Twisted Ever After

by Celeste Thrower

  “The King! By Jove it’s the King of Hearts himself!” cried the Dodo, snatching at the remnants of a scone and gulping it down in two snaps of his beak.

  “Shhhhh!’ pleaded the King, spilling a little tea down his front as the Hatter smoothed down his wild grey hair and the March Hare straightened his bowtie and puffed out his chest.

  “Dear sir, why would you abandon your Queen?”

  “I just wanted a little time to myself,” replied the King. “The castle crumbled and most of my subjects disappeared and I just needed some time to think.”

  The Dodo nodded, puffing on his pipe once more. “Understandable, we have lost a fair few friends, wot? Terrible business indeed.”

  As the two chatted Franklin cast his eyes over the table. The Rabbit was busying himself with buttering a scone, Three scraped a plate of eclairs clean and a tiny Dormouse wound its way out of the spout of a teapot and snatched a crumb of Bakewell tart. While the tea party continued, the world beyond seemed blank and lifeless, an enormous white void extending out from beyond the hedgerows. Franklin watched a small blackbird flutter from inside the hedge, spreading its wings and braving the white vastness yet no sooner had it taken flight that its feathers appeared to unravel, transforming into ribbons of black ink which made up the word ‘bird’ before it all disappeared like water evaporating under hot sunlight.

  “Enjoying yourself?” purred a voice behind Franklin, he suppressed a shout and caught his cup before tea went spilling over his trousers.

  “I do wish you wouldn’t do that!” he hissed at the Cat, turning in his chair to face him.

  “I’m glad to see you haven’t been wasting your time on frivolities, it will not last you know,” said the Cat as he stretched his claws.

  “What do you mean?” asked Franklin.

  “Look around you, the cakes are losing their flavour, the tea is tepid and everything’s becoming so dull and grey,”

  Franklin turned back to the table for a moment, taking off and replacing his glasses as he tried to understand just what he was seeing.

  The bright colours of the tablecloth had faded to a washed out murky shade, a pale imitation of their former glory. Every guest at the table seemed to lose their shape, transforming into hazy blotches of shifting colours peppered with various words that Franklin could not make out. He watched as the March Hare made to pour himself another cup of tea, the teapot and cup becoming simple words twisted into the shape of their namesakes. A stream of letters, T, E and A tumbled into what was the cup and the March Hare took a long, satisfied sip, undisturbed by these new developments.

  ‘They’ll stay here until everything fades away,” said the Cat.

  “It’s all they know.”

  “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

  The Cat shrugged, batting at his swishing tail with one paw.

  “Nothing. Of course I won’t be here by the time everything fades,”

  “What?”

  “The cat flexed its claws, scratching at the hedges, throwing up shredded letters instead of leaves.

  “I’ll find a way out.”

  “There has to be someone who knows how to fix this!” Franklin demanded.

  “Mmmmmm, well Pontefract might,” thought the Cat.

  “Just who is Pontefract?” asked Franklin.

  The Cat rolled his eyes and recited:

  “The best in the land was The Great Wizard Pontefract,

  In his castle he created spells in point of fact.

  Yet his heart was heavy with such a burden,

  The Yorkshire town of his namesake,

  had run out of sweets and cakes.

  So Pontefract took up his tomes and whizzed across the sky.

  Though he was so small that most thought he was a fly.

  He arrived at the baker’s door and

  In a squeaky voice did say,

  ‘Don’t you worry good sir, I’m here to save the day’.

  But the baker merely laughed and said

  You’re tiny! Go away.

  And so the mini Magus fled the village in a huff,

  But not before he turned the man into a pile of sweet foodstuffs. “

  “Do you think he’d help?”

  “It’s possible. Last I heard, he was coming up with a new spell book to help bring everything back together.”

  “How can I find him?!” asked Franklin, leaping from the table and rounding on the Cat.

  The Cat stared at the boy for a moment, before it let out another yawn and began to groom itself.

  “Please Cheshire puss, help me. You’re the only one who can.”

