Wonderland

by Marie O'Regan

  On the plain below, beyond the palace walls, the game stretched out in every direction as far as the eye could see, shifting and revolving like a carousel. The game made a sound, a kind of hum, as the land spun at dizzying speed. Trees and houses and rivers whirled. In the game, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.

  I saw a small figure stagger across a forest clearing, weeping. It was a young boy in a round hat. As I watched, a tall man strode out of the trees and clubbed him. He struck the boy again and again until he stopped moving. Then the man dragged the body into the shadow of the woods and the game kept turning and they were gone from view again. If you watched the game for more than a few moments, you always saw death. My favourites were the knights with their great horses and gleaming wicked swords. Snicker-snack. The boy with the round hat will be back tomorrow, though, running with lips drawn back from his teeth in fear. Death doesn’t stick, down there. The game never lets you go.

  We don’t use the words magic or enchantment round here anymore. Snowdrop calls it funny business. The game is full of funny business. It reeks of it. Snowdrop used to have a touch of it, but she never uses it now, not since Mother.

  As the shadows lengthened and dark came creeping in, still Snowdrop sat with that strange look in her eyes, fixed on faraway things—or perhaps she looked inwards at the depths of herself. When night fell Snowdrop at last got up and came inside. She didn’t have the air of someone who had been disappointed or stood up. She seemed like she was exactly where she should be, doing just what she wanted. It didn’t make sense. I saw then that she held some small object, almost hidden by the curve of her palm.

  Straight after breakfast Snowdrop went to the south terrace, arranged herself artistically on a bench, and stayed there. I watched her all morning. The wind made rills in the glassy pond nearby. A gardener trundled a wheelbarrow. The royal dog walkers took a turn, the dragonhounds panting and straining at the leashes. Below, on the plains, a bishop with eyes of flame cut down screaming children. Snowdrop paid all this no mind. She was watching the object held in her palm very closely.

  I was crawling on my stomach to get a better look when I became aware of a burning sensation on my calves, then on my wrists and other exposed places. I saw too late what shared my hiding place under the yew hedge.

  “Ssssss,” the nettles said in their high voices. “We’re ssssssleeeeping. Pisssss off.” They blinked their yellow eyes and wrapped agonising tendrils about my limbs. I screamed and tore at them until they let go and then I crawled weeping into the light.

  That night, after I had soothed my furious red skin with salve, I went to Snowdrop’s chamber. She was staring at her reflection in the glass. Her mind must have been elsewhere, because she didn’t notice when I came up behind her. She started when I took hold of her throat.

  “You’re up to something,” I said. “I can tell.”

  “I’m not up to something,” she said, eyes filling with tears. “Please, Kitty, let me go.”

  I loosened my grip and released her throat. “Don’t lie to me,” I said, “I can always tell.”

  “All right, fine,” she said in a different tone, rubbing at my finger marks on her white neck. “I was going to tell you tonight, anyway, after supper. I might have found a way to get out of it, Kit.”

  Snowdrop was to be married in two months’ time, to the King of Blanch, the kingdom over the mountains. She didn’t want to do it.

  She looked at my face. I don’t know what she saw there but the corners of her mouth turned down in sorrow. “Oh, Kitty. Don’t be sad. You’ll come with me!” She pried my nails out of her arm. “I wouldn’t leave you here alone, I swear.”

  ‘‘You can’t do it, Snowdrop,” I said quietly. “You said you never would again.” The last time Snowdrop tried her hand at funny business, she killed our mother.

  “I don’t have a choice,” Snowdrop said. “I have to try, or you know what happens. I’ll have to run and scream and die every day. Or kill people, just to stay alive.” She was right. When she married she would go into the game. And in due course I would marry and follow her. That’s how it worked. I knew she was dreading it.

  “What do you have in mind?” I asked, stabbing my palm idly with her nail file.

  “Well, it’s the most extraordinary thing, Kitty. Come to the west terrace tomorrow morning, and I’ll show you what I mean.”

