Playing Hearts (11 page)

I didn’t see Jack for three years after
that. To tell the truth, I wasn’t sorry for it. I didn’t want to be fond of
someone as horrible as Jack, and it seemed to me that we had gotten so used to
each other over the years that I
had
very nearly become fond of him.
There were still the birthday presents every year and I still saw Jack in the
reflections, but the visiting stopped: both mine and his. And I suppose I
really had been visiting him, if it came to that. It was Jack I saw visited often
when I went into Underland– Jack I was most likely to see. That all came to an
end; though I still visited Underland, and I still experimented with my
puddle-jumping. It wasn’t Underland I wanted to give up: just Jack.

When I was eighteen I
came back to find the tea-table broken, the teacups scattered and the cutlery
strewn through the forest. The only sign of the Hatter was his multifaceted
hat, crushed and forsaken by the broken table. I sat down in the grass with the
hat cradled in my arms, frightened and unsure of anything but that an evil I
had felt threatening had finally arrived. Where was Hatter? Where was the Hare?
Hatter wouldn’t have willingly left without his hat, I knew.

When I wasn’t feeling so
cold, I rose with the hat still clutched between my hands, and searched through
the tumbled remains of the tea party. The grass had been flattened by sharp,
metallic footprints that could only have been formed by card sharks, and on a
jagged edge of broken chair I found a clump of red velvet.
The Queen!
Where had she taken Hatter and Hare? And what, I wondered in sudden coldness,
did she want with them? I’d always been quite sure that they were involved in
something dangerous and tricky: their mad way of speaking was always
irritating, hard to follow, and sometimes stunningly to the point, and I had
often been surprised by a gleam of intelligence in Hatter’s eyes. Even Hare,
who hadn’t ever shown what I might consider to be intelligence, had often shown
a cunning, sideways streak of slyness in his dealings. Had their madness been a
cover? No, I didn’t think so. I thought it was more a case of them desperately
using every advantage in a silent, deadly war against the Queen. Once, long
ago, Sir Blanc had spoken of the rebellion I’d seen brewing over the last few
years. He hadn’t had his wits about him at the time and hadn’t been able to
tell me anything else about it—nor had Hatter or Hare ever been persuaded or
tricked into talking about it—and eventually I’d stopped asking. It was just one
more cog in the ticking, whirring, complicated darkness that I felt creeping
over Underland from the first time I popped out in the teapot.

Now I wished I’d made
more of an effort. Maybe asked Jack. He wouldn’t have told me, but I might have
been able to trick it out of him. Sometimes he had been relaxed enough to say
more than he meant to. In my fear and confusion it took me too long to remember
that I still had my own ways of finding things out. All I needed to do was find
a source of liquid. What I saw in the ripples would tell me what had happened.
In the last three years I had learned a thing or two about the ripples—and more
than a thing or two about the Queen, whose skill in the Mirror Hall may have
earned her more information about me than I would have liked her to have—and I
knew exactly what to do. Hatter, of course, had talked madly of possibilities
and probabilities when I first met him: it was only a short step from there to
realising that if I was clever about it, I could see more than the present in
the ripples. I’d already learned that I could alter things in the
ripples—stretch time and space, and make things that Weren’t as if they
Were
—and
not only did I learn, I improved. It was a talent that had never much helped me
in what I was seeing less and less as the ‘real’ world, but it was very useful
in Underland. I had only ever managed to see a few seconds into the future; and
even then, I had never actually proved even to myself that it
was
the
future. The past was much easier. Like the Hatter had said at the time, it
wasn’t so much a matter of looking backwards, but Seeing Things Differently. I
found myself wondering, as I searched the smashed crockery for any unbroken
teacups, exactly how much the Queen could see in her Mirror Hall. I doubted she
could see into the past: there were too many people who would have been in her
dungeons if she could. That she could make the same kinds of changes I could
make in the ripples was certain: I’d seen her do it myself. Now I wondered if
it was possible that she saw the future instead.

I searched among the
broken porcelain for some time, but none of the cups were whole enough to
contain so much as a drop of tea, and all of the teapots had been smashed to
smithereens. Even Hatter and Hare’s pretty little pond had been drained. The Queen
had been incredibly thorough. I put Hatter’s hat on my head to keep it out of
the general mess, and it wasn’t until I dashed it off my head again in
frustration that it occurred to me how silly I had been. I’d seen Hatter use
the reflective patches on his hat to do much more than provide a pretty head
covering. I made a sound of disgust at my own stupidity and sat down on a
fragment of chair that remained amidst the general wreckage, setting the hat on
my knees. As I looked at it, one of the flashy pieces reflected a scrap of
something from some time that wasn’t now. I narrowed my eyes on it, hunching
over the hat. At first there was only darkness and the sensation of something
missing. Then I saw Hatter and Hare at the tea table, Hatter pouring tea into
the sugar bowl and gravely stirring the sugary mess with a twig, and Hare
thumping the side of the table vigorously with his hind leg. He still had his
crutch with him– he had begun carrying it with him when he lost his front paw,
despite the fact that he didn’t need it in order to get around
and
that
it meant his one remaining front paw was occupied. With the crutch he was
buttering crumpets and offering them to Hatter. They looked up at the same
time– looked right at me, and I thought for a moment that they could see me.
Then the reflection...disappeared. Well, not quite
disappeared
. It was
more like the reflection suddenly lost sight of Hatter and Hare and was showing
me a dark, blank screen instead. I hadn’t seen anything like it in my ripples
before. I was still frowning at the blank nothingness of it when all of a
sudden, there was the tea-table again. Only this time it was smashed to pieces
and Hatter and Hare were gone. The scene was abandoned. No, not quite
abandoned: I caught a flash of movement at the farthest corner I could discern,
and saw...
Jack
. It was Jack! Walking quickly and purposefully away in
his red suit and pointy shoes, surrounded by card sharks.

