(Re)Visions: Alice ((Re)Visions)

by Kaye Chazan

  As the line filed forward, Toby strained to see where it led. He could just barely see through the crowd well enough to spot an enormous stone arch, which was presumably the gate to the city. After a while, a huge black and white sign with the word "IMMIGRATION" painted on it in big, block letters came into view. Eventually, he was close enough that he could make out the massive wooden desk beneath that sign. Like the arch, the desk was a massive thing, and it dwarfed the sour-looking woman who sat at it, far above the fray. It was tall enough that she occasionally needed opera glasses to see the subject of her scrutiny. Her desk was flanked by uniformed security guards.

  "Occupation?" The woman asked the dapper, horse-headed man who stood in line just ahead of the minstrel.

  "File clerk," the horse replied.

  The woman pulled a massive book out from behind the desk and dropped it on the desk surface. She paged through, made a little harrumphing sound, then slammed a rubber stamp down on the page. "In!"

  Security waved the horse-headed man through the gate. The woman put the book back under her desk.

  The traveling minstrel stepped forward and the woman at the desk turned her attention his way.

  "Occupation?"

  "Traveling mins—er, itinerant musician, ma'am."

  She narrowed her eyes and peered down over the edge of her desk. "How itinerant?"

  "Significantly," the minstrel answered. "No two nights under the same roof, more nights than that under the stars. Mileage may vary."

  The woman hauled the same enormous book out from behind the desk and whomped it down onto the desk. She turned a few pages, and then stroked her chin, considering. The minstrel glanced nervously at the security detail, who seemed to puff up in response. Finally, the woman reached out for the rubber stamp.

  "In!"

  The minstrel let out a massive sigh of relief and dashed in through the gate.

  Toby edged into his place as the woman put the book away. He squinted up at her from his spot on the path. She, meanwhile, watched him through her opera glasses.

  "Occupation?"

  "Um. Gallery owner?" It was true, though it felt awfully far away right now.

  The woman frowned sharply. "Is that supposed to be some kind of a joke, young man?"

  "Er. No?" Toby squirmed. The thing in the handbag behind him made an awful sort of growling noise. This time its owner did not shush it. "How about, uh, mouse?"

  The woman heaved the book out yet again. "See? Not at all difficult to tell the truth, is it? I'll have you know that I could have you deported permanently for this kind of behavior. Now, let's see. Firebeater, hatter, idleman, jigger... Ah! Here it is. Mouse. Church or field?"

  "Um. Church?"

  The woman nodded and stamped the page firmly. "In!"

  Security waved him through.

  Toby hurried in through the gate before anyone could change their mind.

  As far as Toby could tell, the city didn't have a name. Nor did it strictly seem to have a single time period. Sooty, early industrial streets crowded with barkers and carts abutted sharply modern ones, or gritty noir alleys. The newspapers he spotted were named The Chronicle, The Standard, and The Non-Standard. He'd spotted shops advertising themselves as "the city's best apple pies!" or "finest tin ears in the city!" and even "voted city's most gratuitous!" on a shop which didn't advertise its contents. Toby skipped peeking in on that one.

  The wall near the police station was papered with wanted posters, each bearing a caricature of a nefarious wrong-doer and his or her crime. Toby did a double-take when he noticed a familiar, sultry face in a top hat. "The Amazing Brandy," it read. "Wanted for High Crimes including but not limited to Impersonating Royalty, Unlawful Bawdiness, and Wearing To A Party The Same Dress As Someone Much More Important Than She Is." Toby chuckled and shook his head.

  He kept to the main streets and avoided the narrow side streets and alleys. Each time he had to pass close to one, the frontiersman's warning rang in his ears. He'd look into the shadows and try to spot the cats. Sure enough, every so often he'd catch a hint of tail or toes, or maybe a pair of eyes and a grin.

  The Cheshire trick.

  Toby kept his eyes open for drug stores (also, apothecaries and chemist's and potion shops and any other likely-sounding places one could buy a corked bottle like the one he'd drunk from in the crow's nest). After all, wouldn't there have to be a corresponding "Eat Me" to the mouse potion's "Drink Me"?

  On reflection, Toby thought as he noticed another cat spying on him from the shadows, anything with "Eat Me" involved was possibly a little bit unwelcome at the moment.

  When morning had rolled into afternoon and the closest thing he'd managed to find to a solution was a bloodletting shop with actual leeches—talking leeches, he recalled with a shudder—Toby allowed himself to start worrying seriously about his survival. The cats kept mostly to the shadows, but those shadows got longer and longer the further the sun sank toward the western horizon, and the cats were getting bolder. All around him, the city went on with its business of buying and selling, manufacturing and housing. All Toby could rightfully claim to be accomplishing at this point was getting more and more lost every time he asked for directions.

  "Gotta love that Wonderland hospitality," he grumbled as the street he was on opened into a small plaza. With some difficulty, Toby hopped up onto the edge of a fountain and sat, frustrated. He picked up a discarded crust of bread, gave it a cursory sniff, and then nibbled at its edge.

