Page 145 of Heartless

‘Oh, Mary Ann.’ Her gaze flitted up to the soiled bonnet on Mary Ann’s head.

Hatta’s bonnet. The one that turned logic into dreams.

Resentment shot through her, mixing with the fear and the panic and the need to get both of them away from here as quickly as possible.

‘I forgive you. I do. But you need to be calm now. Take off that bonnet and try to be sensible, if you can. We need to find a way to get you out of there.’

Mary Ann untied the bonnet and tore it off her head.

Cath gave the bars one good shake but if Mary Ann couldn’t pull them open, she had no chance. ‘I need a ladder. Or something that can cut through these bars.’

Sniffing, Mary Ann pointed towards the far corner of the pumpkin patch. ‘There was a shed on the other side of the cottage. There might be something there.’

‘Right. I’ll be back.’

‘Be careful,’ Mary Ann cried as Cath turned away and started picking her way towards the darkened cottage. Her skin was covered in goosebumps, her gown made heavy by the drying mud. Her gaze searched the patch in desperation, looking for any sign that Peter or the Jabberwock might be near.

A whisper drifted past her ears and she froze. Her pulse drummed as she turned in a full circle, searching.

The whisper came again and this time she was ready for it. The familiar poem turned her organs to ice.

Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater . . .

She forced down a gulp.

Had a wife but couldn’t keep her . . .

She spun around again, her legs trembling. She wished she’d taken Jest’s sceptre or Hatta’s cane, anything to use as a weapon.

He put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well.

She turned again and spotted the destroyed shell of one of the enormous, house-sized pumpkins. It was the one she and Mary Ann had seen before, the one they’d heard the strange scratching from. Now the shell lay in gigantic pieces scattered across the pumpkin patch, as if some beast had destroyed it from the inside.

Some beast. Like the Jabberwock.

Cath pushed ahead. The sooner she got Mary Ann out of here, the sooner she could return to Jest and begin her new life far away from the Kingdom of Hearts.

‘He’ll take you too.’

Cath yelped. The voices were louder now – right at her feet. She jumped back and looked down at a knee-high pumpkin that sat off the path. As she stared, its flesh peeled back, revealing two triangle eyes and a gap-toothed mouth.

‘Run away,’ the pumpkin told her, still whispering, as the carved pupils of its eyes slid from side to side. ‘Run away.’

‘Run away before he finds you,’ warned another pumpkin lantern two rows over.

‘You . . . you’re alive,’ she stammered.

‘He’ll kill you,’ said the first pumpkin, ‘to feed the insatiable Jabberwock.’

‘He killed our brothers, blaming us for what became of her.’

‘It wasn’t our fault.’

‘It wasn’t our fault.’

‘It was those other pumpkins. Those cruel pumpkins.’

‘The ones that came from the Looking Glass.’

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