I went straight to the
Heart Castle. I was so frightened, or angry, or confused, that I pushed through
the card sharks at the castle court and then the grand entrance. I had begun to
think that the Queen knew of my visits to Underland—had always known of
them—and it seemed only natural that they would let me pass. I was
instinctively sure that she wouldn’t have me killed: not until she saw me
married to Jack, anyway. I didn’t know what to expect after that. I didn’t even
know why she wanted us to marry. But I was certain, that day, that none of the
card sharks or guards would stop me: and none of them did. I swept past them,
my chin high, and stepped briskly through the halls until I found Jack’s suite.
This time, when I flung open the door and it cracked against the wall, Jack
really
did
jump. But by then I was too pent up with fury and terror to
enjoy it. I simply marched up to him, and when he stepped back, a flash of
alarm—or was it anticipation?—in his black-flecked eyes, I followed him step
for step.

“
What
,” I said in
a voice that was cold and precise, shoving him in the chest with every word, “
What
have you done with Hatter and Hare?”

“Oh, what a
disappointment!” said Jack, forced to sit down unexpectedly on the bed to
escape my shoving. “I really expected–”

“What have you done with
Hatter and Hare!”

“Mab, I really can’t have
you assaulting me in this manner. There are other, far more pleasant methods of
assault that I can think of off-hand, as a matter of fact; and since I’ve not
seen hide nor hair of you for three years now, I
do
think–”

“
Where are they?
”

“I much prefer to
associate with the less subversive elements of Underland, actually,” said Jack.
“Mother Dearest, on the other hand, almost certainly knows where your mad
little friends are if they have disappeared.”

“I saw you in the
reflections!”

“I’m more than willing to
provide you with all the company you desire, Mab. You don’t have to watch me in
the reflections.”

I made a pleasingly
realistic choking noise that caused Jack to raise his brows. “Yuck. Why would I
watch you in the reflections? I was looking at the old reflections to see what
happened, and–”

This time it was Jack who
made a particularly realistic choking noise. “You were looking at
what
?”

“The old reflections,” I
said impatiently. “You know, the ones that show what happened instead of what’s
really happening.”

“Ye gods!” said Jack. “No
wonder she’s afraid of you! Wait, if you saw what happened, why are you asking
me about it? I didn’t do it!”

“I couldn’t see all of
it,” I told him grimly. “The reflection went dark and then the picture was
gone. When it cleared,
you
were there.”

“I see,” said Jack
thoughtfully. “Mother Dearest is up to her old tricks again. She must know what
you can do.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s trying to make us
distrust each other.”

“Why? I already don’t
like you.”

Jack sighed. “Mab, could
you at least
attempt
cordiality? She wants us to get married, but she
doesn’t want us to get too close to each other. We might start planning
things.”

“I’ve been planning
things for years,” I said.

“I’m perfectly well aware
of that, thank you!” said Jack. “It’s the bad company you keep. Do you honestly
think they were looking after you, Mab? The quickest way I know to end up in
the dungeons or decorating the castle walls with your head is to be planning
things in Underland.”

“Hatter and Hare didn’t
know about it,” I told him. I wasn’t sure if that was quite true: both Hatter
and Hare had been—
were
—very cunning. But as with everything else I did
in Underland, though they hadn’t encouraged me, they hadn’t stopped me, either.
“And they don’t let me get involved.”

“Wonderful job they’ve
been doing,” said Jack, one of his brows raised.

“You’re one to talk! It’s
your fault I’m in Underland at all!”

For once, Jack looked
completely taken aback. “Well really, Mab! To be blaming me for Mother Dearest’s
actions is really beyond the pale! I’ve enough of my own faults to be owning
to, thank you very much!”

“Who did she blood-bond
me to?” I said grimly. “It wasn’t Hatter!”

“I really can’t be blamed
for what my mother does in pursuance of power!” said Jack. “And I refuse to be
compared with that mad little muck-raker! I’m
far
better looking, and we
won’t even get into the issue of style and fashion, thank you very much.”

“I like the way Hatter
dresses,” I told him stiffly. “It’s better than your horrible pointy shoes,
anyway.”

“Mab, I understand that
you’re angry, but I’ll thank you not to mock my choice of apparel! I’ll accept
aspersions made upon my character, but– actually, no! As a matter of fact, I
won’t! I refuse to take the blame for something that my mother probably did.
She’s obviously made it look like I was there, and as much as I admire her
skill, I’d like you to know that I
wasn’t
.”

“How would she do that?”
I demanded. I didn’t trust Jack, and despite the Queen’s way with mirrors,
surely she wasn’t capable of making reflections show me something that wasn’t
true. Or was that something she could do in the Mirror Hall, too?

Jack’s eyes were on me,
and they had a frozen sort of look to them. “You actually think I could have
done this,” he said at last. “I’d be flattered if I thought you knew what sort
of skill it takes to pull off a trick like this.”