Secrets of the looking g.., p.18
Secrets of the Looking Glass, page 18
“Let’s not talk about dead men right now,” Celia said.
His face grew serious. “You still feel like something’s wrong?”
“Don’t you? Black Sheep reminds me of someone. The way she pretends to be all nice with her baths and food and—”
“The Queen of Hearts,” Tyrus said. “Right before she turned into a monster.”
“Yes!” Celia nodded. “Exactly.” She checked the hall behind him. “We need to search as much of the ship as we can. They’ve got to be hiding something.”
“Right,” Tyrus agreed. “Maybe we can sneak below deck without anyone noticing.”
But as soon as they stepped out the door to the officers’ quarters, they found Black Sheep waiting with Ty and Lia.
“We were coming to check on you,” the pirate captain said with a broad smile. “I thought you might enjoy a tour of the ship.”
Celia hadn’t been expecting that. “All of it?”
“As much as you can stand,” Black Sheep said in her sweet, yet powerful, voice. “I’m quite proud of my ship, so I tend to go on and on about it. If I start to bore you, just tell me.”
With that, she strode off down the deck.
Celia dropped back to walk next to Lia. “I know you don’t believe me, but there really is something wrong here.”
Lia sneered. “You don’t trust anyone. First it was Bandy, then it was the Red Queen, now it’s a sweet old sheep.”
“You mean the creature who stole our mirror images, the woman who wants to destroy half the people in the Looking-Glass World, and a pirate?” She shook her head. “Maybe you didn’t talk to the people back at the dock, but everyone there is afraid of Black Sheep. They won’t say her name and no one who’s ever been her passenger has come back.”
“We know all about that,” Lia said. “Black Sheep explained she has to keep everyone afraid of her so she can keep getting the best deals. It’s all an act. Trust me, if it were anything more, Ty and I would have noticed.”
“This is the helm,” Black Sheep said to Ty. “It’s where we steer the ship.” She slapped the back of a sheep who had a thick scar down one cheek. “Huntsman takes the wheel while the boys up on the masts keep an eye out for danger.”
“What kind of danger?” Tyrus asked.
Huntsman leered down at him. “All kinds of dangers on the Nix. Whirlpools big enough to swallow a craft whole. Waterfalls that appear out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly.” He pointed at the deck below. “See them double-heads down there?”
Celia leaned over to see rows of huge double-bladed axes attached to the sides of the railing every few feet along the main deck.
Huntsman chortled. “There’s things in the Nix big enough to snatch a sailor or snap a mast or rip a chunk of deck clean off. You see big bubbles coming toward us, you grab a double-head and chop for all you’re worth.”
“No need to scare the children. We have watchers to warn us of those sorts of things,” Black Sheep said, although Celia noticed the captain was laughing too.
Celia looked into the confusing array of sails and rigging overhead.
“You’re wondering how the sails are full when you can’t feel the wind?” Black Sheep asked.
Celia nodded.
“Part of it is magic,” the captain said with a grin. “My ship is so fast she makes her own wind. Part of it is that we’re sailing with the wind, so the night feels still. But most of it is air currents. Wind blows harder higher up. That’s why the masts are so tall.”
That sounded reasonable enough. So why did Celia feel like it was a lie?
As they continued their tour, she kept expecting the captain to avoid some part of the ship, some hidden area where the secrets were kept.
But Black Sheep seemed to take pleasure in revealing every nook and cranny. From the galley, where Sicarius cooked the food, to the navigation room Tyrus and Celia had seen earlier.
By the time they’d explored the fo’c’sle, which was where the crew lived and slept, the officers’ quarters, and even the captain’s own cabin, Celia was starting to yawn. It wasn’t until they went down to the “gun deck” that she got her first real surprise.
“This is where you keep the cannons,” Tyrus said as they walked down the worn wooden stairs.
