Unbirthday

by Liz Braswell

  At this the Queen of Hearts threw her head back and laughed. “Step down? When I am about to win? We’ll have one final count, and then it’s game over—I win forever!

  “Rabbit! Rabbit! Where is the list? How many toys do I have now? Rabbit…?”

  The Queen of Hearts looked around, at first in annoyance, and then in complete perplexity. “Knave! Where is that dratted rabbit? He’s supposed to be doing the tally for me!”

  The Knave, Alice saw, was at the base of the mountain of toys along with several of the Queen’s closest advisers (one was the Knave of Accounting—of course he would be in charge of lists of toys). None was the Rabbit, however, and all were shaking their heads and shrugging and denying and looking in general very worried and excitable.

  “We shall execute the Rabbit twice as much,” the Queen of Clubs announced. “For being a traitor to his own people as well as carrying out your ghastly orders.”

  But no one was paying attention to her.

  The Knave put a reluctant foot on the base of the pile of toys, then gave up any pretense of trying to climb the ramshackle structure at all.

  “No one has any idea where he is,” he admitted loudly.

  “WHAT?” the Queen of Hearts shouted, putting a hand to her ear.

  “He’s gone AWOL!” the Knave shouted back.

  Then a little thing, something like a vole but with a longer snout and red eyes and webbed feet where its ears might normally have been, scrabbled up to the Knave and whispered something in his ear.

  “Apparently he’s gone to the Great Clock—What?” the Knave demanded in surprise, interrupting himself. He asked a question, quickly and quietly. The thing nodded. “All right. Apparently he’s already gone to the Plain of Time, to push the clock forward.”

  “But that’s ridiculous!” the Queen said as thoughtfully as was possible for her. “We haven’t done a final tallying. I don’t know if I have enough toys yet.”

  “They’re all about to be mine anyway,” the Queen of Clubs said helpfully.

  “And what about the Ticket Master?” the Queen of Hearts’ owl called out. “Have you checked against him? He has been collecting toys since the beginning of the last age. He definitely had more jacks than anyone else, acres of them.”

  “Yes, there’s no point in ending the world until we know for certain,” the Queen of Hearts agreed. “There may be no point in ending it at all. That rabbit is a traitor! He’ll ruin everything! Off with his head!”

  “Surprise attack!” the Queen of Clubs suddenly yelled.

  A black card ran forward and threw himself down in the middle of the battlefield, directly between the two armies. He flipped himself over.

  He was a nine.

  All the spectators—where had they come from? They were suddenly there in bleachers, oohing in impressed surprise. The crowd was a perfect cross section of Wonderland: creatures from the Unlikely and the land of the Clubs were bright-eyed and eager, well-dressed, and passing bags of snacks to one another. Those from Heartland were tired, bloody, sad, wounded, fixed up with bandages and slings and eye patches. But they looked toward the battlefield with hope.

  “Odds, odds on the war, on the end of the world, on the number of toys,” a genial pig in a cap shouted, walking up and down the aisles waving pound notes in the air.

  “I’ll take seven to one against the Queen of Clubs,” a duck declared, handing over what looked like a small bag of buttons.

  “Lemonade, punch, quizzes, and comfits. Biscuits and breaderflies,” a woman with a tray of concessions called out.

  “We’re all going to go with the end of the world in a few moments,” the Gryphon reminded her. “No one could possibly finish a bag of comfits in time.”

  The woman shrugged.

  “This is terrible!” Alice cried. “I don’t understand! I had solved everything! Oh, why is the White Rabbit going ahead to try to end the world if the Queen of Hearts isn’t ready?”

  “Of all the questions that pertain to this situation, is that really the one that’s the most ripe?” the Hatter demanded.

  “But the two armies—won’t they determine the winner? And what about the Rabbit? What do we do…”

  She looked around at their expectant faces, as if she were about to pull a March Hare out of her hat.

