by Lotus Rose
Alice chuckled at the very idea. “Well of course I won’t, but why exactly did you want to tell me that?”
The girl sighed. “Listen. You’re still new here. But I know…from personal experience. This place, the creatures and people here can be very cruel, and over time, it can, I mean it will really tear you down, make you start thinking negative thoughts. You might start thinking about getting revenge, hurting those who hurt you…”
Alice giggled. “Oh, that’s silly! You can only get negative thoughts if you allow yourself to. That won’t happen to me, because I always stay positive.”
“I’m sorry, but all their cruelty, over time, it can get to anyone. It happened to me.”
Alice frowned. “Well did you think positive thoughts?”
“I did for a long time, until I didn’t.”
She frowned more. “But did you look on the bright side?”
“I did, but then after all those years, the bright side disappeared, and it became all dark side.”
Her smile wavered a bit, then reasserted itself. “But did you tell yourself everything was going to be okay?”
“Yes, I did everything you do, but still, over time, I let my heart grow black. And now I regret it.”
Alice’s mouth was twerking as she thought. “Well if you did all that, then I don’t know how you could possibly let your heart grow black. You must have done something wrong. Did you try turning your frown upside down?”
“Yes, but after so many years of people being mean to me, the dark side took me by surprise. That’s why I came here. I want to tell you, that over time, all the ways you keep the dark thoughts away might not be enough. Don’t always assume you can keep away the darkness on your own.”
Alice frowned, but then smiled. “Aww, don’t worry. Everything will be okay.”
“No! Listen to me! Things might not all be okay! They could turn out very very bad! I was once like you! I didn’t take the darkness seriously, and now…” She pointed at the splotches of reddish-brown on her dress. “This is the blood of boys whose hearts I ripped out after causing them to love me.”
Alice frowned, but this time her smile did not reappear. “That sounds mean.”
“It was mean! Because I let my heart grow black! Listen, you must promise me, to do whatever you can. You must fight it, don’t you understand? You must fight the darkness! Never let your guard down!”
Alice nodded and her lower lip began to tremble. She felt like she was going to cry, because this lady was scaring her.
The girl said, “Good. I’ve got your attention. I know the citizens of Wonderland can be cruel, but never let their cruelty wear off on you. Never give in to hatred, never let them get you down.”
In a whisper, Alice said, “I won’t. They just don’t know any better. I will teach them to be kind.”
The girl laughed sadly. “Just promise me you’ll never let your heart grow black. You gotta do whatever it takes.”
Alice’s eyes went wide. “I promise. And those guys don’t get to me. The meaner they get, the nicer I get! I’ll kill them with kindness!”
Again the girl laughed sadly. “That’s the spirit. I wish I could do more than just warn you, like provide you magic protection or something, but all I can do is use my own words and experience.”
“Aw, don’t feel bad,” said Alice.
The girl softly shook her head. Meanwhile the guard card was regaining consciousness and slowly figuring out his condition.
The girl said, “Now I know it’s your birthday, because I had to wait till today to speak to you, because of how the timelines interact, so I brought you this.” She reached into her iron box and pulled out a chocolate cupcake with a candle stuck in the top.
“Ooh, is that for me?” said Alice. “I thought everyone had forgotten my birthday.”
“I could never forget,” said the girl just before she struck a match and lit the candle.
The guard card struggled and shouted, “Who are you? Let me out!”
Alice watched as the girl set the birthday cupcake upon her desk, and then Alice lost control and burst into tears. “Thank you so much!”
“You’re welcome sweetie.” She set two keys next to the cupcake.
“Halt! Surrender yourself!” called the guard card.
“Blow out your candle,” said the girl gently.
Alice closed her eyes, made her wish, then blew out the candle. She expected it to go out, but then relight, just like the candles the citizens of Wonderland tormented her with during her unhappy unbirthday parties.
But when she opened her eyes again, the candle was extinguished and unleashing gray smoke.
The girl was walking away.
“It’s your birthday?” said the guard card. He sounded remorseful.
“Where are you going?” said Alice.
The girl’s voice sounded choked up. “I’m sorry. I can’t stay.” She picked up her things, put the gauntlet back on. “Happy birthday.” She began walking toward the door.
“Lady?” Alice said.
She turned her head to look backward. “Yes?”
“I’m real sorry your heart turned black.”
“Thank you,” and as she turned away, Alice thought she could see tears brimming in her eyes.
And then the mysterious veiled woman was gone.
In the ballroom, all of Alice’s birthday cake had been eaten. A near riot was on the Queen of Heart’s hands because of the crowd’s outrage. Numerous humiliations and indignities of Alice had been planned for her party, and now with her nonarrival, those plans were ruined.
Alice was now extremely late, and it seemed likely that the devious urchin was intentionally choosing not to show up.
The Queen of Hearts had put on a smiling face earlier, but now she could no longer hide her rage. She was supremely offended. “How dare she ignore my invitation!” she said to no one in particular. “I even went out of my way to make her a very special card, quite separate from all the ordinary unexciting kind I gave to all the other little people.”
