Wonderland

by Marie O'Regan

  Alice cupped a hand over her mouth and whispered, “Who are they?”

  “The Liddell sisters,” the Cat purred. “Lorina is fourteen. She has a hunger for all sorts of things, and not just cake. The youngest is Edith. She’s nine. Quite bright, by the standards of children, but a little shy.”

  “Oh. She looks just like me.”

  “She does, doesn’t she?”

  Alice watched the tears bubble in Edith’s eyes. “Not again.” She glared at the Cat. “One puppy dog is really not enough.”

  “The middle child is Alice.”

  Alice frowned and studied the third girl. She had brown hair in a bob and a cherubic face, just like the doll. “Now I can see what game you’re playing, Cheshire Puss,” Alice said, throwing up her hands. “This is the woman in the bookshop, and the one in the abbey. As a girl.”

  “Three as one.” The Cat grinned wider. “You are a clever girl. But don’t call me Cheshire Puss. I have claws. Very sharp ones.”

  The other Alice pursed her lips, trying to hold back her tears. “It’s not my fault.”

  Lorina snatched the straw doll off the bed and flung it at her sister’s head. “Of course it’s you. Mother and Father are fighting. Because Charles asked them for your hand in marriage.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  Edith began to sob as she watched her sisters fighting.

  “Oh, stop being a crybaby,” Lorina spat.

  “You’re only acting like this because you want to be Mrs Dodgson,” Edith said through a trail of snot.

  Lorina harrumphed, but didn’t answer, which Alice thought was answer enough.

  Downstairs, the father bellowed, “Eleven years old!”

  “Eleven years old?” Alice repeated. “That can’t be right.” She felt gripped by that scene as if she was sitting in the stalls at the pantomime just before Christmas.

  “You play up to him,” Lorina continued. “All those photographs he took of you. You know the ones I mean—”

  Alice Liddell let out a piercing scream, screwed up her face and clapped her hands on her ears. “I don’t want to hear about that! I don’t want to think about that!”

  “Eleven! Years! Old!” thrummed through the door.

  “He took photographs of all of us,” Edith whispered.

  “Yes, but Alice is his favourite,” Lorina sneered. “He even made up that stupid story for her. And dedicated it to her! Alice, Alice, Alice!”

  “It’s not a stupid story!” Alice Liddell said. “It’s my place. Wonderland is… my place. And… and I can go there…”

  Lorina snorted. “Keep spinning your little lies, Alice, why don’t you? I suppose everything is Charles’s fault? Quite why he chose to fall in love with you, I’ll never know. Why don’t you admit that you lured him on?” She stamped her foot. After a moment’s thought, she eyed her younger sister and said in a voice dripping with acid, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Mother and Father got a divorce. Because of you.”

  Alice Liddell slumped on the bed next to Edith and began to sob uncontrollably.

  “ELEVEN! YEARS! OLD!”

  “You’re cruel,” Edith said, looking out of the corner of her eye at her elder sister. She ducked, expecting another missile, but nothing came her way. “Besides, who would want to be a vicar’s wife? All that praying. Cold pews. Sermons morning, noon and night, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  Lorina bit her lip, her shoulders sagging. “Mother and Father won’t get a divorce, will they?” she said, almost to herself.

  “They’re just angry with Charles,” Edith said. “Father told him not to come around again. No more trips in the boat on the river.”

  Now Lorina began to cry, but silently, her shoulders heaving.

  “It’s not Alice’s fault,” Edith pressed. “You know that.”

  Alice dried her eyes. “He wanted some nice photos, that was all. That’s what he said. To look at, so he could think of me while he was dreaming up another story.”

  That wasn’t the right thing to say. Lorina glared at her.

  “Well, there’ll be no more stories now, will there?” the eldest girl said. “Wonderland is gone forever.”

  There was so much crying at this remark, that Alice clapped her hands over her ears and thrust the third door shut.

  “That was yet another waste of time,” she said, kicking up little whorls of dust. “This isn’t a very good game if you can’t win it.”

  “It’s not really the kind of game that you win,” the Cat purred. “It’s more like a game where you learn.”

