Unbirthday

by Liz Braswell

  But which was the right tree? Where had she first seen the rabbit?

  As she stood on one hillock after another, peering at the landscape between the prams, painters, and picnickers, everything seemed different.

  “Well, of course everything seems different, because I’ve opened up like a telescope since then,” she said, sighing. “I’m over a foot taller. Everything would look different.” Unlike the speed with which she changed size in Wonderland, the creeping of time and aging in this world had come upon her slowly—and yet she was still strangely unprepared.

  She tried getting down on her knees for a more childlike view. Awkward and unseemly. Also it didn’t seem to help.

  Maybe I should start with the sort of place a rabbit would like. An open meadow, with tasty flowers and buds, next to a thicket, a safe place for running into.

  With this idea in mind she straightened her hat, adjusted her bag, and strode off like an intrepid adventuress down a game path in deepest Africa.

  Two hours later there was still no rabbit, no rabbit holes (or at least no occupied ones), no Wonderland. Only a red and breathless Alice with painful feet and aching shoulders.

  “You’re here, I know you are,” she shouted, uncaring who heard her. “I’ve seen the pictures! You’re real! So come out already! Where are you?”

  “I beg your pardon? Did you take secret photographs of me after all?”

  Alice spun around.

  Regarding her curiously from farther back on the path was Mr. Katz. He had a faint smile on his lips, but his eyes showed a real concern for her odd behavior. His jacket was thrown carelessly over his shoulder and he had taken his hat off in the warm weather. He hadn’t loosened his bright purple cravat, however, and it blazed like the breast of a young, strange robin.

  “No, I wasn’t talking to you, I was…Oh, bother.” Alice shook her head. “It’s complicated and a little mad.”

  “Well, now you have me curious. May I accompany you on your perambulations for a bit?”

  “I’m rather done in, actually. I’ve been perambulating for almost three hours now looking for a rabbit. Or a rabbit hole. Or a place where I saw a rabbit once. With my sister. I also sat in a tree—was it this tree? Fie on it, I just can’t remember!”

  She sat down wearily at the base of the questionable tree, a lovely oak with long spreading branches like outstretched arms, amusing and useful for little girls to sit on (unlike the tight upright oaks along Pelgrew Street that made such tight and narrow acorns). This very well could have been her tree.

  In her sweat and exhaustion and under Katz’s gently amused look, she realized she had completely forgotten about her clever ruse with the blanket and fake picnic.

  Now she remembered the little sandwiches and fairy cakes she had packed. She reached in and pulled out a cake, only thinking to break it in two and offer a piece to her companion at the last moment.

  “Thank you.” He took it very properly and popped it in his mouth, but it seemed more out of politeness than real desire. He squatted on his heels, his back up against the tree—apparently unlike the otherwise proper girl next to him, he was unwilling to sit in the dirt.

  “But what are you doing here, Mr. Katz?” Alice asked curiously.

  “A friend of mine asked for help for a friend, in the friendliest way…. That sounds like a riddle, doesn’t it? But I cut through the park—a long cut, mind you, not a short one, because it’s such a beautiful day. Eventually I shall have to follow through on my promise. For now, however, tell me: what is so special about this rabbit, or hole?”

  Alice chewed the cake thoughtfully. What had the little treats in Wonderland tasted like? Sweeter, she thought. Would they be too sweet now? Besides growing up and out, there were other changes in her. Given a choice between a fondant-covered petit four and a bit of fat from a juicy roast, she would choose the latter.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. But I simply must find him. Soon. It’s imperative. After a brief rest.”

  “Well, all right, then. You grab a kip and I’ll ward off thieves and suspicious magpies,” he offered chivalrously.

  “What about your promise to your friend? And I’m not going to sleep,” Alice insisted. “I absolutely shouldn’t sleep. I feel I wouldn’t wake up for hours and hours.”

  “Oh, I keep all my promises,” Katz said with a reassuring smile. “Never fear.”

  “Keep me awake, then, if you don’t mind delaying your errand for a bit. Tell me something interesting, Mr. Katz. Tell me a story about your life. Tell me about your parents’ lives. About coming here, and then having you, and you becoming a barrister. That’s quite a lot.”

  “Ah, well, I suppose it’s interesting enough to some people, but I doubt stories about studying law would keep you awake. How about instead I tell you stories I’ll wager you’ve never heard, about a fantastic city called Chelm, full of fools and madmen?”

  “That sounds perfect. I must in fact find a bunch of madmen,” Alice said eagerly before she remembered how silly she sounded.

  “Well, as the English are so fond of saying, Once upon a time”—and here he sat down on the ground, finally.

  It was a little improper, perhaps, having the young man so close to her, but they weren’t touching and there wasn’t anything stupidly fantastic and romantic happening like her slowly falling asleep, overcome by the day, and leaning up against him. He didn’t offer his coat to keep her warm. It was all fine.

  “In the great city of Chelm in Poland there were many wise men who spent their days debating everything from the number of angels who could dance on the head of a pin to how best to save the moon from drowning in the lake at night.

  “One day, the town baker came to the rabbi with a perplexing question….”

  Alice listened as best she could: he spoke clearly with an educated, academic accent and sounded like one long accustomed to telling stories.

  But the day was working its slow magic on her and she found it hard to concentrate. Instead of keeping her awake and engaged, the story was lulling her dangerously toward a dreamy loss of consciousness. She watched the ducks playing on the edge of the water in the reeds with a diminishing sense of interest in the goings-on of the baker of Chelm and all his in-laws.

