by Frank Beddor
This time The Cat and Jack of Diamonds knew better than to answer.
Redd stepped up to Jack and stroked his wig. She held one of its long curls against her palm, studying it
a moment. With sudden ferocity, she yanked the curl from the wig and tossed it away from her. The lock of hair lay on the floor, growing in size and hairiness. It grew and grew, developing arms and legs, until it stood at twice Jack’s height.
“Lord Diamond, say hello to my beast of a wig.” Redd yawned.
Before Jack could offer a greeting, the beast dealt him a stinging blow to the stomach. He doubled over, straining for air. The Wig-Beast picked him up and tossed him across the room. He landed with a thud worthy of his girth, and with a single bound the Wig-Beast was beside him, lifting him to his feet, holding him upright with one wiggy limb and slapping him with the other.
The Cat purred, a wide grin on his face as he watched Jack of Diamonds suffer, but his enjoyment was interrupted by the sharp-as-a-claw piercing of Redd’s voice raised in anger and disbelief. Redd had turned her imagination’s eye on Alyss. She should have seen nothing-Alyss should have been part of the void-but instead she saw the princess, Hatter Madigan, and the others walking through the charred and molten landscape of the Volcanic Plains.
“Not dead!” she screeched. “Alyss not dead!”
Jack heard the words too, but it took a moment for his addled brain to understand their meaning. Between slugs from the Wig-Beast, he managed to say, “They’re-going to-Looking-Glass-Maze!”
Redd held up a hand and the Wig-Beast halted.
“I must be getting soft, Lord Diamond, if I think you could have said anything worth listening to.”
It was lucky for Jack that Redd had shrugged off the lessons Bibwit tried to teach her in adolescence. Jack was quick to understand that his knowledge of the Looking Glass Maze could save his life. But he would tell her as little as necessary. His future health and safety might depend on his leaking such valuable intelligence to Redd.
“The Looking Glass Maze, Your Imperial Viciousness. By passing through the maze, Alyss will reach her full potential of strength and imaginative power and be able to defeat you.”
“But I have the Heart Crystal! She can’t reach her full potential without that!” “I’m only repeating what I heard from Bibwit Harte, Your Imperial Viciousness.”
He shouldn’t have mentioned Bibwit; Redd bristled. Jack cast a quick glance at the Wig-Beast. It was perfectly still, as if it had never been alive. So far, so good.
“What if I pass through the maze instead of her?” Redd asked.
“Ah, very clever, Your Imperial Viciousness. If you pass through the maze, then you’ll be that much more powerful. I’m sure Alyss won’t be able to defeat you then.”
What Jack of Diamonds knew of the Looking Glass Maze could fit in a gwynook’s third nostril-which was very little. As a boy, he’d often heard his mother recall in bitter tones how Princess Genevieve had passed through the maze to become queen. But she didn’t know that becoming queen was not just a matter of navigating the maze. None of the Diamond clan had been tutored by Bibwit Harte, so none of them knew that only the person for whom the Looking Glass Maze was intended could enter it. But like many young men who grow up as privileged as Jack of Diamonds, he didn’t suspect his own ignorance.
“We’ll see if what you say is true,” Redd said. “Bring me In Queendom Speramus!”
The walrus toddled into the dome. “Here it is, Your Imperial Viciousness. In Queendom-”
The book flew from his flippers, hovered in the air before Redd as she thumbed through its pages, searching for mention of the Looking Glass Maze. She found none. She saw pages torn from the book and her own words in Bibwit’s handwriting.
“Bah!”
She swatted the book and it flew at the walrus, but the waddly fellow ducked and the book hit the floor and skidded out the dome and down the hall.
“I’ll get it, Your Imperial Viciousness,” said the walrus-butler, and hurried after the book, never able to leave Redd’s company fast enough.
Redd strolled up to Jack, all the more frightening for her nonchalance. “And now, my unworthy servant, you are going to tell me where the Looking Glass Maze is.”
