“You underestimate me,” she said, and lunged for her gear.
Her legs gave way as if they’d been shorn of all muscle. Her arms were useless and she was unable to steady her vision, as if her eyes were swirling in their sockets independently of each other. She fell to the floor. Far, far away she felt someone pick her up and set her back down. Her head began to settle and she found herself on the mattress.
“It seems, Molly, it is you who underestimates me,” Arch said. “I should’ve perhaps told you the item
you’re wearing is a drug-delivery system. When you make any sudden move, it will secrete through your skin a certain something that…Well, I hope you’ll never succumb to the illusory charms of artificial
crystal, but let’s just say that this certain something produces an effect similar to a night of overindulgence with such unhealthy ingestives.”
“What do you want with me?” she asked.
“You had an unpleasant tumble.” He nodded toward the unfamiliar creatures. “My Ganmede friends and
I are nursing you back to health, that’s all.” “By drugging me?”
Molly tried to intimidate him with her most vicious glare, but not getting much of a response, she fell to pulling at her collar and the cuffs at her wrists.
“You might as well try to remove your own skin,” Arch said. “Please understand, Molly. I have no intention of harming you. The Lady of Diamonds has caused you enough inconvenience, I think. Your flattering outfit is simply a precaution in case you overreact at finding yourself here. I hope that soon you’ll choose to stay here as my personal guest.”
Molly rose to her feet-slowly, steadily. “I have a duty to my queen, who will be missing me. I would like to go home now.”
“I wouldn’t be so hasty. The queen you left might not be the one you return to.”
He was trying to trick her into something. She would be smart. She would keep her mouth shut, learn as much as possible, and report back to Alyss.
“I want you to know that I find it appalling how the Lady of Diamonds attempted to deceive you,” the king said. “You’re to be commended for protecting the queen from opening the Lady of Diamonds’
‘gift,’ however much your doing so has jeopardized the queendom itself.” Seeing Molly’s questioning expression, he explained: “Yes, it seems your little adventure in the Crystal Continuum has limited the mobility of Queen Alyss’ army, a circumstance the Diamond clan has taken advantage of to try and gain the crown.”
Molly didn’t believe him, refused to believe him. Besides, the Lady of Diamonds could never defeat
Alyss Heart.
Arch rose from his chair and paced about the tent. “The Diamonds came to me for support, but as you can see, my loyalty lies with Queen Alyss rather than with a scheming lady of rank in her queendom.” He was at the table, picking over her wrist-blades and coat and backpack as if they were a merchant’s untidy wares. “I should never have been so dismissive of you when we first met at Heart Palace. I should have realized that you possessed formidable skills, since it’s not anyone who can take Hatter Madigan’s place.”
Molly said nothing.
“Your parents must be extremely proud of you.” He turned abruptly to face her. “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot that you don’t have parents.”
King or not, he was lucky she didn’t have access to her homburg.
Arch sat back down in his chair and, with practiced nonchalance, asked, “Do you know much about the people who brought you into this world?”
“I know enough.”
“Really? Is that why you don’t seem very curious about them?” “There’s nothing to be curious about,” she said.
“Nothing to be…? But don’t you want to know why they gave you up?” “They didn’t give me up!”
She flung herself at him, but her legs refused to obey her, her arms belonged to somebody else, and her head filled with kaleidoscopic jelly. When her wits were again hers, she was back on the mattress.
“I apologize,” Arch said. “I should have taken into account how the trials of life can break a family apart for reasons that have nothing to do with ill will or a lack of love in any of its members. With Redd in control of Wonderland as she was, the actions of your parents might have only appeared uncaring, when in fact they were just the opposite-necessary to your survival.”
“Uh-huh,” Molly said, hating him.
“Do you, by chance, remember how old you were when you last saw your mother?”
She wasn’t going to answer. She would tell this man nothing, especially not that she’d been just three lunar years old when Weaver left the Alyssian camp in the Everlasting Forest and that, if not for the holographic crystal of her mother posing in front of the Unnatural History Museum shortly before Redd’s coup, she wouldn’t even know what the woman looked like.
“Her name was Weaver, wasn’t it?”
Molly was startled. “How’d you know that?”
He waved off the question. “I’ve hardly begun to astound you, Molly. Not only do I know your mother’s name, I know who your father is. And what’s more, so do you. You’ve already met him.”
Molly was so taken aback by all of this that she didn’t hear Arch call for his bodyguards. Shadows fell over her as Ripkins and Blister entered the tent.
“Molly wants to know her father’s name,” Arch said to them. “Why don’t we give her a hint?” “His first name rhymes with ‘splatter,’” said Ripkins.
“And ‘matter,’” put in Blister. “Also ‘fatter,’” said Ripkins. “Likewise ‘chatter,’” added Blister. “And his surname?” Arch asked.
“It rhymes with ‘that again,’” said Ripkins. “And ‘Flanagan,’” put in Blister.
“Also, um…‘pad a fin’?” offered Ripkins. “Or ‘pan a tin’?” Arch and Blister looked at him.
“‘Pannikin’!” he said proudly.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Molly screamed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Perhaps not,” Arch said. “But I can think of at least one person whose knowledge you’ll trust.” He got to his feet as a strange aroma wafted into the tent. “Here she comes now with a plate of DoDo dumplings, one of my favorite Boarderland delicacies, to help you regain your strength.”
Ready to deny all, to denounce Boarderland as a nation of liars, Molly turned and saw the last person in the world she had ever expected to see alive.
“M-Mom?”
CHAPTER 18
R EDD FOUND her usual bitterness amplified by her passage through the Heart Crystal. The roses of her dress gnawed the air, their petal-mouths mutely opening and closing in echo of her black melancholy as she stalked the predawn streets of this alien city and lashed herself with gloomy thoughts.
“If anyone tells you it’s painless to be turned into pure NRG and formed again from the muck of some
Earth person’s imagination,” Redd hissed, “don’t believe them.”
“I won’t, Your Imperial Viciousness.” The Cat glanced side-long at his mistress, licked a paw and rubbed it over his eyes.
“If I’m not powerful enough to defeat Alyss…” Redd murmured, and dropped into a depressed silence. The otherworldly pair walked the length and breadth of Montmartre, not knowing what else to do. Few
people were out and about, and none had passed within twenty yards of them when Redd stopped as if
slapped.
“I am more powerful than that disgustingly well-intentioned niece of mine!”
But what if her journey through the crystal had weakened her power, diluted it to a laughable remnant of what it used to be? What if what if what if. She would test it, flex the muscle of her imagination, and it would tell her all. She reached a hand out to nothing. A stick as long as one of The Cat’s claws formed in her palm, extended lengthwise until it resembled the twisty, knobby thing she’d used as a scepter in Wonderland.