“I’ll let you in on a secret,” the captain said, putting a hand to her mouth. “We don’t actually have cannons. I had them removed years ago for guest quarters.”
“Guest—” Celia began before her mouth dropped open and her words died.
The entire lower section of the ship was filled with men, women, children, and animals of all kinds, laughing, eating, and playing. Some of them rested in the rows of colorful hammocks, while others sat at tables, playing cards, tossing dice, or just chatting with the bandana-wearing sheep that carried out drinks and plates.
“I thought your whole crew was topside,” Tyrus said.
“They are.” Black Sheep beamed. “These are our guests. The secret of The Pillaging Life is that we aren’t really pirates at all. We don’t make money from stealing or treasure hunting. We make it by taking passengers on pleasure cruises.”
Celia stared, feeling like a curtain had been moved away to reveal that the werewolf she’d been so terrified of was, in reality, a fluffy puppy.
Lia smirked. “Still think we’re in danger?”
Celia put a hand to her head. Had Hatta been wrong? Had it really all been a trick to fool the sheep at the port?
“Here are your beds,” Black Sheep said, leading them to a pair of red-and-green-striped hammocks. “I’m sorry we couldn’t put you up in the officers’ quarters with Lia and Ty, but we didn’t know you were coming.”
She nodded at a damp, black lump on the floor. “I believe that’s yours. My sailors found it on top of the vat. Sorry about the condition.”
“My backpack,” Tyrus said, touching it tenderly.
Celia searched all the happy faces around her, looking for some sign that it was a trap, but it seemed so normal. And yet, she kept feeling like she was missing something—something she could see out of the corner of her eye that disappeared as soon as she turned to look at it.
“There are no other areas of the ship?” she asked.
“Just the cargo hold below, and the ballast under that,” Black Sheep said, covering a yawn. “You can look for yourself tonight, or I can show you in the morning. But now, us old sheep have to get our rest.”
“I’m going to bed too,” Ty said.
“Let me know if you see any threatening carrots,” Lia shot as she walked away. “Or maybe a coil of rope that looks like a snake.”
As soon as the others left, Celia dragged Tyrus to the next deck down. But even though they searched for another hour, they found nothing more than the basic supplies one would expect on a ship full of passengers. There wasn’t even so much as a single gun or keg of gunpowder.
By the time they finally gave up and returned to their hammocks, it was late enough that Celia could barely keep her eyes open. Half of the passengers had gone to bed, but the other half were still up playing games and talking with the crew members, who strolled the length of the ship with snacks.
“I really thought Black Sheep was up to something,” Celia said, pulling off her boots. “Maybe she isn’t like the Queen of Hearts after all.”
Tyrus unbuttoned his vest and hung it from a peg on the wall. “You know who else she reminds me of? That sheep in Through the Looking-Glass.”
“Who?” Celia climbed onto her hammock, feeling like she could sleep for a week.
Tyrus looked affectionately at his backpack full of root beer–soaked books. “It’s kind of hard to remember because now that my imagination is gone, my favorite stories feel like I read them in another life.”
“What if you don’t think of them as stories?” Celia said. “I mean, what if you look at them as the history of other worlds? We know that’s true for Charles Dodgson’s books.”
Tyrus smiled. “Histories of other worlds. I like that.” He plopped down into his hammock and put his hands behind his head. “Okay, well in the history of the Looking-Glass World, Alice met a sheep who worked in a store. Except you could only see the things on the shelves out of the corner of your eyes. When you looked directly at them, they disappeared. It reminded me of Black Sheep because the sheep in the story knitted too.”
Celia’s eyes snapped open, and she sat up with a start. “Out of the corner of your eyes. That’s it!”
Tyrus blinked. “That’s what?”
“Remember back in Wonderland how you said that Charles Dodgson wrote his books not just as stories for people to enjoy, but also as clues for us? He was on this ship. The sheep in his book was a clue.”
