," Morpheus continues. "Wake them, and they can tell you where the sword is. You've already dried up the ocean and made peace with the clams. I've a guest coming to the banquet tonight who will receive the gloves and fan on the duchess's behalf. After that, making things right for the tea party guests will be the only thing left undone."
Standing the Alice figurine up again, I place the caterpillar next to her, thoughtful.
Morpheus returns to the table and drops the cat into the brass box, then sweeps all the other characters in with him. Standing over me, he holds out his palm. "What say you, Alyssa? Are you willing to help me while you're helping yourself? A favor for your childhood friend?"
Once Jeb and I get home, I can tell Alison that the nightmare is finally over, that we'll never be connected to Wonderland again. Just thinking of her smile sparks an ember in my heart.
Taking a breath, I slide my fingers into Morpheus's and meet his gaze. "I'll do it."
He lifts my hand and presses soft lips to my knuckles. "I always knew you would." Then he smiles, his jewels glistening gold and bright.
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