Unbirthday

by Liz Braswell

  Alice could argue about the plight of the Heartlanders until she was blue in the face, but Clubs here wouldn’t do anything that might eventually jeopardize her own rule.

  “Now, if her subjects actually rose up against her, lots of them, we mean,” the Queen of Clubs said softly, “that would be a different matter altogether.”

  Alice blinked, slowly processing what she said with a mix of suspicion and intrigue.

  “If a majority of people judge they are ruled by an evil queen, a vindictive, Heartless, cruel tyrant, and they have had enough, and they make that known—why, we would be more than happy to step in and lend them a hand. Perhaps even a flush or a straight.”

  The owl craned his head on his long accordion neck around in surprise at his mistress’s words.

  “We would do it out of the generosity of our own clubs,” she continued serenely. “And only take as our fair reward in the end any toys our soldiers seized from the deposed despot.”

  Aha. There was the Wonderland angle. Alice strongly resisted rubbing her forehead in exhaustion. She wasn’t sure it was a faux pas before royalty, but it seemed like the sort of thing that might be. She also tried not to sigh.

  “So,” she said instead, taking a broad, shallow breath, “if we can adequately demonstrate that the subjects of the Queen of Hearts are all—or mostly—resisting her efforts to mow them down and seize their property and bring about the End of Time and all of Wonderland, that they are ready to overthrow her themselves, then we may count on you for military assistance?”

  “You may count on anyone you like,” the Queen said generously. “Even our dog, if you wish, although there is only one of him, so it would be fairly short counting. We will commit troops. Pairs of troops, even.”

  Alice had no idea how to do what she had just proposed. From the savage and brutal drumming her friends had taken to their inability to organize for even the smallest, slightest operation, the task of organizing a revolution seemed hopeless. But at least there was a chance now. She would take it.

  “This is just the sort of thing Mary Ann would have been so good at,” the Queen said a little sorrowfully. “She knew just what to say, and she knew everyone, and she knew what to say to everyone when she met him.”

  “Also, she knew the heart of the Rabbit,” the owl agreed, bobbing his head up and down. “And all his plans. And therefore…all the Queen’s plans.”

  “Yes, upon considering it, we are…unsurprised at the removal of Mary Ann by violent means,” the Queen agreed. “It was very efficient of the Queen of Hearts, we will give her that. But we can’t imagine it endeared her to the White Rabbit.”

  Why did their talking about Mary Ann still irritate Alice, even a little? The poor girl was dead, had died trying to save everyone. She deserved to be thought of as a hero, not an impossible ideal to live up to.

  Alice was ashamed of her inner self, and promised Penitence later when she had time.

  “I shall depart at once to rally the people,” she said aloud, getting up to curtsy again. “How will you know when…enough people have decided to throw in together against the Queen of Hearts? Even with, ah, spies, they can’t be everywhere at once.”

  “Take this.”

  The Queen nodded to her owl.

  He heaved and coughed and coughed and heaved most terrifyingly. Alice looked over at the Dodo for confirmation that this was normal Wonderland business—owls coughing up fewmets or pellets in public at the will of the Queen.

  But the Dodo looked horrified and embarrassed and uncomfortable and started nodding his head back and forth as if he too were about to be sick, or were looking for a place to hide or excuse himself to.

  Finally the owl reached a crescendo and leaned over. The Queen put out her hand. He promptly coughed into it a small and perfect ivory-colored egg.

  Alice blinked in surprise. Wasn’t the owl a boy? But, and also, was that how eggs came in Wonderland? And…

  The Queen smiled, satisfied, and turned the egg over with her long black fingernails. On its shell, raised just a bit, was a perfect set of black clubs. The Queen extended it to Alice, who took it with both hands as carefully as she could.

  “Take this with you. Keep it safe at all times. Reveal the will of the people to it. If all is as you say, we shall come when it is expedient to do so, with our army.”

