Unbirthday

by Liz Braswell

  “Oooh, and be petted the whole time by the Great and Powerful Alice,” the Cheshire said saucily. He twisted so she could get to his belly better, but his head popped off for a moment to give her a wink. “At least until we get to Mary Ann.”

  Alice stopped petting him and glared.

  “All right, all right, I’ll bow quietly out when she takes over you lot. I’m not a leader, or trained in the ways of rebellions or civil disobedience. I don’t have much to add to your side. But I will still take comfort in seeing the Queen of Hearts dethroned and punished for her actions so everyone can return to their normal—ah, absurd—and safe Wonderland lives. So come with us, rather than making jokes, and help!”

  The Cheshire Cat gave her an inscrutable look. Then he feigned fatigue.

  “I am helping…. You don’t know how hard it is to keep a straight thought in a place like this.” His body suddenly became a series of sharp angles and squares, from rectangular ears down to his long looping tail that was now a spiral of not-quite-ninety-degree turns. He stood out in orange-and-purple starkness against the coiling organic growth of the trees behind him.

  “Time is running out on you. He didn’t even pay his portion of the bill.”

  Now he stood and made a triangle with his paws above his head; his head then began to drain into his body like sand in an hourglass. “Beware what churches and suits and jails all have in common.”

  “Is that another riddle?” Alice demanded. “Is it—oh, he’s gone.”

  Of course the cat faded out of view, eyes last, which rolled up into the now invisible head. Then they bounced and rolled through the spiral branches like tiny croquet balls.

  “Bother! How people still come and go in this place!” She allowed herself exactly one humph and stamped her foot exactly one time like the seven-year-old she once had been, and then ran after her friends. They were chattering nonsense at each other, not having even noticed she was gone. The cat’s puzzle reminded her of another one from Wonderland, long ago.

  “Hatter! Hatter! Do you remember your old riddle? The one you told me the last time I was here?”

  “I don’t own any riddles,” he responded, pulling out his pockets to show how empty they were. Needles and pins fell out. They scurried to the side of the path to not be trod on. “I borrowed one once—but I doubt the March Hare will ever be able to collect on it now.”

  Alice took a deep breath.

  “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” she prompted.

  “I don’t know, why?” he asked gamely.

  “No—you asked me that, last time. I never figured out the answer myself. But I asked everyone when I woke up—er, came back to Angleland, and even read a great many books on puzzles and riddles to try and solve it. So now I have several answers. So tell me which one is right!”

  She began counting on her fingers.

  “One: because they both have quills dipped in ink.”

  Her audience just looked at her gravely.

  Alice hurried on to the next.

  “Two: the American author, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, wrote on both.”

  The Dodo and the Gryphon looked at each other and shrugged helplessly.

  “And three—my friend Charles came up with this—because each can produce a few notes, tho’ they are very flat!”

  She sat back on her heels, much pleased with herself, and waited for a reaction.

  The Hatter took her gently by the hand. “Ah—it doesn’t have an answer, my dear girl. That is the point of a riddle.”

  “That is not the point of a riddle!” Alice almost shrieked.

  “I think the heat has gotten to her,” the Dodo whispered badly to the Gryphon.

  “But I just gave you three answers!”

  “Well, you had better take them back, they would best be used elsewhere. Here, there they are,” the Hatter said graciously.

  Alice regarded them all silently for a long moment. “I’m remembering this from last time,” she finally said. “Nothing gives satisfaction in Wonderland. You always think you say the right thing, do the right thing, figure the deuced thing out—and you’re always wrong. Always! The key is too far away. You’re too short. The rules of etiquette are all skewed. The rules of croquet are insane. It’s like the most beautiful and yet worst sort of dream where everything is upside down consistently and could be beautiful and perfect but instead just drives one to fits!”

  “Definitely the heat,” the Gryphon whispered back.

  “Well, what is it like in your world?” the Dodo asked politely.

  “In Angleland, if you learn the rules, and follow them correctly, you generally get where you want to go or receive what you want to have.”

  “Seems boring,” said the Dodo.

  “Seems easy,” piped up Bill.

