Unbirthday

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Unbirthday Page 19

by Liz Braswell


  She smiled at herself in gentle mockery as she spoke. On the one hand, she sounded like a little girl trying to seem as if she understood the world and politicians and all that occurred between them (as Mathilda’s magpie did). On the other hand…she did, a bit. She knew about the nasty Ramses’ party line and the coming mayoral elections and the problems with antisemioticism.

  (No, that wasn’t quite right. But the feeling and basic thrust of it was.)

  So maybe she wasn’t an ambassador or spy, but she knew enough to ask: what was the Queen of Clubs’ position on the Queen of Hearts’ waging war on her own people, and would she help?

  “Funny that,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s like what the Cheshire Cat said: I do carry a bit from the real world over here. Just enough sense or something to help me out. What do you call that? That little thing, that angle? That way of seeing something differently from someone else?”

  Sighing at her funny memory in this funny world, Alice carefully unpinned the brooch and put it on the pillow on her bed, and only then donned the strange outfit.

  She wandered the halls of the castle a little shocked by her own freedom. Certainly there were a number of strange courtiers and servants who gave her stern looks as she passed, but when questioned they directed her reluctantly to the Queen.

  (The only ones who didn’t respond at all were an ordered column of creatures that might have been nuns or anhingas; it was hard to tell. They walked with padded feet and bowed heads and crossed wing tips, wearing either headdresses or feathers.)

  Club guards stood at attention outside certain “rooms” or paraded in twos down the hallways—but did little more than give her a once-over.

  The castle was also a little too free in its own architecture, Alice thought; she passed through rooms where private meetings between councilmembers—and one assignation—were apparently going on.

  Decorations looked careless and hastily done, although they all matched. Asymmetrical tapestries on the walls and rugs on the floor were black or grey. Tiny occasional tables up against the walls would have a single piece of grey or black bric-a-brac, sometimes a vase holding a flower that looked just-picked and often droopy.

  Some of the windows that looked out onto the world outside shouldn’t have, as they were on interior walls. Alice stopped by one and stood on her tiptoes to peep through. Clearly depicted like an early Renaissance painting was the entire board of Snakes and Ladders. The game spread out in the plains beyond the snug little valley where the castle sat, guarded by its silvery moat. Cards and other creatures were fixing the bank of the river that Alice had accidentally ripped out when trying to save herself and the Dodo. She felt bad about that, of course, but wondered at the richness of the loam thus exposed, and the bucolic nature of the scene. It was the thematic opposite of her coming upon the cards painting the roses red or the dying boxwood maze; these creatures were working together quietly to repair nature, and, for all it seemed, happily.

  Alice hurried on and eventually found—well, if not the throne room, then at least the Queen’s sitting room. For the Queen herself was there and sitting on an elegant, tall chair. The Dodo was also present, relaxing on a tufted couch with a cup of tea and an owl of state perched uneasily nearby, craning his head around on a long accordion neck. He kept the nearly extinct bird fixed in his sight with large unblinking eyes. A little white dog chased both its own tail and a shiny black ball on a grey shag rug. A low table was set with all manner of nibbles and treats—though none of them was sweet. More of the black biscuits, some bright orange cheese, and finger sandwiches that were black with bloody red filling of some sort. Nothing looked appealing in the slightest, though it made a pretty picture. The Dodo, Alice noticed, wasn’t actually sipping his tea.

  “Your Majesty,” Alice said, dipping into a low curtsy.

  The Queen turned an elegant head slowly to look at her.

  She was tall, very tall, as tall as the Queen of Hearts had been short. She was serene, reposed, and had eyes that were black all the way to the edges—no whites at all. Her cheekbones were high and sharp as a stylized statue’s and her hair was black and shiny and intricately swept into rounds and balls around a headpiece of similar construction, so it was hard to say where one began and the other ended. A long, draping golden veil hung from her crown over her shoulders and down her back. The rest of her dress was a familiar mix of checks, six-pointed stars, and club insignias in dark blue, black, and gold.

  “More like the real card,” Alice thought.

  “Alice! So glad you’re well!” the Dodo cried. “Bit of a close call there!”