Next to her, Humpty Dumpty huffed. “Well, I never.” He crossed his stubby arms and turned away from her.
The Queen felt the need to defend herself. “Well, her card was special. Not boring like the kind for the plebeians like you! I went through a lot of trouble making that card!”
Humpty huffed louder and turn away even further.
The Queen once again felt the need to defend herself. “Well, I did! It was lined with real gold and covered in purple glitter, in the shape of a heart. I had my court’s best calligrapher write the note upon it with all sorts of swirly doodads.”
“Like this?” said the March Hare.
The Queen turned to see that he was holding Alice’s invitation card in his hand. He explained, “It was setting atop a table next to some escargot.”
The Queen snapped her fingers. “Ooh! Now I remember setting the card there. Why, I must have forgotten to send the card off…but errr,” in a loud voice she proclaimed, “But I did it on purpose, for if a girl can’t be bothered to inquire about and find out when her own birthday party is, then she doesn’t deserve to attend hers at all. So, Her Majesty doth declare she is greatly offended by this Alice’s non-attendance, and for this offense, Her Majesty declares that Alice shan’t be allowed to any more of her birthday parties!”
“Hear hear!” the call rose up from the crowd.
Of the two keys the mysterious veiled girl had left upon Alice’s desk, one was the key to her own chains, which the guard card usually carried. The other key turned out to be for the handcuffs bounding the guard card.
The guard card was quite distraught after Alice unlocked him.
He whimpered, “If the Queen of Hearts finds out I was sleeping on my post, she’ll have me beheaded for sure!”
He sounded so miserable that Alice took pity on him. “Don’t worry. I shan’t tell.”
“Oh thank you, thank you!”
“Yes,” Alice said, as sh
e used the key to rechain herself to her desk. “As a matter of fact, let’s not mention anything about this incident to anyone, shall we?”
“Oh, absolutely not. It shall be our little secret.”
Alice tossed the key to the guard. “I only ask one thing of you…”
“Yes, what, Miss Alice?”
“Eat half of my birthday cupcake? It’s lonely to celebrate one’s birthday alone. Everyone else seems to have forgotten.”
“Certainly, Miss Alice. It’s the least I can do.”
The crowd was gathered outside the Queen of Heart’s ballroom. In front of them was a scarecrow that someone had placed a blond wig on.
The Queen of Hearts stood beside the scarecrow as the crowd shouted, “Burn the witch! Burn the witch!”
The Queen of Hearts was holding a blazing torch. “That’s right!” she called out to the crowd. “This is what we think of stuck up girls who are so conceited that they can’t even show up to their own birthday party! But we are no longer gonna put up with little stuck up Alice anymore! This is what we do to girls like you!” She pressed the torch to the mannequin and it caught aflame. “We burn you in effigy! Damn you, Alice! Damn you straight to hell!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Stolen Tarts
When Alice was 7 (before she arrived in Wonderland)
The Queen of Hearts was walking through the hallway feeling quite puzzled and annoyed. She’d gotten a message about an “urgent matter” but when she’d rushed to the throne room, no one seemed to know who sent the message or what it was about, so the Queen decided to go back to her ballroom.
“Someone’s head shall roll for this screw up, that’s for certain,” she muttered to herself. She had been quite enjoying herself before she had been called away. This distraction was the second thing that had gone wrong with the party so far—the other thing was that the Jabberwock had misread his invitation and showed up an hour early, then left before the ball even began!
It was a masquerade ball and she was wearing a mask. Of course, everyone knew it was her, due to her elaborate dress. No one was allowed to have a better dress than her, after all. The only dress splendid enough to be comparable to this one was…the original version of this dress. She’d unfortunately torn it along the sleeve and so she’d had a duplicate made, which she was wearing now.
Come to think of that torn dress, she’d seemed to have misplaced it earlier this morning, but what did it matter, really.
She was approaching the doors to the ballroom, besides which stood two frog guards wearing powdered wigs.
“Welcome back, Your Majesty,” said one of them.
“Shush!” she said. “I’m supposed to be in disguise, remember?”
“Of course My Queen.”
That’s when the door suddenly flung open to reveal someone wearing the Queen’s duplicate dress running out of the ballroom. Since the person wore a mask, it was impossible to tell who it was.
Behind the person came the yell, “Stop! Thief!”
The person was looking behind him or herself as they ran, not looking where they were going. They turned their head forward just in time for the Queen of Hearts to land a solid punch across the person’s face, knocking him or her flat on their back and seemingly unconscious.
One of the guard cards ran up to the prone person and pointed a spear at him/her.
The Queen said, “What is going on here?”
The card said, “That impostor stole Your Highness’s tarts!”
Other guards arrived on the scene and handcuffed the thief. Behind them, the crowd of partygoers watched, whilst whispering amongst themselves.
“Who is it!?” demanded the Queen.
A guard lowered the mask to reveal that it was the Knave of Hearts! He began to come to.
She said, “Did he eat any of my tarts? Guard, check his breath!”
A guard squeezed the Knave’s cheeks and sniffed his breath. “I don’t smell any tarts, Your Highness.”
