by Frank Beddor
“What is it, my lord?”
“She’ll never forgive me for missing the party.”
“I think the queen would forgive you anything, my lord.” “Not the queen. The princess.”
“Oh. With her you’ll have trouble.”
The men laughed. With Alyss, King Nolan would indeed have trouble, but it would be a pleasant sort of trouble. Even in her pouts, he thought his daughter a delightful creature.
“Hi-yah!” With a refreshed sense of urgency, the king prodded his spirit-dane onward, toward home and family.
CHAPTER 3
B IBWIT HARTE gathered together books and papers in preparation for his charge’s lessons the next day. Now that she had reached her seventh birthday, Alyss would begin her formal training to become
queen.
“And being a queen isn’t easy,” muttered Bibwit Harte. “The position comes with tremendous responsibilities. One has to study law and government and ethics and morality. One must train the imagination for the promotion of peace and harmony and the precepts of White Imagination, because Black Imagination is not what anybody wants at all, oh no. And if that isn’t enough, there’s the Looking Glass Maze to get through.” Bibwit Harte, alone in the library at Heart Palace, recited from an ancient Wonderland text, In Queendom Speramus: “A unique Looking Glass Maze exists for every would-be queen. The maze must be successfully navigated by the would-be queen if she is to reach her imagination’s full potential and thus be fit to rule.” The tutor returned to his usual tone: “And where the Looking Glass Maze is, only the caterpillars know.”
Mr. Bibwit Harte was an albino, seven feet tall, with bluish green veins pulsing visibly beneath his skin, and ears a bit large for his head-ears so sensitive that he could hear someone whispering from three streets away. He was rather intelligent, but he had the habit of talking to himself, which more than a few Wonderlanders found strange, particularly members of the Diamond, Spade, and Club families, not one
of whom had ever forgiven him for his decades-long schooling of the Heart daughters as opposed to their own. Not that Bibwit paid much attention to what others thought of him. He talked to himself because there weren’t many people as learned as he, and he liked to talk to learned people.
“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you!”
Bibwit threw open a pair of doors leading to the royal gardens, and the chorus of voices might have become painfully loud to his finicky ears if it had been any other song sung to any other princess. But he found nothing too much when it was in appreciation of Alyss. Among the assembled guests being led in song by the garden’s sunflowers, tulips, and daisies, Bibwit spied various members of the suit families (he bowed to the Lady of Diamonds when he caught her eye) and General Doppelganger, commander of the royal army, who suddenly split in two and became the twin figures of Generals Doppel and Ganger, so as to lend two voices to the song instead of one. Bibwit bowed to the blue caterpillar-that oracle of
oracles, sage of sages, wisest of the wise-sitting curled in a corner of the garden, puffing on his hookah while a gwynook-a small creature with a penguin’s body and an old man’s wrinkled face-waddled about on his back.
“Waddling is an underappreciated art,” Bibwit heard the gwynook say to the caterpillar. “Say, let me have a puff of that.”
“Ahem hmm hem,” grumbled the caterpillar, who never shared his pipe with gwynooks, even on the happy occasion of Alyss Heart’s birthday. “Smoking’s bad for you.”
“It is indeed a special day when a caterpillar comes all the way from the Valley of Mushrooms to partake in the celebration,” Bibwit Harte murmured, watching two spirit-danes pull a giant cake toward Alyss, a host of tuttle-birds glowing and flapping their wings in place of candles. Next to the birthday girl stood the queen, and behind her, Hatter Madigan, leading member of Wonderland’s elite security force known as the Millinery, and the queen’s personal bodyguard. Carrying the backpack common among Millinery
men, wearing a long coat and bracelets, and the top hat he took off only in times of violence, he alone in the crowd remained stoic, alert.
The song ended. The guests applauded, and Queen Genevieve said, “Make a wish, Alyss.”
“Besides wishing that Father had never gone on his trip,” Alyss declared, “I wish to be queen for a day.” Her mother’s crown lifted into the air and floated toward her head. The guests laughed-all except
Hatter Madigan, who never laughed.
“Hatter Madigan,” sighed Bibwit, “even you should relax sometimes and enjoy yourself.”
“You’ll be queen soon enough,” Genevieve said to her daughter. The queen’s imagination was not exactly weak, and the crown floated back onto her head.
Alyss noticed Bibwit standing at the library doors and decided to have a little fun. It was the least she could do until she found Dodge. She whispered, “Do you want some cake, Bibwit Harte?”
The tutor nodded and she brought him a slice of cake on an edible chocolate plate.
“Happy un-birthday to you,” she said. “It’s raisin-butterscotch with peanut butter, marshmallows, and gummy wads. It’s the best.”
Bibwit stared at the cake. “Yes, well…thank you, Alyss. But I’m afraid you won’t be so nice to me after we begin our lessons tomorrow.”
“I won’t need any lessons,” Alyss said. “I’ll just imagine that I know everything and then I will, so you won’t have to give them to me.”
Bibwit picked at the cake, examining it, squinting at it. “My dear,” he said, “you can’t imagine everything because you don’t know everything there is to imagine. That’s precisely where the lessons come in. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. I taught your grandmother and your mother when they were your
age, and yes, I did try to teach the woman who shall not be named-namely, your aunt Redd-but we won’t go into that.”
