by Liz Braswell
“And if we win?” the Hatter asked unexpectedly.
“I beg your pardon?” Alice asked, still fuming but trying to calm down. Oh why did comparisons to the poor dead girl upset her so?
“If we win…will you stay?” It wasn’t quite plaintive; it was genuinely curious. “Forever?”
Alice blinked.
“Why, I…I don’t know, Hatter.”
Things in Wonderland would be different if they won, and she was the reason. If it was anything like last time, they would probably make her a Queen of Something and maybe listen to her now and then.
But…what about the real world?
What about Mayor Ramses and the mome raths of the Circle?
And—Mother and Father would miss her. Maybe her sister, too, although perhaps she would be too busy trying to avoid the scandal of having a missing sister to really weep for little Alice.
And that boy…there was a boy, wasn’t there?
And if she won there, in the real world?
If she saved the—whatevers, and defeated Mayor Ramses and…well…somethinged with the boy…she wouldn’t think about that bit right now…would that be winning? Would it be enough that she would never want to return to Wonderland? What if they made her Queen of the World over there? Or even just the Americas? Would that be enough to occupy her ideas and banish thoughts of borogoves and bread-and-butterflies?
“Let’s concentrate on defeating the Queen of Hearts right now,” Alice said, a little too swiftly. “My personal future is far less important than stopping her from imprisoning and executing innocents, and then ending the world.”
“Too true, too true,” the Dodo cooed.
“The Queen of Clubs says she will help if there’s a mass uprising against the Queen of Hearts. She must see that this is what the people really want. So we must convince the otherwise timid and skittish inhabitants of the realm to come together, face their fears, and resist rather than just running away and hiding—as welcome as that idea might be.”
Alice addressed this last bit to an umbrella leaning casually up against the wardrobe, trying to look like an inanimate object rather than the vulture it really was.
The normally spooky, beaked head looked around at her in almost comical chagrin.
“Have you ever had a thought you couldn’t catch?” the Hatter asked. “It just…skitters around the edges of your mind while you’re having an argument with someone, and only later does it turn up and you say to yourself: yes, that is what I should have said? ‘Where were you when I needed you most, you silly little thought?’”
He nodded, using his chin to point out the various hidden creatures around the room. It was the same as trying to catch the creatures of Wonderland and reason with them, was what he was trying to say.
“Well, until someone comes up with a better plan, this is all we have. We shall just have to try,” Alice said firmly, pursing her lips. “And lead by example. Creatures? Wonderlandians? Les enfants?” She clapped her hands together the way she had seen foreign governesses do when taking a number of their charges to the park. “Attend me now. It is time to go.”
A dozen different Wonderland natives stuck their large-eyed heads out of various hiding places. While Alice wasn’t entirely surprised to see a mirrorbird step down off her vanity (fancy and new and not from her real house) or a pencilbird sneak up off her tiny child’s desk (gotten rid of years ago), the eighteen-footed raterpillar crawling out from under the bed was a bit of a shock. But the thing that looked a little bit like a garland and a little bit like a string of pom-poms that fluttered through the room on uncertain wings was most surprising of all. Alice was afraid it would tangle up in her hair somehow. It settled itself rather endearingly around the Dodo’s shoulders, where he thoughtlessly adjusted it like a muffler and patted one of the yarn baubles on its body.
“Very fetching,” Alice said approvingly. “Let us depart; it is time to leave the Unlikely.”
And trying to project an aura of unquestionable, calm leadership—again, like a foreign governess—Alice left her room and floated down the stairs, not daring to look back to see if anyone followed.
She did, however, hear the Dodo and Hatter pattering down the stairs behind her; apparently they didn’t float, or didn’t choose to. And she very much hoped the soft susurrus and mushy cloth sounds that were just on the edge of her hearing were the rest of the small and assorted Wonderlandkind following.
“And what if I throw open the front door,” she thought as she reached for the doorknob, “and we are immediately surrounded by Heart cards?”