  “No, what do I do,” she said slowly. “I am the only one who can get us out of this. That is what you have been saying all along. I just didn’t believe it until now. That I had anything to offer Wonderland at all—compared to you natives.”

  “I told you she wasn’t a stupid girl,” the Dodo said mildly, stirring his tea. “She just takes a while to get to the right answer. She’s slow, that’s all. But I think everyone in Angleland must be. Don’t be hard on her.”

  “Where is the Plain of Time?” Alice asked.

  “Oh, it’s a terrible adventure off,” the Gryphon said, frowning. “First you have to go through the Labyrinth of Shifting Persimmons. Then you must cross the Sinking Sea. If you survive that, there’s the land of—”

  As he spoke the Dormouse tumbled down from the Hatter’s hat with a large iced biscuit, aiming for the Dodo’s tea to dunk it.

  “Yes yes, no,” Alice said, seizing the biscuit out of the poor little mouse’s hands. She popped it into her own mouth. “Sorry. Seized for emergency measures.”

  Then she stuck all her fingers together like she was holding a very tiny, very sticky ball—and drew them apart.

  Inside the space she created was a scene of a surprisingly serene, if empty and endless, prairie. Stuck in the middle of it was what looked very much like Big Ben, if Big Ben went to thirteen instead of twelve.

  “Wish me luck,” Alice said, stepping through.

  “We’re counting on you,” the Dodo said, raising his teacup.

  “It’s one rabbit,” Alice said, knowing exactly how stupid she sounded. “How hard can it be?”

  The Plain of Time smelled funny.

  “This,” Alice said, “is how one can tell it isn’t a dream at all but reality: one doesn’t remember smells in dreams most of the time.”

  The air was…burning a little? There was nothing precisely she could see, but something definitely reminded her of the scent of blue. Sparks. Clean, like before a thunderstorm or after a particularly close lightning strike. The opposite of the smoldering piles of rubbish in Heartland. She felt the hairs on her arms rise and her heart quicken. Something exciting was about to happen.

  And yet it didn’t look like a place where anything exciting happened, ever; it looked like an African veldt or a flat alpine field that extended endlessly. The grass was low and not green and vibrant emerald like a proper field, but shades of straw and sage. The flowers were delicate and tiny. The shadows were strange because the sun and all the moons stood next to each other in the sky in a kind of a standoff. The sun had fire, of course, but there were at least eight moons in their different phases, and some of the horns looked quite sharp indeed.

  The clock tower stood in the middle of the field—or really, it could have been at either corner, at the bottom, or near the top, because the field went on forever, so who could say where the middle was, really? If clocks read the same in this world, it looked like it was about an hour and a half until thirteen o’clock. Whereas through the doorway, the Great Clock had seemed austere and severe ruling over the empty space, up close she saw that it had rosy cheeks and a cheeky smile and eyes that looked left and right with the seconds. Surprisingly friendly for something that could bring about the end of the world.

  To the right of her was the White Rabbit.

  They caught each other’s eyes for a long moment. He wore his little waistcoat. He had his pocket watch (with heart-shaped fob) out but the face seemed to be cracked. The Rabbit’s face was still and strange and his red eyes held hers with no fear—but also not with the blankness one normally associated with lagomorphs.

  It was a pause before the storm, the breath before a tirade, a last moment of peac
e before the crying began.

  Then he slipped the watch into his pocket and—took off.

  On all fours, like a rabbit.

  “No!” Alice cried and raced after him.

  There were many disadvantages for the girl.

  For one thing, she was not made for running in the way a rabbit is. The poor dear had only two legs. Also her dress, corset, crinolines, and underskirts were ridiculously confining. (A giant and satisfying riiiiiiip could be heard as she opened her stride up just a little more, forcing the pace of legs below her a little faster.) Her shoes were stupid. She was not used to exercise.

  She did have the fate of a world and panic within her, but whatever drove the Rabbit drove him mercilessly and madly.

