Furthermore(41)

She wanted to give up.

She nearly did.

Instead, Alice shook her head and forced herself to focus. Quitting would be easy. Dying would be simple. But neither would solve her problems, and both would leave Father lost forever. She had to find a way to keep the two of them alive.

Well, and Oliver, too.

Suddenly, she had an idea: All this running they’d done, all this energy they’d exerted—it could be put to good use, couldn’t it? There was no time to deliberate. She grabbed Oliver’s shirt, kicked him in the backs of his knees, and knocked the both of them onto their backs. Before Oliver had even a chance to shout about it, they were flying. Sliding, gliding, they were practically penguins sloping down the shiny street, moving so quickly you’d think they had wings.

Up and left and down and right, the street curved and swayed and dipped and flipped and with it they went, human roller coasters ready to be sick upon stopping.

Eventually, the road came to an end, and with it, Alice’s only hope for escape. She and Oliver had been dumped at the outer edge of Still, beyond which was nothing but grass for miles on end. There was no way out, it seemed, and certainly no time to celebrate Alice’s temporary stroke of genius.

In the few moments they wasted catching their breaths, the ladies of Still had spent catching up to their bodies. Hundreds of ladies in colorful suits and angry, bloodied faces were waiting to attack two dizzy, dazed, and broken children.

They had nothing left to spare.

Not an ounce of energy. Not a shred of power.

Not a single—

“Alice,” Oliver gasped. “Oh, Alice. Bless you. Bless you,” he said, “bless you for getting us to the other side, you wonderful girl,” and he tugged a stoppick out of his bag, broke it in half with his teeth, turned back for only a moment, and threw it hard in the direction of their attackers.

Everything slowed.

The broken casings spun with no real speed, but the very presence of magic sent the ladies into a wild-eyed frenzy. They were salivating, faces distorted by tortured excitement as the magic drew closer, but their eagerness turned to anger as the remains of the stoppick froze and shattered in midair. The ladies shrieked and shrank back, clawing at their eyes, as tens of thousands of colorful threads fell from the sky and wove themselves across the land, creating a beautiful and terrifying barricade.

Alice couldn’t believe something so simple had worked. She also wondered where Oliver had gotten so much magic, and how much more he had left.

Oliver collapsed.

“Alice,” he said, “oh, Alice, you were excellent. That could’ve gone so badly,” he said. “But you did so well.”

“That could’ve gone badly?” Alice was staring at him in shock, even as she crumpled to the ground. “You mean it could’ve gone worse than them nearly killing us? Oliver, have you gone mental?”

Oliver shook his head. He was on his hands and knees, trying to breathe. “You have no idea how much worse it could’ve been,” he said. “The first time I met the ladies of Still”—he laughed, wheezed—“I tried to be charming.”

“Oh, Oliver,” Alice said, cringing. “You didn’t.” She coughed twice and prayed for her legs to stop cramping.

“I did,” he said, sitting up. His breathing was a little better now, still broken, but evening out. “And it was a most thorough rejection. I did my best, but it proved impossible to persuade such a large number of ladies to believe anything I said.”

“So how did you get through?” she asked, as she, too, pushed herself up into a more comfortable position.

“Well, the first time I only broke free by accident. I was very nearly done for. They’d had me strip down to my underpants and climb into a pot over the fire—”

Alice gasped and covered her mouth with both hands.

“—because it had been a long time since they’d had any dinner, you see.”

“They were really going to eat you,” she cried, dropping her hands. “I still can’t believe—”

“Yes,” Oliver said, “but”—he held up one finger—“while they were busy trying to light the fire, one of the ladies tripped over my clothes and stepped on a few stoppicks that’d tumbled out, accidentally releasing their magic.” He waved his hand with a flourish. “They went mad. They were thrilled. All they want is magic, after all—it’s the central reason they want to eat us—but I hardly had time to be relieved before they were demanding more. More magic. Everything I had. They took me for every fink they could find and it still wasn’t enough. So they were going to eat me anyway.”

Alice was shaking her head in horror.

“Luckily, all their procrastination gave me time to form a better plan. I had one last stoppick tucked behind my ear, and I decided to put it to good use. I was outnumbered and would’ve been completely useless in any kind of battle; and as I had only a single stoppick—which isn’t enough magic to do much damage—I had to think quickly. A temporary barrier seemed like just the thing to help me get away.” Oliver nodded at the woven wall he’d built. “This will fade, eventually, but it’ll keep for at least several hours or so.” He laughed. “Good grief. Getting in and out of Still has proven a highly expensive endeavor, hasn’t it? Though I do hope I can say with some confidence that our lives were worth it,” he said, still laughing. Oliver was thrilled, grinning from cheek to cheek, feeling far too triumphant to notice the careful narrowing of Alice’s eyes.