by Frank Beddor
She had to be strong. She was a princess, the future Queen of Wonderland. She shouldn’t weep like a baby.
She took a running start toward the nearest puddle, jumped, and landed in the middle of it, splashing herself and a lady and gentleman walking past.
“Oaf! Good heavens!” the woman protested.
The man made as if to chase after Alyss, but she had already stamped out of the puddle and was sprinting toward another. She jumped into it and thoroughly soaked a dapper young chap who’d just come from a visit with his tailor.
“Ugh! This cravat alone is worth more than you, you beastly thing!”
Alyss splashed from puddle to puddle, squeezing shut her eyes as she took to the air and imagining hard that she was back in Wonderland, opening her eyes as she came down, sprays of water going every which way, only to find that she was still in this alien world.
I’ll never find my way home. Never ever EVER!
All hope gone, she jumped up and down in a single puddle, yelling, “No! No! No!” until it was impossible to tell which were her tears and which splotches of street water.
“You taking a bath or what?” said a boy watching from a safe distance, out of splashing range.
She stopped jumping, sniffed. The boy wore gray breeches patched at the knees and thighs, a frock coat much too big for him, the tail of which reached down practically to his heels, and cracked leather boots with no laces.
“I’m Princess Alyss Heart of Wonderland,” she said defiantly.
“Yeah, and I’m Prince Quigly Gaffer of Chelsea. That’s one loony outfit you’re wearing.”
She looked down at her damp, dirty birthday dress: a flouncy thing, tight at the waist and poofing out below her knees in a cumbersomely wide circle, its collar high and floppy and ruffled. It was decorated with appliqued hearts, in colors only available in Wonderland, and the dress was a rare sight even there, where it would be taken from the princess’ wardrobe and aired only once a year, the royal tailors refitting it to accommodate Alyss’ growing body.
“It’s all I have,” she said, which started her crying again.
Quigly considered her for a moment. Even smudged with dirt and scum, and with tears leaking out of her eyes, there was something about the girl that intrigued him. She seemed brighter than everything around her. It was as if she were lit from within by a lantern that shone faintly through the pores of her skin.
“Better come with me if you want dry clothes, Your Majesty,” he said.
He started to walk off. Alyss hesitated. Half a block away, Quigly turned. “Off we go!” he called, waving for her to follow.
She looked around one last time for Hatter, then abandoned her puddle. She couldn’t afford not to have a friend.
CHAPTER 13
N O AMOUNT of Millinery training could have prepared Hatter for getting sucked through the Pool of Tears. Having somersaulted out of a puddle and landed on his feet with the agility of…well, of a cat, he let his instinct for self-protection take over. His backpack sprouted its usual array of weaponry. His steel bracelets popped open and spun in propeller-like action. He reached for his top hat but it was gone,
which was bad news. Really bad news. The top hat was his signature weapon, the one he had worked the hardest to master. And he was probably going to need it, judging by the shocked and alarmed faces all around him. He had emerged from the exit portal in Paris, France, 1859, and found himself standing in the middle of a wide thoroughfare known as the Champs-Elysees. Parisians spilled their cafe au lait at the sight of him. His sudden appearance upset traffic, carriages veering left and right. One carriage knocked over a fruit stand, another crushed baskets of baguettes and loaves. Horses whinnied and neighed, edgy.
Who was this strangely attired man with knives and oversized corkscrews jutting out of his backpack and rotary blades on his wrists?
Hatter kept an eye on the puddle, expecting The Cat or Redd’s soldiers to spring from it at any moment. “Alyss?”
But she was nowhere to be seen. This was worse than not having his top hat. In the Pool of Tears for hardly any time at all, with only one job to do, one simple job-to look after the future Queen of Wonderland-and he’d let her fall away from him. She must have been sucked through the portal to another location.
Men were coming toward him-men in uniforms and small, firm caps with brims, looking confused and more than a little frightened. He snapped his wrist-blades closed and ran, not because he was afraid of them, but because he was afraid of what he might do to them. Even here in another world he would abide by the codes of Wonderland’s Millinery, which stated that combat skills were not to be used on a person until he was a proven enemy, and even then only to the extent that they were necessary. Plus, it was best to draw as little attention to himself as possible, to disappear into the underground in order to find
Princess Alyss.
His Millinery coat swooped out behind him as he cut across the Champs-Elysees and down a residential street. He was faster and more agile than the Frenchmen and would have easily escaped their pursuit if he’d known his way around Paris. Time and again he thought he’d lost them, that they were no longer following him, only to discover that they must have taken a shortcut through an alley, because now they were in front of him.
He had to get rid of them for good. He stopped running and let them approach. When they were within ten paces of him, he flicked open his wrist-blades, feinted at them, and they scattered into cafes, brasseries, patisseries, and boulangeries, lunging for safety anywhere they could find it. Hatter snapped shut his wrist-blades and ran, and this time they didn’t follow.
