Elizabeth could just imagine someone holding the door of a cab open for her, saying, “Please take care, Miss Hargreaves.” The driver would gently settle a rug over her knees and just as he climbed up onto his seat someone would run up and hand her a cake from a tea shop and say, “I would be ever so grateful if you would take this, Miss Hargreaves,” and Elizabeth would nod and ask what shop it was from so that her family could return and patronize it at a later time.
The thought of the tea cake made Elizabeth’s stomach rumble. She really ought to be in her own carriage right now, nearly home and ready for the feast.
“Well, Elizabeth Violet Hargreaves, the sooner you choose the sooner you’ll be home.”
She stood in the center of the circle, closed her eyes and pointed her arm straight out like the hand of a clock. Then she spun in a slow circle for a few moments before coming to a stop. Elizabeth opened her eyes.
The tunnel she pointed at looked the same as the others. Elizabeth shrugged and went inside.
Be careful now, sister of Alice! Be so, so careful!
Elizabeth wasn’t certain if she actually was hearing the Voice now. It would sound tinny and far away and then somehow close and clear.
Besides, she didn’t need the advice of a mysterious Voice to know that she ought to be careful. She was going into a dark tunnel and the possibility of falling and hurting herself in the darkness was very great.
She strode forward confidently, certain that she would see light at the other end of the tunnel any moment.
Elizabeth was already looking forward to sitting in a cab. Her patent leather shoes, which had looked so smart that morning, pinched her feet. They weren’t meant for running. They were only meant for sitting at tea and standing in line to meet the City Fathers. If she looked down she could see the shoe that lost its color faintly glowing in the light from the entrance.
I wonder how I will explain to Mama what happened to it, she thought. Elizabeth knew she could never tell her mother the truth. Mama would never believe—not even if Elizabeth demonstrated with the other shoe right in front of Mama’s eyes.
Mama only saw what she wanted to see, and everything else resulted in “Run along, Elizabeth.”
It didn’t matter, really, if Mama was upset about the shoe. What mattered was Elizabeth’s wish. When she thought of Mr. Dodgson and that terrible fear on Papa’s face she felt a fierce delight that Dodgson would spend the remainder of his days on his knees, scrubbing at a stain that could never be cleaned. That would be worth any scolding she got from Mama about her shoe.
Elizabeth was so caught up in thinking of Mama and Mr. Dodgson and her shoe and the anticipated relief of a cab and a cake that at first she didn’t notice just how dark it was inside the tunnel. And it was very dark, much darker than she’d expected. There was no light in the direction she was heading, and when she looked behind, the entrance of the tunnel seemed to have shrunk to just a pinprick.
“But that can’t be,” Elizabeth said, frowning. “I haven’t come so far.”
She started back toward the entrance, determined to prove the truth of this statement, but the pinprick shrank even more as she looked at it.
And then it disappeared entirely.
There was no exit that way.
Cold fear washed through her.
Just what sort of mess have you gotten yourself into, Elizabeth Violet Hargreaves?
How very foolish she’d been, chasing after some strange man because she wanted to see his face. At the time it had seemed like a harmless lark, a moment’s diversion.
Now she was trapped in a tunnel far from home and the way back was closed.
The only possible direction she could go was forward.
But what if she reached the other side and found that it was closed, too? Would she die in this place, a brick mausoleum, withering without light and air?
Elizabeth clenched her fists. “No, I will not.”
She marched forward, her heels ringing on the pavement. She was going home to Mama and Papa and when she got there she vowed she would be very sensible from now on.
“I shall be so sensible I might even be called boring,” she said.
Her voice echoed off the walls and returned to her, seemed to press up against her ears and make her shiver.
Sensible, sensible, sensible, boring, boring, boring
“That’s right. I shall be eminently sensible. I shall always do what I am told and I won’t take any extra marmalade at breakfast. I’ll discreetly refuse sugar cubes when Hobson tries to hand them to me. I’ll never make a fuss about anything again.” She paused, thinking hard. “Well, perhaps about sitting in the Beadle’s lap. I don’t think that’s something I should have to do.”
A voice said out of the darkness, a voice that scraped like grain in a grindstone, “He only wants you to do that because he’s a dirty old man. When you sit there and wriggle, his dead staff comes to life again.”
Elizabeth screamed. She couldn’t help it. She’d had no notion that she wasn’t alone in the tunnel. Then she was angry because she’d screamed—angry at herself and more angry at the person who startled her.
“Who’s there?” she demanded, using her best Hargreaves voice. People generally obeyed the Hargreaves voice.
“Yes, he likes it when you wriggle this way and that, and he can smell the sweetness of your hair and think about what he would do if only your parents would leave the room,” the voice said again. “He would like that very much, although I expect you wouldn’t. Most girls don’t, you know.”
The voice sounded closer this time, though Elizabeth hadn’t heard any movement in the darkness.
“Who are you?” she repeated. “If you’re not going to introduce yourself properly I don’t want to speak to you. I don’t need to stay here and listen to you speaking about filthy things.”
The things the voice said made her skin crawl, made her feel like hideous bugs marched inside her ears with the words.
Of course she’d known, deep down, that what the Beadle did was wrong. She didn’t completely understand what was wrong about it but she knew that it made her feel ill and that was enough.
The voice cackled, and Elizabeth started away, for it had been just at her right shoulder—close enough for her to feel its breath. This wasn’t like the other Voice, the mischievous one in her head. This voice was a cruel and malignant thing, harsh and grating. This voice had never seen sunshine.
“But filthy things do happen here, Miss Hargreaves. Filthy things done by filthy people.”
Elizabeth didn’t turn around, though the owner of the voice stayed very close to her. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of her attention. Whoever it was obviously wanted to terrorize her and she was not going to be terrorized and that was that.