Chapter 44
The massive trees of the Angry Grove grew side by side, and their roots bowed high up from the ground, plunging over one another like eels in a net.
From the ground, thick velvet moss crawled over the roots and spread toward the tree canopy.
It was enchanting, which seemed fitting for a land that was enchanted.
“Stay quiet as can be, and do not step on the roots,” the lion whispered. He slinked through Alice’s legs and crouched low to crawl beneath the gap of an exposed root. Alice followed, stepping over the thick root. She imagined herself navigating the seesaw at Pellum’s Academy.
“You’ll have to lift me,” the lion said. Alice stood behind the lion, who was noticeably skittish. His ears darted every which way.
“Up we go, then,” she said, scooping him into her arms. She steadied her balance and lifted her leg to climb over the next bulging root, which protruded above her knee.
“Gentle, do not touch it!” His squeaky voice became quite loud as he tensed.
Alice felt his paw clench, and his sharp, thick nails extract from their covering.
The sharp edges pierced her flesh above her waist. Alice winced, squeezing the lion tightly as she began to totter.
She dropped quickly as the lion wriggled in her arms, and she plopped with a thud, with her legs spread over the root.
“Your claws, sweet friend,” she said, clenching her jaw as she pulled the tip of a claw from her skin.
The lion was trembling intensely. “There is nothing to worry about. We have touched a root, and all is well,” Alice said, rubbing his head as she did with Dinah.
The lion’s claws dug in again, this time with much greater force.
Alice screamed, and then a horrible blow struck her back, stinging her neck and pulling her hair sharply at the back of her head.
Without realizing it, she thrust the lion forward.
He toppled to the ground, skidding against a root.
Alice whipped her head around as a branch of the tree she squatted on struck again.
The branch did not move with stiffness as a branch would.
It bent and struck like a horse’s whip. Alice was knocked from the root, and nearly landed on the lion.
She rolled as he scurried, and the root against which they were stuck bucked.
Alice managed to right herself before the root knocked her chin.
Alice became disoriented as the ground rolled under her feet, the large roots driving in and out of the ground until she was knocked off her feet.
The lion’s legs were spread wide as he tried to balance.
The terror on his face sent Alice into drastic action.
“Run, go!” Alice shouted, sweeping the scared animal into her arms. She heaved him as hard as she could over the root before them.
If he had stayed, the root would have easily come down upon his head.
The lion whimpered sharply. Alice tried to step on and over the thrashing root, and as her boot hit the bark, it pushed her up into the air.
A branch from another tree whipped at the front of her thighs.
Instinctively, she grabbed the branch as it struck, and its tremendous force pulled her over another root.
She tried to brace her hands in the shifting moss and dirt and felt the crushing force of a root on her fingers.
She screamed and yanked her hand from under it as it pushed back upward.
Where was the lion? Alice stood up shakily on the moving ground and scanned the grove floor.
The lion was curled into himself between two thrusting roots that rolled him about like a ball on a taut sheet.
Alice stepped up on a root as it thrust down, and with its upward thrust, she pushed off, landing with her knees on the root beside the lion.
She tensed as the pain in her knees burned for a moment.
She grabbed the terrified lion and put his paws over her shoulder.
She held him like a governess would burble a baby, and she took off.
Her feet struck roots or moss, all of which moved rapidly and aggressively.
She stumbled through the blows to her knees and held the lion’s head into her neck as the branches struck from all around her.
She could see the edge of the grove where trees stood still, as trees are meant to stand.
“We are almost out!” Alice assured the whimpering lion.
But almost wasn’t close enough. A branch struck her back at the same time a root hit her shins.
Alice plunged forward. As she fell and bounced against the pumping roots, she saw a large figure hurtling toward the grove.
The cub’s mother. “Your mother is here!” Alice shouted.
She held the lion tightly with one arm and used the other to brace her body as it tumbled from a root to the moss-covered dirt.
The lion squirmed under her from their fall and flipped itself so that it could stand.
A branch swept lowly over them across the roots.
