第1章 THE BOY IN THE WEB

To the fans of the Splintered Series:

Your love for my stories inspired me to revisit the rabbit hole … to reimagine the end as the beginning. This book is for you, with a promise of more to come one day. Thank you for opening your hearts to my characters and worlds.

1

LUNGE & PARRY

"If we're going to survive this, Alison, you have to go for the jugular. No. Mercy."

Thomas's deep, commanding voice warms my ear as he helps me stand up, then molds my fingers around the sword's metal handle that had slipped from my gloved hand. A mixture of his sweat and the citrusy scent of his bath soap lingers in the air, muted by the perfume of flowers and greenery surrounding us.

I rub my hip where it still throbs from my fall, then resume my stance and stare across the bloodstained grass at our opponents: mine, with the beautiful, otherworldly glow to her skin … Thomas's, with his muscled build and fearless green eyes. Their silver swords flash beneath the autumn sun and reflect light off of faces that give nothing away, until, in a sweep as slow as a storm cloud, curiosity crosses their features as they try to predict our strategy.

My heart pounds out a steady pulse of anticipation. I wipe some sweat from my brow. They're younger, faster—but Thomas and I have wisdom on our side, and an incomparable connection. We've been a team for twenty-two years. These amateurs have nothing on us.

Ignoring how hot and itchy my skin is beneath the layers of clothes, I coax my body to relax, yet hold position, sword raised and ready, before snapping my mask over my face.

My husband often offers cues, gestures that only I can decipher: a nod of the head for a parry, a squint of the eyes for a block. But I don't need his instructions this time. I know my opponent. I've watched her long enough to learn her strengths and weaknesses. She'll lunge at my left, and I'll defend with a parry of six. Unless this time she decides to mix it up.

As if thinking she's figured me out, she glares with piercing blue eyes and then smiles, overly confident, before dropping her mask into place. Her stance tightens and mine does the same, inviting her to make the first move.

With stealth and grace, she shifts her feet and thrusts, attacking on my right in a surprise tactic. I strike her blade with a beat to compromise her rhythm. She totters off balance and overcompensates, executing a messy parry. Her hasty reaction creates an opening at her chest.

Growling, I aim my sword's tip at her heart, feeling the burst as I puncture her white jacket. She drops her blade and grips her sternum. Her eyes grow round behind her mask. Blood spurts across the grass and spatters my white tennis shoes.

"Mom?" she mutters in shock, then folds to the ground.

I snap up my mask, shuck my gloves, and drop to my knees beside her, poking her ribs relentlessly. "Say it!" I shout. "Say I'm the queen!"

Jebediah and Thomas laugh from the sidelines as Alyssa giggles hysterically, rocking on her back like a turtle turned over on its shell, trying to catch her breath and escape my tickle torture. Her mask pops off in her efforts, revealing flushed cheeks.

"Say it!" I insist again.

"Never!" she screeches and captures my hands, wrestling me to the ground beside her.

Soon my own ribs ache from her relentless fingers and we're hugging and laughing so much tears stream from our eyes.

"All right." Thomas regains enough composure to call a cease-fire. "The elders won, fair and square."

"Foiled again," Alyssa quips, referencing our flexible practice swords. Her pun coaxes a deep chuckle out of Jebediah as he reaches down for her blood-smeared hand.

Thomas helps me up and I pat the wet, red streaks on my fencing jacket and pants, the stickiness clumping between my fingers.

My husband offers towels for us to clean the mess. I use mine to blot my face and brow.

"I still think the Halloween blood packets were overkill," Jenara says from her place on the porch swing where she and Corbin are waiting to challenge the winning team. They're sipping lemonade the same shade of pink as her hair. She wrinkles her nose. "That's a pretty gruesome scene."

"You're kidding, right?" Alyssa says with an eager grin, appraising the thousands of red splotches across our clothes and the lilies, honeysuckle, and silver licorice plants in the garden. "It's beautiful. Like any window dressing, it just needs to be shaped into something new."

The long, blond braid down her back swishes and sways as if coming alive. She uses her magic to lift the shiny droplets from the plants and flowers, then reanimates the spatters on our clothes to join them. The fake blood floats into the air in bead-size balls and hovers in place, melding together like raindrops on a windowpane until they've formed a virtual latticework—a shimmery red archway that looks like stained, spun glass. Alyssa grabs Jebediah's hand and pulls him to her. He grins, taking the lead as they dance beneath her makeshift gazebo. Their movements are graceful and synchronized, their bodies never once disrupting Alyssa's display.

Thomas tilts his head in a scolding gesture, although the pride in his expression would be impossible to miss. If not for the nine-foottall wooden fence he recently installed to protect us from prying eyes, he probably wouldn't be taking Alyssa's showmanship so lightly.

Then again, she's always had him wrapped around her finger.

Our daughter glances at him, beaming, more at peace and more comfortable in her own skin than I've ever seen her in all of her seventeen years.

As a result of her magical training with Morpheus in her dreams, she's becoming flawless in her execution—able to unleash her powers with just a thought. It's moments like this when I see it: the netherling queen simmering below the surface. A predisposition toward blood and chaos. How she thrives in flames and ravaging storms. How her magic can both inspire and tame pandemonium. How she finds beauty in the morbid and bizarre.

It's ironic. I tried for so long to hone those same qualities in myself, but my humanity was too strong to be swayed. I was never meant to be queen. I had the desire, but I didn't have the heart.

The dance ends, and with a flick of Alyssa's wrist, the droplets of blood fall in slow motion—like a macabre flutter of crimson snow—and nestle again on our clothes, the leaves, and the petals where they originated.

Jenara slurps down the rest of her lemonade, the ice in her cup rattling. "That's going to be one big mess to clean."

Alyssa shrugs and laughs. "Nothing that a bottle of bleach and a garden hose won't fix."

"Nope. I won't be using bleach on this masterpiece." Jenara holds out her arms to showcase the hot-pink fencing jacket covering her petite frame. She dyed it a few weeks ago and added delicate lace trim to the sleeves and neckline. Setting her cup of ice on the ground next to Corbin's foot, she slides off the swing. "If we're going to insist on blood and gore, I'm changing into my black one."

Corbin grabs her around the waist and pulls her back into his lap. "Aw, come on, punk princess. We'll take down the oldsters before you can even break a nail. Jeb and Al, they just don't have the right moves."

Jenara smirks. "Good point."

"Oh, ha!" In one smooth motion, Alyssa taps her toe against her fallen sword so it rises perpendicular from the ground and slaps the handle into her waiting palm. "Come over here and say that to my face, Cor-bin-ara."

I exchange glances with my husband and laugh.

"Nice maneuver, skater girl." Jebediah grins, brandishing his foil. "Want to spar under the willow tree?" He lifts a brow.

"You won't last two seconds." She flashes a smile, her engagement ring sparkling in the light as she tosses her sword from one hand to the other in a single, smooth stroke.

"Oh, yeah?" he scoffs, then, without warning, scoops her up and tosses her over his shoulder. Her sword hits the ground with a clang and she giggles as he carries her to the tree and tumbles them both into the low-hanging leaves.

She could easily use her powers and break free. But that's the point. She doesn't want to break free of him. She never has. He's her human match, in every way.

She and I have discussed what her immortality means … how hard it's going to be when he's gone and she remains. She's assured me she can survive—even though her eyes grow distant when she imagines it, and her face clouds with torment at the thought. But I believe her devotion to Wonderland and Morpheus is strong enough to help her overcome that loss. And I know that when the day comes, her forever will be dazzling. Morpheus will cherish her. He'll treat her like royalty. He would even if she weren't a queen because he admires her bravery.

She's a warrior, and I'm the coward. My fear of losing Thomas overpowers any loyalty I once had for the nether-realm. I can't live without him for an eternity. For this reason, among many others, I'm glad my spirit doesn't harbor crown magic and I'm mortal still. Even if I outlive my husband, it won't be by very long. And I'm secure in that inevitability.

Watching Jeb and Alyssa wrestling and laughing prompts a smile of my own. They're so like Thomas and myself at that age—filled with hope. The difference is, they have a real chance at getting everything they've dreamed of, because there are no lies between them. Wonderland is an open book they've both read and lived. They've even brought Jenara and Corbin into the circle of trust.

Thomas and I didn't have the truth to bridge us, until recently. And I have my daughter to thank for giving us this second chance, and for giving me back my sanity. I close my eyes, listening. All I hear is the gurgling water in our fountain, and Jebediah and Alyssa's horseplay. No bugs chatting. No flowers whispering.

At my request, three months ago when Thomas, Alyssa, her fiancé, and I returned from our final sojourn to Wonderland, Alyssa used her royal powers to put a stop to the endless nattering in my ears, and she's made sure that her descendants will hear only silence. She alone has a direct line to the insects and plants now. Just as she's the only one who still makes regular visits to the nether-realm in her dreams.

Although I still have my wing buds and eye markings, my netherling attributes will make an appearance only if I allow it. So for the first time since I was sixteen, I feel normal. And for the first time since I was twelve, I remember silence.

I thought I might miss the tiny whispering voices that carried me through my adolescence, that became my confidants when no one else would listen, but I don't need them as a crutch anymore. I have a family now, and a husband who knows and shares my Wonderland history.

I'll never be alone again.

My eyes open as I feel Thomas's strong fingers weave through mine as if he's reading my thoughts. Nothing anchors me like the feel of his hand in mine.

"You kids have fun," he says. "We're calling it a day." He turns his coffee-rich brown eyes on me and kisses my knuckles, prompting a thrill that races all the way from my arm to my heart. "I promised my blushing bride I'd take her out for our twentieth anniversary. We'll pick up again tomorrow." He squints toward Corbin and Jenara. "Unless you two are ready to forfeit now. We all know how this is going to end. Age and wisdom always trump youth and recklessness." His teasing Elvis sneer is met with guffaws and huffs by the younger set.

"As if, Mr. G." Jenara snorts. "Tomorrow … same time, same place. I'll be the one in the black fencing gear. And remember: The loser has to wear a short, frilly dress in public. Prepare for the makeover of your life."

While Thomas showers, I study myself in the mirror over the bathroom sink. A mundane task to most people, but one I had avoided since the day I first met my husband.

At last, after all these years, I don't have to hide from mirrors anymore. I no longer have to worry about seeing Morpheus's judgmental frown behind me in my reflection.

My dress is simple and elegant: ivory lace with a low V-back and cap sleeves. A strip of contrasting lace—the color of a cappuccino—slims my waist and complements the sun-kissed glow of my freshly scrubbed skin. The bodice hugs my breasts and the skirt my hips—the hem swishing at midcalf. Alyssa and Jenara helped me pick it out at the thrift store, swearing it was sexy enough to make Thomas's eyes bug out. I'm eager to test that theory.

We were apart, needlessly, for too long. Maybe that's why he makes me feel like a young girl in love, because each moment spent together is like learning everything—his sweet words, his kisses, his laughter, and his goodness—anew.

With a sweep of rouge at my cheeks and a blot of burgundy on my lips, I'm ready. Energy and vitality pulse through me and trigger little sparks of magic beneath my skin. My shoulder-length platinum hair twines seductively around my face, so I begin the task of pinning it up in ringlets at the base of my neck with glittery, jeweled clips to imprison it.

