More applause. More cheering.
More bile in my mouth.
“Breathe, breathe, breathe,” someone whispered to me, except when I turned just slightly to see who was behind me, I found it was Mimi, and she was telling herself that, not me.
Either way, it helped.
I focused on her rhythm, released my breath when she did, breathed in deeply at the same time. I wasn’t sure why my body was reacting this way to the crowd, but I doubted I’d ever wanted to be anywhere else in the world as much as I did now. I doubted I’d ever wanted someone’s attention off me with such desperation.
But here, I couldn’t run.
Forward we went as the White Queen waved for us to do so. No more grass underneath my heeled shoes, only tiles, red and white, big, shiny—they made me dizzy three seconds in.
Don’t look at your feet, don’t look at your feet,I urged myself, yet my eyes remained downward because it was still easier than to see the gleaming ones of the people who were stepping aside to make way for us. What felt like both a blink and a lifetime later, we were at a long table close to the edge of the tiles, and Elida had to literally push and pull us until we were standing in a perfect row because none of us had the capacity to listen to her instructions just now. It wasn’t justme—all the Hands felt like we were walking on needles, and the fact gave me a slight relief.
It didn’t last, though.
People spoke. The White Queen said something, but my ears were acting like I was underwater, and all sound came to me warped and from a million miles away. Then the crowd of people were moving, all of them going to their appointed tables, and the White Queen went to sit, too, across from us.
There, the Red Queen was already waiting.
Something like a fist squeezed my insides when I saw her face again. They had the biggest, longest table on the floor, raised on a platform, the tablecloth full of diamonds that looked like drops of water when the light from the candles hit them right. They had high-backed chairs, white and red, and there was this huge red button right there in the middle of the table, surrounded by roses.
At first, I thought it was some kind of glass dome, maybe a dish or something, even if it did look too big, and too strange—but no.
Because the White Queen went around the table, and the Red Queen stood up, and together, they brought their hands over that red dome.
“And now, for thebestestpart of the banquet,” the White Queen said, and it was easy to hear her now when everyone else had fallen silent. “Wefly!”
The queens pushed their hands down at the same time, and it was most definitely not glass, but rubber.
It happened slow and fast at the same time. The ground underneath the tiles vibrated, just like it did when we were in a trial. Gears were shifting, and by the sound of it, they weremassive.
Hands wrapped around mine—Cook on one side, Helen on the other. The floor began to vibrate—but more than that. It began to rise.
More laughter. More cheers. More applause.
The sound of it was like a monster coming to life, awakening from a deep sleep. Hisses and growls, groans and whistles—it sounded exactly like a living being was somewhere underneath us, below the tiled floor, and it was pushing us up and up and up…
We were flying, indeed.
I thought I screamed, but maybe it was one of the others. Our feet were strangely glued to the floor, and we couldn’t lose balance and fall if we tried—must have been magic. None of the guests, and none of the Hands around me budged, and we held on tightly to one another with all our strength, eyes upward at the dark sky, on the stars that were growing brighter and brighter.
Another groan like a cry sounded somewhere beneath us, and then we stopped.
Slight screams andwows andoohs followed from the crowd and the Hands. I was shaking from head to toe, holding onto those two hands so tightly that Cook had to nudge me to get me to let go of him.
We were up. We were in the sky. The tower and the Great Clock at the top of it were so close, and all around us, Neverwhen stretched into a blanket made out of a million lights.
It was breathtaking—and not just because it was beautiful. But because the air was thin.Toothin—and I couldn’t breathe properly.
Nobody could.
“And now, a little magic on top,” said the White Queen from behind her chair, her smile bigger than I’d ever seen when she turned to the Red Queen. “Sister dearest, if you will.”
The Red Queen did not smile.
Just like in my dream—nightmare—her red lips were cast downward. She raised her left hand and waved her fingers.Over the red silk glove that covered them came the magic in the very same shade, spreading over her head within seconds. People coughed, held their throats, watched in awe as the magic spread from over the Red Queen’s head and all the way to ours, wrapping the entire tiled floor into a dome for real, until it sealed around the edges, and the color faded away.
