Blood of Wonderland (Queen of Hearts Saga #2)(8)

Dinah screamed and flailed in Harris’s arms when the thin ruby crown was removed from her mother’s head. The priest held it over open flames until the crown glowed a dim red, as if lit from within. She realized with a start that it was a precautionary measure, to cleanse it from the fever. He walked over to Dinah as he blew on the crown to cool it.

“The queen is dead. Long live the future Queen of Wonderland.” He placed the crown on her head, the heat of it scorching the tips of her ears. Harris carried her out of the room, and as he turned, Dinah was given one last glance at her mother’s face, her beauty siphoned away by death.

Taking a cue from her father, Dinah had built a wall around that memory, thick as stone and impregnable to wandering thoughts. But here, in the depths of the Twisted Wood, it had been so easy to remember. She could smell the putrid air of the bedchamber, could see the fear in Harris’s eyes as the hot crown was laid on her head.

Dinah wiped her eyes as she pushed her blistered feet into the cool stream. The relief was instant, and it occurred to Dinah that she could possibly stay here forever, in this tiny lovely part of the wood where all the trees were white and the huge dark blue and deep green veiny leaves stretched out over the ground. But she couldn’t. Not yet. After a few moments, Dinah pulled her feet out of the stream, delicately wrapped them with the remaining strips of linen, and pushed them back into her boots, now instruments of torture. She watched silently as a fiery red hawk danced and dipped over the horizon, such a thing of beauty. She looked hopefully over at Morte, wishing he would lift his leg and have mercy on her. He did not, but rather stared off into the distance, his massive black head tilted with interest.

“I guess we’ll be walking, then,” groaned Dinah. It was nice to hear a voice—any voice, even if it was her own. They continued walking northeast. Her march to starvation, as Dinah had begun to think of it, dragged on.

The tracking hawk continued to circle lazily overhead.





Three


All day Dinah had felt strange. She had just eaten her last loaf of bread and there were only a few pieces of bird meat left. A creeping feeling made its way from her spine to her forehead. She convinced herself that it was just the sinking feeling of having no more food. Her time was up—she would either need to learn how to hunt or begin eating only fruit that she could find along the way, but that wouldn’t sustain her for long.

Dinah was losing weight rapidly—already she had tightened her belt loop two notches, and when she had splashed her face in the stream that morning, she was shocked at how thin her face looked, how tired. Her hair was a raggedy tangle that would probably take years to work itself out, and her skin was marked with dozens of small cuts from thorny branches. The cut on her hand was healing well, but her two broken fingers still ached whenever she put pressure on them. The shocking thought that she might not survive this ordeal washed over her like a cold wave. I cannot die from something as simple as a lack of food, she told herself.

That day she kept a very sharp eye out for things that looked edible. She found a Julla Tree, but most of its spiky fruit had gone rotten. Dinah managed to grab three fruits that were edible and stashed them in her bag for the following day. She found a strange plant in the ground that sprouted something similar to the cabbage they ate at the palace. Tentatively, she rested a leaf on her tongue only to spit it out immediately. It was bitter and numbed her tongue, and she quickly rinsed her mouth out with water. I’ll die from poisoning much faster than starvation, she thought.

The wood was filled with such fascinating and terrifying plants: huge rubbery vines that gave a shiver when she passed, and when she touched them, they released a puff of sparkling yellow powder; tubal roses that grew long instead of wide, whose petals collapsed inward when the sun set; carnivorous plants that feasted on small rodents—and once attempted to bite Dinah’s ankle and would have broken the skin if she hadn’t been wearing boots. There were thousands of ever-changing plants and flowers woven among the trees—those trees, always knowing—and none of them to eat. Damn it.

Grumbling to herself while ignoring the sharp pain in her stomach, Dinah walked on, watching the blazing sun creep from west to east as dusk settled in like a thick blanket. Without warning, she found herself in a small clearing, marked by a unique tree that had small, perfectly round holes drilled into its impossibly wide trunk. Dinah walked up quietly to inspect the tree, noting that it was at least twice the width of her bedchambers. She padded slowly around the smooth trunk, letting her hand linger on its surprisingly glossy surface. The bark had the texture of marble. It shimmered in the setting sun, the light playing across it like a warm ember. Dinah watched with amazement as rays of sunlight shot through the tree, and suddenly it hummed with life, as if lit from inside. The tree was transparent and filled with a frozen golden sap. She could see everything inside it—every fiber, every bubble of air. This was an amber tree, something she had only seen in her picture books, valuable because they were so rare. Once found, they were immediately hacked down and turned into jewelry, furniture, and hand railings for the wealthy. The base of her tea table was made of this rare amber wood.

Dinah ran her hands over the trunk. It was so beautiful it took her breath away—why would anyone ever chop it down? There was so much more beauty in a living tree than a pendant wrapped around some noblewoman’s neck. The tree pulsed with warmth that Dinah suspected didn’t come from the sun, but rather from inside the tree. Her fingers trembled with the knowledge that its texture was changing underneath her skin. Whereas before it had felt like cool marble, it now was soft, like the jams she spread on toast. When she pulled away, her hands were covered with a dark, drippy syrup the color of molasses. Without thinking, she licked it. After weeks of stale bread and dried bird meat, the syrup was heavenly—rich and sweet, the best thing she had ever tasted. She licked her hands dry, covering her face in syrup, and went back for more until she felt sluggish with the sugar, drunk on this rush of goodness. She stumbled away from the tree past Morte, who had also been licking the trunk.