  “How boring. This sounds like those diversions that the governess suggests in the schoolroom when she wants you to remember the capital of Mozambique or how to conjugate a verb.”

  “Nevertheless, it is the only game we have. So I suggest we play it.”

  “But we’re done,” Alice protested. “And there were definitely no shields anywhere.”

  “Really? I believe I saw a shield once every door was open.”

  “Now you’re teasing me.” Alice narrowed her eyes. A notion flitted across her mind and she looked back at the three doors. “What exactly is the Vasteous Shield?”

  “All will be revealed. Or not. It depends very much on whether you’re paying attention.”

  Alice stamped her foot. Perhaps this was the real entertainment here—to make her seem foolish.

  “Why don’t you try the fourth door?” the Cat asked. He swayed among the silver birches to where another door stood. This one was white.

  “You said there were only three doors.”

  “Exactly. This is the fourth of three.”

  “Only a mad person would say something like that,” Alice said, following along behind.

  The puss looked back at her, a little snootily, Alice thought. “I was sure we’d long since established that we’re all mad here.”

  “I’m not mad,” Alice replied. And the moment the words had left her mouth she had the strangest feeling that she’d said them before.

  “You must be, or you wouldn’t have come here.”

  Alice shivered, though the afternoon was as warm as any she’d known. “I’m not mad,” she whispered to herself.

  “That’s the spirit. Now, shall we proceed?” The Cat perched in front of the fourth door of three.

  Now Alice felt her arms turn to gooseflesh. “I’d rather not,” she replied. She wasn’t quite sure why, but that white door pulled her belly into knots.

  “You don’t really have a choice,” the Cat replied. His words sounded menacing, but he was still grinning. “The only way out of here is through the door.”

  “I’d rather not leave, thank you very much.” Alice pushed her chin up, which she’d found was an acceptable way to let people know that she wouldn’t be swayed. “This is a perfectly nice summer’s day, and I would like to enjoy it with a walk, or perhaps a picnic.”

  “If you want to stay here, you’ll still have to go through that door.”

  Now she felt the Cat was looking at her in a manner that he had never done before. Perhaps a little sorrowful, though why that should be, she didn’t know.

  “Very well!” she replied, as indignantly as she could manage. “But… I don’t really want to. I’m scared.”

  “I understand. It is frightening. But it’s necessary.”

  Alice reached out a trembling hand. For a moment, she let it hang there and then she pushed open the fourth door.

  Once again it was a bedroom. But this time it was a grand old thing, she thought with a nod, much grander than her own. The curtains were drawn and the only light came from the stub of a guttering candle beside the bed. In the wavering light, she glimpsed a dressing table covered with glinting glass bottles of perfume, jars of cream and a silver-handled hairbrush. How odd, she thought. The mirrors had been covered.

  “And no Vasteous Shield here, either,” she said.

  “But I can see it.”

  Alice looked round. The Cheshire Cat wa
s staring directly at her, twin candles flickering in the depths of those emerald eyes.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” She looked away rather more quickly than she intended. “Oh!” She clasped her hands together.

  At first she hadn’t seen it, so still it was, but a figure was lying under the thick covers. Arms that seemed little more than skin on bone stretched out beside the body. A head poked above the eiderdown, face like a frozen millpond, hair silver as moonlight. Sleeping, or so it seemed.

  “She must be a hundred and fifty years old,” Alice whispered.

  “Years are only years, and that’s no way to measure a life,” the Cat purred.

  “I can hear you. Step forward.” A voice like autumn leaves.

  The Cheshire Cat prowled across the threshold and curled up at the foot of the bed, still licking his teeth in that broad, broad grin.

  “Oh, it’s you. I wondered if I would see you again,” the old woman said. “Always vanishing when I needed you most.”

  “Vanishing?” the Cat said. “I’ve always been with you.”

  “Are you alone? I thought I heard another voice.”

  “Only you and me, as always, Alice.”

  The puss faded away, beginning with the tip of its tail, until only his smile hung like a wisp of candle smoke. And then that too was gone. Alice blinked, and when she focused again, the Cat was perched on her belly. He stared at her, and she stared at him.

  “You like your games,” she said.

