The Color of Fear (17 page)

“They spoke of visiting the great caterpillar, Lord Amethyst Bartholomew.”

Jack turned excitedly to Alfonzo. “Do you know how to find him?”

“I most definitely do.”

The caterpillar’s hideout must
have been dreadfully far away, because the girls traversed Zeno’s Forest in a matter of moments. In less than a minute, it seemed to Caitlin. She had taken about three actual steps; her feet had barely touched dirt. The scenery had zoomed by her eyes like a wet landscape painting smeared on the walls of a narrow tunnel. And Caitlin had been like a bullet hurtling through that tunnel.

They were stopped now, standing in the magical, timeless, spaceless heart of Zeno’s Forest, somewhere just north of Wonderland and south, east, and west of … every place, everywhere.

Caitlin’s eyes swept over her new environment. Thick woods of wide ponderosa created a brown wall of timber that encircled them. The branches above filtered the sunlight bathing the woodlands in emerald green. Trunks as wide as Caitlin’s bedroom at home and covered in knotty bark rose majestically through a ground cover of thorny brambles that covered a snarling landscape of tree roots and sharp-edged rocks.

“Not exactly smooth terrain,” Caitlin said. “Thanks for the ride.”

“Yeah, really,” said Natalie. “Imagine if we had to cab it?”

“So,” Rapunzel said to Snow White, “where’s this hidden entrance to the caterpillar’s safe house?”

Snow scoped out the area for a moment, then broke out in a smile and pointed. “Over there.”

A fair-sized sandstone boulder sat in a grassy tract of woods by a dead pine only a short distance away.

“The tunnel to his cave is underneath the rock,” Beauty said.

Tunnel?

Caitlin picked nervously at a fingernail as they tramped toward the boulder.

“Hey,” she blurted out, “maybe we can communicate with the caterpillar without paying a personal visit? Like, maybe we call first … or something.”

The girls paid her no attention.

They reached the boulder and, sure enough, the huge, oval rock rested in a prolific patch of shamrock-green four-leaf clovers.

Caitlin had never seen so many lucky four-leaf clovers in all her life. Natalie seemed mesmerized too. Though the leaves were withering, all four leaves seemed to be intact on every clover.

Natalie bent down and picked one for good luck. “You sure that insect is sipping organic tea down there and not Irish whiskey?”

Rapunzel rolled the boulder away from the base of the dead pine. A pitch-black, narrow tunnel entrance loomed before them.

Are they kidding?

“Hey … ” Caitlin said, still fidgeting with her nails. “Let’s send just one person down there. Like on a reconnaissance mission. She’ll locate the caterpillar and bring him back here.”

Beauty, ignoring Caitlin’s plea, peered down the entry shaft. “I’ll go down first. Someone else follow me.”

She got down on her hands and knees—beautiful tattered dress and all—and crawled into the muddy hole. Next went Cinderella, then Natalie.

“You’d better go now, my dear,” Snow said to Caitlin.

She had started rocking back and forth on her heels and chewing the split ends of her beloved cinnamon-colored hair.

“Hey, I have another idea,” Caitlin said. “Suppose we—”

“Hush up, girl,” Rapunzel said sternly. “You’re next.”

Caitlin approached the entrance timidly, leaned slightly forward, and peered down the shaft. “It’s, like, totally dark down there. How will we see in the tunnel?”

Snow smiled. “Glowworms.”

Her smile seemed sincere, but Caitlin had no clue how slimy worms could help ease her dread of the dark. Natalie had already disappeared down the hole, though, and Caitlin couldn’t leave her unattended. So despite her considerable trepidation, she crawled into the shaft and got swallowed up by the blackness.

When her feet touched bottom, Caitlin crouched on her hands and knees in the pitch dark. She peered down the length of the tunnel, expecting to see another stretch of blackness.

A galaxy of green, twinkling lights reflected in her eyeglasses. They glittered in front of her down the full length of the seemingly unending passage.

This isn’t scary. This is extraordinary!

Snow was absolutely right.

Caitlin stared in awe at the countless speckles of emerald light shining as far as her eyes could see; they were like a glittering ocean of stars from a distant spiral galaxy.

These green, glowing insects are beautiful and sort of disgusting at the same time.

Caitlin began to crawl on all fours, following her sister. Lime-colored jewels of light cast irregular shadows onto the dirt beneath her. As she maneuvered deeper into the tunnel, Caitlin’s heartbeat sped up. Her breath grew shallow—though not for lack of oxygen. She simply realized there was no turning back. She was too far into the tunnel.

“Pick up the pace!” Rapunzel shouted from behind. “We need to get there today.”

A glowworm suddenly poked through the surface of the tunnel ceiling, startling Caitlin. It squirmed mere inches above her head.

“I despise worms!”

“Technically,” Natalie said, “The glowworm is classified as an insect. They’re a species of beetle.”

The bright-green, segmented body curved and wiggled side to side within its armored exoskeleton.

Caitlin cringed. “Oh God, please don’t notice me. Pleeease!”

The slimy beetle must have sensed Caitlin’s approach because, at that very moment, it turned to face her directly. It poked the air with its pointed front tip, searching for a surface to crawl on.

“Oh God, please don’t crawl on my face,” Caitlin begged.

The glowworm dropped onto her head.

She shrieked.

It scuttled down her forehead and onto her cheek … then onto her neck …

“Get it off me!”

Natalie craned her head backward. “Just pick up that freaking incandescent insect and place it back onto the dirt.”

“You do it!”

“Just to shut you up, I would, but this tunnel’s too tight to turn my butt around.”

