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 on to 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 on to 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 on to 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.
THE 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 on to 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.’