Not at all sure that it was the right thing to do, Bibwit put a bit of cake into his mouth. He chewed once, twice, but something was amiss; the stuff in his mouth felt like it was moving. Alyss started to laugh. Bibwit spat the half-chewed cake into the palm of his hand and saw that it wasn’t cake at all; it had turned into a handful of gwormmies.
“Got you!” Alyss shouted, and ran away.
The gwormmy prank hadn’t been nice, not nice in the least, but Bibwit was willing to forgive. Alyss was young, she needed to be taught. She might remind him of Redd in certain things, but he was confident that she wouldn’t grow up to be like her. He wouldn’t let it happen. Besides, he couldn’t blame Alyss for needing to occupy herself somehow. There were hardly any children her age at the palace.
He cast a last gaze about the gardens. The blue caterpillar had slithered off somewhere. Frog, the palace’s internal messenger, was hopping about in his finest clothes, no doubt longing for some guest to entrust him with a message for another guest. Generals Doppel and Ganger were again in one body and they, or rather he, General Doppelganger, was conversing with Sir Justice Anders, head of the palace guardsmen. Hatter Madigan, following the queen like a protective shadow, remained as unexpressive as ever.
Bibwit retired to the library, where picture books from Alyss’ earliest youth sat on shelves next to a ten-volume chronicle of the civil war, written from various points of view-the card soldiers who’d
fought on the front lines; members of the chessmen militia; General Doppelganger and his sergeants; even Queen Genevieve herself. It came complete with lists of those killed in each of the battles and explanations of the strategies that had called for the sacrifice of Wonderlander lives. Bibwit took down the first volume of the chronicle and set it with the other books and papers he’d collected for Alyss’ lessons. The book contained a catalog of atrocities committed by Redd-torture, the slaughtering of
prisoners, mass graves. The tutor had always viewed Redd’s fall into the diabolical as his fault, a failure in her education.
“It’s never too soon for a future queen to become familiar with the ugl
ier contingencies of ruling a land,”
he said to himself.
CHAPTER 4
K ING NOLAN and his men left Outerwilderbeastia behind. They passed through a narrow stretch of the Everlasting Forest and were stampeding through the eastern edge of Wondertropolis, the most rural area of the capital, home to farmers and those favoring the quiet country life, when their spirit-danes stopped and reared up on their hind legs, agitated. Speckled across the tranquil landscape, looking harmless, and partly camouflaged by the day’s lengthening shadows, were Redd’s undealt card soldiers, lying flat one on top of another, each deck fifty-two soldiers thick, awaiting orders.
“Redd’s decks are stacked.”
So whatever King Arch decided, it would no longer matter; Wonderland didn’t have the luxury of waiting for his answer.
“We have to warn the palace,” said King Nolan.
One of his men removed a looking glass communicator from his saddlebag and began tapping out a coded message on its keyboard. If the soldier had had time to hit the Send button, his message would have appeared on a crystal viewer in the Security Oversight Room of Heart Palace. But with a sound akin to the metal blades of scissors rapidly opening and closing, an unseen deck hidden in nearby underbrush fanned out and surrounded the king and his men. The air filled with adrenaline-induced war cries from Redd’s soldiers, agony-infused moans from the throats of King Nolan’s men. The looking glass communicator fell against a rock and shattered, its owner dead before the device hit the ground.
The Wonderlanders were outnumbered five to one. At the center of the skirmish, slashing his sword this way and that, was King Nolan, still atop his trusted spirit-dane when a figure in a scarlet cloak passed through the fighting, untouched, and stabbed him through the heart with her pointed scepter.
“My queen…” he moaned, slumping into death, blood leaking from the corners of his mouth. “My queen…”
CHAPTE R 5
G OT HIM, I got him, I got him! A laughing Alyss left Bibwit Harte frowning at the half-eaten gwormmies in his hand and ran into the palace’s Issa Room, where (finally!) she found Dodge Anders standing to attention, waiting for her. He looked as if he would have waited for her all his life, if necessary.
“I was wondering where you were,” she said, breathless. “I thought you were ignoring me.” “I had to get you a present, didn’t I? Why’re you running?”
“No reason.”
“Uh-huh.” Dodge knew she must have been up to something, she was always up to something, but he let it go. He handed her a small box tied with red ribbon and bowed. “Happy birthday, Princess.”
“Cut it out.”
Alyss didn’t like her best friend bowing to her and he knew it. Hadn’t she told him so countless times,
saying she didn’t care if he was a commoner, she just didn’t want him doing it? He was her elder by three years and four months. Did he like bowing to a younger girl? And what was so bad, or lowly, about
being a commoner anyway? It gave Dodge the freedom to venture out beyond the palace grounds, and Alyss wouldn’t have minded that. For all her rebellion and free spirit, she had never been outside the luxurious confines of Heart Palace.
She opened the present and stared down at a gleaming, sharp, triangular-shaped tooth resting on a bed of puff.
“Jabberwock tooth,” Dodge said.
