“What did you expect?” the girl said, stopping his rolling noggin with her foot.
“A thank you would have been nice!”
The Hatter should have been concerned that his friend had just been beheaded, but he was concentrating, trying to see the Dream Girl as he knew she really was.
Behind him, all four Queens stood to their full heights, which would have been more impressive if their High Horses hadn’t vanished an hour or so before. The garden at the foot of the clocktower was all that was left of their kingdom, and they knew who to blame.
“Why are you doing this?” the Queen of Clubs railed.
“Because you’re missing it,” the girl replied simply, her foot still resting on the Hare’s forehead.
“Missing what?” he asked, peering up at her.
“The point.”
“You killed the Grindlemeer,” the Queen of Diamonds declared.
The girl cocked her head to one side. “Did I?”
“And the Jabberwocky, and the Jubjub, and even the Snark,” the Queen of Hearts snapped. “Squillions of Wonderlanders, gone forever. How did you do it?”
“She has a bottle,” the Hatter blurted out, his throat more painful than ever. The lights still danced in front of his vision, having now coalesced into three balls of fire, and he didn’t care who struck him down for talking, be they playing cards or the Angel of Death. “The Grindlemeer took a sniff of whatever’s inside and that was that.”
“That was what?” asked the Queen of Spades.
“He was gone,” the girl answered, smiling impishly.
“Show us this bottle,” the Queen of Clubs commanded.
“Gladly,” the Dream Girl said, reaching into her bib. Or was it her overall pockets? The Hatter couldn’t tell anymore.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
“Look out,” the Hare yelled, still loyal to the Queens despite his recent decapitation. “It’s dangerous!”
“Only if you smell it,” the girl advised them, holding the bottle above her head.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
“Bring it to us,” the Queen of Diamonds commanded.
“No,” the Hare shouted, trying to trip the girl with his ears. “It’s a trick.”
“Of course it is,” the girl laughed, drawing back the hand containing the bottle. “Here, catch!”
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
The bottle arched through the air, flying over the Hatter’s throbbing head and down towards the four Queens.
“I’ll get it.”
“No, I will.”
“No, I will.”
“You’re all off your heads!”
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
With a cry, the Queens crashed into each other, the bottle slipping through their cardboard fingers to smash on the table in front of them.
A rich aroma swept out from the broken glass. One by one, the Queens vanished, first Clubs, and then Spades, and then Diamonds and Hearts. They were followed by their subjects, who disappeared the moment they breathed the heady odour into their impossible lungs. The Hare gulped as he watched his body dissipate seconds before his severed head erupted into nothingness.
Only the Hatter was left as the Alarm Clock ticked steadily towards disaster.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
He took in a long, luxurious breath as the bell finally tolled, the earthy aroma sweeping over him. His body lost its shape, the brim of his non-existent hat lifting from a brow that was no longer there.
All he could see were the three lights, and all he could hear was the Dream Girl’s voice.
“See you on the other side, Uncle…
“On the other side…
“On the other…”
* * *
“ Milliner?”
Milliner tried to open his eyes, but the lids were gummed shut. Something was being pulled up from his throat, over his tongue, past his chapped lips.
He coughed, his body racked with pain, muscles in spasm, joints creaking after years of inactivity.
“Hey, take it easy, buddy,” the voice said, a familiar lisp softening the words. “The feeding tube’s out. Let the drugs do their work.”
“Hare?” he slurred, his voice barely more than a croak.
“Yeah, it’s me. And don’t worry. I had trouble talking when I came around too.”
Water sprayed over his face, a refreshing mist that cleared the gunk from his eyes and moistened his lips. He blinked, wincing at the glare of the three LED bulbs above his head.
“Oops. Sorry about that.”
Milliner heard the whine of servos as his bed was raised to a standing position. No, not a bed. A pod, the product of Dormouse Hibernation Services.
“Just take it easy, okay?”
A face came into view. Buck teeth. Straw-coloured hair. Milliner smiled, his head still muggy. Hare? Was it really him? He frowned. That wasn’t right.
