Unbirthday

by Liz Braswell

  “A Diamond, is that it? Or no, the Spade?” she wondered.

  The scissor sort of swayed back and forth and for just a moment looked like it was as thin as the skeleton itself, but of course even so it was pure sharp golden metal.

  “Brass, maybe,” she decided.

  “Vile thing!” the Hatter swore, grabbing it with both his hands—and almost cutting his fingers off in the process.

  “No!” Alice started to shout, for though she had little knowledge of medicine, she did have a feeling, or maybe remembered a story, or…The point was, one didn’t…

  Whatever it was, it was too late.

  The Hatter pulled the scissor out, and with it came great pumps of blood. Real blood, not red paint. It smelled of meat and copper and as it flecked her lips Alice could taste it. The Hatter’s eyes widened in shock, and unable to think of anything else, he grabbed his hat and held it over the flow. It didn’t work very well without its top.

  “Things aren’t…supposed…to hurt…in Wonderland…” Alice murmured.

  “Alice, you have to go home now. Go back to wherever Alices come from,” the Hatter begged. “You will die here.”

  “No!” Alice struggled to sit up. “You’ll all die here! The world will come to an end! Patch this up—bandage it…. It’s not going to kill me…. I cannot die in Wonderland.”

  But whatever shock had reduced most of her initial pain took this moment to wear off. A strange sloshing went back and forth through Alice’s whole body, half nausea, half heat, half something else.

  Half scissors, she thought. A bright white light of pain like nothing she had ever experienced before divided her chest from her torso, as if the sharp weapon had relodged itself there.

  She cried out, unable to stop herself.

  “Alice, go home, that’s an order,” the Hatter said, saluting her. “Come back as soon as you can. You’re no good to us dead.”

  “Might make a good martyr for the cause…” the Dormouse suggested sleepily from the middle of his balding head.

  “We already have Mary Ann for that, you heartless rodent,” the Hatter said without feeling. “Alice…we need you. Alice. Only Alice. Alive. Come back to us. Soon…”

  “I don’t know how!” Alice said, feeling blackness come over her. It wasn’t pleasant like falling asleep. It was like a thousand delicate crabs had dropped on her slowly from above and were pinching their way into her. Why did her stomach hurt if her arm was nearly cut off? Wait, was it her arm?

  “Don’t…” she said, grabbing the Hatter’s hand.

  She tried to memorize it: the little hairs, some of which were grey, around his knuckles. The dimples of pores where they entered his skin. A tiny scar. An actual fingerprint. All these things, unique to the Hatter, and as real as, as real as…

  She came to in an alleyway.

  Alice felt strangely encumbered and kicked her legs, trying to get out from underneath the quilts and nooses that held her down…and then realized that it was all just her own skirts, pinafores, and various assorted underthings. She had been thinking of her other outfit, her Wonderland one.

  “The Hatter! The Hatter’s hand!” she cried, trying to remember. It was an older man’s hand, still with a little plumpness around the knuckles but thinning out around the bones. “No, no! Details!” But her clever brain substituted descriptive words for specific facts, glossing over exactly what he looked like with what he probably should have looked like. The way any brain will do upon awaking, filling in the forgotten or unimagined bits of dream.

  Large hat, crazy hair, large nose, short stature, like a children’s illustration in a book of funny poems…

  “The Card Cutter! We were almost at the castle! We showed the egg to the Ornithsivillians and the Queen of Clubs will come! We almost won!”

  Two of the children from the Square were standing over her, staring at her worriedly. One was Zara. Alice had no idea what the boy’s name was.

  “Mistress Alice, are you all right?” the boy asked solicitously. “You’re very white.”

  Things were drifting in and out of focus.

  “I need to get back,” Alice said, trying to hang on to the feelings she had just a few moments before. Unfortunately all it involved was tremendous pain and then a faintness, with all the cares of the world lifting away from her.

  The Card Cutter. The burning piles of rubbish. The mad queen. The end of the world…the desperation…

  Hold on to it, Alice! she told herself.

