I wanted so desperately to fire off an array of questions the moment the Duchess stopped talking, that I decided to down half my cup of tea in an effort not to launch into a series of questions.
“Again, everyone died. And yes, Alice-who-is-not-Alice, that means everyone. Not some of them, all of them.”
I nodded, indicating I had understood, and wisely ignoring how rude the Duchess was being toward me.
“Meanwhile, the citizens of Wonderland get arrested for the stupidest of crimes. Stealing bread. Making jokes about the Queen. Just being plain old mad,” the Duchess said.
“Which is a severe problem,” Theodore explained, “because almost all the people in Wonderland are stark, raving mad. It’s kind of our trademark.”
“The Queen of Hearts cannot be defeated. We tried to raise an army against her once, and we failed. We couldn’t try it again, even if we wanted to, because we no longer have the men required to take on her army of cards. But there is one way to defeat her.”
“The Tournament.” I smiled at the Duchess, letting her know I wasn’t as stupid as she thought I was, but the Duchess didn’t seem impressed.
“Which is why we need someone to participate in the Tournament,” the Duchess said, while she stared at me.
All of them were staring at me, Theodore and the Lone Turtle too.
“Oh, no, no, no,” I said, shaking my head. “No way. I’m not participating in any kind of Tournament when the survival rate is exactly zero percent.”
I stood up abruptly, bumping into the table and making my chair fall backward. “I’m really sorry Duchess, Theodore, Turtle, but I’m not going into a suicide mission for a place I don’t even know, to save people who… Well, in my world, who wouldn’t even exist.”
The turtle threw his head back and let out a long wail. “I told you so, didn’t I?” he said, before he grabbed his plate filled with cookies and promptly deposited its contents on the rabbit’s head. “I told you she wouldn’t be willing to help us, but you just had to go and find her! Get my hopes all up and for what? I even baked cookies for this occasion!”
The turtle stomped off, leaving a cookie-covered rabbit and the Duchess as my only table companions.
“Disappointing,” the Duchess said while she wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Is she really the Alice-who-isn’t-Alice?”
“She is, but that was a different timeline,” the rabbit replied. “She doesn’t remember any of it.”
“Hm.” The Duchess stood up from her chair and walked toward me, almost gliding over the floor, her long dress dragging after her. She leaned close to me, holding the fan in front of my face. “Wonderland depends on you, Alice-who-isn’t-Alice. You’re the only one who can save us.” She patted my nose with her fan. “We won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Is that a threat?” Because Duchess or not, I wasn’t about to let anyone threaten me.
“The Duchess is merely stating a fast,” the rabbit said while he jumped down from his chair. “This isn’t the first time you’ve been in Wonderland, Alice-who-isn’t-Alice. You were here once before.”
“I’m pretty sure I would remember a place like this,” I told Theodore. “And I don’t.”
“What about ‘a different timeline’ don’t you understand?” The Duchess threw her hands in the air, exasperated. “I can’t work with this, Theodore. Was she always this stubborn?”
Theodore shrugged. “We wouldn’t remember if she was, Your Highness.”
“Fair point.” The Duchess waved that annoying fan at me again. “What Theodore and I are trying to say is that this is your destiny, Alice-who-isn’t-Alice, and you can’t escape it. Wonderland depends on you, as it has done in the past, as it’s likely to do in the future.”
They were both raving mad, of course. A different timeline? Calling me ‘Alice-who-isn’t-Alice’, while I was pretty sure I was Alice? Thinking I would be able to save them? If they needed hero material, they were better off asking someone like Heather for help. Heather wasn’t afraid of anything. She faced danger head-on. Little old me? Not so much.
“We’ll take you to the Neverever House in the Neverever Wood,” rabbit said matter-of-factly, as if I had no say in the matter whatsoever. “Then you’ll remember.”
“The what-what in the what-now?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “I’m not sure if I’m ready to go on any more of your adventures, Theodore. This tea party is crazy enough already.”
“The Neverever House is a place where the timelines come together,” Theodore explained. “Where time has no more meeting.” He tapped his watch, as if to underline this. “There, you can see what was, what is, what will be, what might be, and everything in between.”
“So, the Neverever House holds the answers?” I looked from the rabbit to the strangely mismatched table decoration, the plethora of chairs, the peculiar Duchess, to the closed door behind which the Lone Turtle, who wasn’t lonely at all despite his name, had disappeared. In a place as strange as Wonderland, were there any answers to be found in the first place?
“Yes,” Theodore replied. “At least, all the answers you can find. Some answers simply aren’t meant to be found.”
I licked my lips, trying to think it through. On the one hand, I had no idea how to get back from Wonderland. Part of me still expected this was some crazy dream I would wake up from at any moment. Maybe I was a hit by a car and ended up in a coma, or someone had put something in my drink at prom, and I was having an insane drug-induced trip. Whatever reason, I found myself in a world that couldn’t exist, talking to creatures who normally shouldn’t be able to talk, and having conversations that made absolutely no sense.
