Curiouser and Curiouser

by Melanie Karsak

  “I wouldn’t be a very good thief if anyone saw me, now would I?”

  At that, the Queen laughed.

  A moment later, the henchman entered with a wiry-looking man who was wearing large round glasses and an oversized suit.

  “Sit,” she demanded shrilly. She set the diamond in front of him.

  The man gasped.

  I kept my gaze straight. I would show nothing.

  “Is it the real diamond or not?” the Queen demanded.

  “Where did you get this?” the man exclaimed. “How?”

  “Shut your mouth. Now, tell the truth or I’ll cut out your tongue. Is it the Koh-i-Noor or not?”

  The man pulled a jeweler’s monocle from his pocket and pressed it into his eye socket. He lifted the diamond and studied it closely.

  I bit my tongue hard. If the lie was discovered, I would have to murder her right there. There was no other way out. I looked at the floor, hoping the Countess was as good at concealing what she knew. So far, she had not betrayed me. If she was planning to do so, now was the moment.

  “Lifeless hunk of rock. Dull. Large. Not a shimmer to it,” the man said then set the jewel aside.

  The Queen turned on me, fury in her face.

  She opened her mouth to speak when the gem master interjected. “Yes, this is most definitely the Koh-i-Noor.”

  A massive weight of relief washed over me.

  “This dead looking stone?” the Queen asked sharply.

  The man nodded. “It’s a grand but lifeless thing.”

  The Queen turned and smiled at me. “Very good, Bandersnatch. Now, get him out of here,” the Queen said then motioned for her henchman to take the gem master from the room.

  “Prepare the potion, Countess,” the Queen said then turned to me. “Why don’t you stay? It will be very exciting to watch. And you’ve always struck me as someone with curious eyes.”

  “Watch?”

  “Watch. Watch me be reborn.”

  Chapter 22: The Mock Phoenix

  The Countess stood over the table mixing items into a silver bowl. As she dropped each item therein, she intoned just under her breath. I’d known the Countess since I was a girl. I always admired her, called her friend. And I knew very well that her interest in the occult went beyond occasionally browsing her Uncle Horace’s old books. I had always fashioned her more a tinker than a mage, but I could see how those lines could easily blend. She poured the blood from the bowl that contained the heads of the Japanese ladies, then added blood from two other vials.

  A nauseous feeling swept over me. The smell of death and decay perfumed the air.

  “Now, the diamond,” the Countess said.

  “Grab that mallet,” the Queen instructed William.

  William clenched his jaw together. Smothering his feelings, he picked up a wooden mallet that had been sitting just beside the door.

  The Queen set the faux Koh-i-Noor on the table. “Smash it.”

  “But it’s a diamond,” Jack interjected.

  The Countess turn to William. “It is hard, but it will break. Put your back into it.”

  Frowning, William took aim. He lifted the mallet high then, with a hard swing, he brought it down.

  The table cracked under the pressure, the tabletop splintering. The Countess reached out to steady a candlestick before it fell over. In the concave of the table, the rock lay shattered into three large chunks. Diamond powder lay all around them.

  The Countess took the mallet from William then smashed the rest into powder. When she was done, she collected all the powder and dropped it into the concoction.

  She looked at the Queen. “I have made it as written here, but there is no saying it will work. At best, it will do as the Priest of Sekhmet has described in this writing. At worst, you may become very ill. This is not without risk. I have done everything I can. You cannot hold me accountable if something goes wrong.”

  The Queen narrowed her eyes at the Countess. “If it has been done properly, then we have nothing to worry about, Frances.”

  “And if the translation is off, or if the spell is a lie, you may become gravely ill, Anastasia,” the Countess hissed.

  The Queen glared hard at her. “Just say the words.”

  From her bag, the Countess pulled out a cloth on decorated with Egyptian cartouche. She draped it around her neck. “Get back,” she told us and the Queen’s henchman.

  We all moved toward the door.

  A terrible feeling racked my stomach.

