Wonderland

by Marie O'Regan

  You see, I does like her, and her style, and the way she holds herself, and how clean she still seems to be, despite all the treacle. But it ain’t a model that works for me, not a hundred percent, and so adaptings and adoptings must be made before any agreements cans be come to.

  So we’s begin, and the pen keeps a-writing and the notebook a-wriggling so sometimes things is more legible than others, but in the end, Wonderland’s a different place. Alice’s taken a page out of my book for herself, and instead of being Red or White, she’s the Blue Knight, because the color scheme and symbology of that suits her better, and each of my sisters has they’s own title, and the option to swap around when they like. Salla is in charge of Communications and Deliberations and Selle oversees the roads, because it turns out she’s always wanted to go a-wandering. Silli is our General in case of Foreign Invasion and Sollo is in charge of the Ministry of Tourism. Sullu is in charge of the Wonderland libraries, and Sylly, it turns out, wants to go back to the treacle mine and make certain changes there involving management and workers’ rights.

  All in all, when shove overcomes pushing, we finds out leading a place like Wonderland don’t take all the energy that the Queens seems to has thought it did. And maybe they was meddling too much, and steering things their way, because it turns out when everything’s sorted, the castle don’t need quite so much treacle as it thought, and that frees it up for everyone, upon which occasion they’s rejoicings and chantings and general jubilations.

  Alice and me, we watches from up in the castle that ain’t a castle anymore, but been turned into a university, and all the studentlings and wordbugs and instructor creatures hang out the windows and watch, and cheer, and has ourselves a celebration that be for more than treacle tart for alls that’s wants it. We celebrate the new Wonderland, and everything that came about when the Red and the White thought they put our Alice in the darksome treacle mine and keep her quiet.

  They forgots all of us there in the darksomeness already, grimbling and grambling so they could have their tarts.

  Because with an Alice, it’s not that they just changes things, though that’s true. With an Alice, they changes you, and that’s how things start changing for real.

  Six Impossible Things

  MARK CHADBOURN

  Still she haunts me, phantomwise,

  Alice moving under skies

  Never seen by waking eyes.

  ~ Lewis Carroll

  “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” the Cheshire Cat replied. Emerald eyes flickered and a rough pink tongue licked across gleaming teeth.

  Alice pressed a finger to her chin. “I believe I’ve heard that somewhere before.”

  “Believe whatever you want. That is one of the rules. If you believe hard enough, perhaps it will even be true.”

  Alice looked around. How on earth had she come to be there? Trees as far as the eye could see, silver birch and ash, lit in a hazy, golden glow. Honeybees droning through sunbeams. The Cat curled on one of the low branches. His smile seemed to be teasing her.

  “I don’t remember any rabbit holes. Or mirrors, for that matter. How did I arrive?”

  “Don’t trouble yourself with that! You’re here to play a game. That’s what matters. Don’t you recall?”

  “A game?”

  “You have to find the Vasteous Shield.”

  “The Vasteous Shield?” Alice said, her eyes narrowing. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “What does it sound like?” the Cat asked.

  “It sounds very much to me like something a knight of old would wear on his arm to protect himself.”

  “Then that may very well be what it is.”

  Alice eyed this puss. A talking cat was a remarkable thing in itself, but this one had many other qualities which she found quite astonishing. For one, it had a grin wider than any she had seen on a cat before. There seemed far too many teeth in a mouth of that size. But it appeared good-natured enough.

  “Have we met before?” she asked. “I think perhaps we have.”

  “Have we met before, or will we meet? That is the question,” the Cat replied. “I can’t quite keep this straight in my head, so goodness knows how you are supposed to.”

  The Cat frowned, if cats could indeed be said to frown. And a moment later it did something else rather strange. It began to fade away, from the tip of its tail, along its haunches and its back, to its head. And when that was gone, only the grin remained, floating in a sunbeam.

