The night dragged on and grew cold. Cath pressed herself against Jest, seeking his warmth through the lining of Hatta’s jacket. His arm wrapped around her shoulders, rubbing the wool sleeve to ward off her shivering.
She stumbled more than once. Her toes were cold as ice inside her boots. Her feet began to ache. She felt a blister forming on her left big toe from the rub of stockings and dress shoes.
Hatta’s pace never slackened.
Her eyelids grew heavy and she wondered if she could fall asleep while walking. Or perhaps she was already asleep and this was another dream and she would wake up to find that the mansion at Rock Turtle Cove had been overgrown with laurel.
As their meanderings dragged on and began to seem endless, Jest tried to distract Cath with banter and jokes, flirtations and riddles. She did her best to be amused, and his attempts warmed her from the inside out, especially as his own weariness was showing around the edges of his composure.
At some point, even Hatta stopped whistling. Raven, it seemed, had fallen asleep on his hat.
Cath’s adrenalin had fled. Her body dragged forward, step by stumbling step. She grew thirsty and her stomach rumbled. The night must be near its end, she thought, but the world remained pitch-black beyond the halo of the lantern.
Then, unexpectedly, something new.
Jest halted first and she drew to a stop beside him.
They stood together on a set of moss-covered steps that dropped down into a little glen. A glen full of wildflowers and the sudden golden glow of twilight.
In the centre of the glen was a well, smelling of sweet, sticky treacle.
Hatta firmed his shoulders and inhaled a long breath. ‘Welcome to the beginning of the maze.’
There was a sullen pause, a heady silence, before Catherine shrieked, ‘The beginning? But we’ve been walking all night!’
‘Or has the night just begun?’ Hatta mused emptily, then he turned back and shot Cath a weary smile. ‘Worry not, love. I haven’t led you astray. Not yet.’
His gait was uncoordinated, heavy with exhaustion, as he approached the well. Cath and Jest followed, her hand tightening around his with every step.
Only once she stood over the well did she see that it was no longer a well at all, but a spiral staircase leading down, down, down into the earth.
CHAPTER 45
THE WALLS OF THE WELL were dripping with treacle and Cath’s heels kept sticking to the steps. The air carried that same sickly-sweet aroma. Normally Catherine would have been dreaming of treacle biscuits and treacle-nut cakes, but the smell was so encompassing it turned even her stomach with its syrupy thickness. She imagined it filling her lungs, drowning her.
After such a journey as they’d been on that night, she couldn’t guess what would greet them at the bottom of the well. A treacle fountain? A sailboat made from her old boot? A fox, an owl, and a raccoon inviting them to tea?
She was not expecting to reach the bottom of the well and find herself in a circular room with a black-and-white-chequered floor and a small glass table at its centre. The room was expansive and tidy and . . . familiar.
Catherine turned in a full circle.
They were in the Crossroads, the thoroughfare of Hearts, and they were surrounded by doors. Nothing but doors everywhere she turned.
Her palms started to sweat, her pulse roaring in her ears.
She paced the room’s edges, sure there must be a mistake. There must be something she wasn’t understanding. Through one enormous keyhole she could see the beaches at Rock Turtle Cove. Through a tinted peekaboo window she recognized Main Street – the cobbler’s storefront now abandoned. One heart-shaped door, she knew, would lead to the drawbridge of Heart Castle.
Her heart sank. ‘This isn’t Chess.’
‘Quite the riddle, isn’t it?’ said Hatta, leaning against the rail at the bottom of the stairs, one leg crossed in front of the other. ‘Choose a door, any door – they all lead to some horrible fate. Then they drop you down into a room full of doors.’ His voice was humourless.
Cath spun on him. ‘They dropped us back into Hearts. I thought you were taking us to Chess!’
He smiled at her, but it wasn’t a kind look. ‘I said I would take you to the Looking Glass, and so I have.’
Catherine shook her head, her insides roiling with anger, with frustration, with exhaustion. All night they’d wandered. Humoured those awful girls, looked at their awful drawings, listened to their awful poetry. Her stomach was empty, her feet were blistered, and her future was as uncertain now as it had been the moment she and Jest had run from the castle.
This was supposed to be a new start. Her and Jest, escaping into a new life together. And Hatta dared to taunt them.
‘Cath,’ Jest said, quiet and calming. He settled his hands on her shoulders and pulled her away from Hatta. Perhaps she’d looked on the verge of murder to worry him so, though Hatta seemed unconcerned. ‘It’s all right. Like he said, it’s a riddle. The answer will seem obvious once we figure it out.’
She grit her teeth and jabbed her finger at Hatta. ‘He already knows the answer! He’s toying with us!’
‘I’m making sure that you’re worthy,’ said Hatta.
‘Worthy of what?’
‘Everything,’ Hatta snarled. ‘Life is made of sacrifices, Lady Pinkerton. I had to pass their test to enter the lands of Chess, and now you expect to go into Chess and be crowned a queen, without any trials? Why should it be so easy for you?’
‘Sacrifices!’ she screamed, not realizing she’d thrown herself at Hatta until she felt Jest holding her back. ‘I’m leaving everything! My home! My family! My whole life behind!’