Mad Hatters and March Hares Page 4

  She drank.

  * * *

  The second time Lily-White sees the ’Snatch, she is barely an inch tall—courtesy of the vile DRINK ME she’s just downed. She is a pale gem riding the hilt of the vorpal sword. She is utterly and literally in her sister’s hands.

  Compared to her present size, the ’Snatch is massive—as big as a borogove roosting column, as colossal as a full-grown caterpillar. But then, so too is Ruby-Red huge, the size she always seems when Lily-White closes her eyes and imagines her, and Ruby-Red has her blade and her winds and her forge-scarlet temper. Surely the ’Snatch is no match for such a girl—a Hetchdaughter no less!—however many cheshires it has stalked and murdered in the murk of Lesser Night.

  Wrong.

  For the ’Snatch has plated itself in splinted mail of a most peculiar nature. It is armed to the tooth (or, more accurately, armed in teeth) with illimitable cheshire choppers that barb the silk swathing its soft body. Varnished in vanishment.

  When it beholds Ruby-Red cycloning toward it through the relentless luster of Mount Gnomon’s innards, the ’Snatch bristles its bridgework, twinkles like a hundred thousand razor blades—and disappears.

  Lily-White tenses on the hilt of the vorpal sword, gazing left and right.

  “Where did it go?” Ruby-Red booms.

  Lily-White cannot even hear the words. Her ears are too small, the sound too vast. It is a whole-body ache, a thunderclap, bones splitting.

  She squints. Tricky, in this glassy atmosphere, to make out the telltale diamantine glister of a cheshire’s imminent reappearance …

  Ruby-Red staggers. Head turns over heels. Limbs flail. The sword flies from her hand, Lily-White with it.

  While Lily-White watches, her sister is slammed into an airborne somersault by eleven thousand pounds of armored oyster. Only an affronted buffer of angry winds prevents Ruby-Red from smashing skull-first into the unforgiving vitrine of the mountain’s inner slopes and dripping down like bug jelly.

  Ruby-Red rights herself, rushes toward the ’Snatch, who vanishes again. She has just time enough to scramble for her sword. Lily-White clings grimly to the hilt, thinking about the EAT ME in her pocket. Perhaps it is time to scrap her plan, regain her height—and then some. But it is dangerous to grow inside a mountain. One might get stuck forever: or worse, burst out of the top, destroying the centermost ornament of the Dial, and thus the Wabe entire.

  The coward ’Snatch appears again, this time from above. It drops from a red diamond stalactite, aiming to crush, to comminute, to smear.

  “Ruby-Red!” Lily-White shouts.

  Just as Lily-White can only hear her sister as a thunderstorm, Ruby-Red can only hear Lily-White as a mouse’s squeak, or perhaps the quick sting of a needle.

  It is all she needs.

  She dives out of the way, and the ’Snatch splats down. Lies there, stupefied. Mount Gnomon trembles, tickled.

  Ruby-Red strikes.

  Cheshire teeth are a powerful magic, keen and cunning, lunatic and lovely—but they are no match for the hard slice of vorpal thorns. The sword pierces tooth and silk, skewers the mucilaginous mollusk within. Right through the worm-pale, tongue-like radula. Not a mortal wound, but still.

  It is enough for Lily-White. It is an opening.

  She detaches herself from the hilt and slides down the length of the blade. The blade is firmly stuck, of course. The silk cocooning the ’Snatch’s softness clings to what it touches, binds fast. But Lily-White, a-slick in Jubjub oil, slips right through. She hops from the tear onto the injured radula. From there, into the digestive system.

  Which is just as horrible as it was this morning, except it isn’t, because she has already endured it.

  It is dark. Slimy-writhy-viscous. Oddly non-muscular. It smells of the sea.

  She takes the EAT ME from her pocket, stuffs it in her mouth. Not all. A third will do. She is mindful of Mountain Gnomon, of its importance to the Wabe. Also, Ruby-Red never likes it when Lily-White looms. Not her place, as baby sister, to lord it over her elder, wiser, braver sibling.

  But Lily-White has to eat enough—just enough, just so much and no more—to do what she intends.

  Please, let this be enough, she thinks. Chewing is difficult while being chewed.

