Splintered

Their murmurs rise to a harrowing screech, as if someone has taken a cello’s bow and scratched it across a chalkboard—back and forth, again and again—feeding the vibrations through subwoofers turned full blast in my brain. I fall to my knees, screaming.

“You’ve gained a square.” A woman’s singsong voice cuts through the chaos. As she scurries by, a rustle of skirts touches my sleeve.

Her long, pale fingers tug on the web that surrounds the shattered rose, playing the anchor lines with the mastery of a harpist. The other blossoms—still trembling and murmuring—grow quieter until their whispers are tolerable again.

I look up into her face, eyes sky-bright blue and lips the lavender of November dusk. Her skin is so translucent, she’s like a drawing on a piece of tracing paper—shimmery and gauzy, with hair the color of pencil shavings. A red and white striped dress, fitted at the bodice like a candy striper’s uniform but with a long, flowing hoop skirt, gives the illusion she’s from the Regency era.

I stand, shaky, and back away. She follows. The lacy hem of her skirt kicks up and sweeps fog from around her feet. If she had ankles and shins, they’d be showing. Instead, eight jointed limbs, black and shiny like a spider’s, glide underneath. It’s as if someone took her torso and snapped it into place atop the thorax of a black widow.

I swallow a groan. The hoop skirt must hide a globule abdomen along with the spi

“Sister One?” I croak, surprised I can get anything out of my compressed voice box.

“How do you do?” She offers an open palm for a shake. I can’t bring myself to reciprocate, for fear she’ll spin me up and tuck me away for a late-night snack.

Her hand drops. “You gained a square but lost the queen.” She grows taller in one smooth motion, as if raised up on a mechanical platform. “That was not in my bargain with Morpheus.” Her hands settle on her waist.

“Morpheus?” Suspicion defeats horror. He’s the reason she had me dragged here? Was it to ensure I’d find Chessie’s head? But he said she was holding a grudge, so why is she helping him?

“Have you stolen the queen? Or is she on the loose?” Sister One’s blue eyes glimmer, her feathery black lashes narrowing.

“Um.” I shoot a sideways glance at the rose I ruined, now splintered like the mirror in my room. And then it hits me why the smoky white silhouette looked familiar. “That was Queen Red!” The netherling who cursed my family. “I didn’t know she was dead …”

“Yes, was.” Sister One leans down to wave a finger at my nose. “And this was not part of the bargain.”

The roses on the web start to shake again, more volatile this time. The movement rocks my equilibrium, as if I’m spi

“You woke them! You must help me lull them back to sleep!” She starts to sing a familiar tune … not Morpheus’s lullaby but something else from my childhood.

“Ring around the rosy …”

Her eight feet tap to the rhythm, waiting for a dance partner. Trying not to think about the spi

Soon we’re whirling in a circle like children. One scene in Lewis Carroll’s version of Wonderland comes to mind … when Tweedledee and Tweedledum danced with Alice to the tune of “Here We Go ’round the Mulberry Bush.”

But Sister One is partial to the rosy song—for obvious reasons. Though it’s a different version than I heard growing up:

Ring-a-ring-a-roses / The body decomposes.

Hush! Hush! Hush! Hush! / You’ll all tumble down.

Down, down, into the deep / Give the Twids our souls to keep.

Silent slumber on a web / Ne’er to raise a restless head.

If we wake the First will come / And sing us back to sleep as one.

Hush! Hush! Hush! Hush! / We’re all slumbered down.

We turn in dizzy circles beneath the bouncing web. I lift my chin and laugh, actually starting to enjoy the clamor around me. It’s so freeing, my wings whirling like clouds, soft and silky when they bat my head and shoulders. We spin and spin and spin until finally the roses stop their uproar and join our chant. Sister One releases me to face her spirit charges. I lean my elbows on my knees and catch my breath.

The flowers’ voices converge to finish the final verse. Sister One leads them, her arms raised and snapping in time like a band conductor:

If we fail to find our rest / Sister Two will raid our nest.

She’ll make us live as broken toys / Discarded by the girls and boys;

And there will no more slumber be / For we’ll be locked in misery.

Hush! Hush! Hush! Hush! / We’ll all tumble down.

At the end, stillness falls over the garden. The only sound is the swish of grass slapping Sister One’s sticklike legs as she moves about the web to tuck the flowers into the clingy gauze.

Euphoria fades as I’m taken back to a time when Alison would tuck my blankets around me and kiss my head good night … moments before I’d drift off to sleep to meet Morpheus. The memory swirls to a blur, like food coloring dropped into water.

I can’t remember how long I’ve been here … minutes, days, weeks?

I have to find Jeb.

Sprinting for the archway, my bare feet crush the grass with each step.

“Wait!” Sister One screams from the tu

Ducking my head, I leap over the chain and rope I dropped earlier and keep going. Fear has taken up residence inside my heart, and I don’t know how to send it packing.

Skirts rustle behind me as the spider gives chase.

I skid onto a pathway and pick up speed. My lungs ache from panting. The drag of my wings slows me down. I reach behind and draw them around me like a shawl.

Coming to the only archway left, I plunge through. One look around, and I fall to my knees.

Just like in the Alice nightmare … I’m as good as dead.

I kneel, too horrified to move.

I’ve stumbled into Sister Two’s lair of despondent souls. That’s the only explanation for the moans and wails rattling my spine. A chill hangs on the air and clings to me like a second skin—dry and stale, softened with a hint of snow.

Clenching my hands, I force myself to stand. The cries and laments silence. Every hair on the back of my neck grows rigid. Drifts of white powder, grainy with bits of ice, coat my naked feet and pack between my toes. It’s cool but not biting like the snow at home.

The passage widens to a vast hollow filled with dead weeping willow trees—branches drooping sinuous and thin, all the way to the ground, each one bare and slick with ice. The thicket’s roof reaches high and filters what little light there is. It gives the scene a brownish tinge. At first glance, it could be the front of a sepia Christmas card, complete with ornaments hanging from the serpentine branches.

Only these aren’t ornaments. An endless array of teddy bears and stuffed animals, plastic clowns and porcelain dolls, hang on the branches from webby rope. In the human realm, we’d call them love-worn and threadbare—playthings that were hugged and kissed by a child until the stuffing fell out or the button eyes popped off. Toys that were loved to death.