Heartless(77)

Ice blew over Catherine’s frame, freezing her feet to the platform, plastering her panicked smile onto her cheeks.

The King looked at her with pride that should not have belonged to him. “So you see, for any contest in which she is a participant, I will say to you, yes! She must be the winner! She wins it all, my heart, my joy!”

Catherine felt a hundred eyes boring into her, but she was petrified, unable to look away from the King.

This was a nightmare.

“What a queen you will make, Lady Pinkerton, cake baker and happiness maker! Oh, oh, somebody write that down! Jest—there you are! Write that down! I shall include it in my next poem!” The King clutched his stomach, overcome with a bevy of giggles.

The crowd stirred. Their whispers flooded the tent. Cath sensed her mother’s overzealous glee. She could imagine how quickly the gossip would spread outward from this little festival on this little beach, like a pebble dropped into a pond.

Mortification washed over her.

I haven’t said yes, she wanted to tell them all. I haven’t accepted him. I’m not his bride, despite what he says.

She had opened her mouth, her body pulsing with denial, when a scream cut through the tent.





CHAPTER 29

CATHERINE SWIVELED, SEARCHING for the scream, as chaos erupted—chairs crashing, paws and wings scrambling away from someone, something …

Her attention fell on the Turtle, that adorable, most enthusiastic of judges. He had fallen off his chair behind the table, and if Jack hadn’t accidentally tripped on the tablecloth in his haste to get away, yanking the cloth and all the cake-filled dishes away with him, Cath would not have been able to see the Turtle at all. As it was, he was on full view to the startled onlookers. Upended on his back, exposing the softer underside of his shell, his arms and legs flailing. He was still groaning and pressing his flippers to his stomach, his voice hoarse with pain, his eyes wide and frightened.

From her perch on the contestants’ platform, Catherine had a perfect view of the Turtle when he began to change. His skin bubbled beneath the surface, shifting and undulating. Some of his scales sloughed away and new skin stretched along all four limbs. His screams turned gargled as his head, too, began to morph into something strange. Something horrid.

Cath pressed a hand over her mouth to keep from heaving. Someone suggested carrying the Turtle down to the sea so one of the Sturgeons could have a look at him, but nobody dared to touch the poor thing.

No one could look away, until the squashing and twisting of the Turtle’s limbs gradually stilled and his screams dwindled into sobs. A puddle of tears had formed beneath his thrashing head.

The head that was no longer the head of a turtle.

The pointed beak and sunken eyes were gone, replaced with the contorted face of a baby calf, complete with flared pink nostrils and soft tawny fur.

Though his shell and belly and front flippers remained intact, the Turtle’s lower legs were now hooves, and, with one last painful shudder from the creature, his reptilian tail stretched and curled and sprouted a tuft of fur on its end. His tail, too, was now that of a young cow.

“It’s impossible,” someone said, and the word sent a chill down Catherine’s spine.

The crowd could not stop gawking, though some of the children had been coaxed away from the horrific sight. The Turtle continued to cry enormous blubbering tears, still trying in vain to roll himself over, and it dawned on Catherine how vulnerable he was. Embarrassed and in pain for all the crowd to see, and having no idea what was becoming of him. Words formed beneath his sobs—What happened? What’s happening to me? What’s going on? Help me, help, help …

Unfreezing her legs, Catherine rushed forward. “Someone help him!” she cried, dropping to her knees to crawl beneath the table. She knelt at the Turtle’s side and laid a hand on his leg, just above the new hoof. It was covered in a fine layer of fur and damp with sweat.

“You’re going to be all right,” she whispered. The Turtle continued to blubber nonsense and hiccups. “Or at least, mostly right. I hope. We’re going to roll you over. Just hold still.”

She looked up at the stunned faces. The King, pale and shocked, the Knave, disgusted, the Duke, looking on the verge of illness, and the Caterpillar, eyeing the Turtle like an unexpected result of a science experiment. The White Rabbit had fled from the stage and his pink eyes now peered over its edge. Mary Ann had removed her bonnet, maybe confused to see her dreams of the baking contest so quickly turned to a nightmare.

“Help me!” Cath yelled.

No one moved, and it was a startling sight that snagged her attention in the crowd. Two piercing eyes watching her from a livid face. Peter Peter’s expression was twisted in fury, one lip peeled up to reveal gritting teeth. And he was looking straight at her.

Cath shrank back under the force of his loathing. She couldn’t comprehend the fear that curdled in her gut as she glanced up at the judges’ table and the five plates that had been set there.

Four untouched pieces of pumpkin spice cake—and one plate showing nothing but crumbs.

Bells jingled, mockingly cheerful, and the crowd parted to let Jest and Hatta through. They both looked as appalled as anyone, but concerned, too, as they climbed onto the stage and knelt beside the hysterical creature.

“It’s all right, chap,” said Hatta, picking up the bowler hat that had fallen off during the Turtle’s transformation and tucking it under his arm. He laid his free hand on the creature’s shell. “Calm yourself, now. It can’t be as bad as all that.”