Bargain price

CHAPTER 42

T HEY TREKKED single-file along a volcano’s narrow ridge, their noses and mouths covered with cloth torn from Bibwit’s robe to protect them from airborne ash. It was too hot to speak, almost too hot to breathe. No one had said a word since they first emerged onto the Volcanic Plains and Dodge had suggested they smash the exit portal just in case. Redd’s diabolically inventive mind was not to be underestimated; any remnant of the Crystal Continuum might cause her to reconstruct it in its entirety, providing her with the means to reach the plains that much sooner. Now Redd and her armies would

have to travel on foot or by beast.

“The looking glass must have been used by jabberwocky poachers,” Bibwit Harte had said. “Lucky for us, it was over-looked or we’d still be…” He’d shivered with the thought of the void.

“If Redd saw us in the Continuum, she might still be watching us,” General Doppelganger had observed. “Can’t be helped,” Hatter had said.

Dodge had been impatient. “Then let’s stop standing around and get to where we have to go.”

So Bibwit, who carried detailed maps of the queendom within his bald head, led them toward the Valley of Mushrooms. Picking their way along the rocky, irregular ridge, they constantly had to look down to be sure of their footing, all the time reminding themselves of how high they were and how dangerous their passage.

“Ah!”

A hardened chunk of lava hit General Doppelganger on the shoulder. The Alyssians paused, looked up. Another chunk of lava rock fell. Another and another.

The volcano’s moving.

Not the entire volcano, just the topmost layer of rock and earth on the steep slope above them. The ridge gave way, crumbling beneath the Alyssians’ feet, and they tumbled and rolled down into a gorge at the base of the volcano. General Doppelganger was half buried in earth and rubble. Bibwit came to rest completely upside down, his feet in the air, but he quickly righted himself, coughing and spitting, before he was suffocated. Alyss, being the lightest among them, had bounced down the volcano’s craggy lower slope and slid to a stop on a bed of gravel. Hatter and Dodge stood wiping lava crud from their coat sleeves as if surviving a landslide was something they did every day.

“Everyone all right?” asked General Doppelganger. “Alyss?” Dodge’s voice, concerned.

“I’m okay.” She didn’t want the others to think she considered a few scrapes and bruises serious injuries. She was supposed to be strong enough to defeat Redd. “Someone’s watching us,” she said.

A pair of yellow-green eyes were peering at them from the black mouth of a nearby cave. Before anyone could speak, the giant reptilian head of a jabberwock thrust forward from between two boulders. Its long tongue lashed at Bibwit, scorching a swath through the sleeve of his robe to his delicate skin.

“Yaow!”

Even in the heat of the plains, Alyss and the others could feel the hotness of the jabberwock’s breath, fouled by the stink of carcass meat. The creature opened its slobbery mouth impossibly wide, as a cobra does to swallow a rabbit-a display of menace quite uncalled for, since the jabberwock could have easily fit two full-grown Wonderlanders in its jaws with any old everyday chomp. The Alyssians backed toward the cave. The jabberwock lurched toward them, shot a spitball of fire at Alyss. She dived to the ground and the fireball flared against the gorge wall, but in its brief explosion of light the Alyssians saw

that the yellow-green eyes in the cave belonged to a miniature jabberwock surrounded by gnawed bones:

a newborn.

“She’s protecting her baby,” Bibwit said.

The mother jabberwock rose up on her hind legs, preparing to charge, and in a single swift motion, Hatter took off his top hat, flicked it into blades, and hurled it at the rock overhanging the cave entrance.

Thwink-thwink-thwink-thwink!

Rocks loosened and fell into a pile, blocking the mouth of the cave. Hatter’s blades were still boomeranging back to him when the mother jabberwock let out a pained wail and, ignoring the Alyssians, scratched and scrabbled at the fallen debris, clearing it away to save her baby, as Alyss and the others escaped unharmed along the gorge floor.

Each of them knew without saying it aloud: As long as they were on the plains, the threat of jabberwocky still loomed.