  The EAT ME works quickly.

  Lily-White shoots up and out, everything expanding at once. She covers her head with her arms, just in case she miscalculated.

  Her calculations are true.

  The ’Snatch bursts from within.

  * * *

  In the (admittedly gooey) silence that followed the eruption, Lily-White and Ruby-Red blinked at each other. Then Ruby-Red threw back her head, clutched her sides, and howled with laughter.

  Lily-White’s ears were once again of a size to bear this happy noise, and now that the winds had settled into low-whispering Zephyrs and Kavers and Coramells, Ruby-Red’s laughter was the loudest thing inside the mountain.

  After a moment’s reflection, one corner of Lily-White’s mouth twitched.

  She started to snicker. Lily-White had always been more of a snickerer than a laugher. She was a duck-behind-her-hand, half-snort, half-hiss-like-a-punctured-balloon sort of person. Rarely did her laughter peal out, and now was not the time to let it. Best to keep her lips sealed till she had a proper wash. Even before today, Lily-White had never been fond of shellfish. Now that one had consumed her, she was fairly certain she would never acquire the taste.

  Eventually, Ruby-Red ran out of breath and doubled over, hiccupping.

  In the mountain’s new quiet, there came a soft, plaintive noise from far away and high, high up.

  “Arreow! Arreow!”

  “Oh, balls,” said Lily-White, who just wanted to go home, and knew that this would never happen until Ruby-Red rescued the beast.

  “Kitty!” Ruby-Red squeaked. Her winds picked up again, urgent and ungentle, prodding Lily-White to her feet.

  She warned, alarmed, “It may just be the wind through a chink…”

  “It’s a kitty, stupid!” Ruby-Red insisted. “I know a kitty when I hear one.”

  Despite the gunk depending from Lily-White’s every limb like viscid icicles, Ruby-Red grabbed her sister’s hand and pulled her into a close embrace. “Up we go, Egg-White! Giddy-up! Calloo-callay!”

  Uttering this jubilant ululation, Ruby-Red spurred her winds with a widdershinly kick of her right heel.

  Up they went, straight and fast (much faster than Lily-White liked), through the narrowing light. The walls slimmed, slanting inward at velocity. The source of the mewling became increasingly demanding the closer they came to it. Only when they reached the peak of Mount Gnomon did the sisters realized the noise was coming from without, and that they were still within. Lily-White managed to prevent her sister from punching a hole through the pointed ceiling and breaking right through—“You might damage the animal!” she remonstrated—and down they went again, riding the wind tunnel at a gut-plunging plummet, sweeping out through the broken heart, and up the sharp glass mountainside again, this time in the open air.

  A tiny, cheese-colored kitten awaited them placidly, balanced on the knife’s edge of the peak.

  Lily-White could not imagine how it had gotten there—and why, since it had, it did not have the sense to get itself down again. Upon closer inspection, she realized the kitten was a cheshire. Science and sense did not apply.

  “Kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty,” Ruby-Red crooned, reaching her free hand out for it. “You’re unsnatched! Oh, puss, let me take you home to Mimsy! You are quite the last of your kind!”

  The kitten glanced from one sister to the next. He saw that of the two, Lily-White was covered in the stuff of which grimalkind breakfasts are made.

  He meeped charmingly and graced them with a glittering grin into which he vanished, only to reappear on Lily-White’s left shoulder. Whereupon he began a desperate grooming and/or feasting upon of her forehead.

  Lily-White sighed. Ruby-Red was sure to
take affront. And since Ruby-Red was the only thing currently holding Lily-White aloft, she hoped something would come along pronto to distract her sister from dropping her. Again.

  It did.

  Lily-White might have guessed Mother would be three steps ahead of them. Not forthcoming, mind you. But three steps ahead, all the same.

  “Look!” Ruby-Red gasped, though Lily-White had already seen. “Mimsy’s rolled out a new Motto! What can it mean?”

  Three words glowed up from the green lawn of the southlands.

  FELES REGINAS SPECTET.

  “A cat may look at queens,” Lily-White translated. “Well, and so they can. So can we for that matter! But the Wabe doesn’t have a queen, much less two of them. What a silly Motto! What was Mimsy thinking?”

  “Arreow!”

