Looking Glass
Page 25
Two more bolts of lightning struck the platform. Alice wondered why Wilhelmina Ray would not save herself. She didn’t have to feel the lightning.
She must know, deep down, that what she’s done is wrong, Alice thought. She must believe that she should be punished.
Alice found she couldn’t feel very sorry for Wilhelmina Ray.
Hatcher touched her shoulder. “We should go, while they are distracted.”
“They won’t try to harm us now,” Alice said. “They’re afraid of us.”
“This is an unhappy place,” Hatcher said. “I don’t think we should stay any longer than we have to.”
“You’re right,” Alice said.
They turned and left the village, though they could hear the crack of thunder and see the flash of lightning for a long time after.
* * *
Alice and Hatcher did not speak of that village for many days.
One day, almost three weeks later, Alice said, “What kind of mother would give up her child like that?”
They were walking downhill for a change, and Alice found she preferred it to the constant climb of the mountain paths. Even though her belly wasn’t any larger she found herself more tired every day, and most days they had to stop in the midmorning so she could nap. Hatcher didn’t seem to mind it, though. She often woke to find he’d gone off and caught a rabbit or two for their lunch.
“Do you mean Jane Blackwood’s mother, or your mother?” Hatcher asked, in that way he had of knowing what she meant without her saying it.
“Both, I suppose. It doesn’t seem a very motherly thing to do,” Alice said.
“What are mothers supposed to do?” Hatcher said.
“Well, they’re supposed to love their children, and care for them, and play with them. They’re supposed to listen and understand. They’re supposed to make sure they are never harmed. That’s what my mother used to be like, before I went to the Old City and came back broken.”
“You weren’t broken, Alice,” Hatcher said. “You were only cast in a new mold, and she didn’t like the shape of it.”
Alice tried not to feel the hurt of this, the fact that her mother could do without her so easily.
“I never had a mother at all,” Hatcher said.
“You didn’t sprout from beneath a mushroom,” Alice said.
Hatcher shrugged. “I know I had one, in the sense that someone gave birth to me, but she left me with Bess and she disappeared. And most mothers in the Old City are tired and cross, for they have to work all the time, and as soon as their children are old enough the children have to work, too. I didn’t see many happy families.
“I think that kind of mother you’re talking about doesn’t exist, not really. She’s only the idea of a mother, a perfect person who can’t be true. It’s sort of the same way your mother thought you were the perfect daughter, and when you weren’t she couldn’t reconcile it with the real you.”
Alice considered this. Perhaps she was being unfair to her mother, as unfair as her mother had been to Alice. She knew that they had loved each other once.
It wasn’t so easy to be a mother. Alice hadn’t even given birth yet and she already knew that. It had to be hard to know just what the right thing to do was, especially when it came to your children. It had to be hard to know you were responsible for someone else’s life, someone else’s happiness.
Maybe she ought to remember what she loved about her mother. Maybe she ought to forgive her.
As she thought this, something inside her unknotted, some hurt she’d been holding on to for too long.
The path they were on leveled out, and Alice and Hatcher rounded a high cliff wall.
Below them was a clear silver lake stretching across a wide valley. Wildflowers sprouted all around in a riot of color. Above the valley the high peaks of blue mountains watched.
This was the place she had dreamed of for so long. This was the place where they would raise their child, and perhaps more than one. Alice felt something catch in her throat, for she could almost see them, their children, running and playing in that field of wildflowers, their high sweet cries echoing all around the valley.
This was the place where they could be quiet, and content, and leave their terrors behind.
Alice could finally see the exact spot where they would build their cottage, and their life.
“Hatcher,” she said. “We’re home.”
Photo by Kathryn McCallum Osgood
Christina Henry is the author of The Girl in Red, a postapocalyptic version of the classic “Little Red Riding Hood” tale. She is also the author of the Chronicles of Alice trilogy—Alice, Red Queen and Looking Glass—a dark and twisted take on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, as well as The Mermaid, a historical fairy tale based on the P. T. Barnum Fiji Mermaid hoax, and Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook, an origin story of Captain Hook from Peter Pan.
She has also written the national bestselling Black Wings series (Black Wings, Black Night, Black Howl, Black Lament, Black City, Black Heart and Black Spring), featuring Agent of Death Madeline Black and her popcorn-loving gargoyle, Beezle.
Christina enjoys running long distances, reading anything she can get her hands on and watching movies with samurai, zombies and/or subtitles in her spare time. She lives in Chicago with her husband and son.
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