  The Queen stepped down from her chair. Somehow she was now wearing a thick black cape with a long train that extended out of the room. It appeared just in time for her to turn and have it elegantly and dramatically swirl out around her as she left.

  “You will exit out the back door, of course,” she said, not bothering to turn around. “The bonetalopes were following you to the front—and the snakes didn’t get all of them.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty, Yes, Your Majesty,” Alice said, leaping up and curtsying, although she wasn’t sure it was necessary since the Queen wasn’t even looking. Even so, there was a pair of black cassowaries who now stood guard on either side of the door through which the Queen had exited, with rather mean looks in their eyes. So perhaps it was just as well, for form’s sake.

  An all-black mome rath with particularly large and heartbreaking eyes and a platter balanced on its head bumped into Alice’s leg, obviously encouraging her to put her used tea things on it. She didn’t have any, of course, because the tea and its accompaniments looked disgusting.

  “Well, this is exciting,” the Dodo said (pensively, not excited-sounding at all) as they followed the creature through the halls. “Actually, everything has been rather too exciting lately. This is less exciting than some of the previously exciting things. This is more than usually exciting but less than recently exciting. And less violent too, with any luck.”

  “What is?” Alice asked, trying to pay attention. But they were passing what looked like a miniature bakery crammed into one of the castle’s strange room-alcoves, and tarts and cookies had been set out to cool on an open window that hung from the ceiling. She couldn’t help sneaking a couple, just in case. The cookies were pink and sandy and said EAT ME on them in little nuts that might have been pecans, but she wasn’t certain; Alice had never seen them before.

  “…the Unlikely,” the Dodo was saying. “I haven’t been there since I was a fledgling.”

  “And what was it like?”

  “It was Unlike anything else, you silly goose,” the Dodo said, rolling his eyes. “The Queen is right—you do take a long time to get things through that head of yours.”

  This, of course, made Alice feel a bit glum. Especially since she had failed in the one task she had set herself once they had begged her to take over from Mary Ann: to secure help from the Queen of Clubs.

  “Dodo, do you have any thoughts about how we are to go about this? I’m afraid we haven’t had much luck with gathering the forces of good so far.”

  “You gathered the tea party,” the Dodo said philosophically. “And brought us to the Grunderound. And you came back and rescued me. So there’s two of us now.”

  “Oh, I really had thought to be able to turn the whole thing over to Mary Ann when we found her!” Alice said, trying not to whine. “I’m afraid the Queen of Clubs is quite right. I’m really not a very good savior, in comparison to her.”

  Was she hoping for him to disagree? Just a little? She peeped out the corners of her eyes to see his reaction.

  “Well, there’s no one like Mary Ann,” was all he said.

  “There’s no one like anyone else in Wonderland,” Alice muttered. “Not you, not Bill, not the Hatter—oh! That’s what we’ll do!” She clapped her hands. “We will talk to and rally all the Heartlanders we see along the way, of course, but first we shall find the Hatter! Assuming, of course, he made his escape and isn’t…well, gone.

  “Without his Nonsense he seems to have moments almost of clarity and purpose, and he certainly knows how to talk to all Wonderlandians.”

  Suddenly Alice was afraid she might have insulted the Dodo. Dear, kind, kin
d-of-ridiculous Dodo, who was loyal to the point of waiting on the enemy’s very stoop for her to return. Who stayed by her side through Snakes and Ladders and the toves and meeting the Queen.

  But he didn’t appear to notice any undue compliments given to his friend, or rather, did not seem to be bothered by it.

  The black mome rath indicated the end of a long corridor with a careless twitch of its leg and then scooted back the way they had come, bouncing off the walls back and forth as it (he?) went.

  The ridiculously long hall narrowed down to a ridiculously tiny end, but of course by the time they made their way along it, everything had shifted and they stood at a giant blank wall in the middle of which was a drab, unremarkable little kitchen door. A giant sign above it said EXIT, with an arrow indicating the door just in case the reader didn’t quite get it.

