Splintered

As if waking from a trance, Jeb sits back on his palms and looks out over the rippling water.

“What do you think will happen tomorrow?” I ask, my voice as shaky as the rest of me.

“Whatever it is, don’t jump into things without me. We do everything together. Deal?” He lifts one of my hands, smooths the wrinkles on my glove, and curls my fingers into a fist while waiting for an answer.

“Deal,” I say.

“Good.” He bumps my fisted knuckles with his. I shiver—both from the chilly breeze and the sweetness of the gesture.

“Here.” Jeb picks up his tux jacket and helps me slip my arms inside. Then he puts everything into the pack. “Let’s try to get some sleep.”

He cradles my back against his chest, and we spoon in the hull of the rocking boat. His nose nestles in my hair. A spiral of white stars coils and uncoils in feathery sparks. It looks like curls of lightning, just like the spider and beetle mosaic I worked on earlier today before I went skating at Underland. Another tremor rolls through me. I remember watching these same constellations with my netherling guide years ago. No wonder it came through in my art.

“I hope that’s not a storm coming,” Jeb whispers against my nape, arms tensing around me. “This boat won’t hold up to thrashing waves.”

Tucking my hand absently into my skirt pocket, I prod the sponge my guide wanted me keep.

“It’s only a constellation,” I answer, and Jeb doesn’t question how I know.

Without speaking, we watch the display overhead until it bursts into a thousand glittering colors, like silent fireworks. When it’s gone, nothing remains but common white stars.

“Wow,” we both say.

After a few quiet minutes, Jeb relaxes, and his breath rasps, slow and even, against the back of my head. Although it’s Jeb’s body keeping me warm, the last things I envision before falling asleep are inky black eyes and a spread of satiny wings.

The Alice nightmare finds me while I’m sleeping …

I’m not alone this time. Jeb carries the stolen sword, and we race down the path toward the Caterpillar’s lair. The thorns that once snarled and ripped my pinafore elongate into leafy eels. The serpentine strands wrap around our legs and carry us upside down to the chessboard. Our bodies freeze into game pieces. A hand appears, wearing a black glove, and moves us from square to square. It picks me up to claim checkmate, but Jeb comes alive, slashing at the fingers with the sword to free me. The bloody digits fall one by one and morph into caterpillars. Jeb and I race back to the path. The mushroom waits in the center, cloaked in a web. The caterpillars beat us there. They tu

I awaken, startled, and blink against the sun’s brightness. My hands are clenched into fists. What woke me up? I was so close to unveiling the face in the cocoon—the one I’ve been waiting years to see.

Yawning, I focus on the here and now. Sometime in the night, I must’ve turned toward Jeb in the rowboat, and he pulled me against himself, tucking me under his chin. All I see now is a close-up of his tank. He’s still asleep. His heavy breath rustles my hair, slow and rhythmic. His arms clutch my waist.

Yesterday comes back to me in pieces: the rabbit hole, the mutant flower garden, the ocean of tears.

I snuggle into his neck, fingers curled within the sleeves of the tuxedo jacket, determined not to wake him so I can pretend things are simple and perfect for just a few minutes longer.

The boat rocks and I realize that’s what woke me. Not a gentle, riding-on-a-current movement. More a something-heavy-sloughed-over-the-edge-and-is-watching-us movement …

I freeze—as rigid as the wood beneath us.

Guttural snuffles fill the air, like those of an asthmatic bulldog. The warmth of sun on my shoulders turns chilly as a shadow falls across us. My heart does a somersault. Before I can belt out a scream, Jeb snaps into action, rolling us toward the bow and jerking us to our feet. He was awake the whole time.

“No way,” he says.

I wobble with the boat’s motion, holding on to Jeb’s waistband with one hand and the seat behind me with the other. I peer around him.

At first glance, our intruder looks like a walrus. He has two giant tusks with images of snakes and angry flames carved along the ivory. But beneath rolls of blubber, his lower half is a tangle of slithering octopus tentacles, covered in suction cups. It’s as if someone snapped two different creatures together, creating an octo-walrus. He must weigh over five hundred pounds, and his body occupies most of the boat.

As huge as he is, and with his tentacles hanging half in and out, the boat should be capsized. Jeb and I should’ve been flung like stones from a slingshot as soon as he slithered aboard. Instead, the hull is level and drifting along the shining water as if the creature weighs no more than we do. Wonder what Isaac Newton would have to say about the jacked-up physical laws here?

Jeb nudges me to sit behind him but keeps standing, every muscle in his body tense and ready to snap. “What are you?”

Our uninvited guest scrapes oozing goop from his eyes with the human fingers on the ends of his flippers. “Fair question, elfin knight. I’m an octobenus. Now, let me guess your next question. What do I want? For that, there’s a simple answer. I want to stop the endless suffering in my belly.” Whiskers—long and blond against a ci

From the chain at his neck, he opens a locket the size of a cigar box and digs something out. He lays a clam in his palm, carefully holding its shell pinched shut. “Good morning, little sea cabbage,” he taunts it. “Still worried about your family?”

The clam tries to open its mouth in answer. The octobenus repositions his hold to keep it quiet. “Tell you what. If you can stanch my hunger, I’ll set all of them free. Willing to give it a try?”

Although the clam can’t open its mouth wide enough to talk, a pinkish, hatchet-shaped muscle slinks out from the crack—like a malformed foot or arm—patting the enormous creature’s cheek in a final bid for life.

A whimper bursts from my throat. Jeb reaches behind his back and opens his hand. I lace our fingers together.

In a rush of blubber and slobber, the octobenus forces the shell open, seals his mouth around it, and suctions out the contents with a terrible sucking sound. The clam’s excruciating scream echoes in my head, then fades to dreadful silence. I grasp Jeb tighter, trying not to gag.

“Nope. Still hungry. Suppose I’ll be eating your children next.” Our unwelcome visitor laughs, an ugly, grinding sound, then tosses the empty shell overboard. He swats it with a tentacle so it sinks, and the motion makes the boat rock.

Jeb’s fingers cinch around my wrist as he struggles to stay balanced.

“You must be swift with slimy prey like that,” the octobenus says. “They’re tricksters … always trying to capture you in their Deathspeak. Can you imagine, being a slave to a clam’s final wish?” He laughs again.

Deathspeak … that phrase from the back of Alice’s psych evaluation. I peer around Jeb as the walrusy creature wedges a monocle over his watery left eye.

“Now,” he says, “if you would be so kind as to step aside, Elf, I might get a better look at your ward.”

Jeb’s stance tightens. “Not a chance.”

The octo-freak drops his monocle. “Those bumbling flowers think that your blood has the power to buy me my fill of bivalves!” His shout rattles over us—through us—carrying the scent of fish and death. “But it’s never been an issue of buying them. I’m a hunter. I must capture them. It is my nature. Clams are such crafty creatures, always using their little arms to move about and escape under their beds on the ocean floor. If only it weren’t so dark down there, and with my eyes gone so bad … I’m lucky to capture a half dozen before they all hide.” He wipes his mouth with a thick flipper. “But the Wise One owns a magic flute that calls my prey from their hiding places. And now I have a way to barter for it.”