  Alice stuck out her leg—the bandage and wound were utterly revealed by the scandalously short dress thing. The pain wasn’t too unbearable. She wondered what would happen when the black drink wore off.

  The Dodo went pale upon seeing the scope of the damage.

  Even the owl hooted, unable to help himself.

  “Congratulations on winning the game,” the Queen said formally, bowing her head a little bit. “You’ll want a prize, of course. Here.”

  She nodded, and a thing that looked part hedgehog, part jay shuffled forward with a small wooden chest, which it opened with great ceremony. Inside was a strangely familiar pile of gaudy junk, though not, obviously, really junk: there were giant sparkling jewels hung on golden cords, bangles covered in silver bells, teeny tiny diamond crowns on hair clips, and all sorts of chunky, tacky dinner rings.

  Alice selected a pretty little wristwatch whose large dial had pearls marking the numbers. It was the most tasteful thing of the lot, and anyway Alice had always wanted a wristwatch. It would leave her hands free for her camera while she was timing exposures and the like.

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  “I chose a tiepin.” The Dodo preened, showing a golden stick that had NUMBER ONE WINNER engraved on it with diamond stars like fireworks all around.

  “You risked life and limb to come and see Ourself,” the Queen said in a resonant, deep voice. “Almost no one tries the game, much less wins it, these days. Especially after that nasty little rabbit let all those nasty, dangerous creatures into it. Very curious—normally toves don’t attack people so immediately and so viciously.”

  “Yes, but my leg would tend to disagree with that,” Alice said with a wan smile.

  “Really? What do you have to say for yourself?” the Queen demanded of Alice’s leg with interest.

  For a moment Alice was terrified her leg was going to answer back. She didn’t know what she would do if that happened.

  “I think both I and my leg are most grateful for the ministrations of your servants,” she answered quickly with another curtsy.

  The Queen seemed to like that, sniffing a little.

  “We—I mean, my leg, the Dodo, and I—have come here to beg Your Majesty to help an ailing people…” Alice began, clearing her throat.

  “Oh, we weren’t expecting that,” the Queen said, a little nonplussed. She patted herself all over and found a single coin—golden, shaped like a club—and tossed it at Alice. “You don’t seem like a beggar.”

  “No, Your Majesty, if you please.” Alice curtsied again, but honestly couldn’t keep her eye off the curious golden coin. It was very shiny and intriguing. “I’ve come to ask for your aid against the Queen of Hearts.”

  The Queen of Clubs’ eyes widened at that. Then she laughed. She shook up and down, stiffly, like an old man in a corset pretending to find a joke funny. “Why do you need our aid against her? We have been against her, with all our clubs and soul, since the beginning of Time. We have played War against her over and over.”

  “And who wins?” Alice asked politely.

  “Sometimes we do, sometimes she does. More often ourself,” the Queen said, perhaps lying. She looked a little sly. “I grew tired of it. It’s boring.”

  “Some say it’s not a proper game at all,” the Dodo put in, trying to be part of the conversation. “Because the cards are random, but set at
the beginning of the game, and there is no actual choice or any additional random elements during play—you just flip cards and the outcome is predetermined….”

  “Don’t be absurd,” the owl cooed.

  The Queen held up her hand impatiently. “We have no time for Nonsense right now, Dodo. We sense this girl has urgent matters on her mind. Now, have we answered your question?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Alice said, blinking.

  “We have told you: we are always against the Queen of Hearts. Is that all you wanted to know?”

  “Ah—no, Your Majesty,” Alice said, dropping into yet another curtsy while she thought, confused. “I was wondering if you would be—ah, actively against her. As in, help her subjects overthrow her.”

  “Help her subjects overthrow their queen?” the Queen of Clubs demanded. Her mouth went square, or maybe trapezoidal, her upper lip dipping down and the corners pulled taut and outward in disgust.

  Alice could see how that idea might seem a little controversial, at least in another queen’s eyes.

  “Your Majesty, she is out of control, executing and murdering and locking up and torturing her own people, many of them for seemingly no reason. And taking all their toys,” she added. She still felt it sounded foolish, but the Dodo nodded seriously and the owl let out a low whistle of shock.