While part of me wanted to go home, part of me was also intrigued about this land and its wonders. If it was really a figment of my imagination, it was no doubt the most elaborate fantasy world I could ever come up with. If this Neverever House held the answers to what Wonderland was, or how to get back home, then it seemed like my best option right now.
“All right then,” I said. “Take me to the Neverever House.”
Chapter 11
Four Days in Wonderland
Two more chests. Two more potential mimics.
I knew the others depended on me, and that I should be brave, but my heart still hammered in my chest as I made my way to the next chest. All my instincts told me not to do it, to turn around, run away and never come back. But I had made my choice, I had to live with it now: even if I tried to run, no way would the Queen let me out of this labyrinth until I had seen it through to the end.
As I reached the chest, I spotted its reflection in the watch, but nothing happened. The chest stayed an ordinary object, and didn’t morph into the monsters we had seen before.
“One to go,” I said over my shoulder to the others, while I approached the last chest. It would be a typical move of an evil tyrant to make sure the last chest held the most terrible monster of all. Bracing myself for another transformation, I held out the watch’s reflective surface in front of me, waiting for the monster to appear.
It didn’t. Nothing happened.
Okay, that was surprising. I had expected the last chest would definitely be a go, but maybe the order was completely random, or the Queen thought it was too obvious to have the last chest be another one of those mimic monsters.
“Looks like the coast is clear.” I turned around to face the others, and just as I did, the reflection of the four-meter high door behind the others, the door through which we had entered the labyrinth, hit the surface of the watch.
Instantly, the door transformed into the biggest of the mimics so far, easily bigger than the two previous monsters combined.
“Behind you!” I screamed and pointed at the monster, warning the others.
Tweedledee acted too late; the mimic grabbed him with his left hand, and lifted him up, high into the air. Tweedledee’s legs kicked back and forth as he was being lifted higher than a house.
“Help!” t
he young boy screamed. “Help me!”
I couldn’t move. I was frozen to the ground, staring in awe at the sheer size of this mimic. Its tongue alone, rolling out of its mouth, which was situated in between the double-doors that made up the entrance, was at least three meters long. The monster had small legs in comparison to its body, the majority of which was made up by the colossal door frame.
The monster’s arms were elastic: one moment they were quite short, clinging close to his body, and the next they reached six or seven meters in length, enough to snatch up my friends one by one.
After Tweedledee, the monster reached for Tweedledum. The child tried to get away, but the mimic linked its finger into the trousers of poor Tweedledum, lifting him up on the same hand it was holding his brother.
The Snark hid behind the body of one of the deceased monsters, pressing its tiny body against the single eye of the cyclops, probably hoping to go unnoticed. The Snark breathed hard, its tiny frame going up and down at rapid speed.
“Run, Hare!” Hatter screamed, when the mimic reached for them. Hare was still supporting Hatter, who stood no chance to outrun the monster, not in his current condition.
“No!” Hare held up his arms in front of himself and his friend, trying to protect them. Billy, who was also still recovering from the previous attack, crawled behind Hare.
They needed my help. Come on, Alice, I urged myself. Standing here in shock isn’t going to help anyone.
Even though I was still terrified, even though this monster was by far the most terrible thing I had ever seen, I was Alice bloody Carroll, Alice-who-isn’t-Alice, and I wasn’t going to let any ghouls stand in my way.
The roar that erupted from my throat sounded far from human. Armed only with my dagger and Hare’s watch, I moved in front of Hare and the others, holding out my knife defiantly.
Whatever I expected, my heroic action did little to deter the monster. It grabbed me with its others hand, raising me until I was closer to its face. That enormous tongue rolled out of its mouth and licked me, probably preparing me to be this thing’s dinner.
I gagged as the tongue wrapped around me. Great, even if I survived, I was drenched in monster-saliva.
Then, the monster slapped the tongue against my hand, causing me to drop the knife. The dagger plummeted toward the ground, landing only half a meter from the Snark.
“Let her go!” Hare yelled, something the monster obviously ignored. Billy was scrambling around, probably looking for something to throw at the monster and try to distract it, like we had with the previous mimic.
The monster lifted me to its mouth, and I saw the horrible, shark-like teeth that hid behind the mimic’s lips. Oh God, oh God. This wasn’t how I had pictured my death, not at all. It was far less heroic, and not to mention, I was far too young and too pretty to die.
Pretty.
I stared at the watch in my hand, the only item I had still left. Perhaps not as useful as a dagger… Or perhaps a lot more useful.
“Hey, ugly!” I shouted at the mimic while I trusted the watch closer to its face. “Look at this mess.”
The mimic turned toward me, and caught its own reflection in the watch’s reflexive surface.
Instantly, the eyes of the monster froze. They no longer darted about, the color drained from them, and it looked… As if they were turning into stone.
Which meant…
“Jump!” I yelled at the twins, while I crawled to get out of the monster’s hand before it turned to stone and would crush me.
Tweedledee and Tweedledum were more active in those two minutes crawling their way out of the mimic’s claws than they had been in the entire time before that I had met them. They escaped the monster’s claws seconds before I did.
“Go!” I screamed, and the twins jumped in unison.