A woman about to go on a date with her husband of twenty years … this is what I see. But there was a time when it wasn't just me looking back, when any reflective surface would conjure the doorway to a mad and chaotic Wonderland that I once craved to rule. I saved the boy in the web from that world, then did my best to turn my back on it by breaking every mirror in sight.

It was wrong to abandon it all without an explanation. I can see that now.

I reneged on my responsibility, on a deal with the devil himself. So Morpheus found another way to make me pay by crashing into my daughter's dreams—using me as an unwitting conduit. He spent time with her every night for the first five years of her life, making himself young—to the point he became a child in both form and mind—so he could be her playmate and win her trust and affection. When I found out, I tried to counter his mental attack with a physical parry, to protect her by doing the only thing I could: leave.

I blink, and for an instant, my lacy dress in the mirror transforms into the straitjacket that became my weapon of choice.

How could I have thought there wouldn't be consequences for hiding away in the asylum? I had hoped he'd find another sparring partner … another Liddell to exploit, one who would save his spirit from his curse of spending eternity trapped in Sister Two's lair. To escape his fate, he had to fulfill Red's Deathspeak by crowning a queen of her lineage with the ruby tiara while Red possessed her body. I mistakenly assumed, when I failed him, he would move on and find another victim in a distant relative, out of respect for my choice.

But there was a chink in my armor, and my adversary broke through. I should've seen it coming. For as long as I've known Morpheus, he has never moved on. Not when his goal is in sight. He's the most brilliant and patient strategist I've ever encountered.

The steam from Thomas's shower blurs my reflection, and behind the fog I see myself as I was when I first discovered Morpheus's plans for Alyssa: that naive young mother, terrified for her toddler's future. Guilt-stricken for putting her child in danger in the first place. My little girl was never meant to be my substitute, but through my betrayal, that's exactly what she became.

I chose not to tell Alyssa about my choices, about the repercussions, because I thought I had managed to spare her. But all that time in the asylum away from my husband and child didn't matter. Neither did the vow Morpheus made not to contact Alyssa again. Because he'd already planted memories of their moments together in her mind, counting on her inherited Liddell curiosity to lure her into seeking him out. At the age of sixteen, she found the rabbit hole on her own, just as he planned.

My hand jerks involuntarily at the memory, and I pull a strand of hair too tight. It pinches my scalp, causing me to wince. Repositioning the curl, I pin it in place.

Morpheus tricked my daughter into winning the crown I once craved and had come to despise. He saved himself in the process. It was a responsibility Alyssa hadn't asked for, although she came to accept and even embrace it. But still … he'd lured her into becoming queen without offering her all the facts.

The one thing that gives me satisfaction is that he didn't go unscathed. He paid a price. One he never anticipated.

While "growing up" with Alyssa in her childhood dreams, while watching her meet every challenge he laid at her feet as a young woman in Wonderland, Morpheus—the solitary and selfish fae once incapable of love—fell head over heels for her. I wouldn't have believed it, had I not seen it myself. He proved the depth of his devotion when he gave up his chance to have her at his side in the nether-realm. When he opted instead to wait, so the human half of her heart could heal until she'd be strong enough to reign over the Red kingdom eternally.

Because of this sacrifice, I'm starting to suspect that maybe he's not the devil after all. That maybe, after all these years, I'm seeing a side to him bordering on vulnerable and caring. A side he kept locked away from me, other than a glimpse or two I might've forgotten over the years.

Still, I'm not ready to forgive him for using my daughter quite yet. Because to do that, I'd have to forgive myself for making her responsible for my messes to begin with. And as much as Thomas wants me to … I'm not sure I can.

Alyssa's life will always be split down the middle because of me. She's taken it in stride. No one could see her with her netherling subjects and deny that she was meant to be their queen. She loves the very world that I came to hate.

And because I love my daughter, somehow I have to learn to embrace that world again. Otherwise, I can never move past letting Morpheus and all of Wonderland's lunacy into our lives in the first place.

My filmy reflection reels me back into the here and now. I spritz my favorite perfume across my collarbone and wrists—swimming in notes of passion fruit and blood orange—then blot my nose with powder, stepping out of the bathroom before the steam from Thomas's shower can smear my makeup.

I slip pearl earrings and a matching necklace and bracelet into place, then sit on the bed's edge and wiggle my toes, concentrating on our closed bedroom door. The sounds of cabinet doors and clanging pans drift in from the other side. The kids are in the kitchen, putting something together for dinner. I debate helping them while I wait for Thomas, but I'm not ready to force my feet into the pair of pewter heels on the floor next to me. The carpet feels too nice … plush and luxurious. Instead, I lie back on the fluffy comforter, spread out my arms, and close my eyes, relaxing muscles that still ache from our bout of fencing earlier.

Attuned to the rhythmic patter of water against the shower door, I allow myself to fall back into another day and hour, when I was thirteen, staring out at a rain-drenched world. When I embraced the nether-call during one of the bleakest and loneliest times of my life.

It was the day Morpheus came to me and offered power and vengeance in the palm of his manipulative hand. The day that would change who I was going to be, forever.

2

BOXED IN

Twenty-six years earlier …

Rain pounded the empty refrigerator box atop my head. I had turned it on its side and climbed in just minutes before the storm hit. The Dumpster beside me reeked of dead fish and decaying fruit, overpowering the fresh scents of wet asphalt and dirt. Puddles filled the uneven gravel street and water gushed out of the gutters that hung from the back of my eight-story apartment building on the other side of the alley.

A damp gust of wind blustered through my makeshift shelter. I hunkered down against the box's back, tucking my canvas tote bag behind my neck like a pillow and holding the pages of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland so I wouldn't lose my place. A few weeks before, I'd crossed out "Alice's" in the title and replaced it with "Alison's." It was partly to make sure everyone knew the book belonged to me. But there was more … a part of me wished I could live those same adventures … that I could somehow be Alice and escape into a rabbit hole where a new world awaited—one where maybe someone as peculiar and mismatched as me might find a fit. A place to belong.

I'd never been good at understanding other people. Mostly because I moved around so much. At least that's what I told myself. It had nothing to do with how hard it was to trust people, or my inability to relate to them on a daily basis.

Reading offered me friends enough, and my Lewis Carroll books were my favorite, being one of the few things my mother had left behind when she died right after giving birth to me. The stories made me feel closer to her, even though I never knew her. Maybe because I secretly understood how real the Wonderland tales were to her heart, considering our distant relation to the London Liddells.

Once, when I was staying at an orphanage while waiting for a new foster family, I broke into the office and read my records. It was the only way I could find out about my background. Alice Liddell, the real-life girl who inspired Carroll's fictional tales, had a son who was involved with a woman before he went off to war and died on the battlefield. His lover ended up pregnant and came to America to raise their illegitimate child. That boy grew up and had a daughter: my mother, Alicia.

Somehow, all of this made my mom go crazy. My records stated she spent time in an asylum as a teenager after painting Wonderland characters on every wall of her home and insisting they talked to her in dreams. The day I was born, she jumped out of her second-story hospital room window to test the "fairy wings" the voices told her she had. She landed in a rosebush and broke her neck.

The doctor claimed she committed suicide—postpartum depression and grief over losing my dad months earlier in a factory accident. Whatever it was, one thing was never explained … the dime-size welts on her shoulder blades, too big and perfectly spaced to have been caused by getting pricked by thorns.

My opinion? She did have wings. Ones that never sprouted. If it made me crazy like her to think that, I could live with it. Because if I was off my rocker, it meant we had a bond. Something in common. As long as no one else ever knew.

My mother had also left behind a Polaroid camera—the kind that spits out completed pictures at the push of a button. I'd known how to use it since the age of five.

I snuggled deeper into the nest of photographs I'd dumped from my tote. It was something I'd become good at: hiding behind trees on playgrounds or parked cars at the mall to capture stolen moments of other people's families and friends. I liked to surround myself with them—to cushion me from the absence of my own.

I lifted my denim jacket's cuff to scan my watch. Only ten more minutes and school would be out. Then I could go to my apartment and pretend I'd been where I was supposed to be all day. I'd shown up at the beginning of my last class, long enough to be counted present, before "taking a trip to the bathroom" and never returning. With any luck, Mrs. Bunsby, my latest foster caregiver, would never know I'd skipped. I'd only been living with her for a month. I didn't want to upset her and get thrown away again. Other than her being a forty-something-year-old vegetarian widow, she was the best keeper I'd had since I could remember.

I peered up at the sixth floor of the building. Our apartment was the farthest on the left, where the fire escape had rusted through and left a jagged black skeleton hanging askew and useless. I was aces at climbing, and had tried a few weeks ago to descend the railing and sneak out at night for a session with my camera. I had slipped and fallen.

Six stories was a long drop. I should've died, or at least broken multiple bones. But I lapsed into a dream state on the way down and somehow, when I woke up, didn't have a bruise on me anywhere. I didn't even ache. All I had was a strange memory of giant, flapping black wings.

Sorting through my pictures, I found one at the bottom of the pile: a sparrow-size moth with a blue body and black wings, splayed on a flower between a slant of sun and shade. I remember the day I saw it in the park, as if it was sitting between two worlds. I took the shot not only for the symbolism, but because I'd seen the bug before. My mother had sketched one that looked just like it on a slip of paper that she kept in her Alice books. The strangest thing was she'd also made a rough sketch of Alice from the Wonderland illustrations right next to it. Somehow—in her mind—they were connected. I'd lost the drawing during one of my many moves. So when I saw that identical moth, live and in person, I had to immortalize it with my camera.

Sighing, I tucked the picture into my Alice book to hold my spot. That shot was Mrs. Bunsby's favorite. She said I had a gift, that if I kept improving, she would give me her late husband's camera—a Yashica 44—along with his books on developing your own film.

She was one of the few adults who'd ever believed in me without being judgmental. But if Mrs. Bunsby knew that I thought this very moth had played a role in my mother's Wonderland fantasies, she would think my imagination was too vivid, like my teachers and caregivers always said. I'd done research at the library. Moths have a life span of months, certainly not decades.

Thinking about it even kind of gave me the creeps. But it also made me feel special, like my mom and I mattered to someone somewhere—enough to warrant watching. It wasn't the first time I'd felt like bugs and plants were reaching out to me in a way they didn't to other people. I'd been hearing their voices ever since I hit puberty close to my twelfth birthday a year ago. Still, I knew better than to share that tidbit with anyone for risk of ending up in a psych ward like my mom.

My stomach growled. I shoved a fist beneath my ribs. Mrs. Bunsby would be serving pickled beet and tofu casserole tonight. Just the thought made my taste buds want to run for cover. I had to stretch out my snack as long as possible. The package of peanut butter crackers I'd saved from lunch lay open next to me. I slid one out and munched on it. Crumbs gathered on the illustration of Alice fleeing from some card guards in hopes of keeping her head, and I shook the cracker remnants off so they fell on my thigh.

A roach skittered out from under one of the box's flaps and climbed onto my pants to gobble up the residue without so much as a please or thank-you. In my opinion, they were the rudest of all the insects. I'd had conversations with houseflies and mealworm beetles that were civil and interesting. But roaches never had much to say, other than to grumble about the lack of trash piles and dirt now that humans populated their world, claiming garbage bags and vacuum cleaners were the bane of their existence.