  She screamed in a very un-Alice way: more of a forced groan made loud as her entire body and soul tried to expel the real world and its sensations that infringed on her mind.

  She raked her nails along her arms, leaving long white scratches and trailing pinpricks of blood like pearls. Pain would focus her. Pain would help her remember….

  “What are you doing?” the boy cried. “STOP IT!”

  Zara was more practical and simply reached over with her two strong and chubby hands and grabbed her.

  “I’m just trying to remember,” Alice said calmly.

  “You could tie a string around your finger, maybe,” Zara suggested with an insouciant irony that seemed far too young for a girl of seven. Then again, that was how old Alice had been when she spoke back to monsters and creatures from that other world.

  Just not adults of this one.

  Alice gave her a wan smile. It tasted terrible. She smacked her tongue around somewhat impolitely, trying to dispel whatever it was.

  “Your camera’s gone,” the boy said, picking up her bag and shaking its obvious lightness. He peeped in. “Other stuff is still in there, though.”

  “My camera?!” she cried in dismay.

  Then:

  “No, wait, that is not important. The other things are more important. An entire world…”

  “I really think you should go to the doctor,” the boy said seriously. “You have had a fit or something.”

  “No, I’m fine. Perhaps I just fainted and someone came along and saw me and stole my valuables.”

  But that wasn’t precisely true, was it? She had a memory of tripping, and an arm, and not being able to breathe, and an assailant….

  “You still have your necklace and ring,” the little girl pointed out promptly.

  “And your little purse with money in it,” the boy said, taking it up and shaking it.

  “Someone has mugged me to…just take my camera? Why not everything else as well?”

  Her arm itched for a moment as she thought about the implications of this. She scratched it idly and then remembered why the injury was there.

  “No, no, this is all irrelevant. There are other things to worry about.” She rose to her feet, unsteady but determined. “Little darlings, thank you so much for my rescue. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could I offer a reward for you to see me safely home?”

  “No reward,” the boy said simply. The girl spat in disgust.

  Aha! Alice thought. That is how it’s done. I should take note!

  “Can I reimburse you for the task of helping me get there, then, and carrying my bag for me?” she asked politely. “And can you remember all the strange things I may say along the way, if I ask later?”

  “Home or vrach?” Zara said, rolling her eyes.

  “Doctor,” the boy translated.

  “Home. An extra penny if you don’t mention the doctor again,” Alice said with a smile.

  And actually it was good that they went with her: walking was a little harder than it should have been. Her head was swimming with the remnants of her dream or having fallen; reality moved slowly around her, landscape and objects only slowly catching up to what her body and eyes told her was going on. Sort of the reverse of Wonderland, where the scenery sped up on you. Every time there was a sudden change of altitude, a slope down or a step up, she wobbled and the world spun. The worst was a set of four steps down. At the base of them everything went dizzily blurred and a sharp pain drilled itself into her chest with an
intensity so great she began to black out.

  “Alice, is that you? Get away from her at once!”

  Alice jumped at the shouts as an unwanted pair of intruders came over to investigate her decrepitude.

  It was, she saw from the light shining painfully off a half dozen buttons like angry little suns, a police officer, and—

  “Are you all right? Begone, vermin!”

  She closed her eyes. Coney. Of course Coney. Again Coney! Even when she was trying to avoid him, he reappeared in her life. Like…almost like…

  She had it on the tip of her tongue but couldn’t quite place it.

  “I’m fine,” Alice moaned in irritation. “I’m all right. I’ve just been robbed….”

  “You little thieves! Officer, take these two away at once! This is the body—the girl, I mean—I told you I saw in the alley! These two must have been stealing her blind while she lay prone!”

  “No, no, no.” Alice was finally able to pry her eyes open enough to glare at the hateful face of Coney, pale and surrounded by a halo of ridiculously glassy pale hair. “They found me. They saved me. Someone knocked me down and they came upon me….”