  Alice was larger than the Rabbit, which was a little bit of an advantage; her steps were three or four times his body length. There was a moment when she felt like she could have, if she just knew how, thrown herself over and on top of him.

  But rabbits are made to evade meat eaters; the way they run is tricky and wily. He would suddenly change direction, zigging and zagging with each leap, as confounding and frustrating as any rabbit a child has chased at dusk. It is like they can always predict the straight, boring paths of the house-apes who chase them.

  The Rabbit danced around a small boulder; Alice leapt over it.

  The Rabbit cleared a trickling not-quite-stream in a single hop, and Alice’s leather boot went deep into the mud, becoming stuck there for precious seconds.

  The Rabbit suddenly cut right, a perfect ninety degrees right, and Alice tripped over him trying to stop and change her own direction.

  She could hear nothing but the Rabbit’s hind feet beating the ground like a drum—and her own breathing in her ears, too loud and not enough.

  The Rabbit made a mighty jump and landed on the first step of the clock tower. Without so much as a pause he leapt up and up and up, clearing several stairs at a time and never resuming his upright, human stance.

  Alice practically fell over the first step, tumbling forward and hitting her hands hard on the fifth and sixth one. She bled but continued her forward and upward motion, all her limbs now out of sync and staggering.

  She had to keep going. The world depended on her.

  Around and around she followed the Rabbit up the outside of the tower.

  She looked for cookies in her pockets. She tried to make a window or a door while trying not to trip.

  All too soon—or too late—she was on the walkway that led to the giant hands of the rosy, smiling clockface.

  The Rabbit had the hour hand in his paws.

  “NO!” Alice cried.

  The Rabbit swung hard, and pushed it to thirteen.

  “It had to be,” the Rabbit said.

  The ground—the whole world—began to shake. Alice flung up her arms to try to balance on the narrow walkway.

  “NO! There has to be another way. There is always another way in Wonderland!” she cried in despair. She grabbed the hour hand herself to pull it back, but it didn’t budge. The Rabbit didn’t even try to stop her.

  As Alice struggled and groaned, her dress stretched and ripped more, this time at the seams of her arms. The cloth shrank up her biceps as it tore, exposing her wrists and forearms.

  And also the watch she had won from the Queen of Clubs.

  “My watch…” she murmured.

  What was it someone had said?

  Time is always on your side, Alice. Or your wrist, if you’re wearing a watch.

  The Rabbit was looking at her curiously but bleakly. The tower began shaking so hard that she stumbled, almost falling off the platform. Strange cracks of purple and black lightning split the sky.

  Alice grabbed the knob of the watch with her right hand and pulled.

  Everything stopped.

  Everything…

  …was…

  …silent.

  Alice fell forward from momentum, her body already used to the movements of the crumbling world. An ugly black streak of not-lightning froze in the sky; the waxing half-moon was caught in a look of surprise and horror. The Rabbit’s eyes were glassy and wide like a taxidermy’s.

  Alice sobbed, catching her breath. The sound carried strangely across the prairie.

  All was still except for her.

  She didn’t pause to ask now what. Perhaps little Alice would have done that.

  Ever so carefully she popped open her watch—which also had thirteen numbers on it, each in a different style and font—and tried pushing its hands backward.

  Like the one on the tower itself, the hour hand wouldn’t budge.

  Neither would the minute hand.

  Tentatively, holding her breath, Alice tried the second hand.

  Success!

  She sobbed again, in relief.

  She wound the hand backward…once…twice…

  …and was plucked up through the air, pulled backside-first like the hand of God was playing dolls with her. Her hair waved the wrong way, and despite her body repeating the motions that had led her to where she was now, in reverse her mind wasn’t pulled that way. She still thought forward and could examine the strange course she and the Rabbit had taken across the field.

  Suddenly she stopped with a jerk, half in and out of the window she had created to get to the Plain of Time.