  The Cat fixed Franklin with a long stare and heaved an exasperated sigh, flexing a paw and slashing at the air to one side of its ample rump. The tips of the Cat’s claws caught the air like fishhooks, raking away great streaming tatters of the world, a rainbow of watercolour lights streaming from each tear.

  “Follow me,” the Cat said, its body fading into multicoloured smoke as it slipped inside a rip. Franklin scrambled from his chair and dove headfirst into the swirling mass of light.

  A vortex of colour and sound blazed past Franklin’s eyes as he tumbled through the rip in the world. A howling wind scraped at his face and eyes as he tried to force them open and focus on the Cat. He rode through the stream of noise as if he were lazying around in a hammock, rocking from side to side and bumping into walls of colour which warped around his shape like a sheet of elastic, launching him further into the stream with a warbling, distorted song.

  Franklin followed suit as best he could, bouncing around like a pinball as he fell towards a small pinprick of white light which engulfed the both of them.

  Franklin awoke face down in a sea of black grass, the sound of waves lapping at the shore filling his head. He blinked a few times, trying to get his eyes to readjust, but the grass did not change colour, drifting in calm ripples as a sweet sea breeze blew through it. A familiar dark, scent filled Franklin’s nostrils, and he snatched a clump of grass, stuffing it into his mouth. The wonderful, aniseed flavour of black liquorice blossomed over his tongue, making his mouth water.

  “If you’ve quite finished,” called the Cat.

  Franklin looked up, marvelling at the sight before him.

  A gargantuan three tiered cake stood before them, iced in white fondant and crowned in black icing. Great mountains of profiteroles doused in molten chocolate served as its towers while fluffy, pink wafer biscuits had been carved into a drawbridge with crisscrossing strips of red liquorice serving as a portcullis.

  “This is where we’ll find Pontefract?”

  The Cat nodded, slinking into the grass, Franklin followed, blushing a little as his stomach let out a ravenous gurgle.

  The inside of Pontefract’s castle was a strange mix of order and chaos. The floors and walls of the entrance hall were a mix of interlocking blocks of fluffy cake, dyed red and yellow. The welcome mat was a long square of golden brown pie crust, crimped at the edges and decorated with small pastry cauldrons and wands in each corner. The sickly sweet smell of marzipan swam around Franklin’s head, drawing his eyes to a massive chandelier hanging from the vaulted ceiling. Great candles of the sticky confectionary burned in a rainbow of colours sending out showers of sparks. Scraps of paper and ancient, well-worn tomes littered the floor, discarded potion bottles oozed their multicoloured liquids across the floor, seeping into the foundations of the castle.

  “Pontefract!” called the Cat. “Are you here?”

  The Cat’s shout faded into silence and for a few moments there was no reply, the coloured flames above them winked out one at a time until the only source of illumination was the pale, imitation light streaming through the entrance.

  “What business do you have with a wizard of my caliber Cat?” rumbled a deep, sonorous voice, the chandelier swinging from side to side as the castle shook.

  “Not my business,” replied the Cat, snatching a small gobstopper from the edges of a picture frame “Someone e
lse thinks they can help you fix our problem.”

  Clouds of thick, pink smoke billowed down the great staircase leading to the rest of the castle. Franklin watched it in awe as they coalesced into a new form blossoming into a huge balloon shape as the disparate clouds began to paint a set of bushy eyebrows and a long beard which trailed down the stairway. It seemed to be made of thin strands of sugar that reminded Franklin of the caramel baskets his mother had tried to make once to brighten up a rather meagre plate of fruit.

  A wizened old man’s face greeted Franklin as the smoke settled, even in this form Franklin noticed the nest of crow’s feet and heavy bags surrounding his eyes. He looked exhausted.

  “Who might you be?” boomed the voice.

  “Fr-Fr-Franklin Liddell sir,” said Franklin, stepping towards the bottom step of the staircase and craning his head up as he bowed.

  Pontefract paused for a moment, considering this.

