by Frank Beddor
CHAPTER 35
IT WAS Alyss’ turn to wait, to be first to the Morgavian hilltop, standing solitary in a whipping wind. A mottled wet land stretched to the horizon, thawing in what passed for the hinterland’s summer—the few weeks barely long enough for the spearheaded trees to shake off their winter coats.
The air bit into her skin, the ground crunched under her feet: the sensations as real as any she’d ever felt, yet . . .
I’m not here. I’m in Outerwilderbeastia, a dried scraggly patch of Outerwilderbeastia not a hectare’s length from where the jungle gives way to the flatlands, the munitions factory.
Rhythmic stomping, tremors rippled the reflective pools of melting ice, and Alyss turned as—
A jabberwock reared up, almost trampling her. Redd was riding the beast bareback as she might a spirit-dane, pulling on reins of heavy chain-link.
“I trust you feel special,” Redd grimaced. “I don’t allow myself to be summoned by just anyone.”
Flame jetted from the jabberwock’s throat—close enough for Alyss to feel its heat.
“He likes you,” Her Imperial Viciousness said, yanking hard on the jabberwock’s chain to keep the beast still. “They’re not the easiest things to tame, but that’s why I like them.”
Say what I’m here to say. The sooner to be rid of this murderous company.
“Remember when you were queen—?” Alyss started.
“I never forget! How could I forget the only years I’ve exercised the authority that’s rightfully mine?”
Alyss took a deep breath and tried again. “Remember when you were queen . . .”
She spoke of the time Her Imperial Viciousness had received reports of her rebel niece enjoying a gwynook kabob in Tyman Street, entering a tube station at Redd Square, roughing it on an Outerwilderbeastia safari. She asked her aunt to recall how the Glass Eyes and card soldiers despatched to these locations had found nothing, because the Alysses were decoys, constructs dispersed throughout the queendom to confuse Redd’s all-seeing imaginative eye.
“And this allowed me to reach the Chessboard Desert and close in on the Heart Crystal unimpeded,” Alyss said.
Her Imperial Viciousness’ expression became more and more steely as she listened to what she knew had happened next: Alyss’ feint of a full-on attack, she herself in Mount Isolation, the sky brightening with day beyond the Observation Dome’s telescoping glass to reveal her niece astride a spirit-dane at the head of a populous army; she dealing the first hand of the Cut to engage in battle, discovering in the initial explosions that Alyss’ soldiers were impervious to annihilation because the entire army was a construct, a diversion that had allowed the real Alyss to reach Mount Isolation undetected.
“You remind me of this oh-so-joyous time in my reign, why?” Redd said in a clenched voice.
“I’m proposing we imagine decoys of ourselves and an army to goad Arch into revealing his next move.”
“And what, my clumsily plotting niece, will that get us?”
Alyss had asked herself the same question many times, beginning to feel that any attempt to provoke Arch into exposing his scheme would be flawed. Only now did she understand why. If Redd’s hypothetical scenario was correct—that Arch simply wanted to lull them into believing their imaginations had returned for good, which in turn would cause them to reveal themselves in battle so that he could void their imaginations when they were most vulnerable—if this were true, then getting Arch to expose his scheme via decoys would render Alyss as powerless as if he’d succeeded with it. She would have acccomplished nothing. She’d be stuck in hiding without imagination. Arch would still have the crown. Imaginationists would still be imprisoned.
“Too bad there’s not someone close to Arch we could enlist in imagination’s cause,” Alyss said.
Redd was intrigued, the vines of her dress squirming and squiggling with increased gusto. “Yes. One of those bodyguards of his perhaps. They don’t strike me as the selflessly loyal type.”
I’m not here. I’m in a self-induced trance, my actual body unmoving with my back against a stump in Outerwilderbeastia, Dodge watching over me and—
“I trust Mr. Van de Skülle is behaving himself?” Redd asked as if the notion was distasteful.
“He does nothing offensive or inoffensive.”
Her Imperial Viciousness snorted. “How boring. Though necessary, I’m sure. You haven’t had occasion to use him, niece of mine. So far your trek to the weapons factory has been uneventful.”
Alyss showed no sign of surprise, expressed nothing at all.
“Where’s the startled look?” Redd asked. “None too long ago, it wouldn’t have occurred to my ignorant niece that I might turn the eye of my imagination upon her to see what my new partner is up to.”
Nastiness is her civility. Arrange what I must. Get it done.
“You and your assassins,” Alyss said, her voice betraying no emotion, “are in the Volcanic Plains, heading for the Whispering Woods so that I will be on one side of Heart Palace, you the other, and in a loose sense we’ll have Arch surrounded.”
Redd’s face cracked like a dried scab. “Bravo! Oh, bravo, Alyss, for having turned your imaginative eye upon me as I turned mine upon you! But,” she lowered her voice, con spiratorial and sarcastic, “doesn’t it shock you to find we’re thinking alike?”
I’m nothing like her. It’s just . . . with her I take precautions, knowing too well what she’s capable of.
