Looking Glass

by Christina Henry

  But it was open, that was the important thing—just a fraction of an inch, enough for Alice to fall forward and push it the rest of the way.

  She couldn’t stand. She knew she ought to, ought to face whatever was inside—for good or ill—on her feet. All she could manage was to lurch forward on her hands and knees.

  There was a deep, plush carpet lining the hall behind the door. Alice could see it, see her mittened hands sinking into it—it was the color of wine, or perhaps the color of blood—but she couldn’t feel it. Her hands were two useless blocks at the ends of her wrists.

  Once she was fairly certain all of her parts were inside the house, she glanced behind and kicked at the door with her boot. It closed with a smooth, almost unnatural motion and though Alice couldn’t hear anything except the storm raging outside she was sure that the hinges wouldn’t make a sound, would be insulted by even the tiniest squeak.

  The closed door blocked out almost all of the noise outside except the screaming wind. Alice heard her own ragged breath, the scrape of her knees on the carpet, the crunch of her ice-covered hair against her forehead.

  Glass lamps were set at intervals along the hall and inside them were flickering candles, their light concealing more than they revealed. There were deep pools of shadow beyond the place where Alice paused, on her hands and knees like a child, unable to stand or move forward another inch.

  She must have fainted again, because the next thing she knew her nose was mashed into the blood-colored carpet. It had been some time that she lay there, for the ice and snow on her clothes and face had turned to water. Her forehead was wet and so were her fingers where the melted snow seeped through. In fact, her hands were stinging.

  No, they weren’t stinging. They were burning, and the burning was so terrible that it made her cry out. She pushed up to her knees and pulled off her mittens with her teeth, sure that her fingers were on fire, but they weren’t. They were very pale and also splotchy with red, but they hurt like nothing Alice had ever felt before, hurt inside under the skin. She tried to rub them together, to put them under her knees, but anything she tried only made them burn more.

  “It hurts, it hurts,” she whimpered, and tears streamed down her cheeks.

  The more they burned the more her hands could move and flex, and once that thought registered she realized that the pain was because they had been nearly frozen and now they were warming. Knowing what the cause was didn’t make it any easier to endure, though, and it was some more time before she was able to calm herself.

  She slowly stood up, wobbling a bit as her legs were still stiff. All her heavy layers felt like they were now impeding her, so she took off her cloak and hat and hung them on a peg near the door. There were no other cloaks or hats, no umbrella in the umbrella stand, no wet boots on the mat. But somebody lived in the house. Alice was certain of that.

  Her stomach rumbled and that’s when she remembered that she’d dropped the packs full of food out in the storm.

  “Stupid,” she muttered, but there was nothing for it now. The packs would be buried by the storm. She hoped Hatcher would forgive her for losing his axe.

  So she was hungry. She’d been hungry before and no doubt would be again, but there was no amount of hunger that could make her eat any food that she found in this house. Alice had seen enough enchantments and heard enough fairy stories to know that there was nothing more foolish than taking food from someone she did not know. The smallest crumb of bread passing her lips might be enough to keep her trapped there forever, or to poison her, or to make her fall into an enchanted sleep.

  And then Hatcher will have to come and wake me with a kiss. She laughed aloud at the thought. There was no one less likely to fit a story-idea of a prince than her wild and bloody Hatcher.

  Even if she had no intention of eating any food she still wanted to stay inside the house until the storm passed. She was worried about Hatcher, but she thought that if he came back this way he would surely see the house and know where she’d gone. He did seem to know how to find her no matter how long they were separated.

  It might have been his wolf’s nose or wolf’s ears or it might have been the way their hearts were tied together with invisible strings that only he knew how to follow. It might have been a kind of magic of his own, for all that he was no true Magician. He had a little touch of Sight, but Alice didn’t know how often he used it, or how often it occurred to him to interpret the strange images in his head as seeing the future.

  Alice took a good look around the hall. It was perhaps twelve or fifteen feet long. There were three doors, one on each side about halfway down and one directly in front of her at the farthest end.

  One door leads to certain death, she thought, but it wasn’t really a thought—more like a memory from a story she might have heard once. If she chose one door and didn’t like what she found there would she be able to come out and choose another, or would she be trapped?

  Alice crept toward one of the doors. She didn’t know exactly why she was trying to be silent now—surely if there were anybody living in the house they would have heard her crying over her poor abused hands—except that she wanted to listen at each door before going in and her instinct was to make certain no one inside would know what she was about.

  It wasn’t a polite thing, to listen at doors, and politeness had been ground into Alice as a child. Her mother had always told her to “be a good girl” and “mind your manners.” It was the hardest habit to break, even when ignoring it would keep her safe.

  She carefully examined the first door on her right. It was made of wood that had been painted white, and it shone like a sharp tooth in the gloom. It was as tall as the front door, though not as wide. There was a brass doorknob but no keyhole to peer through, which made Alice wrinkle her nose in annoyance. Things would be so much easier if she could only see what might be waiting on the other side.

  Why should anything ever be simple or easy? This was a very tired thought, the thought of a person who’d spent a long time struggling and didn’t want to struggle anymore, who wanted a few hours of the day to be free from peril or hunger or difficulty.

