Looking Glass

by Christina Henry

  Elizabeth considered this. If it was that sort of trap then it could benefit her. A policeman would clearly be able to see that she was a daughter of the New City and didn’t belong here. He might even help her get home safely.

  But it could be another kind of lure, and there might be a different kind of person waiting with a net.

  “Well, no one is going to capture me, even if so,” Elizabeth said. “I won’t let them.”

  Still she hesitated. Her heels dragged across the ground like the cobblestones were made of molasses.

  I thought you wanted it, Elizabeth. I thought you were going to open the jar and put it in your pocket and make it your own.

  The idea didn’t seem so wonderful, all of a sudden. Maybe it was because she’d left the mouse behind in a huff, and now she regretted it. Maybe it was because something about the way the purple thing waved and winked made her feel ill. The calling song had turned sour and she wished she could stop up her ears so she couldn’t hear it.

  Now she was right up to the table, and all she had to do was reach out and pick up the jar. Her hand didn’t seem to want to move, however, and she wasn’t inclined to force it. Elizabeth crouched down so she was eye level with the jar.

  “It’s not a jewel at all,” she said.

  It was a butterfly, a little purple butterfly fluttering around in desperation inside the jar. It beat its wings against the glass, darting up and down in the limited space available.

  Elizabeth knew she should have felt some sympathy for the insect. She was fond of butterflies, and the sight of one so clearly longing for freedom should have had her opening the jar without a second thought.

  But now that she’d seen it the butterfly repulsed her. She had nothing in her stomach but still she felt her gorge rise. All she wished for now was to be away from the horrid little thing. It had tempted her, distracted her from her purpose. Elizabeth glanced up at the sky and thought it might be darkening. She needed to be back home in the New City before night fell.

  Elizabeth spun away from the table, determined not to be led astray by such nonsense again.

  “Where do you think you’re off to?” a voice said. It was a lazy, drawling voice, the kind of voice that you might say was too slow to mean harm. If you said that you’d be wrong, because there was a ripple of menace under those seven words, a dangerous compulsion that made Elizabeth turn back.

  “You!” she said, for there stood the bird-man who’d so fascinated her that she’d followed him from her safe place to this dangerous one, all for the promise of seeing what he looked like.

  She oughtn’t have done it, she realized that now. It wasn’t simply that she’d been lured to the Old City. It was also because this was no amusing chimera, no child’s playmate who would chirp at her and make her laugh. That, of course, was what she’d been thinking would happen. Elizabeth had imagined a kind of chicken’s face crossed with a man’s, with a silly little orange beak and orange eyes and a bright red crest that would flop around when he talked to her.

  The reality was not connected to this silly fantasy in the least. First, the voice didn’t go with the face at all. It was certainly a bird’s face and not a man’s, for all that the voice couldn’t be anything but a man’s. The head was sort of oval-shaped with a high crown and it was all covered in white and grey feathers. In place of a nose there was a medium-sized yellow beak with curved tips that met one another at the end. Those tips were sharp and cruel, made for grabbing and rending.

  His eyes were bright and cold and blue with black pupils—a person’s eyes, eyes that weighted and assessed. Elizabeth’s gaze slid over the man’s clothes. His arms looked like a man’s arms, not wings, though little bits of feather stuck through the jacket sleeves like the down in her quilt at home.

  At the end of his sleeves Elizabeth saw that one hand was a regular human hand—a hand that appeared just as strong and cruel as his beak—and the other hand was a bird’s grasping claw.

  “You’re not going to run off now, are you?” he said, and the long lazy stretch of his syllables made Elizabeth shrink away. “After all the trouble I’ve had to bring you here in the first place.”

  Elizabeth knew she shouldn’t talk to him, shouldn’t stand there frozen like a silly rabbit who’d seen a fox, but that troublesome streak of curiosity made her say, “Why? Why me?”

