She glanced down at her ball gown and bare arms. ‘I was not expecting an adventure tonight, and my shawl was taken by the castle courtiers.’
He grunted, as if this were a weak excuse, and brushed past her, moving towards the well.
Jest took hold of her hand. The bells on his hat jingled extra loud in the stillness.
Hatta knocked his cane three times against the well’s rocky ledge before leaning over and smiling into its black depths. ‘Hello, Tillie.’
Two small hands appeared at the top of the well, followed by a child’s gaunt face. She was ghostlike, not more than six years old, with white-silver hair that cascaded down her back and skin the colour of milk thinned with water. Her eyes, in contrast, were coal black and far too big for her face.
‘Where have you been, Hatta?’ Tillie said, pulling herself on to the wall and perching there on her knees. She wore a white muslin dress that was covered in filth, as though . . . well, as though she’d just crawled out of a well. ‘We’ve missed you.’
‘I’m sorry, love. It’s been a busy time. Are your sisters around?’
‘They’re at the bottom, racing boats made from two halves of a lady’s boot.’ Tillie grinned. Both of her front teeth were missing. ‘Is that Jest? Ah, and Raven as well. How do you do?’
‘Hello, Tillie,’ said Jest.
‘Nevermore,’ greeted the Raven.
Tillie’s gaze drifted to Catherine. ‘And you are the girl he brought before. The one he finally kissed and kissed.’
Cath blushed, but no one seemed to notice.
Hatta cast his eyes upward. ‘I could have gone without that knowledge, love.’
Tillie dropped her head to one shoulder and stared hard at Cath’s skirt. ‘Your ankle is repaired.’
‘Yes. Thank you for the treacle,’ Catherine stammered.
‘It is not mine.’ Tillie held her gaze. ‘But then, it isn’t yours, either, though pay for it you did.’ Her lips pulled upward, but the smile made no attempt to reach her impenetrable eyes. Cath wondered if that youthful face had ever seen a true smile.
She was unsettling. A child who carried the sorrow of an old crone.
‘Tillie,’ said Hatta, ‘we need to get through the Looking Glass again. Will you open the maze for us?’
‘The Looking Glass again, again,’ Tillie sing-sang. ‘How many times have you passed back and forth now, Hatta?’
‘Too many to count, love. But this is important.’
‘You have said that too many times to count.’ She pouted. ‘Always one is coming and one is going but none are ever, ever staying. Won’t you come down to the bottom and race boats with us a while? I’ll fix you a cup of piping hot treacle.’
‘That’s a kind offer, but I’ll have to accept it another time. For now, we must get through the maze.’
‘All four of you?’ Tillie asked.
Hatta nodded. ‘All four of us.’
The child heaved a great, heavy sigh. ‘My sisters and I are ill, Hatta. We have been dying a long time, and must ask for payment to sustain us.’
‘I understand. What is the price for our passage?’
Tillie listed her head, her black eyes staring up at him as if she were in a trance. ‘Lacie wants a feather, black as blackest ink. Elsie wants three joker’s bells that twinkle, tink tink tink. And I shall take your time, dear Hatta. Five minutes will do, I think.’
Hatta glanced back at their group before asking, ‘Nothing from the lady?’
Tillie’s hollow gaze fell on Cath and she had to force herself not to shy away. Slowly, the child shook her head. ‘She has nothing we want. Not yet.’
Then she grinned again, that same eerie, gap-toothed smile.
Cath stood by silently while they made their payment. A tail feather from Raven and three bells torn from Jest’s hat, all dropped into the well. Hatta went last, pulling out his pocket watch and turning the hand forward, five minutes. He didn’t seem happy about it, but neither did he complain.
Tillie nodded once payment was made and vanished back into the well. Cath tensed, but there was no scream and no splash down below.
‘You are running out of minutes, Hatta.’
They turned. A new girl sat cross-legged on a fallen, moss-covered log. She was identical to Tillie, with the waxen skin and eerie dark eyes, only her silvery hair was cropped short like wild leaves.
‘I know, Elsie,’ said Hatta. ‘You keep taking them from me.’
She scrutinized him, unblinking, for a heartbeat too long, before she allowed a close-lipped smile. ‘How much longer will you run from Time?’
‘For as long as I can.’
A third voice sang, ‘Time would never find you here.’
Cath spun again. The third girl stood beside the wall of hedges, again a mirror image of her sisters, although her shining hair had grown all the way to her ankles. Huge, bottomless eyes watched them across the glen.
A door was now set into the hedges behind the third Sister, an enormous wooden structure with black iron hinges. Tillie stood beside it, digging her bare toes in the dirt and gripping its enormous handle.
‘You could stay with us, you know,’ said the third girl.
Hatta shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Lacie, but I can’t.’
‘What about them?’ asked Tillie, pointing her chin at Cath and Jest and Raven.
Cath was glad when Jest answered, as she didn’t think she could speak. ‘I’m sorry, but we must go back to Chess. We have a role to play.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Elsie. ‘Two Rooks, a Pawn, and a Queen. That’s how the riddle begins, but howsoever shall it end?’ She started to laugh.