  “If we didn’t have games, what kind of life would this be?”

  “I’m glad you came to see me one last time, here at the end.”

  “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

  “I didn’t know cats read Seneca?”

  “Cats do many things when you’re not looking.” He licked the back of his paw, but kept those shimmering eyes fixed on her. “Are you ready?”

  “For it all to be over?” Alice let out a deep, juddering sigh. “It’s been a long life, I suppose. And I have as many regrets as you can heap up in that time. My biggest… I wish I’d been kinder to Peter Llewellyn Davies. I might have been able to help him.” She paused. “And he, me. Did he ever…?”

  “He threw himself in front of a tube train. Or he will do. I find it hard to get these things straight.”

  “Oh.” A tiny sound.

  “I don’t say that to upset you. There was nothing you could do. And do you really think he could do anything for you?”

  A long silence, then: “No.” Her fingernails clawed at the eiderdown. “An escape hatch for reality, that’s what he said he wanted. I’m sure he never found Neverland again. And I never found Wonderland. But, you know, I looked everywhere. Searching, searching, searching. In every rabbit hole. In every mirror, until I became sick of my own reflection. That’s all I ever wanted. To see you again, and all the others, in a world of nonsense, that made more sense than this world.”

  “Perhaps you were looking in the wrong places.”

  “Where is it, then?”

  “Where is Wonderland? Everywhere. You walk above it, and below it. But most of all it’s inside you.”

  Alice felt tears well up in her eyes. “I’ve been searching for that place all my life. Yearning for the magic. For peace.”

  The Cat said nothing.

  Alice closed her eyes, lost to a powerful vision of brilliant colours that was nothing like the world she knew. Of Hatters and March Hares, Caterpillars and Mock Turtles. “I can’t remember what happened.” To her ears, her voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well. “I can only remember Wonderland. I was there. I was there? I thought… perhaps… it was a dream. That I’d brought everything to life in my head.”

  “We are all the figments of someone’s imagination,” the Cat said, in a gentle voice that she hadn’t heard before.

  “To taste that once,” she continued, the visions still playing out in her mind’s eye, “to see something so joyous, you can never appreciate this world again. It’s too harsh, too miserable, too dark. Too much pain and suffering. This world is supposed to make sense, but in the end you realise it’s all nonsense. Where harm comes to those who don’t deserve it. Who can’t protect themselves. I needed Wonderland then. And I’ve needed it ever since. I think we all do.” She choked back a sob. “But I could never find my way to it again.”

  “Well, you don’t have to worry about that now,” the Cat said in a bright voice.

  Alice eased open her eyes to look at him, to see that grin. But all that floated in front of her was the deepest, darkest black.

  “Peter… Peter…” She heard her voice crack, grow thin. “…‘to die will be an awfully big adventure’, that was always his message…”

  For a while she heard only the silence that came after a bell had been struck. Then…

  “Oh,” Alice said. “I feel—”

  “Reborn?”

  Alice felt as light as a feather. Like she was ten years old again, before the summer faded. Somehow she was standing at the end of the bed, and the golden glow of an early July afternoon flooded through the open door.

  “Come along, little girl,” the Cat said, dancing ahead of her. “Wonderland beckons, and there’s an awfully big adventure waiting for the both of us.”

  The Cat began to vanish into the light, and this time it was his grin that disappeared first.

  In a Wonderland they lie,

  Dreaming as the days go by,

  Dreaming as the summers die:

  Ever drifting down the stream—

  Lingering in the golden gleam—

  Life, what is it but a dream?

  Revolution in Wonder

  JANE YOLEN

  The hounds caught White Rabbit

  in a very long chase.

  Fought for his watch,

  which one kept for his mate.

  Humpty was cannonballed

  off the high wall.

  The Duchess cried foul.

  The dogs ate the yolk cold.

  Old Caterpillar was skinned

  and then fried.

  Tasted like chicken,

  the sergeants agreed.

  The Tweedles were knotted

  in a sack for the Jabber.

  Left on the field.

  Beamish Boy swept up later.

  A tribunal then sentenced

  both Queens and the Knave.

  The executioner’s sword

  was covered in salve.

