Looking Glass

by Christina Henry

  The roses were in the fullest bloom, all of them fat and red and giving off thick perfume that made Elizabeth feel dreamy and drowsy. Mama loved her roses, never let the gardener go near them but insisted on tending them herself.

  And of course the roses were the crown jewels of the garden, more luscious than any of the other flowers. The dahlias and tulips always looked like sad little broken soldiers next to Mama’s roses.

  Elizabeth found her favorite place in the garden, a little nook underneath one of the rosebushes with just enough room for her to sit without anyone spotting her from the house. It was the perfect place because there was space between her hair and the catching thorns of the roses. In fact, she was so well hidden that if you didn’t know she was there you would walk right by the rosebush and never see her.

  Though if she got any taller she likely wouldn’t fit anymore, Elizabeth reflected. She’d grown a little in the last year—not much, but she was hoping to be very tall like Papa. Her mama was slender and delicate and not too tall, but taller than the average neighbor who called for afternoon tea.

  Elizabeth wanted long legs and long arms, though she suspected that if she got tall she’d lose some of her roundness.

  Well, she thought, it would be a small price to pay for being tall. And of course, if she ate enough cake she could make herself as round as she liked again. At least, Mama seemed to think it was Elizabeth’s love of cake that made her so. Maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe Elizabeth was just naturally that way.

  Elizabeth wanted very much to be taller than almost all the boys on the street. She wished to stare down at them imperiously and make them cower. Then maybe they wouldn’t say rude things about her face and her soft arms and her round thighs. It didn’t bother her to be this way until they said something about it. Though it only bothered her because she felt she ought to be bothered, not because they made her feel bad, really.

  Not really.

  Besides, it was only poor people in the Old City who should be very thin. Elizabeth had seen some of them pushing up against the bars whenever they drove past the border. They always appeared so pale and spindly and desperate that Elizabeth wanted to stop the coach and hand out all of her pocket money.

  She said this to her parents once and her father had scoffed. “Charity is all very well, Elizabeth, but any money you gave those creatures would end up in a bottle. Don’t let your sympathy be misplaced.”

  Elizabeth hadn’t understood what Papa meant by “in a bottle” so she’d asked Dinah later and Dinah told her that it was someone who drank a lot of spirits.

  “And those Old City folks, they’re nothing but shiftless drunkards and murderers, your father is right about that,” Dinah had said as she brushed out Elizabeth’s hair. “No need to worry yourself about them.”

  This had seemed very hard-hearted to Elizabeth, but all the adults in her life said it so it must be true.

  A little orange butterfly flew into Elizabeth’s secret nook and landed on her knee. It flapped its wings at her for a moment, as if giving her a friendly greeting, and then flew away.

  A red rose petal floated down from the bush and landed on her knee in the exact place that the butterfly had landed.

  I wish that rose was a butterfly, too, a beautiful red butterfly with wings like rubies.

  And of course because she wished it, it was so.

  The petal seemed to swell, then split, and a moment later there was a lovely butterfly with wings the size of Elizabeth’s palm waving its antennae at her.

  Elizabeth wasn’t surprised by this. Her wishes tended to come true, though she needed to really mean them. If she said idly that she wished for ice cream then ice cream would not appear just because she said it.

  Her wishes also came true more often when she dreamed under the roses, though she did not know why this should be. Perhaps because Mama tended them and put her love into them, instead of the gardeners who always seemed to be having their elevenses even when it wasn’t the proper time.

  She carefully picked up the butterfly from her knee and let it rest on the flat of her hand. It showed no inclination to fly away.

  “But butterflies must fly away,” Elizabeth said. “They aren’t for keeping.”

  Unless their wings are broken.

  She looked all around, startled. That was not her own voice she’d heard. It was someone else’s.

  Someone terrible, she thought. Who would break the wings of a butterfly?

  A jealous Caterpillar who can never fly, the voice said.

  “Are you the jealous Caterpillar?” Elizabeth asked.

  She wasn’t certain where the voice was coming from, but it was definitely not inside her head, as she first thought. That was a comfort, because she was old enough to know that only mad people heard voices that were not their own.

  Me? The voice was richly amused by this question. Elizabeth heard the laughter in that single syllable. Oh no, not me, never me. I am jealous of nothing and no one for I am the one who keeps all the stories and stories are more valuable than rubies. All the knowledge of the world is in stories.

  “So who is this Caterpillar who breaks butterflies, then?” Elizabeth said.

  She thought the voice sounded like a know-all and since Elizabeth had an older sister she didn’t need to associate with any more know-alls. Still, if he told her a story it might make the time pass until the carriage came around to take them to the Giving Day ceremonies.

  He was very naughty. Very, very naughty indeed, but Alice made him pay for his sins.

  “Alice?” Elizabeth asked, her eyes widening and her heart leaping at the sound of the name. “Do you know Alice?”

  Perhaps now she could discover the identity of this troublesome Alice, this spectre who left her mother’s eyes haunted and her father’s face white.

  Of course I know Alice. Once she was the Rabbit’s Alice. The voice had gone all singsong croony. Pretty little Alice with a pretty axe murderer at her side. Pretty Alice who cut the Caterpillar’s throat and made it all fall down.

