Looking Glass

by Christina Henry

  Then her adult-self realized that a few flakes meant more to come, and soon enough that brief joyous feeling was thoroughly squelched by anxiety that built higher with each passing moment. Pretty drifting crystals soon became a torrent of white that blew into their faces and made it impossible to see. Alice squinted, hugged her cloak tight around her body, and took steps that became increasingly difficult as the snow piled up around her ankles faster than she would have believed possible. It was wet and heavy and it sucked at her boots and managed to sneak under the hem of her trousers and soak the tops of her socks.

  Hatcher’s hair and beard were quickly coated, making him resemble a snow-creature from a northern tale. Alice had heard tales of those creatures from one of her nurserymaids. They walked like men but were actually half beast, and covered all over with white fur. They had huge fangs and claws and were fiercely protective of their mountains.

  Alice and Hatcher weren’t on a mountain (and thank goodness for that, we have enough trouble as it is) but Alice could readily believe that one of those snow-creatures might loom before them at any moment.

  After some time (Alice wasn’t certain how long, because her view of the sun was entirely wiped out by the blizzard) Hatcher tugged on her arm. She halted and immediately felt snow piling up on her hat and the shoulders of her cloak.

  “What is it?” she said. The wind seemed to whip her voice away into the gale.

  Hatcher leaned close so she could hear him. “I think I ought to run ahead and see if there’s any place we can rest for the night.”

  When he said “run ahead” he meant as a wolf, for he would move more swiftly and easily that way.

  Alice stared at him. “You’re mad.”

  “Well, yes, I am,” he said. There was no grin, no hint of mischief. He was only stating the facts.

  “That’s not what I mean,” Alice said. She wiped her face with fingers that were stiff with cold despite being covered in wool mittens. “I mean if you run ahead you’ll never find me again.”

  “I’ll always find you, Alice.” Again, it was a simple statement of fact. Whatever Hatcher had to do he would find her again, even if it meant tearing himself to pieces to do it.

  “Well, all right. I know you will,” she said, and she did. She believed he would always return to her no matter the circumstances. “But what about your things? I’ll have to carry everything, which means I’ll go even slower than I am now. Maybe we should just try to make some sort of shelter and wait until this blows through.”

  Hatcher shook his head. Snow flew out of his hair and joined its fellows. “We don’t know how long this will last. Look, I’ll run ahead a ways and see if there’s any village or structure that we can use, and then I’ll come right back to you as soon as possible. I think it would be best if we don’t wander aimlessly. If I don’t find anything within an hour’s walk we can try building a shelter then.”

  This was a very long speech for Hatcher, and that more than anything else told Alice that he was worried. Still, she wasn’t fond of the idea that they separate for any length of time. It would be too easy to lose each other in the storm.

  “What if you get hurt and I can’t find you again?” she asked.

  “I’ll come back to you,” he said. “No matter what.”

  She didn’t like it, but then she didn’t like the idea of trying to survive while exposed in this storm, either. She pressed her lips together and finally nodded.

  “There’s one thing, though, one very important thing you have to remember,” he said. “Don’t stop moving.”

  “You mean like we are now?”

  “I mean it, Alice. If you stop moving in cold like this you’ll die. Promise me that you won’t stop, no matter how tired you get.”

  “I promise,” she said. She could already feel her body cooling while they stood and talked, and she recognized the danger of prolonged stopping.

  Hatcher took off his cloak, stuffed it in his pack and handed the pack to her. Then he stripped down to his skin, handing her each item of clothing to put in the pack. It made Alice freeze just to look at him. His teeth were chattering even before he got to his smalls.

  Then he grinned at her and a second later there was a wolf standing before her instead of a man.

  “Hurry,” she said. “Hurry and come back.”

  He bounded away into the snow, a grey-and-black shadow that was swallowed up by a white gale.

  Alice took the straps of her pack off her left shoulder so that it was only slung from the right, and then replaced those straps with Hatcher’s pack. The two packs knocked together as she walked, but there wasn’t a lot she could do about it. They needed the supplies in Hatcher’s bag and he would certainly need his clothes when he returned.

  The awkward weight made her pace, already glacial from breaking a trail in the snow, even slower. Ice crusted on her eyelashes and the bits of her hair that stuck out from under her cap. Every time she inhaled, her throat and lungs felt burned by cold (that’s a funny thought, Alice, how can cold burn?) and then she would cough wildly, her chest seizing and contorting.

  When she glanced behind her she saw her footsteps filling up with snow, wiping away the proof of her passage almost before she could blink.

  Don’t stop moving. You promised Hatcher you wouldn’t.

  “Hurry back,” she said, or maybe she didn’t. She might have imagined speaking.

  She couldn’t see anything around her except snow. There were no trees and no rocks and no path and no sky and no ground, only snow and cold and her trudging feet—feet that were barely lifting off the ground anymore, just sliding a few inches forward at a time like a snail, except she wasn’t leaving a trail behind her.

  How will Hatcher find me if there’s no trail?