  The Countess then began intoning in a language I did not recognize.

  “The Goddess Sekhmet was a destroyer. She was a Goddess to be feared. We are all going to die,” the Queen’s henchman said.

  “This is not how I thought this day was going to go,” Jack said.

  My stomach shook. The diamond was a fake, but the Countess’s spell was real. What would happen now?

  As the Countess spoke, the sky began to darken. In the distance, I heard the crack of lightning. Outside, the wind blew hard, and the clouds began rolling strangely. Everything went black. Twinkling lights shot across the sky. The small fire in the fireplace grew higher.

  The Countess lifted a silver rod, and chanting some unknown words, she struck the rod on the side of the bowl.

  The sharp sound followed by a strange vibration swept across the room. My hair stood on end.

  “We need to go,” Jack whispered.

  The Countess lifted the rod once more and spoke again.

  I looked at William who was staring with wide eyes. He turned to me. “If this works, if she takes on this power, what will happen? We need to stop the Countess,” he said, then reached for his gun.

  I shook my head. “No. Wait.”

  “Friends, we need to leave,” Jack said again as he moved toward the door.

  The Countess lowered the rod once more, knocking it on the side of the bowl.

  Lightning cracked. The mixture inside the bowl began to swirl of its own accord.

  “Yes,” the Queen screamed. “Yes!”

  The Countess lifted her rod a third time. The wind outside whipped hard. Thunder rolled and lightning cracked. The flame inside the fireplace burned wildly, the flames leaping out of the confines of the fireplace.

  I heard the door behind us open. I looked back to see that Jack had left.

  “Alice,” William whispered. He had his pistol in hand. “We can’t permit it.”

  “Wait,” I said.

  “Alice?”

  “Do you trust me?”

  He nodded. “With my life.”

  “Then wait.”

  The Countess dropped the rod a fourth time. The liquid in the bowl flared with bright purple light. Then, all at once, everything went silent.

  Her hands shaking, the Countess poured the liquid from the silver bowl into a glass goblet which she then handed to the Queen. The liquid moved and sparkled, purple flame flickering at its surface.

  “To eternal life,” the Queen of Hearts said, lifting her chalice in a toast. Eyes closed, she drained the cup.

  We waited.

  At first, nothing happened.

  The Queen opened her eyes and glared at the Countess. “It didn’t work,” she screeched. But before the Countess could respond, the Queen’s body jerked. She dropped the crystal goblet. It fell to the floor, smashing into pieces.

  She jerked again.

  Orange light flashed through the Queen’s body. It moved down her limbs, twisting like vines of fiery light just underneath the Queen’s skin. Her hair broke free of its pins. Her long locks blew in a wild torrent around her. The Queen opened her eyes. I gasped to see they were alive with brimstone. Orange light shot from her fingertips. Everything in the room began to tremble.

  “It worked,” the Countess whispered, fear and awe in her voice. She stepped away from the Queen. “It worked.” The Countess passed me a frightened and confused glance.

  “I feel it. I am immortal,” the Queen screamed.

  “
Alice,” William said, reaching out to take my hand. “We need to leave.”

  It wasn’t possible. The gem wasn’t real. It shouldn’t have worked.

  The Countess grabbed her book and moved toward us.

  The Queen laughed wildly. Surrounded by a halo of light, she began to rise off the ground. She floated at least a foot above the floor, her entire body alive with orange light.

  And then, there was a strange rumble in the sky.

  Lightning cracked.

  A sharp wind blew, blowing open the windows. An awful smell perfumed the air. The scents of sulfur and rot rode on the breeze.

  “Sekhmet,” the henchman whispered.

  A strange voice spoke on the wind. It echoed around the room. It was soft, female, and very angry.

  “What is it? What is she sayi—” the Queen began, looking at the Countess.

  But her words were cut off midspeech by a strange, sick laugh that echoed around the room.

  The Queen’s body froze in place, suspended in the air. The orange light died down, and we watched in horror as the veins under the Queen’s skin began to grow black and pulse toward the surface. The glow in her eyes dimmed. They began to turn solid black.