When she did open it—at a speed somewhere between bravery and caution: too slow for real bravado but too fast to do any actual good should there have been a danger—there was nothing.
Well, not quite nothing. For one thing, the Queen of Clubs’ castle was no longer in view. Perhaps it was behind the house now, or perhaps it or the house had hidden itself entirely elsewhere. Whatever the case, the grounds that now spread out below the house were soft and infinite. Rolling hills and friendly trees invited the viewer to walk, no, run into their embrace, propelled by half-recalled memories of childhood. The air that blew was sweet, somewhere between bedstraw and the sea. A tiny, jolly train rode over the crests of hills and disappeared, only to reappear again with white puffs of smoke that bubbled up to the sky in the shapes of fish, and whales, and miniature suns.
Alice was at first enthralled and then immediately suspicious.
None of her companions gave the view a second thought, but they all piled up around the doorway—behind her, of course—and looked out at it with their owlish eyes.
“Well,” Alice said, trying to sound bright. “Here we go!”
The other not-quite-nothing revealed by the open door was a bright piece of fluff lying in the middle of the walkway, too slim to be the tuft of a buried mome rath. Alice went to pick it up, but it was far heavier than it looked and somehow caught—on the scene itself, it seemed.
“Excuse me!” a voice cried out in purple indignation.
“Oh!” Alice dropped the furry bit, but it stayed angrily where it was in the air.
And then, of course, the rest of the Cheshire Cat appeared, walking back and forth above the ground with the hauteur only a truly affronted cat could pull off.
“What are you doing out here?” Alice asked, scratching him on the back of his neck. He stretched to better enjoy it, the tip of his tail extending far beyond its supposedly natural limits, the space between the purple stripes increasing to a foot or more. Then it snapped back into a tight coil. “Why aren’t you hiding inside with the others?”
“I haven’t been invited in,” the cat said with cool dignity, suddenly flipping on his back and wearing a top hat, spectacles, and a gentleman’s general appearance.
“Lovely hat, Cheshire,” the Hatter said from behind Alice.
The cat rolled his eyes. “Of course he’s here. Before she took off your head she would have to take off your hat, wouldn’t she? And that would be difficult….”
The Hatter doffed his hat to reveal the Dormouse. The cat’s eyes widened and he leapt at the poor sleeping thing with the yowl and frenzy of a real cat, glasses and hat forgotten.
The Hatter immediately clamped the hat back down on his head and held it there hard, over his ears. The Cheshire screeched to a halt in midair, barely stopping in time to keep from colliding.
“Choose a side, cat,” the Hatter growled.
“I dare say, Hatter old boy,” the Dodo said, alarmed. “It’s just a little bit of nonsense. How far gone are you? Ease off!”
“I choose inside,” the cat said, opening his mouth wide and walking his tail and hind end into it until he entirely disappeared, having swallowed himself.
“No, on the contrary, outside is better.” His voice came out of the air, sounding far away and hollow. He reappeared in the air before them, lying contentedly on his side.
Alice took a deep breath to steady herself.
“Cheshire Cat, can you help us? We need to drum up—no,” she said hastily, “we need to encourage everyone to resist the Queen of Hearts on their own, and then the Queen of Clubs will help stop her.”
“And the Queen of Diamonds shall dine on fine sums and the Queen of Spades will call for all ransoms,” the Cheshire sang.
“I’m serious, cat,” Alice said, frowning at the fact that she sounded like the Hatter. “People’s lives are at stake.”
“Mary Ann tried to rally them to a man, and now she is no more,” the cat said thoughtfully, looking at his claws. “What makes you think you can do better than she?”
“I know I’m not Mary Ann! But I am trying my hardest! And besides, I bring…an outside perspective to the whole thing!” she surprised herself by saying.
“Here’s a riddle, liddell Alice: then why are you trying to be Mary Ann? Why are you pursuing such a complicated plan?”
“Do you have a better idea?” Alice demanded.