Although being dyslexic made some things harder for Celia, one of the things she was good at was recognizing patterns—focusing not on individual letters but the shapes of words. Maybe that was why she’d sensed something was wrong since the moment they arrived on the ship. Even without her logic, her brain had been telling her the big picture didn’t match the detail.
She gazed around the ship, focusing less on individual images and sounds and more on the overall picture. Immediately the world around her changed. Voices blurred, colors darkened. Something was wrong; she was sure of it. But as soon as she tried to see the reality behind the illusion, it all changed back. It was maddening.
“If only there was a way to—” She leaped out of her hammock. “Tyrus, where are Hatta’s shadeglasses?”
He rolled out of the hammock so quickly he fell on the floor. “Oh, my gosh. I forgot I put them in my pack.”
He unzipped a side pocket and pulled out the glasses. They were dripping with root beer and the lenses were spotted, but Celia didn’t care. Snatching them out of his hands, she shoved them onto her face.
Instantly the entire ship transformed. The things she’d been sensing snapped into focus.
Every sound, every sight, every smell that had been hidden before hit with brilliant clarity. And what she saw was so shocking, so terrifying, that for a moment she couldn’t think. Her mouth opened and closed soundlessly, and she had to grab the rope of her hammock to keep from falling.
Somewhere far in the distance, Tyrus was calling her name, but she didn’t have the strength to respond. Because, through the glass, she could see that the passengers she thought were humans or animals were actually shriveled gray creatures with drooling, toothless mouths and empty holes where their eyes had been. Instead of laughing and playing games, they were bending forward and back, pulling on long wooden oars to the rhythmic snapping of whips.
The colored hammocks they’d been lying on were really bundles of thick, black webs. Some were empty, but others jerked back and forth by whatever was trapped inside. The roasted chickens and vegetables on the tables were dead rats. The puddles of root beer spilled on the floor were thick green slime.
Worst of all, the bandana-wearing pirates were no longer sheep at all. Their thick wooly bodies had been replaced by glossy black thoraxes, their mouths now had two curved fangs the length of a human arm, and hundreds of shining red eyes covered their heads. Though they still wore boots, now there were eight of them stomping on the deck as they clattered up and down the ship, whipping the pitiful creatures crammed together on narrow benches and screaming at them to row faster.
This wasn’t a ship at all. It was a . . .
Chapter 29
Spider’s Den
“Celia.” Tyrus’s voice seemed to come from miles away. “Celia.”
“Everything all right?” chittered a high, squeaky voice.
Celia turned to see a huge spider glaring down at her. A thick strand of green slime dripped from its mouth onto the floor.
“Y-yes,” Celia managed to stammer. “Everything is fine.”
The spider narrowed its many eyes at her, but then slowly walked away.
Celia stripped the glasses from her face. The air in her lungs felt thin, making it hard to breathe.
“What’s wrong?” Tyrus said. “What did you see?”
Celia risked looking around the room, but the terrifying spiders had been replaced by laughing people and pirate sheep. She handed the shadeglasses to Tyrus. “Put them on—but don’t scream.”
Tyrus hesitated, then put on the glasses.
Celia watched as his mouth dropped open. His breathing changed to ragged gasps, and a soft mewling sound came from deep in his throat. A second later, he yanked off the glasses and shoved them back into Celia’s hands.
“No. No, it’s not—I can’t—” Panic filled his eyes.
She grabbed his shoulders. “Hold it together. We have to come up with a plan.”
“This is—I mean.” Sweat glistened on his face. “Ty and Lia at the table, they were eating—Then I—And the things with the oars are—”
“I know,” Celia said. “It’s bad. It’s terrifying.”
“It’s worse than that.” Tyrus pressed his hands to his face. When he took them away, she saw his cheeks were wet with tears. “It’s like my brain can’t process this,” he whispered, his voice trembling. “I mean, I’ve dealt with everything else—the bumblephants, the talking chess pieces, the Bandersnatch. I handled it by telling myself they were just a new kind of animal I hadn’t seen before. But this is so—” He shook his head. “I can’t. I just can’t.”