  “No matter who you are? No matter what your height is?” the Hatter asked curiously.

  “It doesn’t at all matter what you look like, or…” Alice paused, thinking about the children of the Square. “Well, perhaps it is a little easier if you’re Anglish. Born in Angleland.”

  “And what if you don’t have the luck of that?” the Hatter asked. “Can you change it?”

  “Where you were born? Of course not!”

  “Seems a bit arbitrary to me,” the Hatter said. “Sounds harder than here, where you merely have to run twice as fast to get anywhere. At least you can choose how you run.”

  Alice rubbed her temples. He wasn’t wrong. For a brief moment she had a vicious wish that all her Wonderland friends could spend a week in London, figuring out the trains and how to get a cup of tea they had to pay for, talking to alley cats and dormice who didn’t speak back.

  “Well, anyway, forget my riddle. Perhaps you can help me out with a new one.”

  (“I thought she said it was the Hatter’s riddle,” the Dormouse whispered to Bill. The two tiny things nodded knowingly at each other.)

  “We’re already out, and there’s no place to go in,” the Gryphon said testily. “Speak plainly, girl.”

  “Call me girl again and I’ll have you on a leash before you can say bandersnatch,” Alice snapped. The Gryphon’s eyes widened and he shrank back behind the Dodo. That was the other thing she remembered about Wonderland; the random, abject cruelty that was constantly threatened. Well, when in Rome…“What do churches and suits and jails all have in common?”

  “Oh, that’s a good one! I don’t know! What do churches and suits and jails all have in common?” the Dodo asked eagerly.

  “I—don’t—know,” Alice said through gritted teeth. “I was told this riddle but not its solution, and it might be important to our mission.”

  “That’s a trifle rude,” the Knave spoke up. “Demanding the answer to a riddle you have no answer for.”

  “Try out one of the other answers that you kept,” the Hatter suggested eagerly. “Poe wrote on both, perhaps?”

  “It doesn’t…” Alice began. “Besides, there are three things there, not ‘both.’”

  “Does a church produce notes?” the Gryphon asked the Dodo.

  “If its bell tolls, or it’s Lutheran,” the Dodo said sagely.

  “All of ’em have quills dipped in ink?” Bill joined in enthusiastically.

  “Oh, forget it!” Alice cried. “I’ll work it out myself. You’re no help at all with your nonsense. Let’s just keep going to Mary Ann.”

  The Knave’s eyes widened when she said that, but he said nothing.

  The denouement to their search was dreary and disappointing. Even in ancient Greek plays, the deus ex machina was a fellow let down in a basket draped in flowers and cloth of gold or whatever so that everyone could tell a god had come to save the hero at the last minute. It was ridiculous but glamorous and made good theater.

  But our traveling heroes had merely made their way to an even less Wonderlandy place than usual: a scrubby edge of nothing. There were dead leaves and duff, unraked, in ugly drifts. The sharp-edged green grass that thrived here was intersperse
d with many dead yellow companions. The bushes and hazel had small leaves, smaller than they should have, and looked generally unkempt. The whole place resembled an abandoned park in a bad part of town.

  That’s what it was, Alice realized; the place looked real-world unkempt. Not “mysterious etching of a romantic moor” wild or “carefully contrived, abandoned and folly-filled gardens of the wealthy” wild. Bad wild. Ungoverned, and possibly with bears.

  “There it is!” the Hatter cried. Then he looked around, alarmed. “There it is,” he whispered.

  Alice finally saw it, too: a worn and weathered sign whose bright colors had faded to the dim shades of the vegetation around it, saying: GRUNDEROUND THIS WAY. It pointed to a plain hole in the dirt whose edges had grown smooth and hard with roots over time. It was not unlike the rabbit hole Alice had first fallen down, except that it was even smaller.

  “Oh, what are we to do?” the Dodo moaned.

  “We could dig it out,” the Gryphon suggested, holding up his claws.

  “You know the defenses are prepared for that,” the Hatter said accusingly.

  “What defenses?” the Knave asked casually.

  The other three gave him silent, frosty looks.

