Chapter 42
“A place between worlds, that’s a natural portal, not like the mirror, those are created,” Blinkem clarified to Alice before he stopped and turned to her. “I was to wait for Tattypoo. That’s when I found you.”
Alice found she had nothing to say for a moment.
She had chased that rabbit along the bank, laughing, a girl at a game.
She had thought only of the chain, and of untangling it before it strangled him.
She had not known what it was she chased—a boy of seven, running for his life on hands that had just been broken to fit the running.
“You were so small,” she said at last.
“I was fast,” he said. He looked away, at the roses. Neither of them smiled.
“And then?” she asked, gently, the way one turns a page that ought not be turned too fast.
“I went back through with you in tow, and, at the time, Munchkin Country was overrun by poisonous shrubs, poppies. They had not yet been cleared, and it was there my legs gave out, and I fell asleep, and you…”
“That is where I dreamed.”
“In the poppies, yes.” Their grins both began to fade, as their gazes lingered in each other’s.
Blinkem’s eyes faltered. “After that, Tattypoo and I decided together that, while I was young, I would explore to find the regions that offered passage, hoping that my parents would be found and restored to their seat. And because of my ability to shift, and the chronex, I could find endless passages.” Blinkem nodded to the towering wall of autumn trees flanked them beyond the garden.
“The chronex?” Alice asked.
“It’s a watch, an enchanted relic, Tattypoo’s watch. They are very rare,” he said as he became subdued. “It acts like a compass of sorts for portals, wells, anything with high concentration of lurlicite. But somewhere between here and Ev, I lost it.”
His jaw tensed, and he let out a sharp breath, clearly exasperated with himself. Losing something so important weighed on him more than he cared to admit.
“Maybe not,” Alice said. She had completely forgotten she’d been waiting for the right moment to bring this up.
With a rush of excitement, she unfastened her waistbelt and pulled the pocket watch free, presenting it to him.
For a moment, he simply stared, stunned into silence.
Then, as the realization set in, his entire expression changed.
A grin—wide, genuine, relieved—broke across his face.
“Tattypoo was going to kill me!” He let out a breathless laugh, shaking his head before flipping open the watch and turning its face toward Alice.
“You see how this hand doesn’t tick in time?
” He pointed to the glowing short hand that sputtered forward and then back.
Alice nodded. “It’s pointing in the direction of a well or portal.
Funnily enough, wells are usually also portals.
When you come close to a place between worlds the hand will spin, and if you have the chronex in hand, you can pass through. ”
“We were holding hands when we came through the mirror to Ev, so that’s how I was able to come through, I suppose, but what of the other times I’ve visited? I had no watch.”
“Well, if you are a witch, lurlicite is in your blood, so you don’t need this to pass through, but I do,” he said, confirming yet again this bizarre notion. The proof was stacking up.
Alice studied the watch as Blinkem handed it to her. “But Mombi was a witch. Why would she need the watch?”
Blinkem shook his head. “I think it has something to do with this. You see here. This knob, the fourth knob, turns these symbols, the moons and such…” He pointed to the crescent moons.
“Never ever touch the fourth knob. That’s about all I know.
That’s what Tattypoo says, and I’ve not asked anything further. ”
Alice had been enjoying Blinkem’s unprecedented openness, but there came the obvious halt in his transparency. The tenderness that she was feeling quickly dwindled as the runaround flared her agitation.
“How do you not ask questions? You were asked to guard me, watch me, and you didn’t even ask who is this woman or why should I risk my life to protect her?
Or why did a witch turn me into a rabbit?
Or what does the fourth knob do? It seems absurd to me!
You didn’t at least try to turn the knob once?
” Alice’s agitation simmered. How could one be so dutiful?
How did the curiosity not drive him mad?
“I don’t question Tattypoo. I do as she says, and in regard to asking who you were. It wasn’t until I saw you, and when I did, I knew exactly who you were.”
Alice nearly laughed. “But you do not know me.”
“I do. It is you who does not know me,” he said, but what was she supposed to say?
She closed the watch and tried to hand it back, but he did not take it.
“It’s likely safer in your care for now.
You hold onto it.” He was upset. But Alice’s body was tangled in a knot of confusion—she wanted to stay angry.