Celia remembered how close she’d come to breaking down when they’d first entered Wonderland. Overwhelmed by things and creatures she knew couldn’t be, her brain had almost shut down. And that was with at least some imagination. She couldn’t imagine what this must be like for Tyrus with no imagination at all.
She grabbed his hand. “It’s not real,” she said quickly.
He looked at her, still gasping and shaking. “What?”
“It’s not real,” she repeated. “None of what you saw through the glasses is real. It was like a movie or playing a VR game. That was pretend. What you’re seeing now—that is reality.”
His breathing slowly returned to something closer to normal, and his eyes lost their glassy sheen. “Okay, right. A movie.” He nodded. “I can deal with that. But—”
“No.” She shook her head. “I need you here with me. We have to get Ty and Lia and find a way off this boat. Which means you need to stay calm. Which means what you’re seeing right now is reality. Strange reality, but reality. Got it?”
“Yeah.” He smiled shakily and squeezed her hand. “Thank you.”
“You’d do the same for me,” she said. “You did do the same for me.”
She looked toward the sheep pirates, several of whom were gazing in their direction. “Sorry,” she called. “Couldn’t sleep. Just, uh, just feeling a little seasick.”
Several of the pirates laughed, and she was grateful she couldn’t hear the real sound or see the creature’s true mouths.
“We’re going to get some fresh air,” Tyrus called. He leaned toward Celia and whispered. “How was that?”
“Perfect.” Trying not to look at what she knew were horrible mutations rowing the ship, she tucked the shadeglasses into her pocket and walked casually toward the stairs.
Tyrus started with her, then ran back and grabbed his pack.
“Are you sure you want to bring that?” she asked. It was still damp and heavy.
He set his jaw. “I’m not leaving my books in this . . . ship.”
At the top of the stairs, she used the shadeglasses to get her bearings and instantly wished she hadn’t. The entire deck of the ship was covered in thick webs, green slime, bits of rat fur and pink tails, and a black gooey substance. She didn’t want to know what that was.
Looking up might have been the worst. The sails were gone, replaced by giant, tightly woven spiderwebs. Silk-wrapped lumps swayed and spun from lines of thread shining silver in the moonlight. As she watched, a bird flew straight into one of the webs. The bird squawked, flapping its wings, which only trapped it further, until a dark shape scurried across the web and sank its fangs into the hapless creature with a horrifying crunch.
Wishing she hadn’t heard that, Celia pulled the glasses off.
Tyrus was watching her intently, beads of sweat standing out on his forehead. She had to get his mind on something else.
“Can you figure out a way to get that longboat into the water with the four of us inside?”
Tyrus studied the small craft suspended over the water on the other side of the railing. “The cranks that lower it are inside the ship,” he said, his voice becoming steadier. “To do it ourselves, we’d have to cut both lines at the same time and hope none of us falls out. We might be able to use a couple of those axes.”
“Okay, good.” She took a deep breath. “I’m going to get Lia and Ty, but maybe you should wait here.”
“You don’t want me there when you tell them about the . . . other thing,” he whispered, his body tense.
Celia felt him trembling as she put her hands on his shoulders. “Don’t think about that. You and I are real. That’s all that matters.”
“Okay.” He gave her a shaky smile. “One thing, try talking to Ty first.”
“You think he’ll be easier to convince because of his imagination?”
“Maybe. But if not—if you have to, you know, force them to look through the glasses—he’d be easier to beat up.”
She pulled him into a hug, grateful they had each other to depend on. “We’re going to find a way out of this.”
“I know.” He looked at the pirates climbing around the rigging and shuddered. “Just hurry.”
Five minutes later, Celia was outside the door to Ty’s cabin. The corridor was dark and empty, and something felt wrong. She took the shadeglasses out of her pocket, slipped them on, and gasped.