  “That’s a very extraordinary thing for a cat to do. And for people too,” Alice said. “I’ve always wanted to vanish, particularly when I’m unhappy, or angry, or someone is trying to make me feel bad.”

  “Over here.”

  The Cheshire Cat was sitting on a track through the woods. She hadn’t seen it before. “I suppose you want me to follow you,” she said.

  “I suppose I do.”

  As the puss meandered along the track, Alice glimpsed a flash of movement away in the trees. She felt momentarily blinded, as if she’d been caught by the sun reflecting off the bathroom mirror in the morning.

  “Oh! What was that?”

  “Those are just the Machine Elves.” The Cat’s voice floated back. “No need to pay any heed to them. They helped you build this place.”

  Alice widened her eyes. “Me?”

  “Well, not you exactly.”

  “Did they make you too?”

  “Oh no. I’ve always been here. And always will be, I might say.” He looked back and that grin licked a tad wider.

  In a clearing, three doors stood side by side. They weren’t a part of any building, just a wooden jamb with the doors inside them, panelled like the ones in the grand old houses Alice remembered visiting when she was younger. On the middle door frame, a crow perched. The bird cocked its head, studying Alice with gleaming black eyes. When they neared, the crow soared over the treetops, cawing.

  “You scared it off,” Alice said to her companion. “It’s a well-known fact that birds don’t like cats.”

  “I would be very suspicious of well-known facts, if I were you. Things that you believe are true are very often not. Use your eyes. And ears. And occasionally your nose. And think for yourself.”

  Alice sniffed. This puss seemed to have a very high opinion of himself. Her thoughts drifted back, across croquet lawns and locked rooms, parks and rivers. Yes, surely she had encountered this odd fellow before, but where, she couldn’t quite place. Perhaps it had been a dream.

  She wandered around the three doors, looking them up and down. “And what is the meaning of this? A door to nowhere is not much use to anyone.”

  “Doors always lead somewhere, even when they seem not to. A door is the beginning of a journey. Or the end. And once you set forth upon a journey, you learn a great deal about yourself. In fact, if a journey has any other purpose I can’t imagine what it is.”

  “I know everything about myself. That’s how I’m me.” Alice stepped to the end of her circuitous route and looked down at her companion.

  “But there are so many things about you! How can you possibly tell which of them is important, and which of them is merely butter melting on a hot crumpet.”

  “I would say hot buttered crumpets are very important indeed,” Alice replied.

  The Cat clawed his way up a tree trunk and perched on a low branch where he had a good view of the proceedings. “Here is the game. Choose a door. And once you see what’s inside, you might also get a glimpse of the Vasteous Shield.”

  Alice pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle a titter. Silly cat! she thought. Inside!

  But she’d play along. It would be rude not to. Choosing the door on the left, she tugged on the handle.

  “This is very strange,” Alice said.

  The door opened onto a bookshop. A quiet lay across it, of the kind to be found in bookshops everywhere. People who enjoyed books didn’t like to talk very much, Alice thought.

  Frowning, Alice p
eered around the edge of the door. The woods stretched out as they had done. No bookshop to be seen anywhere.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” Alice said.

  She peered back through the door. A few people browsed the volumes on the shelves, licking their fingertips as they turned the pages with studious concentration. Beyond them, a large glass window looked out onto a city street. A mauve car rolled by, long and sleek, with large lights at the front, and a running board.

  “That’s not Oxford,” Alice said.

  “It’s a city where people choose to go into holes in the ground without a white rabbit to lead them,” the Cat replied.

  A bell tinkled, and an elegant woman walked in. She was wearing a long coat of deepest purple edged with black fur. A black hat was perched on her silver hair. Furrowing her brow, she looked around as if someone might ask her for money.

  “She has an interesting face,” Alice said. “I like her.”

  The woman edged past the browsers to an area that had been set aside for an exhibition. Pen-and-ink drawings in sable frames covered the wall, and beneath them a glass case contained sheaths of handwritten paper as if they were valuable. Looming over the display was a model of a man with wild eyes and a battered top hat.

