Table of Contents
Cover
Also available from Titan Books
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane
Alice in Armor
Jane Yolen
Wonders Never Cease
Robert Shearman
There Were No Birds to Fly
M.R. Carey
The White Queen’s Pawn
Genevieve Cogman
Dream Girl
Cavan Scott
Good Dog, Alice!
Juliet Marillier
The Hunting of the Jabberwock
Jonathan Green
About Time
George Mann
Smoke ’em if You Got ’em
Angela Slatter
Vanished Summer Glory
Rio Youers
Black Kitty
Catriona Ward
The Night Parade
Laura Mauro
What Makes a Monster
L.L. McKinney
The White Queen’s Dictum
James Lovegrove
Temp Work
Lilith Saintcrow
Eat Me, Drink Me
Alison Littlewood
How I Comes to be the Treacle Queen
Cat Rambo
Six Impossible Things
Mark Chadbourn
Revolution in Wonder
Jane Yolen
About the Authors
About the Editors
Acknowledgements
Copyright Information
Coming Soon From Titan Books
Also Available From Titan Books
AN ANTHOLOGY
Also available from Titan Books
Cursed: An Anthology of Dark Fairy Tales (March 2020)
Dark Cities: All-New Masterpieces of Urban Terror
Dead Letters: An Anthology of the Undelivered,
the Missing, the Returned…
Exit Wounds
Invisible Blood
New Fears
New Fears 2
Phantoms: Haunting Tales from the Masters of the Genre
Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse
Wastelands 2: More Stories of the Apocalypse
Wastelands: The New Apocalypse
Print edition ISBN: 9781789091489
Electronic edition ISBN: 9781789091496
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
www.titanbooks.com
First edition: September 2019
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.
‘Introduction’ Copyright © 2019 Marie O’Regan & Paul Kane
‘Alice in Armor’ Copyright © 2019 Jane Yolen
‘Wonders Never Cease’ Copyright © 2019 Robert Shearman
‘There Were No Birds to Fly’ Copyright © 2019 M.R. Carey
‘The White Queen’s Pawn’ Copyright © 2019 Genevieve Cogman
‘Dream Girl’ Copyright © 2019 Cavan Scott
‘Good Dog, Alice!’ Copyright © 2019 Juliet Marillier
‘The Hunting of the Jabberwock’ Copyright © 2019 Jonathan Green
‘About Time’ Copyright © 2019 George Mann
‘Smoke ’em if You Got ’em’ Copyright © 2019 Angela Slatter
‘Vanished Summer Glory’ Copyright © 2019 Rio Youers
‘Black Kitty’ Copyright © 2019 Catriona Ward
‘The Night Parade’ Copyright © 2019 Laura Mauro
‘What Makes a Monster’ Copyright © 2019 L.L. McKinney
‘The White Queen’s Dictum’ Copyright © 2019 James Lovegrove
‘Temp Work’ Copyright © 2019 Lilith Saintcrow
‘Eat Me, Drink Me’ Copyright © 2019 Alison Littlewood
‘How I Comes to be the Treacle Queen’ Copyright © 2019 Cat Rambo
‘Six Impossible Things’ Copyright © 2019 Mark Chadbourn
‘Revolution in Wonder’ Copyright © 2019Jane Yolen
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Introduction
MARIE O’REGAN and PAUL KANE
Wonderland.
That one word conjures up all kinds of mental images, from the tea party with the Mad Hatter to the grinning Cheshire Cat, from the White Rabbit to the giant chess game and the Queen of Hearts. And Alice, of course. Always Alice.
Ever since their publication back in 1865 and 1871, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (originally called Alice’s Adventures Under Ground) and its follow-up Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There have captivated readers of all ages, providing the source material for countless movies and TV shows. Beginning with the silent adaptations of 1903 and 1910, by directors Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow, and Edwin S. Porter, then carrying on through the TV incarnations of George More O’Ferrall in 1937 and 1946… From the classic and beloved Disney animated version of 1951 to, most recently, the Tim Burton takes of the twenty-first century, starring Mia Wasikowska in the title role, our obsession with this mythos seems to know no bounds.
Alice’s adventures have been turned into a ballet, countless comic strips (we’d highly recommend picking up Dynamite Entertainment’s The Complete Alice in Wonderland), they’ve inspired parodies such as The Westminster Alice, an opera, a popular song by Jefferson Airplane, a theme-park attraction (based on the Disney version) and even video games! References to—and the influence of—the original works can be felt across the board, and our interest extends as much to the story behind Wonderland as it does to the study of the place itself.
In terms of fiction, novels inspired by the works started appearing as early as 1895 with Anna M. Richards’ A New Alice in the Old Wonderland, and have continued right up to the present with interpretations such as A.G. Howard’s Splintered trilogy, The White Rabbit Chronicles from Gena Showalter, and Christina Henry’s The Chronicles of Alice.
