Seeing Redd

CHAPTER 12

T HE FIRE crystals in the shallow pit cast a modest heat as Hatter sat staring at Weaver’s stilled image. He had paused the diary, wondering if something were wrong with its inner workings, because his beloved appeared blurry, as if seen through a veil of water. But then he felt the wet on his cheeks. It wasn’t the diary; he was crying.

She was dressed in the Alyssian uniform: rough-fibered and nondescript except for the emblem of a white heart on the cuff of the right shirtsleeve.

His hand twitched. The diary began to play.

“If you’re viewing this,” Weaver said, “then you have proved wrong all those who currently believe you and the princess are dead…although it also means that I’m most likely dead.”

She smiled sadly at the space between them. Hatter nearly slammed the diary shut. He’d been wrong; he wasn’t ready for this. But to relegate Weaver’s image back inside the book…No, he couldn’t do that either. It would be too much like shutting her away in a tomb. And so he sat there, watching her recorded image, listening to her every word.

“This diary is for me as much as it is you, Hatter. I hope I’ll be able to tell you what I have to say in person, but circumstances here are dangerous. Just because I’m alive today is no guarantee that I’ll be so tomorrow. You probably already know that Redd has destroyed the Millinery. Her goal is genocide, to wipe the Milliner breed from existence. It’s believed that she salvaged the ID tracking system from the Millinery and is using it for this purpose, after which she’ll destroy it. You often told me that one born a Milliner still needs the proper training to make the most of his or her natural gifts, but Redd puts more credence in the birth than in the training. As soon as the first Milliner was ambushed by Redd, I hid out here, not sure if I’d be targeted too. There are rumors that a few Milliners have so far managed to escape their assassins and are hiding undercover somewhere. If the rumors are true, I hope they will continue to evade their would-be murderers so that once the rebellion succeeds-and I believe it must-they will come out of hiding and you can lead them in a new Millinery.”

Hatter felt a twinge; reestablishing the Millinery was the last thing he felt like doing.

“I understand that our relationship was difficult for you, Hatter,” Weaver went on. “I know that despite how thoughtful and loving you always were to me, a part of you was angry with yourself for succumbing

to your feelings for anyone, let alone a civilian. A master of self-control as all of Wonderland believes you to be, you shouldn’t have been consorting with me. You thought your feelings a mark against you, an

indication of weakness.”

“I no longer think so,” he said aloud.

“I always knew your duties could call you away,” Weaver continued. “It was wrong of me not to tell you when I first found out, but…Hatter, my love…I’m sorry.” She wiped her eyes. “I should’ve told you before you left…I was pregnant.”

Hatter remained perfectly still. Pregnant? With his child? So long did he remain unmoving that, when he again became conscious of his surroundings, he thought he had paused the diary. But then he saw Weaver’s chest rise and fall, rise and fall; she was breathing, struggling with her own emotions.

“I know how you feel about halfers,” she said at last, “and I was never sure how you’d react to hearing that you had fathered one. Every time I thought to tell you of my joy-of our joy-I found an excuse not to. I did plan to tell you the next time we’d be on Talon’s Point together. But as you know, there was no next time.”

Too preoccupied with the vision before him, Hatter didn’t hear the pop that sounded-either the bursting of an air bubble in one of the fire crystals or an explosion from outside the cave.

“I couldn’t give birth alone, so I risked an overland journey to the Alyssian camp in the Everlasting

Forest. Doctors there delivered me of a beautiful baby girl.” With the saddest smile Hatter had ever seen, the smile of one who had long ago resigned herself to a life incomplete and unsatisfactory, Weaver said, “It’s time you knew your daughter’s name, Hatter.”

But just then, as if surprised by an intruder, she looked off at someone or something not recorded by the diary, and the pop that Hatter had failed to hear a moment before proved to be the opening salvo in a battle raging on the nearby mountain, which Hatter now heard without hearing, his whole being fixed on Weaver’s image, already fizzling to nothing as she whispered, “Molly.”