  Underneath the “why me?” was something else, something that seemed like, Why me and not some other girl, couldn’t you have taken some other girl? And Elizabeth felt her cheeks burn in shame for she should never, ever wish her own misfortune on someone else, not even for a moment.

  The bird-man didn’t seem to notice this, for he clicked his beak and made a rough noise that could have passed for laughter in another place.

  “Why you? Why do you think?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. She didn’t seem capable of any other movement. She certainly didn’t feel like a lovely creature now, a creature of bone and gold and flame. She felt like a soft little girl caught in a hunter’s net.

  “What do you think is in that jar?” the bird-man asked.

  “A . . . a butterfly,” Elizabeth said, stumbling over her words.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “No I don’t what?”

  “Don’t think it’s a butterfly. You know it isn’t a butterfly. You can feel that it isn’t, can’t you?” The bird-man glared at her with such furious expectation that she could only nod.

  “I want that jar open. And you’re the girl to open it for me.”

  He was coming closer now, looming over her, reaching out with that clawed bird-hand and she felt more helpless than she’d felt all day, unable to run or scream or even set him on fire. The claw closed around her wrist—cold and scaly and tight like a wire.

  It was so alien that she didn’t even try to pull away. A deep shock radiated from his touch, a shock that froze her muscles, even seemed to stop her blood flowing.

  Think, Elizabeth, think. You don’t know what’s in that jar but you don’t want it open so you have to get away.

  “Wh-why can’t you open it yourself?” Her teeth were chattering and her voice was a tiny thing, a mouse squeak in the dark.

  “You think that’s just a regular sort of seal on that jar? That jar was closed by a Magician, and only a Magician can open it,” the bird-man said. His beak clicked between each word, a sound that was uncomfortably like the ticking of a clock.

  Tick-tock goes the clock and so flies the time. You have to get away before he makes you do something you don’t want to do because when that butterfly comes out it won’t be a butterfly anymore.

  “So get some o-other M-Magician,” Elizabeth said through her chattering teeth. “Wh-why should I b-be the one?”

  “You’re a very stupid little girl, aren’t you? Why would anyone be interested in you except for one reason? You are the very image of her, after all.”

  He seemed to smile then, though Elizabeth didn’t see how with that beak, but he made a kind of sly smirk that caused Elizabeth’s back teeth to grind. She hated the sort of grown-up who acted like they knew everything and that she was a fool simply because she was young.

  How could she help being young, after all? She was certain that when she got older she would know more things—perhaps all of the things there were to know—but she hadn’t had the time to do so yet.

  Getting angry about the bird-man’s smirking face seemed to calm her. His cruel grip on her wrist hadn’t lessened, and she still couldn’t see how she was to escape, but she felt better able to think it all through. She only needed to think faster.

  “What, didn’t your parents tell you about Alice? How you are just a tiny version of the girl they lost to a Rabbit?”

  Elizabeth remembered tripping down the stairs in her new dress that morning—was it really that morning? It seemed like it was one hundred years ago�
�and her mother’s face was so white as she whispered, “Alice.”

  “Alice, who wandered too far and got lost, just like you. I wonder what they’ll do when you don’t come home. You were supposed to fill in her space. Perhaps they’ll have another golden-haired Alice to fill in your space.”

  No, I’m not just a placeholder for Alice. I’m not. I’m not.

  “But Alice was a little too clever for that Rabbit. He marked her but she escaped, and then she and her hatchet man made him fall down like a domino. Him and the Caterpillar and the Jabberwock. They all fell down, one by one.”

  Elizabeth’s attention snagged on one word, that very funny word. “The Jabberwock?”

  “Beware the Jabberwock, that’s what they used to say. And he made the streets run with blood. Until little lost Alice decided she didn’t want to be lost anymore and put him in that jar.”

  Little lost Alice decided she didn’t want to be lost anymore. Somehow Elizabeth had gotten the impression that Alice was a broken thing, not someone to be admired. But then she remembered the Voice telling her that Alice “made it all fall down.”