  “Let the little ones go first. Bill and the Dormouse,” Alice suggested. “Perhaps they can tell those below to let us in—somehow. Or at least see the lay of the land.”

  The Hatter shrugged and lifted off his hat. The Dormouse, who had been sleeping on its brim, tumbled down the Hatter’s arm and neatly rolled like a billiard ball into the hole without so much as a peep. Alice wondered if the fall had even woken the poor thing up. Then the Knave plucked Bill off his chest like an oversized military medal and dropped him, rather quickly and perfunctorily, into the hole after the Dormouse. He too tumbled, feet over feet, but at the last second whipped his tail and landed, clinging to the side of the entrance. Despite his sleepy and anthropomorphic expression (and cap), he scuttled off most lizardlike into the darkness.

  “Well, here’s a fine mess. And you not even able to shrink,” the Hatter said, then crossed his arms and sat down in a huff.

  “And what about you?” Alice demanded, pursing her lips. “How were you, the Dodo, and the Gryphon supposed to be able to get down?”

  “Oh, we’re not important, you know that,” the Hatter said grumpily, waving a hand at her like a ninety-year-old granny.

  “So this is the hideout of the infamous Mary Ann,” the Knave said with a sniff of distaste, kicking some sand into the hole. He took out a tiny flacon, unscrewed its tiny gold cap, and prepared to take a swig. “No wonder the rebels are losing. To the Queen!—Er, Queen’s defeat, that is,” and he made to drink it down.

  “No! Give it to me!” Alice cried, forgetting herself and all her good manners (“Ironic, that,” she observed; she had been out of the Forest of Forgetting for a while now). She grabbed the bottle from the Knave’s hand and without a word of apology or excuse tossed the entire contents back. It burned in a cardamomy, cinnamony, peony sort of way.

  “Surely this will do something,” she thought. “It feels strong!”

  “I say,” the Knave said, a little dismayed that his quaff had been quorffed.

  Only the Dodo and the Gryphon looked hopeful. The Hatter just turned away and rolled his eyes, grumbling.

  Alice stood, arms out, legs spread, body parts removed from other body parts, fingers and toes splayed and nothing touching itself, waiting for the magic to come.

  Nothing happened.

  “You see?” the Hatter said sourly. “You’re too grown. You…”

  “Oh, shut up already,” Alice snapped. “Do you know, I’m really growing weary of your constant comments about me and my physical relation to Wonderland. Why should I grow and shrink, anyway? Why should I remember or forget according to what you think will work? ‘Get small to fit in the tiny door, Alice.’ ‘Get big to get the key, Alice.’ Get too big and scare the birds. Shrink, and the birds and mice walk all over you. I’m tired of being something else for everyone else.

  “It’s long past time Wonderland started changing for me.”

  And, not quite sure she knew what she was doing but full of red and rage, Alice marched over to the hole and pulled it open.

  It was a bit tricky and didn’t budge at first, like a cold piece of leather, but after a tug or two and an unladylike groan she managed to stretch the hole several feet across—quite large enough for herself, the Knave, the large-headed Hatter, the hexaped Gryphon, and the portly Dodo.

  Everyone blinked in surprise.

  Alice recovered herself quickly and tried not to look surprised, too.

  She did it. How had she known she would do it? Had she known? It was and yet wasn’t like a dream where you realize you have to do something and somehow it works. In dreams everything was fuzzy with no clear beginnings or embarrassing ends; here she could have failed spectacularly and just wound up clutching dry dirt.

  She had just trusted in herself, and Wonderland, and…it worked.

  “Remember that,” she marveled to herself. “Trust in yourself and Wonderland.”

  The Hatter whooped in delight, taking off his hat and whacking the Dodo with it. “She did it! Alice did it!”

  “Alice always does,” the Dodo said proudly, like she was his daughter.

  “But never in the way you expect,” the Gryphon added, also like she was his daughter.

  Alice rolled her eyes at them. “All right, I’m first. Here we go—”

  And she leapt into the darkness and unknown, for that was what Alice always did.

  But she did not land in an abandoned hallway with a charming door leading to an even more charming garden. Nor was it a forest, nor a castle, nor an oversized banquet, nor a bucket on a sea of tears.