  The Queen tried to break free. “What’s happening? What’s happening?” she demanded of the Countess who backed toward the door.

  Her face twisting, the Queen’s mouth suddenly clamped shut. Her body twisted oddly and then we heard a terrible crunch, then another, as the Queen’s body jerked from side to side like invisible hands were breaking her into pieces.

  At last, she let out a terrible scream.

  An invisible force slammed her to the wall, and then to another wall, over and over again. At the last moment, as the Queen hung in the air very still, that strange voice spoke once more.

  The Countess gasped.

  And then the Queen exploded.

  “Alice,” William shouted, pulling me close, shielding me. Blood and bits of the Queen of Hearts sprayed around the room.

  The Countess yelped.

  I looked in time to see the book she had been holding burst into flames. She dropped it on the floor. It disintegrated to ash.

  When it was over, we looked back at the terrible sight. The Queen of Hearts had been shredded into pieces.

  And at my feet lay her heart.

  Chapter 23: Today’s Alice

  The Countess’s auto pulled up to the door of The Mushroom. Wordlessly, Jack got out and went inside. None of us had said a word as we left the Queen’s manor. We’d left unimpeded. The Queen’s sycophants, glassy-eyed creatures such as they were, seemed to awake from a strange stupor. When we left, they were milling about as if they’d just awakened from a dream. And no one, not even her main henchman, had tried to stop us.

  “Countess,” I said carefully, setting my hand on hers. She was clutching the steering wheel so hard her knuckles had gone white.

  The Countess turned and smiled softly at me. “If you need anything, Alice, please don’t hesitate to call on me,” she said then looked back at William. “I think things will be different from now on. Please know that I’m here for you both.”

  I nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Lord Dodgson will be sorry to lose you,” the Countess said.

  “He’ll recover.”

  She nodded knowingly then patted my hand once more.

  William and I got out of the vehicle. With a wave, the Countess drove off.

  “I feel like I’m waking up from a bad dream,” William said.

  I slipped my hand into his. “William, I owe you an apology.”

  He shook his head. “No, I owe you one.”

  We both chuckled.

  “What if we simply move past the apologies? There is no use in going back to yesterday. Let’s be today’s Alice and William,” he suggested.

  “Starting from now, though. And after a bath,” I said, looking down at my clothes which were still splattered with goo.

  William laughed. “Of course,” he said then cast a glance back at the pub. “I need to talk to Jack.”

  I nodded. “You know where to find me.”

  William pulled me close and set his forehead against mine. “I love you, Alice.”

  “I love you too.”

  With that, he turned and headed inside.

  Chapter 24: Falling Stars

  The moment I entered our flat, Bess let out an excited squeal. “Alice,” she yelled excitedly. She turned to embrace me but stopped. “What in creation are you covered in? Ew!”

  “You don’t want to know. And I need to change. Immediately. But what happened?”

  “Henry just left. He’s having a carriage brought around. Alice, he proposed!”

  She stuck out her hand. On her finger was a beautiful ring with pearls set in a flower design around a sparkling center gem—a diamond, but not quite a diamond. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “A new beginning. How very exciting,” I exclaimed.

  Bess hugged her hand to her heart. “It’s been a very odd day. Just out of the blue, he asked me to marry him. Can you believe it? And the weather. Have you noticed? It was so strange today. Thunder. Lightning. Some sort of odd eclipse. There were falling stars in the middle of the day.”

  “A good sign, perhaps?”

  Bess smiled, squinting her eyes closed. Her face was radiant. She turned and looked at me. “Oh, Alice! You look just awful. Get that off at once. But what’s this expression on your face? You look so…so, I don’t know what!”

  “Relieved? Elated? Happy?”

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “William.”

  Bess squealed. “What a wonderful day.”

  Dinah, who was observing us both from her perch on the window seal, meowed at us.