I waved my hand, shooing the bug away. It skittered back into the folds of the box and scolded my bad manners.

"I'm trying to help you, moron. You want to get squished?" I gathered up my canvas tote, shoving my pictures and books inside, then bounded into the storm, making a run for the skinny space between my apartment building and the run-down barbershop next door.

The only way in was from the front. Our landlord, Wally Harcus, kept the back door to the building locked for "safety reasons." Or so he claimed. He just wanted to gawk at all the single moms and young girls who lived in his low-rent building. His door was the first one down the hall from the entrance, meaning he had the ideal situation from any perv's perspective.

Shards of rain, laced with ice, pelted me. The denim of my jacket and jeans absorbed every droplet, and I felt ten pounds heavier and twenty degrees colder by the time I pushed inside the building.

My hands were too wet to hold on to the knob, and the door slammed shut. I cringed at the sound.

I'd barely skirted by Wally's room when his door flung open. I backed slowly down the hall toward the stairway, keeping him in my sights.

His sweaty face appeared first, then the rest of him, rolls of flab barely contained within a tight blue T-shirt and grease-stained khaki pants. I could smell his distinctive odor even with my eyes—the scent of rotting cabbage and meat. Pools of perspiration formed uneven circles beneath his armpits, darkening the blue to navy.

He'd always reminded me of a walrus—bald head, deep folds of skin over his brow, double chin, and a handlebar mustache that looked like a half-chewed kielbasa dangling over his sausage-fat lips. The wheezes and clicking sounds he emitted with each breath only added to the illusion of a beached sea mammal.

"Hey there, Alison. Get a little wet, did ya?" His gaze glittered—watery and dark like liquid charcoal—as he took a bite of an overripe apricot. The juices drizzled down his chin and he offered a sleazy smirk. His incisors—two sizes too big for his mouth—hung low like underdeveloped ivory tusks.

My stomach twisted with disgust as he stepped full into the hallway and made an obvious appraisal of my chest where my shirt clung to me. He looked famished, as if he wanted to gobble me up. I snapped my jacket closed and shoved ringlets of dripping blond hair off my face.

"I've got some hot chocolate on the stove. Wanna cup?" he asked.

I'd caught him staring plenty of times, but he'd never had the guts to ask me in. I swallowed and held tighter to my bag's straps. "Nah. Mrs. Bunsby's waiting."

"Nope, she's not. Had to make a run to the grocery store." He flashed a note at me.

I only had time to see a tiny triangle torn from the top, right above the words I'll be back in an hour, before he shoved it into his pocket.

"In fact," Wally wheezed, "she told me to keep you company. Says you're too young to be on your own and stay out of trouble. I can come to your room instead, if ya like." He jangled the keys that hung on one of his belt loops and smirked bigger.

Idiot.

I hated him, and hated myself more for being scared. I'd faced monsters like him before. Two foster families ago, I had a fourteen-year-old foster brother who trapped me in the basement and stuck his tongue down my throat while his hands found their way up my shirt. Yet I was the one who got sent back to the children's home for biting off the tip of his tongue and breaking his thumb. I was the one with issues.

Unfortunately for me, Wally Harcus wouldn't be as easy to fend off as a skinny teenage boy.

The bottom step hit the back of my heels, stalling me. It was fight or flight. One thing I knew: Mrs. Bunsby wouldn't have asked the walrus to keep me company. He probably saw her leave and decided it was the perfect chance to make a move. So there he stood between me and the only way out. And even if I locked myself inside our apartment, he had the keys to get in.

I could prop something against the door and buy myself time to clamber down the broken fire escape. I'd probably fall to my death, but that had to be better than the alternative.

I spun around and hightailed it up the four flights of stairs. The sound of his footsteps followed, slow and plodding. He was in no hurry. Everyone minded their own business here. No one would stop him, which made the chase about as challenging as a fly already stuck in a spider's web.

Tears blurred my vision as I made it to our door. A piece of Scotch tape dangled the missing puzzle piece from Mrs. Bunsby's note where she'd stuck it next to the peephole. Wally had taken the letter she left for me.

Gulping back bile, I struggled to fit my key in the lock. Adrenaline used my heart like a punching bag, slamming it until it quivered uncontrollably in my chest. I'd just managed to get inside, shut the door, and lock it when Wally cleared the final step onto our floor.

Straining every muscle, I wedged Mrs. Bunsby's favorite wing-backed chair into place under the knob and raced for my bedroom, dropping my bag just inside the threshold after I shut myself in. The overcast afternoon hazed the light to a gray fog, and with my heavy curtains covering the window, shadows cloaked the room and painted eerie shapes along the bare walls.

Keys jangled outside our apartment, loud enough I could hear them through my closed door. Sobbing, I stumbled over to the window, shoved the curtains apart, and opened the pane. A rain-drenched gust caught my hair and slapped it around my face. Tears burned trails down my cheeks as I flung one leg over the sill, about to throw myself out.

"Tsk, tsk. Now, that would be a tragic waste." A deep cockney accent froze me in place there, straddling life and death. "Surely your existence is worth more than that oily rat's."

I snapped my head toward the voice. In the left corner of my room, the shadows moved and took on the indistinct silhouette of a man.

A gasp broke through my lips. "Wh-who's there?"

"Introductions aren't necessary amongst friends." My intruder leaned into the dim light, revealing a face both beautiful and terrifying. He wasn't human. No, he was far too perfect and mystical for that. Markings, resembling tattoos, flashed with jeweled colors beneath his dark, fathomless eyes. His blue hair swayed, out of sync with the wind gushing through my window. "I believe I've merited the title of friend, don't you? Considering the last time you almost cracked your skull clambering around on that fire escape." Giant wings splayed out from behind his shoulders, glistening like black satin in the grayish light.

Adrift somewhere between terror, disbelief, and hope, I eased my leg back into my room and leaned against the juncture of the window frame and the wall. "You … you were the one. You saved me."

He smoothed the wrinkles from some red gloves on his hands. "Not quite, Alison. You saved yourself by daring to defy the natural laws in the first place. The fact that you even tried to make that climb merited a second chance at life, yes? Courage paired with folly becomes abandon, which is an honorable trait where I'm from, and should always be rewarded."

I squinted at him. "You were rewarding me for my folly?"

He held a top hat in front of him and stroked it as if it were a cat. "Your abandon." A deep chuckle rumbled in his chest. "You're an odd duck, aren't you? You haven't balked at me yet, nor have you questioned if I'm real. Or even how I know your name. It doesn't matter to you one way or the other, does it?"

I clenched my hands into fists at my sides. "It doesn't matter if I'm crazy, as long the madness helps me survive."

He raised an eyebrow, obviously pleased and surprised by my answer. "Ah, spoken like a true netherling. Madness, like any other facet of irrationality, can be used as a tool and a weapon, in the right hands."

I didn't have the chance to ask what a netherling was because in the other room, the wing-backed chair's wooden feet scraped across the tile floor and clawed through my nerves like talons. Wally was in the apartment.

My throat dried. I glanced outside at the slippery rails, then back toward the man with wings, now standing in full view next to my door. He was tall and graceful, around the age of nineteen or twenty, and dressed in lace and velvet, like a gentleman from another time and place.

"Are you … are you my guardian angel?" I'd heard of such creatures but had never believed they might be real. Yet in that moment, I was willing to believe anything if it would save me from my landlord or a broken neck.

My visitor flashed his teeth in a stunning smile that transformed his face to the devil's playground—malice concealed within a veneer of lovely persuasion. "I'm the furthest thing from an angel, little ducky. But I am here to watch you dole out some righteous retribution upon a sinner most foul." He placed the top hat on his head. A string of dead moths trembled at the brim in morbid tribute to the gusts fluttering my curtains. "Now, let's have us a bit of fun with old Wally, aye?"

3

THE LONG LEG OF THE LAW

Wally the Walrus's footsteps scuffled toward my door.

"You won't let him in, right?" I asked the demon … angel … savior … whatever. He stood still as a statue, the gems on his face blinking through different shades of gold. "You're going to help me like last time?" My pulse pounded hard in my neck, and my vocal cords shuddered like a snare drum.

The creature's wings spanned wide. "Oh, no, little ducky. You're going to help yourself. After all, you're the one with a direct line to the most ancient and heavily populated inhabitants on earth. They're adept at more than conversation, Alison. They have skills. All you need do is ask for a hand." He gestured toward a daddy longlegs creeping across the wall behind him, casting a spindly shadow on the white plaster. "Or eight feet. Whatever fits the bill."

Before I could make sense of his riddle, my mystical guest vanished in a poof of sparkling blue dust, only to be replaced by a bird-size moth that dove back into the shadows.

The moth from my picture … from Mom's sketch.

My gaze fell to the Polaroids that had spewed out from the opening of my tote bag. Before I could focus on them, the door crashed open, sweeping a pathway through the stolen memories.

My stomach turned as Wally stepped in. Glistening apricot pulp was tangled in his mustache. He used the back of his pudgy hand to swipe it off and almost tripped over my Alice's Adventures in Wonderland book.

He picked it up and snorted. "Alison's adventures in Wonderland? What's wrong with you, girl? Are you crazy, or just stupid?" The moth picture slipped out of the book as he shook it. He watched it drift to the floor. "Wait, I've seen that bug. I was tryin' to get it out of the building earlier. It's what led me to your door—" Wally stopped himself, as if he'd said too much. "Come away from that window. That ain't no rabbit hole. You're gonna trip and I'll have to scrape your scrawny ass up off the pavement."

I clenched my jaw, unmoving.

He tossed the book down. "Look, I can make you sigh, or I can make you cry. But either way this is gonna happen."

My attention flickered from his leering gaze to the tiny space of wall over the door behind him. A parade of spiders skittered free from a hole in the doorframe, covering the wall and ceiling. There had to be thirty daddy longlegs now, and still more were pushing through. Had the storm driven them out?

Ask for a hand, or eight feet …

Maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe I had finally teetered over the edge like my mom. But whatever was happening, I had to use it to my advantage. I couldn't move, and I'd missed my chance to dive to my death.

"Help me," I pleaded—not sure exactly what I meant or to whom I was talking.

"Oh, I'm gonna help you." In a matter of seconds Wally had me pinned to the wall with his clammy palm at my neck. I gripped his wrist with both hands and dug my nails in hard. He laughed, his sour-fruit breath hot on my face. "Yeah, I'm gonna help you real good. See, I'm the white rabbit, and I'm takin' you on an adventure you'll never forget, Alice."

He lifted me by my neck until only my toes touched the floor. The pressure constricted my throat, and black fuzz began swimming in my gaze's periphery. I kicked at him, but he sidestepped my feet and, with his free hand, started to work at my belt buckle.

My abdominal muscles clenched in revulsion. The dark fuzz grew, but not from lack of oxygen. I turned my eyes and saw a sweep of daddy longlegs along the walls and ceiling—hundreds of them.

"Help me now," I commanded this time. My only hope was to drive Wally out of this apartment and back down the stairs on an avalanche of arachnids.

