“I’m not interested in filthy things. Filthy things only happen in the Old City,” Elizabeth said primly, marching forward.
“And just where do you think you are then, little Alice?”
She couldn’t see him because the dark was an absolute thing, a cloak over her eyes but she could feel him, so very close, close enough for his long fingers to scrape over her upper arms.
The terror erupted then, made her heart pound and her hands shake, made her want to run and scream and cry and call for her papa to save her, but she kept her voice as clear and even as she could make it.
“I’m afraid you are mistaken,” she said. “My name is not Alice.”
“Oh, you’re an Alice, all right. Too curious by half, and foolish with it. So full of magic that you practically glow in the dark, so full of it that you’re calling all the hunters to you without even knowing it, little rabbit. And rabbits who wander from their warren get caught by foxes.”
He did grab her then, closed his fingers around her arms and squeezed hard enough to bruise. He had long, long fingernails that tore the sleeves of her dress and cut into her skin. She felt like he’d branded her there, marked her as his own.
Elizabeth was scared, she was more scared than she’d ever been in her life, but she was angry again, too. Angry because there was that name again and somebody insisting that she was someone she was not.
“I. Am. Not. ALICE.”
The last word was not a scream but a yell, a primal thing that came from her heart instead of her throat. The man holding her jerked away, releasing her. There was an awful smell of burning flesh, sour and smoky.
“My hands!” he screamed. “What have you done to my hands?”
Elizabeth didn’t know what she’d done, but since she couldn’t say she was sorry it happened, she didn’t stop to investigate. She ran, harder and faster than she’d ever run before, ran until the howls of pain and rage faded away into the shadows of the tunnel behind her.
“How long is this horrible place?” she said, stopping to try to catch her breath when she thought she was far enough away from the man with the long nails and the grating voice.
For all she knew the tunnel might not be a tunnel at all but a labyrinth, or a circle. She might run forward only to crash right into that man again from the other side.
Think, Elizabeth. Think, think.
“There has to be a way in and out. Otherwise that man would never have gotten in here in the first place. So there are exits, but they must not be very obvious ones.”
She hesitantly reached out to her left, waving her hands in the blackness until she felt the rough scrape of brick under her fingers. She had an idea that there were openings in the wall, if only she could find them.
But what if I’m walking along here, searching for a door, and it happens that the door is on the opposite side and I never notice it?
Elizabeth shook her head. If she worried about all the possibilities, then she would never get anywhere—she’d just stand there like a frightened goose until that man caught up with her again. She rather thought he would be more determined to catch her the second time, too, and she wasn’t certain she could duplicate whatever it was that hurt him the first time.
Elizabeth crept along, sweeping her arms up the wall as far as she could reach and then down again in big half circles. Every few moments she would stop and listen for the sound of someone creeping up behind her. She wasn’t going to be taken by surprise again.
After several moments (in which her stomach began making extremely noisy groans that were loud enough to drown out the possible presence of another person) she halted in frustration. There wasn’t any door in the wall. At this rate she’d just go on creeping forever and the only thing she would detect would be plain brick wall.
She put her back to the wall and lowered herself until she was sitting. Her feet hurt so badly that she wanted to take off her shoes, but she knew that wouldn’t be a wise thing to do. She might step on a nail or a piece of broken glass, and if her foot were hurt or bleeding she wouldn’t be able to run if she needed to run. And she might need to run, though she hadn’t the faintest notion where she might run to. There wasn’t anything here except shadows and brick that went on and on and on.
But how did that man get in here? The exit behind me is closed, and the way ahead is dark.
A tear slid out of her right eye, and she knuckled it away impatiently. Crying wasn’t going to solve anything. And no one was going to come and save her, because no one had any notion where she’d gone.
Except the Voice. That Voice knew where I was going, somehow.
It felt very lonely there with the dark pressing all around her and her feet hurting and her stomach growling. She would have welcomed the presence of a bossy Voice just at the moment. At least she would have felt less like she’d fallen into a hole with no bottom.
You have to stand up again, Elizabeth. You have to keep going.
But it was very difficult to feel that going forward mattered at all. Why tire herself out if there was nowhere to go?
Just then she felt something furry nosing around the fingers of her left hand. It was only a tiny thing, making equally tiny squeaking noises.
She lay the palm of her hand flat and felt its paws as it climbed on, and then when it scurried off again quickly. A mouse.
“Hello there, Mr. Mouse,” she said. “Don’t run away. I won’t hurt you.”
She heard the mouse hurrying back. Its forepaws climbed onto her palm again. Elizabeth couldn’t see the mouse, but she imagined it perching there, half on and half off, staring up at her with bright little button eyes.
“That’s what Big People always say, that they won’t hurt us, but then they set out traps that catch or hit us with great brooms or put the cat on us,” the mouse said, in a rather squeaky little voice.
“Well, I haven’t got any traps or brooms or cats in my pocket,” Elizabeth replied, and then a moment later she realized she was talking to a mouse. She was talking to a mouse, and the mouse understood her and she understood the mouse.
She’d thought the day couldn’t be any stranger, but she supposed one must be prepared for strange things to happen on a day when one chased a bird-man into an endless tunnel.
“You could still stomp on me with your feet,” the mouse said.
“I would never do such a thing!” Elizabeth cried, insulted at the very thought. Then she amended, “Leastways, not on purpose. I might accidentally tread on your tail in the dark, but I wouldn’t mean it. It’s very dark in here, you know.”
“Not for me,” the mouse said, and Elizabeth noted the pride in his voice. “I can see everything just as clear as sunshine.”