  The Queen’s face froze as if it was on its way to another expression but she had forced it, by will, to stop.

  “Taking…all…their toys, you say,” she said slowly.

  “Yes. But also ravaging the countryside and executing people and—”

  “They are…her subjects. She may rule as she wilt.” But even with her formal, toneless voice, Alice could tell she wasn’t convinced by her own words.

  “Do you know Mary Ann?” Alice tried.

  “Of course. Who doesn’t?” the Queen said, rolling her eyes. Probably. It was hard to tell without any whites.

  “The Queen of Hearts had her killed, after torturing her first. I think—I think she blinded her, or ripped her eyes out, or something of the like.” Alice trembled as she spoke, picturing the photograph.

  The Queen went pale—perhaps. Her skin didn’t change color but gave the impression of changing somehow.

  “Mary Ann?” she whispered. “The White Rabbit’s—the Rabbit’s—girl?”

  “Yes, and it’s horrible. But I’ve seen similar things done to people you might not have heard of. Children and lizards and most of the Hatter’s tea party. The Hatter lost an eye to one of her jubjub birds. She’s killing and maiming everyone who wants to stop her from taking all the, um, toys.”

  The Queen tapped the armrests of her chair with long and pointed black fingernails.

  “And it doesn’t even make any sense—or Nonsense, either,” Alice said, more to herself or the world than the Queen. “I don’t know what she expects to gain from any of it.”

  “Why, she wants to win, of course,” the Queen said in surprise. “The girl who has the most toys when she dies wins. At the end of it all, of course. Everybody knows that.”

  Alice thought about it.

  “So she means to die? To—what? Gather all the toys in the world and then…? At the end of all what, do you mean?”

  “The End of Time, you silly girl. She is going to bring about the End of Time, and the End of Wonderland.”

  Alice had thought herself a sensible girl—outside Wonderland, of course—but for some reason she just couldn’t make her normally logical, aphorism-stuffed mind chew through what the Queen of Clubs had just said.

  “But—” Then Alice decided to shelve her follow-up question and move on to the next-most-obvious piece of information that seemed to be missing. “What does she win? If Time itself ends, if it’s all over, if Wonderland itself is over and everyone—including herself—is gone, what is there left? To win?”

  “She just wins. Everything. What can’t you understand, girl?” the Queen huffed impatiently. “She is the winner. If she has the most toys. When we all die.”

  “Does she—does she then alone get to live through the End of Time?”

  “It’s the End of Time, you little fool,” the Queen said, leaning forward to look her in the eye. “We don’t know how Time works in your world, or what he works at—”

  “Perhaps he’s a druggist,” the owl suggested.

  “Perhaps a druggist.” The Queen nodded. “Or a cobbler. But here the End of Time is what it sounds like. He—and everything—ends.”

  “But then,” Alice said, reluctant to anger the Queen but unable to let the confusing issue drop, “if the Queen of Hearts…along with everything else…ends…what is the point of her winning anything?”

  “Because she wins. Because she—Is there something wrong with this girl?” The Queen turned in desperation to the Dodo, who shrugged and gave a mild smile like the grandfather of a particularly dull but pretty granddaughter.

  “All right, all right,” Alice said hastily. She would just have to accept it; this was Wonderland, and their worldview was simply not her own. Winning was important even though you weren’t around to enjoy any of your toys or acclaim or spoils. The End of Time was indeed the end of everything, but apparently not enough to whip immediate panic and terror into the hearts—or clubs—of the locals. That’s just the way it was.

  “So she wishes to acquire all the toys, or most of the toys, and then bring about the End of Time quickly so that she may be judged to be the winner,” she said as slowly and clearly as she could.

  “Finally the girl is making some sense,” the Queen didn’t really whisper to her owl. “It took an awfully long Time for her to do so, however.”

  Alice thought hard. She had won Snakes and Ladders; she could figure this out, too. Right?

