Page 29 of Wondrous

“What are you, anyway?”

He’d finished his tea and cinnamon swirl and was examining me with open—well, I almost would have said fascination if I hadn’t known how much he hated me. Still, there was less animosity there, as if he’d been rude enough to me to satisfy himself, at least for the moment. Also, I had the impression that I was one of the first people he’d encountered at close range, if not the very first, despite his sinister comments on the subject. It seemed I was at least as interesting to him as he was to me.

“I’m a girl,” I said slowly. “Oh, I see. I’m not from Wonderland. I’m from Upland. I suppose you can tell.”

He nodded. “That’s it. You smell different. In every other respect, you seem just like the other two-handers I’ve seen.”

“Two-handers?” I repeated.

He gestured vaguely toward my hands. “That’s what we call you.”

I remembered how he’d used his tail to strike at me and suppressed a shudder. “What do you mean, I smell different?”

He shook his head. “You smell like the mud of a thousand lands. What is your world like? And how did you get here? Did you say you came all the way from the Queen’s castle? How?”

I didn’t think I was imagining the fascination now. He seemed to be trying to cover it, though, by asking his questions as scornfully as possible. “Using my feet, mostly,” I said. “And my world isn’t all that interesting, I promise.”

Hedgewitch trundled out of the shadows with an indignant snort. This was interesting, because hedgehogs were quite cowardly and preferred to stay hidden around people they didn’t trust. Perhaps the jabberwock’s good looks worked on hedgehogs, too.

I picked her up and let her nestle into my lap. The other hedgehogs followed Hedgewitch’s lead as they always did, emerging one by one from the forest gloom.

To my astonishment, the jabberwock was immediately taken with them. He reached for Hogwash, who was sniffing his toes, then drew his hand back with a curse.

“What happened to these poor rats?” he demanded.

“They’re not rats,” I said. “They’re hedgehogs. They’re naturally like this. I rescued them from the Queen of Hearts, who was mistreating them.”

I told him about the Queen’s croquet games and how the hedgehogs had suffered, being whacked around all the time. I wasn’t certain he would understand everything but was pleased to have an opportunity to show him that I wasn’t completely awful. He watched me with a furrowed brow.

“I think you care what I think about you,” he said. “Why?”

I couldn’t say it was because I felt guilty about what I’d done to him, or that I was starting to feel as if I wasn’t cut out for being anybody’s enemy—it made me want to pull a blanket over my head and hide. I wasn’t sure he’d believe any of that. Instead I said, “I suppose I care what everyone here thinks about me. I just want to belong—in Wonderland, I mean.”

“It’s not your world,” he said—not rudely but with something like disbelief, as if it were incomprehensible that I would want to be anywhere else than where I’d been born. I supposed that for someone who had spent his life in the same woods, it was incomprehensible.

“That’s the advantage,” I said with a short laugh. “Have you never traveled beyond this part of the Tulgey Wood?”

“Of course not. Beyond our woods is a world filled with nasty heroes and knights and other monsters who want to cut my head off.”

He said it with so much resentment that it seemed connected to more than just my question, and I remembered the fascination in his voice when he’d asked about my travels.

“Have you ever wanted to?” I said cautiously. “Leave your woods, I mean.”

He flushed, and his face shuttered. “And spend my life hiding from two-handers? Why would I want that?”

“There’s more to Wonderland than—two-handers, you know,” I said. “And anyway, not all of us are like the heroes you know about.”

For a long moment, we just examined each other, me in a helpless sort of way and him thinking who knew what. We seemed to realize what we were doing in the same instant and both looked away awkwardly. The jabberwock reached down to Hoggard and carefully lifted her onto his shoulder, as naturally as if he’d done it a thousand times. A small brown moth was perched on his other shoulder, which I hadn’t noticed before.

“You’ve got a bug on you,” I said, gesturing. “Or breakfast, I suppose.”

He glanced at it. “That’s just Grackle. He’s my pet.”

“Your pet? I thought you ate moths.”

“We do,” he said in an obstinate sort of voice.

I sighed. “If you’re able to walk now, we should go. I’d rather not attract attention from any more jabberwocks—one has been more than enough. And after all, we have three dragons to catch.”