Chapter 76
Chapter Seventy-Six
HOOK
I grip the sword steady, my fingers tight around the hilt, but my eyes scan the courtyard. This is too perfect, too still. Too fucking quiet. I don't like it. There's something... I don't know. Even Alice stands beside me almost still, her posture about as tense as mine.
"Where are the guards? Where's the bloody cavalry?" I narrow my eyes, making sure to look at every corner, every crack and crevice, because this does not feel right. Not at all.
I don't even take a step.
We're standing at what I can only describe as a grand courtyard with perfectly manicured hedges, and blindingly white marble underfoot. Crystal clear fountains flank us. It's like stepping into a warm summer's day at a royal palace and everyone left.
The building ahead of us is gleaming and pristine. It has wide steps leading up to the large ornately carved doors. And that's fine. This is all so nice.
But where are the guards? The fact that there isn't a single soul up here...
"This place feels... wrong."
I tap the ground in front of us with the tip of the sword, half expecting it to give way like the ground did in the maze and drop us down into the oubliette.
That's what I'd do if this was my palace.
"The Queen went through all that trouble to stop us getting up here?
The bandersnatches, the moving rock, even the gate and we get here and there's nothing?
" I turn around to look behind us. "I don't buy it. This doesn't make one fuck of sense."
"Maybe she's confident no one would get up here," Alice says. Though she herself doesn't step over the threshold. "Maybe she thinks she didn't need guards?"
"Nah. That isn't it. Queen Paranoid down there.
There's no way she's leaving this place open like this.
She could have an entire army of bandersnatches down there and this place would still be locked right up.
" I dare to take a step forward, but I'm listening, and watching for something.
Something is going to jump. The place is too quiet and I sure as hell do not trust it.
She's the kind of cruel woman that would have us step out, feel safe and then a blade would swoop down and something somewhere would ring out, 'off with their heads! '
We creep out when my first and second step doesn't get us killed.
Alice is just behind me. "The air feels cold." She rubs at her arms. "Do you feel that?"
I nod. "Cold like her heart."
"Like someone filled this place with ice. And it's too quiet. It isn't just quiet like it's silent, but it's quiet quiet." She taps her shoe on the ground, and she's right. There's no echo from the movement, no tapping.
I do the same with the sword, stabbing it down, and the sound is dull. Lost. I don't know what that means.
We make our way towards the doors. And they're massive.
I mean, fucking huge, covered in twisting shifting patterns that seem almost alive.
In the centre of both doors are carved hearts and where the doors meet, is another.
On either side of the top of the steps instead of there being pillars, there are two card-shaped statues, carved out like an almost S shape, playing cards made of stone.
Cards of the hearts deck. Each with a heart-shaped head.
They have their eyes closed, but that doesn't mean I take my eyes off them.
As we reach the bottom of the stairs, Alice and I exchange a look, but we don't say what we're thinking because I'm pretty sure it's the same thing.
We made it across the courtyard, but this.
.. we step. What if an alarm goes off, what if when our feet touch the flat stone something happens?
I've seen enough of the things Hollowlanders call movies in my time (movie nights at pixie bay).
I hate fucking pixies, but I was desperate for supplies.
"Do you feel that?" she says, her hand on her chest, over her heart. She's looking up at the doors. She takes a gasp. "It feels like something's pulling at me. Calling to me. I..."
I feel the opposite. Every instinct in me is screaming at me to turn back.
I push against it. I have to. I don't have it in me to come this far and back down, because my amulet is in there.
I'm sure as I am of anything. But it's the playing card pillars I have my eyes on.
I stare at the one on my side as we walk up the steps, and I swear it's moving with us, moving its head.
I grip the sword ready. Keeping my eyes on their spires.
One move, and I'll take their fucking heads off.
When we reach the top, I wave a hand in front of its face, then poke it with my sword. I have to be sure. Nothing happens.
"Hook."
"I'm checking." I stab at it, jabbing it with the tip of the blade, but the thing's smooth, impervious to my sword. It doesn't mean it doesn't have a weakness, though.
Alice goes to the doors and checks the handles, rattling them. "Locked," she says.