  “All right,” Alice said, putting her hand on the—slightly greasy?—knob. It swung open, crookedly, like one of the hinges wasn’t fastened properly. The light was so bright after the dark, cool halls of the Castle of Clubs that the Dodo blinked and squawked and Alice shaded her eyes.

  They stepped outside.

  Alice expected many things: a forest made of broccoli, a vast plain that dissolved into a hazy swamp, a brightly colored and garish market town with blue onion domes and flying desk chairs. But what she saw instead was…

  Home.

  Her home.

  “But…But…I don’t understand!” Alice cried.

  The house wasn’t actually, but seemed, much larger than it should have been, taking up most of her frame of reference. There should have been other houses with lawns to either side of it but she couldn’t see any, as if they weren’t quite important enough to show. Everything was perfect and real down to the last detail, including the cracked keystone over the second window to the left of the library.

  Except…

  Alice frowned.

  In the real world—or back home, or whatever—the window with the cracked keystone was on the right side of the house if you were standing in front and looking at it. A quick ascertaining of other pertinent details further proved her sneaking suspicion: the house had been reversed. Her mother’s little kitchen garden could be seen poking out the left side of this one.

  “Astounding,” Alice murmured. Someone else probably would have said creepy or disquieting, but this was Alice in Wonderland, and everything was amazing.

  “Dodo, this is where I live!” she added with excitement.

  “Of course,” the Dodo said offhandedly, straightening his cuffs. “Very Unlikely it should be here at all.”

  “Right,” Alice said. “I know we’re on a mission to unite the Heartlanders, but I would love just a peek inside. I could show you my room!”

  The Dodo shrugged. He seemed neither interested nor anxious to go on. Then again, she remembered from her first visit that in Wonderland all things had a habit of leading to the same place. Avoiding her house or going into her house might not have any effect at all on defeating the Queen of Hearts.

  Alice practically skipped up to the front door, which tried to sidle out of her grasp once or twice before reluctantly letting her in. It seemed to be just peevish, though, not really set on keeping her out.

  “Oh, look!” she cried. “Everything’s the same…but different!”

  At first glance it appeared to be exactly like her real home (in reverse). Beyond the symmetry, however, all other details were slightly askew. Portraits on the wall were occasionally empty of people, as if their subjects had grown bored and wandered off. Many of the smaller inanimate objects—like her mother’s favorite vase and a blown-glass candy dish—had little faces and personalities. Alice tried to see what the candies were in Wonderland; in the real world she had eaten all the good ones, and only the licorice were left. But the dish scuttled away from her. It made little tsking sounds that were almost too high-pitched to hear, and that was really the most vexing thing.

  “I’m not a child anymore,” Alice protested. “I can have as many sweets as I want!”

  “Seems like you don’t keep your place in very good order,” the Dodo chastised. “You should really reprimand it more. Spare the rod, spoil the house, as they say.”

  “I should do,” Alice agreed.

  The pianoforte was asleep and its keys unsettlingly warm. The wax fruit in the basket laughed and dissolved under her touch. The fancy carpet slowly revealed scene after scene of distant meadows, other places.

  “If the rug at home were really like that, I should never leave the living room!” Alice declared, fascinated. How much her childhood would have changed with the magic views. She might not have done anything else at all.

  The downstairs fireplace was unlit and Alice had the distinct feeling that the hearth was yawning every time she turned away. And the…

  She suddenly turned back to the fireplace, realizing something else was amiss, even for a Reversed, Wonderland House.

  There was the little broom for sweeping the cinders, there the scary black iron poker she had not been allowed to touch when she was little. But in place of the little shovel normally used to lift out the coals was a dark green shovelbird. It stood very still and held its shovel-beak downward the way the real shovel would have pointed. Its dull orange legs were held tight together to imitate the handle and it seemed to suck in its breath to make itself skinnier and more normal-shovel-like.

