Bargain price

CHAPTER 43

S URPRISINGLY, BIBWIT Harte did not have a pair of gemstone fire crystals tucked anywhere in his scholar’s robe, so they had to build a fire the old-fashioned way, with the suns and a pile of dead branches. The Volcanic Plains were behind them and they had made camp next to a wide river en route to the Valley of Mushrooms.

Dodge wrapped a dampened leaf around Bibwit’s burn and tied it with strong vine. Bibwit tested the movement of his arm, grimacing and perhaps making more of his injury than was necessary, because Dodge, with a quick glance at General Doppelganger, said, “We might have to cut it off.”

Bibwit fell still, too horrified to speak.

“You can tutor just as well with one arm as with two, can’t you?” Bibwit’s mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out.

Dodge and General Doppelganger sputtered with laughter. “I’m just teasing, Bibwit,” Dodge said. “You’ll be fine.”

“Oh. Ha ha,” Bibwit said uneasily. “A bit of levity to ease the burden we’re under. Yes. Ha ha.” But he hugged his injured arm close until Dodge and the general settled into sleep. Regaining his usual composure, he took a seat next to the princess. “Now, Alyss, we shall have that lesson of ours that keeps getting put off. Lucky for us, I have memorized most of the necessary books.”

Alyss nodded, but she was in no mood for a lesson. The day itself had been a lesson-in survival. “I will close my eyes for a moment,” continued Bibwit, “to file through all that’s in my head for the

appropriate material. It’ll just take a moment.”

But as soon as the tutor shut his eyes, he began to snore, his ears opening and closing with each breath. Alyss smiled a tired smile and pulled the ends of his robe about him as a blanket. She moved to the other side of the fire to let him sleep undisturbed. As it had long ago, on that first night with Quigly and the orphans in the London alley, her mind was plagued by too much to allow her any rest. How did it work when I was young? Her ability to conjure objects from the strength and depth of her imagination. How had it worked? She’d been lucky with the muzzle. She hadn’t intended to conjure such a thing, had only tried to imagine Dodge safely out of the spider’s sticky clutches.

Hatter sat beyond the fire’s glow cleaning his weapons, his top hat beside him. He removed first his left wrist-bracelet and then his right, and set about wiping their blades with a leaf. Alyss had never seen a Milliner without his bracelets. He looks so much like an ordinary Wonderlander. Indeed, especially now, as Hatter paused in his work to strip off his long outer coat and lay it on the ground beside him. Without his coat and the tell-tale weapons, there was nothing in his appearance to distinguish him from any normal, adult male Wonderlander. He must have hopes, dreams, loves, and sorrows outside his duty, as anyone does. Strange that I should know so little about him when he’s devoted his life to protecting my family. He caught her looking at him. She smiled in apology, as if she had been intruding. Hatter went back to his cleaning.

The thing about when she was young…she didn’t remember her imagination having to work. It just was.

“Hatter?”

“Yes, Princess?”

“When you’re fighting in a battle, what do you think about?” Hatter considered. “Nothing, Princess. Nothing at all.”

“So you don’t tell yourself, ‘I’m going to throw my top hat and then I’m going to attack with the blades on my wrists’ or anything of that sort?”

“No.”

“No,” Alyss echoed, “of course not. It just happens. Your body knows what to do.” Hatter nodded.

It’s unconscious. To will something into being, the willing of it must be so deep down that no self-doubt is possible. The imaginative power itself must be a given, a thing already proven that cannot be disbelieved.

Lunar hours passed and, at first, Alyss was all too aware of her efforts to conjure, all too aware of the items she attempted to imagine into being. A platter, a sword, a crown. A platter, a sword, a crown. She repeated these words over and over again to herself. No crown materialized. Part of a platter did form, but quickly vanished. A sword appeared, but in outline only, plain and without detail, as if the weapon had not been precisely envisioned. With time, the fire died down to a heap of glowing embers. Alyss’

mind cleared. While she was in this trance-like state, a large glass cover akin to one you might see over a cake in a bakery formed in the air. Alyss looked at it without surprise. She tilted her head to the left and the glass cover tilted left. She tilted her head to the right and the cover tilted right. Then, without moving

at all, she brought it down over the fire. Robbed of oxygen, the embers fizzled out. The glass cover dissolved in the air.

Alyss beamed-for not only had she conjured, but she had controlled her imagination in a way she never had before. I’ll need to practice. I’ll need to…oh. Hatter was watching her, had witnessed this first controlled exercise of her powerful imagination. He bowed his head in respect. Then came a final, honking snore and Bibwit awoke, shivering and hugging himself.

“It is chilly without the fire, isn’t it?”