  Alice leaned close to the door, carefully placing her right ear against the wood. There wasn’t any noise coming from behind the door. That didn’t mean it was safe, though. There could be a man with a knife waiting silently to butcher her as soon as she entered.

  Don’t be a goose, Alice, why would anyone do that? Wouldn’t it have been easier to slit your throat while you were passed out in the hall?

  She felt the logic of this, but logic didn’t apply when she was tired and alone and yes, a little frightened. The house had a strange and unsettled atmosphere, an expectant waiting. Alice didn’t know what it wanted from her.

  It wouldn’t have been quite so frightening if she only had spent more time learning how to become a proper Magician. She imagined herself shooting fire out of her hands or turning an enemy to a puddle of goo with a fierce look, but she had no idea how to go about actually doing such a thing.

  Well, perhaps not the second thing, she thought as she crossed the hall to the second door. It would be very unpleasant to turn someone into a puddle, all their soft insides and stiff bones melted into a stew. A very unpalatable stew.

  Being a Magician had brought Alice mostly grief from those who wanted her power in some way. She still didn’t really have any idea how to make it work consistently. Mostly she’d done some small things

  (well, not the Jabberwock, that wasn’t a small thing)

  by wishing. What Alice needed was a teacher, a teacher who could help her find that wellspring of magic inside and harness it to her will. But every Magician she’d met thus far had been mad or corrupt or both and therefore not the sort of instructor Alice would have chosen for herself.

  She pressed her ear against the second door, which looked exactly like the first door except that it h
ad a silver doorknob instead of a brass one. Alice wondered if this mattered, if it indicated some arcane force at work or signaled what might be on the other side. Perhaps the knob was different only because they’d run out of brass.

  At first she thought there was nothing behind this door either, then she caught a whisper of a sound. There was a kind of papery rustling, something almost like the sound of Papa turning the newspaper at the breakfast table or the whish of Mama’s petticoats as she adjusted her skirts.

  She hadn’t thought of her parents like that in years—just a memory, without bitterness—and it made her sway on the spot, caught in a momentary loop of herself, happy and smiling and spooning too much jam from the pot onto her toast.

  The rustling increased in volume, seemed to come closer to the door, and Alice imagined that it wasn’t a person at all, but a giant moth with translucent wings. It was flying closer to the door now. Perhaps it was reaching out with one of its antennae, pressing it against the door, feeling for the vibrations of some nosy someone on the other side.

  The rustling ceased.

  Alice thought she should move away then but she couldn’t. She strained, trying to determine just what was making the sound.

  Something hissed, a long, sibilant noise that was nothing like a moth or a silent Papa turning the pages of the newspaper or like Mama’s petticoats. It was a cry of alarm, or perhaps the cunning recognition of prey.

  Alice didn’t wait for whatever it was to exit the room. She darted toward the farthest door at the end, heart pounding.

  I wish I was invisible, I wish you wouldn’t see me.

  The door behind her opened. She knew this not because she heard it but because the quality of the air shifted. She knew this because she sensed the presence behind her, a thing that peered into the corridor with hungry eyes.

  It hissed again, and her thoughts became frantic crowded things, tripping over each other.

  I wish I was invisible I wish you wouldn’t see me hear me smell me you don’t know that I’m here you can’t I’m turning into a shadow a formless thing and you can’t catch me you’ll never catch me

  She halted in front of the door. She should open it and go inside, because then there would at least be some sort of protection between her and whatever was behind her.

  You can’t see me hear me smell me you don’t know I’m here

  Alice knew she ought to look. She ought not to be a scurrying mouse, not when she’d been a fierce and fearsome killer once.

  You made the Caterpillar pay. Do you remember that? Do you remember that girl, the one who slashed his throat without a regret?

  But the dream-memory she’d had that morning—the one of the small girl who was hunted by a white bird—was still clinging to her edges, and so was the little girl Alice had been, the golden-haired doll who sat so prettily and ate so daintily at the table with her mama and her papa.

  You’re not that little girl anymore, that girl is gone, she’s just a memory in amber and maybe not even that. Maybe she never existed but you exist now and you have to be here. You have to save yourself.

  You have to save yourself.

  Alice turned her head to the left, so slowly, like she was an automaton winding down. Her teeth bit into her bottom lip, and her breath was stuffed up inside her chest so she wouldn’t make a sound.

  At first all she saw was white—a pale glowing white like the snow outside, like the pale-faced boy in the white coat whose laugh had led her here. Her brain thought, It’s just a very pale person like him, it’s all right to look more, it won’t be anything that means you harm.

  She turned her shoulders, all the while thinking, You can’t see me hear me smell me you don’t know I’m here, because if the charm had worked thus far she was sure it was only because she hadn’t loosened it from her grip.

  The pale glowing thing was a hand, a hand that looked terribly like one that had haunted her—the hand of a goblin in the woods as he reached out, long fingers that brushed over her hair, a goblin that had wanted to put Alice’s head on the wall because he loved her so much.