The originals are very special stories that have stayed with us both since childhood, and which have subsequently led to putting together this anthology you now hold in your hands. But, of course, if you are going to gather a range of tales that also take as their inspiration the world of Wonderland, including drawing on the real-life circumstances surrounding its creation, then you have to be sure you’re doing something very different from what has gone before… not easy when you consider just how much of it there has been. Thankfully, the talents contributing to Wonderland are very special themselves, and their unique approaches have resulted in some of the best fantastical fiction we’ve ever read! Within these pages you’ll find poetry by Jane Yolen—and the imagination on display here would put some novels to shame—while Jonathan Green uses the “Jabberwocky” poem as the jumping-off point for his story. There are historical approaches to Alice from the likes of Juliet Marillier, Genevieve Cogman and L.L. McKinney (this takes place in her own Alice-inspired monster-hunting A Blade So Black universe). There’s even a Wild West tale from Angela Slatter and a story by Laura Mauro which presents us with a very different Wonderland, inspired by Japanese folklore.
Authors such as Alison Littlewood, Cavan Scott and Catriona Ward make the more outlandish e
lements their own, while James Lovegrove draws on the supernatural for his entry. Cat Rambo takes us to a part of Wonderland we haven’t seen before and Lilith Saintcrow gives the mythology a science-fiction spin. The nightmarish reaches of the imagination are the breeding ground for M.R. Carey’s visions, while Robert Shearman, George Mann, Rio Youers and Mark Chadbourn’s tales have a deep-seated emotional core which will tug at the heartstrings as well as shock and surprise.
So, it’s time now to go down the rabbit hole, or through the looking-glass, or… But no, wait. By picking up this book and starting to read it you’re already there, can’t you see? You don’t need to do a thing because it’s already surrounding you. You’re not late at all; it’s perfect timing, in fact! You’ve already begun your journey of exploration. You’re already in the place that they call…
Wonderland.
Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane
Derbyshire, 2019
Alice in Armor
JANE YOLEN
She dashed from the house,
Reverend Dodgson lingering at the door.
Never again. Never again, she thought.
She knew he would not follow.
He was too timid for the chase.
She found the armor
where she’d stashed it, by the old hedge.
The hole in the root, unused for years
still gaped like a giant’s mouth.
That armor had twice served
as one of the costumes
she wore—then un-wore—
for the old don’s photographs.
She slipped into it, feeling a bit
like a sardine in a tin, but safe,
with a bit of borrowed power.
Curiouser and curiouser, she thought,
before plopping down at the hole’s edge,
contemplating her next move.
She could hear Dodgson calling.
Her answer lay unspoken between them.
Never again. Never again.
Hands trembling, she pushed off the edge,
dropped into the hole,
going down and down and down
much heavier than before,
the armor more than doubling her weight.
She passed the familiar shelves.
Instead of empty marmalade jars,
instead of maps hung up on pegs,
she found a sheathed sword on one shelf,
a fillet knife on another, and three cannon balls.
She managed to kick the balls into the hole
and they plummeted before her.
When she finally reached bottom,
the welcoming heap of sticks and leaves,
a medal snapped perkily onto her chest plate.
A helmet topped with feathers,
red and white, settled on her head.
Spit and blood, she thought,
hefting the sword with a firm hand.
She stuck the knife into her belt.
They gave her courage for what lay ahead.
In Wonderland.
Wonders Never Cease
ROBERT SHEARMAN
1
It should go without saying, but not all the Alices survived. Some fell foul of the Red Queen, and had their heads chopped off. Some didn’t respond well to the drugs: “Drink Me”, and the Alices shrank and shrank until at last they winked out of existence; “Eat Me”, and they grew so fast that they snapped their necks on the ceiling. And many fell down the rabbit hole and never quite managed to find the bottom. They just kept on falling, and no one knows where they might have ended up.
Let’s not waste any time on them. Or any sympathy either. These are not the good Alices. These are the failures. The truth is, we wouldn’t have much enjoyed their adventures anyway. Better that we get rid of them quick, so another Alice, a better Alice, can come along.
This is not their story. Tell you what, let’s just pretend I never mentioned them. My mistake. Forget I spoke.
2
All the time she had been down the rabbit hole, and encountering all manner of weird and perplexing creatures, Alice had worried that the experience would change who she was beyond all recognition. But in fact Alice managed to confound the pressures to transform, and held on to her identity very well indeed. Yet something had to give. If Alice wouldn’t change, then something else would have to change in her place. And as she crawled out of the earth, and saw once more a daylight she feared she’d lost forever, as she smoothed the dirt from her pretty blue dress, and spat out the soil, Alice realised that the entire world had altered whilst she had been gone. There were flying machines up in the clouds and tall grey buildings scraping the sky, and all around were cars, and concrete, and computers, and cashpoint machines. And the grassy bank on which she had begun her grand adventure was now the central reservation of a roundabout off the A1.