  It was like nothing Alice had ever experienced before.

  It was loud. Dozens, perhaps a hundred or two hundred different voices muttering and cursing and wailing and soothing and talking and sighing with the occasional strident laugh. Creatures of all stature and make sat, stood, padded, milled, or lay on benches in—well, in some sort of building. Something large and cavernous with a vaulted roof. From the smell—hoppy—and the size of the place—infinite-seeming with shadowed corners—Alice thought it might be a tavern, or perhaps a Viking longhouse, or something she had no name for in which people of all ages gathered but that wasn’t a church and stank a bit.

  “Wounded in the bedrooms, please,” a long-necked duck told her tiredly. His hat was beaten about the brim and his bright yellow neckerchief was spotted with blood. He held a clipboard and what Alice couldn’t help noticing was a quill pen—but black. Dipped in ink. Someone else’s feather.

  “A raven’s, perhaps,” she mused.

  But before she could focus her thoughts on what was actually going on, the Hatter hit her squarely in the head in his tumble from the skylight (which was dark, of course, and opened onto absolutely nothing at all). She fell aside and managed to just avoid being landed on again, by the Dodo this time. The Gryphon spread his elegant wings and coasted to the top of what looked very much like a bar.

  “Dear me, this place has changed a bit,” the Hatter said, swallowing.

  “Don’t tell me you frequented this notorious joint,” the Dodo said with a wink and an elbow in the ribs.

  “When I was younger, and a little less Mad,” the Hatter said with dignity, pulling out his cuffs and straightening himself. “But there were more refreshments then. And fewer…wounded…”

  The duck had decided that the newcomers were fine and wandered off, checking in on other recent arrivals.

  “But who are all these people?” Alice asked as what looked like an overgrown hedgehog and three baby brushes woefully waddled past her. The mother—Alice assumed—clutched a pathetically small bag of possessions and had a bandage around one broken arm, which didn’t really work because of her spines tearing up the wool.

  “People with nowhere else to go,” the Hatter answered
with a shake of his head. “I thought the Grunderound had just become a place for conspirators to meet, for the resistance to convene, but it looks like word has gotten out. These are all refugees from the Queen of Hearts’ War.”

  “My doll! They took my doll!” one of the baby brushes cried.

  Alice frowned.

  Hands she has but does not hold….

  Nothing in Wonderland was a coincidence. Especially not with the Cheshire Cat helping her.

  “Who took your doll?” she asked as gently as she could, kneeling down to look her in the bristles.

  “The soldiers, of course,” the mother snapped, pulling her child back protectively. “They took Earnest’s cup and ball, too! Ruffians! Thugs!”

  “But you still have your bag…and a necklace…” Alice said, confused. “Why would they bother with toys and let you keep your valuables?”

  “Who knows? But their father is missing and we have no home. Doll’s the least of our problems now,” the mother said, trying very hard not to cry by frowning and marching away.

  “Odd,” the Hatter said, which for him was also odd.

  “Let’s find Mary Ann,” Alice said, swallowing as she saw a—well, hard to say what it was. Something long and furry and bound entirely from head to hoof in one long bandage. Its blue mouth let out a groan as a pair of pigs tried to carry it gently over to a bench. “Perhaps she can clear up this mystery for us.”

  “They would be in the back room, in the hidden casino,” the Hatter said, pointing. “Behind the false cabinet.”

  How he knew that was more than Alice wanted to consider at the moment. She pushed her way through the crowd and around to the back of the bar, someplace she never in a thousand years imagined she would ever find herself—either in the real world or Wonderland. There was a point in her childhood when she assumed that the men and women who stood behind bars in pubs had no legs at all but were merely puppets who moved back and forth behind their wooden stage as they magically produced glasses and froth.

  She squeezed herself along the large set of wooden shelves that at one time must have been full of bottles of whatever passed for imbibables in Wonderland. There were a few tiny brown jars of bitters and cordials that remained, dusty, on a lower shelf; these Alice hastily grabbed and stuffed into her sleeve. DRINK ME said one, VIOLETS said the second, HOURS said the third.