“What I think, niece of mine, is that the so-called adversities you’ve experienced have made you less stupidly trusting of others. I approve, but it’s not very White Imagination of you.”
Ignoring this, Alyss said, “So we’re agreed? Instead of decoys, we’ll try to turn one of Arch’s guards to our cause?”
Redd sniffed in accord. “And while I could stoop to tell you my methods for turning this disloyal guard, I’d much rather hear yours, seeing how like-minded we currently are.”
“We haunt him.”
Redd erupted with laughter that sounded like the pain-riddled screeches of a seeker. “A haunting! I approve! Oh, niece of mine, we may have more in common than I ever supposed! But what else should I have expected? We do share some of the same blood!”
Her Imperial Viciousness’ ear-stabbing cackle was taken up by the wind and she pulled at the jabberwock’s reins she held in her swollen-knuckled fist. Screaming fire, the beast carried her galloping off, leaving Alyss alone on the hilltop once more, with Morgavia extending around her in all directions.
Does this land actually exist as it appears? Or is it a rendering of what Redd—and now me, borrowing from her—have imagined it to look like?
It was strange that she could summon Redd to a place she might not physically be able to find. But it was strangeness short-lived: Alyss had summoned her aunt for the last time; they would never again meet in peace.
CHAPTER 36
IT WAS lovely when the family could be together, taking respite from their busy lives in one another’s company—her father, Dean Liddell, surrendering himself to laughter as brother Harry, home for an unexpected visit, related a curious story involving a pheasant. It was hard for Alice to hear the story’s details because across the table, Lorina—whom she thought too often moody—was teasing Edith about the attention the latter had lately been receiving from a young gentleman by the name of Harcourt.
“Oh, Edith, a daily visit from Mr. Harcourt isn’t much, not really, not when he could make three!”
Even her mother—whose ambitions for her children induced her to comment constantly upon the benefits of this or that connection—had been lulled into happy relaxation. For here was an opportunity to remind the table that Mr. Harcourt was heir to Nuneham Park Estate, yet she surveyed all with contentment and said nothing! She merely bent her head toward Mr. Skene, Lorina’s husband.
“These strawberries,” he said.
“Not overripe, I hope?”
“Perfect, I’d judge.”
> “Alice,” Mrs. Liddell said with a sudden turn of attention, “why do you look so dreamy?”
“Do I? I’m sorry, Mother. I don’t mean to appear so. I assure you I’m very much present. I was just thinking that I used to consider these long family meals such a chore, but now . . . how I savor them!”
A man came suddenly through the wall next to the sideboard: Dodge Anders. “What the—?” he breathed.
Only Alice noticed him, Mr. Skene and the rest of the Liddells enjoying their desserts as if he wasn’t there. But before the guardsman could utter more, the dining room with its wainscoting and wallpaper, the sideboard and china cabinet and tea service, Edith, Lorina, Mr. Skene, the dean and his wife—all began to dissolve. And Alyss Heart, the author of this elaborate construct, found herself no longer Alice Liddell. She was sitting on a tuft of dry grass in the flatlands instead of a handsome oak dining chair, her Oxfordian dress gone, replaced by the coarse maid’s outfit and hooded cloak in which she’d been disguised for too long.
“What were you doing?” Dodge asked.
They had left Outerwilderbeastia behind and made camp for the night. Somewhere in front of them: the munitions factory and the Creedite Quadrant. To the east: the Whispering Woods and the Pool of Tears. Alyss was nearer the Pool than she’d been since her return from exile on Earth.
“I don’t know . . . imagining,” she said.
The life that might have been mine for much longer than thirteen years. Not a carefree life by any means, but at least I didn’t have the burden of securing an entire nation’s welfare. Only my own happiness, and my family’s, to consider.
Mr. Van de Skülle was sitting at a respectful distance, greasing his whip with gryphon innards he kept in a pouch hanging from his belt. He must have seen the detailed construct she’d created, but he pretended as if he hadn’t.
“Anything?” the assassin asked.
Dodge shook his head. He’d shown remarkable faith in the accord with Redd by leaving Alyss with Van de Skülle while he’d reconnoitered the vicinity. “All clear,” he said.
There were probably a smail-load of questions he wanted to ask, Alyss thought. Why had she been imaginating that? Why now? Questions she didn’t know if she could answer. But he was trying hard to gloss over what he’d witnessed.
“Bibwit’s patched through Hatter Madigan, who’s asking what he can do to help us,” he said. He touched his communicator’s keypad and a holographic image of the Milliner formed in the air.
“My queen,” Hatter said, lowering his head. “I apologize for the delay in being of service to you. For too long, I’ve not been doing as I should. I claim no excuse.”
“Save the love a father feels for his daughter, you mean. Bibwit informed me you were looking after Molly’s safety.” It was momentary relief, to escape Dodge’s accusing eye into the behavior of a sovereign.
Hatter again lowered his head. “And I trust I have secured it, my queen.”
“As do I. How is she?”
The question gave Hatter pause. “She didn’t wish to stay where she is. But the feistiness with which she let me know leaves me confident she’ll soon be capable of returning to her duties.”
