Page 50 of Wondrous

“I wouldn’t recommend moving too much,” Maria said, standing and dusting herself off. She placed her hands on her hips, and though she was covered in soot and a fraction of the mock dragon’s size, I couldn’t help feeling awestruck. She looked exactly like the heroic Alice of my imagination, confidently surveying her handiwork. Alex went to stand beside her, just as sooty, clothes nearly torn to rags, and I felt another pang of jealousy. The two of them not only looked like heroes but had each other. I just had me.

The mock dragon stopped struggling, her muscles relaxing. The net loosened ever so slightly, but it was still tight enough to leave marks in her fur.

“Why haven’t you killed me?” the mock dragon growled.

“We don’t want to kill you,” I said. “Even if you deserve it. We just want to talk to you.”

“Talk,” the mock dragon spat. “I have nothing to say to you. As soon as I am free of your snare, I shall devour you each in one bite.”

I felt a pang of sympathy. I could see the pulse ticking in the mock dragon’s throat—her heart must have been thundering, and the net held her in what looked like a highly uncomfortable position, neck twisted at an angle. While the mock dragon was objectively terrifying, I suspected, in that moment, she was trying to convince herself of this as much as us.

“I know about the world you came from,” I said, making my voice hard. “I understand why you wouldn’t want to stay there. But you’re destroying this world. Surely you know that.”

“I won’t go back,” the mock dragon cried, and the net tightened a fraction. She stilled, breathing hard, eye sockets fixed upon me.

“I know,” I said quietly. “I—I understand wanting to escape the place you’re from. If you let me, I might be able to help you.”

The mock dragon gave a hiss of laughter. “You don’t want to help me. You only want to steal my treasure.”

“Treasure?” I repeated. “I didn’t know you had any. But you’re wrong—I’m not interested in gold. Or jewels.”

“Pah,” the mock dragon spat. “My treasure is not of gold, foolish child. What use have I for the baubles of the wingless?”

“Treasure,” Alex said musingly. “Do you mean those flowers we saw?”

I looked at them. “Flowers? Her treasure is just flowers?”

The mock dragon hissed. “Those are not just flowers. They are snapdragons, and you had better not have disturbed one single shoot.”

“We found her living in a cave by the lake,” Alex told me. “And she’d made a sort of greenhouse out of stone and glass. The greenhouse had a bunch of clay pots and sacks of soil, and the meadow behind the lake was filled with snapdragons in all colors. She must have brought the seeds from her world.”

“Snapdragons belong to all worlds,” the mock dragon said. Her tone was almost pleading, or it would have been if she weren’t so proud. “My flame might be dangerous to your world, but they are not. They are the noblest of flowers, and I had to scour my world for years to gather enough seeds for a garden, because my world has hardly any flowers in it—truly, it’s a dreadful place. Yes, these particular snapdragons may have a tendency to bite on occasion, like most of the living things in my world, but they will do no harm if you do not try to pick them, which one should never do with snapdragons, anyway. They are too wild and regal a flower to imprison in a vase.”

A smile touched my mouth. “Tell me more about your snapdragons,” I said.

Chapter 25

It didn’t take as long for the second mock dragon’s flame to go out. Like the first, she had clearly never had the opportunity to explain her odd hobby to anyone at length, and she seemed as pleased to ramble on about it as the Hatter was to ramble on about his teas. She wasn’t as calm about losing her ability to breathe fire as the other mock dragon had been and thrashed around in the ever-tightening net, threatening to have her revenge on me. When I reminded her, though, that her flame was as much a risk to her snapdragons as it was to Wonderland, she fell into a sullen silence. She didn’t try to attack us when Maria released her from the net—no doubt in part because Alex stood at the ready with five different fireworks, ready to blast them at her head. She did fix me with a long dark look as she left, though, which sent a fresh shudder down my back whenever I remembered it.

“I’m glad we let her stay in Wonderland,” Maria said as we made camp that night. We’d spent most of the day hiking toward the crossroads of Thisaway and Dead End Path (not to be confused with End Up Dead Path). While they were tailing me and Jack, Maria and Alex had met a knight who’d heard a large monstrous something scuffling in the underbrush there. The crossroads wasn’t far from where I’d met my own nighttime monster with my Traveling Tea Shop, a monster I strongly suspected of being the third mock dragon. So it seemed as good a clue as any.

“All the same,” Maria continued, “I don’t think I’ll be visiting that lake anytime soon, even if it is one day surrounded by acres of snapdragon meadows.”

“I might risk it,” Alex said. She was adding wild carrots to the stew bubbling over the fire. “I love snapdragons. When I was little, my mother and I used to pick the flowers and make them fight each other. Wouldn’t it be fun to see them actually bite?”

“You’re a bit strange—you know that, don’t you?” Maria said fondly.

I didn’t join in the conversation. I’d already set my tent up, and now I sat by the fire, making tea and feeling extremely awkward. Alex and Maria didn’t seem awkward about our new arrangement at all, which somehow made my own awkwardness worse.

It wasn’t just that I was worried about the prophecy. Traveling with the two of them felt like being trapped, as if somehow my own world had caught up to me. It didn’t make sense—I knew that. But I also knew it didn’t feel right, the way traveling with Jack had.

Jack left, I reminded myself. A part of me still wanted to go charging off into the woods after him, but I didn’t know which way he’d gone. More important, I didn’t know why he’d left, and without even a goodbye. It was true that I’d forced him to take part in my quest, and yet in spite of that, I’d thought we’d become—friends. Had I only imagined it?

Shoving aside my disquiet, I checked on the tea I was brewing—a calming vanilla honeydew—and gave it a stir. The leaves needed another moment or two to steep.

“What’s Grackle up to?” Alex said, motioning to the moth, who was fluttering obsessively around a mushroom.

I leaned over to look. “There’s an earwig hiding under the cap. I think he’s trying to work out which bugs I like to eat.”