“You didn’t kill the beast yourself, I hope?”
Jabberwocky were huge, ferocious creatures living in the Volcanic Plains-a land of active volcanoes, lava rivers, and geysers of noxious gas, extremely dangerous for any Wonderlander to enter. But you never could tell what Dodge might do. Ever since the age of three, when he toddled into the coat of his father’s guardsman uniform and saluted, the direction of his life had been known. Dodge wanted nothing more than to be like his father, Sir Justice Anders, who had distinguished himself with his bravery in the civil war and been awarded his current position by the queen herself. Dodge now stood before Alyss in his own guardsman uniform, complete with fleur-de-lis badge.
“No, I didn’t kill the jabberwock,” he said. “I bought that in a shop.” “I’ll keep it forever,” Alyss said.
She slipped the tooth onto her necklace. She had grown up with Dodge, couldn’t remember a time in her life when he hadn’t been her partner in adventure. By her bed, she kept a holographic crystal that
showed him, at four years old, kissing her cheek as she sat in her royal baby carriage. Officers of the court stood frowning in the background. What their problem was, Alyss never understood, but she cherished the crystal all the same.
Dodge became embarrassed whenever she showed it to him, so she showed it to him often. He knew why the court officers were frowning: the importance of class distinctions, of consorting with your own kind. Alyss might not care about such stuff, but Sir Justice had explained the situation to his son and Dodge understood that part of being a successful guardsman meant abiding by what was considered proper, by not allowing his affections for anybody-especially Alyss-to compromise his duty.
“You can never marry the princess, Dodge,” Sir Justice had explained, sympathetic, even a little proud that the princess had taken a liking to his son. “She will one day be your queen. You can show your affection by serving her to the best of your ability, but she has to marry someone from a suit family, and Jack of Diamonds is the only boy of proper rank close to her age. I’m sorry, Dodge, but you and the princess…it’s not in the cards.”
“I understand, Father.” But this had been only half true; Dodge’s head understood, his heart did not. “Don’t you have to practice any military exercises?” Alyss asked now.
“I can always use more practice, my princess.” “Stop calling me that. You know I don’t like it.”
“I can never forget who and what you are, my princess.”
Alyss clicked her tongue. Sometimes Dodge’s seriousness could be tiresome. “I have a new military
exercise for you,” she said. “We must pretend we’re enjoying ourselves at a party. Music is playing, there are mounds of delicious food, and you and I begin to dance.” She held out her hand.
Dodge hesitated. “Come on.”
He put an arm around Alyss’ waist and moved with her in gentle circles. He had never touched the princess before-not like this. She smelled of sweet earth and powder. It was a clean, delicate smell. Did all girls smell like this or only princesses? A potted sunflower in the corner of the room began to serenade them.
“This isn’t a military exercise,” he said, making a weak attempt to free himself.
“I order you not to go anywhere. While we’re dancing, Redd and her soldiers crash into the room. It’s a surprise attack. People are screaming and running. People are dying. But you stay calm. You promise to protect me.”
“You know I’d protect you, Alyss.” He felt warm all over and a little dizzy. He was holding the princess close. He could feel her breath on his cheek. He was the luckiest boy in the queendom.
“And then you battle Redd and her soldiers.”
He didn’t want to let her go, but he did, brandishing his sword. He jousted this way and that with his imaginary foes, spinning and ducking in imitation of Hatter Madigan, whose military workouts he often watched and studied.
“And after many close calls,” Alyss narrated, “your life in danger every second, you defeat the soldiers and stab your sword into Redd.”
Dodge looked the picture of intensity as he plunged his sword into the air where he envisioned Redd to be. He made a show of eyeing his handiwork, his vanquished foes littered on the ground before him. He returned his sword to its scabbard.
“I’m saved,” Alyss continued, “but I’m shaken by what I’ve just witnessed. You calm my nerves by dancing with me.”
The sunflower in the corner again began to serenade. Without hesitation this time, Dodge took Alyss and spun her about the room. He had loosened up despite himself, despite what he knew his father would think of his behavi
or. He was reveling in feelings he should not have allowed himself to feel.
“Will you be my king, Dodge?”
“If it pleases you, Princess,” he said, trying to be nonchalant, “I-”
“You there, clean my boots!” a voice shouted from the corridor. “Servant, do my bidding!” Dodge immediately stepped away from Alyss, stood stiffly to attention.
“Wash my waistcoat, make my bed, powder my wig!” the voice shouted.
Ten-year-old Jack of Diamonds, heir to the Diamond family estate, marched into the Issa Room. He stopped when he saw Alyss and Dodge.
“What are you doing?” Alyss asked him.
“I’m practicing being a royal personage. What does it look like I’m doing?”
Jack of Diamonds would have been a handsome boy if not for his bullying personality and for the fact that he had the biggest, roundest rear end in Wonderland. It looked like he carried an inflated cushion in the back of his trousers. He also had the silly pretension of wearing a long, white powdered wig because he’d heard that the well-to-do in other worlds wore powdered wigs. He eyed the discarded box and ribbon on the floor. He eyed the jabberwock tooth hanging from Alyss’ necklace.