  It was something to do with a man, I was sure. There was that sheen on her. As I closed the door behind me she was dabbing rosewater on her face.

  * * *

  Three memories.

  One: when we were becoming young women the King of Blanch left the game, just once, to come here and choose between us. He had a broad smile and flat eyes. I met his eyes and stared right back. Snowdrop looked down. She was afraid of him, I could tell, and I think he could too because he picked her.

  “You’ll like Blanch,” he said to Snowdrop. “The skies there are diamonds, and the cats are white tigers with coats like silk. You’ll like being a queen.” Snowdrop nodded and the corner of her mouth trembled, but she managed not to cry.

  Two: when we were children I accidentally cut off the very tip of Snowdrop’s little finger. Everyone was screaming and running for bandages and the doctor. Meanwhile, I took the bloody tip into my mouth. It was cold and clammy but I swallowed, because all of Snowdrop’s flesh belonged to me too, and I didn’t want it wasted.

  Three: when we were very, very little, Snowdrop killed Mother by drinking her health; Mother shrank and wept until she disappeared. The sound of her bones cracking was sharp on the winter air. It happened in front of all the court, it must have been a feast day. I can’t remember which. The courtiers cried, Daddy cried, Snowdrop cried. She had only wanted to drink a bit of Mama in—she wanted our mother’s raven-dark hair. Snowdrop hated being a redhead. But she got something wrong and Mama died instead.

  Funny business.

  * * *

  The following morning I met Snowdrop on the east terrace, which was filled with tall orange trees. Prisoners hung in cages from the branches. Some were dead and the stench mingled uneasily with that of orange blossom and the cries of the living.

  Snowdrop stood in the morning sun, looking very lovely and serious.

  “What is this marvellous thing you’re going to show me?” I asked.

  “Look,” she said and opened her hand. In it was a little round mirror, decorated with white pearls and black agate. “I found it in Mother’s things. I was looking in her dresser for a ribbon to tie my hair, and it fell out of her button box. As if I was meant to find it, Kitty!”

  “Well,” I said, “you always did like to look at yourself.”

  “No,” she said. “Keep looking at the sky!”

  I watched the still blue image of the sky in the mirror. Nothing happened. At length a bird flew by, lonely and small.

  “Did you see it?”

  I shrugged.

  “Now look up,” Snowdrop said.

  Overhead, the sky was clear; there was no bird in sight.

  “It’s another world,” she whispered. “Just like this one, Kitty, but better. If I can get us over there to the other place—why, then we don’t have to get married ever, or go into the game. I’ve looked very carefully in each direction and I’m sure—they don’t have the game over there. It’s full of fields and sheep and mills turning lazily on flowing streams. Oh, Kitty, it’s lovely, do look!”

  She held up the mirror to the great plains below, where two teenage boys were stabbing one another to death. In the mirror I saw only flashes of cool forest. “And dearest Kitty, there is someone over there who…” Her cheeks flushed prettily. “Oh, I can’t spoil it. You will have to see for yourself. It’s too wonderful.”

  No doubt this was the man for whom Snowdrop had put on that shining green belt this morning, for whom she had brushed her hair a hundred times. Some shepherd or miller—when she could have had a king. Honestly.

  She laid her
hand on mine. “Please, Kitty,” she said. “It’s our way out. And I couldn’t do it without you. Dearest sister.”

  I don’t know if she really wanted me to come. But she was right, she needed me. We’re made of the same flesh, and that’s powerful magic. She didn’t have enough strength to do it by herself.

  I took a deep breath. “All right,” I said. “I’ll come.”

  “It should be tonight,” Snowdrop said. “There’s a twin moon, which will help.” She bit her nail. “Should we say goodbye to Father?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Yes, I suppose we should, if we can find him.”

  * * *

  We had to search high and low. He had hidden himself well. At last, in the red ballroom, I heard breathing. It came from inside one of the flower vases that lined the walls, each the height of a man. I tugged on Snowdrop’s sleeve. We went up close to it quietly and I said, “Papa?”

  The vase trembled on its base. “No,” a voice said. “Go away!”