  Thus declaiming, the Cheshire Kitten sprang off Lily-White’s shoulder, suspending himself midair by frolicsomeness alone.

  Ruby-Red crooned at his cuteness. Lily-White, who did not trust cuteness, scowled.

  The Cheshire Kitten stared insolently at both of them, his eyes as large and as golden as two saucers full of buttermilk. He seemed to make some decision, and swam through the air once more to Lily-White’s shoulder. There was, after all, a seafood breakfast awaiting him, served up for his pleasure upon her royal pate.

  CONJOINED

  Jane Yolen

  The Tweedle twins were at it again, which meant everyone on the circus train had to shut their doors and lock them tight. It would be another knockdown fight. Happened every now and then, and we had long ago learned to ignore them.

  They were easier to handle before they’d been separated. Better draw, too. Even Barnum had given up on them. And when he gives up, it’s like a piece of cloth ripped right down the middle. You can hear the tear up and down the length of the train.

  Told it to them straight. He might be a whirligig to the marks, but to the family—which was what we were to him, from Jumbo to the Tweedles—he was a real straight shooter.

  “Can’t make you headliners anymore, lads,” he said. “Conjoined, you were a goldmine. Separate, you’re just two small, fat, ugly men, with volcanic tempers. And I’m the only lava lamp on this train.”

  Mr. B never just minces words. He slices and dices them.

  They had another meltdown right in front of him then, called him all sorts of names. Some of them were verbs. All of them impossible to do, even if you’re conjoined. Especially then.

  But Barnum, he’d heard worse. Besides, it was his troupe and his dough. They were lucky they weren’t just flung from the train right there and then, bottoms first.

  Not that they would have been permanently injured. Probably would have bounced until they came to a full stop. Barnum wasn’t just kidding about them being fat. Spheroid was another word he used. I had to look it up. Took me near an hour perusing my pocket dictionary because I couldn’t figure out how to spell it. Being an ape in human clothes is tough enough. But learning to spell …

  Of course, when the Tweedles performed, they had stretchy bonds, flesh-colored, that looked like the real thing, and most marks never knew the difference. But there was something just … off. And since the rest of us freaks knew they weren’t freaks anymore, we treated them different. (Or is that differently. Grammar rules are tough if you’ve spent the first month of your life squatting in Sumatran trees.)

  Different, that is, till the cops came, called in by some snoopy neighbors in houses along the train line. Then we circled the wagons, as always. Even I knew what to do. Trust me, no cop wants to tangle with an orangutan in full threat mode, even if he is wearing a tuxedo. Or maybe especially then.

  * * *

  Once the cops left, there had been the inevitable Barnum meeting in his private car. Meeting may be too kind a term for it. It was Barnum in full-bore mode: shouting, cajoling, scolding, cursing us with his power voice—not the soft sawder he used to cozen the rubes.

  But no sooner had the train started up than the Tweedles were at it again. This time, we ignored them, as per Barnum’s advice, which was the same as an order. But as my compartment was next to theirs (we three plus The Fat Lady, Mary, needed our own spaces, given how large we were), I could hear every thump and bump as they fought their way from Toledo to Cincinnati.

  We stopped outside of the city to sleep. We’d be setting up tents in one of the parks the next day, but it was politer not to disturb the locals during the night. That was one of Barnum’s rules.

  I don’t sleep well in the compartment, anyway. Besides, the entire car in which our individual compartments sat shook with the Tweedles’ struggles. They had evidently given up shouting at one another and taken to rolling around on the floor, I assume trying to reach one another’s necks with their small hands.

  It was the perfect excuse for me to leave the train. Even after all this time with Barnum—fifteen years it is—I preferred finding a tree in which to sleep. I might have been treated as a man, but I was also an ape. “Two souls in a single breast,” the poet wrote. As conjoined as the Tweedles had ever been.

  Sniffing the air, I not only picked up the scent of trees off to the west, but apes as well. And that meant a zoo was nearby. I left my clothes on the train—you try swinging from limb to limb wearing a tux or those tight pajamas Mr. Barnum had specially made for me. My arms, like all orang arms, are considerably longer than my height when stretched out.

  Off I ambled, on foot till I could find the woods my nose had promised. And then maybe a converse with the apes.