  Two minutes and fourteen seconds.

  That was as far back as she could go.

  Perhaps the window was the end point; perhaps time couldn’t travel through it the way it could through local space. She was frozen at the beginning, right before the Rabbit had come up next to her. She could see him hopping toward the tower but just starting to turn toward where she had popped out of nowhere.

  “This is an easy fix,” she said. But her words sounded strange and dead, as if they too couldn’t travel through time-stopped air.

  She made for the Rabbit, taking her belt off. All she would have to do was tie him up when he was frozen like this, and the game would be over.

  “No,” she told herself, despite the horrid sound of her voice. “No more game metaphors. We’re done with that.”

  But as Alice approached the White Rabbit, the air around her seemed to thicken, like she was pushing against a strong wind. She closed her eyes and dug her feet in but the force grew stronger in response. Soon it was as hard as walking through water or mud. A hollow booming sound emanated every time she forced a foot or a hand forward even an inch, trying to split the air with her fingers.

  Finally she ground to a complete stop. She could push no farther. And she was still several feet from the Rabbit.

  Well, if she couldn’t get to the Rabbit, the obvious answer was just to go to the tower, perhaps with a stick or a stone, and wait for him there, and bop him over the head.

  Alas, Time had other ideas.

  As she walked farther away from her starting point, once again the air built itself up against her. She was little more than halfway to the Tower before she couldn’t budge, even by sliding her feet forward in the dirt a smidgen at a time. The booming sound became unbearable.

  “All right, then. I can’t stray far from my point of origin, in time or geographic locality,” she concluded. “I’ll just set myself right in front of the Rabbit, as close as I can to him, and grab him when he runs by. He’ll be so surprised at my sudden appearance that he will be unable to do anything but continue barreling forward into me. It’s a trap that practically sets itself.”

  She went as close to the Rabbit as she could and walked back and forth in front of him several times, checking the angles, making absolutely sure she was directly in front of his path. No room for error.

  Then she hunched down with her hands out like a wicketkeeper in cricket, ready for catching.

  She took a deep breath and put a finger on the watch knob.

  “Three…two…one…go!”

  She hit the button.

  Time restarted.

  The White Rabbit started moving—but slowly, as if
Time was warming up, stretching.

  Suddenly he shot forward.

  His sometimes-human eyes saw the girl who had somehow appeared between him and the clock tower. They widened in shock. It was obvious from just that little movement that he had no idea Alice was capable of anything like this—anything at all surprising or dangerous. Alice would remember that later.

  But right now she was too busy being confronted with a simple fact of nature. White Rabbits in waistcoats with pocket watches aside, rabbits in general were creatures of the wild with very little brain—but very lots of instinct. He might not have understood how Alice got there, but this puzzle meant nothing to the rabbitiness inherent in him.

  Without thinking he thumped his hind legs to the side and darted around the unexpected obstacle.

  Alice cried out in dismay as he whisked by her, his inside leg beating the ground twice in a double thump to make up for the hard right turn. Rabbit fur flew up Alice’s nose.

  Being human (and a Victorian one at that) the girl had very little instinct and very lots of reason: it took her a precious millisecond or two to process what had happened and then turn and run after him.

  Although her plan hadn’t worked out the way she had expected, she was at least much, much closer to him than in their previous race. Alice made herself run harder, pumping her arms and legs and running on her toes. It was easy because her dress was already torn.

  The Rabbit bounced around the large rock as before; this time she cleared it without pausing.

  There was the stream and bog—he leapt straight over it. She wasted a second or two pausing to see what was the best way through so she wouldn’t get stuck like last time. There was a tuffet that looked perfect for pushing off from—and it was. Strong and sturdy and springy, it gave her an extra foot or two of lift, which recovered a little of her precious lost yards.

  The Rabbit made one human mistake: looking around back at her just as he began to leap up the tower stairs.