“Haig?”
“In the flesh, buddy-boy. You had us worried for a minute. Thought you weren’t going to come around. We’re the last.”
“The last of what?”
“To wake up, but don’t worry—the gang’s all here.”
Milliner forced himself to look around the pod-bay, full of people he hadn’t seen in… how long had it been? Millennia, if the programme had been a success. He smiled as he saw the twins—Dee and Datum—embracing each other as if they never wanted to be apart again. Then there was Glenn, the engineer that had helped design the ship. Some found the lion of a man intimidating, but Milliner knew he was a gentle giant. He just hoped his breath had improved as the years had ticked slowly by.
“Are we there?” he asked, trying to push himself forward.
“For quite some time,” a commanding voice rang out to his left. Holding onto the pod to steady himself, Milliner turned to see Captain Delta walking purposely towards him, a steaming mug in her hands. “It appears we overslept.”
“By how long?”
Delta smiled. “One hundred and fifty-four years. But what’s a century or two after three thousand years of travel?”
“Apparently the computer couldn’t wake us,” Haig explained. “She had to construct a special avatar to enter the dreamscape.”
“The dreamscape you programmed to keep us all sane,” the Captain commented, pointedly. “The first avatar was lost. Corrupted by a faulty line of code, and so the AI entered the ’scape herself, and just in time. The Liddell’s power cells are nearly exhausted.”
Milliner’s head spun and he staggered, Haig catching him before he could fall back into the pod. “It’s okay, bud. No one’s blaming you.”
“Speak for yourself,” the Captain said, with a wry smile on her lips. “Heads would have rolled if I’d woken up dead. But I suppose I can forgive you, just this once, especially considering what’s outside. Do you want to see?”
Milliner nodded, still holding onto his friend’s arm. The Captain tapped a communicator on her sleeve. “Alice?”
“Yes, Captain?” the ship’s AI replied, using the voice-print Milliner had programmed a lifetime ago, the voice of the niece who had helped him in his workshop, the niece he’d promised to take to the stars, the niece who had lost her fight against cancer before the Liddell had begun its long journey. He smiled, imagining her mop of frizzy hair, her dark freckled skin.
“Will you show Mr Milliner where we are?”
“With pleasure,” Alice replied.
A holographic screen shimmered into view, running the length of the room, one of a thousand identical hibernation suites dotted throughout the sleeper-ship. Milliner’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of the planet, its continents teeming with life and the oceans cobalt blue, a stark contrast to the dry world they’d abandoned.
The Captain took a sip from her mug, stamped with the logo of the recolonization programme. “Worth getting out of bed for?”
“Definitely,” Milliner said, before asking Alice wh
at she had used to rouse them from their slumber.
“A protocol of my own devising,” the AI replied. “I call it ‘wake up and smell the coffee’.”
Milliner smiled, gazing at the globe beneath them.
Their new home.
Their Wonderland.
Good Dog, Alice!
JULIET MARILLIER
In Great-Uncle Bartholomew’s opinion, it was a mistake to name my dog Alice. He made that clear from the moment I introduced them.
“Alice? You can’t call a dog Alice!” Uncle Bart’s moustache quivered with disapproval, putting me in mind of an overexcited caterpillar.
I had known other dogs with names generally reserved for girls and boys: Monty-short-for-Montague, for instance, a British bulldog; and Seraphina, a well-coiffed miniature poodle. “What’s wrong with Alice?” I asked.
“My dear girl! Everything! A learned colleague of mine knows a young person of that name, and I gather she is involved in all manner of wild escapades. I once had a gardener whose daughter was an Alice. She would tuck up her skirts and climb trees all day long, and if anyone asked her to descend and comport herself like a lady, she would pelt them with random objects.”
That sounded rather fun to me, though I could imagine Uncle Bart being somewhat put out if I hit him on the head with, say, a conker. “What sort of objects?”
“Whatever one finds in a tree, I suppose. Sticks, acorns, squirrels.”
“Squirrels?!”