  “It’s us, Papa,” Snowdrop said. “Won’t you come out?”

  “I can’t,” he said, his voice echoing strangely in the neck of the vase. “It’s not safe.”

  Papa went into hiding after Mama died. Everyone knows that a king is in grave danger once the queen is gone. We had seen him perhaps once or twice in the intervening years.

  “Papa,” Snowdrop said. “We’re leaving here for a better place.”

  “No!” he said. “Your place is with me! I want you here!”

  “It will be fine, Papa,” said Snowdrop, with more patience than I could have mustered. “I found a mirror in Mama’s bedroom. It’s the door to a wonderful kingdom, where there is no game.”

  There was a long silence from the vase. Eventually Papa said, “You found Mama’s mirror? And it still works?”

  “Yes,” Snowdrop said, “and we have to go, Papa. You must understand that.”

  “Well, what are you standing here talking to me for?” he asked, which was a very good question.

  Snowdrop looked as if she were about to cry. “If you want to come with us,” she whispered, “we’ll be on the north terrace, at the double moonrise.”

  “My place is with my kingdom,” Father said, spitting the words. “As is yours, you traitorous girls.”

  “Goodbye Father,” I said politely. “I hope no one puts a bouquet of roses on top of you.”

  We walked the half mile back across the ballroom in silence. At length Snowdrop said, “We need some things for tonight.” Her voice had a new, grim note in it.

  I helped her gather the necessary items. They were mostly herbs and insects. As we foraged in the garden, the sun bright and the wind bringing the pink to our cheeks, I saw her looking at the castle, at the bright silver doves in the dovecote, the apple tree we climbed as children. I saw her making her silent goodbyes.

  I cut a sprig of thyme. “Ow,” it screamed. “Ow, my arm!”

  “Oh, do be quiet,” I said.

  I didn’t make any goodbyes. I had no intention of going with Snowdrop. I planned to pull back at the last minute, and push her into the mirror world. I knew that alone and without my magic, she would probably die there. As far as I was concerned this was probably the fate she deserved, since she killed Mother. But if by some miracle she made it over, that was fine too. Either way, Snowdrop would be gone. Then, I supposed, King Blanch and I would marry. He should have chosen me—we were well suited. I have always known that I would do well in the game, because I know how to bow to the necessary.

  * * *

  Night fell and the moons rose, one of pearl, the other black like jet, gleaming like the surface of a deep, dark lake. You wouldn’t think you could see a black moon against a night sky, but you can.

  We stood on the north terrace, among the graves, the memorials of ornate marble and gold. They all bore the same name. Queen Dinah of the Raven Hair. For the short time before he went into hiding, Father kept holding Mama’s funeral, over and over. Since she didn’t leave a body to bury, all the coffins were empty.

  Snowdrop began. She burned the herbs and insects in a chalice of grey flint. The flame leapt purple and green. She held the little mirror over the flame and whispered, the crease between her brows growing deeper and deeper. At last she stopped, mouth crumpled with distress.

  “Come here, Kitty,” she said. “I need to use you.” We had both known she would—I just wanted to make her ask. I took her hand and we stood side by side, just like the moons above us in the sky.

  Snowdrop began again, under her breath, and it happened very quickly this time. The mirror leapt from her hand and into the air where it hung and grew, like a pool of mercury spreading. Soon it was the size of a door.

  Snowdrop drew a deep breath. “It’s time.”

  We stepped through together, hand in hand. Ahead, at the end of the shimmering tunnel, I could see a quiet room, with a black cat sleeping on a sofa. There was the sound of a fire crackling in a hearth. I prepared to withdraw my hand and run back down the tunnel, to the castle.

  The black cat raised its head and looked at us. Around her neck was a silver tag, which read Dinah. She blinked her green eyes. “There you are, children,” she said. “Hurry up. Come through.”

  It wasn’t a man that Snowdrop had been preening for, after all. I cursed myself for my stupidity. Whose opinion does a daughter most care for? For whom does she fuss and preen and put on her best finery?

