Monachopsis | Chapter Two: Across the Board (1/2)

The Glassland didn’t look anything like Madder had imagined.

She’d met Percy by the stables and they’d slipped out of Queensquare by way of a drainage ditch that ran out of the eastern wall. From there, they’d had a short downward scramble through the Red Queen’s orchards, and then the trees gave way to a steep sandstone cliff. The rest of the board sprawled out below them.

With nothing to judge by but pale-blue, cloudless skies and the manicured grounds of Queensquare, Madder had imagined rolling green hills and lush forests. Reality, as it turned out, was a sort of sandy brown tinged blue-grey by sagebrush. The bandersnatch runs drew a bloody slash across the fields a few squares ahead; Madder’s injured hand twinged as she looked at it. She’d almost died there.

A dry, hot wind gusted up at them, skimming warm fingers through Madder’s hair and tossing Percy’s much longer ponytail around like a flag. From this height, the Chessers were little more than tiny blobs of color, red and white specks inching their way across the squares. The urge to fling herself from the edge of the cliff bubbled up in Madder’s chest, and she shuffled a few steps back, averting her eyes from the drop until the moment passed.

“What do you think?” Percy asked.

“It’s a desert,” Madder said.

Percy snorted and took Madder’s elbow, steering her toward a set of steps carved into the cliffside. There was no railing, just a sheer drop to the ground below. Madder shuddered.

“If you want a jungle, go through the Looking Glass,” Percy said. “It’s very damp in Wonderland. That’s how we irrigate Queensquare, you know; the Leporidae have these pumps to keep their warrens from flooding, and they run a pipeline through the Looking Glass.”

“The what?”

“The Family.” Madder could all but hear Percy rolling her eyes, which only made her cling tighter to Percy’s arm. Sarcasm and dangerous heights seemed like a poor combination. “Rabbits and Hares. They sort of run things on the other side. Nonli doesn’t like them; ce says they’re all underhanded cheats. Still, they do provide the water for cir gardens, so they’re not all bad…”

“Rabbits…” Madder shook her head. Trying to extract a coherent explanation out of Percy almost never worked and, besides, right now she had more important things to worry about. Things like sudden drops. “Um, Perce—”

Percy already had a foot on the stairs. She looked over her shoulder, all innocence, while Madder fought the persistent urge to leap. The long fall sucked at her, cajoling, even though her stomach rippled with nausea at the mere thought of lifting her feet from the ground.

“I… don’t… think I can go that way,” she managed. Her chest felt all fluttery, a sensation which eased off as she shook her arm out of Percy’s loose grasp and scuttled further back from the edge. In its wake, she became aware of an itchy burn in her toes. Her heart sank; of all the things she needed right now, the feeling that she was walking on glass shards was not one of them.

“Well…” Percy threw a long glance down the steps, then shrugged. “Afraid of heights?”

“Something like that,” Madder said, picking at her bandages. Fear was not the word she’d pick to describe this weird mix of excitement and horror at the thought of just… falling out of herself, but it made a convenient explanation. Percy probably already thought she was pathetic; Madder didn’t want to add suicidal to the list of things that were wrong with her. Ever.

Percy held out her hand again. Madder took it and tried for a smile. “We’ll take the long way, then,” Percy said. “Come on; the hill curves down to the beach. It’s a pretty walk, just slow.”

Madder bowed her head and shuffled along in Percy’s wake, taking care to keep her steps as light and smooth as possible. The itching was turning into pins and needles; soon it would become a biting pain that would worsen until she couldn’t walk anymore. Healer Carmine said it happened because her nerves were regrowing, and such things took time; Madder wasn’t sure she believed him anymore. Maybe she was just broken, somehow.

The path took them on a meandering route through fields of increasingly sparse and wild grass. It turned rockier as they got further away from Queensquare, and the wind picked up until it was a steady torrent of whispering, sage-scented air instead of intermittent gusts.

“Nothing much happens along the first rank during the games,” Percy said as they descended. She still held Madder’s hand; their arms swung loosely between them as they walked. “All the real action happens in the middle of the board, in the far parts of the Forest of Names and especially past the Tumtum tree—that’s where it’s safest for people to linger, you see.”

“Why?”

“Well, all the nasty stuff lives Redside,” Percy said. “We’ve got the bandersnatches, the barmaglot hives, the sentient gas in the Manxsome Swamp, all the worst bits of the Forest of Names and the Wabe River. All they’ve got Whiteside is tea fields and some old fairgrounds. Very boring.”

Madder, whose definition of excitement did not include a list of things that could kill you, said nothing. The soles of her feet prickled worse than ever, and she was beginning to feel an echo of the sensation in her fingertips, too.

“Madder?”

“Yes?”

She dared to look away from the rough terrain long enough to glance at Percy’s face; the other girl was gnawing on a loose strand of black hair, watching Madder with unexpected intensity. Madder jerked her gaze back to the ground.

“Where exactly were you planning on going?” Percy swiped her thumb over the back of Madder’s hand—it felt like sandpaper scraping across her knuckles, sharp jolts of pain where before there’d been only pinpricks. Madder bit her lip and stamped on the instinct to yank her hand away.

“Away, I guess,” she mumbled. She’d had a vague idea about walking into the sea and not stopping until she found a softer place to live, but then she’d remembered she needed air to live, so that was out. “What else is there?”

“Tewolgow’s in the mountains,” Percy said. She flapped a hand behind her, where shadowy purple mountains rose out of the horizon. “That’s where Nonli and I are from. It’s nice. Small, though. And cold.”

Madder shuddered. “Nowhere cold. Please.”

This time, Percy went silent for almost a full minute. They came to a low hedge, and Percy shouldered the worst of the branches out of the way so Madder could crawl through without scratching her face. She looked up as she escaped the final clutches of the hedge, and her breath caught in her throat.

Sand dotted sloped away from her for maybe thirty feet before it meat frothy, yellowed surf; beyond that, the glittering sea unfolded to the horizon, flat and smooth as polished steel. Flickering lances of blue and green light danced along the seam between sky and water.

The beach smelled of salt and burning pine, and the waves lunged up the shore like something alive. Deflated purple jellyfish pockmarked the sand, and she could see weird, scuttling orange things closer to the water, but Madder didn’t care. The air scraping through her lungs felt like it might stand a chance of clearing out the muck inside. She closed her eyes and swallowed another lungful.

(Her notebook sat empty on the desk, blank pages full of derisive condemnation. Seven months out, and she still had trouble even picking up a pen?)

“The Mog Islands are supposed to be warm, but there’s boojums,” Percy said as she emerged from the hedge herself. Madder teetered as the sound of branches scraping against leather shoved her out of the other reality. Spots danced in her eyes, each a window into a room she knew but couldn’t seem to visualize.

“Boojums?” she coughed, looking askance at Percy.

If she acted as if nothing had happened, then nothing had.

(Completely pathetic.)

“Monsters,” Percy said. “The worst of the worst. They sneak up on unsuspecting travelers and then pounce and—well, no one’s ever found out what happens next.” She wiggled her fingers in a mockery of claws, but the smirk slipped from her face when she caught sight of Madder’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Nothing, nothing, Madder repeated it to herself like a mantra. The other reality dwindled in her conscious until it was nothing but a flicker of shadow in her periphery; if she turned her head too fast, she saw a ripple of dark red curls that should have been there but weren’t. The straps of her bag dug into her shoulders until it felt in danger of chopping them off.

And her hand hurt, even worse than her feet.