Their response was instantaneous and violent. Wally yelped and dropped me to the floor as the swarm began to clamber over him, creeping up his shoes, then along his legs. I moved away from the window and gasped for air as the insects continued their march, overtaking his chest. His horrified screams were drowned out by the spiders' angry whispers as he swatted at them. More arachnids came to replace the ones that fell. They found their way to Wally's neck and face, then filled his gaping mouth, muffling his bloodcurdling cries. He clutched at his throat, his bare arms covered with sleeves of spindly legs and throbbing thoraxes.

His nose and eyes disappeared under the ever-growing infestation. He lost his footing, and tried to catch himself against the wall, but his aim was off. He fell through the opened window, choking on the way down.

Numb, I backed up to my bedroom door, gagging when I heard the sick, heavy splat of his body on the wet asphalt.

Sudden movement in the left corner of the room distracted me. The moth fluttered out from the shadows, then landed on the windowsill, observing the mess below. A rush of nausea burned my gut.

"It was an accident," I whimpered to the insect, as if he was my confessor. "I—I didn't mean for it to happen!"

"Oh, but I did." That cockney accent stirred inside my head. The voice belonged to both the moth and the man. Somehow, they were one and the same, and somehow they were also tied to the Wonderland tales. My mom had figured that out. Which meant he'd been watching us for years. Not only that, he had led Wally to my apartment earlier. It was his fault the landlord found Mrs. Bunsby's note before I did. This whole thing had been a setup.

I couldn't speak, dragged into a vortex of confusion, shock, and regret.

"Do not concern yourself with that drowned rat, Alison," the British voice scolded me in my mind. "There are countless young girls he damaged. It was up to you to set things to rights. Imbalance brings balance. Chaos is the great equalizer. But there will be repercussions. You'll ne'er belong here now. It's better that way. You are meant for so much more than this paltry world has to offer." The moth flapped over to me, hovering in front of my face. "Take things into your own hands. Power is the only path to happiness, and I can help you acquire it. My name is Morpheus. Find a looking glass and call on me when you are ready to claim your destiny."

With that, the huge bug turned and flew out the window.

"Wait!" I shouted. Tears scalding my lashes, I stumbled over to the sill and gazed down. Two teen boys on bicycles stared up at me from beside Wally's corpse. Just moments ago the man had been overpowering me … now he looked like a broken doll whose arms and legs had been twisted in unnatural poses until they'd popped out of their sockets. The rain puddles beside him were tinged red with the blood seeping from the back of his skull.

Dogs barked and people screamed as more spectators emerged from our apartment building. Slowly, each one turned to my window. Several pointed at me; some shook their heads.

I wanted to run but couldn't release my white-knuckled grip on the sill. The spiders were gone, having slipped within the thousands of hiding places accessible only to insects, leaving me to wish I was their size, so I could disappear and never have to face the accusations and questions about to come my way.

Morpheus was right. I didn't belong anywhere after that. And I suspected that's why he arranged for Wally to find that note and prey on me in the first place.

Child welfare services accused Mrs. Bunsby of negligence, stating someone with my "violent tendencies" shouldn't have been left to my own devices while she ran errands. They also pointed out that I'd been skipping classes, which only made her look more inept. They took me out of her care that very evening.

While the police and my child care advocates interviewed Mrs. Bunsby in the living room, I packed up my sparse belongings, trying to avoid looking at the window. Mrs. Bunsby had left a brown grocery sack on the bed. Funny, how she thought she'd failed me. I could see it reflected in her teary hazel eyes when she came home to the mess I'd made. Too bad I couldn't tell her the truth. That she wasn't to blame for me being an accomplice to murder … that the responsibility fell on Wally himself, along with a mystical moth and a swarm of daddy longlegs.

Inside the grocery sack, she'd tucked her husband's camera, film, and a book on picture developing. There was also a packet of peanut butter crackers, an apple, and a bottle of water. My heart twisted tight, because I knew I could've been happy with her, if only Morpheus hadn't had other plans for me. But as much as my chest hurt, I refused to cry. I was done crying.

And I would never be a victim again.

As I left the apartment, Mrs. Bunsby promised to try to visit sometime. I knew better.

A month passed, filled with psych evaluations and doctor exams, to make sure I wasn't traumatized. Hard as they tried, the doctors couldn't pin any crazy on me, because I refused to give details about the event. All I said was that the landlord had tried to force himself on me, we wrestled, and he fell out the window. Simple as that.

When the psychiatrist held up the cards for the inkblot tests, I never confessed what each one really looked like. I didn't tell them that I saw rabbit holes, hookah-smoking caterpillars, little girls in aprons with knives in their hands, winged men, sparrow-size moths, or armies of spiders. I also never let anyone catch me talking to the flowers and bugs that kept me company. I knew how to appear sane.

I did such a great job, I was released from any more evaluations after only six weeks. The problem was child care services wouldn't be able to place me with a foster family considering all the baggage I carried. So the children's home became my permanent residence.

Or so they thought. I didn't intend to stay. I planned to go someplace where their laws and watchful eyes could never find me again. And I knew just who would aid me on my escape.

All those weeks in therapy, I'd procrastinated reaching out to Morpheus. I needed that time to think things through. And I'd come to three realizations. One, my family really was somehow tied to the Lewis Carroll tales, which meant Wonderland had to exist on some level. Two, Morpheus was also tied to Wonderland, and he needed me for something, because no one helps anyone without wanting a favor in return. And three, before I was going to help him, he was going to give me a couple of things: a way out of the children's home, and answers to all my questions.

Solitude was hard to come by. The grayish brick building had multiple levels with bedrooms on each floor. They were like dorms, three to four girls per room … or boys, depending on the floor. The place was surrounded by a tall wrought-iron fence to keep strangers out and to keep the occupants in. There was only one gate, and it remained locked.

The laundry house—a flat-roofed building with hopper windows located just beneath the eaves—was abandoned except on weekends when we took turns washing our clothes by dorm number. I decided it would be the best place for a Wednesday night meeting.

I snuck out of my room, flashlight in tow, about two hours after lights-out.

I'd found a handheld vanity mirror in one of my roommates' drawers and carried it over in a pillowcase, along with my mom's Lewis Carroll books, a spiral notebook, and a pen. I still wasn't sure how a "looking glass" figured in, but Morpheus had insisted I use one to call for him. Since the laundry house was locked, I climbed a tree beside it, lowered myself onto the roof from the branches, opened a hopper window, and slid in feet first. A dryer met my boot soles, so I didn't have far to drop.

I slashed the darkness with my flashlight, revealing a cement floor, dinged and dented washers and dryers, and four vinyl laundry baskets. A mix of dust and detergent made me sneeze. A few night crawlers offered hissed greetings before going about their business.

Moonlight seeped through the hopper windows and cloaked the room in a creamy, silver film. I scouted out a spot next to the door to set my things down. My body would be a barricade, in case anyone found out I wasn't in bed and came looking for me. If I blocked the way in, it would buy me extra time to think up an excuse.

After spreading my jacket on the floor for a cushion, I propped the flashlight against the wall so it gave off a halo of light, then sat down and held up the mirror.

"Morpheus," I whispered, and that was all it took.

4

TWENTY QUESTIONS

A blue flash skated across the glassy surface of the mirror and pulsed. But the pulse wasn't just visual, it was tactile. I could feel it vibrate through the handle. Cautiously, I set the mirror on the floor. Alight with an icy cerulean glow, the now-familiar moth climbed out from the glass, as if it had been waiting inside the whole time.

It took flight and perched in a puddle of moonlight. Its wings folded over its thorax, then expanded to the span of an angel's, swooping open to reveal flawless skin and masquerade-style patches lit with jewels beneath inky eyes. A mass of blue, shoulder-length hair, messy from the magical static emanating across his humanoid form and extravagant clothes, moved about his head.

Morpheus loomed tall over me—re-situating his hat on his head to a cocky slant.

"Alison," he said simply, and the sweet scent of licorice drifted my direction. "Ready to strike a bargain?"

I held up my forefinger. The last time we were together, I was distracted by the danger around me and mesmerized by his magic. All of which led to the murder of a man. Tonight, I would take the lead.

"Have you ever played the game Twenty Questions?" I asked him.

He tilted his head and grinned, pulling one of his wing tips over his shoulder to preen it. "Let me see … is it anything like Riddle Me This?"

I squinted. "Huh?"

He stretched out his wings and took a seat in the middle of the floor, his complexion aglow with the soft blue light radiating from his hair and the gems under his eyes. "Riddle me this: I belong to no one, yet am used by everyone. To some, I am money, to others I can fly. I make up space, yet don't take it up. To those who never change, I hold no sway. But to those who do, I carry the weight of desert sands. What am I?"

I bit my lip. It wasn't easy to ignore the intense craving to compete—to prove to him I could figure out his puzzle. But I sensed that would be exactly what he wanted, and I needed to stay focused on my goals. "Ball's in my court, Morpheus. Twenty questions. I ask them, and you respond. I'm not striking any bargains with you until my curiosity is satisfied. No chasing rabbits."

He snorted. "Not even white ones?"

Frowning, I opened my bag and took out the pen and spiral notebook. "No getting off track. Straight answers. You want something from me. If you're going to get it, I'm calling the shots from here on out."

"My, my. So tyrannical for one so young. I like that in an accomplice." Legs crossed and folded in front of him, he steepled his hands under his chin and narrowed his eyes. "By all means, little ducky. You have the floor."

Blue lightning branched out from his shadow along the cement beneath us, racing across the room in all directions. The washers and dryers activated and began to rumble and swish.

I ground my teeth. "I'm not ducky. Do you see any feathers on me? I'm Alison. Nothing more, nothing less. Got it?"

The jewels under his eyes blinked a warm orange hue. "Oh, I got it. But you don't. Because you're so much more than just a name."

I frowned. "What does that mean?"

"Everyone is more. We're each formed of life forces, then blood, bones, and spirit. And your blood is more precious than most."

I couldn't think of a response, too distracted by the motorized disturbances echoing off the walls. "Stop the machines. I need to be able to hear if someone's coming."

"Afraid not. My mind works better with a stir of chaos in the background. And yours needs to learn to do the same. As for our privacy, I have that all taken care of. Sneak a peek in the looking glass, peaches."

Gritting my teeth at the new nickname—which was ten times as annoying as the first one—I lifted the mirror. The dim reflection of my face blurred, shifting to a portal that showcased the grounds around the laundry building. Tiny dots of light floated and bounced through the trees and grass. Looking closer, I could make out the shapes of miniature women with glittering scales and dragonfly wings.

A strange prickle raised the hairs on my skin—an awareness of the magic all around us that I never knew I had. "What are they?"

"Sprites. Though they may be small, they can stop anyone in their tracks should they try to interrupt us. Just pay heed where you're walking when you leave. Otherwise, you might trip over a body or two."

I gasped and set the mirror down. "They'll kill them?" I couldn't let that happen. One dead person on my conscience was enough.

Morpheus chortled. "I should've clarified. Dozing bodies. They'll be no worse for wear once they wake, other than being immensely satisfied and confused. Most importantly, they'll be too preoccupied with their own thoughts to know you were here, or to care, for that matter. But, I'm speaking out of turn again. You had some questions to ask me, yes?"

