Henry, Christina - Alice by Henry Christina

Author:Henry, Christina [Henry, Christina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9781101618189
Google: Vs_sBAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0425266796
Barnesnoble: 0425266796
Goodreads: 23398606
Publisher: Ace
Published: 2015-08-10T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

10

Alice didn’t know what he meant. She didn’t see any butterflies. There was a large building before them, directly across the alley. This building was strange, a construction of many different styles all jammed higgledy-piggledy on one another.

There were turrets and balconies and staircases that went up into nowhere, and tilted shacks that appeared to have been dropped on the roof of others, stacked up to the sky. Parts of the building crept into the structures on either side, like a bloated spider spreading its web all through the garden.

Alice wondered whether all the parts connected when you were inside. How would you climb up to that highest tower otherwise? It didn’t appear that way, though. It looked like another maze to her, a different sort of maze, and she’d had quite enough of mazes.

Then she noticed the sign attached to the porch roof. It was made of tin and swung back and forth in the evening breeze.

BUTTERFLIES.

Cheshire had delivered them right to the Caterpillar’s doorstep. Only now they were there, Alice did not want to go alight that doorstep. That mad building could only house a mad person.

Hatcher’s mad, she thought.

Yes, but there is no evil in him, she thought back.

She didn’t know why she thought “evil.” The building was twisted and weird, but it didn’t have to be evil. Except that she had that feeling, that same feeling of wrongness that she’d had in Nell and Harry’s tavern, the feeling that something bad was before them and they ought to turn away while they still could.

She noticed Hatcher’s hesitation also. “It’s not right there, is it?”

“No,” he said. “But we must go. He’s the one Cheshire said would know about the blade.”

“Cheshire also tried to kill us for his own amusement,” Alice said. “Why should we trust anything Cheshire said?”

“Because it’s all we have,” Hatcher said.

Alice and Hatcher went to the door of Butterflies. Hatcher pushed it open and it creaked like the door of a haunted mansion in a story. Before them was a dusty, musty hallway with several doors. There was no one in the hall; nor was there any indication that anyone might be behind the doors.

Hatcher took his axe out of his jacket. Alice found the knife was already in her hand. They shuffled forward cautiously, and the door swung closed behind them with a decisive thud. Alice checked the knob and found what she’d already suspected.

“It won’t open,” she said. She should be frightened. Instead she was angry—angry at Cheshire for sending them here, angry with herself and Hatcher for listening.

Anger would not help them escape. Finding the Caterpillar would, although she doubted he would know anything about this blade that Cheshire spoke of. She did not believe that such a weapon existed at all, but that Cheshire had sent them here for some purpose of his own. “Let’s try the doors. One of them must open, else how does the Caterpillar go about his business?”

She didn’t like to think of his business, but there it was.

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