“But I don’t know where it is.”
Redd’s fingers twitched and Jack thought he saw the Wig-Beast move.
“The Alyssians don’t know either!” he said quickly. “The caterpillars have to tell them!”
The caterpillars: those annoying, oversized larvae. Redd had tried to do away with them and their outdated prophesying when she first took control of the queendom. She didn’t need those things breeding dissent with their predictions. But every time she tried to attack them, they saw her coming and vanished like smoke. So she had exercised her rage on their beloved Valley of Mushrooms. But what to do now? A raid on the valley would not serve her purpose.
“I have decided to let Alyss meet with the caterpillars,” she announced. “We’ll maintain close surveillance on that goody-goody little Heart, and when she leads us to the Looking Glass Maze’s location, we’ll attack and I will enter it myself. Cat, bait the seekers.”
“But what about Lord Diamond?” the feline whined. “He may prove useful yet.”
Jack gave Redd’s furry assassin a taunting little smile. The Cat was to blame for his trouble, the bruises he felt forming all over his body. He would have to return the favor somehow.
“I see you don’t treasure your lives as much as I’d supposed, Cat, or you would have obeyed my order by now,” Redd said.
As The Cat sulked off to bait the seekers, Redd again focused her imagination’s eye on Alyss. How wonderfully cruel it was going to be! Miss Prissy Heart would serve as personal guide to the Looking
Glass Maze and thereby become the agent of her own downfall. How deliciously nasty.
The Cat could hear the seekers’ frenzied screeching even before he reached the end of the corridor, shouldered open the heavy door, and stepped inside the chamber carved out of Mount Isolation itself. It was impossible to hear his own footfalls or breathing because the seekers’ cries-like the sound of pain itself-were so loud. The chamber was dimly lit by faint, glowing crystals embedded in the walls. Hundreds of cages hung from the ceiling, with several seekers in each of them: Redd’s bloodhounds,
bred out of her distrust and paranoia; creatures with bird-of-prey bodies and the heads of blood-sucking insects.
Walking up and down the chamber, The Cat stopped beneath each cage to wave Alyss’ London wedding dress-a souvenir from his raid on the Alyssian headquarters. He teased the seekers with its scent and they pressed eager faces against the bars of their cages.
The baiting complete, The Cat flipped a lever in the floor and a wall retracted-a wall that, from the outside, looked like part of the mountain. The cages fell open and with wild shrieks the seekers flew out into the night, on the hunt.
CHAPTER 45
T HE ALYSSIANS emerged from a small wood to find themselves on a mountaintop, the Valley of Mushrooms spread out before them. The suns were setting on the distant horizon, their slanting rays shining down on the mushrooms nestled within a ring of twilight-blue mountains. No two mushrooms were alike, their colors ranging from earthy pink to unearthly brown to nearly translucent and, with the
play of the suns on their caps and the multihued shadows they cast on the valley floor, the Alyssians were greeted with a sight of impressive kaleidoscopic brilliance.
The colors of the valley were like the sprouting of renewed hope in the breasts of Alyss and her friends and, for a moment, it seemed unlikely that Redd could survive their rebellion. They may have been few in number, but they were strong and determined. They believed. But this optimism lasted only a moment, because as they descended into the valley, they saw that it wasn’t as beautiful as it might have been-indeed, as it once was. Mushroom stalks showed the marks of The Cut; mushroom caps lay butchered on the ground. Prayer temples were blasted
apart.
In silence, Bibwit led the Alyssians through the unexpected desecration to a clearing, where they came upon five giant caterpillars whose bodies were coiled beneath them as they smoked from the same ancient hookah. Each of them sat on a mushroom as distinct in color as himself: red, orange, yellow,
purple, and green. The caterpillars showed no sign of surprise upon seeing the Alyssians, had in fact been aware of their presence for some time.
