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C ATHERINE SWIVELED , SEARCHING for the scream, as chaos erupted—chairs crashing, paws and wings scrambling away from someone, some thing …

Her attention fell on the Turtle, that adorable, most enthusiastic of judges.

He had fallen off his chair behind the table, and if Jack hadn’t accidentally tripped on the tablecloth in his haste to get away, yanking the cloth and all the cake-filled dishes away with him, Cath would not have been able to see the Turtle at all.

As it was, he was on full view to the startled onlookers.

Upended on his back, exposing the softer underside of his shell, his arms and legs flailing.

He was still groaning and pressing his flippers to his stomach, his voice hoarse with pain, his eyes wide and frightened.

From her perch on the contestants’ platform, Catherine had a perfect view of the Turtle when he began to change.

His skin bubbled beneath the surface, shifting and undulating.

Some of his scales sloughed away and new skin stretched along all four limbs.

His screams turned gargled as his head, too, began to morph into something strange. Something horrid.

Cath pressed a hand over her mouth to keep from heaving. Someone suggested carrying the Turtle down to the sea so one of the Sturgeons could have a look at him, but nobody dared to touch the poor thing.

No one could look away, until the squashing and twisting of the Turtle’s limbs gradually stilled and his screams dwindled into sobs. A puddle of tears had formed beneath his thrashing head.

The head that was no longer the head of a turtle.

The pointed beak and sunken eyes were gone, replaced with the contorted face of a baby calf, complete with flared pink nostrils and soft tawny fur.

Though his shell and belly and front flippers remained intact, the Turtle’s lower legs were now hooves, and, with one last painful shudder from the creature, his reptilian tail stretched and curled and sprouted a tuft of fur on its end. His tail, too, was now that of a young cow.

“It’s impossible,” someone said, and the word sent a chill down Catherine’s spine.

The crowd could not stop gawking, though some of the children had been coaxed away from the horrific sight.

The Turtle continued to cry enormous blubbering tears, still trying in vain to roll himself over, and it dawned on Catherine how vulnerable he was.

Embarrassed and in pain for all the crowd to see, and having no idea what was becoming of him.

Words formed beneath his sobs— What happened?

What’s happening to me? What’s going on? Help me, help, help…

Unfreezing her legs, Catherine rushed forward. “Someone help him!” she cried, dropping to her knees to crawl beneath the table. She knelt at the Turtle’s side and laid a hand on his leg, just above the new hoof. It was covered in a fine layer of fur and damp with sweat.

“You’re going to be all right,” she whispered. The Turtle continued to blubber nonsense and hiccups. “Or at least, mostly right. I hope. We’re going to roll you over. Just hold still.”

She looked up at the stunned faces. The King, pale and shocked, the Knave, disgusted, the Duke, looking on the verge of illness, and the Caterpillar, eyeing the Turtle like an unexpected result of a science experiment.

The White Rabbit had fled from the stage and his pink eyes now peered over its edge.

Mary Ann had removed her bonnet, maybe confused to see her dreams of the baking contest so quickly turned to a nightmare.

“Help me!” Cath yelled.

No one moved, and it was a startling sight that snagged her attention in the crowd. Two piercing eyes watching her from a livid face. Peter Peter’s expression was twisted in fury, one lip peeled up to reveal gritting teeth. And he was looking straight at her.

Cath shrank back under the force of his loathing. She couldn’t comprehend the fear that curdled in her gut as she glanced up at the judges’ table and the five plates that had been set there.

Four untouched pieces of pumpkin spice cake—and one plate showing nothing but crumbs.

Bells jingled, mockingly cheerful, and the crowd parted to let Jest and Hatta through. They both looked as appalled as anyone, but concerned, too, as they climbed onto the stage and knelt beside the hysterical creature.

“It’s all right, chap,” said Hatta, picking up the bowler hat that had fallen off during the Turtle’s transformation and tucking it under his arm. He laid his free hand on the creature’s shell. “Calm yourself, now. It can’t be as bad as all that.”

But his creased brow and Jest’s thin-pressed mouth said otherwise. The Turtle blubbered on and on.

They rolled the Turtle back onto his stomach, but the position was no longer natural, what with the hooves jutting from beneath his shell. Instead, with a gasp and a sob, the Turtle pushed himself onto two knobby legs, his flippers hanging dejectedly in front of him.

“I’m a turtle,” he whimpered, looking down at the abomination he’d become. “I’m a real turtle. Y-you believe me, don’t you?”

Catherine shivered. “Of course you are.”

But it was a lie .

The poor creature was changed. Disfigured. She couldn’t fathom how, but he had become a Mock Turtle, right before their eyes.

***

T HE FESTIVAL THAT HAD BEGUN with so much spirit and joy ended darkly with the memory of the Mock Turtle’s sobs on everyone’s minds and recent threats of the Jabberwock still plaguing them.

Festivities that normally continued far into the night were over before dusk could fall.

The baking contest was left uncompleted, a handful of entries still untasted and unjudged, but everyone having lost both their appetites and their sense of merriment.

Cath could not bring herself to be selfish enough to ask about the prize.

She climbed into the carriage with her parents.

The ride was suffocating. Catherine stared out the window, seeing again and again the furious expression on Sir Peter’s face.

She felt guilty, but not because she’d stolen a pumpkin from him.

She couldn’t help feeling responsible for what had happened, but how could that be?

It was only a pumpkin cake. And while she had heard of sweets that made a person shrink and mushrooms that made a person grow, she had never heard of anything disastrous happening as a result of a pumpkin.

