Blood of Wonderland (Queen of Hearts Saga #2)(26)
On the sides of the valley, Yurkei women had lined up to watch her, this dirty and humiliated princess. She tripped over her feet as they stared, and she felt even more humbled by their wild beauty and piercing stares. The women wore only white feathered skirts that draped loosely around their legs and a white feathered band that covered their breasts. Each woman was muscled and lean, with smooth dark skin and shining blue eyes. Their hair was long and twisted back into several elaborate buns accented by sparse blue beads that winked in the sunlight. Dinah felt so out of place, a hideous monster with her pale white skin, black hair, and black eyes. Their eyes narrowed as she passed. The tunic was given to her with a purpose, she realized. She was wearing red, the color of Wonderland Palace, a color to remind those around her exactly who she was. Red, the color of blood, the color of the oppressor. I should have gone naked, she thought, stumbling again. I might have attracted less notice.
The crowds parted in front of her as she approached a massive white rope ladder that seemed to hang in midair. Dinah glanced up, her neck straining to take in its height. Far above, carved out of the two mighty rock walls that lined the valley, two cranes faced each other—their wings outstretched, their chests puffed out. Two long necks elongated into huge heads with terrible, open beaks. The carvings were so large that the beaks were almost touching, though they began on opposite sides of the valley.
“Meir hu-gofrey,” murmured the Yurkei warrior who had looked at her with such curiosity. “Our protectors and gods.” Dinah nodded. She knew that the Yurkei worshipped the birds, and that Wonderland’s fascination with birds had grown out of their early meetings with the Yurkei. A single large pod was suspended between the birds, harnessed by the same wooden supports she had seen in the valley. The chief lived there, she guessed, ruling his people from between two warring birds, each the size of a foothill.
Dinah stopped and stared at the ladder. It blew about in the wind, looking weak and worn. “I can’t.”
The angry Yurkei warrior pushed Dinah up to the ladder and placed her hand on the bottom rung.
“Climb,” he demanded.
Dinah looked up. The pod was suspended hundreds of feet above the earth. A fall from even the middle would surely either kill her or break every bone in her body. She took a deep breath and began making her way up the rope ladder that somehow blew in the breeze but still managed to be strong and unbendable beneath her white-knuckled grip. Hand over hand, she made her way up with the two Yurkei warriors lingering behind her, obviously annoyed by how slowly she was climbing. A strong gust of wind rocked the ladder, and Dinah pressed herself against it, wrapping her arms and legs around the rungs. She heard the roaring laughter of Yurkei children from below who watched her desperately cling to the ladder for dear life as it lifted off the ground and blew out behind the warriors, lashing like an angry tail.
“Up, up!” shouted the guard behind her. Dinah clutched the ladder, afraid to move. The ladder twisted and swayed, and Dinah let out a cry before murmuring nearly forgotten prayers from childhood as she clutched the rung before her. The ladder began to twirl in the wind, which cracked and whistled the faster it blew. The rung underneath her hand was growing slippery with sweat, and Dinah’s foot was tangled between two other rungs. I can’t, she thought.
Before she could finish her thought, the kinder of the two guards began rapidly climbing up the ladder after her. He reached her in seconds. Once there, he moved slowly, circling around the ladder until he was on the opposite side, his face inches from Dinah’s. He dangled from the rope with one hand as he untangled Dinah’s footing with the other. He switched hands then and wrapped one palm around the wooden rope and the other tightly around her waist. “I will help,” he murmured. “Step.”
Dinah closed her eyes and reached for the next rung, secured by his hand supporting her waist. Her foot found the rung. She opened her eyes. Without thinking, she grabbed the next rung and the one after that, even when the wind wrenched the ladder sideways so roughly that Dinah almost lost her grip. The Yurkei warrior held on to her as she slipped and strained her way up. At times it seemed hopeless, but still she climbed. She climbed up past the breasts of the enormous cranes, past the crests of their giant necks, and finally, straight up into the vast white pod strung between the two birds, like some saucer that the fowl had dropped from their mouths.
The Yurkei warrior was the first one through the pod, and he rapped his hand twice against a wooden bracket on the outside. A square of fabric was pulled from the bottom, and with a leap, he disappeared up into the hole, reaching back to help Dinah. Her feet dangled in the air as he held her arms, and she looked up with fear into his glowing blue eyes, her life completely in his hands. He gave her a shy smile and yanked her up through the opening, setting her down roughly inside the tent. Dinah’s legs and arms were shaking so terribly that she simply rolled over onto her back, her lungs heaving and contracting with each long breath. Her hands wouldn’t stop trembling, a cold sweat pouring from her skin. It felt good to be on a hard surface, but she couldn’t forget that this fabric tent was suspended hundreds of feet in the air. It was unnatural to be this high, and she longed to feel dirt underneath her fingernails. She was a child of the earth, not the sky. Her heart gave a terrified thud when she realized that she would also have to climb back down the ladder, which would be less physically exhausting but infinitely more dangerous. She closed her eyes and focused on breathing. After a few minutes, a man’s voice broke the silence.