  The fingers of this hand were long and slender and tipped with very sharp nails that one might call claws. The hand was attached to a thin arm that was shrouded in loose and crumbling skin, skin that flaked and rustled like paper in the fireplace.

  The arm joined an elongated body loosely covered in a grey tunic. The tunic was littered with flaking bits of skin like fallen dragon scales and fell almost to the floor but didn’t conceal the overlong feet, feet that were not quite human, feet that crouched on the balls and had toes that ended in curling white nails.

  The feet were so hideous that she gave a little shudder and closed her eyes but she forced herself to open them again so she could see its face. She’d been afraid to look, afraid that if she met its eyes that it would see through her disguise.

  She shouldn’t have looked.

  It wasn’t a human head, it wasn’t something that could even pretend to be human. The jaw was long, unhinged like a snake’s, and a questing tongue darted out from its lipless mouth. The tongue was a strange faded grey, not like anything Alice had ever seen in nature. There was no nose, either, just two flaring nostrils.

  The eyes were overlarge and seemed to stretch back from its face, like it could see in front and on the sides too (and that’s cheating, how is anything ever supposed to escape if it can see all around and maybe behind itself too) and they looked so much like a reptile’s eyes that she thought they ought to be yellow or green like others she’d seen but these were pink, pinkish red like those of the boy who had stood and laughed outside in the snow, but that boy had been demonstrably a boy and this was not anything like a boy or a man or a girl or a woman. This was not a person.

  It had, though, something like a person’s ears, but as strangely elongated as the rest of its body, ears that weren’t soft and round and shell-like but stretched from nearly the top of the head to the bend of its jaw.

  All these strange and disparate pieces were covered in the same papery, flaking skin as the rest of it, and Alice’s brain couldn’t make sense of this strange creature no matter how hard she tried, and its eyes made her shudder, which she shouldn’t have done though she couldn’t help it.

  The creature was suddenly behind her. She didn’t see how it moved in less than a breath, less even than a thought of a breath, and she willed her heart to beat more softly else it hear the very rush of her blood in her veins.

  Its nostrils widened and she heard the quick sharp inhalations, its head bobbing up and down and side to side as it sought proof of her presence.

  You can’t see me hear me smell me you don’t know I’m here.

  She whispered the charm inside her brain and her heart over and over but she could hear the force leaking out of it, hear her strong intent withering as this terrible monster sniffed the air so close to her, so close that she could smell its papery skin, a smell like a faded sachet tucked into an old trunk of clothes, a trunk that hadn’t been opened for years.

  Alice could have killed the thing, if only she had any kind of weapon, but she’d dropped her weapons in the snow and she didn’t know how to cast a spell that meant anything, didn’t know how to strangle it with her mind or make it explode from the inside out. She didn’t know how to do anything, really, except stumble around and survive by the skin of her teeth.

  She was a useless little girl, really. She’d always been.

  The spell wavered, and she felt herself becoming solid and visible again and she redoubled her effort but she had been seen, she knew it. The creature hissed, like it had seen her flickering in the shadows, a guttering candle that was blown out a moment later.

  It lifted one of those horrible hands tipped with horrible claws. It was going to slash out at her, or even just reach out to touch her and she couldn’t bear the thought of either. She would have to run or fi
ght. There was no more hiding.

  Her hand fumbled for the doorknob behind her—it didn’t matter anymore what was on the other side of the door, it couldn’t possibly be worse than what was in front of her.

  (Oh, but it could. You know that better than anybody. There could be horrors you’ve never imagined.)

  The creature’s eyes shot to the knob. It could see that moving even if it couldn’t see Alice. Her hands were sweaty (just a short time ago they were so cold you couldn’t even bend your fingers and now they’re so sweaty you can’t grasp the door everything about you is always wrong, Alice) and she couldn’t get it to uncatch and it was all over because even if she could get the door open the creature could only follow her inside she was a fool such an absolute fool.

  “Alice?” A man’s voice. Hatcher’s voice.

  “Alice, are you in there?” And then the sound of a fist pounding on a door. It wasn’t the front door, though. It was one of the side doors, the one opposite where the creature had emerged. And he didn’t sound completely like himself, either. He sounded kind of slurry and sleepy, like he’d just woken from a nap. Or was drunk.

  But Hatcher never drank spirits. Not ever. And he was hardly ever sleepy. So maybe it was a trick to lure her, and not really Hatcher at all.

  “Alice? Alice? Open the door, Alice.”

  The creature hissed loudly and

  (jumped? leapt? flew?)

  to the other door, and Alice finally got the knob behind her to turn and she hesitated only a second, because it might be a trick but it might really be Hatcher, and if it was Hatcher then there was something wrong with him and she shouldn’t leave him alone with this shedding-paper-snake monster, leave him alone with its fangs and claws, but she remembered then that Hatcher had fangs and claws of his own and she didn’t.

  Alice pushed the door open and stumbled through and at the last second she lost the spell entirely. The creature saw her, she could feel it seeing her, and it screamed a terrible sound, a sound that made Alice clamp down on the tip of her tongue in terror and her mouth filled with blood.