Heartless(110)

*

CATH DID NOT KNOW IF this magic could be called a tower, a tunnel, a bridge, or some other impossible passageway, but she was relieved when it deposited them into the meadow outside Hatta’s shop. She was trembling, though Jest and Raven looked as though traveling through the earth was the most natural thing in the world.

“And to think,” she gasped, pushing herself up onto wobbly legs, “I’ve been bothering with carriages all these years, when there was such a more reasonable way of traveling.”

Jest was grinning as widely as ever as he laced his fingers with hers. “It’s a favored trick of us Rooks,” he said. “You get used to it.”

She sniffed and straightened her gown. “That remains to be seen.”

They approached the Marvelous Millinery with their hands fiercely entwined. The windows of the traveling shop glowed warm and gold, but the forest was quiet.

Jest reached for the doorknob on the shop’s round door but found himself holding a furry striped tail. A cat yowled.

Jest jumped away, bracing his body in front of Cath’s.

Cheshire’s head appeared next, grinning enormously despite the way his slitted eyes glared. He licked at his injured tail. “Well,” he said, “that was uncouth.”

“Cheshire, what are you doing here?” asked Catherine.

“Tending to my wounds. I fear he may have bruised me.”

She fisted a hand on her hip. “I mean it, Cheshire. Have you been following us?”

He stopped licking and his tail vanished, leaving only his bulbous head hanging where there might have been a door knocker. “Following you? I was here first, dear girl.”

Catherine lifted an eyebrow.

Cheshire’s vivid smile widened even farther. “I heard a rumor that you had fled the masquerade in the arms of our most-wanted criminal. Well, our only wanted criminal. I wanted to see the truth of it for myself.”

“And now you’ve seen it. Please move aside.”

Cheshire’s eyes narrowed, peering into the distance. “Is that bird friend or food?”

Cath and Jest glanced back. Raven had claimed a spot on a low-hanging tree bough. He puffed up his feathers until he was the same size as Cheshire. Or, the same size that Cheshire would have been had his entire body been visible.

“Friend,” said Catherine, turning back. “What do you want?”

Cheshire’s head turned upside down. “I suppose you haven’t any idea what’s been about this evening. Been awful preoccupied, what with your proposal and such and such. Do you want to hear about it?”

“Not particularly. I have a few preoccupations of my own, you may have noticed.”

“It involves the pumpkin eater.”

Her gut tightened. She’d all but forgotten how Sir Peter had accosted her earlier that evening. “Why would I have any interest in him?”

“And also Mary Ann. And even the Jabberwock. A zesty new rumor that might be even more scandalous than our King’s bride running away with the Joker. I’m positively dying to tell someone”—his eyes turned to silver coins, like those placed upon the dead—“and you were the first person I thought who would want to know.”

A chill scurried down her spine. She could sense Jest peering at her, could imagine his concern, his curiosity, but she shoved her own curiosity down into the pit of her stomach, right beside the angry pit where lay Mary Ann’s betrayal.

“You were wrong. I don’t want to know. Go bother someone else with your gossip and leave us alone, or I’ll bruise much more than your tail.”

The coins turned back into glowing eyes. “I see,” he said, drawing out the words. “It appears I was incorrect about you, Lady Catherine. After all these years.” His gaze shifted to Jest. “He’s handsome enough, I suppose…” His ears and eyes and nose vanished then, leaving only his smile—hanging downside up so it became a frown without a body to tether it. “If one cares for that sort of thing.”

Then he was gone.

Jest was still looking at her.

“It’s fine,” she said. “He won’t tell anyone where we are.” She didn’t know if it was true, but she hoped they would be far gone before it mattered.

With the cat gone, Raven left his perch in the trees and flew down to join them as Jest pulled open the door.

No longer a tea parlor, no longer a shop—the little room was a messy workspace, a hatter’s studio. The long table was littered with ribbons, feathers, felt, buttons, needles, and thread. A dozen mannequin heads were lined up, wearing unfinished hats of varying styles, blinking bored eyes at the newcomers.

The Dormouse slept curled up on the table, wrapped in velvet ribbon like a present.

The March Hare was stringing different-colored buttons onto a thread and draping them around his neck like a pile of beaded necklaces. There were enough on him that they reminded Catherine of a noose.

Hatta sat on his throne, wearing his plum top hat, one leg strewn over the chair’s arm and his chin propped up on his knuckles. An incomplete lady’s hat sat on a mannequin’s head before him, half done up with yellow rhinestones and half done up with seashells, but his eyes were on Jest and Catherine and Raven.

He scanned Jest’s dark motley and smirked. “Still playing the part of the royal idiot, I see. Or maybe that’s an effect of the girl who has you so neatly wrapped around her finger.”