Chapter 25
Alice and Blinkem began running towards the yacht ramp, shouting to the queen as the ground noticeably shifted under their feet.
Suddenly, Alice felt the ground drop from below her violently. In that split second, all Alice could think of was Guinevere’s voice: When it drops out, don’t fight it.
Her feet and legs dropped into crumbling cobble and earth. Blinkem, who had one foot on the ramp before her, fell forward and clung to the wood plank as it slipped free from the ship.
He quickly tried to reach behind him toward her, but it was too late. Just as the tips of his fingers touched hers, Alice was submerged in gritty black water.
In the open sinkhole of the cobble road, Alice was violently dragged backwards towards the levee, with a sickening feeling that the remaining earth would soon collapse above her.
Debris churned around her body, threatening to crush her, until she was finally caught against timber that was part of a submerged structure beneath the cobble.
Water and sand poured past her from a gaping hole in the exposed rocks below the surface, and she sank lower and lower on the timber as the water source north of her receded into collapsing ground.
Alice found herself trapped in a newly formed cave that was soon going to collapse, with Blinkem crouching high above her, screaming words she could not understand.
The rocks on the interior of the large hole continued to crumble.
Alice watched in terror as hands—large, grey, clawed hands—began to push through the earth wall, and a surge of water burst forth, rushing towards her, pushing her from her precarious perch on the post and down into its powerful current.
Alice held her breath and struggled to keep her head above the water until she could no longer.
She forced her eyes shut as she was pushed down, down, down, until it felt like the very earth was being ripped away from beneath her.
When it drops out, don’t fight it, she heard again.
Then, all at once, the water gushed from her ears, and she found herself falling through complete blackness. She plummeted down before finally splashing into a cavern pool, surrounded by total darkness.
She was submerged for a moment as the current pushed her down, then its force spun her around and lifted her to the surface.
Spitting water from her mouth, she gasped for air.
The rushing sound of the waterfall that brought her below the earth began to fade until it was only a stream, which was followed by an explosion of rock falling from somewhere high above.
She was trapped, and the escape had been sealed.
Alice waded through the cold water, fighting the panic that the blackness brought, a panic similar to what the cold-water tub had given her, though this pool wasn’t nearly as cold.
She reached out to find the edge in the black void.
Eventually, her boots found rock, and she was able to climb the slippery ledge to solid ground.
“You have lived, Alice. There’s no reason to fall apart now,” she told herself, breathing slowly through her nose and squeezing her drenched skirt so that water poured over her cold, wet legs. Somewhere deep below the earth, there was another crash of rocks and the faint sound of rushing water.
“There! That must be where I am supposed to go,” she said, stretching her hands forward and starting to walk.
She imagined she was looking for the paper donkey without peeking, hoping that a childhood memory could save her as an adult.
Off she stumbled, still trying to catch her breath, looking for the donkey, imagining Emily was calling out left or right.
Each time the wall jutted or changed, she responded to Emily. “Yes, sister, right it is!”
Clinging to the ramp, Blinkem watched as the earth that swallowed Alice filled with the final collapsing dirt of the main cobble square of the port. Onlookers who stood at the opposite edge began shouting. He struggled to kneel on the shaky ramp, poorly balanced over the jagged pile of rubble.
At his back, the ship slammed into the unstable levee, and with a crack, the remaining side gave way. Earth and water rushed away, and the royal yacht, carrying all but Blinkem, tilted violently before sliding into the river.
Blinkem sprang up onto the ramp, which now was poised as a walkway over the sunken hole of rubble, and to his relief, saw that the yacht was still upright.
Queen Rosemarie and Princess Languidere were likely below deck.
He scanned the rough water, hoping no one had been thrown overboard.
But there Tinkerton bobbed, clutching his partially cloaked invention that looked like a copper buoy.
“Let it go!” Blinkem shouted, but the likelihood of Tinkerton hearing him over the churning water and cries from the port was slim.
The yacht seemed to have run aground, as it did not move, though waters rushed around it.
Blinkem scanned for smaller vessels that could potentially rescue Tinkerton but saw only a dark spot that was growing toward the center of the river—a whirlpool.
For a whirlpool to exist in water that had very little current meant another hole had opened, and Tinkerton was but debris that would be sucked into a drain.
Blinkem took off up the slope of the hill that ran alongside the levee, passing the collapsed pen where the queen’s yacht had dropped.
He ran the narrow plank deck to where the levees lowered below the waterline.
He scaled an iron ladder where a small cargo boat stood, its crew all huddled, pointing at the yacht off the shore.