  Hare turned state’s witness,

  but Hatter had fled,

  off to Amerika

  where he was feted.

  Dormouse carved up

  for an afternoon tea.

  His bones into toothpicks.

  The last thing he saw?

  Alice, in armor,

  who publicly wrung

  the neck of Flamingo

  who had done her wrong.

  Dodgson was hanged.

  where all Wonder could look.

  The world celebrated

  one less Carroll book.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Jane Yolen, called “The Hans Christian Andersen of America” by Newsweek magazine, is the author of over 376 books ranging from children’s books to poetry collections, novels, cookbooks, short-story collections, graphic novels, non-fiction, and even a verse memoir of her immigrant family. She lives in both America’s New England and St Andrews in Scotland. She writes a poem a day and sends them out to over a thousand subscribers.

  Robert Shearman has written five short-story collections, and between them they have won the World Fantasy Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Edge Hill Readers Prize, and three British Fantasy Awards. He began his career in the theatre, and was resident dramatist at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter, and regular writer for Alan Ayckbourn at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough; his plays have won the Sunday Times Playwriting Award, the World Drama Trust Award, and the Guinness Award for Ingenuity in assoc
iation with the Royal National Theatre. A regular writer for BBC Radio, his own interactive drama series The Chain Gang has won two Sony Awards. But he is probably best known for his work on Doctor Who, bringing back the Daleks for the BAFTA-winning first series in an episode nominated for a Hugo Award. His latest book, We All Hear Stories in the Dark, is to be released by PS Publishing next year.

  M.R. Carey is a novelist, comic book writer, and screenwriter. He has worked for both DC and Marvel Comics, on titles such as Lucifer, The Unwritten, and X-Men. He wrote the movie adaptation for his novel The Girl with All the Gifts. He is also the writer of the Felix Castor novels, and (along with his wife Linda and their daughter Louise) of two fantasy novels, The City of Silk and Steel and The House of War and Witness.

  Genevieve Cogman is a British author of fantasy literature and role-playing games. She has an MSc in Statistics with Medical Applications. She works for the NHS and lives in the North of England. Her hobbies include patchwork, knitting, and sleeping in at weekends.

  UK number-one bestseller, Cavan Scott is an author and comics writer who regularly contributes to such popular universes as Star Wars, Doctor Who, Pacific Rim, Warhammer 40,000, Star Trek, and many, many more. He has two Sherlock Holmes adventures published by Titan Books—The Patchwork Devil and Cry of the Innocents. Find him at www.cavanscott.com.

  New Zealand-born, Australian resident Juliet Marillier is the author of twenty-one novels, including the Sevenwaters and Blackthorn & Grim series, plus assorted short fiction. Juliet is a member of OBOD (the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids). Her lifelong love of mythology and folklore is a major influence on her writing. Juliet’s new novel, The Harp of Kings, first book in the Warrior Bards series, comes out in September 2019. When not writing, Juliet tends to a small crew of rescue dogs. More at www.julietmarillier.com.

  Jonathan Green is a writer of speculative fiction, with more than seventy books to his name. Well known for his contributions to the Fighting Fantasy range of adventure gamebooks, he has also written fiction for such diverse properties as Doctor Who, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, Sonic the Hedgehog, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Moshi Monsters, LEGO, Judge Dredd, and Robin of Sherwood. His work has been translated into at least nine languages. He is the creator of the Pax Britannia series for Abaddon Books and has written eight novels, and numerous short stories, set within this steampunk universe, featuring the debonair dandy adventurer Ulysses Quicksilver. Steampunk and dieselpunk have left their mark on his latest gamebook publications as well, Alice’s Nightmare in Wonderland, The Wicked Wizard of Oz, and NEVERLAND—Here Be Monsters! He is the author of an increasing number of non-fiction titles, including the award-winning YOU ARE THE HERO—A History of Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, which now runs to two volumes, and he has recently taken to editing and compiling short-story anthologies, including the critically acclaimed GAME OVER, SHARKPUNK, and Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu. To find out more about his current projects visit www.JonathanGreenAuthor.com and follow him on Twitter @jonathangreen.