“The slower ones might be caught, then hurled,” said Uncle Bart thoughtfully. “The gardener’s daughter was a quick sort of young person.” His eyes fell again upon the dog, a tri-coloured King Charles spaniel which my favourite cousin, William, had brought for me as a surprise birthday present that very morning. William had not obtained Uncle Bart’s permission to give me a dog, perhaps anticipating the answer would be no. He had simply arrived with the puppy in a covered basket. He’d brought his parents too, not in a covered basket but walking behind, all smiles. It had been impossible for Uncle Bart to refuse.
“That’s only two Alices,” I pointed out. “I believe there is something amiss in your statistical method, Uncle.”
“Ah, well,” said Uncle Bart, ignoring this comment, “at least the dog will not tuck up her skirts or climb trees. But I fear the wild escapades.”
“You could come on them too,” I suggested, wondering at what age a person would be too old for escapades. It would do Uncle Bart good to get away from his studies from time to time.
He chuckled. “I am a scholar. A scientist. A man of many parts. None of those parts is inclined towards escapades. Not to say that scholarship and adventures cannot go hand in hand. I recall a time…” Then, just as he was about to say something interesting, Uncle Bart went off into a dream. This was a frequent habit of his.
“Uncle?”
He snorted, coming back to himself. “Yes, child?”
“I think Alice is missing her mother.” I picked the dog up and held her to my chest. “We should make her welcome.”
“Why not call the creature Fluff or Spot or… or Rover?” Uncle Bart had not given up.
“Rover is for a boy dog. Spot is for a spotted dog. And Fluff…” There was no denying the fluff; Alice possessed it in abundance. “Fluff is too obvious,” I said. “A scientist would not choose that name for his dog.”
“Ah,” said Uncle Bart. “But she’s not my dog. You’re the one who had the eleventh birthday.”
“And I’m the one who is calling her Alice.”
* * *
William and his family had stayed only long enough to wish me a happy birthday and hand Alice over. That was disappointing. William and I could have explored or made a snow monster or played shuttlecock. We could have had a proper birthday luncheon: roasted potatoes with rich gravy; tiny cakes with crystallised violets on top; lemonade to drink. Not that our cook and housekeeper, Mrs Manifold, would dream of preparing something so festive. Maybe if I’d still had a mother and a father, birthdays would have been different, but my parents and my brother had been killed when I was three years old. That was why I lived with Uncle Bart.
At least there were no lessons on my birthday. Froggy was away for four days, doing some kind of examination. Froggy was my tutor. I was supposed to call him Master Frederick. He had been Uncle Bart’s prize student at Oxford University.
“One good thing, Alice,” I told my dog as I put on my cloak and boots and woolly hat. “With him away, we have four whole days to ourselves, and nothing to worry about.”
Mrs Manifold had decreed that Alice should stay in the scullery, eat and drink from her own bowls and not get underfoot. I saw no good reason to keep to those rules. “You will sleep on my bed, of course,” I whispered in Alice’s ear as I carried her down the back stairs. “I’ll take you for two walks every day, and I’ll teach you all manner of tricks. I know you are an exceptionally clever dog.”
I gazed into Alice’s round, bright eyes, searching for signs of the naughtiness Uncle Bart anticipated her developing, but she was the very picture of innocence. Her face belonged in a painting, the sort where the girls wear white frilly frocks and have their hair in ringlets, and the boys are in satin sashes and knickerbockers. “You won’t be that kind of dog, Alice,” I told her, “because I’m not a frilly frock sort of girl. You and I will have escapades. At least, when Froggy is away we will.”
On the first day I showed Alice the garden. It was winter, but there was not enough snow on the ground to make a snowman. There was not even enough for a snow dog the size of a King Charles spaniel. We made a snow mouse, then another one so the first would not feel lonely. Alice spent most of the time digging a hole under a leafless rose bush. But she was there. That was the important thing. I found tiny pebbles for eyes, so the snow mice could watch out for trouble. I made their ears from dried-up leaves and gave them tails of winter grass. I named them Sebastian and Amethyst. When you made something it was right to give it a name, even if it was only a snow mouse that would soon melt away. A name brought a thing to life. A name gave it light. You remembered that light even after the thing itself was gone.