The branch came back and hit the cub, pushing him face-first against a root.
The lioness’s roar tore through the forest. She was close enough that Alice could hear her paws hitting dirt.
Alice could not see her, for the arm that she used to brace herself was now caught beneath a root.
“Come!” Alice called to the cub, who was at arm’s length.
He scurried to her. The root that pinned her no longer thrusted back up.
It stayed down to keep her pinned. The tree knew she was caught.
Alice’s arm was being compressed into the dirt as it began to throb.
The cub came to Alice, and she pulled him tightly to her before thrusting him up high so that he could go over the root.
“Run to her!” Alice shouted, feeling something slide over her wrist and tighten.
The ground started to vibrate, and dirt and moss flung over the shaking ground.
As the ground shook, Alice was pulled by her bound wrist into the loose soil.
The grove was burying her, and though she tried to yank herself free, the roots that dragged her yanked back.
Her head was now pressed against the root, and her neck was bending under the tension while her body became covered with earth.
Just as she thought her neck would snap, the root thrust up, and her head dropped down.
Now under the root, she crawled wildly but had nowhere to go, and down came the root on her back, and the soil beneath her continued to shake wildly.
She closed her eyes and mouth as tightly as she could as her face was forced into the dirt.
Her ears tickled uncomfortably from soil that sifted into them, and her chest compressed firmly under the root. She couldn’t take air into her lungs.
Through dirt-packed ears, she heard the lioness roar and snarl above her.
The root shook at her back and then shot up.
The root that wrapped her wrist suddenly loosened, and Alice pushed from the dirt, trying to open her eyes to navigate moving out.
The root thrust down again, this time at her lower back.
She shook her head and blinked through the stinging itch of dirt shaking from her eyes.
The lioness was atop the root that pinned her, clawing it with terrifying snarls.
The root released again, and Alice crawled over the next root that struck her chest. She couldn’t get to her feet and tried to wipe the gritty mud that the tears in her eyes created as branches struck her head, yanking her by the hair as it caught in their leaves.
Then another force struck her. The lioness was at her back.
Alice screamed from the sudden force of the lion’s snout on her back, and the lion’s teeth dug in.
Alice cried out, then stopped as the lion’s teeth did not pierce her skin.
With clenched teeth, the lion yanked her firmly by the skirt and waistband, and Alice toppled up and over roots close to the edge of the grove.
She dragged on her backside as the lion lunged and dragged.
She covered her face as branches whipped down, and with one last forceful yank from the lion, Alice slid over the last root and fell onto her back atop solid, unmoving ground.
The sound of earth moving and branches rustling slowly quieted as Alice panted, looking up into the moonlit leaves above her.
The cub scurried to her and licked dirt from her face with a long, rough tongue.
The cub ran abruptly as the lioness roared at Alice, rattling her eardrums. She covered her head, expecting the lioness to pounce.
The lioness bounded past her to the cub as he cowered.
Then the lioness began purring so loudly that Alice could feel it in the soil.
She looked up to see the cub squeaking and meowing as his mother licked his fur.
He was so much like a kitten that Alice almost laughed, though she was still too terrified to, at the moment.
“I will be on my way now,” Alice said as she stood.
“You have saved my child, witch,” the lioness purred.
“Oh, I am no…” Alice began, but if Rosemarie, Evoldo, Blinkem, Gayelette and now the lioness seemed certain of the fact, there no longer seemed a need to argue. “It was my pleasure.”
The lioness abruptly stood, and Alice stumbled back slightly at the animal’s height. The lioness then reared and pulled the cub to stand, sniffing the air for something that approached.
From a part in moss-covered trees stepped an animal as large as a horse with shiny, black iridescent fur that shimmered in the growing moonlight as it approached.
The animal’s eyes were glowing, emerald, and radiant, as if lit from within.
Between the beast’s eyes was a tremendously long horn that could have been made of opal, if not attached to the creature.
Unlike the lioness, or the unicorn she once dreamed of, it did not speak.