  “Oh, isn’t that—”

  “Yes, it is,” the Cat interjected.

  The elderly woman leaned in to study a drawing of the Cheshire Cat.

  “Marvellous, isn’t it?”

  A man was smiling at her. He was younger, perhaps half her age, and wearing a grey suit and waistcoat with the gold chain of a watch fob dangling from the breast pocket. The woman scowled at him. The man didn’t appear deterred.

  “Peter Llewellyn Davies,” he said, holding out a hand. “I believe we have much in common.”

  The woman took his hand as if he might be hiding a razor blade in his sleeve. “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “Peter Pan?” he prompted.

  “This isn’t Neverland.”

  “Neverland is a place I escape to when the rigours of this world get too much. We all need an escape hatch from reality, eh?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  The woman turned back to the drawing of the Cat, but Peter leaned in.

  “I can understand your reticence. All those stares and wagging tongues can get a bit much.”

  The woman began to hum to herself.

  “But I understand you,” Peter persisted, “and I think you would understand me. I am Peter Pan, but I am not. Sounds nonsense, doesn’t it? The whole world is nonsense and we should accept it as such. That way it would make more sense.”

  “You do like the sound of your own voice. However much drivel spills out of it.”

  “Prickly as a hedge-pig; I’d heard that! With a tongue that can cut you into pieces and a demeanour like the middle of winter.”

  “How flattering of you.”

  Peter stepped past her and waved a hand towards the framed drawings. “The Gryphon. The March Hare. The Mock Turtle. Wonderland. I would imagine, in certain ways, it’s like my Neverland. It’s hard to find again once you leave childhood behind, as much as you need it—”

  “Look,” the woman snapped, turning to him with blazing eyes. “If you’re looking for money, spit it out and then I can show you the door.”

  Peter pressed a hand to his chest. “Good Lord, no. I don’t need money.” He paused, staring into space as he reflected, and in that moment Alice thought how unconscionably sad he looked. “I’m sorry,” he said eventually. “What an ass I am. These are my defences, but to other people they often appear as weapons. I’ll talk plainly, shall I?”

  “Please do.”

  “Of course you’ve heard of the esteemed author J.M. Barrie. Well, he became my adopted father after my parents died and he based his most famous creation on me. I was just a babe in a pram when he first encountered me, in Kensington Gardens. But he befriended two of my brothers, George and Jack. And later he befriended me.”

  Peter held the woman’s eyes for an inordinate amount of time, Alice thought. If the elderly lady saw anything in that look, she didn’t show it.

  “Uncle Jim only took the name from me, I suppose,” Peter continued. “George and Jack were the real role models for the boy who wouldn’t grow up. But innocence can be stolen in many different ways, can it not?”

  Alice wasn’t quite sure what these two grown-ups were saying to each other. They seemed to be having one conversation and discussing something else entirely. Grown-ups were strange like that, she’d long since realised. One thing was certain: that elegant woman looked very uncomfortable.

  Peter’s eyes brimmed with tears. “May I ask,” he said, his voice so low Alice could barely hear it, “the Reverend Charles Dodgson—”

  “That’s enough of that.” The silver-haired woman slammed a hand into Peter’s chest and thrust him out of the way. She flew to the door without a backward glance and was gone in the tinkling of a bell.

  The door Alice was peering through also swung shut, though slow enough for her to see the fat tears rolling down Peter’s cheeks.

  “What an unhappy man,” she said. “I hope he cheered up.”

  “Sadly not,” the Cat replied. “But he’s not really a part of this story.”

  “There was a drawing of you there,” Alice continued, Peter already forgotten. “How odd that you are known in my world too.”

  “Not odd at all,” the Cat replied. “I’m known everywhere.”

  Alice eyed the closed door, then curled her tiny fists on her hips and tapped her toe. “That wasn’t a very good choice at all. No Vasteous Shield there.”