“Thank goodness! Search him!”
Now the Knave spoke. “I didn’t steal the tarts. They were already gone when I lifted the lid!”
As the guards searched him, the Queen furiously said, “Are you telling me that your defense is that you tried to steal my tarts, but someone else beat you to it?”
“Yes Your Highness. It is the truth!”
The guard cards had found no tarts. “They’re not here, Your Highness.”
She had been looking forward to eating those delectable tarts in front of the crowd while everyone watched with envy. She’d set the tarts upon a table in the middle of the ballroom beneath a metal dome with a sign next to it that read: “These tarts are the Queen of Heart’s and you shan’t have none, or ye shall be executed.” The fact that they’d been stolen was a tragedy. With overwhelming sadness, the Queen looked to the guard. “Are my tarts truly gone? All of them?”
“I’m afraid so, Your Highness.”
She turned red with fury and pointed at the Knave. “Off with his head!”
“But I didn’t take them!” the Knave said.
“But you tried! You dressed up like me and you caused the distraction, yes? You sent a false urgent message?”
“Yes, but if you think upon it with Your Highness’s obviously superior intellect, you will realize that I actually committed no crime.”
“Yes, I’m much more highly intelligent than all the plebeians.” She thought for several long moments. “Then you shall be given a trial. I am still not convinced you didn’t steal them. But if ’tweren’t you, then who?” She glared angrily at the crowd, which visibly cringed.
She stepped up to one of the guests who seemed particularly afraid and trembling with fear—a man wearing a mask. She pressed her nose to his. “Did you steal my tarts?”
“N—no, Your High-highness.” He swallowed hard.
“I daresay you are much too nervous to not be guilty of something! Guards, off with his head! Take him away!”
Two guard cards dragged him, screaming, away.
The Queen of Hearts addressed the crowd. “Now, I shall ask each of you one by one, and have each of you executed until someone confesses!”
This caused a great deal of alarm, then everyone in the crowd began running away.
The Queen of Hearts watched and sighed. There were too many guests to be captured by her guards.
She looked down, lost in her misery. She had truly looked forward to eating those delectable tarts, but now that they were gone, it would take nearly an hour for the Cook to make her new ones.
She motioned toward the Knave. “Take him away to await his trial. And leave me alone.” Her footsteps echoed through the large room as she walked to the table where her beautiful tarts had formerly been. The dome lay on the ground. The plate was empty. There were only a few crumbs.
She took off her mask and looked about to make sure she wasn’t being watched. Sadly, she lifted the plate to her mouth.
And sadly she licked the crumbs.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Knight
When Alice was 8
Alice was in her usual place when she wasn’t running her rounds—in her hut, chained to her desk. At that particular moment, she was doodling on a piece of paper a picture of her punching the Cheshire Cat’s floating head, when the door flung open with such a jolt against the wall that Alice shrieked and jumped. And even the guard card, who was usually such a sound sleeper, startled up from his nap. He did so with so much enthusiasm that the chair he sat in toppled over backward.
Alice looked in the doorway to see a knight in gleaming white armor holding a sword.
“White Knight?” she said, recognizing the armor from a previous encounter.
Meanwhile, the guard card was rolling on the floor and moaning. “Owey owey, I banged my head.”
The knight pointed his sword and with his voice muffled behind the armor of his helmet, shouted, “Off with that!” or at least that’s what Alice thought he might have said, muff
led as his utterance was.
If the knight had indeed said “off with that!” she could only surmise that he meant the guard card’s head. Perhaps that’s how he hoped to cure the headache!
The guard card’s eyes bugged out as he saw the sword pointed at him. “Uh oh!” He seemed to be looking around for his spear, which had rolled quite a distance away.
As the knight set his sword point down into the ground, Alice was hoping there wouldn’t be a fight, because then she’d be forced to free herself from her chain and reveal her secret lock pick she’d made from one of her hairpins.
The knight took off his helmet. It was indeed the same White Knight Alice had encountered when she’d first come to this magical realm several months ago.
He was an older man with a white floppy mustache. He repeated himself, “I said, ‘sorry about that’. I should have warned you before I made my dramatic entrance, good ol’ chap.”
“Who are you?” the guard card said as he was getting up.
“It’s the White Knight!” Alice said, delighted.
The Knight looked at her. “I much prefer the term Light Knight now. It’s much less limiting, don’t you think?”
“If you say so, Light Knight. So what brings you here? Have you come to rescue me?”
The card had retrieved his weapon at this point. He pointed it at the Knight, but seemed hesitant to interrupt their conversation.
The Light Knight chuckled. “Ah, I would love to rescue you, my little damsel in distress. But rescue you from what?”
Alice lifted the chain in her hands, shrugged her shoulders and bugged her eyes. “Do you not see I am being kept captive? I am a damsel in distress, as you have said, being kept against my will here in Wonderland.”
“Oh, balderdash,” said the Knight. “What little girl wouldn’t want to be in Wonderland? Why it is a magical world of fantasy and imagination!”
Alice scowled. She rattled her chains feebly.