He ran across the timber frame of the pen as if he were running across rooftops and, without pause, dove over the edge.
The canal at the levee’s edge was deep, and he rocketed through the green water and began to kick ferociously as he surfaced.
He swam with arms churning, and his speed began to pick up rapidly.
The pull of the whirlpool was growing so strong that he hardly needed to kick to propel forward.
He broke his stroke and treaded water, searching for Tinkerton, who had drifted further downstream.
The buoyant invention kept him afloat—its hollow form propelled away from the turning water, keeping its desperate passenger skirting the edge of the turning pool—but it wouldn’t for long.
Blinkem himself was aggressively pulled into the pool.
If he allowed himself to ride the water like the hand of a clock, he could free himself from the drag at around seven o’clock and intercept Tinkerton.
He let himself go, but the pull was more chaotic than he had expected, and he ended up kicking through the momentum closer to eight o’clock.
He now had to swim against the drag to overcorrect and reach Tinkerton.
This plan would have worked, but Tinkerton saw him and panicked, reaching his arm into the air, and immediately was pulled from the invention that had been saving him.
Blinkem dove beneath the water and could just barely see Tinkerton’s thrashing in the undertow.
Something kept him from being sucked into the cyclone of water.
Blinkem saw the shimmer of a fin, and arms wrapped tightly around Tinkerton’s waist, while the rope that kept him tethered to the buoy above was looped at his ankle.
The fishtailed figure pulled him back, keeping him from the spinning water, but above him, the copper buoy suddenly took off toward the center of the whirlpool.
It had finally been pulled into the current.
Tinkerton dragged as the fishtailed figure strained against the current, but as soon as Tinkerton hit the draining water, the fishtailed figure vanished.
Blinkem kicked, and into the whirlpool he went.
At the last moment, he grabbed the rope of the buoy tied to Tinkerton’s ankle.
The two spun violently, at the mercy of the copper buoy above, which finally circled toward the bottom.
Tinkerton, Blinkem, and the copper invention were sucked underneath the river’s bed.
“I believe we already made this left, Emily,” Alice said, beginning to become frustrated with the lousy advice she was giving herself as her sister. So, she decided to do the exact opposite of the advice she was giving herself, and her conversation quickly shifted to a discourse with Wendy.
“I see your point, Wendy, but can we at least try going right?” She hesitated, a wave of sadness washing over her at the thought of her friend.
But, in the darkness, Wendy was the light to follow.
Alice took a breath and in her best imitation of Wendy’s clipped yet drawn-out accent, responded to herself, “Right it is, Alice.” Both she and Wendy had refined accents, after all.
The memory of Languidere’s tactless insults simmered beneath her skin.
Infuriating. The princess didn’t even know her!
Lost in thought, Alice picked her way through the darkness of the cave, rounding a large rock with crumbled debris at its base—only to misstep.
Her foot caught, and before she could steady herself, her hand slid from the wall.
She reached out to brace herself while falling to her knees, and her hands splashed into a small pool of water that suddenly illuminated.
She yanked her hands from it and blinked.
The darkness was playing tricks on her mind.
Just to be sure, she slapped her hands down into the puddle again, and the darkness shimmered with light.
This time, she kept her hands submerged, and the light grew.
Beneath her hands, from somewhere deep inside the rocky floor, streaks of silver shone as if trapped below ice.
A brilliant silver that sparkled at her touch; silver that glowed as the witch’s libre did, as Wendy’s slippers had.
She kept her hands pressed against the rock, and the streaks of silver extended, creating a dimly illuminated path through the dark.
Once she picked her hands up, the light began to dim inside the rocks. “Strange…”
Alice stood and stomped her boot in the water, but to no effect.
“It must be my skin,” she thought, though the idea was absurd.
Either way, she unlaced the leather and tweed and stepped into the puddle.
The chill surprised her but quickly passed as a stream of silver emerged from deep inside the rocks and pulsed at her toes.
How tremendous it was. She untied her other boot and began to walk through the cavernous tunnel, guided by streams of light.
Lord Roquat’s massive hands gripped the wet slick walls of his crystal chamber as threads of silver light began to glow all around him.
The gnomes had succeeded in bringing the girl below ground, and now somewhere—in his world, a world shielded from the sun—she was there, and in her a power so vast that it caused the endless connected veins of lurlicite to shimmer within the rocks from wherever it was that she touched.
At long last, in her was a power that could free him from the Under and let him rise to take Oz as his own. All he need do is wait for the gnomes to carry her back to him.