Alice had left her sister reading, and she went to her now to ask what had happened, and what her sister made of it, and whether her sister thought it could be put right, but her sister was dead, she was dead. Alice touched her on her shoulder and she toppled over and she wasn’t breathing and she hadn’t breathed for years, and maybe she’d died of old age waiting for Alice to return, or died of boredom reading a book without pictures or conversations in it, or she’d had her head chopped off by the Red Queen, yes, that was the one. Alice touched her on her shoulder, and over she toppled, and the head toppled too, it came off nice and clean, Alice didn’t think it would have hurt a bit.
Alice had never had any family worth mentioning—just a sister without a name, and a cat called Dinah. She picked up Dinah, and put her under her arm, and set off into the city to find herself a new life.
She determined to find employment. At the job centre she was asked whether she could type, and Alice didn’t know but said yes anyway, and it turned out she could type, so that was all right. She worked in an open-plan office and she had a desk just two aisles away from the window, and Alice sometimes liked to look over the other typists’ heads and wonder what marvels the windows might reveal if only she were close enough to see through them. A man who was a clerk at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food kept giving her lots of typing to do, some days Alice felt the only typing she got to do was his. Some days he came to her desk and stood over her even though he didn’t have any typing to give her at all. And eventually he told her he had fallen in love with her and wanted to marry her, and he was so very earnest about it that Alice didn’t feel she should refuse. She asked him his name. It was Dom.
On their wedding night Dom got into bed beside her and turned out the lights and climbed on top of her. He was there for a good minute or two, Alice didn’t quite like to ask what he was up to, she didn’t want to break that very earnest concentration of his. At last he rolled off, and panted for breath, and lay beside her, and asked her whether she had enjoyed the adventure. Alice was very polite, and said it had been no more unedifying than playing croquet with flamingo mallets, and no more uncomfortable than drowning in her own tears, and mercifully briefer than either.
And then she said, into the darkness:
“I don’t love you, Dom. I don’t think I could ever love you. What are you? You’re a talking man, but we expect men to talk, so where’s the magic in that? To meet a man who wouldn’t talk, now there would be a thing! And the thing I’ve learned about talk, is that so much of it is nonsense. To me you’re like a black hole, Dom, but not a rabbit hole, Dom, not a hole down which I can find adventure, not a hole that will challenge me or perplex me or make me think. You’re a void of a man, Dom. You’re nothing.” And she said all of this perfectly nicely, because Alice was a well-brought-up sort of girl, and had excellent manners.
It was so dark and so still that Alice thought her husband wasn’t there any longer, and that he had just disappeared, and there would be some relief in that. So she reached across to see if she could prod him, and she could prod him, his body was solid and thick and cold. Alice said to h
erself, “There’s nothing for it but to sleep, and see if things may be better in the morning!” And in the morning she woke up and looked to her side and Dom had gone, and his clothes were gone from the wardrobe, and his toothbrush was gone from the bathroom sink.
For a while things were much simpler. It was just Alice, and Dinah the cat, and the other girls in the typing pool. She didn’t even have to type all that much now that Dom had disappeared. But presently she began to get the funniest notion that she was never alone. There was someone else there, just out of the corner of her eye, and no matter how hard she’d turn her head she could never get a glimpse of them. And then, curiouser and curiouser, her body began to grow in different directions, and she wondered why, for she was certain she hadn’t lately drunk any strange potions or eaten any strange cakes or nibbled any strange mushrooms marked “Eat Me”. Her stomach distended and her belly button popped out and she felt very, very sick in the mornings.
Alice was always practical, and she soon realised what the matter was. “I will not let my body be used by a stranger for temporary accommodation!” she said firmly to her fat belly, and she rapped on it with her knuckles to get the occupant’s attention. “Come out of there at once!” And out it popped, she dropped her baby right there and then in the open-plan office, she had to take an early lunch break to give these new circumstances frank and considered attention. Alice didn’t know whether it was a boy or a girl, and she decided she’d think of it as a girl for the time being, and that should ever any further evidence come to light to convince her to the contrary she’d deal with it then. She chose to name it after her sister, and so didn’t name it anything at all. “How very lovely you’ll turn out to be,” said Alice to the shrieking lump of flesh, “just as soon as you’re finished!” She wasn’t quite sure that the baby would be lovely, not particularly, but she was a good-hearted girl, and she wanted to give the baby something positive to aim for.
Alice had learned all about babies during her time down the rabbit hole, and knew that the trick was to hold its arms and legs out in all directions and wait for it to turn into a pig. The baby bawled no matter how hard and long its limbs were stretched, and by nightfall Alice began to despair it would ever become a pig at all. “Just my luck the first baby I get is defective!” thought Alice. She shook it fiercely from side to side, just to see if she could shake the pigginess to the surface, and within the blur of motion she would think she could discern the baby’s nose flatten to a snout. But every time she stopped shaking and the blurring came to a halt, she’d see to her disappointment that the child stubbornly remained no more porcine than before.
Wonderland Page 1