“I don’t. But I’m a cat, sweetheart.” He twirled and flipped around and regarded her with lazy eyes. “Mary Ann and the Rabbit and the Rabbit and Mary Ann. There are always two. Me and…”
…he grinned and disappeared.
“Bother,” Alice said, kicking the dirt he had been floating over. “He always makes me feel itchy and stupid. Come on, you lot. Which way do we go?”
Two of the mome raths, a big and a little one, toddled forward and threw themselves onto the ground, making an arrow.
“Fine,” Alice hissed and tried to march with some dignity in that direction.
The landscape changed in just the sort of way Alice now expected; that is, she expected it to change unsettlingly but couldn’t of course predict what it would change into. Somehow the summery hills faded and the little band entered a dark forest of positively enormous trees—far larger around than those in the Tulgey Wood. The ground rose in humps about their roots. It was so dark on the path that Alice couldn’t clearly see what kinds of leaves or branches were overhead; pine, she thought, considering the cylindrical shape of some of the silhouettes she managed to make out. But there was no inkling of dark green or light green or any green at all: this was apparently an autumn forest where the tones were all brown and grey and black and shadow.
Sometimes the trees shivered.
And instead of muted birdcalls and the riffling through leaves by small animals, there were strange, deep-throated mumblings and murmurings. Like a conversation you couldn’t quite catch a word of, the sounds drifting maddeningly just at the edge of comprehension.
“Where are we?” Alice asked the Hatter and the Dodo. The smaller creatures followed them like a particolored parade with their own murmurs and snufflings, the broom dog bringing up the rear. It would have been very jolly indeed if the mood in the woods hadn’t been so mysterious and grim.
“Still at the edge of the Unlikely, I suppose,” the Dodo said, looking around.
“The Droozy Forest, I think,” the Hatter said mournfully. “Shan’t make it out of here without a scratch, that’s for certain.”
At this the Dodo reached over with his big and seemingly buffoonish beak and raked it across the Hatter’s left wrist. It left a ragged line of broken white skin and a few pricks of pink blood.
“What was that for?” the Hatter demanded in outrage.
“Now you have a scratch. Now we can leave,” the Dodo said simply.
“I really don’t know how much more of this I can take,” Alice muttered. She was beginning to remember a much younger Alice weeping in the Tulgey Wood, tired of all the nonsense. Could she even imagine living here forever? Even if she were queen? Her penchant for nonsense was less than when she was a child, but more than the Hatter could endure right now, and far more than most adult Anglishmen and women would put up with. “I saw a train on the hills—could we take a train to Heartland?”
“Why would we take it there? It belongs here,” the Dodo said pointedly.
“Is there a station around here?” she asked through gritted teeth.
“I believe so.”
“Well, let’s get out of these woods as fast as we can and find it,” Alice decided. She doubled her speed and walked with her chin in the air, away from the mystery of the whispering trees.
A train; that was something reasonable. And civilized. How badly could Wonderland muck up something so real, so mechanical, so invented by humans?
She thought she saw the path lighten a little before them, as if it were opening up, just past the two argyle oaks. Maybe this was only a small wood, like in a park! Yes, a town park. Then the train station would be nearby, and…
…Argyle oaks?
Alice stopped. She took a look—a really good look—at the trees around her. They all stood in pairs, well matched. The swells at the bottom of each that she had thought were boulders or roots were dully shiny, black, and brown. And laced.
The cones and cylinders that sheathed the fat trunks were wool, of course….
“mumble mumble Alice not a chance…”
“little upstart, mumble? Cut her down to size…sssssize…size…. card cutter will….”
“Hallo!” Alice shouted, trying not to panic. “I can hear you! It’s very rude to talk about someone who’s right below your nose!”
“thinks she’s so important…irrelevant as a hat on a tove….”
There was faraway grown-up laughter. A pair of stockinged feet in ladies’ heels tapped a little up and down as if unable to conceal their mirth at whatever scornful thing was being said.