I have so many more now.

I shook off the hunger to know everything at once, determined to stay on task. I dragged my mother's books from the pillowcase and laid them out between us, preparing to write his answers in my spiral notebook.

He clapped. "Oh, goody. I like this game. Show me all your cards, and I'll show you mine. Just wait until you see what I have up my sleeve."

"Would you stop talking already?" I scowled. "So, you and those … sprites … you live in Wonderland?"

His countenance lit up. He was obviously eager to answer, but he kept his mouth closed tight.

"Come on," I pressed. "Are you from Wonderland?"

He remained silent.

"Seriously?"

"You asked me to stop talking."

I dug my fingers into my knees. "Ugh. Answer me!"

"Tut." He peeled off his gloves, one at a time, leisurely and maddeningly calm. "No need to get peevish. Yes … I'm from Wonderland, as are my lovely little pets outside."

"Which means," I swallowed, "Wonderland really is real?"

"It is."

"And the rabbit hole, too?" I asked around the knot in my throat.

Studying me in the dim light, Morpheus nodded. "I can provide you with a map. Just say the word."

I gripped the collar of my shirt, trying to cover the rapid pulse at my neck. "What role do you play there? I've never seen you in the stories."

A strand of blue magic leapt from his fingertip to my "Alison's" Adventures in Wonderland book. The electrified currents flipped the pages, stopping when they arrived at the illustration of the Caterpillar speaking to Alice. "Much like our clever and curious heroine, I wasn't quite myself in the earlier tales."

My gaze fell to the text on the page and Alice's answer to the Caterpillar's question of her identity: I'm afraid I can't explain myself, sir. Because I am not myself, you see?

I gulped, the realization hitting me like a slap in the face. "You're the Caterpillar … hatched from a cocoon."

Morpheus winced, as if offended. "Moths and butterflies do not hatch. They transform. Now, six questions to go. Don't squander them, peaches."

"Wait … I've only asked four so far."

"I beg to differ." He held up his hands in a strand of moonlight, wiggling his fingers and making shapes on the wall—startlingly real for shadows. Some looked like teacups, some like mushrooms, others like roses getting splashed with buckets of paint. "You've asked fourteen, albeit most of them were inane and wasteful. First, you asked me if I'd ever played Twenty Questions. Well, that in itself is a question. Then, when I gave the riddle, you said—and I quote—'Huh?' Another question. Next, after you told me not to call you ducky, you asked if you had feathers, and then if I 'got it?' Finally, you queried what I meant about you being more than merely a name. Honestly, can you even think of a reason any of those were necessary? Of course, when you asked about the sprites—what they were, and if they would be killing your half-witted zookeepers—that bordered on relevant."

My ears grew hot. "I don't live in a zoo!" I snarled.

Morpheus smirked and merged his shadow puppets into a rabbit hopping along the wall. "Add to that the four questions about me and my home—the only ones that actually bore some semblance of importance, mind—and you asked eleven. Unfortunately, you repeated one of them twice after first asking me to stop talking, and then you questioned my seriousness. Which was another three. So, only six remain. Choose your words wisely."

Suppressing a growl, I squeezed the pen in my hand until it bit into my palm. "Okay," I mumbled, preparing to ask the one question I was most afraid to have answered before he could trick me out of any more chances. "You reached out to my mom, didn't you? When she was a teenager."

The washers and dryers grew silent as his magic receded back into his body, just as the mischief drained from his features. He took off his hat and laid it in his lap. "I tried to, Alison. Her mind was … more fragile than I anticipated."

I slammed my notebook down and scrambled to my feet. "You told me that abandon always merits a second chance at life. So why didn't you catch her? You caught me! You couldn't have done the same for her? Her fall was so much shorter! You could've stopped her with your wings!" Tears blazed down my cheeks. I was furious, maybe more at myself than him. I'd promised I'd never cry again.

He stared up at me from his seat on the floor. His jeweled markings blinked a fuzzy periwinkle shade, mirroring the softness of his expression. It was almost as if some small part of him sympathized. "Your mum chose to leap out in the open. There were too many spectators in the parking lot. She made it impossible to be rescued. If only she'd jumped from a little higher, her own wings could've saved her. Those two miscalculations cost her everything."

"No. It was you that cost her everything. Why do you keep bugging my family?" I refused to think about the irony in my choice of words, and hoped he would do the same. If he cracked some stupid joke about it, or taunted that I'd squandered four more questions and was now down to two, I would lose every ounce of control I had left. I'd strangle him with my bare hands, electrical magic or not.

Mercifully, he only shook his head and said, "I am not responsible for, nor am I here to make amends for, all the wrongs you've been dealt throughout your life. Instead, I am offering a way for you to honor your mum's death. To make peace with it."

I slapped the hot wetness from my face. "I don't want to make peace with it! All I've ever wanted was to know her. And the only things I have to remember her by are these stupid stories! The stories that killed her." I kicked the books toward him. They slid along the floor a few inches but didn't go far enough. I glared at them, wishing they would leap into the air, dive down on him like birds of prey … grow beaks and peck out those beautiful, endless black eyes so filled with cryptic riddles and even more cryptic answers.

As if hearing my thoughts, the two books lifted from the floor, pages flapping wildly, like wings. They swooped toward him to attack, but he was ready, safely behind a dome formed of blue lightning.

"Splendid show," he said with something like pride in his voice as he straightened the cravat at his neck. "Do let me know when you're finished with your tantrum."

Wait. I'd spurred the books to action? I made them fly? My jaw dropped.

Not possible. The books fell to the floor with a clunk, as if my logical reasoning killed them.

"I did that." It was an observation. Even in my state of disbelief, I was aware enough not to frame it as a question. I only had two left now … choose your words wisely.

I looked from the crashed books to Morpheus, who had reeled in his magic and was unprotected again, waiting in the moonlight, patient and somber.

"My mom, she had the same abilities, didn't she?"

He returned his hat to his head. "Yes, though hers were dormant. I tried to awaken them, to show her in her dreams what she was capable of. Tried to encourage her to animate her paintings on the walls. But before she could …" He held up a palm. "Well, never mind that. You enlivened those books almost without trying. Think what you can accomplish with guidance and focus. You see, you do know your mum. Because that touch of magic was a part of her. What she left you via the blood you share. What you choose to do with it, that's up to you. All she wanted was freedom and escape. Some might say she got that. But as for you, something tells me such an ending wouldn't be satisfactory for one with your … drive and determination. So, what do you want, Alison?"

I didn't hesitate. "I want to leave this world." My voice sounded wispy, like a slip of air through a screen window, as I sunk to the floor atop my jacket. I crossed my legs, mimicking Morpheus's pose. "But I also want so much more …"

He smiled. "Of course you do. You want it all. The crown, the throne, fearful subjects kneeling prostrate at your feet. And you shall have it. It is your heritage. It was taken from you, and you're going to win it back. I believe it's time to show you my ace, little princess." He withdrew a cylinder of paper from inside his jacket's cuff and unrolled it so I could see the beautiful winding letters. The golden ink looked wet, though I knew it wasn't because it hadn't smeared. It was reflecting the flashlight's glow:

Burst through Stone with a Feather; Cross a Forest in One Step; Hold an Ocean in Her Palm; Alter the Future with Her Fingertip; Defeat an Invisible Enemy; Trample an Army beneath Her Feet; Wake the Dead; Harness the Power of a Smile.

"I don't get it …"

"They're tests," he answered. "Should you pass each one, you will dethrone the imposter seated in your stead, and be crowned the one, true Red Queen. Half of Wonderland will be yours to reign, and you'll need never return to this zoo again."

I gulped. A slow thrill trickled through my body, warm and sweet, like a tree feeling the sap flow through her limbs at the first breath of spring. It was my enchanted intuition awakening. I had a place where I belonged. Where I was meant to rule. There, I would never be lonely again and everyone would be at my mercy. "But how can I accomplish such impossible things?"

Morpheus rolled up the paper again and tucked it away. "That is your twentieth question, and well spent. The answer is in the riddle I gave you earlier. And in case you haven't figured it out, consider this: Any interpretation can be altered simply by looking at things from different, more colorful angles … view the words and the world through a kaleidoscope instead of a telescope."

I nodded, because he made perfect sense, in some crafty yet absurd way. After all of his badgering about using my words wisely, I was starting to see everything differently already: connotation versus denotation, instinct versus logic, infinity versus …

"Time," I whispered, answering his riddle.

"Indeed." He stood, drawing out a small key on a chain from his lapel. He held it up so it glistened in the moonlight. "Time to train you, time to outsmart the tests, and time to win over your subjects."

"How long will that take? And what's in it for you? You said we'd be striking a bargain."

"Sorry, Alison. You've run out of questions. All you need to know is it's as much to my advantage as yours to see you crowned." He tossed the key to me, and I caught it in midair. "Nothing will get in our way, however long it takes. You give me time, and I'll give you all the tools you need to claim your birthright, to change everything you once thought you were. And then, time will matter no more, for you will don the robes of netherling immortality. Starting tonight, we reshape your destiny."

5

TRAIN TRACKS

The absence of the shower's lull shatters my nostalgic haze.

I stretch and sit up on the bed, glancing at the half-opened door where steam drifts out in a ghostly dance. Thomas is shaving. Water swishes in the sink, then pauses as he hums softly while passing the razor over his skin. The song is one he used to sing to me when we were dating. The words spin through my memory: a man begging forgiveness for loving his lady too much, telling her he'd want no other but her forever, that it was worth any amount of pain to be with her.

He'd upheld the message from the song, stood by me when any other man would've thrown up his arms and left. I've never once regretted choosing him over my netherling destiny. I only regret hurting him. Just as I regret almost robbing Alyssa of her chance to be immortal.

I thought at the time that I was doing the right thing, keeping silent to save her from Wonderland's barbaric practices. I was only sixteen when I stumbled upon Sister Two's lair and saw what she was using human children for, but even at that age, I couldn't close my eyes to the tragedy, or the similarities: how the grave keeper siphoned away their dreams to feed the restless souls in the cemetery. Similar to what had been done to me by unnameable monsters throughout my life—siphoning away my dreams for their own pleasure and satisfaction. But unlike me, Sister Two's victims never escaped.

Seeing Thomas wrapped inside her webs after having been imprisoned there for ten years—all of his life draining away—changed me. And my betrayal changed Morpheus. It was a tragic chain reaction.

I shudder and turn away from the bathroom, staring down at my bare feet, my mind stalled in that awful place and time.

The mattress sinks as Thomas settles behind me in a pair of gray slacks and a lavender dress shirt hanging from his broad shoulders, loose and unbuttoned.

"Ali-bear. What are you thinking of?" He kisses my neck, surrounding me with the scent of his aftershave. His fingers mold around my abdomen, sending shivers of pleasure through every inch of my skin.

I smile as I melt into his lips, my back snuggling against his bare chest as he kisses the spot beneath my ear.

"You, now," I answer, running my fingers over the slick fabric covering his arms.

"Perfect," he whispers. "Because I'm thinking of you, and how beautiful you are."

"You approve of the dress, then?"

"Not just that …" His teasing mouth finds its way to my nape. "You smell good, too."

I giggle and he smiles against me.