  “But who is Alice?” Elizabeth asked impatiently. And why does no one want me to know?

  Alice swam in a river of tears and waded through streets that ran with blood and found a cottage covered in roses. Alice walked the forest at night and danced with the goblin and took the queen’s crown.

  “No, I don’t want riddles. If you’re not going to tell me properly then I don’t want to talk to you at all,” Elizabeth said impatiently, and crawled out from under the roses.

  The butterfly in her palm flew away and landed on an open flower. Its wings were the same red velvet as the rose, matched so closely that you wouldn’t know it was a butterfly at all except for the antennae waving in the breeze.

  She dusted the grass and flower petals from her blue dress, feeling that the day was not going at all according to her plan. Everyone was supposed to love her new dress and instead she’d had to drag a compliment from her parents. This annoying voice had come to intrude on her dreaming time under the roses and instead of telling her what she wanted to know it only left more questions in its wake.

  And always, always, there was Alice.

  “Who is Alice?” she asked, though she didn’t expect an answer. She just wanted a chance to show the strange voice that he hadn’t distracted her.

  Why, Alice is your sister, of course.

  * * *

  Elizabeth was squashed up against the door of the carriage because her nieces Polly and Edith had demanded she ride with them and Margaret and Daniel instead of in her parents’ carriage.

  Normally she would have been well pleased to play with them instead of straining to listen to her parents’ murmured conversation, but she wanted to think quietly about what the voice had told her and it was impossible to think with Polly squealing because Edith kept tickling her.

  “Edith, stop that this
instant,” Margaret said, frowning at her younger daughter.

  Edith obligingly folded her hands in her lap, but everyone in the carriage knew that as soon as Margaret’s attention turned to something else she would start in on Polly again. Polly was astoundingly ticklish—if you even brushed her cheek with your fingers she would start giggling uncontrollably.

  “What’s the matter, Elizabeth?” Margaret asked, turning her frown on her sister. “Are you feeling poorly? You’re not usually this quiet.”

  “Yes, I thought some cat had come to steal your tongue away in the night,” Daniel said, and winked at her.

  Elizabeth dredged up a half smile for him, because she really did like her brother-in-law very much. “I think perhaps I am just a little tired. I didn’t sleep very much last night, thinking about today. I was so excited.”

  Of course this excuse was patently ridiculous. Elizabeth was an exceptionally good sleeper. She could fall asleep in any circumstance, in any position and surrounded by any kind of cacophony. Even if she was overly excited about Giving Day she still would have slept straight through the night and woken up refreshed.

  Margaret, however, accepted this reason without considering it for a moment. Daniel gave Elizabeth a sideways glance that told her he wasn’t certain she was telling the truth, but was too polite to say so.

  Her sister’s carriage joined the line of vehicles inching toward the Great Square. Of course they would have to leave the carriage behind and walk part of the way, though their higher status would allow them to park closer to the ceremonies.

  There were soldiers everywhere, strictly enforcing this policy. No amount of wheedling or unsubtle offerings of notes would affect one’s placement among the vehicles. Elizabeth had once asked Papa how the soldiers knew where every person belonged.

  “It’s because of our seal,” Papa said. “There is a very tiny mark on the carriage, one that every owner is required to have when they purchase a vehicle of any kind. The soldiers use them to rank each family accordingly.”

  And the next time Elizabeth was in the stables she’d asked Phelps, the groom, to show her the mark. It was indeed very small, placed in the bottom right corner of the door, and raised like the surface of the seal that Papa used to mark wax on envelopes.

  Once their carriage was parked—a few minutes’ extra distance farther than Papa’s carriage, for although Daniel was connected by marriage to an old family his own family was less prominent than Papa’s. His wedding to Margaret had raised his standing, but his own name limited how far he could rise without some significant contribution to the City.

  Elizabeth did not believe Daniel ever would rise very much higher. It wasn’t that he lacked intelligence—he had plenty of it—but he did seem to lack drive. Elizabeth had often heard Margaret remark that he ought to spend less time laughing and more time working. This reprimand never seemed to affect Daniel, though—he’d only grab Margaret around the waist and spin her until she was flushed and giggling like a girl.

  When Elizabeth saw them like that she understood a little better why Daniel had married Margaret in the first place, because her sister often seemed too dour for Daniel’s happy nature. Margaret kept her joy tightly wrapped and hidden like a secret present, and only Daniel knew how to find it.

  Mama and Papa lingered near their carriage until the rest of the family caught up with them and then they all proceeded together in the direction of the Great Square.

  In a proper city the Great Square would have been the geographical center, but the New City wasn’t like other cities that Elizabeth had read of in books. The New City had been built when the grandfathers of the City Fathers wished to escape the crime and degeneracy (this was Papa’s word; Elizabeth wasn’t entirely sure what degeneracy was but Papa’s tone indicated that it was a Bad Thing) that was spreading ever outward from the heart of the City. It had been decided that the heart of the City would be walled off and a fresh New City built around it like a ring. Only families of wealth and breeding were permitted to reside in the New City, and all the thieves and murderers were left inside “away from decent folk,” as Papa said.