  “You wouldn’t happen to be related to an Alice would you young man?”

  “Yes!” cried Franklin with a smile. “She’s my grandmother.”

  “Is she indeed? Well that’s a turn up for the books, we haven’t seen her in quite some time and now she’s a grandmother.. wonders never cease.” The Wizard chuckled, a smoky hand stroking at his sugary beard.

  “Why have you come before me young Franklin?”

  Franklin’s face fell.

  “Everything’s falling apart, Grandmother told me about Wonderland but now I’m here I can’t find half of the residents I’d heard about. I didn’t even know YOU existed sir… with all due respect,” Franklin flushed and the smoke began to darken as Pontefract glowered.

  “What can I do about it?”

  “I don’t know sir, but the Cat seemed to have a lot of faith in you,”

  The Cat made no response to this, padding his way through the piles of paper.

  “Did he indeed?” mused Pontefract. “Well I was working on a Chronicle of Wonderland but I ran into a few rather frustrating problems, chief among them I have no binding for the pages,”.

  “No binding?” Franklin scooped up a cluster of pages, noticing at once that they were made from rice paper. Images of the Walrus and the Carpenter, Tweedledee and Tweedledum. and the Duchess grinned at him from the pages. The White Rabbit’s house emblazoned another and the Queen of Heart’s castle, restored to its former glory adorned another.

  The great smoke face faded as a squat old man, his face shrouded in a mix of a long white beard and thick bushy eyebrows hopped out of the open mouth. He wore oversized flowing black robes that swept dust from the stairs as his tiny feet skittered down each step.

  “We still remember them but without youngsters like Alice or yourself things begin to fade so I tried to immortalise everything, at least in some form,”.

  As Franklin shuffled through the pages he was struck by a sudden idea, scampering outside and returning with his arms laden with clumps of black liquorice grass.

  “Did you make a cover?” he asked Pontefract.

  The little wizard shook his head but produced a long thin wand from his sleeves. A cluster of sugar mice scurried from beneath his robes as he flicked the wand, producing two Bourbon cream biscuits in a spray of fizzing lemonade bubbles.

  “Perfect,” said Franklin, snatching a long length of red fondant from the curtains framing one of the long sugar glass windows, draping them over each biscuit. He snatched a few of the pages, pausing for a moment as he pondered his next steps.

  “Cat?”

  “Hmmm?” The Cat looked over, scratching at one of the bannisters.

  “Do you mind?”

  The Cat rolled its eyes, opening another tear and poking its head through, Franklin followed suit.

  The residents of the tea party gazed dumfounded as the Cheshire Cat’s head popped out of the sugar bowl along with Franklin’s hand.

  “Don’t mind us,” purred the Cat as Franklin snatched at a fork and a pot of jam.

  “IT’S A CAT!” squealed the Dormouse, careering across the table, sending plates, cups and spoons flying in all directions. The Hatter and the Hare scrambled to catch their tiny friend, as the Dodo and the King of Hearts ducked a set of flying cream cakes. Three fled under the table.

  “Apologies,” The Cat grinned before he winked out and the two of them returned to Pontefract’s castle.

  Franklin gathered up all the pages, puncturing the margins of each with the prongs of the fork and threading loops of liquorice grass through the holes to bind them together smearing a thick layer of jam on the edges of the stack and sandwiching the two biscuits on either side.

  The ground quaked as Franklin smoothed the new book closed.

  Great swathes of the liquorice grass burst from the ground, seized by the wind and knitted themselves into long black ropes which flew over the horizon, hauling the remnants of the Queen’s castle next to Pontefract’s, threading their way between each castle like shoelaces as The Queen’s castle began to rebuild itself. The old stone was wiped clean of moss and slime as the gardens burst into bloom. A flock of multicoloured flamingos lounged against fresh red rose bushes. The sky returned to a deep, sapphire blue as The Dodo, alongside a gaggle of birds and other sea creatures ran in circles along the shores of the beach.