He hid under a bridge on the banks of the Seine until nightfall, when he could more easily move through the city undetected. He planned to canvass the streets, search every lane and alley for the princess before moving on to another town or city. He would get maps, systematically scour this entire world if
necessary, familiarize himself with intercity routes, pass across borders like a phantom. His promise to
Genevieve, the queen he’d left behind, demanded it.
Under the blanket of darkness, he made his way up and down streets, starting at one end of the city and working his way across it. And now that he had an opportunity to notice, Hatter saw that some people had a glow about them. Supposing them suffused with the luminescence of imagination, he followed one glowing man down the rue de Rivoli to a modest shop with a wooden sign in the shape of a top hat hanging over its door. It could have been a station for the Millinery men and women of the city. Perhaps he would find camaraderie and assistance here. He followed the man into the shop. It was filled with every variety of hat: derbies, bowlers, tams, fezzes, berets-an array of headware that impressed even Hatter. He picked up one of the top hats and flicked it, but it held its innocent shape.
A diminutive gentleman with a wispy mustache approached. “Bonjour, monsieur. Est-ce-que je peux vous aider?”
“I come from Wonderland,” Hatter said. “I oversee the Millinery there.” He waited, hoping the meaning, the import, of this would make itself felt to the shopkeeper.
“Cela est un bon chapeau,” the man said, pointing to the top hat.
Hatter set down the item. “I am searching for Princess Alyss Heart of Wonderland. She has landed somewhere in this world, as I have, through a portal and…”
But the shopkeeper’s eyes showed no recognition at Alyss’ name, no understanding of what Hatter was saying. When the man tried to show Hatter the merits of a certain beret, Hatter left the shop. He would try others, however. He trusted those who dealt in headwear more than he trusted anyone else.
A few doors down, three men emerged from a cafe, tipsy with drink. They stopped in bleary-eyed surprise at the sight of Hatter, his odd-looking clothes.
“Je n’aime pas des etrangers,” one of the men said.
Hatter didn’t have to understand French to hear the hostility in his voice. The man pretended to punch
Hatter and his c
ompanions laughed.
Hatter didn’t flinch. “I don’t want to fight you,” he said. “Non?”
“No.”
The man shoved Hatter, who stood his ground, an exemplar of restraint. “Qu’est-ce qu’il y dans le sac?” the man asked, indicating Hatter’s backpack. “Donnez-moi le sac.” The man took a step toward Hatter, reached for the backpack.
Only an enemy would try to take Hatter’s weapons. Activating his wrist-blades, the Milliner flipped backwards to give himself some space. He reached into his backpack and let fly with a handful of daggers. Thimp! Thimp! Thimp! The daggers pinned the men to a wooden cart by their shirtsleeves: a feat of martial skill Hatter hoped would show that he could kill all three of them if he so desired.
More men appeared, spilling out of the nearby cafes, alarmed. They surrounded Hatter-fifteen of them. One of them aimed a pistol at his head.
Hatter vaguely recognized the pistol as something invented by a Wonderlander during his boyhood. To reacquaint himself with its capabilities, he eyed the man and said, “Boo!”
Panicked, the man fired.
A round steel bullet shot toward Hatter, but with the speed of a jabberwock’s tongue, he ducked and it whizzed past.
Hatter punched a button on his belt buckle and a series of curved saber blades flicked open along the surface of his belt. But before the blades sliced into action, the group scattered, each man running as far from Hatter as he could get, which didn’t stop them from later reporting that they had witnessed the menacing figure kill upwards of twenty innocent civilians with his elaborate weaponry, themselves living to tell about it only by the grace of God.
The sabers on Hatter’s belt retracted. He snapped his wrist-blades closed and allowed himself a brief smile, relieved that he hadn’t had to kill anyone. He didn’t see the large, elaborately decorated rug closing in on him, held up from behind by six of Paris’ bravest carpet salesmen. The rug knocked him down and the men rolled him up tight in it. His backpack weaponry poked through the thick pile, but his arms were pinned to his sides; he was unable to reach his belt buckle or flick his wrists to activate his deadly bracelets.
Hoisting the rug-cocooned Hatter onto their shoulders, the men hauled him off to the Palais de Justice. But as he breathed in the rug’s fibers, Hatter’s concern wasn’t for his own safety, but for that of Alyss Heart, a lost princess in a hostile world.
CHAPTER 14
T HE CAT stood at the edge of the cliff and stared down at the foaming, rippling spot where Alyss and Hatter had splashed into the water. Lightning flashed, thunder broke overhead, and rain fell in sheets. If there was one thing The Cat didn’t like, it was water. Rain, showers, baths, it didn’t matter which; he hated getting wet. He turned and stalked back into the forest with the scrap of Alyss’ dress in his fist.
“You let them get away,” a voice said. The Cat stopped, tense.
“They escaped,” said another.
He spun round but saw no one. The forest was talking to him, the trees and plants and flowers. “What’s the matter?” asked a nearby lilac bush. “Afraid to take a dip in the water?”
The forest had a good laugh at that, but The Cat didn’t appreciate the teasing. He bent down and tore the lilac up by its roots and threw it on the ground. The forest fell silent. The Cat walked up to a tree.
