Alice Hatter's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Alice Hatter had enough dynamite to level a hill, but she still couldn't find the vault she meant to blast. She crouched at the marsh's edge, a red-tipped sprout in each fist, and stared at the black water. Somewhere under that muck sat a sealed vault packed with Wonderland's lost weapons. She had spent three days plugging sticks into the mud and lighting them. Three days of craters. No door. Behind her, boots squelched. A stranger led a pair of white-and-brown oxen up from the reeds. Mud caked him to the knees. His eyes were the tired eyes of a man who had ridden too far. "You lost?" Alice asked. She didn't stand. "I'm looking for the arsenal vault," he said. "Every road here ends in water." Alice laughed and lifted a sprout. "I've got the boom. I just can't find the box." She pointed at her latest crater. "Been guessing all week." The man knelt by the water. He was Roper, he said, a builder of tools and weapons. He pressed his palm flat to the mud and went quiet. "Marsh water hides sound," he said. "You've been listening wrong. Watch the oxen." He walked the pair along the bank. At one spot both animals stopped cold and stamped. The water there didn't ripple like the rest. It sat flat, dead still, as if something solid lay just beneath. Alice scrambled over. She shoved her arm into the muck up to the shoulder. Her fingers scraped stone. Not a rock. A flat, worked edge, straight as a table. She dragged her hand along it and found a groove, then a seam, then the cold lip of a hinge. "There," she breathed. "The lid." Roper grinned. "Your vault's roof. Buried under a foot of water and mud." Alice sat back in the muck, laughing. For a week she had wasted her sprouts on empty ground. Now she had the spot. She could pack it, wire it, and crack it open. Then she pressed both hands against the stone and stopped laughing. The seam ran wide and deep. She followed it left, then right, and never reached a corner. She stood and paced the flat water. Twenty steps. Thirty. The buried lid stretched on under the whole pond. "Roper," she said slowly. "How much dynamite did you say I have?" He eyed the two sprouts in her hand. "A stick or two." "This lid's the size of a barn." She turned to him. "A stick or two won't scratch it. I need a wall of them. And a real bomb to set them all off at once." Roper looked at his oxen, then at the sagging plantation house on the rise behind them. "Then we'll need your workshop," he said, "and every sprout in this marsh." Alice wiped mud from her grin. She finally knew where to dig. Now she just had to build something big enough to open it.