“The caterpillar counsel,” Bibwit informed the others, and then stepped forward to address the oracles. “Wise ones, we are in need of your assistance. We-”
The orange caterpillar raised his frontmost right leg, as if to say shush, and all the little legs behind it echoed the gesture. “We know why you’ve come.”
“What sort of oracles would we be if we didn’t know that?” said the yellow caterpillar.
The hookah burbled, the purple caterpillar inhaling deeply. His eyes rolled up into the back of his head and smoke streamed out his nostrils.
“Whooah.”
Dodge and General Doppelganger exchanged an uncertain glance. Hatter stood at the ready, a hand at the brim of his top hat, his eyes scanning the surroundings for trouble.
“O wise, all-seeing caterpillars,” said Bibwit Harte, “we offer you our humility and respect, and hope that-”
“I’m having the weirdest sense of deja vu right now,” said the green caterpillar.
“Duh!” said the yellow caterpillar. “Do you think, just maybe, that’s because you predicted this?” “Oh, yeah.”
The caterpillar counsel tittered.
“We are saddened to see that even your home has suffered from Redd’s reign,” Bibwit pressed on. “Knowing who we are and why we’ve come, then you already know…”
But here, the caterpillars added their voices to his: “…that we come for the health of the queendom, to install the rightful queen on her throne and end these years of brutal tyranny.”
Being able to see the future (and/or possible futures) didn’t always make the caterpillars agreeable conversationalists.
“Have you brought us anything to munch?” asked the orange caterpillar. “Some tarty tarts perhaps?” the yellow caterpillar hoped.
“Well,” Bibwit said, checking his robe but finding no tarty tarts.
I’ll conjure a dozen tarty tarts. It’ll be good practice. Alyss started to concentrate, to focus her imaginings, when a series of blue smoke rings floated overhead, coming from somewhere deep within the mushrooms.
“Blue has summoned Alyss,” the orange caterpillar said. “He will tell her everything she needs to know.” The counsel fell silent, puffing intently on their hookah as if able to communicate with one another through
it.
“Go on, Alyss,” said Bibwit Harte. “It’s all right.”
The princess followed the trail of smoke rings back through the mushrooms to a ruined temple. Over its front door were the words “Did Lao Tsu Dream the Butterfly or Did the Butterfly Dream Lao Tsu?” Sitting on a blue mushroom out front was the blue caterpillar, smoking from a hookah of his own.
“Thank you for seeing me,” Alyss said with a bow.
“Ahem hum hem,” the caterpillar grumbled, exhaling a cloud of smoke, in the middle of which Prince Leopold appeared. The prince was in a London drawing room, pacing anxiously back and forth while his mother, Queen Victoria, sat fanning herself in a quilted chair. Dean and Mrs. Liddell were there too, sitting close together on a settee. Prim and erect, the commoners looked uneasy, cowed by the queen. Is this the past I’m seeing? The present?
“Even in that world,” the caterpillar said, “where no one knew you were a princess, you were to marry
royalty. It seems that destiny will not let you deny who you are.” “I don’t mean to deny it, Mr. Caterpillar.”
The caterpillar frowned, puffing at his hookah. “Call me Blue.”
“All right. I don’t want to deny it, Blue, it’s just that my time away from Wonderland has confused me. I’ve been through so much and all I do is run from those more powerful than myself, which doesn’t strike me as being…well, as very queenly.”
“Ahem hum mmm,” Blue said, and in the cloud of smoke he exhaled from his caterpillar lungs appeared the words: It is sometimes braver to run. “By running, you live to face further uncertainty and trouble,” he explained. “It would be much easier for you to give up. You should not doubt your courage, Alyss Heart. She who runs from her enemies until she has the strength to do otherwise is both brave and wise.”
Funny that it should feel like cowardice. “You know why I’m here?” “You seek the Looking Glass Maze, as your mother did before you.”