  Bess laughed. “You see, even Dinah agrees. And what about you, Chess?” Bess asked, turning to my clockwork cat.

  From his position on my cot, the Cheshire cat flashed us a toothy smile.

  We both laughed.

  “Now, get cleaned up. We’re going on a picnic. Oh, Alice, why do I get the feeling that everything will be different now?”

  “Because it will.”

  Bess signed happily. “A wonderland of opportunity awaits us.”

  “Indeed. How very curious.”

  Chapter 25: Epilogue

  “Your move,” William said.

  I picked a pawn and moved him across the chest board. “Check.”

  “You think you’re so clever,” William replied, moving his king.

  “Don’t you?”

  “Don’t I what?”

  “Think I’m clever.”

  “Of course I do. Stop trying to distract me.”

  “Me?” I asked, tilting my head sideways and looking him over, my eyes radiating desire.

  “Oh, now you’re really playing,” William said. He slipped out of his seat and onto the loveseat beside me. He moved my hair aside and kissed my neck.

  “Now who is playing?” I whispered.

  “After a look like that, how can I resist?”

  The grandfather clock struck six. The last chime had just sounded when I heard a knock on the front door of the guesthouse.

  “Henry and Bess?” William asked.

  I nodded. “They returned from Bath today.”

  William kissed me on the forehead. “No wonder Maggie has been cooking all day. I thought perhaps the Countess had returned.”

  I shook my head. “I had a letter from her this morning. She’s still abroad.” In fact, the situation with the Queen had rattled the Countess in a way I didn’t understand. She’d been quiet and thoughtful. Despite her peculiar reaction, she’d still done everything she could to help us. She’d situated Henry into a shop in Twickenham and paid for Bess’s and Henry’s wedding. William and I, who were more wed in spirit, had taken up residence in the guesthouse at Strawberry Hill. The Countess, quite rightly, suspected that I would be able to make something of the old printing press that had sat cobweb
bed since her uncle’s death.

  “I’ll go welcome them. Why don’t you show Bess what you’ve been working on?” William said, motioning to the stack of papers I had sitting on my desk.

  I nodded, kissed him quickly, and then rose. William exited the room, closing the wood panel doors behind him.

  On my desk near the fireplace, I had a stack of papers. Notes, illustrations, and outlines covered the pages. I picked up my writing tablet. I was just about finished. I smiled when I thought of Bess’s reaction to my news.

  “Wonderland by Alice Lewis. Subtitled, Imaginative Tales for Children. How does that sound, Chess?” I asked, turning to my clockwork cat. The little creature, who’d been grooming his paw, looked up at me and blinked his wide, aquamarine-colored eyes.

  I laughed then kicked a ball of yarn toward him. Excited, he crouched, his gears clicking, then pounced.

  Grinning, I looked at my reflection in the mirror over the fireplace. I pushed my hair behind my ears and straightened the black headband I was wearing. In the mirror, I saw the reflection of the yard outside. The lights inside Strawberry Hill House glimmered through the windows. But then I noticed something odd. A hooded figure carrying a lamp moved toward the castle. I turned and looked out the window. It was dusk, but not yet entirely dark. I peered through the window. No one was there.

  I looked back at the mirror once more. This time, to my surprise—given it was autumn—the mirror reflected a wintery scene outside my window. The grounds were completely covered in snow, squalls of white whipping across the landscape. And at the center of the grounds, I saw a woman dressed in all white. She carried a lantern and wore a crown of ice on her head.

  Gasping, I turned around and looked out the window once more. Again, no one was there. The leaves were hued sunset orange, ruby red, and gold in color. They swayed in the breeze, shimmering softly in the dying sunlight.

  “Alice?” William called.

  I looked down at my manuscript. Imaginative Tales indeed. The first tale in my collection was none other than the tale of the Snow Queen. I grinned. Strawberry Hill was certainly an odd little castle, built by the Countess’s odd uncle, and filled with odd fixtures, like the odd mirror above my fireplace. As it turned out, it was the perfect place for an odd girl like me.