  Snowdrop squeezed my hand. “I wanted to surprise you,” she said. “Mama didn’t want to be in the game either. She wanted to take us away, into this world, but she knew Father would not give us up and she began to fear for her life. So she made it seem like she died, but she came here. Oh, when I first saw her in the mirror, Kitty, it was like I came alive again! I knew we had to go to her.”

  And what of all those years she let us think she was dead? That you killed her? But at the other end of the tunnel the cat smiled and purred. I couldn’t hold on to the bitter thought.

  “You’re home!” she said. “For a girl’s place is always with her mother. Don’t just gawp and stand there, Kitty dear. Curtsey while you’re thinking what to say, it saves time.”

  I curtseyed and laughed. “Why not?” I said. I had been planning something very different but there was a crack opening in my heart. It had been sealed shut for many years, since the day Mother died.

  We ran towards her, hand in hand. The surface of the mirror was unpleasant and yielding like jelly. We came through it with a plop and tumbled out onto the soft blue rug before the fire.

  I looked at Snowdrop. She meowed and did a quick turn. She was a kitten now, as white as her name. Whereas I was a kitten the colour of pitch. “Oh, Kitty,” Snowdrop whispered. “How wonderful. I hated that red hair.”

  “You left out many, many details about this, sister dear,” I said to Snowdrop.

  “All worlds have rules,” my mother said. “As you know. Can you accept these ones? I wouldn’t dare to try and influence you, but it’s actually rather nice, being a cat.”

  I leapt into the air and batted my two front paws. I couldn’t help giggling. It came out as a purr. She was right, it wasn’t so bad. I felt very light and playful, quite unlike myself. Perhaps I could be better here. Perhaps there would be no need for villainy.

  Dinah leapt down off the sofa. “Come to me, my lovely girls.”

  A long, thin arm pushed through the mirror. It hung in the air like a dead winter branch. At horrible speed it grasped Dinah’s scruff in thin fingers. One of the fingers bore Father’s ring.

  “Come back,” Father said, voice oddly booming. “You belong here.”

  Dinah screamed and writhed. Snowdrop and I leapt and bit at the arm with our needle teeth. He shrieked in pain and let Dinah go. Then he seized Snowdrop and me by our scruffs and pulled us towards the mirror. Mother was yowling and trying to pull us back into the room.

  We went through the clingy surface of the mirror, and then stopped, pulled this way and that by either parent
. Then it happened. With a great rending sound we divided. I saw us float back along the tunnel, two girls held by Papa’s giant monstrous hand. With a thump, Mama pulled us kittens back through the mirror and into the quiet sitting room.

  Snowdrop was screaming. And I understood because I felt it also; the pain was very bad, yes, where our selves had been torn in two.

  Mother nuzzled Snowdrop. “It’s all right, darling, you’re here with me, now.”

  “I’m there, too. I feel everything she feels.” Snowdrop wept. “Father is beating her. Oh, I shall have to get married and be in the game after all, I cannot bear it…”

  We were double, now, one of us trapped in each world. I think it could only have happened to twins. Snowdrop and I were divided from a single zygote. And what can be split once can always be split again. Magic is like that. It has no imagination.

  Dinah put out a pink tongue and groomed Snowdrop, who continued to weep softly. Mother looked at me. I saw a familiar light, deep in her green eyes. It was triumph.

  “Father didn’t put up much of a fight about that mirror, or our plan to leave him,” I said. “And somehow, you and Father both have us now. It makes me wonder if perhaps that was the bargain, all along? A pair of twins each.”

  Dinah sat up straight. The tip of her tail flicked. “Not now,” she hissed. “The girl is coming. Play your part. Remember, you are a cat.”

  The approaching footsteps sounded like thunder to my new, delicate ears.

  “Father didn’t close the way behind him,” I whispered. I could feel the looking-glass pulsing gently above the mantel.

  Mother swore quietly, and then said, “She will never notice.”

  I sat by the hearth and washed my whiskers.

  The Night Parade

  LAURA MAURO