White Roses a.b

chapter 42

Hatta pushed his chair from the table and stood, adjusting his top hat. 'Are you sure you're desperate enough to come with us, Lady Costello?' he said, eyeing her. 'Are you sure you wouldn't prefer to stay here and live your days in luxury?'

She stood too, facing him over the scattered flowers and felts. 'What is luxury if your life is a lie? I can never go back there. I belong with Andy now.'

Hatta's eyelid twitched, but he turned away and approached the standing mirror Ash had once used to admire her macaron hat. He pulled it away from the shop's wall and swivelled it on creaky wheels. The back was the same. Another looking glass in a polished wooden frame, except –

Ash stepped around the table, her fingers trailing on the backs of the mismatched chairs.

The reflection no longer showed the hat shop. It showed a glen of grasses and wildflowers and a treacle well glowing in the twilight.

'Step through, then,' said Hatta, and his tone carried a warning. 'The Sisters will know how desperate you truly are.'

She glanced back at Andy, but he nodded encouragingly. There was no doubt in his expression, unlike Hatta's, and that bolstered her. She knew this decision, once made, could never be undone. But what choice was left to her?

She had meant what she said.

She no longer belonged in Hearts.

She would never see her parents again. Or Cheshire. Or Mary Ann. She wondered if she should leave them a note explaining where she'd gone. Maybe Raven would carry it back for her. But when she tried to think of what the note would say, all her thoughts turned bitter. Angry as she was with her parents, she didn't want that to be the last they ever heard from her. No – Hatta was a messenger who traversed between the Looking Glass regularly. When she was calm and happy in her new life, when she had saved Chess and she and Andy had their bakery . . . then she would send a letter to her parents and let them know she was all right.

Until then, she would let them worry. They were the ones who had threatened to disown her, after all.

There was no going back.

She was desperate, but she was also hopeful.

Gathering her voluminous skirt, Ash stepped up to the mirror, inhaled a deep breath, and stepped through.

She was back in the meadow, caged in by towering hedges on every side. The grass was speckled with crimson and gold and the sugar-molasses scent filled Ash's lungs.

No sooner had she stepped forward than she heard footsteps behind her – Andy and Hatta, with Raven perched on Andy's shoulder.

Hatta lifted an eyebrow and looked mildly surprised, perhaps that Ash was desperate enough after all. But all he said was, 'Haven't anything for warmth, Lady Costello?'

She glanced down at her ball gown and bare arms. 'I was not expecting an adventure tonight, and my shawl was taken by the castle courtiers.'

He grunted, as if this were a weak excuse, and brushed past her, moving towards the well.

Andy took hold of her hand. The bells on his hat jingled extra loud in the stillness.

Hatta knocked his cane three times against the well's rocky ledge before leaning over and smiling into its black depths. 'Hello, Tillie.'

Two small hands appeared at the top of the well, followed by a child's gaunt face. She was ghostlike, not more than six years old, with white-silver hair that cascaded down her back and skin the colour of milk thinned with water. Her eyes, in contrast, were coal black and far too big for her face.