  Elizabeth thought that probably there were more than just thieves and murderers left in the Old City, that there were decent folk who just didn’t have enough money to make it out. This was a Very Controversial Opinion, for when she expressed it she was immediately shouted down by any grown-ups in the vicinity who assured her that “only filth lives in the Old City.”

  The ring of the New City accomplished its purpose—the crime-ridden streets no longer spread outward from the center. But dark things grow even in the absence of sunlight, and the denizens of the Old City began stacking floors on top of other floors, and buildings on top of other buildings, until the whole thing looked like a tottering child’s toy ready to fall at the touch of a well-placed kick.

  The rooftops of the Old City were now higher than the tallest building in the New City—the six-story Home Government building, a gleaming beacon of shining white marble that was meant to be visible from anywhere in the New City. Now, owing to the increased height of the Old City, those residents who lived directly across the ring from the Home Government building could not see the glimmering edifice—only the crooked towers and plumes of dank smoke that emitted from the Old City.

  The Home Government building was set at the northern side of the Great Square. The other three sides were residence buildings for the City Fathers, twelve identical three-story brick buildings set four to each side.

  The cobblestones that paved the rest of the City were not present in the Great Square. Instead, the ground was composed of large pieces of marble that matched the Home Government building. This marble was cleaned every day, three times a day, by twenty-four servants who scrubbed on their hands and knees at even the most minute scuff in the field of white. There were to be no imperfections in the Great Square.

  The twelve City Fathers, descendants of those original forward-thinking men who had stopped the swelling pustule of crime (this was another phrase Elizabeth had overheard, though it wasn’t one of Papa’s—Papa didn’t state things in such a poetic manner), waited on a dais in front of the Home Government building to greet the families of the New City. Beside each Father was a servant holding a bag that contained coins for the children.

  Every family lined up according to their housing parish number—there being one Father for each parish. Strictly speaking each Father was a sort of governor for his parish, although as far as Elizabeth could tell all the actual work was done by the Father’s representative in the parish.

  In Elizabeth’s parish that was Beadle Kinley, a horrid old man who smelled of mothballs and always insisted that Elizabeth sit on his lap when he came to visit her papa. She’d tried very hard to avoid this task on his last visit, arguing that she was far too grown-up for lap-sitting. But the Beadle had given Papa a look with his piercing blue eyes, a look that Elizabeth could not read but that her father understood.

  He’d swallowed visibly and said, with the tiniest of tremors in his voice, “Go on, Elizabeth. You’re not so grown-up yet.”

  Mama had looked away as the Beadle slid his damp hand down Elizabeth’s curls and onto her back. Elizabeth had wanted to wriggle away from his foul touch, but she had learned that he seemed to enjoy this (he always chuckled wheezily in a way that passed for happiness, anyhow) and since she wanted it over with as soon as possible she sat very still and hoped he’d have his fill of her company soon.

  Elizabeth shook away the memory of the Beadle as she and her family joined their line. Polly and Edith tried to jostle in front of her in order to receive their coins first, but Margaret reprimanded them sharply and they fell into line behind. Elizabeth was so preoccupied with thoughts of Alice and the mysterious voice (and the creeping memory of the Beadle that seemed to hover like an infected thing in the back of her mind) that she hardly noticed. Of course it was only right th
at she go first—she was the girls’ aunt, after all, and her father was more important than Daniel—but at the moment she couldn’t say that she cared.

  She only wondered about Alice.

  The voice said that Alice was her sister.

  Mama and Papa had always said that Elizabeth’s only sister was Margaret.

  And nobody ever spoke of a person called Alice.

  Except on the day that the newspaper brought news of the fire in that hospital.

  And today, when Elizabeth came down the stairs in her new blue dress.

  Alice must have been my sister once, but she was sent away to that hospital. But if she was sent away, why did no one ever say so? Why did no one ever visit her?

  It was very possible the voice was lying to her.

  Or, if you are perfectly honest with yourself, Elizabeth Violet Hargreaves, there was no voice at all. Only a phantom you made up to amuse yourself in the garden.

  It was certainly possible that the voice was just her own imagination, trying to explain why everyone kept mentioning a person called Alice and then shushing the name away.

  Elizabeth moved forward with the line, hearing the clink-clink-clink of coins and the numerous happy cries of “Thank you, Father!” echoing all around the Great Square.

  The marble tiles made quick walking an impossibility. The material was slippery—not less so for the daily polishing—and it forced everyone who walked upon it to take tiny, mincing steps. There was no striding confidently across the Great Square. That was likely by design, as it was probably best to get one’s inferiors in the correct state of mind before they met with one of the Fathers.

  Polly and Edith fidgeted behind Elizabeth, tugging on her curls and ribbons to try to make her turn around. But Elizabeth only waved them away with an impatient hand. She didn’t have time for her nieces’ teasing. There were a lot of things she needed to consider just at the moment. She half wished it wasn’t Giving Day at all, for to be surrounded by a jostle of people who expected her to smile and make conversation was very tiresome at present.