Chapter 57
From the earth he rose, grey in complexion, his skin nearly like stone itself.
Under the black sky, his eyes flickered in silver sparks.
The sound of tumbling stones followed as his enormous muscular frame emerged with a cloak of shiny black jagged stones rolling over shards of crystal.
As he rose, the stones pulled up from the dirt, as though drawn to him by an invisible magnetic force.
He was just as his illustration in Rosemarie’s book of lore, but infinitely more menacing.
He towered above Alice with terrifying stillness.
His blinking was the only sign that he was not a statue, but in fact something else.
“Lord Roquat,” Alice said softly, standing now, unable to move. Was she paralyzed? She clenched her fists, to be sure she could—but where would she go?
“Alice.” His voice was deep and seemed to rumble from all around, as though it vibrated through the rocks.
“What do you want from me?” Alice tried desperately to find the strength to hide the fear that pounded in her chest and shook her knees, but she was too weak.
“You have something in you, of unimaginable importance.” His eyes gleamed, and he turned from her.
“But I do not wish to harm you.” Slowly, his glittering eyes looked away from her toward the sky, the crystals and onyx stones tumbling over and over, falling from his shoulders like a waterfall.
“Centuries without the sun upon my face, Alice.” His enormous hands reached up to touch his chiseled jaw and cheeks.
“But with you, I shall see the light, and all of Oz…the Oz that I built.” He turned to her, his brow heavy over sharply squinted eyes.
A violent anger brewed just beneath his stonelike surface.
“With you…” He softened and stepped forward, stones dragging, his hand now extended covered in gems and metals.
“I can return and bring Oz back to glory, where only those with the gift of powers rule, and all else will kneel and serve us. Our children far more powerful than any other in the land.”
Alice shuddered at a destiny that would require her to be Roquat’s queen, and shuddered at the company Lord Roquat would provide. “I will not go with you.”
Roquat retracted his hand and moved slowly toward her.
“You search for answers.” His pupils dilated like black holes in a universe of stars.
“I can give you what you look for. You will know more of this world, or any world, than any one being. You will be as I am, divine. No more searching for answers, Alice. Come with me.” He held out his hand to her again. Alice shook her head.
He made a large gesture toward the perimeter and the stone, as if on chains, dragged through the earth closing in on them, before stopping abruptly at the drop of his hand. “It is not a negotiation.”
“I refuse to be your queen!” Alice looked around. Could she climb the stones? The sky, why did it not move?
“If you do not come, I will drag you below the ground.” Roquat began to circle her, as Mombi had, and Alice pivoted to keep him from her back.
“And if you do not take your place beside me, I will drain you of every drop of blood, and with it the power the goddess has hidden inside you!” His voice boomed, rumbling so low that her ribs vibrated with the sound.
Suddenly, he made a sharp movement, and shards of rocks tumbled from the earthen stone pillars surrounding her, closing her perimeter to him dramatically as she rushed to escape the chunks of boulder that slammed around her.
He waved his hand, and the stones stopped falling.
He and Alice were but a few feet apart. Alice stood, cornered.
“Come with me!” he commanded. Alice balled her fists again and stood as tall as she could.
“No!” she shouted, and the sound echoed in the stone prison.
Could she command the stone? Roquat’s face contorted and his eyes burned brightly.
His arms raised to his sides, his outstretched palms facing her, then violently he shot his arms toward her, and the tumbling crystal and jade cloak slid from his back over his arms and began to slither over her legs.
She tried to move, but the slicing of the stones was unbearable as she moved against it.
“Leave me!” she shouted, not to Roquat but to the stones.
But the small hope that she could control them dwindled, as the stones wrapped her like a mummy up to her waist and continued to crawl up, stopping below her chin, tilting her face to the sky as Roquat approached.
“So be it,” he said and placed his enormous hand against her face.
With the scalloped ring like a falcon claw that adorned his finger, he sliced into her skin beneath her jaw.
Nauseated waves of heat hit her body as blood from her neck rolled down the stones, emitting silver light.
As the blood dripped, the silver light streamed to Roquat, crawling over his skin, and where it touched, the grey stone-like surface of his flesh began to pigment.
“In your blood is magic without limit,” he said through gritted teeth as her blood crawled away from her.
“The gifts I have waited to have since this place was but a garden in a land of poison.” He began to grin as the grey of his forearm dissipated to the pale pink of flesh.
This is how he will walk above the earth, Alice realized.
She raised her eyes to the black sky. The dragon circled.
She circled without a sound. That was the thing to notice, and Alice—whose mind kept its catalogue even while her blood was walking away from her—noticed.
Dinah was never silent. She squawked at weather.
She clicked at supper. She had one scream for morning and another for strangers, and a low door-hinge grumble for being looked at too long.
Even over the well, going down into the dark after the gnomes, she had bellowed the whole way.
Loud was battle. Loud was fear, and joy, and Tuesday.
Silent was the held breath before the strike. The first Dinah had taught her that, on a kitchen windowsill, years ago and worlds away. The chatter stops. The tail stops. Everything stops, and then the bird is gone.
Alice’s ribs still carried the rumble of his voice.
Her neck ran wet and warm. None of it mattered next to the signals from the empty sky: Dinah had gone quiet, and quiet had a landing place, and Roquat was standing on it.