“Were you talking to me?” The tree said nothing.
The Cat glanced to his left, then right. “I don’t see anyone else here, so you must have been talking to me.”
Still the tree said not a word. It didn’t matter. The Cat raked his claws down its trunk, skinning off the bark.
“Aaaaahowwww!” the tree cried.
The Cat reentered the Crystal Continuum through the forest looking glass (its guard, the tight-lipped shrub, now more tight-lipped than ever) and reemerged in Genevieve’s sitting room. He hulked through the destruction of the sitting area and down a heart-shaped passage to the South Dining Room, stepping over dead card soldiers and guardsmen as if they had never been alive at all, never beings who laughed, cried, rejoiced, or had loved ones waiting for them at home.
Notwithstanding the blast that had rocked the palace, the bodies splayed in all manner of death on the tables and floor, the South Dining Room was a scene of celebration. Redd’s soldiers helped themselves
to wondercrumpets, fried dormice, and whatever other delicacies they could find, and none too delicately shoved them into their mouths. Not being much interested in tea, they’d raided the palace’s wine cellar, and now flooded their bellies with goblet after goblet of the queendom’s finest wine.
“To the health of Queen Redd!”
“To the death of Queen Genevieve!”
These toasts were one and the same to Redd, who was lounging in a chair, wearing the bloody crown. “Well?” she said when she saw The Cat. “Where are their heads?”
One didn’t admit failure to Redd and get away with it without suffering pain or worse. The Cat held up the shred of Alyss’ dress. “This is all that’s left of them. I’m sorry, Your Highness. I couldn’t control myself.”
“It’s unwise to control yourself in a situation like that,” Redd said. “Well done.”
But a scheming, dishonest mind such as Redd’s always suspects others of scheming and dishonesty. She tried to see Alyss in her imagination’s eye, to discover the truth for herself: nothing. Imagination could not penetrate the Pool of Tears, which was lucky for The Cat.
“She’s dead?” said a voice from behind a curtain. “Alyss is dead?”
Redd waved her hand and the curtain swung back to reveal Bibwit Harte. “If it isn’t my wise and learned tutor,” she said.
Bibwit Harte was a loyal fellow, and it was because of his loyalty to Genevieve and Alyss and White Imagination that he determined, then and there, to ensure his own survival by appeasing Redd. Though a scholar, he vowed to one day topple this mistress of Black Imagination and return Wonderland to the glory of peace. He bowed his head. “At your service, Your…Imperial Viciousness.”
Redd sneered. “‘Your Imperial Viciousness’? Ha! Yes, that’s perfect. From now on everyone will refer to me as ‘Your Imperial Viciousness’ or die. You there!”
“Yes, my quee-” a Two Card started, but was immediately pierced through the lung by one of The
Cat’s claws.
“You!” Redd said to a Three Card.
“Um, y-yes, Your…Your Imperial Viciousness?”
“I want a list of those considered sympathetic to the former queen who are not dead in this room. I am aware that General Doppelganger is not among the bodies here. Begin the list with him. For the rest, ask them.” She turned her gaze upon the suit families, who stood clustered together, trying to take up as little space as possible. “I’m sure they’ll be helpful.”
“Oh yes,” declared the Lord of Diamonds, still with a hand on Jack of Diamonds’ shoulder. “Absolutely,” said the Lady of Spades.
“Of course, by all means,” said the Lady of Clubs and her husband.
Redd was not an idiot. She knew that she couldn’t rule the queendom by fear and intimidation alone. The suit families had relationships with mayors of principalities and influential business men, with key members of what remained of the queendom’s military force-relationships that would have to be exploited for her profit and exaltation.
“There are to be some changes in the queendom, which may prove beneficial to you all,” Her Imperial
Viciousness announced. “Not the least of which is that since I have no heirs of Heart descent, nor do I
want any, I will choose my successor from one of the ranking families. Whoever among you serves me best can be assured of nothing, but you will at least have a better chance at the crown than the others.” She ventured a smile, which the Lady of Spades, for one, found more gruesome than many of the lifeless bodies surrounding her, and which, if truth be told, it physically hurt Redd to accomplish. “I trust you don’t mind my preying on your ambitions in this way
?”
“Oh no,” declared the Lord of Diamonds. “Absolutely not,” said the Lady of Spades.
“By all means no,” said the Lady of Clubs and her husband.
The suit families struggled to remember who had escaped, mentioning pawns, a rook, a knight, numerous card soldiers.
“Dodge Anders has escaped!” Jack of Diamonds asserted, louder than the others. “And who might Dodge Anders be?” asked Redd.
“He is in love with Princess Alyss but pretends not to be. He’s a guardsman’s son. That’s his father, there.” Jack pointed to Sir Justice, lying dead on the floor.
Redd approached the boy. The rogue soldiers paused in the midst of their celebrations. The Cat stood motionless. No one knew what Redd might do.
“You’re a helpful one, aren’t you?” she said, squeezing his cheeks like a loving grandmother. Jack couldn’t answer because of her grip.