"If we're going to go anywhere tonight," I press, trying to concentrate in spite of his soft kisses, "we should leave soon."

He sighs—petals of warm breath blossoming around my left shoulder blade and wing bud. "I guess you're right. Especially since we're not just going out. We're going away."

I glance over my shoulder where his mouth makes contact and leaves an imprint of sensation. "Away … where?"

"Faraway London." He grins. His damp hair catches the sunset filtering through the blinds—a glossy mess of chocolate waves. When he smiles at me like that, he looks nineteen again.

"You want to go to London, tonight." I shift around on the mattress to help him button the shirt. It's one of my favorites, for how the color complements his complexion, and how the silky fabric clings to his form. I skim my fingers along his chest before I close the placket. His daily fencing regimen has refined his muscles to a new level—a sophisticated and seasoned density that only a man his age could acquire. "So … I guess this impromptu trip means you've decided to forfeit our sword fight tomorrow. Are you sure that's wise? Don't get me wrong, you're in great shape. I'm just not sure you have the legs for a miniskirt."

He chuckles, causing the dimple in his chin that matches Alyssa's to catch a shadow and appear deeper. "Oh, we'll be back in time to defend our titles. We're going to take a shortcut." He places my key necklace around my neck. "Our royal daughter offered us the use of her mirror."

I force a smile, in spite of the chill that wraps my spine—as if ice-tipped spiders are spinning webs of frost around each bone. Every time I use the looking-glass passages, I feel like I'm falling back into my past, which is why, when we make our visits to the Skeffingtons in London, I always insist we go the traditional route and take a commercial flight.

But tonight, I don't have the heart to put a damper on his plans. I can do this. We'll still be in the human realm, after all.

There was a time I craved stepping through the glass and going down the rabbit hole, just to see the landscapes and creatures again. But after being trapped there a few months ago, spending every day and every night in Ivory's castle, helping Grenadine plug her memory leaks, I'm done. I'm ready to stay here for the rest of my days, with Thomas and Alyssa. I get my fix for netherling companionship at Humphrey's Inn twice a month when we visit Thomas's family. That's enough.

"Okay. Just let me finish dressing." I bend down to gather the strappy sandals, but Thomas beats me to it, falling to his knees at my feet.

"Wait, now," he scolds, low and gentle. "That's a knight's job, princess." He lifts my bare foot, pressing his lips to my ankle before slipping the shoe into place. He does the same with my other foot, then finishes with a kiss at my knee before placing the sole of my shoe gently on the floor.

"My sweet Tommy-toes." I lean forward so our foreheads touch, so I can get lost in his warm, kind eyes.

Grinning that Elvis smirk that I adore, Thomas stands and helps me up. He grabs a sport jacket and my lacy shawl, then leads me across the hall and into Alyssa's room. Muffled laughter and conversation burst from the kitchen. The scent of melting cheese, spicy pepperoni, and marinara sauce makes my mouth water. The kids must've decided on homemade pizza.

"So, we're going to Humphrey's Inn?" I ask, suddenly craving a plate of spaghetti Bolognese with a side of artichoke-feta garlic bread, my favorite of Hubert's specialties.

"That's on the agenda," Thomas answers. "We'll be spending the night there. But first, we're going to Ironbridge Gorge." He flashes the mushrooms in his jacket pocket—our "tickets" to the memory train—before shrugging into the sleeves.

I frown and help him straighten his lapels, studying our shared reflection in Alyssa's cheval mirror—a French silver-framed antique she found at a thrift store. It was the first thing she bought upon our return from Wonderland, so she could check in with her subjects throughout the day when necessary. "I don't understand. Why would we go to the Iron Bridge? Haven't we seen all there is to see?"

"You haven't," Thomas answers, his face glazed with pinkish sunset. "I know you're still wrestling with regrets. I see the pain on your face every day." He traces my frown with his thumb. "It's time to forgive yourself. Time for you to realize the positive impact that letting Morpheus and Wonderland into your life has had on the rest of us, because you've dwelt so long on the negative, you've lost sight of it. I asked Alyssa about lost memories yesterday. She told me that once they're stored as cargo, they become part of the train, even after they're viewed by the one who made them. So, we're going to take one last look at my missing years, but this time, we're doing it together. You need to see what would've become of us all, had you not intervened."

Our trip to the Ironbridge Gorge is simpler than it was the times Alyssa and I came here in the past, each seeking different things. With Jeb's help, she recently installed a tall looking glass in the bridge's tunnel. Transportation here is now as simple as stepping from one mirror to the next. There's no traversing the countryside. It's a straight shoot from her bedroom to the tunnel.

As we step through, moving chandeliers—made of clusters of lightning bugs strung together with harnesses—roll like miniature Ferris wheels across the ceiling. They flash along dingy tiled walls, faded advertising posters dated circa 1956 to 1959, and the pile of old, discarded toys in the tunnel.

In spite of a rash of nerves, I manage enough bites of mushroom to shrink alongside Thomas so we can board the rusted toy train that holds all of Wonderland's forgotten and lost memories.

The fuzzy carpet beetle conductor is expecting us. He opens a door marked Thomas Gardner and leads us into a small, windowless room with a tapestry rug under a cream-colored chaise lounge. An ornate floor lamp casts a soft glow on the walls. On the other side, a small stage with velvety curtains waits to showcase Thomas's memories.

"Please, do have a seat and take some refreshments," the beetle offers, more cordial than I remember. Word has spread about Alyssa's bloody rampage in the looking-glass world. She's earned the reputation of a severe yet wise Red Queen, and this warrants us, as her parents, the respect of all the netherlings.

Thomas and I sit side by side on the chaise. There's an end table to the left and a lace doily beneath a plate full of moonbeam cookies. I take one and hold it out for Thomas to sample. He bites off half, brushing away the glimmering moonbeams that fall with the crumbs onto his pant legs, and gestures for me to eat the rest.

Waves of nausea roll over me. I try to attribute the sensation to hunger and nibble on the flaky cookie and delicate almond icing, tensing as the conductor punches a button on the wall with a spindly arm. The stage curtains open, revealing a movie screen.

"Picture your husband's face in your mind whilst staring at the empty screen, and you will experience his past as if it were today." The bug turns a dial that snuffs out the lamp and then closes the door.

I clasp Thomas's hand in mine. The one time I visited this train, I was spying on his past without his knowledge, and the things I saw horrified me so much I wanted to hide them from him forever. Now he's here, encouraging me to look deeper. Even with the comfort of his presence, my trepidation is almost smothering.

I push past it, remembering him as the child I saw that day I came alone—when his name was David Skeffington and he was eight years old. But this time, I imagine him a few months earlier, while he's still living with his mother, father, two sisters, and brother in Oxford.

An image appears on the screen in living color and reaches out for me. It pulls me apart at the seams—every piece of me fraying—until I come together again, on-scene, looking out of little David's eyes and sharing his youthful thoughts, emotions, and senses.

He has a happy childhood, rich with sentimental moments … following his father on daily chores at their goat farm, playing with his sisters and brother upon the hills surrounding his home, family excursions and picnics, bedtime stories recited by a mother's gentle and melodic voice. But one night, he's visited by an imperial group of knights dressed in red and white tunics—the same ones who came for his brother two years earlier.

His mother weeps at their arrival, shouting that they've never visited a family more than once, but his father comforts her, assuring her he's had the suspicion all along and called them himself. Then he leads David into a darkened room to be interviewed.

One of the knights, a white-bearded man in a red tunic and chain mail, opens a multi-mirror contraption in the darkness. He flips a switch, igniting the white lights along the frames. Each mirror is set at a precise angle to reflect the other, causing the illusion of infinity.

"Take a walk in the mirror maze, lad," says the knight. "Tell me what you see."

David wanders within and around, at first seeing nothing but a thousand images of himself. Then he catches movement in one of the distant reflections—a silhouette of something inhuman. He turns on his heel to find such distortions in each plane of silver-backed glass. With just the blink of an eye, the shadows resolve to clarity and a strange, terrifying world opens up. Large, ugly birds with two sets of wings, lumbering along an ashy terrain in lieu of flying. Crimson bats twice the size of condors swooping overhead, capturing anything brave enough to share the flaming sky with their long, fanged tongues. He starts to back away, but terror evolves into fascination, and lures him closer as some smaller creatures—puppylike beings, colored and shaped liked snowflakes—drift across the lands. They turn themselves inside out, their innards a ball of snapping teeth that devours anything in its path. Blood splashes everywhere as they feast on the four-winged birds. David winces, half expecting to get splattered by the warm and coppery spray, but the massacre is contained within the reflections. Fear and revulsion clench his throat, but he watches one instant longer, as the smallest creature of all, shaped like a butterfly with a scorpion's tail, flutters down—an elegant angel of death—and turns all the bloody, snarling balls of teeth to statues of stone.

In a dazed euphoria, David winds his way out of the maze and relays all the death he's seen. The knights converse among one another, then turn to his father.

"This is unprecedented: your second son to have the sight," the white-bearded knight says. "He sees the weak points in the barrier between the nether-realm and the human world even more clearly than his brother. You know what this means, Gregor."

David's father nods. He looks both sad and proud as he pats David's head. David isn't sure what to feel. But one thing he does know: He's no longer considered a child. He's a warrior, and will be trained as one.

His father packs his bags, they kiss his sobbing mother and sisters one last time, and then it's off to live with his uncles and cousins in Oxford, England, at Humphrey's Inn. David's searing grief over saying good-bye to his family and old life is stanched only when his older brother, Bernie, comes to greet them at the door.

The scene shakes and shivers as we pass through several months of lessons: studying AnyElsewhere, the looking-glass world where Wonderland's exiles are banished. He learns it's connected to Wonderland by the tulgey wood and to the human realm by infinity mirrors, and that a dome of iron surrounds the prison, warping any incarcerated netherlings into grotesque creatures should they try to use their magic while inside.

During his training, David buries himself in studies of the mutated creatures to earn the honor to be a part of the special faction of knights who guards the two gateways—the one from the human realm and the one into Wonderland. But the violent and gruesome subject matter saturates his nightmares and dreams with vivid and bizarre imagery. Still, he advances, taking self-defense classes and redefining his language—learning how to wield the mind as armor when riddles are the weapon.

The shifting scenes of David's life pause at Hubert's restaurant as his feet skate through ash in the fighting pit while diners watch him learn to fence from above. I feel Thomas's … David's … heart rate climb, feel his eagerness to make his father proud, his competitiveness toward his brother and cousins, and a self-conscious awareness as all eyes fix on him—the youngest and newest candidate. But in time he learns to block everything out but the game. He becomes confident, graceful, and adept, betters all of his opponents—including his own father—and by his ninth birthday, he's ready for his first sojourn to AnyElsewhere, to experience the secrets inside firsthand. Most of the boys are taken in at age thirteen, but he merits an earlier initiation, for not only has he learned to defend himself, but he also has the daring, wisdom, and acumen of someone five years his senior.

