Chapter 73
Chapter Seventy-Three
HOOK
"Bloody fucking hell."
That's all I manage to spit out as the gate shrieks open. The iron moans and groans like it's coming alive, and she—she just unlocks it like it's nothing.
Is this what the mirror meant by her being the key?
The evidence suggests it, and even the Bandersnatch seems to confirm it.
I could leave her here now. This is my problem, my mission to get the amulet.
I could just get up there, get it, come down, get her home like I promised, and get back to Neverland.
But it feels too easy. After all we've gone through to get here, simply seeing that she's the key to open the gate?
I don't buy it. Nothing is ever that easy.
Power shimmers beneath her skin, coursing over her, making her glow from the inside. She's all ice and fire, sharp angles and soft words, grace and fucking violence. And I can't do a damn thing but stare.
She's incandescent.
A goddamn star, burning right in front of me, and I'm going to burn with her.
"Are you coming?" she asks.
"Someone has to keep you from getting killed."
The steep incline looms before us. My thigh aches at the mere thought, but Captain Hook doesn't back down so easily. No, fuck that. I'm getting to the top of this hill if it kills me.
"We just go up?" I ask the Bandersnatch.
"You just go up. What you seek is in there."
"The amulet?"
The creature pauses. "What you seek."
A smaller Bandersnatch steps forward—female, by her voice—and speaks:
"Lost not in time, but a tale untold,
A stolen seat, a fate grown cold.
Where power was taken and shadows grew,
The truth is locked in what she knew.
To open the past, you must walk through your own,
For mirrors reflect what the mind has shown.
Face what was, unravel the thread—
Only then shall the path be read."
More bloody riddles. I want to ignore it, but my mind sticks on part of it: To open the past you must walk through your own. I think of the field, of Sam, and I don't want to walk that past. Don't want to see it.
"Is it so hard to just say 'go up the path, open the door, take the first left, and the amulet's on the top shelf next to the biscuit tin'? Boom, world saved, we all go home."
They all stare at me, blinking.
"We can't give you answers," the female says. "Our words are bound, and if they were to spill from our lips, we could become dust."
Alice steps in. "The Queen has made it so you can't speak? Like Sophia?"
"The Queen holds onto threads with loose hands, but she can stitch in places she is not meant to."
"Fine," I say. "We'll find our own way." I step onto the path, Alice beside me, but the Bandersnatches remain at the edge. "Are any of you coming with us?"
"We can't cross the path. It is not our place. We are tied to this world and the land forbids it. You are not."
"But you said Alice is of this world too." I pointedly look at her feet, already over the threshold.
"You already know the answer to your question, pirate," the main Bandersnatch says in his deep, gruff voice. "Go now. Do what you are meant for." He glances up at the sky, where the sun sets in deep reds. "This will be the last sunset here. Make it count."