Chapter 21 Books, Training, and Magical Blades
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
BOOKS, TRAINING, AND MAGICAL BLADES
It’s been two weeks since Hatter left. It’s been two weeks since I woke up to a note on my pillow explaining that he couldn’t face our goodbye, so he left before I could wake.
Part of me was furious, but I knew he was right. I wouldn’t have let him go. I would have begged him, pleaded with him, used every dirty trick in the book, including falling on my knees before him, to get him to either stay with me or allow me to go.
On our last night together, I decided that training and saving this world and, subsequently, the man that I love mattered more than any fears I had.
So that’s what I’ve been doing.
Training.
Cirius hasn’t been easy on me—every bone, muscle, and tissue in my body throbs. My world has turned upside down, and I now have hardened muscles, whereas before, I had cushy pockets of fat. All because of the giant training me as if I’m going to win a war single-handedly.
Based on the scrolls, I guess I’m expected to.
I know the whole of Wonderland will be behind me. They won’t let me fail. I just hope their blind confidence in me isn’t the thing that gets me killed.
“Today’s the day,” Cirius says, swinging the Vorpal Blade before him. Its metal glints in the bright sun above, and I swallow.
“I think maybe tomorrow…”
“No. The time of the Great Slaying approaches, and you must be ready. You’ve trained with the wooden blades long enough. You’ve mastered my obstacle course and outwitted me over ten times in hand-to-hand combat. You’re ready.”
That I’ve done all those things in the last two weeks is astounding, but I all but forget it when I look at the size of the Vorpal Blade.
“It’s nearly as tall as I am!” I squeak.
“I’m four times your size, yet you fell me whenever we go toe-to-toe.”
“Sheer luck,” I argue.
“It’s not lucky to fight a giant, and it’s not lucky to win. It’s skill.”
“So, you are a giant.”
Cirius rolls his eyes at my stalling, stalking toward me in two strides before stabbing the Vorptal Blade into the earth near my feet.
I jolt at the action, my breath hitching.
“Remove the blade, Eleanor of Earth. Take destiny by the hand.”
I laugh at the absurdity of his words, but Cirius is… well, serious, for lack of a better term.
Shaking the tension out of my shoulders, I wrap my hands around the hilt of the massive sword, bending at the knees for leverage. Cirius buried the blade’s tip deeply into the ground, giving me my first task: release it.
It takes four tries, but I finally tug the blade free and swing it through the air before me, testingly.
“How does it feel?”
I toss the sword as Cirius taught me, capturing it and zipping it back and forth through the air to test the balance. “Perfectly balanced. It’s a lot lighter than I thought it would be.”
“Because you’re a lot stronger than before.” His chin juts up with pride at his job well done.
I grin. “I am. Because of you.”
“It was nothing. I did my job.”
“You did more than required of you.” The White Queen’s voice sounds from behind Cirius, and he steps out of the way, bowing as deeply as possible for his size.
“At ease,” she says.
Cirius falls into his usual resting position with his hands behind his back and his feet perfectly squared off with his shoulders—a soldier’s stance.
“You are ready,” the queen says, walking closer. In her hands, is something made of leather. It’s rolled up and obscured so I can’t make out what it is, but she spots where my attention’s fallen and unravels it.
“This belongs to you. It always has. You should never wear it.”
Her erratic way of speaking in front of her guards returns, leaving me wishing Cirius were elsewhere, so she’d speak plainly.
“What is it?” I ask as she steps behind me and fastens the apparatus around my waist.
“It’s for your blade.”
Lifting the Vorpal Blade, I sheath it inside the leather holster. “It fits perfectly.”
“It does. It was made for the blade.”
“I still don’t feel ready,” I admit to her, and Cirius rolls his eyes from the sidelines, compelled to remain silent by the queen’s presence.
“You are,” the queen whispers, her hands splaying against my cheeks in quiet comfort.
“How will I know when the time is right? How will I know when to draw the blade or when to fight?”
“Unfortunately, you won’t have the luxury of worrying much longer,” she answers. “Enjoy the time you have before the battle.”
Battle.
Swallowing, I nod.
As the White Queen leaves Cirius and me standing bereft and reeling, I turn toward him. “Ready?”
He nods. “Let’s work on unsheathing the blade in action.”
Later in the day, the sun waning on the horizon, I’m sitting beneath a large mushroom the size of a tree, yawning as the book in my lap has lost my attention entirely.
Beau runs toward me from a distance, his ears larger than his body.
I smile.
“Hey, Eleanor!” he says, tripping over his front paws and toppling over my feet.
I capture him and hug him tightly, kissing the top of his head.
He and I have gotten close since Hatter’s been away. Besides Hatter, he’s become the companion I’m worried I can’t live without.
“Whatcha’ up to?” he asks.
“Reading.”
“You weren’t reading. I know what that looks like. Papa loves to read anything he can get his paws on.”
I smirk at his candor. What I love about him is that he doesn’t mince words. “No. I guess I wasn’t.”
“You were thinking. You had your thinking face on.”
Shaking my head, I ruffle his ears back and forth.
He growls at me, taking a defensive stance to my left as he rolls off my lap.
“Going to fight me, little pup?”
“The way I hear it, you could use the training,” he teases.
Standing, I take chase after him through the woods. “Oh, you’re done for!”
His high-pitched screams dance back to me as I laugh, chasing him at half-pace so our fun isn’t cut short.
An hour later, we’re both lying beneath the same mushroom, my book long forgotten, and our breathing has finally returned to normal.
“Being with you makes me feel young again,” I tell him.
“Being with you makes me tired.” He yawns.
“You started it.”