It stepped slowly toward Alice, with eyes that appeared to be filled with stars.
As it came closer, Alice felt her heart.
She knew not why or how, but she could feel the tremendous weight of it beating in her chest. She felt sadness fill her, a sadness she had never known before.
She felt as though something, everything, was lost. Alice reached her hand out without thinking, and the unicorn lowered its head, and its opal-spindled horn pointed directly to her.
“Touch her horn,” the lioness said lowly behind her.
Alice felt entranced, as the words of the lion felt miles away and inside her head all at once.
Alice’s fingers pressed against the tip of the horn.
Heat poured through her hand, moving down her arm until it radiated through her, her skin shining as if the blood in her veins was illuminated, and the horn of the beast burned hotter until its blinding white light forced her eyes to shut.
The light dimmed beyond her shut lids, and she felt as though the ground was pulled from below her.
Her stomach dropped, and when she opened her eyes, she saw the orange flicker of candlelight and the reflection of water streaming over a ceiling made of rock.
Her body did not move as she willed it to move, but remained still, floating atop the water.
Around her she could see the water’s surface was covered with orange blossoms that delicately moved around her.
She wished to call out, but could not. A voice echoed in the chamber of the cave.
Quietly at first, as though in the distance, and then quickly and loudly it screamed.
“She is dead! My baby is dead.” It was Wendy’s voice!
The water began to churn and thrash around Alice, and a heavy pressure rotated her head.
There beside her, Wendy lay as Alice did, floating upon her back.
In the arms of women in flowing robes of sunflower yellow, she screamed.
Alice tried desperately to call out her name, but Wendy could not see or hear Alice.
As water lapped against Alice’s face, she remained still as Wendy continued to cry in anguish, the anguish only a woman in childbirth cries.
Tears fell from her eyes and mixed with bloody water, and then, miraculously, Wendy jolted, and the women rotated to her, and her hand brushed Alice’s.
“One more push, Wendy,” a beautiful dark-haired woman with bronze skin urged from her position.
“Wendy,” Alice’s voice finally came to her, softly, and, for a moment, Wendy turned her head in the water. She smiled through tears, not at Alice, but at the sound of the baby, its desperate cry filling the cave as the woman who delivered it held it high above.
“She is here, Wendy!”
Wendy lay still smiling, listening to the child’s cry. Alice knew Wendy couldn’t see her, for somehow Alice was seeing the past, but for a moment it felt as though Wendy lingered just a moment looking at Alice. “Thank you, Tiger Lilly,” Wendy said, “for saving her…”
“Your Majesty,” one of the maidens bracing Wendy said to the woman, Tiger Lilly, who had delivered the child. “The goddess…Lurline…she has come.”
With that, Alice saw light swirl beneath the surface, first one form then another, until four illuminated fish circled Wendy, and then made the same illuminated path around Alice.
The goddess, a woman with umber skin and radiant glittering green eyes, draped in deep green silks, waded through the pool toward the child held by the woman who had delivered it.
The goddess gently took Wendy’s daughter into her arms. “Hello, little one of wonder,” the goddess said, then began whispering words Alice could not hear, as silver light flowed from the goddess and wrapped the child before vanishing into the child’s skin.
Then she kissed her upon the forehead. “For protection, so that she may protect.” She then placed the baby, who no longer cried, on Wendy’s chest, and said, “Such bright light in your child.”
Alice wished desperately to reach out and touch Wendy, but, like the baby in Wendy’s arms, Alice was helpless. Her eyelids felt as though they were pressed upon by someone’s touch as she struggled for one more glimpse of Wendy and her child, and Wendy began to quietly sing.
“Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.” Her words trailed into the distance, and Alice felt a hand upon her cheek. Alice’s eyes began to shut, but not before she saw the glittering green eyes of the goddess gazing down upon her, as the goddess Lurline stroked her cheek.
Alice began to stir; in drifting consciousness, she tried to open her eyes as a dense mist wrapped itself around her. “She is coming, Alice,” voices whispered.