  “He won’t come from behind you, silly, but ahead of you,” she said. Her teeth clattered together. She couldn’t feel her cheeks anymore. Her voice sounded like it was coming from the top of a far-distant mountain instead of from inside her own chest.

  Alice was hungry, but she was afraid to pause even for a moment to dig something out of her pack. Her fingers wouldn’t bend any longer, either, so she wasn’t sure how she would grasp anything.

  She was so cold. She’d never been so cold, not even in the White Queen’s castle. Her brain felt sluggish and so did her body. She wasn’t certain she was even moving forward anymore. She might be walking in circles. There was no way to tell.

  Her body decided enough was enough. Her feet ceased their endless shuffle. Her legs stiffened. Alice fell face forward into the snow.

  It was almost warm, having the snow all around her and covering her up like a blanket.

  You promised Hatcher you would keep moving.

  But I just want to rest awhile.

  You promised.

  She tried to press her hands into the snow to lever herself back up again, but they only sank into the fresh pile.

  You have to get up. You have to move again or you’ll die out here, and then what will Hatcher say?

  The packs had fallen to each side of her body when she collapsed and the straps were twisted and tangled on her arms. It was impossible to stand with the packs hanging at such awkward angles but her hands were far too stiff to pry them off. The snow blanketed her head as she made tiny pathetic movements that were meant to get her up and moving again. She only succeeded in making some very oddly shaped snow angels.

  Alice started to laugh, and she knew the laugh was the insane laughter of the nearly dead but she couldn’t stop herself. She was going to die here, buried in snow. After everything—after the Rabbit and the hospital and the Caterpillar and the Walrus and the Jabberwock, after all the perils of the waste and the giants that wanted to make her into a meal, after defeating Magicians with far more power and malice than she could ever have—she was going to die in a blizzard, alone and far from home
.

  Sorry, Hatcher, she thought, because her mouth was still laughing—the only part of her that was moving any longer.

  After a while Alice began to think that she heard someone else laughing, too—a high, sweet sound, like that a child makes when running and playing outdoors.

  But that can’t be. No child could survive out here.

  Still, she made herself clamp her lips together—this didn’t work so well, as the laughter stopped but her teeth chattered like knocking boulders inside her skull. The other laughter continued even when Alice’s ceased. It was even closer than it had been a moment before.

  She lifted her face out of the snow and blinked several times. At first all she could see was more snow—snow that flew into her eyes and stung and made her eyes water—but slowly something else came into focus.

  There was a boy.

  A laughing boy.

  He stood only a few feet away from her. At first she thought he wasn’t really there, because he was so pale that he practically blended in with the snow. His hair was short and white and looked very fine, more like the downy fuzz on a baby duck than human hair. His skin was nearly translucent, the blue veins in his jaw visible.

  She didn’t know how old he might be—younger than school age, maybe, but only just. His cheeks still had the softness of babyhood but the rest of him looked slim and sturdy.

  He didn’t seem to be affected by the snow, though he wore a white coat with shiny silver fastenings. But the wind and the blowing white crystals diverted around him, didn’t settle on his downy hair or his delicate ears or his white, white eyelashes.

  Even that wasn’t the strangest thing about him. The strangest thing was the color of his eyes—a strange sort of pinkish red, a hue so unusual that Alice thought she imagined it. They seemed to float in the air, unattached to his pale face against the pale background.

  Those pinkish-red eyes laughed at her, and his very pink mouth laughed at her, and the indignity of a strange child laughing at her expiring in the snow energized Alice in a way nothing else had.

  She clambered to her feet—she wasn’t certain how she managed it, as she couldn’t feel any of her limbs and she half thought she might have left one of her legs in the snowbank—and stared at the boy.

  He’d stopped laughing while she struggled up from her prone position, but now his very rosy mouth split into a wide smile again and that high, sweet laughter rang out.

  The boy turned and ran a few feet away from Alice before pausing again. He threw a glance over his shoulder that could only be interpreted as an invitation, those strange eyes crinkled at the corners.

  He started off again and Alice noticed then that his white-furred boots didn’t sink into the snow the way hers did. The boy darted lightly along the surface without leaving a mark.

  I’d better hurry or I’ll lose him in this gale, she thought.

  The appearance of the boy had given her a jolt of energy, but the packs were still tangled up on her arms and she shook them away in frustration.

  Part of her cried out, Don’t do that! Your clothes and food and matches and weapons are in those bags. Hatcher’s axe is in there. What is Hatcher without his axe? What will you eat if you can’t make a fire or toast or tea?

  But the other part of her, the part that was fixated on the boy, ignored this warning. She stumbled forward, hurrying as quickly as she could, her legs and arms as stiff as a nutcracker’s.

  The boy had to come from somewhere—somewhere close by, somewhere with a roof and a fireplace. Almost as soon as she thought this she caught a faint whiff of woodsmoke, and then had a glimpse of an enormous black shape in the near distance.

  It disappeared again, hidden by the storm, and Alice tried to run toward it but her body wouldn’t let her run, it was shutting down again, and she’d lost track of the pale boy in the snow.