“I typically do. Doesn’t mean I don’t pay for it.”
Silence bleeds between us, and it’s comfortable. Closing my eyes, I let it envelop me whole.
“Are you scared to fight the Chatterwocky?”
I used to laugh at the name until Cirius took me to the library in the palace and showed me depictions of the great beast the Red Queen calls pet.
“Yes.”
“But you’re still going to do it?”
“Yes.”
“That’s stupid.” Beau snorts a laugh.
Turning onto my belly, I lay my head on my hands, grass prodding through my fingers and stabbing my chin as I level Beau with a gaze. “Cirius says it’s brave.”
“Easy for him to say; he’s a fucking giant.”
A laugh falls out of me, and I realize this is the least anxious I’ve been since Hatter left. I know it’s because I’m fully trained and as ready as ever, but I chalk it up to my newfound friendship with Beau.
“You miss Hatter,” Beau says softly, his puppy-dog eyes growing softer.
“I do. So much it feels like I can’t breathe.”
“You love him. Papa can’t stand being away from Mama.”
“That’s sweet.”
“It’s gross.”
I laugh. “You’ll get there one day.”
“Gosh, I hope not.”
“I’m sorry you’re sad,” Beau offers, and my heart constricts at his kindness.
At such a young age, he has more compassion than anyone I’ve ever met.
Rolling onto my back, I let my mind drift back through memories of before. Before Wonderland. Before the earth swallowed me whole and brought me back to Hatter. Back to a world that needed me.
The world I’m from was harsh and cunning.
Everyone around you was always trying to use you in some fashion, use you to get a leg up, to survive.
Down here, everyone works cohesively for survival.
Love is abundant and shared, and hate is silently forbidden.
Even if hate exists in one being in Wonderland, this world feels like the better option when thinking about my future.
“Will you stay after the fight, Eleanor?” Beau asks, his voice barely audible through the emotion in it.
My mind tumbles and twirls through memories from here and there, from a life before and a life changed. “I don’t know,” I answer honestly.
“You could leave Hatter behind?” he asks, and I wish I had all the answers to quell his worrying, but I don’t.
This feels like home. Hatter feels like home, but my mind still argues that I don’t belong here.
That I belong in the world I was born into.
“No,” my voice cracks as tears fall over my lids.
“You don’t have to, Eleanor. You control your fate in Wonderland. You control your fate always.”
“You’re really wise for… how old even are you?”
He scoffs. “I’m thirty-five.”
I roll over, tears forgotten, and sniffle. “You’re older than me?”
“What’s it matter? Time is relative and doesn’t factor into your character whatsoever.”
I narrow my gaze at him. “You’re right.”
He rolls his eyes, flipping onto his back and wiggling left and right to scratch an itch he can’t reach. “I know I am.”
Hours later, when I’m in bed, staring at the ceiling and missing Hatter more in the emptiness and silence of the bedroom, I realize that I’ll soon need to make a solid choice.
The White Queen acted as if the battle looming is stalking nearer, and once it’s over, I’ll need to choose one world or the other.
Which feels daunting.
Snuggling into bed, however, all I can focus on is that Hatter returns tomorrow, decisions be damned.
“You can’t do this,” I argue with Hatter.
The portal’s magic is tugging at my back, pleading with me to step inside the swirling purple ripples and return to where I belong.
“You have to. It’s not time for you to fulfill the scrolls. You know it as well as I do. It’s not time.” Tears cascade down Hatter’s cheeks, breaking my heart with each of them that carves sadness into his features.
“The scrolls could be wrong! They could change!” I argue, my hands clutched onto Hatter’s wool coat to remain in Wonderland.
If he shoves me into the portal behind me, he goes with me.
“Tiger Lily, I adore you. You know that. For that reason alone, I need you to heed my warning and go home.”
“When can I return? How will I know when it’s safe to come back? How will I know when it’s time? Let me take the scrolls with me.”
“The scrolls are safely hidden.”
“But she’s already seen them,” I argue. “Hiding me is moot. Fate will come for me, eventually.”
“Let’s hope it’s later.”
My chest tightens at his words. Thinking of never seeing Hatter again, never hearing his laugh, never feeling safe again in the bedroom he built me, is shattering my heart to bits. Shards that might never fit back together once I’m back home.
“Time will heal your wounds, Tiger Lily. It’s the way of Wonderland.”
He speaks of the security wards; Winston has told me all about them. Once back in my world, as I age, the memories of Wonderland and everything I’ve come to know and love will fade away like they never were.
I’ll never find my way back here if I don’t recall the portal locations.
“Don’t do this to me, Hatter. Let me hide here.”
He hangs his head, his body convulsing with emotion, before tugging me into him. “I have to do what’s best for you. No matter what. That was always what I promised myself. It’s always been about you and your safety, and you’re old enough to survive there now. You’re tough enough to fight back.”
I don’t know what muddled bullshit he’s spouting about. I only know he’s walked me three paces closer to the portal, and my chest is tightening, anxiety spiking through me like lightning through a calm sky.
“Hatter! No!”
“I’m going to close the portals, Tiger Lily. Don’t look for me there. Don’t come back here.”
“You need me! I’m the one who saves Wonderland!” I scream as he cups my face, his massive hand enveloping where I have a firm grip on his jacket.
“It’s not the right time. I have to keep you safe.”
I can’t see through my tears as Hatter rips my hand from his jacket and shoves me through the portal.
Wonderland falls away, and I’m ripped through time and space, my screams of agony blending into the magic surrounding me.
When I land in the woods, battered and broken, my cries echo off deadfall and pattering rain.
I’m back.
I’m defeated and utterly broken, but I’m back.