  "Way to go, Toby Sanderson," he muttered to himself as he ate. "You're not only going to die single, alone, and where nobody will ever find you, but you're doing it as a mouse with a belly full of somebody else's stale, leftover rye. Great job."

  "It could be worse," a low, smooth voice said. "People could throw up in you every night."

  Toby held very still.

  The fountain let out a sigh. "If you're worried I'm going to eat you like a piece of wild furniture, you can stop. Honestly! One badly upholstered ottoman goes rogue and mauls a couple of children and suddenly everybody gets tense around the rest of us law-abiding décor items. It's an ugly stereotype, perpetuated by the biological majority. Do you know how many children I could have drowned by now if I'd been that way inclined? More than a few. But I don't, and I'm not. I'm a damn good fountain, I work hard, I pay my taxes, and frankly I'm sick of keeping silent just so that other people can feel more comfortable around me."

  "Sorry," Toby said. He squirmed, unsure of whether it was polite to stay seated on an offended fountain or not. "I didn't mean to make a bad assumption. I've had a rough day and you surprised me, that's all."

  He nearly said that he hadn't yet figured out how to tell the good furniture from the bad, but that sounded suspiciously like telling the fountain that all furniture looked alike to him, and he didn't need someone else to tell him how wrong that would sound out loud.

  The fountain gave a quiet sigh and shifted a little bit beneath him.

  "You don't have to stay quiet if you don't want to," Toby said after a minute. "I don't meet many fountains. I suppose you probably see a lot out here on the plaza."

  "I do see a fair bit," the fountain acknowledged coolly. "Not that anybody notices. Or cares. They just run around, doing whatever it is they want to do, and pretend I don't exist. Or that I'm just some pretty prop that doesn't notice them. I can't count the times I've woken up in the middle of the night to find some stinking drunk sprawled all over me, or a pack of exhibitionists stripping down for a late-night skinny dip. The only nice bit is that people get me confused with a wishing well and throw money in me."

  "What do you buy?"

  The fountain gurgled a laugh at him. "I don't buy anything. I mean, come on. If I come back here with a lamp, where would I put it? On my rim? Over there on the plaza? No, I hire a pair of kids to scrub off all the pigeon shit. Once a month, all the coinage they can stuff into their tiny pockets."

  "Does anyone else ever try and take your money?"


  "Are you kidding? Think about it. Who's going to steal from a talking fountain?"

  "Point." Toby finished his bread crust. "Slightly random question, but hypothetically speaking, if someone happened to drink something—"

  The fountain scoffed. "Nothing hypothetical about that around here."

  "I don't mean like that. I mean if somebody had a bottle of something they didn't know what it was and—"

  "Do you see that glitter in between the paving bricks? That isn't a design feature. That's bits of glass they can't sweep up. There's no bottle shortage around here, believe me, and the locals don't discriminate."

  "No, I mean if somebody drank the whole contents of a bottle and—"

  "You don't get out much, do you?"

  If he were in his right body, Toby might have started massaging his temples or pinching the bridge of his nose. As it was, he couldn't quite figure out what sort of gesture to make in his mouse body, and settled for a frustrated twitch of his whiskers. "How often do the locals turn into something they're not?"

  "That's an excellent question." The fountain was silent for a moment as it considered it. "Almost never."

  "In those almost-never situations, if someone wanted to change back into what they were supposed to be, where would that person go for help?"

  "All kinds of places, I suppose," said the fountain. "One man might go to a mother, another to a lover. Or a teacher. I suppose possibly, if he turned out to be really desperate, someone might go to the Catmistress. But I wouldn't try that if I were you."

  "Why not?"

  "Well, for one, they say that the Catmistress is cruel just as often as she's kind. Asking for her help can be just as bad—or worse—than the thing you need help with."

  "I really doubt that," Toby said.

  "Besides. You're a mouse. They don't call her the Catmistress for nothing. She's the matron of all those things in the alleys who know the Cheshire trick. You'd be food before you even had a chance to lay eyes on her."

  Toby rose up on his hind feet and smiled. "Oh, but I'm not a mouse. I'm..." He felt a bit foolish saying it aloud, but he doubted there was much chance of avoiding a certain degree of foolishness in Wonderland. "I'm a man. Or, at least, I was before I chose to be a mouse, but I'm choosing back."

  "Hey, I can't stop you. I'm just telling you how it is out there. Your funeral, you know?"

  "So where do I find her? The Catmistress?"

  "She's got a speakeasy. All the alleys lead to it if you follow the scratchings in the brick. But you'll never make it."

  "I'll have to." Toby hopped off the fountain rim onto the bricks of the plaza. "It was nice meeting you."

  "Yeah, nice knowing you, too, kid."

  Toby started to scurry across the plaza, then stopped and turned back. "Actually, now that I think about it, I wonder if you could do me a favor."

  "What kind of favor?" The fountain sounded curious.

  Toby hopped back up onto the fountain's edge and whispered his plan.