  “A likely story. You’re too forgiving, Alice. Officer, search these two at once for the missing camera!” Coney ordered.

  The policeman gave the kids a distrusting but mild look. “They’re filthy, thieving, foreign gutter rats, to be sure,” he said almost regretfully, “but I don’t think there’s any place on their selves they could hide a camera. And why would they stick around after the crime?”

  Alice raised an eyebrow at Coney.

  “To…put you off the scent…?” he asked lamely.

  “I am happy you are all right,” Zara said with a perfect curtsy, holding her patched but mostly clean pinny in between delicately arranged fingers as she did so. Alice was pretty sure only she—and possibly the police officer—saw the sarcastic sparkle in the girl’s eyes as she performed the maneuver.

  Brother and sister turned to go.

  “But wait—” Alice said, fumbling for her purse. The boy gave a quick, nearly undetectable shake of his head. His eyes flicked to the two men. With a hot lick of shame and anger, Alice understood: giving them money would just encourage Coney to claim they were profiting off her neediness. The policeman would question the children further, prolong the encounter—who knew. It would cause problems. The kids wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible without any more fuss or attention. “Thank you.”

  The siblings ran off, happy to escape.

  “I’ll see you home,” the policeman said, offering her a hand up. “And when you have rested you can make a complete report to us about the theft.”

  “Take me to my aunt’s. It’s closer.”

  “I’ll take care of her,” Coney told the police officer with a man-to-man smugness. Alice dearly wished she could have done something to him—she couldn’t remember quite what, but in Wonderland she could have effected a physically final response.

  “Just you take care to come by the station, or I’ll have one of my men drop by your house,” the officer said—ignoring Coney and his looks. “This is a strange and serious thing. You still have your jewelry, and your purse. The miscreant just wanted the camera. The sooner we can get all the details, the sooner we can apprehend this criminal—and protect other ladies as well.”

  Alice nodded dully. These were all excellent points and he was only doing his job, but aside from the annoyance of having to acquire a new camera, it was all unimportant. The police officer tipped his cap to her and strode off.

  She endured the walk to her aunt’s as best she could, putting up with Coney’s careful holding of her arm and constant exhortations to lean on him if necessary. It was agony. Fortunately Vivian’s house wasn’t actually too far, and the relief she felt when she saw its odd, green-painted door was as perfect and complete as lemonade on a hot summer day.

  “Thank you,” she said politely and succinctly as she opened the door. “I’ll be all right now.”

  “Should I see you in? I really am…I really am worried about your health. I hadn’t realized it was you when I saw your unconscious form on the ground. I just ran and fetched the policeman…” He did indeed sound worried, all unctuousness aside.

  “No, pray do not come in.” She stepped over the threshold and turned around, holding the door half closed between them before delivering her final word.

  “I never said that it was my camera that had been stolen.”

  She slammed the door in his face.

  With her head still aching she stumbled through the blessedly cool, dim, and for once incense-free interior. Vivian came out, covered in clay and frowning; myopically concerned.

  “Alice! You look terrible. Is everything all right?”

  “Not at all. I’ve just been manhandled and mugged by a truly loathsome individual so he could steal my camera…for, I assume, some image he thought was captured on the film. Evidence of something. But all that was on that plate was a harmless little blue bird. He left behind all the other plates in the bag, because he’s an idiot as well as a thief. I must develop them all immediately to see what he was after.”

  “Alice, that’s dreadful! What hap—”

  “But far more importantly,” Alice interrupted, holding up her hand, “there is a whole fantastic world under siege that I must return to at once. The villain who stole my camera is simply a distraction. I’m beginning to forget what it was all for.”

  Her aunt stared at her through gradually narrowing eyes, like a lizard overcome with cold.

  “You haven’t been in my personal things—taken anything from my rosewood cabinet in the studio, for instance?”

  “No, Aunt Vivian.”