  Her “plan” up until now had been to throw herself on the mercy of the Queen of Clubs—a feckless and rash thing, considering the general self-interest and irrationality of all the Wonderland natives. She needed something that had much more tooth, much more appeal to a Wonderland type.

  “Do you think all the toys of all her subjects would be…enough…for her to feel comfortable about her chances of winning? Or might she decide it’s not quite enough, and she should seek beyond her borders for other kingdoms’ toys as well?”

  The Queen of Clubs narrowed her eyes and looked thoughtful.

  “Aha,” Alice thought. “That’s got her attention.”

  “We do not know. This is a thought normally only given to queens to consider because of its political ramifications. From the likes of you, this sounds like a tactical question, child. As if you are looking for ways to draw Our Royal Self into Hearts’ ridiculous folderol.”

  Alice was surprised at how quickly the Queen saw through her cunning and, yes, manipulative plan. The ruler of the Clubs was much cleverer than many a Wonderlandian.

  “Well, yes; that’s why I came here,” Alice admitted, holding her hands out. “To seek help from you in any way I could. The Queen of Hearts is destroying her own kingdom, plundering it and killing and torturing and locking up her subjects without stopping. I had hoped you would help stop this travesty out of the goodness of your heart—”

  “Our WHAT?” The Queen stood up on her little footrest, which made her taller still. She seemed a mile high, and a trick of the light caused her eyes to look depthless and terrifying.

  “Your clubs, I mean, Your Majesty, forgive me!” Alice immediately jumped off the couch and curtsied as low as she could, bowing her head. Her golden hair fell around her shoulders and sparkled in the sunlight. Perhaps that nudged the Queen’s judgment positively. “The goodness of your clubs, I meant to say.”

  “You are forgiven,” the Queen said haughtily, and sat back down.

  “…but even if you were unmoved by their terrible plight, perhaps you might choose to get involved to protect your own people and their, ah, toy resources.”

  Did that sound wise? Academic? Clever? Alice had a vision of herself and the Queen dividing up a globe w
hile intently discussing the Doll Mines of Eastern Europe or the Toy Boat manufacturing centers of the Outer Hebrides.

  “But of course,” the Queen said, narrowing her eyes so dramatically to look down on Alice that they almost entirely closed. She smiled and said with warmth: “That is what a queen does—protects her subjects. Why do you think we put our castle here, at the end of a terrible game on one side and open to the Unlikely on the other?

  “We are very much protected in this narrow valley. If the Queen of Hearts ever chose to turn her armies toward us and invade, she would have a hard time of it indeed.

  “Our toys are safe.”

  The Dodo was blinking long, feathery eyelashes at Alice, obviously still keeping all his faith in her but wondering what to do next, where to go from here. His trust and loyalty were frighteningly endless. Alice steadied herself under his avian eye.

  The Queen continued on blithely:

  “We will not involve ourself in the domestic affairs or troubles of other queens. We have no proof of what she is doing, or if it is out of the normal way she reigns.” She sniffed.

  “Oh, you have evidence enough, I’d wager. I wager you have spies—knaves and the like—who keep you informed,” the Dodo said unexpectedly. “If the Queen of Hearts keeps her eye on you, you most certainly do the reverse, and contrariwise,” he added, sipping his tea a little too smugly through his long beak.

  Then he coughed, ruining the effect, obviously having forgotten he hated the black stuff.

  The Queen of Clubs darkened—really darkened, her skin going shiny and black like onyx. She glowered.

  “Please, Your Majesty,” Alice begged. “The Queen of Hearts is a monster—maiming, executing, and torturing even those once loyal to her! You wouldn’t do these things, would you?”

  “No, but We are a good queen.” More than a little self-congratulatorily.

  “To her own people,” Alice thought angrily. Of course…if this were the real world and she were arguing with a real head of state of Europe, she could almost see some logic behind the Queen’s thoughts, as backward and uncaring as it might have seemed. The Queen of Clubs was indeed a “good queen,” but if she interfered in another queen’s rule over her own people…what was to stop someone else from doing the same thing to her? What if a king thought that being made to wear little pins of clubs was malicious and coldhearted, and invaded to “save” these people? Because he too thought himself good?

 

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