A vivid rainbow smears the screen as the memory tilts and turns on David's ride within an ashy white wind tunnel shaped like a tornado. The funnels provide safe transportation across the prison world for the knights, since they're the only ones with the magical medallions that control the winds. Gusts rip through David's hair and clothes as he's carried along with his uncle William to the Wonderland gate, where David will be taught the secrets of his guardian status. Triggered by the medallion at his uncle's neck, the funnel opens up and spits them out, one by one, far above the gate kept locked against the tulgey wood and Wonderland. A giant slide of ash rises up to catch and guide them to the platform, keeping them a safe distance from the glowing vortex of nothingness that separates the gateway from the world's terrain, and holds the prisoners at bay.

David watches it all through illuminated, leather-framed goggles. Being his first time within the domed world, he was determined to miss nothing, even the ride over. His father gave in and let him wear the goggles he and his brother used to keep dust out of their eyes and light the way when they were riding motorbikes at night along dirt trails on the hills of Oxford.

Because of his unhindered vision, he sees—as his uncle is dropped from the funnel behind him—that the chain holding the medallion at the old man's neck breaks and the necklace starts to fall. David reaches up to catch it. Once they're safely beside the gate, he returns the necklace to his uncle. The old man pats him on the back as he tucks it into his chain mail.

"One day, you'll be a bearer of a medallion. I'd stake my life on it." His uncle chortles. David beams at the praise.

Uncle William has always been his favorite … He smells like the cinnamon candies Mom used to put in pretty dishes at Christmas, he can outmaneuver anyone in a game of chess, and he always has a jolly good joke to tell. He was the one who took David under his wing when his father had to return to the goat farm. And now he's insisted on being David's guide to all the mysteries of this strange, magical world their family has guarded for centuries.

David moves closer to the solid iron gate, so Uncle William can share the secret to unlocking the way into Wonderland. Embedded within the lower third of the three-story barrier, a hexagonal box appears with five puzzles arranged in a nesting doll structure. David watches as Uncle William solves three, triggering the gate's hinges to open wider at each turn, and revealing glimpses of the dark tunnel behind the gate—a tulgey's throat. A stench seeps in—rotting, moldering wood. Only two puzzles away from fully opening the gate, Uncle William pales and hunches against the iron for support. Then he clutches his chest and collapses to his knees.

Gasping, David drops beside him. "Uncle, what's wrong?" He means to shout the words, but he swallowed too much black mist in the nothingness on the way to the entrance earlier. His vocal cords aren't fully awake, so it comes out a mumble. "Should I call the wind back?" His whisper is indecipherable, even to his own ears.

It doesn't matter. His uncle is beyond answering him. David is too small to drag Uncle William's stocky body to the landing spot. And if he were to take a wind tunnel alone for help, his uncle would be left vulnerable in front of the partly opened gate. David doesn't know how to use the puzzle box to shut the door. He drags out a mechanical messenger pigeon from the old man's bag. It's only to be used in emergencies, and should be sent with a recorded message, but—with his voice asleep—all he can do is send it on its own and hope one of their relatives sees it and figures out something's wrong.

He flips the switch to light its eyes and activate its wings, and sends it into the sky. But he worries that time is waning. Already, his uncle's skin is a translucent blue, like the color of ice over a pond.

David's heartbeat pounds in his chest.

There's one other thing he can do.

Eyes burning behind his goggles, David stares at the partly opened gate. Although the Looking-glass Knighthood has scads of information on AnyElsewhere and its occupants, not many studies have been done of Wonderland. Other than the Alice books, they know very little of the beings there. Though rumors abound of fae creatures with healing powers beyond anything comprehensible to humans.

David may not know how to solve the last two puzzles, but the opening—too slight for a grown man to breach—is already the perfect size for his small frame to fit through.

He hesitates. There are other stories, too, about the fairy-kind. That some are tricky and deadly. But how could they possibly be any worse than the monsters on this side of the gate? And he's been taught how to best those. Surely his knowledge can get him in and out of Wonderland unscathed.

Jaw clenched, David leaps to his feet and rushes through the gate before fear or reason can stop him.

6

ANCHOR

In a chain reaction, the moment David steps through the gate, it slams shut behind him. His uncle would be safe from any stray Wonderland creatures until the mechanism reset itself with the tulgey wood's mouth opening and closing. Only then would the gate allow anyone in from the same entrance again. Even David would have to find a new pathway to it … through another tulgey's throat.

A panicked flush burns David's face. He feels alone and scared for all of an instant before remembering that he's been trained as a knight. His plan could work. He just has to find a fae with healing powers to spare and then make a trade of some sort. They're rumored to collect human trinkets.

David removes his gloves, revealing the ring he received after he was anointed: a shiny band of pure gold, inlaid with sparkly diamonds around its circumference and a large glittering ruby setting, with a white cross of jade embedded in the center. To him, it is invaluable, far beyond its monetary worth, but he is willing to give it away if it means saving Uncle William.

The horrible rotting stench stings his eyes even behind his goggles. He turns on the light around the leather frames to illuminate the mossy trail beneath him, and begins running. After what feels like a quarter of a mile, the air seems to thin. He fights for breath in the enclosed, dark space. His goggles fog and he slides them off his face so they hang at his neck, still lighting his steps.

He rounds a bend and an opening comes into view, offering a hazy light to see by and a fresh stream of air. Panting, David turns off his goggles so he won't be conspicuous when stepping from the unhinged jaw onto the ground outside.

He draws his sword as he catapults over the teeth and lands inside a thicket. A loud creaking sound makes him spin to face the tree he just exited. The jaws snap at him. He jumps backward, barely escaping before the teeth retract into the trunk to form what appears to be a benign wooden grain in the bark—though David knows better.

Tall neon grasses feather around his boots as he circles the thicket, looking for a path out.

Some tangled bushes behind him quiver. Clenching his jaw, he centers himself in the middle of a small clearing out of reach of the foliage and trees surrounding him, although there's still a canopy of branches overhead he keeps in his sights.

The bushes shake again, and he holds up his sword, mentally preparing for one of the netherlings who've been spit back out of the tulgey in strange and horrible forms. Possibly a fire ant with a body made of flames, or a rocking-horsefly, with wooden rockers affixed to its six legs.

Instead, a strained yelp erupts on the other side of the bushes, followed by an outburst of hysterical miniature voices, all the more unsettling for their childlike banter.

"Stupidesses! Stupid, stupid, stupid! She usn't like runner-aways!"

"Atchcay the umanlinghay!"

"Yesses! Or be our necks deadses and stomped."

"Missing stakes happen."

"Mistakens or notses, Twid Two asks usses to tie it up."

"Onay oremay eamsdray!"

"She will hang usses by our necks … deadses-deadses-dead are we!"

David picks through his language training. It's like pig latin mixed with nonsensical jargon. Three of the phrases he can make out clearly enough: The miniature-voiced creatures are chasing a runaway humanling, they're concerned about a lack of dreams, and they're about to have nooses around their necks.

The voices grow louder and the bushes rattle again. David ducks behind a large rock to watch. He can't let himself be captured or hurt … Uncle William needs him to find help and hurry back. The leaves on the bushes part, and something plunges through.

David gasps to see a naked human boy, maybe six years older than him, stumble into the soft light of the clearing. He's the color of milk, all but the shock of black hair on his head. It's as if the blood has drained from him … not just from his face, but his torso and arms and legs, too. Then David realizes the boy's not completely naked after all. His body is coated with something—gossamer, sticky, thick. Silken fibers hang from him in places like threads, as if he's fraying.

Web?

David gulps, louder than intended.

The boy turns toward him, but his glazed eyes look through him. Nothing seems to register on his face. There's no expression other than a blank, somber stare.

A webby rope grows taut on the boy's ankle, dropping him to the ground face-first. He garbles into the grass—a strange, animalistic sound devoid of any sense—as if he's forgotten how to talk.

The chatty little creatures of earlier scurry in—five of them—still arguing among themselves. They look like silvery spider monkeys with hairless hides. Bulbous eyes the color of nickels, with no pupils or irises, glimmer like coins in a wishing well.

Glossy slime oozes from their bald skin. The silver, oily droplets trail their footsteps and long, thin tails. All of them are wearing tiny miner's caps. The lights bob around the clearing, a disorienting display, like glowing bubbles.

As they pass David's rock, a putrid, meaty stench follows in their wake. They surround the fallen boy, hissing. One of them unwinds the web from the victim's ankle and uses it to tie his hands at his back. The boy snaps his teeth in a vicious and feral attempt to break loose, though his face retains that unchanging, empty stare.

The closest creature tumbles back and then laughs—jagged, spiky teeth spreading wide in its primate face. It emits a disturbing sound somewhere between a purr and a growl, then jumps atop the boy, proceeding to stuff his mouth with web. The other silvery monkeys cheer their partner on, driven to glee by the defenseless boy's choking sounds.

Nauseated by the gruesome spectacle, David slings his goggles at the group to distract them, then jumps out from his hiding place.

"En garde!" he shouts, and swipes his sword at the silvery creatures in an attempt to frighten them away.

They screech in unison and squirm into some hedges nearby. Whimpers shake the leaves, followed by flashes of light from their caps.

David sheathes his sword and stoops beside the boy, releasing his binds.

"Yous-es aughtent shouldn't do it, talker," one of the creatures warns in an airy and threatening singsong voice. "The gardener omescay on the ayway." The others snicker in response, causing the shrubs to rattle, but then they grow disturbingly silent, as if listening for something.

Gardener? David keeps an eye trained on them as he continues to untie the boy. Uncle William niggles in the back of his mind. David hopes his other family members have found the old man by now. One thing he knows: Uncle William and his father both would want him to do the right thing. He took an oath to protect all humanity from the magi-kind, and this boy obviously needs protecting.

So intent on his inner battle, he doesn't see the giant hovering shadow until he hears the haunting song:

"The itsy-bitsy spider went up the water spout," an eerie voice croons from above.

His shoulders grow chill in the same instant his eyes snap up—too late. The horrific sight mesmerizes him.

A human-size spider hangs upside down overhead. The top half is female—translucent face with scars and bloody scratches scattered all across her purplish lips, cheeks, chin, and temples. Her silvery hair hangs down in thick coils, nearly reaching David's head. Her bottom half is a black widow's, five times bigger than the size of the medicine balls the knights use to build muscles and stamina. She's balanced on a strand of web affixed to the branches, and it glistens like her hungry blue eyes. Eight shiny spider legs bend around the anchor line, both terrifying and graceful.

David considers drawing his sword, but he's frozen with awe and fear.

She brings her left arm down, and it almost looks human, aside from the garden shears in place of a hand.

Gardener. The word taunts David, biting at him, nudging him back into the moment.

Snip, snip, snip. The whisk of the scissors wakes David completely from his trance. He crab-walks backward, pulse racing as the blades barely miss his face.

The spidery woman alights delicately onto the ground in front of him.

Terror skitters through his nervous system—a thousand icy sparks igniting chill bumps along his skin. Before he can right himself and run, a thick spray of web encases him from his feet to his thighs, catching up his sheath and rendering his sword hidden and useless. David totters off balance and flattens to the ground, right next to the boy he tried to save. The boy stares at him with those numbing, desolate eyes. He pushes the web from his mouth with his tongue and garbles again in that senseless mantra, as if trying to tell David something.

The left side of David's body aches where it hit the ground, and strands of grass tickle inside his ear.

