Page 64 of Wondrous

“Cat—” I broke off as another coughing fit overtook me. The smoke had grown too thick. “Oh, Cat—what do I do? Everything has gone wrong. The fire is spreading, and I can’t stop it! It’s going to destroy Wonderland.”

He swiped his paw over his head twice before deigning to reply. “You already know the answer.”

“I do?”

“How is a teacup like a river?” the Cat said. “You know the answer, Alice.”

He rubbed his face against my hand, and I gave a gasp of surprise. The Cat had never allowed me to pet him before! He was just as soft as I’d always imagined, and his whiskers tickled my palm. But before I could react, he vanished into the burning woods, leaping over another hole in the world as if it were little more than a mud puddle.

“Teacup,” I whispered. “River. Teacup.”

And then I knew.

The chalice.

I surged to my feet, nearly falling over again as a wave of dizziness darkened my vision. I couldn’t breathe this smoky air much longer, I knew. Pressing my sleeve over my mouth and nose, I stumbled back toward the tea table.

It had grown too difficult to see more than a few feet in front of me. I didn’t know where Jack had gone, nor Maria and Alex. I only hoped they’d made it out alive.

I fell to my knees and sifted through the grass with my hands. The chalice was blue, but that made little difference; the falling soot had given everything a universal gray hue. Had it broken? Or gone tumbling into another hollow?

I found the teapot first—miraculously, it was still half full. I felt a sharp pain as my thumb scraped against a teacup shard, but I didn’t pause. I found the sugar bowl next, or half of it, and then a single saucer.

There. I gave a cry of triumph as I unearthed the chalice from a pile of burnt leaves. I brushed the debris away with shaking hands and turned it in my fingers, pressing against the sides. It was still slightly soft, in part due to my clumsy haste when I’d formed it—I’d made the walls too thick. I’d never been so grateful for a mistake.

I kept turning it, kept squeezing at the sides, all the while pushing my intention into the clay. I didn’t know if it would work—normally, when I made teacups, I had an enchantment in mind from the start. Would the clay still listen to me, now that it was more vessel than clay?

I didn’t have time to worry about it. I kept turning the chalice, putting every ounce of my willpower into it, begging the clay to listen to me as I never had before.

“Good, noble clay,” I chattered nonsensically. “Brave clay, kind clay, most beautiful clay in all the worlds, please do this for me, please—”

There was no reply, of course, and I felt absolutely nothing as I worked—the chalice remained as inert and lifeless in my hands as ever, though it did grow warmer from my working it. Finally, I knew I could delay no longer.

I lifted the teapot and poured the remainder of the tea into the chalice. Then I charged into the heart of the inferno.

I shrieked as I ran—the heat of the fire hurt. I smelled singed hair and knew it was mine. But I didn’t pause.

The core of the devastation was clear—above the tree the mock dragon had ignited first, a massive hollow had formed, large enough to nearly block out the sky. The edges of the hollow fluttered back and forth, paper-thin. To my astonishment, it looked as if there was writing on them, lines of words that faded with distance from the hollow, as if it had somehow revealed them. As if they had always been lurking behind the fabric of Wonderland like stars behind the blue of the sky.

With a desperate cry, I swung the chalice and hurled its contents at the burning tree.

Chapter 33

What happened next was, at first, a terrible disappointment.

The tea I’d poured into the chalice flew out, landing on the tree with a hiss and the tiniest puff of smoke. I might as well have sneezed on the fire for all the good it did.

But then the chalice made a glug-glug sound, like an old pump that had to labor to draw water up. And then it exploded.

Well, it didn’t really explode—that was only what it felt like. A geyser of tea erupted from its depths, and I nearly lost my grip on it. I slipped on the sudden puddle beneath my feet and slammed onto my backside. To my immense relief, the tea was merely lukewarm, as it had been in the teapot. Meanwhile, the chalice continued to gush—and gush and gush. A river of tea, which slammed into the burning oak and extinguished it.

I pointed the chalice toward the next tree, and out it went. It was difficult to maintain my grip on the thing; it was like a bucking horse trying to throw me off. When I tried to point it again, it slipped through my wet hands. This didn’t stop the chalice from gushing, though—it hopped and skipped about, tea spewing in all directions. The fire hissed violently, as if in anger, but it was going out—tree by tree, bush by bush.

The puddle beneath me had turned into a pool of soupy brownish liquid. I waded out, trying to see—it wasn’t easy, for now the air was filled with steam as well as smoke—before I was promptly slammed sideways by a wave.

My scream turned into a gurgle. It was like the Ocean of Tears all over again! The wave wasn’t deep, fortunately, and I was able to drag myself out by grabbing on to a branch, coughing and spitting out the unpleasantly ashy tea. The wave gathered speed and slammed into another tree, climbing higher and higher until even the topmost branches were extinguished. Smaller saplings weakened by the fire crashed down beneath the force of the tea, their flames hissing out.

Waves climbed higher, or went crashing through the forest like runaway trains. Another swept me off my feet, and I screamed.