  There was a scratch across its breast and right eye and a bandage just above its right knee.

  Alice felt her heart melt.

  “Oh, what is it about the eyes?” she asked the Dodo sadly. “The Hatter, your own injury, and this poor fellow here. What does it mean? The Queen of Hearts always seems to be trying to take out your eyes. Why?”

  “Why could be next, I suppose,” the Dodo said thoughtfully, scratching the healing wound on his own brow. “That makes sense. Eyes, Wise, and then she’ll go back around and do the Ays, Ease, Owes, and Yous, too.”

  Alice shook her head disgustedly and turned her attention to the (other) bird.

  “Hello. I won’t hurt you,” she said gently, not holding her hand out for fear of scaring it further.

  The shovelbird opened one eye and regarded her blankly.

  “Come on, come on,” Alice cooed. She reached—slowly—into the pocket of her new outfit and pulled out one of the biscuits from the Castle of Clubs. “Here you go. This is my house, and I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Slowly the bird took awkward and bobbling steps around the other fireplace tools, untangling itself efficiently if not gracefully. It came to within about a foot of Alice and regarded her for a moment—then shot out its shovel-beak and scooped the biscuit out of her hand, neatly and expertly prying it out of her fingers with its pointed tip. It threw the treat up in the air and let it fall precisely down its throat and into its stomach. Alice could see the shape of the biscuit as it traveled down the inside of its scrawny neck.

  “Very good. Mostly. Come with us! The Queen of Clubs has told us that if we stand up for ourselves, en masse, against the Queen of Hearts, she will come to our aid and help overthrow her!”

  This was Alice’s first rousing speech to get Wonderlandians on her side.

  It was not, she reflected, very good.

  The creature looked at her sideways, then began to peck at the ground, looking for missed crumbs.

  “All right. I suppose you still have no real reason to trust me,” Alice sighed. “Well, when we depart I shall still endeavor to take you with me, rather than leaving you here, hiding amongst the ashes. Although…isn’t it funny…” She bit her lip, remembering. “When I was…very little…I used to wonder what it would be like to hide there myself. I imagined Father mistaking me for the poker and picking me up by the head and poking at the logs with my legs…. I must have been very small to imagine that, if I could have fit there. Mrs. Anderbee and my nurse were always scolding me to get away from the fire.

  “I wonder if there are any more refugees h
iding here, in places where I used to hide! Dodo, I’ll look in the kitchen, you in the pantry. No—let’s make it the other way around. I used to tuck away in the pantry myself and pretend the pies were boats that would take me away to Puddingland.”

  “There is already a Puddingland,” the Dodo pointed out. “Or wait—it’s Puddinglane. Or maybe Penny Lane. In my eyes and all that…”

  “Pudding is in your eyes?” Alice asked.

  “Better than pennies,” the Dodo answered sagely. “That would mean I was dead.”

  “Too true.” She patted him solicitously. “We wouldn’t want that. Come now!”

  The copper pots and pans in the kitchen had obviously been gossiping or engaged in some other inappropriate activity, because the moment the two walked in they immediately flew apart from their tight little crowd and tried to rehang themselves on the proper hooks, banging and making a noise so thunderous that Alice had to cover her ears.

  Actually, on second glance they seemed to enjoy the noise they were making, and didn’t look like they were trying to sort themselves out at all.

  “Stop that at once!” Alice cried.

  This only made them bang and clang even more loudly. Now tinny laughter and minuscule jeers were added to the clamor. One saucier actually paused long enough to stick his thumb to his handle and waggle his fingers provocatively at her.

  “Stop it right now!” Alice ordered. She popped a biscuit in her mouth and opened her hands, surrounding the pans—at least visually—and then brought her hands together until they almost touched.

  The pots and pans and lids shrank, of course, their wails getting higher and higher pitched as they almost disappeared. Alice waited a moment, then opened her hands again. They grew and screamed at her.