Caitlin was paralyzed.

The glowworm crawled in circles on the front of Caitlin’s neck.

“Agh! Get it off me! Use the friggin zapper or something!”

The beetle suddenly scurried down her top.

Don’t you dare!

It wiggled across her chest and then downward, crawling along the rim of her bra!

“Aaaahhhh!” Caitlin’s ear-splitting shriek shook the whole tunnel.

“We have no time for your neurosis!” Rapunzel shouted from behind. “We’ve been spotted by the crows, and the clock is ticking. Now pick up the bloody beetle and move it before I zap
you
.”

Caitlin had forgotten how forceful the long-haired dead girl from the cemetery could be. And, somehow, being ordered to move the vile and slimy glowworm made it easier for her to do it. She tugged the neckline of her sweater and stretched it outward. She slid her other hand down her top, fingers probing for the bug. By now it had passed over her belly button and was heading toward her pant waist. The dogged beetle then began nudging its way down her pants.

She snatched the slippery beetle up by its abdomen, then pulled it out of her sweater and plunked it back on the tunnel wall. The glowworm slithered along the soil, heading happily off into the tunnel.

Caitlin sighed in relief.

With that nasty catastrophe resolved, the group continued to shimmy their way through the narrow crawlspace.

They tunneled on their hands and knees through tangled tree roots and around a banked curve. The crawlspace began to get even narrower.

A thin wisp of smoke suddenly wafted through the tunnel. Caitlin smelled something peculiar. She coughed.

“Head toward the smoke,” Rapunzel said.

Caitlin recalled the old adage: Where there’s smoke …

The cramped tunnel soon
opened out into a wide, cavernous pit. A large entryway with a narrow stained-glass skylight above allowed rays of sunlight into the cave, enlivening the space with blues, violets, and reds. More glowworms lined the walls, providing ample hues of greens. Candles mounted in bronze sconces on the cave wall shone yellow candlelight. All these colors together gave unexpected life to the cave.

The second surprise was that the cave itself was a luscious underground garden. Unlike the zombified plant life above-ground, the flora here was far from struggling. Vines full with tomatoes and cucumbers climbed the walls. Bean plants with stems chock-f of beans grew in abundance out of the ground. Clusters of grapes in purple, green, and red hung from the ceiling. Passion fruit vines clung to shoots of corn and artichokes and tall sunflowers. Pumpkins and carrot greens carpeted the floor. There were cloves of garlic, wasabi plants, and thick horseradish roots. Lettuces and kale and purple-and-yellow chard sprung from pockets of soil between other plants. Even a lemon tree grew here.

Caitlin didn’t know much about plants, but she was pretty sure peppermint was growing somewhere too—minty fumes scented the cavern.

“Wow, this place is like a garden of earthly delights,” Natalie said. She ran her finger along a vine. “So where’s the caterpillar? Looks like the only things here are plants and glowworms.”

At the far end of the cave, they noticed a long sofa with purple pillows and a large decorative mohair blanket spread out cozily.

Wisps of the minty smoke wafted from a stick of incense perched on a mushroom near the sofa. The mushroom, Caitlin noticed, was as tall as the bookshelf in her bedroom, and even wider.

“Ahem,” came a small voice.

The girls approached the mushroom. Seated on top of its cap, sipping tea from the smallest porcelain teacup Caitlin had ever seen, was a three-inch-long, royal-blue caterpillar.

“You must excuse me,” the caterpillar said. “I was not expecting you for another minute and thirty-seven seconds.”

He dug one of his pin-size hands into the mushroom cap and pulled up a chunk of mushroom. He took a bite, chewed, and … began to inflate! He steadily increased in size like a carnival balloon, inflating and growing and expanding.

“Ah, three feet precisely,” the caterpillar said. “Or 91.44 centimeters. A very good height indeed.”

He reached under his mushroom and pulled out a new, more appropriately sized teacup and chair. Using one of his spare lower hands, he poured himself a fresh cup of tea. Minty steam rose from the cup and filled Caitlin’s nostrils.

Yup. Teacup. Definitely not a hookah.

The caterpillar’s face identified him as old, solemn, and wise, though ashen from the zombie affliction. Tiny spectacles were fixed firmly on the far tip of his nose, making him look like a distinguished scholar, and he wore a thick tweed vest and bow tie.

“Allow me to introduce myself. I am Lord Amethyst Bartholomew, but do please call me Amethyst. No need for formal titles, considering our current state of affairs.”

His voice was midtone and hoarse, as if he had sand in his throat. He had a wispy beard made of fine threads like spun silk the color of ivory. Age lines graced his forehead and temples, and crow’s feet around his eyes became pronounced when he smiled or spoke, drawing attention to them—they were darkly shadowed around the rims.

The grand old caterpillar ignored Caitlin and spoke directly to Rapunzel. “I see you’ve brought the girl,” he said.

She nodded. “Yes. And we’re running out of time.”

The caterpillar raised his hand pensively. “Ah, look at how we mindlessly react to Father Time, Your Highness, without ever asking,
what is the meaning of time?
”

Natalie butted in. “Though time and space are unified as per Einstein’s space-time continuum, time itself might best be defined as the distance—”

“Silence, child!” he scolded in his raspy voice. “It was an allegorical, metaphorical, rhetorical question.”

Amethyst turned slowly and peered deeply into Caitlin’s eyes. “Who … Are … You?”

Caitlin remembered this question from her
Wonderland
book. She knew the caterpillar would try to engage her in all kinds of nonsensical wordplay.

Not gonna happen!