  “Didn’t you see any shields? Anywhere?” the puss asked.

  “No. Unless the Vasteous Shield looks nothing like any shield I’ve ever seen. May I try another?”

  “A very good idea.”

  Alice marched up to the second door. “How about this one?”

  This time the door opened onto the nave of a vast abbey. White marble statues of great men peered down at the pews filled with the living dressed in mourning black. Candlelight danced in their moist eyes.

  “Why do you keep showing me sad things?” Alice whispered. She wrinkled her nose at the choking aroma of incense.

  The Union Flag hung above the benches where the choir sat. Men in military uniform lined up at the back, medals on almost every chest.

  “Have I seen this church before?” Alice asked. “I think I have.”

  The Cat prowled onto the threshold. “Westminster Abbey, that’s its name. And a girl very like you came here many a time when her father was headmaster at Westminster School. In fact, she got married here.”

  “But not me?”

  “Not you, exactly.”

  Alice leaned forward, squinting. “Why, that’s the woman we just saw, in the shop. But she looks much younger,” she said, pointing. “Is that the one you’re talking about? The girl who got married here?”

  The woman was hunched on the front row, her hand grasped by a man with a handlebar moustache. He looked quite handsome, Alice thought, but his face was like chalk and he stared through the choir to the altar without blinking.

  The organ boomed and the congregation lurched to its feet. “Abide with me,” they sang. “Fast falls the eventide… the darkness deepens.” Here and there, sobbing punctured the full-throated singing.

  “I can’t see any shields here either,” Alice said.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” the Cat replied.

  “Why is that lady crying? Is this what made her so angry in the shop?”

  “A part of it. People are made of many things.” The Cat licked his paw. “She’s mourning her sons. Alan and Rex were killed in a war. The Great War, they call it, although wars are not great, and it was a poor name for this war for other reasons.”

  “Are all the people here mourning sons?”

  “All here, and many more besides.”

  “Why do you show me the saddest things?”

 
; “Her name is Alice, too,” the Cat said, as if that was any kind of answer.

  “She looks nothing like me, though.”

  “She looks nothing like you. But I look like a cat, and I am nothing like that. You do resemble her sister, or so I’m told.”

  The hymn droned on.

  “Alice’s children have always been very important to her.” The Cat’s tail flicked from side to side. “Indeed, all children are of importance to Alice. Their innocence particularly.”

  “She sounds like a wonderful lady.”

  “She is.”

  “Would she like me, I wonder?”

  “Without a doubt.”

  The grief hung in the air so thickly, Alice decided she couldn’t bear it anymore. “No, there’s no shield here,” she said, thrusting her chin into the air, “so let’s not waste any more time. And from now on I would like to see only happy things. Sunshine. And puppy dogs. And a big slice of cake, covered in icing, served on a china plate in front of a roaring fire.”

  “Your wish is my command.”

  The second door swung shut and the Cat danced to the third and final door.

  “It has to be this one,” Alice said. “I shall look extra carefully.”

  Behind the third door, a beagle puppy bounded around a large, sunlit bedroom.

  The Cat glanced at Alice who nodded, pleased. “Understandably, I don’t approve,” the Cat said. “Dogs can’t be trusted, and I’m not wholly sure of their reason for existing. But you’re welcome.”

  It was a girls’ room, Alice could see, and there were three beds. One cherubic doll lay spreadeagled on the rug in the centre of the floor. Another one, with a missing eye and straw bursting from its side, was propped up against a pillow on one of the beds. But they were all the toys she could see. Alice turned up her nose. It was actually quite unwelcoming. Not as nice as her room.

  The bedroom door crashed open and three girls rushed in. The beagle raced around their feet, yapping. Before the third girl kicked the door shut, Alice heard a furious din, a man and woman arguing somewhere downstairs.

  The eldest girl stormed to the window, then spun back and jabbed a finger at the middle child. “This is all your fault.”