Ensnared (Splintered, #3)(5)

Refusing to cry, I lift my chin. Morpheus would say that I’m a queen, and queens don’t cry. And Jeb would say, “You got this, skater girl.”

They’re both right.

I turn the dial on the wall to dim the lamp. The stage curtains open, revealing a movie screen. “Picture her face in your mind whilst staring at the empty screen”—I mimic the conductor’s instructions from the last time I was here—“and you will experience her past as if it were today.”

I’m surprised how easy it is to recall Red’s image in the sketches from my mom’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland book. Before little Alice fell down the rabbit hole, before the queen’s world was shattered by an unfaithful husband . . . before she was betrayed by her king. Back when Red was only a princess.

The screen lights up, and I burst apart into a thousand pieces, reuniting on the screen inside Red’s body and point of view.

She’s small and young, maybe ten in human years. Although children are different in the netherling realm—wiser and more cynical, lacking innocence and imagination. Her breath rattles in her lungs as she chases a band of pixies. They’re dragging a dead body draped in red velvet. The pixies don’t stop until they’re within the cemetery gate, safe inside the covered gardens.

“Wait! Bring her back!” Red screams.

She almost trips over her gown, but flaps her wings and lifts off the ground. She lands outside the gate just as it slams closed. Standing alone, she peers through the bars. Sister One scuttles out from the labyrinth of shrubbery, her eight shiny spider legs kicking up her skirt’s hem. The gardener’s humanoid torso leans over Red’s mother and coaxes the spirit from her body. It wriggles, rising from the corpse like a fluorescent vine.

Sister One winds the spirit around her wrist and sends the pixies off with the empty body.

“No, you can’t have her!” Red shouts, a weight in her chest so heavy it hurts to breathe. The stench of mildew and scorched leaves stings her nostrils. She’s never been this close to the garden of souls, having grown up on horror stories of the keepers and the grounds. But tales of scissored hands and trespassers left in bloody shreds hold no sway today. Not with her mother being taken away forever.

Sister One stares back from inside the gate, a frown on her face. “This is hallowed ground, child-queen. Whatever you be thinking, ’tis foolish. You haven’t the power here that you wield in your kingdom.”

Red scowls. Her entire body glows crimson as she concentrates on the spidery woman’s hair. Strands, as shimmery and fine as pencil shavings, flutter around the gardener’s face with a breeze, but Red’s magic has no effect.

Red looks up and down the tall fence and the thorny branches that stretch over the expanse of the cemetery gardens like a roof. There’s no way to breach the defenses.

Sister One smirks haughtily. “It would be a mistake to attempt to find a way in, little princess, lest you wish to know my sister personally. She has a gift for making confetti of delicate little imps like yourself.”

A shudder races from Red’s spine to the tips of her wings.

With a final glare at Red, Sister One winds the whimpering, glowing spirit through her fingers. In a sweep of skirts and spidery legs, she disappears into the maze of foliage.

Red’s kingly father arrives, his face flushed from trying to catch his daughter.

“What’s the good of being immortal,” Red asks, her nose wedged against the gate and cold from the metal, “if we can’t be together eternally?”

“Immortality merely means you reach a point and stop aging . . . and your spirit never dies,” he responds between panting. He squeezes her shoulder. “But the body is vulnerable to some things, and can be left but a shell.”

Red’s arms and legs go numb. Her own body feels like a shell. Empty and brittle, as if it might blow away at the first gust of wind.

She clasps the bars, holding herself steady. “But why can’t we bury her in the ground, amongst the begonias and daisies in our palace courtyard? Like the humans do? If she lived in the flowers, we could visit her every day.”

Her father frowns, as if considering. “You know our spirits need dreams to satiate them, to keep them from being restless . . . from possessing living bodies. Only the Twidsters can find and supply such things.”

“Dreams.” Red sniffles. “One day, I’ll bring dreams to our kind, Father. They’ll be in abundance everywhere, not just in the cemetery. One day, I’ll free the spirits, so they can sleep inside our gardens, brushing our windows at night, and bumping against our feet in the day. I’ll bring imagination to our world so everyone might always be with those they treasure.”

He pats her head, a tender gesture that almost fills the gaping hole in her chest. “That would make you the most beloved queen of all time, scarlet rosebud. But until then we are bound to follow rules like everyone else. We cannot abuse our power and status, or endanger our subjects. No matter how much we love her.” He blots his eyes with a handkerchief. “Understand?”

Red nods.

The scene scrambles and blurs. I’m dragged out of the memory and dropped back into my seat, cradled by the darkness around me. A knocking sensation shakes my skull, as if a fist punches it from the inside. I press my hands to my temples until it stops.

It must be the repudiated memory nesting inside my cranium, because I didn’t experience anything like that the last time I was here.