Alyss said nothing, remembering the surprise of seeing her mother engage so readily in combat. She must have stood before Blue just as…just as I am now. Indeed, and like then, the future of the queendom had been threatened by Redd.
Blue seemed to know what she was thinking. “Alyss Heart, your mother was a warrior queen, as you discovered the hard way. She passed through the maze to assume the throne and to make the most of what she innately possessed, but her strength could only carry her so far. Redd was always the stronger of the two. But you, Alyss Heart, have the strength of generations in your blood. Successfully navigate the maze and you will discover this for yourself.”
“And if I’m unsuccessful?”
Blue ignored the question. “Everything you have experienced up until now has had to be if you are to become the strongest queen Wonderland has ever known. It has been necessary to forge in you the wise and judicious temperament that will guide you as protector of the Heart Crystal. Hatter Madigan will lead you to one who knows where to find the maze. Look for a puzzle shop. You will know the key to the maze when you see it, but you will have to return to Wondertropolis.” Blue formed an O with his lips and exhaled a thick stream of smoke directly at the princess.
When Alyss awoke, she was alone. She walked back through the mushrooms to Dodge and the others. The caterpillar counsel sat coiled on their mushrooms, smoking contentedly. Their expressions did not change at the sight of Alyss, but the Alyssians looked at her, expectant.
“It’s back in Wondertropolis,” she said. There were groans all around.
“That’s like entering the jabberwocky’s lair!” fretted Bibwit. “Or stirring up the seekers’ nest, or-”
The green caterpillar puffed a cloud of smoke at the royal tutor. The smoke enveloped him and his expression slackened, relaxed.
“Oh, well.” He grinned, dreamy. “I suppose we must do what we must do.”
“Where in Wondertropolis?” Dodge asked.
“I was told only that Hatter can take us to someone who will know.”
The others turned to the Milliner, but even he, who was able to maintain his composure in battles that would have sent most Wonderlanders running for their mothers’ skirts, was a little exasperated by this.
“Me? How can I know anyone? I’ve hardly been in Wondertroplis in thirteen years. The people I knew are all dead.”
Bibwit, still feeling the effects of the caterpillar’s smoke, put a hand on Hatter’s shoulder. “Relax, my good fellow. The oracle wouldn’t say it just to hear himself talk. There’s got to be a reason. Relax and think.”
So Hatter thought. What would he have done thirteen years ago? To whom would he have turned for help? Where would he have gone?
“There is one place,” he said finally. “I don’t know if it still exists, but I used to go there whenever official sources didn’t yield the information I needed.”
“Well then, that’s where we’ll go,” General Doppelganger said.
“Let’s go already,” fumed Dodge. He didn’t much care if they stirred up the seekers’ nest; on the contrary, he rather welcomed it.
CHAPTER 46
I T WAS a long, exhausting journey without the ease of travel once afforded by The Crystal Continuum. Not wanting to risk further encounters with jabberwocky, the Alyssians skirted
the Volcanic Plains, and luckily-though strangely, considering Redd’s usual aggression-their trek was uneventful. They hadn’t seen a single Glass Eye or card soldier, just the occasional flock of seekers circling high overhead.
They stood gathered at the base of an abandoned building, gazing out at a dingy Wondertropolis alley. “Where is it?” General Doppelganger asked.
“There.”
Hatter pointed as two Wonderlanders tripped up the front steps of a basement tavern and stumbled into the alley, drunk.
“That’s the place?” General Doppelganger asked. “It looks more than a bit…unsavory.”
“It’s the only place I know,” Hatter said. He cast a studious eye over his confederates: Bibwit in his scholar’s robe; the general, Dodge, and Alyss in their Alyssian uniforms. No amount of camouflage could hide the fact that they were not average Wonderlanders. Still, they didn’t have to bring unnecessary attention to themselves by flaunting their rebel colors, so Hatter folded his top hat into a stack of deadly blades and placed it in his inside coat pocket. He removed his coat and draped it over his arm. “Ready?” he asked.