  The shadows in the alley were deeper now as the afternoon sun dipped lower and oranger toward the horizon. Toby sat at its edge and watched them, and the unnatural ripples as the cats inside them paced and waited, the Cheshire trick in full effect.

  He plotted his route. He would dart in fast, and keep close to and under debris. There was a trio of crates at the visible end of the alley. He was reasonably sure that if he could make it that far, he could take refuge there and plan his next steps.

  A hungry grin bloomed at the nearest shadow's edge. Toby considered reaching down and picking up a pebble to throw at it, but provoking an already threatening animal many times his current size seemed more than a little foolhardy. Instead, he held up his chin and steeled himself for the run.

  He could do this. He had to do this.

  The cat was after him the instant he dashed into the alley. He felt the burst of air against his fur as an invisible paw missed him by a fraction of an inch, and heard (but did not see) the cat crash against a trio of bins that he skirted on his way to the crates. Another two pairs of eyes appeared in the alley as he closed in on his destination. Instead of slowing down, he tried to run even faster and aimed for the gap between the crates.

  Mice are light, Toby told himself. The worst that can happen is that the collision will stun me.

  He didn't have time to give it more thought as he jumped past a flickering paw and darted in through the gap. He landed badly but recovered, and scurried into the center of the crates, out of reach.

  From his fortress, Toby could hear the cats circling outside. They whispered to one another in smooth tones.

  "I can hear you, you know!" he yelled at them. If the cats heard him, they didn't acknowledge it. "And anyway, you don't want to eat me. I'm on my way to see the Catmistress. If anyone's going to eat me, it'll be her."

  "The Mistress doesn't bother with mice," one of them said, matter-of-factly. It lowered itself to the ground and peered into one of the gaps between the crates. Its eyes nearly glowed.

  "Yeah, well, maybe I'm a special mouse."

  "You don't look special. You look like a very plain mouse, with very crunchy bones."

  "Well, then, you're not very observant," Toby shot back. He sat up proud on his rear legs. "I'm the most unusual mouse you'll ever meet. I've fallen through the sky and tricked an owl and met the Queen of the Main Drag. And she liked me."

  "We don't care how special you are, little mouse. You are meat for our bellies and milk for our kittens. The Mistress would find new and inventive ways to skin us for wasting her time with you, and our Lady is creative."

  One of the other cats hopped up onto the pile of crates. Toby couldn't see it, but he could hear it pawing and clawing at gaps, trying to find a way to dislodge one or more of the crates.

  "How impressive can she be? I mean, if she's anything like the three of you? Just... well. I'd been told to expect better."

  One of the cats hissed. "Better than what, little mouse? We've trapped you fair and square, and when you come out, we're going to kill and eat you."

  "Oh sure. Except..." Toby peered at the cat who still watched him at the gap. It hadn't moved so much as a whisker. "Well, for one, you're all really bad listeners. You haven't even noticed the kids with sticks."

  The cat frowned. "Kids with—"

  A screaming band of children (undoubtedly with full, wet pockets) thundered into the alley, banging on sticks and bins and boxes. The cats yowled and bolted.

  Toby stuck his head out between two crates, saw his path, and darted into the open. He kept ahead of the kids as they made their noisy march, but only just. The fountain had promised him safe passage as far as the speakeasy entrance, but he didn't want to risk being far enough out that a vengeful cat might take a swipe at him.

  Then again, he realized as he glanced over his shoulder, he didn't want to get so close that he got crushed to death in a stampede of feral children chanting "KITTY, KITTY, KITTY," either.

  He spotted the blank speakeasy door as they rounded the corner into the alley's dead end. One of the children—a slightly chubby, curly-haired girl in a filthy red Christmas sweater—picked him up and held him up to the little sliding steel peephole window and gave the door a knock.

  The window slid open with a snap. A bored-looking man in a fedora peered out. "Password?" he asked in an exaggerated New York gangster's voice.

  "Password?" Toby said, surprised. The fountain hadn't said anything about a password.

  "’Course there's a password. What does this look like, some kind of legitimate, law-abiding establishment? You can't have a speakeasy without a password. That's just a bar, get me?"

  "Yeah, sure," Toby said, mind racing. "Sorry. I'm a little new around here. This is my first time. You don't think you could maybe show me how it all works?"

  The gangster gave him a confused look. "What do you mean, ‘show you how it works’? I open the window, ask for the password. You give me the password and I open the door. This ain't ro
cket science."

  "Hey, man, I'm just a mouse. I wouldn't know rocket science if it came up and tried to eat me." He stood up on his rear legs and tried to look in through the window. "Look, maybe if you could just come out here and show me what I'm supposed to do—"

  "Me?" the gangster asked, surprised. "Look, just have the kid show you."

  "Have the kid show me?" Toby did a double-take, though he wasn't sure how much of that came through in his current mousy frame. "You want me to have this innocent child pretend to be some sort of vice-seeking barfly? Not that the demonstration would be in any way worthwhile. I mean, you wouldn't let a child into a speakeasy, would you?"