  I don’t want to be lost anymore, either. And I don’t want to let the rivers run red with blood. What should I do? What should I do?

  Alice!

  The cry came from her heart and her mind, somewhere in a secret place that wanted an older sister to help her, to look out for her. Margaret was the type who tutted, never saved.

  Elizabeth didn’t know if Alice could hear her, or if she would even want to hear the little girl who slept in her bed and wore her clothes and took the love that should have been Alice’s.

  Alice! Alice, help me!

  “Since Alice is not here—and it’s a good thing for her she is not here, for there are many who’d be happy to punish her for what she’s done—I need someone of her blood to open this little jar here, you see? And that means you.”

  His grip on her wrist tightened and Elizabeth cried out. He leaned down so his beak was just a click away from nipping off her nose.

  “If you’re a good girl and you do what I ask I’ll show you the way to get home again.”

  No you won’t, Elizabeth thought. Your eyes are lying to me as much as your tongue. I can see the lie.

  “But if you’re not a good girl, if you don’t help me open this jar, then I might have to put you in a sack and take you down to the wharf. There’s lots of men there that would pay good money for a pretty little doll like you.”

  (Pretty little Alice)

  (That’s what he said to me. He grabbed my hair and held it tight and called me pretty little Alice.)

  That wasn’t Elizabeth’s voice, or Elizabeth’s thought, or even the Voice that came and went so mysteriously.

  She saw a flash of images, like a cinema reel turning very quickly. A man with long white ears, like a rabbit but still a man—not unlike Elizabeth’s own bird-man. He was snarling and his face was close to someone—close to Alice—and then one of his eyes was gone, there was a dagger in its place and a hand with broken fingernails pulling the knife away heedless of the blood.

  The last thing was a man, a painfully ordinary-looking man, a man with a black suit and a black cape and very shiny black shoes. He would have looked like he was off to the opera, except that his eyes were pools of night sparking with malice.

  And behind him Elizabeth thought she could see great wings that covered the sky, just a hint of them, a shadow playing tricks.

  Is that the Jabberwock? He didn’t look so very scary, not like the rabbit-eared man, but Elizabeth already knew that cruelty hid behind a kind face. The City Fathers were proof of that.

  (Don’t believe anything he says. He’s going to hurt you no matter what you do.)

  I know, I won’t. Elizabeth didn’t know whether she was hearing the real Alice or only an idea of her, a hope, a wish borne on the fetid breeze.

  (You need to make a wish.)

  I know how to wish, Elizabeth thought. I do it all the time.

  (And your wishes come true, don’t they?)

  The Alice-voice was very faint. Elizabeth was concentrating so hard on hearing it that she half forgot the bird-man holding her wrist. That is, until he shook her hard and made her cry out.

  “Are you listening, my little dove? You do what I want and you’ll get what you want.”

  His beak went click, click, click as he spoke. It was very difficult not to think of his beak going click, click, click and rending all of her soft bits, picking out her eyes, tearing off her nose.

  (I made a wish, too, and you can’t undo it.)

  Then Elizabeth saw one last flash, a memory that wasn’t hers at all. It was the man in the cape, and it was like he melted out of the air, and suddenly there was just a little glass jar with a purple butterfly.

  (I thought he was gone forever, that he fell into a hole with the goblin and disappeared. You can’t let him get out again.)

  Elizabeth didn’t understand this bit about the goblin, but she did understand that she couldn’t let the butterfly turn back into the man.

  “All right,” Elizabeth said. “I’ll do what you want.”

  She hated the way she sounded, her voice a shrinking cringing squeak. The claw gripping her wrist relaxed just a fraction but Elizabeth still felt the promise of violence.

  “No tricks now,” the bird-man warned. “I can rip your throat out before you even think about a scream.”