But I still have my eyes on this fucker. "Would it be anything else?"
Alice runs her delicate hands over the intricate surface, and I pretend not to want to know what that feels like. Now is not the time for my brain to kick in. She's feeling for a lock, a keyhole, but there's nothing. I can see that without even examining the door.
"Here, let me try this." I pull my small knife out and hand her the sword for a moment, then I slide the blade into the slight gap between the two doors, sliding it down and expecting it to make contact with the lock mechanism where the handles are, but my knife slips lower.
The catch is near the bottom, which makes no sodding sense, but okay, if this is the way it's been built, then so be it.
I wriggle my knife, trying to get the blade right in, trying to get it to feel something.
"It's not working," she says.
"It will. I just..." I reach for the handle, to see if I can get the lock to give at all, but there's not a damn thing to it.
I press my ear to the marble and when Alice goes to speak, I put my hand up to silence her.
I need to feel my way around the lock. There isn't any lock or bolt that has kept Captain Hook out and this one isn't about to beat me.
I have to almost force the knife in, though, and then.
.. "Ah, hell." The blade snaps. Right at the hilt, right at the edge, and the metal clangs to the ground. "For the love of--"
"Only the past shall pass."
Both Alice and I stop at that, at the words, at the voice, at each other. It was an echo between my ears, not a sound outside, but I... "Did you hear that?"
"Only the past shall pass?"
I rise from where I am beside the latch on the door and narrow my eyes.
The statue moved, I'm damn well sure of it.
I knew they did. The card at my side of the steps has its head turned towards us more than the one on Alice's side.
"The cards." I grab the sword from Alice and walk right up to the card and stand so we're eye to eye, even if its are closed. "You spoke. What did you say?"
Nothing. It doesn't move, doesn't speak. I raise the sword and point it at the statue's chin, pitching it in a little. If this were human and made of flesh, I'd have nicked the skin. "Open your eyes and look at me before I run you through."
"It's just a statue," Alice says and I feel her presence close behind me.
I always feel her. When she felt the pull inside, I feel the pull to her.
I don't like that. Because as I look at this statue, and she comes close, she gets close to the statue on her side and it makes me try to keep an eye out there, to watch for it to randomly jump and grab.
"It's not just a statue. Now open your fucking eyes. I'll give you until the count of three. That's one, two..."
The thing opens its eyes and looks right at me. "Three."
I step closer, lips tight, sword clutched harder. "Don't be smart. What did you say before? How do we open the door?"
It looks at me and then looks at Alice. The stone where its head joins its body groans with the movement and then it settles, its eyes back on me. "You have to give it the right answers," it says to me.
"Give who? You?"
"No." It doesn't turn its head to indicate anything, but it looks and I follow its gaze to the doors.
Was that there before? Like that? Maybe I didn't see it before, when we were walking up, but the doors.
.. either side where the hearts are in the middle, are two cards of the heart suit, and in the middle, where the door joins is the playing card, the Queen of Hearts.
Only she has a heart in the middle, which means this is not the actual Queen of Hearts, because I know inside hers is nothing that resembles feeling. "She requires payment," the card says.
"Payment? What kind of payment? We don't have anything to give." Maybe Alice has noticed it too, what we didn't notice before, because she's eyeing the whole door too and frowning at it like she's trying to work it out.
"Steel will not turn it," the card says.
"Then what does?"
It's the other card behind Alice that moves and she jumps, stepping away from it. I step back from the card I'm at, and step in front of her a little. I raise the sword to both of them. I don't care if they're made of stone or marble. I don't care if they're hard. One move...
"The past is the key. One of sorrow. One of loss."
"One of a path refocused. Lay them bare, let them breathe."
"Only then shall the way be freed."
"Riddles." Oh, how I hate riddles. "What the hell does that mean?"
The card to my side stares at me. It doesn't have an expression, nothing to give away what it's thinking or feeling. "Three echoes of time. Give it the truth."
"The truth?"
Alice puts her hand on my shoulder. "Memories. I think they mean memories. The key is the past? Three echoes of time." She nods to where we are. "This is the hall of memories. That's what it needs as payment?"