  She gritted her teeth in frustration, for now she had no packs and no boy and no shelter and no Hatcher. If this was all that was going to happen she ought to have just stayed in the snow and let it pile up on top of her. Maybe she would be preserved in the cold and when spring came she could thaw out and bloom afresh, just like the buds on the trees.

  The laugh rang out again, though Alice didn’t see the boy. She chased the sound through the snow though she couldn’t see anything except the storm. The boy’s laugh was the only rope she had to grasp.

  Then suddenly the enormous black shape was there again, rising before her like the beanstalk in that story about the boy who stole a goose from a giant.

  Alice swiped the snow away from her face so she could look properly. It was a house, a gigantic house plopped right in the middle of the forest as if some huge hand had placed it there.

  She couldn’t get a clear view of it, only a sense of black turrets and gabled peaks and flickering light at the windows. It rather looked like her worst idea of a haunted house, and experience told her that even if it wasn’t haunted it would very likely be full of magic or Magicians, and not the benevolent kind.

  Still, it wasn’t as though she had much choice. She could enter the possibly dangerous house or she could freeze to death out in the storm.

  But how will Hatcher find me? And if this house was here when he darted off then why didn’t he find it and return to me? It’s not that far from where he left me.

  She didn’t have the answer to the first question but she did have a shrewd suspicion about the second. The house hadn’t been there when Hatcher passed by. It had been put there just for her.

  Alice thought, rather tiredly, that it was likely something to do with her being a Magician herself (though a very poor one, to be sure). She’d had enough of people trying to lure her and trap her and hurt her for something she couldn’t help.

  Her entire body shook with tremors of cold. She had to decide—stay out in the storm or go into the house.

  In the end there wasn’t really a choice.

  Alice stepped onto the porch. It wrapped around the whole building, and while it didn’t protect her from the wind it was a relief to have the roof to keep the snow off her head.

  Perhaps I could just shelter out here and avoid whatever’s lurking inside.

  She tried to stamp her feet and shake some of the encrusted snow from her cloak, but she could barely bend her knees and elbows. Alice had never lived in an excessively cold place but even she knew this must be an ominous sign. She couldn’t possibly stay out in this weather. If she did she was likely to lose a limb.

  Alice shuffled across the porch. The door was made of some heavy dark wood and it was enormous—twice as tall as she was and she was a very tall woman, and about five times as wide. It was an absurd door even for a large house—the sort of thing that ought to front a government building, or perhaps a castle.

  It can’t possibly be a good thing that the door is this size, she thought. There’s likely to be bears living inside.

  Well, perhaps as long as I don’t sleep in their beds or eat their porridge I’ll be all right. And that boy lives here, doesn’t he? He led me here. Maybe the bears don’t eat humans, after all.

  She knew her thoughts weren’t making sense any longer, but it was hard to think straight while freezing to death. Alice knocked on the door, or rather she attempted to make her poor frozen hand bang against the wood but it came out like a faint and feeble heartbeat.

  I’ll never make anyone hear like that. And where has that boy gone? Why wasn’t he waiting for me on the porch?

  There was nothing for it. She was going to have to try the door, no matter how impolite it might seem to the residents.

  This was easier said than done, though. The door didn’t have a knob but a bright silver handle that went up and down. She bent over to peer at it and saw that inside the handle there was a button to be depressed. She imagined this was what released the door but Alice couldn’t make her fingers curl aroun
d the handle, never mind exert enough pressure to push the button.

  She stared at her hands. Had she lost the use of them altogether? Were they so frozen they could never be healed?

  Don’t panic, Alice. You only need to get warm. And once you get inside you’ll be able to do that. Don’t panic.

  But it was becoming very difficult not to panic, because no matter how much she wanted her hands to work they wouldn’t.

  She let out a cracked cry that might have been a sob if only she were warm enough for tears to flow.

  Why can’t I . . . why can’t I?

  Alice couldn’t even sense the metal beneath her fingers. It was like there was nothing there.

  My hands. I’ve lost my hands.

  Now her vision was disappearing. Shadows crept around the edges of her sight, leaking ink stains that seeped in and covered everything.

  A moment later she found herself slumped on her knees, neck lolling forward. She felt a little sick to her stomach and she didn’t have any idea how she’d gotten there.

  I must have fainted, she thought vaguely.

  This door was going to defeat her, she realized. She was too undone by the cold to open it herself, and nobody inside would be able to hear her scrabbling over the screaming wind.

  She moved her head back—slowly, so slowly, because her skull felt like a heavy iron bar was pressing down on it—so that she could see the door again.

  It was open.

  Did I do magic? She didn’t remember doing it, and she wasn’t very good at it to begin with. But it was possible that the force of her will had accomplished what her body hadn’t been able to do.

  The door wasn’t wide open in welcome. There were no smiling faces there, no gentle hands to assist her inside. That made Alice think that perhaps she had managed it by magic, else there would surely be someone peering out at her. It didn’t make sense that someone would come and open the door and then walk away and leave her there.