  He released Elizabeth’s wrist and she exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. It was such a relief not to feel his scales on her skin. Then his bird-hands dug into her shoulders, the claws piercing the sleeves of her pretty blue dress—it’s not so pretty anymore—and cutting into her skin.

  The bird-man turned her toward the table, and it seemed that all she could see was that fluttering purple butterfly beating its frantic wings inside the jar.

  He’s going to make me open the jar and if I don’t do it he’ll eat me up oh what am I to do Alice what am I to do?

  The voice fluttered into Elizabeth’s ear, as delicate as a baby moth.

  (Make a wish.)

  There were two problems, to Elizabeth’s way of thinking. One problem was the Jabberwock, which was an altogether bigger problem than the bird-man even if it didn’t seem like an immediate threat. And the second problem was the bird-man, who might kill her out of spite if she didn’t do what he wanted.

  (Even when it’s hard you have to be brave.)

  I don’t want to be brave, not really. I want to go home.

  (Girls like us, we have to save ourselves. Nobody else will get you home.)

  I don’t want to save myself.

  (I believe in you. Make a wish.)

  The bird-man jerked Elizabeth’s shoulders. “Pick up the jar and open it.”

  (I believe in you. Make a wish.)

  Elizabeth didn’t want to touch the jar. She thought she saw the shadow-wings rising up behind it, stretching toward the sky. If she put her hands on the glass the wings would close around her and pull her into the darkness and she’d never go home again.

  That’s enough now, Elizabeth. If you want to go home you have to save yourself.

  This wasn’t Alice, or the Voice, or even her own little-girl self. It was some brisk, sensible version of herself, one who knew that the only way to tackle an unpleasant task was to get on with it.

  Yes, get on with it, she thought, and closed her hand around the jar. Make a wish.

  I know what to do. It came to her with no warning, a plan fully formed and delivered. She just needed to make certain he didn’t notice the first part.

  “All you have to do is ease open that little cork and your job will be done,” he said, digging his claws in deeper. His voice was filled with obscene anticipation, his breath puffing out in little pants against Elizabeth’s hair.

>   “Why can’t you open it?” Elizabeth asked. She didn’t really care about the answer. She only wanted to distract him for a moment, so she could do the thing that was going to make him so angry.

  The bird-man shook her again, making her teeth clatter against each other. “I told you, only Alice or one of her blood can open it. And you have to be a Magician on top of it. Do I look like any of those things to you?”

  “But why do you want it open in the first place?” Elizabeth asked. Her hand tightened on the jar, her fingers covering the interior. She thought she could feel the desperate beat of the butterfly’s wings against the glass.

  I wish you to stop fluttering and sink to the bottom of the glass.

  I wish you to die and never be reborn.

  “Why wouldn’t I want to let the Jabberwock out?” the bird-man said. “The last time he caused such wonderful chaos, such delightful death. A smart fellow could take advantage of a situation like that. A smart fellow might even get some territory of his own.”

  So this is all for some venal purpose, Elizabeth thought with contempt. He wants to be a gangster and he’s using me to do it.

  The jar in Elizabeth’s hand felt different than it had before, no longer pulsing with magic, or filled with that rapid fluttering.

  “Open it!” the bird-man said.

  “Very well,” Elizabeth said, and opened the jar.

  The bird-man released her shoulders and snatched the jar from her hand. She ran a few steps away, but not too far. She still needed him.

  The man clearly expected something exciting to occur, some form to rise from the opening like the genie from the lamp. After a moment he lifted the jar to his face to peer inside.

  At the bottom of the jar was a purple butterfly, unmoving, its wings curled at the edges and blackened as though they’d been singed.

  “What have you done?” the bird-man screamed, turning toward Elizabeth.

  For a brief moment she saw her death in his eyes, saw the sharp beak coming for her.

  Then she said, “I wish you were a tiny little moth, barely bigger than my thumbprint. You will live in that little jar and talk to me if I want you to and no one will ever be able to open it but me.”