  “Franklin? Franklin?” A familiar voice called to him from the other end of the castle, and as Wonderland came back together he felt himself falling again.

  Franklin’s eyes fluttered open, Granny Alice and his mother stared down at him, their faces masks of concern.

  The sofa dominated the centre of the room, leaving deep trenches in the carpet and revealing a nest of loose change, discarded sweet wrappers and other detritus. His Grandmother’s eyes were kind, sparkling with pride and a sense of understanding that washed over Franklin as he scrubbed the sleep from his eyes. His mother glared down at him casting her gaze over his dust encrusted clothes.

  “What are you doing here? We’ve been looking all over for you!”

  “Hmmm?” Franklin replied, blearily, suppressing a yawn. “You wanted to play hide and seek.”

  “Not like this!” snapped his mother, a flush bursting in her cheeks that reminded Franklin of someone or something, the memory of them shifting through his mind like a ghost, just out of his reach.

  His grandmother’s face creased into a wide smile as his mother hauled him to his feet, beating the dust from his shirt and trousers.

  Something slipped out of Franklin’s pocket as his mother finished making him look presentable. He picked it up and still in the fog of sleep, handed it to his grandmother, a shocked laugh bursting from her lips as she looked down at an ornate, red leather journal about the size of a matchbook in her palm. As Franklin helped to put the sofa back in its proper place, he noticed a rather plump grey tabby cat stalk across the top of the neighbour’s fence, settling at one end and fixing the young boy in its wide-eyed stare.

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  BLOOD IN THE WATER

  BY AUDREY HUGHEY

  A VALIANT RETELLING OF KING ARTHUR.

  “Stop favoring that little whelp!” King Grindan’s voice reverberated through the passageway in an angry whisper.

  “You can’t possibly understand-” Queen Halldora said calmly before he cut her off.

  “I won’t hear of it. Next time I see her-”

  “You will do nothing,” the Queen returned his interruption, stopping him from finishing the threat. There was an edge to her voice that warned she would not stand for violence against her favorites.

  As Aaricia listened from around a dark corner in an adjoining passageway, she was thankful she was a favorite of the Queen. She didn’t know why the queen favored her, a poor orphan girl with no family ties, no past, and nothing to offer but her service.

  She had been raised in the castle by the cooks and chambermaids since she was a little girl. Only a vague memory of
her real parents remained in her mind now. Her father had been kind and strong, and he had loved her dearly. Sometimes she still dreamed of him. He was guiding her, whispering her words that inspired strength and the will to keep going on when all seemed hopeless.

  Her mother had been beautiful and strong, someone she was always chasing after as a little girl. Ari, as her parents had called her, remembered feeling like her mother knew every secret to the universe, and she believed her mother had known magic. Unlike her father, her mother rarely appeared in her dreams but when she did, it was only her energy that haunted Ari. It was silly, of course, but she loved the feelings that came with the memory of her parents. They made her feel loved. She was too little when they left to remember much more.

  Now Ari was a young woman, nineteen years old and in her prime for marriage without any offers. It was understandable, considering she would have no dowry. Being no one from nowhere meant she lacked any incentive for a man to marry her, and she hadn’t ever felt pretty since being orphaned, so beauty wasn’t an asset she believed she possessed.

  “Then you better keep her out of my sight!” The king stormed down the passageway in the opposite direction.

  Once she was sure he was out of hearing range, Ari expelled a tense breath and relaxed against the cold, stone wall. The slender fingers of a strong hand grabbed her shoulder and pulled her from the shadows, sending her stumbling into the faint torchlight of the old sconces in the main passageway.

  “You were eavesdropping again.” The Queen’s smooth voice vibrated in Aaricia’s ear.

  “No, your highness, I swear!” Aaricia dropped to her knees before the Queen and bowed her head. “I was heading to the kitchen and I couldn’t make it without interrupting you so I stopped.”

  The Queen’s soft hands grasped Ari’s and she gently pulled her to her feet. “You were wise to stop. He’s in a most foul mood of late.”