“I can’t tell precisely what you’re saying, but I know it’s about me!” Alice continued. “And I know it’s very impolite. What is that? About a cutter?”
The legs and feet, now that she recognized them as such, were very, very conventional. There wasn’t a bright sock or Dormouse hidden amongst them. They were very real world.
A horrid thought occurred to Alice: did she actually know these people? She couldn’t recognize them, of course, but then again she didn’t spend much time admiring people’s footwear. “Something I shall strive to correct in the future,” she admonished herself.
Then conversations started up again, incomprehensible and quiet and casual, as if everyone was trying to talk over an embarrassing moment. As if she was an embarrassment to be quietly ignored by everyone. And hopefully removed.
“Hello! I’m real! I’m right here! Hello!” Alice waved, trying to maintain her anger but feeling queer, like she was fading from the inside out.
“Fancy sensible Alice, talking to the trees,” the Dodo said, not unkindly. “Dear girl, the train station is up ahead.”
“But—they’re talking about me,” Alice protested. “I heard them. Didn’t you hear them? They were making fun. They said…I wasn’t important. They were laughing, like I was a joke….”
“Of course they were, dear,” the Dodo said soothingly. “Wind in the branches. Let us go, then. Have a butterscotch?”
He held up a tiny hard candy wrapped in paper. Unsure what else to do and feeling very blue, Alice took it.
“Is there any such thing as a card cutter here, Dodo? Is it like a dealer, or someone who just cuts a deck of cards, before a game?” she asked glumly.
“A dealer? Oh no, not at all. The Card Cutter is terrifying,” the Hatter said, looking pale and serious. “Don’t even mention his name! He’ll smell it!”
And there, before them, was the station.
The ticket booth was made of paper. Printed-page bricks, grey paste from old wet fish wrappings as mortar in between, the signboard DROOZY STATION in rolled newspaper sections. The window had oiled paper to let light in, and the praying mantis who sat there wore a crisp white paper hat.
“Well, step up, step up,” she snapped, but not unkindly. “Where’s it to be, then?”
“Good afternoon,” Alice said, a little distracted. “I’m sorry, I arrived here rather more suddenly than I expected.”
“That’s the National Railway for y
ou!” the mantis crowed, which was strange, and then blew a little horn in triumph, which was also strange. “Now, will you be going first class or premium?”
“I don’t know how much it is,” Alice admitted. “How much is a one way, no return, to Heartland?”
The mantis blinked, which was hard, for she had no lashes—or eyelids, for that matter. “The Local-Nine to Heartland is not recommended, for reasons of bloody civil war. Try a different place instead. The park not too far from TulgVapCo station is lovely this time of year, I’ve heard tell.”
“No, I’m afraid it’s Heartland,” Alice said, putting her hands in her pockets. “One ticket for me and all my…”
She turned, but no one stood there except the Hatter, who was now a slightly stooped, middle-aged, very plain Hatter—with a large hat, to be sure, and a prominent nose, but that was all.
“…and my friend here,” she finished lamely.
“Perhaps they’ve gone ahead,” she told herself. “Perhaps they’re running to tell all their friends to pass the word along about the Queen of Clubs and how they should rise up against the Queen of Hearts!”
She felt a little sad without the colorful mome raths and the Dodo and the shovelbirds. It was scary to lead them but lonely without them.
“No sale,” the mantis said briskly, and reached up to try to slam the oiled paper down.
Without thinking Alice reached up as well. Despite having shorter arms than the giant insect, she managed to grab the ends of the paper window first and rip it away from the ticket seller—to rip it out of the wall entirely, in fact.
“I’ll have my ticket to Heartland, thank you very much!” she said, huffing a little. “And so will my friend!”
The mantis made a terrible hissing, clicking noise with her mandibles. Alice stood firm in the face of this terrifying display. She had held one once as a child, and though it was unsettling and surprising how strong the slender and fragile insect’s legs were, it had neither bitten nor tried to.