With trembling fingers, Catherine reached up and pulled the macaron hat off her head, settling it on her lap. It no longer brought the delight it had hours before.

Her father sighed. He had not stopped sighing since they had left the beach.

“They’re already calling it the Mock Turtle Festival,” he said as the carriage rounded onto their drive. “It’s a travesty. Soon they’ll be calling me the Marquess of Mock Turtles.”

“Don’t be melodramatic,” said her mother. “This whole catastrophe will be forgotten in a matter of days, you’ll see. ”

But she seemed unconvinced of it herself, and the fact that she didn’t mention the King once during the drive suggested to Catherine that she was more concerned than she wanted to let on.

The annual festival was their family’s great contribution to the Kingdom of Hearts—in some ways, their place among the nobility rested on the festival’s shoulders, and it had been their one notable distinction for generations.

Yet, knowing how much this could affect her family’s reputation was barely a passing thought to Catherine. It was the poor Turtle who would suffer most of all, the pitiful, devastated thing.

As soon as they arrived home, Catherine escaped down to the kitchen. The fire had long gone out, so she kept her shawl tight around her shoulders.

Setting a lantern on one of the tables, she grabbed a stack of recipe books and laid them out before her.

She began flipping through, scanning the names of dishes their cook had made for them over the years.

There were plenty of notes jotted in the margins—“Clarify the butter first or it will confuse the rest of the ingredients,” or, “Don’t let the tomatoes stew for too long as they’re like to become bitter and resentful. ”

Finally she arrived at the recipe she was looking for.

Mock Turtle Soup.

She bent over the brittle, broth-stained pages and started to read.

Begin with a medium-size mock turtle , the recipe began .

Using a sharp butcher knife, remove the calf head.

Mock turtles die slowly, so be aware that the head will continue to mewl and the body may try to crawl away for some minutes after decapitation.

Once body is no longer mobile, submerge in a large pot of boiling water.

Meat will naturally separate from the shell as it cooks.

Remove the mock turtle from the water and peel away the skin and shell before —

Catherine slammed the book shut, her stomach roiling.

She would never eat mock turtle soup again.

Light footsteps thudded on the stairs and Cath turned to see Mary Ann descending the steps with a bundle of dirtied tablecloths in her arms. Her hair was disheveled and exhausted circles had appeared beneath her eyes.

Pushing the stool back, Cath went to hold open the bin of soiled laundry waiting to be washed.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

Mary Ann groaned. “That was a long, tiring day, even for me.”

Cath pulled out one of the stools for her. “Were people talking about that poor Turtle after we left?”

Slumping onto the stool, Mary Ann untied her pretty bonnet and dropped it onto the counter. “It’s all anyone would talk of. No one can fathom what caused it. They just kept saying over and over how awful it was.” She sighed. “A mock turtle. What could cause such a thing?”

She thought again of Sir Peter. Of the one devoured piece of pumpkin cake.

“I don’t know,” she said, and started gathering up the recipe books again.

Gnawing on her cheek, she turned back to see that Mary Ann had laid her head down on her arms. Normally she was the model of productivity.

It was odd to see weariness catch up with her.

“Would I be a horrible person to inquire about the winner of the baking contest?”

Mary Ann wheezed into her elbow. “We can be horrible people together. I keep wondering, too, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask, even though I spotted Mr. Rabbit while we were tearing down the grandstand.

” She lifted her head enough to meet Cath’s gaze.

“They weren’t able to finish the judging, so I don’t see how they can award a winner.

Probably the prize will go back into the treasury or be applied to some other celebration. ”

“I figured as much.” Cath climbed onto the second stool, wishing she’d started a batch of bread rather than look up awful recipes. Kneading and pummeling the dough would have relaxed her.

Mary Ann’s eyes had shut. “They say Mr. Caterpillar is almost moved out of his shop. It won’t be long now…”

She didn’t finish, nor did she have to. It wouldn’t be long before someone else took up residence in their storefront, if they weren’t ready to do it themselves.

“All right,” Cath whispered, gathering her courage. “No more stalling. I have to ask my parents for the money, or permission to sell off my dowry. There’s no other way around it.”

“Oh, Cath.” With a groan, Mary Ann peeled her head off her elbow again.

“I adore your optimism, I always have, but they’re going to say no.

You know it as well as I.” Her mouth turned down and her thoughts seemed very far away as she added, “We’ll have no bakery without financing, and no financing without an investor, and who would ever invest in a poor maid and the daughter of a marquess?

Maybe it’s time we realize this was never going to happen, and face our true destiny.

” She forced a smile in Catherine’s direction.

“At least, to be the maid to a queen is more than I ever would have expected when I was a young girl, so it isn’t all that bad. ”

Gnashing her teeth, Catherine grabbed the blue bonnet and thrust it onto Mary Ann’s head, cinching the yellow ribbon under her chin with a quick tug.

“I won’t tolerate such nonsense. If ever there was a time for dreaming, this is it, Mary Ann.

Now, I am going to march up there and demand a word with my parents, and I need to know I have your full support behind me.

So do you want to start a bakery together or not? ”

Mary Ann opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, and seemed to mull over her thoughts for a moment. Her head began to sink between her shoulders, and her blue eyes misted with unshed tears. “I do, Cath. My head tells me it will never happen, but my heart—”

“Sometimes your heart is the only thing worth listening to.” Cath peeled her shoulders back, preparing herself. “Who knows? Maybe they’ll be so weary from the festival they’ll have no fight left in them.”

“ Your mother, without any fight left in her? I wish you luck, Catherine, I truly do, but I also fear this day has already reached its limit on impossible things.”