I didn’t remember my parents very well. But I remembered Tom. He was my big brother, two years older than me. I spoke to him every day, so he wouldn’t be lonely wherever he was. Not out loud; deep down, without making a sound. Do you like my snow mice? If you were here, we could make a whole army and enact a great battle. But I fear Alice would become overexcited and romp all over the field of conflict, scattering the mouse warriors in all directions. I imagined Tom smiling, laughing, throwing a snowball.
I spoke to my brother at night, too, when I sat on my bed with my shawl clutched around me, my heart hammering as I waited for the creak of the door. When I whispered his name, the light of it made a little glow in the dark space of my bedchamber. I wish you were here, Tom. I would be braver then.
On the second day it was too windy to go out of doors. I showed Alice the inside of our house. Uncle Bart was in his study. Mrs Manifold was mostly in the kitchen, but as the only live-in servant at Wraithwood Hall she had many responsibilities, so I made a game out of avoiding her. Then there were Molly and Susan from the village, who came in to scrub floors and remove cobwebs and change the sheets. They chattered while they worked, so it was easy to keep out of their way. James, the gardener, had been given the day off.
Alice and I toured the bedchambers. First was Uncle Bart’s, with an improbably high four-poster bed and a writing desk strewn with academic papers. We did not go into Froggy’s room. After that came two spares, kept in readiness though Uncle Bart rarely had houseguests. Last was mine, with its own little hearth, a tall stack of books—I frequently borrowed items from Uncle Bart’s collection—and a window that looked out over the front garden. My room had only one deficiency: the door was without a lock. I had never found the right words to request one. Uncle Bart would be sure to ask why, and how could I possibly answer? If I told him the truth, he would be
shocked. He would be upset. He might not believe me. After all, he was a man.
On the third day, Mrs Manifold remarked at breakfast time that a dog should know its place. A disobedient animal, she said, was an insufferable nuisance and not to be tolerated. Alice gazed back at her, eyes bright in anticipation of bacon.
I would train Alice in the old ballroom, I decided. It was cold and dusty and darkish, but had the advantage of being in a tucked-away corner of Wraithwood Hall, visited only by pigeons. There had not been a ball since Uncle Bart was young, and that was a very long time ago.
I taught Alice Sit and Stay. I taught her Shh. And because lessons should be fun, I taught her Catch. My breakfast bacon was in my pocket, broken into tiny pieces. Alice was hungry from all the sitting and staying; she learned to catch quickly. I’d been right about her. She was an exceptionally clever dog.
On the fourth day, I lost Alice. We were so busy with our training that I missed the bell for luncheon, and only realised how late it was when I heard Mrs M calling my name. The quickest way back into the main part of the house was through a narrow hallway between the ballroom and the servants’ quarters. I was not supposed to use this shortcut. The hallway was barely wide enough for me to pass through; a solid person like Mrs Manifold would be in danger of getting stuck, and a tall one like James would have to stoop, for the ceiling was low. Stranger still was the blue-painted door halfway along, a door just the right height for an eleven-year-old girl, but far too small for grown-ups. Long ago, Uncle Bart had seen me coming out of the shortcut, and I could still remember his stern warning: “Do not go through that passage, child. No good can come of it. And never, ever open the blue door. Do not even speak of it. Promise me, now.”
Shocked by the terrible look on his face—it was as if he could see demons—I had squeaked out a promise before I had time to consider. Later, I wished I had asked questions. Why must I never open the blue door? What would happen if I did? And if that place was so dangerous, why didn’t they block it up so nobody could go there?
I had never disobeyed the rule about the blue door, though I did use the passage sometimes when in a rush. I had performed some investigations, going around the outside of Wraithwood Hall and trying to work out where the blue door might lead. But it didn’t seem to lead anywhere.
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