"Well, well," their spidery captor says with a breathy voice that leaves a coppery taste in David's mouth, like flakes of rust and despair. "Did ye two make friends? How precioussss."

The silvery monkey creatures snicker and creep out from their hiding places. In a last-ditch attempt to escape, David claws his hands into the grass and pulls himself along toward the edge of the thicket.

Two of the creatures leap on him and another drags the ring from his finger.

"Sparkly!" it shouts, and holds up its prize.

"Give that back!" David demands, though he has no idea where his courage comes from.

Growling, the spider gardener sweeps the chatty monkeys aside with four spindly legs and then pins David in place, spinning him around and around until he's wrapped in web up to his shoulders.

"This ones-es is a sparkly talker," a silver captor taunts as it jabs at David with a stick.

"A talker he may be, my slave." The spidery woman bends low, her breath rushing across David's face. He coughs, gagging on the scent of decay and damp earth. "But is he a dreamer?" Her right hand, cloaked in a rubbery glove, catches his chin. She looks into his eyes—an intense study that pulls at his insides—like a child worrying at a loose scab. He feels the tug deep within, deeper than his heart, deeper than his bones and blood … until it rips free and exposes all of his fears and hopes, all the way to his soul. "Aye. He be a most unique dreamer. And he be mine."

At the spidery witch's proclamation, the monkey creatures dance, their oozing silvery slime slinging across David's face.

"Let us go," he pleads, casting a glance to the other boy.

"Oh, nay." Her rubber glove pets his head, tugging his hair at the scalp. "Ye came to Sister Two of yer own free will. Yer a gift for me, ye are. Ye shall be magnificent in me garden. Ye've seen things other humanlings haven't. Ahhh, ye will have the most vivid dreams. And nightmares, oh, the nightmares we will spin together." Drool dribbles from her lower lip and combines with the blood already on her chin. She swipes it away with her scissored hand, slicing her skin once more.

David tenses inside his webby casing, trying to work his hands closer to his sword. But his limbs are plastered in place—immovable.

The fallen boy whimpers across the way, and the spider scrabbles over to him. "It would seem we have a replacement for ye. Wasn't that easy? No more suffering." She inches off her glove, using her teeth to help in the absence of another working hand. The rubber sheath peels away to free five scorpion tails curling and uncurling in place of fingers.

David groans at the sight, repulsed.

Sister Two bows over her captive and rips the web from his chest, exposing pale skin. "Time to join the others." Her venomous hand presses against the boy's sternum and poison wells from the tip of her forefinger; then she punctures through the bone into his heart.

The boy howls and convulses. David cries out and struggles to get to him, but can't move. Within moments, the boy's body has shrunk and transformed to a silvery monkey slave, like the others. At last he stops struggling and closes his pupil-less eyes, his primate face relaxed and a black tongue hanging out of his mouth. Bubbles of slime ooze off what was once human flesh, and a long, thin tail thrashes at his backside.

David clenches his eyes shut, trying not to scream like a little boy. Be brave, he tells himself. You're a knight. But he's losing courage … he's forgetting everything he's been taught. All he remembers is blood and death and snapping teeth and stingers. There's a flash of his mother's soft and gentle hand stroking his head. It's sliced away by a pair of garden shears.

"Be not afraid, little dream boy." Sister Two has returned to lean over him as the slaves pick up their newest member and drag him away. "Ye're home now. Ye have an immortal brotherhood and sisterhood here. One day, when yer dreams dry up, ye'll join them. But first, ye'll feed my wretched, hungry souls."

"Nooo!" I shout. It's a scream both for David and for the lost boy we'll never know. The lost boy who will never be reunited with his loved ones. Who's now lost forever, even to himself.

I scream louder as the web covers David's face and he's no longer able to cry for himself or anyone else. "Noooo!"

"Alison." Thomas shakes my shoulder, and the scene scrambles and blurs around me, dragging me from his memory and dropping me back onto the chaise lounge, cradled by the dimness surrounding us.

I bury my face in Thomas's arm, seeking his scent and warmth. Reminding myself he's here and will never suffer like that again. "I'm so sorry."

"No, baby. You saved me. You have nothing to be sorry for." He wraps his arm around me and pulls me close, waiting until my heartbeat stops pounding in my ears, until I can breathe without heaving.

"Sister One lied to me," I say, struggling to make sense of things. "She said the pixies used children's bodies to feed the flowers. But that wasn't it at all."

"No. The pixies were once children themselves." Thomas sighs heavily, his rib cage lifting my head with the effort. "And they can never return to that form again."

My face burns with rage. "I can't watch anymore. Please tell me that's where it ends."

He squeezes me. "It's okay. That's the blessing. Something in the web worked like a sedative. I was in a trance. I have no memories of my time in her lair, because I made no memories. All I did was dream. But I do remember stirring when you freed me from her trap and I fell to the ground. I remember you wrapping me in a blanket."

"Yes," I whisper in the darkness. "Sister One let me borrow it. That was all she could offer. She was terrified of her twin's wrath. I used the blanket as a stretcher—to help me drag you out."

"I remember that, too. I saw glimpses of you, glancing behind to make sure I didn't fall off. Your eyes were the color of freedom. Of my future. They were full of so much sorrow, so much determination. And strength." Thomas hugs me tighter. "Then as I roused on Morpheus's shoulder when he carried me through the portal, you and your wings flickered in and out of my view. You were transcendent … ethereal. Waking up in your bed was like waking from a ten-year coma and seeing an angel. Your face was familiar, I guess from those glimpses of consciousness. For some reason, when Ivory erased my other memories, those moments remained. Maybe because they weren't quite memories yet. They were more … awakenings. And with all my other memories gone, you were the only thing I recognized. Later, I convinced myself I'd dreamed of you and those wings, but it didn't matter. Because just looking at you, with or without wings, I was reborn."

I snuggle closer to his chest so I can hear his heartbeat. Shutting my eyes, I replay in my mind that moment we first officially met as if I were viewing it on the screen across the room.

I had sat beside the bed and kept vigil that night, after breaking all my mirrors so Morpheus couldn't find his way back into my room. I knew I'd let him down. I also knew he would be furious. But I didn't care. All I cared about was helping the boy in the web.

Knowing he'd have no identity when he woke, I named him as he slept. He reminded me of a painting I once saw in one of my foster homes. They were religious people, and a portrait of Saint Thomas hung over their fireplace. His hair was brown, his face young but etched with wisdom, and his dark eyes sympathetic and soulful. He was the patron saint of people who struggled with doubt, and I had never believed that I had a place in the human world. So I appointed him my personal saint.

But as I watched the dream boy sleep that night in my bedroom, a boy I'd helped save … a boy I'd given a home, I knew I would never doubt my place again.

Nervous and insecure, I watched his brown eyes flicker open the next morning. A peachy dawn danced upon the walls in the room, animated by the tree branches swaying outside my window. I wondered if he would fear me, if he would panic or lash out. But when our gazes connected, I felt—for the first time in all my years—safe. He reached for me as if he'd known me forever. Considering how long he'd been without human contact, I didn't hesitate to reach back. Silently, I took his hand and slid under the eyelet quilt, nestling into his side. Without a word, his fingertip glided over every feature on my face, his breath sugary and sweet across my skin—a residue of the forgetting potion Ivory had poured into him. To me, it was the scent of fresh hope and new life. Then he stopped at my mouth, cupped my chin, and pressed his lips to mine, his touch so tender yet so confident for a nineteen-year-old boy who had never kissed a girl. It was my first reciprocal kiss, the only one that reached into my heart and lit me up like a torch standing strong against the wind. I stayed there in the warmth of his arms and we slept for hours, until the sun peaked in the sky and it was time to give him answers, however false they were.

Thomas couldn't speak for those first few months. He understood the things I said, but he had to relearn words—how to articulate and read them. It was as if Sister Two not only drained away his dreams and imagination, but also stole a lifetime of communication. Though it was frustrating for him, it made it easy for me, to tailor his impairment and amnesia to a car accident and head injury.

I look back now at the lies I told in hopes to keep him sane, and wonder how different things might have been had I brought him here to the train for his truth.

But the past can never be undone. He's forgiven me, and loves me despite it all.

"I only wish I could've saved all those other children along with you," I say, clenching my hands in Thomas's shirt. "Or saved Alyssa from the pain she went through."

"Come on, sweetie. Can't you see how many lives you did save? Not just mine. You and I were both destined to be a part of Wonderland. No matter what paths we might've chosen. We were caught in that web from the moment we were born. Which means it was inevitable that our daughter would be as well, and that her part would be bigger than both of ours."

"I understand that, but—"

"But what you keep forgetting," Thomas interrupts gently, "is that without your role in all of it, our girl would've never been born to begin with, because I would've ended up a pixie, constantly in search of that missing sparkle of inspiration, never knowing exactly what I'd lost. I can't think of a more tragic ending. Can you?"

A new emotion rises inside me. A splash of righteous indignation for all the lost human children and the one I was able to save, hot and overpowering.

"By stepping into Wonderland in the first place," Thomas continues as he takes my hand and presses it to his heart, "you gave our daughter life, and a chance at life to all the children Sister Two would've caught and used up in the future. Morpheus's luring Alyssa into being queen led him to fall in love with her, which in turn gave a selfish, solitary fae the chance to grow and do something honorable … She's with us now because of it. Jeb giving up his muse for human children—a boy who didn't have much of a childhood himself—another honorable sacrifice. We're all better people … or netherlings in some cases … because of you being brave and daring enough to seek a better life for yourself. Because of your choices as that young, lonely thirteen-year-old girl, and then again as that righteous and caring sixteen-year-old princess, countless lives were saved and improved. And by saving Alyssa's father, you gave her the chance to exist in the first place."

I stave off a sob. "Which gave you the chance to raise her. She's strong and amazing because of you." I take his hand in mine, curl his fingers to a fist, and kiss his knuckles. "Thank you for never giving up on me or our girl. You're our hero."

"You're my hero, Alison. Literally." He brushes a strand of hair from my face that has fallen from its pin. "How many men can say that about the woman they love? Huh?"

I stop fighting the tears. I let them stream quietly down my face. These are different than the others I've cried. They're pure, healing, and happy. Blissfully happy. In spite of the darkness we've all faced, I have my family. I've honored my mother's death by enabling others to live. Just like Morpheus once said … he gave me a chance to make peace with her death. And now Thomas has given me a chance to make peace with my life. Everything is as it should be. At long last.

There would be times the dark thoughts would revisit, I was sure. But now … now I had a light to shine upon them. A beacon to guide me through.

"No more looking back," I say to my husband, my voice surprisingly strong.

"No more train rides." He strokes my jawline with his knuckles. "Only forward, from this day on. Cherishing each and every moment we have left together in this world. You with me?"

"Until the very end," I answer.

Thomas dries my tears. "Happy anniversary, Ali-bear." He draws me into his lap on the chaise lounge, and kisses me until I'm breathless and blushing like a new bride. After he stands me up to straighten my clothes, he whispers in my ear, "I'm starving. How about some spaghetti Bolognese?"

I laugh. "You read my mind."

As we make our way off the train toward the mirror, he holds my hand. The boy in the web, and the man of my dreams. Always and forever, my anchor.