Page 74

T HE TRAVELING HAT SHOP was empty when she squeezed her heart-studded dress through the doorway—empty but for the marvelous Hatter himself.

A cackle reverberated off the wooden walls the moment she stepped over the threshold.

Catherine drew herself to her full height and let her gown fall around her feet.

She met Hatta’s gleeful laugh with firm-pressed lips.

He was on his throne, feet up, hiding his face behind his purple hat. Mannequin heads were set on all of the chairs, adorned in elaborate hats. None were whispering now. They stared blankly ahead at the assortment of ribbons and felts and half-empty teacups.

“Good day, Hatta.”

He lifted the hat and set it onto his white hair. Hair that was in desperate need of a combing. His cravat was undone, his coat wrinkled. There was a mysterious stain on the handkerchief that was crumpled inside his breast pocket.

“Is it six o’clock already?” he said, picking up a pocket watch from the table.

“Why—barely noon. That can’t be right. Perhaps I shall make it forever six o’clock, forever time for tea.

Tea in the morning, tea in the middle of the night.

Then I shall always be an accommodating host. Would that suit you and your early arrival, Lady Pinkerton? Or shall I say— Your Majesty. ”

Cath shut the shop’s door. “Am I early? I did not realize I was expected.”

“I’m always expecting someone. Always coming and going, coming and going.

” He tossed the pocket watch onto the table with a clang.

The face popped open and Cath could hear it ticking, too loud and too fast, like a manic countdown.

If Hatta noticed it, though, it didn’t show.

“I hope you haven’t come here seeking my marital blessing. ”

“I don’t need anyone’s blessing, least of all yours.”

“Indeed, sweetness. You are the epitome of a royal bride. Tell me, does it make it easier, knowing the union had been foreordained? It was all laid out for you in stone and ink. You didn’t even have to make the decision yourself, just go along with all fate expected of you.”

She approached the table, narrowing her eyes. “That’s cruel of you to say, after my one choice was taken from me.”

“That is cruel of you to say, after being given a choice to begin with.”

She frowned.

“What do you want, Lady Pinkerton?”

“I came to see how you’re faring.”

“Liar.” His white teeth flashed in a sardonic smile. “You came to see if I’ve gone mad. You want to know you’re not the only one to succumb to the Sisters’ prophecy.”

“I no longer care about the Sisters’ prophecy.”

“Convenient,” he growled, “as you’re the one who dragged us back here.”

She clenched her fists. Then slowly unclenched them, smoothing her palms along the stiff fabric of her skirt. “Where’s Haigha?”

“He went to get more tea.” Hatta picked up his cane and stuck the end through a teapot handle. He lifted it clean off the table and the lid clattered onto a saucer. A few lonesome drops dribbled from the spout. “As you can see, we’re out. ”

She let out a slow exhale. “I half expected you to have gone back to Chess.”

The teapot slid back onto the table and crashed against a cracked porcelain cup.

“Without either of the Rooks, or the heart we came for?” One side of his mouth twisted into an ugly grimace.

“You should be afraid, Lady Pinkerton. You are a queen now.” He jutted a finger toward her chest. “That has value.”

“I am not afraid of you. Tell me your riddle again, Hatta, and I will tell you that my heart cannot be stolen, only purchased, and mine has already been bought.”

His cheek started to twitch. “You want to hear a riddle, you say? I know a very good one. It begins, why is a raven like a writing desk?”

She lifted her chin. “Have you gone mad, Hatta? I can’t seem to tell.”

“They are both so full of poetry, you see. Darkness and whimsy, nightmares and song.”

“Hatta—”

His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “I figured it out, Lady Pinkerton.”

She pressed her lips together and swallowed. “You figured what out?”

“Everything. Peter. The Jabberwock. The Mock Turtle. We are both to blame.”

Catherine gripped the edge of the table, staring at him across the turmoil. The mannequins said nothing.

“You see, many years ago,” said Hatta, as if she’d asked, “I brought a pumpkin back from Chess. It was going to be a pumpkin hat. A toothless, smiling Jack-O’-Lantern that would light up on the inside.

Oh, it would have been marvelous.” He sung the word marvelous , letting his head tip back over the side of the chair.

“But the pumpkin kept growing and growing. I couldn’t make it stop.

It got to be as big as a goat and no longer fit to be a hat, so I cut it up and carved out the seeds.

I took them to the nearest pumpkin patch and asked if they wanted them.

Ungrateful wretches they were, the man and his sickly wife.

Told me something about wanting no charity, slammed the door on my face.

So I tossed the seeds away into a corner of their patch.

” He smiled wryly. “I thought nothing more of it after that.”

“And then they started to grow,” said Cath.

“So they did. Lady Peter won a pumpkin-eating contest, did you know? She ate twenty-two of them, they say. Twenty-two bloody little pumpkins. And then she turned into a monster.” His lips warbled into a mockery of a smile. Cath could see it now, the hysteria lurking beneath his amethyst eyes.

She thought of the destroyed corner of the pumpkin patch. Peter had tried to kill them all, but one seed had survived and grown and thrived.

“And I made the pumpkin cake,” she said, “and so the Mock Turtle was my doing, and yours, and maybe Peter’s too.”

“Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater,” Hatta quoted in a singsong voice, “had a wife but couldn’t keep her.”

Cath shuddered. Her gaze traipsed across the mishmash of ornamentation on the table. “What else? Have you brought any other dangerous things back from Chess that I should know about?”

“Only Jest, love. He was dangerous enough for us both.”

Hearing his name opened a crack in her heart that she hadn’t felt in days. She bit her cheek and waited for the pain to recede and dull again.

She started making her way around the table.

“You lied to me. Your hats are dangerous. We can’t trust anything you’ve brought from Chess.