So there was exactly one thing to do, and it was nothing.
Alice did not look up again. She gave him her eyes and kept them wide, and kept his squarely on her, and let the sky stay empty for him.
It was not bravery. It was housekeeping.
One keeps the guest looking at the parlor while the kitchen does its work.
“You will not have me,” she said.
Roquat grinned. “I already do. I dreamed of it, Alice. We walk in the sun.”
With that, silently the dragon swooped, and its dark shadow covered them. Roquat turned as a burst of blue flames engulfed him, and the stones trapping Alice fell. She lunged to the ground, darting a look back to see that Roquat stood unharmed, laughing.
The dragon circled above again. Roquat held his hand toward the beast, and as Dinah dove, Alice screamed.
Enormous rocks exploded from the prison pillars and smashed the dragon, sending her tumbling away with a bloodcurdling cry.
Roquat turned, and his rocks crawled behind him and poured over him as his hands found Alice’s throat.
Blood came faster; silver light poured. The winds will blow, Alice thought, looking to the sky. The winds will blow.
Why do the black clouds not move? she thought as black spots came to her eyes. “Oz waits for your command.” Lurline’s voice was but a whisper, but the hum in Alice’s chest returned.
Suddenly, there came a rush of wind so powerful that the howl of it sent shivers through her. Roquat shot a look up. The black clouds finally moved, rolling like the sea itself. In the distance, rays of light emerged.
They moved, and did so by her command.
“The winds will blow,” she struggled to say, and Roquat turned, looking down on her.
“What did you say?” He gripped her throat, slicing into her with the scalloped ring again.
“The winds will blow! And you…” She gargled, then shouted through the pressure of his hand.
“Will have the sun!” There was a rush of wind that came from her somehow and exploded upward, and then the skies poured light down upon them.
Roquat bellowed, releasing her as the stones that leeched her blood from her rushed to him.
Steam and smoke rising from his exposed skin, he boomed, the stones slithering over him to shield what they could from the gleaming sun.
The earth below them suddenly dropped, and the rocks caved downward.
Alice turned to climb as Roquat plunged into the falling earth. In seconds, he came scrambling up over descending rocks toward her, howling to her, his skin steaming.
Alice climbed, looking behind her. He was so close, his hand outstretched. He had her… until he didn’t.
The tips of his fingers grazed her leg, and she felt a searing burn immediately through the fabric of her skirts, and the tips of his fingers crumbled like sand. “You will be mine!” He seethed and then yanked backwards and plummeted into the massive chasm below.
Alice gasped as two strong hands clamped around her arm, yanking her upward just as the stone beneath her gave way. Blinkem pulled her from the earth that groaned, splitting open to swallow Roquat, whose raw and furious scream shattered the very rocks that fell behind him.
Rocks tumbled in an avalanche, cascading over him like the tide, sealing him beneath the earth. The ground convulsed once more, then snapped shut like a tomb.
Blinkem’s grip tightened, pulling Alice higher through the cloud of dust that came from below, until she was scrambling over the jagged pile of rubble that encircled the chasm.
Her breath came in short, panicked bursts; her limbs trembled with exhaustion.
But then—solid ground. The earth beneath her feet held firm.
With a final, desperate lurch, she tumbled down the crater’s edge, rolling onto the stable ground of Palace North.
Blinkem stumbled toward her, his white hair plastered to his face, eyes wild with relief. “Alice!” he rasped, pulling her from the mud. She clung to him, her fingers digging into his shoulders, grounding herself in his warmth. “I thought I’d lost you,” he murmured into her hair.
She pressed into him, her forehead against his chest, her whole body shaking. The rapid pounding of his heartbeat against her ear grounded her, tethering her to where she was.
She tried to answer him and found she could not.
Where the ring had opened her, twice—beneath the jaw, and lower, at the throat—the skin stood in two hot lines, and her voice, when she reached for it, came up as air.
Blinkem’s hand rose toward her cheek, and she flinched from it—hard, before she knew she would—because it was a hand, and it was rising toward her throat.
He stopped. “It’s me,” he said, very quietly, the way one speaks at a stable door.
“I know,” she mouthed back. Knowing was not the part of her that flinched. He set the hand slowly on her shoulder blade instead, where it was welcome, and she felt him take note of the new geography of her, the way he took note of everything. Later she would be grateful. Presently she only shook.
Then, warmth engulfed her—Nimmie fiercely wrapped around her waist, followed by Tinkerton, and finally Tattypoo.
And then, the dam broke. Alice sobbed—deep, gasping cries wracking her chest. Relief, exhaustion, fear, and gratitude flooded through her all at once.
She had survived. The sobs came out nearly silent, which frightened her more than anything else the day had done.
Tattypoo pressed a folded cloth beneath her jaw and held it there, saying nothing.
It came away red twice before it came away pink.
“Don’t speak,” Tattypoo said, and for once Alice obeyed her without a fight, which made Tattypoo’s face do something complicated.
They had all survived.
Survival, Alice was learning, had a body to it.
Hers shook. Her throat burned when she swallowed and burned differently when she didn’t.
Somewhere between the crater and the palace steps, she stopped being able to tell which shaking was cold and which was the other thing, and Blinkem, who had catalogued her from the first day, walked on the side the wind came from and said nothing at all about any of it.