Yet, deep in her stomach, she knew it wasn’t agitation she felt for him.
Before she could untangle her thoughts, a sound drifted around her. At first, it was soft.
“Do you not hear the whispering?” Alice asked.
It sounded like a crowd of invisible people were chanting under their breath around the garden.
Blinkem shook his head. A wind gusted forcefully through the rows of roses and around the stone awning they stood beneath.
The wind then radically shifted in the other direction.
It blew beneath her, whipping her hood overhead.
In the distance, she heard the terrified shriek of her guardian dragon, Dinah.
The whispers suddenly came with chilling clarity. “Run, Alice, run!”
There wasn’t a moment to decide to head inside, for above her and Blinkem, a buzzing, squawking cacophony tore through the sky.
Alice grabbed his hand, stashing the pocket watch in her pouch, and they raced from the stone structure.
“Through the side gate!” Blinkem yelled, yanking Alice downhill through roses, toward the red stone gate with a painted wooden door.
As Blinkem fumbled to unlatch the gate, Alice saw the birds that squawked and swooped in sharp, manic dives.
They were like crows, but their beaks were long and curved, and their skeletal legs swung about with claws larger than their heads.
Alice looked for only a moment, for the gate flung open with a heavy slam, and she found herself sprinting beside Blinkem. The hill into the forest was steep and covered with leaves and debris. “What are those?” Alice yelled as she panted.
“Jubjubs. They snatch your eyes in one peck. Faster!” Alice felt her heart in her ears as she fled. The dragon’s howling call sounded in the distance. If only they could run long enough for her to find them.
Above the birds’ shrill calls came the vibrating boom of Dinah’s cry.
Alice screamed as panic stabbed her side, then she tried to yell again.
Grabbing her side as she rocketed through the woods, her cloak caught somehow beneath her foot, yanking with a sharp thrash at her neck.
She stumbled to her knees, as Blinkem still yanked forward.
A lone jubjub struck, its sharp beak narrowly missing her skull as it pierced the hood and slammed Alice forward to the ground.
Blinkem flung the bird from her. “Run! I’ll lead them away!”
“How!”
“Dinner!” Blinkem suddenly dropped and vanished into his clothes.
Then, in a flash, he bounded from them, as the small white rabbit.
Two jubjubs, shrieking at the sight of an easy catch, dove like arrows toward Blinkem, who was speeding away.
Alice ran, looking back to Blinkem who tore down a hill, bobbing in between trees and under a log as a white rabbit, then shifting again as a fully nude man skidding away from a jubjub that could have carried him off had he remained a rabbit.
Alice ran until talons struck her again, this time one piercing the suede of her cloak at her shoulder, sending her to the ground again with a horrible burning pain.
Then all around her came the noisy thuds of birds striking to the ground.
Alice flung the cloak from her head to see the jubjubs had circled her, squawking, and now they waited.
Alice rose slowly and attempted to back away, which resulted in a quick peck from one near her feet. They had trapped her.
In the distance Alice heard something that sounded like gunfire, a sparking explosion of some kind.
Then Blinkem yelled wildly. “Alice, run from here, now! Go!” The explosive sound came again, this time closer to her as sparks flew and sent chunks of bark flying from a nearby tree.
The jubjubs shrieked, and Alice, taking advantage of their temporary disorientation, ran.
Down the slope of a hill she tumbled, with jubjubs snapping after her, and another explosive spark bounced off the trees. Who was firing at her? She ran faster and then she saw it: a well.
She tore to the bottom of the slope, yanking the watch from her pouch.
She slipped on the red and yellow matted wet leaves and slammed with her chest against the well as she opened the watch face.
Blinkem had said she wouldn’t need it to travel between portals, because she was a witch and had lurlicite in her blood, but she was taking no chances, in case that wasn’t true.
The hand, the one Blinkem had shown her, was spinning so quickly it blurred like a spinning wheel.
Alice looked back to see barreling down the slope was a tall woman in black wielding a wand that she circled swiftly over her head as it sparked.
She then pointed it aggressively toward Alice.
As blinding white sparks exploded toward her like a firework, Alice turned her back, and the sparks crackled against her suede cloak.