All of us and our never-diminishing duties.
“I hope we’ll be in a position to welcome her return to these duties,” Alyss said. “Of course, Hatter, your service could never be more helpful than at present, but if you knew of a safehouse in Wonderland, we might have benefitted from knowing of it ourselves.”
“Understood, my queen. But my daughter is not in Wonderland.”
“Not in Wonderland? Certainly she’s not in Boarderland ?”
“She’s on Earth. With Dodgson.”
“Dodgson!”
It was so utterly unexpected, sent her mind reeling back to when she was a confused little girl hoping to find someone who believed the true story of how she’d wound up on Earth, unlooked-after and alone. A hope she’d all but given up when Reverend Dodgson urged her to confide in him. He didn’t call her stories of man-cat murderers and living chessmen rubbish, as the Liddells and the children at Ban-bury Orphanage had. He seemed to understand and take her seriously, which in the end was what he most assiduously failed to do. He betrayed a trusting young girl for no increase in wealth or power, nothing but the pleasure of teasing her. The recollection of it pained her still.
And now Homburg Molly’s been left with him?
She wanted to ask why the Milliner had thought of the reverend, but Dodge was busy providing him details of her alliance with Redd, disclosing the reasons for their going to the munitions factory.
“I’ve already been in contact with Bibwit,” Hatter said. “I know that he’s to rendezvous with you and the scientist Taegel before the next rising of the moons. I’ll meet you there. Unless the queen has something else in mind for me?”
Alyss shook her head and the communication cut out before she could ask about Dodgson.
“Was it because of the prince, the man you almost married on Earth?” Dodge wanted to know, looking not at her but at the spot where Hatter’s image had just been. “Is that why you imagined yourself back?”
“What? No, how could you ask? Leopold wasn’t even there. You saw.”
“Leopold,” Dodge said, and then, moving away from her: “I’ll dig a fire pit. It gets cold here at night.”
She was left to stare at Mr. Van de Skülle. Finished greasing his whip, he was bending it this way and that to keep it supple.
“Been too long since I’ve gotten to use it on anything except jabberwocky,” he said to her, neither of them knowing that he wouldn’t have to wait much longer.
CHAPTER 37
DODGSON WORRIED every time Molly left his rooms, not least because she refused to let him accompany her and the last thing he wanted was to answer to her father if she came to harm while in his care. Were he as strong in muscle as he was dexterous with pen, he would have physically tried to stop her going out, though he was unsure that a man even three times his size could succeed in preventing the girl from doing what she would. In Molly’s most trivial actions, there was a suggestion of great power and ability. When she spooned sugar into a cup, he saw an unusual degree of ath leticism, effortless hand-eye coordination. When she rearranged her legs as she sat on the floor reading, he saw an animalistic grace, a latent strength like that of a panther or lion at rest and in no way contingent on her ordinary size. So rather than force Molly to stay indoors, he tried to reason with her.
“By going out unchaperoned, you make yourself conspicuous, and what if King Arch’s soldiers have been sent to Earth and are searching for you?”
“It’s bad enough I’m wearing the ugly clothes you found for me,” she answered, not looking up from her book. “I don’t need looking after.”
It was the most she’d said since they’d been together, having responded to his offers of food and tea with monosyllables, sometimes with no more than a nod or shake of the head.
“Anyway,” she finished. “I’m as unchaperoned as any street urchin, the same as Queen Alyss once was.”
Difficult to say which made Dodgson more uncomfortable: the times she went out, leaving him alone with his anxiety, or the hours she spent on the rug, reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which she’d pulled from its shelf above his desk.
“You were having a laugh at Queen Alyss and Wonderland,” Molly said, closing the book with a thump. It was the first time she’d commented on his writing.
“G-good heavens, no! I believed I was happily elaborating on a young girl’s f-fantasy world—”
“Whatever. I’m going out. Can I please have some money?”
This was the latest development: her requests for money every time she left his rooms. “How much do you need?” he asked.
“Enough for a cup.”
He didn’t bother to point out that she hadn’t finished the cup of tea he’d poured for her.
“Please at least remove your coat! What’s the point
of wearing the clothes I gave you if you insist on hiding them under that?”
She answered by holding out her hand for the money. He dutifully gave her a few pence and she left, stuffing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland into the pocket of her Millinery coat as she always did. And as he always did, he went to the window and watched her cross the quad toward the deanery.
The first time, it was a chance sighting—Miss Alice Liddell strolling in Magdalen’s Deer Park with a woman Molly would soon know as Edith. She spied on them for a quarter hour and then—for no reason she could explain—followed them to the deanery’s blue door. But the second time was no accident. Leaving Mr. Dodgson’s rooms, Molly waited outside the blue door, largely obscuring herself from its view behind a lamp post. She watched and waited, and again she could not explain what she was doing or why. She didn’t even know if Miss Alice Liddell was at home. However, the lady at last emerged—again with Edith—and Molly followed them to the Water Walks, telling herself all the while that the person she saw was not Wonderland’s queen. Though why it mattered so much to her, she didn’t know. Unless—