First published in the USA by HarperCollins Publishers Inc. in 2017
Simultaneously published in Great Britain by
HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017
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HarperCollins Publishers Ltd,
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London, SE1 9GF
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Copyright © 2017 by Colleen Oakes
Jacket art © 2017 by Ruben Ireland
Jacket design by Jenna Stempel
Colleen Oakes asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780008175429
Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008175436
Version: 2016-12-01
This book is for Ryan, forever the good king of my heart
The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought: still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect.
—Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Contents
The former Princess of Wonderland was lost. Leaves crunched loudly beneath Dinah’s feet as she made her way through the Twisted Wood, her exhausted body groaning, her eyes taking in the maze of living trees that breathed above her. Not living in that they spoke or walked or had faces, but that they saw her—of this Dinah had no doubt. It was strange and unnerving, these eyes without eyes.
The trees of the Twisted Wood were taller than the Black Towers, and sometimes just as wide. The night before, Dinah had found herself not so much walking as maneuvering through them. Dinah folded her hands over her stomach—empty and ravenous, as always—and looked at the trees. Each tree was so different—some had bountiful blossoms of pink that swirled through their branches and up their trunks, some had velvety ferns that draped from weeping branches, and some were barren, with only their branches to shelter them. There were trees that grew sideways—long and low. Others were spindly towers of wavy bark, their branches shooting straight into the heavens. Some trees looked as though they had been burned; they were as black as night and their trunks gave off a faint aroma of ash. They were alive and thriving, however, as evidenced by the black and white swirled flowers that danced on the tips of their branches.