  “All right. Just checking. So…this camera theft. You aren’t hurt—physically—and you don’t seem to be overly upset by the crime. Although I must point out your dialogue is just the slightest bit off for…normal society. Just a word to the wise. You may indeed want to see a doctor for any lingering effects of your trauma.

  “But as for your other concerns—your ‘fantastic world,’ I mean. Am I to understand that you are upset less about the crime and more because the camera thief is a person from Porlock, interrupting your visit to some sort of private Xanadu?”

  “Let’s say yes, Aunt Vivian. But if Xanadu were real, and in danger of being destroyed.”

  “But Xanadu was destroyed the moment Coleridge awoke. He never went back.”

  “I can. I have. I must again.”

  Vivian was silent for a moment.

  “All right. What can I do for you now?” she finally inquired, brisk and businesslike.

  “I have promised everyone so much, in both worlds,” Alice said with an impatient shake of her arms. “There, I must save the world. Here, I need to develop the film I have left. And I still have to go to the newspaper with that photo of Mrs. Yao. Also, I could use some tea.”

  “And sandwiches, no doubt,” Vivian said, nodding seriously. “I’m on it. Go put on one of the work pinnies and I’ll be right back with a plate. I love my brother very much,” she added—seemingly without emotion—“but really I do wish you were my own child sometimes.”

  Alice had a lopsided smile on her face as Vivian strode away. She loved her aunt, too, of course. But there was something more. What she felt was the sort of affection she could only compare to her feelings for the creatures of Wonderland. Love, but also a delight that such creatures should exist in the first place.

  And a certain amount of curiosity, she had to admit. There was always some holding back with the Wonderland denizens, some further truth or mystery they took their own time revealing. Alice wondered, for a moment, what her aunt’s was.

  Of course all the plates she developed wound up displaying only Wonderlandians—at least for Alice. And none of them portended anything good at all.

  The first photograph was of Messrs. Tweedledee and Tweedledum. They were, just as Alice had expected, Gilbert a
nd Quagley Ramsbottom. They grinned and held hands and wore Heart badges.

  “Of course,” Alice muttered. “They look positively gleeful.”

  The second was of the Dodo. With a giant sheep—a ram—who was weeping.

  Alice nearly dropped this one when she picked it up. The Dodo was looking directly at the camera and had his wings out in supplication: come back.

  “I will! Oh, Dodo, I am trying!” she cried.

  She fished around in her bag until she found the monocle that she had sort of co-opted from her aunt. Who was he, anyway? In this world? There wasn’t a lot of help from the background, most of which was blocked out by the giant sheep. It seemed like basic Wonderland scenery…a grassy plain, some trees, what looked like a train…There. Closer in, almost hidden by the ram’s girth, was a side table that seemed put there for the posers’ extra things so they wouldn’t have to hold them. But instead of the Dodo’s wig, or one of his telescopes, or a bell for the sheep, there was a pair of gloves with particularly large, ugly leather bows on the wrists. They didn’t look feminine and delicate so much as that they perhaps more properly belonged on a dog’s collar.

  Alice would have known those gloves anywhere.

  “Mathilda…?” she said in wonder.

  She sat back, gobsmacked.

  The Dodo. Sweet, loyal Dodo. The least nonsensical of all the tea party. Always proper. Always trying to talk politics and caucus races. He had trusted that Alice would come back…and walked right into the enemy’s hands, knowing she would rescue him. He believed in Alice.

  Of course Willard wasn’t really the Mad Hatter and Mrs. Pogysdunhow was much, much nicer than the Queen of Hearts (probably; she had always been all right to Alice and Mathilda, at least). Headstrewth wasn’t at all sheepish, although in some ways he was large and harmless.

  The other-world doubles possessed only the shallowest of similarities.

  But…

  What if under all her annoying pastimes and lectures and recriminations Mathilda really did think she was doing the right thing? That she was merely reining in the crazy people? What if her trying to manage Alice’s life was because she wanted her to be happy—but exactly like herself? It wasn’t from a lack of kindness or love, but a lack of imagination. She literally didn’t know any other way of being.