  * * *

  The trek to the zoo was easy, mostly unlit meadow, with only a farmhouse around. There were but two major roads to cross, but with no carts or carriages out this late, I had no worries. Besides, though I am big—five feet tall and as round—I know how to hide.

  The little natures—frogs and small narrow snakes, plus the occasional rabbits—fled. A fox gave me a quick glance, then headed in a different direction. They were safe from me. I prefer fruit and insects as a meal. Besides, Barnum fed his freaks well.

  So I came at last to the zoo. It was fairly new. The date carved on the wall said 1875, which by my calculations made it close to the oldest zoo in the United States, the first being Philadelphia.

  When I retire, I think I will ask Barnum to gift me to Cincinnati. Better than a pension. Philly’s nice, too. They gave me the keys to the city the last time we were there. I wear them on a gold fob when I am in my tux.

  The woods around one side of the zoo was really only a small copse, but it would do. I hoisted myself up onto the largest branches of a native oak and let go of all the encomiums Barnum had invented for me: The Human Ape, The Great Ape That Walks and Eats Like a Gentleman, and the like.

  While I sat there, I remembered the Eden that is Sumatra, though it is boring as well. It has no books, no museums, no strolls on ocean-side promenades. It had been fifteen years since Barnum found me there, a six-month-old lying in the arms of my dead mother, who’d protected me from the worst tropical storm Sumatra had had in years.

  But of course, even in reminiscence, I was ever alert. You can put an orang into a tux but you can’t take the wild out of him. Not completely.

  Without warning, something large stirred in the tree next to mine. That was exceedingly strange. For one minute I had no sense of it, the next it existed on a branch nearly parallel to my own.

  Since one never knows when a tiger or a large snake might be hungry for ape meat, even in a city like Cincinnati, I shrank back into the cover of the leaves and watched, all senses alert.

  Though I wear a veneer of sophistication and have a human stepmother in The Fat Lady, Mary, I have not lost my tree smarts. I waited until there was another ripple in that tree before turning my head and saw—amazingly—a large grin appear above the tree limb. Just a grin, mind you, but neither head nor body. It was an unreadable smile, which made me extremely cautious and ready to either flee or fight.

  Just then, a pink tongue as long and sinuous as
a boa, swiped the grin’s lips. It was even more unnerving. I had no idea what I might be facing. In fact I had no idea if the thing had a face at all.

  I tried to reason out from the shape of the lips, the pinkness of tongue. Possibly, I thought, something in the cat family. But though the great cats certainly can blend in with tree foliage, camouflaged in plain sight, they cannot disappear. Not entirely.

  Just as I was thinking this, the smile disappeared and all sense of the cat in the tree next to mine disappeared as well.

  I went into full alert. For a moment I thought about my stepmother, The Fat Lady, Mary, her skin softer than any female I’ve ever met. Her alien smell, both floral and human. And then I banished all thoughts, for they made me an infant again, weak and vulnerable when I had to be strong and smart.

  I waited to see or to hear where the invisible cat would land next. I did not descend to the ground for I am faster in trees. But only if I can see who is chasing me and where. I needed to know the size and shape of this cat thing, and if it liked the meat of apes or men.

  Suddenly, the limb I sat on bent as if touched lightly. Then two eyes opened close to my head. Too close. The mouth opened as well. The teeth, sharp and shiny, gleamed in the darkness like a warning light.

  “Are you a man,” a voice purred, “or a mantle?”

  “I am an ape,” I answered in my thick voice. It had taken Barnum many years to get me to sound reasonably like a man.

  “What are you aping?” Again that purr of a voice. Soft as a snake through the bends of green. Or the feathers of an owl on the hunt.

  “Sometimes,” I said carefully, “I ape a man.”

  “Do you bow to kings?”

  I wondered if there was method in the cat’s madness. Or just a kind of methodical tick-tock of a predator. Was the lure set? Had I already taken it? And then—because it is better to keep the hunter engaged than engorged—I answered, “I bow only to queens.” The only queen I’d ever met.

  “Check,” the cat said.

  I knew this one. Barnum had taught me how to play. And promised to teach me how to write Shakespeare as well. “Mate!” I said.