Then, the monster, now having completely turned to stone, started falling. I jumped off it as fast as I could, while the stone giant collapsed on the floor, shattering into a million stone pieces.
I tumbled through the air, head-first, several meters down. God, this was going to hurt.
Bracing myself for impact, suddenly the Hatter appeared in my view. He caught me, and promptly fell down with me in his arms.
I groaned. Half my ribs were broken, no doubt. Struggling to get off the Hatter, I rolled to the side instead and took a few deep breaths. The first breath hurt so much I wanted to scream out loud. By the time I got around to my third intake of air, I was feeling less ready to hurl out the entire contents of my stomach every time I tried to breathe.
“Why did you do that?” I asked the Hatter. He hadn’t moved since he had caught me; he just lay there on the floor looking as messed-up as I felt. “You’re hurt already. You shouldn’t have tried to catch me.”
“And risk you being the only hero of the hour?” Hatter asked, with an expression that lingered somewhere between a smile and a grimace. He was obviously in a world of pain. “After you saved us all not once, twice, but three freaking times, I figured it was about time someone returned the favour.”
I struggled to sit up, still aching every time I breathed. “You’re crazy,” I told the Hatter. He was still laying down, with his hair slightly messy, that crooked smile trying to mask his pain… He was cute. Cute in a strange way, but still cute.
No, Alice, I started my internal dialogue. We’re not going there. You’ve had enough trouble with one guy—Finn—no need to rush into guy trouble all over again. Besides, you don’t even know this guy. Just because he saved you, even though he can barely walk himself? Pft, standards.
Still, when Hatter smiled back at me, I felt something strange in my stomach, like a bunch of butterflies flying up and down.
Would Heather approve of him? I thought. Would she like him? Certainly more than she liked Finn, that was a given, but was Hatter the kind of guy who my best friend thought would be a good match for me?
I sighed, realizing I would never know, because Hatter and Heather—funny, how much their names sounded alike—didn’t even exist in the same world, or the same realm. They would never meet, so I would never know.
“Alice. Alice.” Billy was waving at me, trying to get my attention.
Oh God, I had been staring at Hatter like an idiot for the last five minutes.
A blush crept up my cheeks as I looked at the lizard. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“I said it looks like we made it through the first challenge. There are no more chests. Do you want to get going, or rest for a bit?”
I shrugged. “I’m not a dictator. We’re a democracy here. But if you want my vote, I say we keep going. You never know if this labyrinth is running on a timer, sending worse and worse ghouls our way the longer we spend in here.”
“Worse?” Tweedledee shivered, and his brother hugged his shoulders. “I thought those mimics were bad enough.”
“On top of that,” I continued, ignoring the twins, “we don’t have any food, or drinks. If we don’t get any nutrients, our energy levels will go down and our strength will diminish over time.”
Hatter groaned, leaning on Hare to pull himself up to his feet. “I agree with Alice Carroll. We should keep on going.”
I blushed. “You can call me Alice. I mean, all of you. Alice Carroll is too formal.”
“I thought it was your name,” the March Hare said. “But sure. Alice, it is.”
“What do you think?” I asked the Snark. “Do you want to keep going?”
The Snark didn’t say anything at first. Then, it spread its tiny wings, as if inviting me in for a hug. “Carry me,” it said in the most pitiful voice I had ever heard. The terrible Snark, the evil criminal mastermind that had stolen a cupcake from a bakery, needed to be carried like a puppy.
Still, the Snark looked undoubtedly cute, so I leaned forward and picked it up. The Snark nestled in my arms, and I felt sorry for the tiny creature, and the large burden it carried.
To think that, when the Duchess first asked me to participate in
the Tournament and save Wonderland, I had almost laughed in her face. It seemed ridiculous, risk my life for a bunch of creatures I didn’t even know? One look at how the Snark lay in my arms, looking for my protection, would’ve changed my mind right away, and I wouldn’t even need the knowledge of the Neverever House for that.
“We can keep going,” Tweedledum said, with a nod at his brother. “You’re right in what you said about the food.”
“I’m game with what the majority wants,” Billy said.
“Good.” I nodded at my band of misfits, proud at them for having overcome our first challenge, even if it nearly cost us our lives on more than one occasion.
“Now, all that’s left, is for us to choose a route,” I said, pointing at the four possible paths. One left, two center, one right. “Which path do we take?”
“Hm.” Hatter and Hare hobbled toward the path to the left, and inspected it. Since Hatter had known about the mimics, he might have more knowledge of what to expect in a labyrinth such as this one. Where did he say he had seen the mimics before again… Otherland?
I made a mental note to ask him about it sometime.
The two friends wobbled toward the two center paths, inspecting these as well, and eventually on to the path to the right.
“They’re identical,” Hatter said. “No markings on any of the paths, no indications anyone went before us through any of these four paths. How do we choose which path is the right one then?”
“Maybe we should split up,” Billy suggested. “At least in two groups, so that we can cover more ground.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t think we should split up. We should stay together. Strength in numbers, remember? If we hadn’t worked together with the mimics, we would be dead.”
Kingdom of Crowns and Glory Page 60