” She grabbed the chair to Hatta’s right and made to pull it out from the table, but he whapped the cane over its arms. The cane crushed through a chiffon hat and shattered the skull of the clay mannequin underneath. Catherine jumped back .

“Don’t be rude, Lady Pinkerton,” Hatta said through his teeth. “Look around. There is no room for you at this table.”

Rejection sliced through her. She sucked in a breath.

“You did not deserve him,” he said. There was a sadistic glint in his eyes.

He was watching her, like he was waiting to see which accusations would make her writhe the most. “I’m glad he cannot see you now.

I’m glad he’ll never know how quickly you fell into the King’s arms. You couldn’t even wait until the worms had tasted him. ”

She clenched her fists. “I made a bargain to avenge him. I did it for him , whatever you might think. I loved him. I still do.”

“If you think you had a monopoly on loving him, then you should be the King’s new fool, not his wife.”

She stared at him. Her thoughts somersaulted, warred with each other—first, a mess of confusion. Then understanding.

She straightened. “Did he know?”

“Does it matter?” With a brusque laugh, Hatta swung his legs off the table and stood.

“He came here meaning to take your heart, but it was clear from the night he brought you to the tea party that he was going to lose his, instead.” His voice had a growl to it as he sauntered to the wall and pulled a hat off one of the shelves.

No—not a hat. A crown.

He tossed it onto the table. The tines of the crown were made of Jabberwock teeth, jagged and sharp, and strung together with purple velvet and gemstones in hideous mockery of the real crown she’d left at the castle.

“That’s for you,” he said. “Consider it a wedding gift, from your most humble servant. One mad hatter to his monarch.”

Her eyes stung. “You are not mad yet. You don’t have to be.”

He planted his cane on the ground and leaned into it.

“It is in my blood, Lady Pinkerton. My father and his father and his father before him. Don’t you understand?

I am always coming and I am always going, but Time is searching for me and he’s getting closer, always closer.

You cursed me when you went back through that gate. You cursed us all.”

“You didn’t have to follow me.”

He snarled. “I had to follow him. ” He took off strolling down the length of the table.

“Did you come here to make a purchase, Your Majesty? A most marvelous hat, and all it will cost you is everything. ” He knocked the butt of the cane into the mannequins’ hats as he passed, tipping them onto the table.

Many of the heads fell too, their foreheads cracking against the table’s edge.

“A hat to give you wisdom, or maybe compassion as you embark on your queenly role? Perhaps a charm of forgetfulness, would you like that? Would you like to forget this entire tragedy ever happened? Or are you so vain, Lady Pinkerton, that you would like eternal youth? Endless beauty? I could make it happen, you know. Anything is possible when you know the way through the Looking Glass!” He started swinging the cane like a battledore, hitting the hats so hard they soared against the room and crashed into the walls.

“That is enough!”

The Hatter hesitated, the cane prepped for another swing.

“Anything is not possible,” she seethed. “If it were, you would have already brought him back.”

He recoiled. His eyes had gone crazed. The pocket watch on the table was growing louder, the tick-ticking a constant buzz.

Catherine snatched the cane away. He let it go without a struggle.

“Whatever you say, these creations of yours are unnatural. I won’t allow them—not anymore.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Beginning this moment, all travel to and from the lands of Chess is strictly forbidden, by order of the Queen.”

His eyes narrowed.

“You started this, playing with things you didn’t understand. You created a monster and it’s your fault Jest is dead. You brought him here and you brought the pumpkin and you gave Mary Ann that hat, and it’s all your fault!”

He inhaled sharply. “Yes. So it is.”

She jerked back, surprised at the levity of his admission.

“I know it is, and I shall pay for it with my sanity, just as the Sisters said. I’ve seen the drawings too, Lady Pinkerton. I’ve seen them all . ”

Her blood pulsed beneath her skin. “If you ever return to Chess, you had better intend to stay there, for I will not suffer a single grain of sand to cross through that maze again.”

A sneer twisted his once-handsome face. “You cannot stop me from coming and going. This is my business. My livelihood. And as soon as Time should find me—”

“I am a queen, Hatta, and I can do as I like. I will imprison the Sisters. I will destroy the treacle well. I will burn the maze to the ground if I must. Do we have an understanding?”

She held his gaze, letting their wills battle silently between them.

His cheek started to twitch. Just slightly at first, but it continued to flutter until one side of his mouth lifted into a painful grin. “Why,” he whispered, watching her with glossy eyes, “why is a raven like a writing desk?”

Shaking her head, Catherine tossed the cane onto the table, satisfied with the crash of porcelain and silver. “It’s a shame, Hatta. Truly it is. Madness does not suit you.”

“Of course it does,” he cackled. “Murderer, martyr, monarch, mad. It runs in my family. It’s a part of my blood. Don’t you remember? I know you remember.”

The watch was ticking so fast now she thought it would burst, crack wide open—gears shattering across the table.

“Good-bye, Hatta.” She swung toward the door, but his desperate laughter followed her. A shrill giggle. A sobbing gasp .

“But why? Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

Her hand fell on the doorknob. “It’s not ,” she spat, ripping open the door. “It’s just a stupid riddle. It is nothing but stuff and nonsense!”

Suddenly, inexplicably, the pocket watch fell silent.

Hatta’s face slackened. His brow beaded with sweat.

“Stuff and nonsense,” he whispered, the words cracking.

“Nonsense and stuff and much of a muchness and nonsense all over again. We are all mad here, don’t you know?

And it runs in my family, it’s a part of my blood and he’s here, Time has finally found me and I—” His voice shredded.

His eyes burned. “I haven’t the slightest idea, Your Queenness.

I find that I simply cannot recall why a raven is like a writing desk. ”