  What pretty rushes the ducks are playing in, she thought as Katz continued his story. I gathered some very sweetly scented ones once, while we were rowing. Who was in the party? Mathilda? I cannot remember. But what are the ducks eating? Frogs? Roots?

  Look how the river reflects the sky. The water close in reflects the ducks. The sky and the clouds do not change for being reversed, but the ducks are upside down. Look at that one funny upside-down duck glaring at me like it knows something. Like it knows anything at all. Silly duck. Well, of course, a duck on the other side of the reflection might know something. Ducks on the other side would be different. All the world is made wise and strange in the surface of the river—oh!

  She sat up suddenly. The mirror duck was staring right at her. Through the water.

  “Help us,” it said, rather less beseechingly than peevishly.

  “I heard that!” Alice cried. “That’s it—the river! It reflects the opposite of everything—contrariwise!”

  She leapt to her feet and, with energy she hadn’t had a moment ago, went racing down the hill toward the ducks. A small part of her was concerned that Katz would stop her; obviously these weren’t the actions of a sane girl. It probably looked like she was suddenly bent on drowning herself, an English Ophelia.

  But if he was chasing her, he was too slow and too silent.

  “I see you! You duck there! Don’t pretend!” she cried—and threw herself into the water.

  She fell, fell, fell, dragged down deep by her petticoats and crinolines and stockings and shoes, arms and legs tangling amongst the reeds and rushes and pointy, sticky things that tried to grab and drown her.

  Self-preservation finally kicked in, and so did Alice’s legs. A thought occurred to
her as she thrashed and spun to push herself upright with her head pointing at the sky and her toes down below toward the depths: the water by the edge of the river hadn’t seemed that deep. The bit off the bank she had been watching ducks swim around was little more than a few inches, just enough for frogs to slip away in quickly when you came too close. There was no way she could float suspended in the water and kick and still not touch the bottom with her feet.

  And yet she felt the empty weight of limitless liquid, an ocean of it, in every direction. She hung for one unbreathing moment in this place before propelling herself reluctantly to the surface.

  Alice gasped as her head exploded out of the water, her hair an unbunning mane that shed droplets and rivers. She was sitting, of course. Spraddle-legged and awkward. In a shallow pool.

  It was a decorative, rectangular pool as might be seen in a book about ancient Roman villae. There were some decorative plants—reeds—tucked in the corners in a naturalistic manner. They were red.

  Everything was red, actually.

  Alice pulled her arms out of the water with a cry, thinking she was covered in blood.

  As diamond-bright drops flew, she realized that only the pool itself was red: its tiles and the walls and floor around it. The water within was normal and clear, but refracted very, very red.

  “Curious,” Alice said, but a little sickly. She stood up and the water peeled off her; had she been paying attention she might have noticed that she dried quite a bit faster than was strictly natural.

  “I did it! I’m not dreaming at all! I’m awake and alive and in…Wonderland?”

  She was in what looked very much like the rest of a Roman villa, but all exploded and flat, or perhaps drawn by an uninspired and talentless student of the classics. The mosaics below her feet were set into what must have been different pictures and patterns, but they were all red. A single wall with a single doorway appeared before her, also red. Through the door in the distance she could see the beginnings of a lush forest—strangely drippy at the edges, and very red.

  (Though if Alice squinted she could just make out organic shades here and there: a little bit of green or brown peeking through.)

  The wall before her was redolent and moist.

  She squished toward it, feet still heavy from the copious amounts of water sloshing around in her leather shoes. Putting out a single finger, she delicately touched the wall. Red came away on the tip. She brought it to her nose.

  “Milk paint,” she murmured, not entirely surprised.

  Beyond the open door to nowhere was a pretty little orchard of orange trees, each and every fruit a perfect round red. Like picture-book apples. She felt very unsettled and anxious, as if something terrible had happened or was about to happen, like descriptions she had read of the battlefields in the American Civil War when brother found brother in battle, wearing the opposite side’s colors. Things were familiar but horrible. Everything was red and terrifying. If photographs came in color she was sure her picture of the Queen of Hearts would have been in all these shades of red as well.

  Suddenly there came a terrible noise, horrible and loud and utterly uncategorizable. Alice flinched, covering her ears and hugging her head to try to drown it out (and probably getting red paint in her hair). The sound was a bit like a pile of something crashing—but a giant pile, a gargantuan stack of pots and pans. It was also a bit like a gong, like the tiny one in Mrs. Yao’s tea shop, but multiplied by a thousand and played by a thousand miniature mad monkeys.

  She closed her eyes and fell to her knees, praying for silence.

  Eventually the noise stopped and the echoes faded.

  Alice unplugged her ears and saw that the sound had some effect on the otherwise empty landscape: beyond the grove of orange trees, figures were now hurrying, hunched over, along the base of a high red wall that had just appeared and was a slightly different shade of red from everything else—a little whiter and dustier, as if it was older. A portcullis slid open just wide enough for the creatures to slip through before it slammed down, locking them in.

  Then everything was still and silent again.

  “This doesn’t seem very Wonderlandy at all,” Alice observed. The landscape was empty of movement now; not a single creature gyred or gimbled out in the open or the shadows; not a mome rath, or mouse, or bandersnatch or any of the hundreds of other creatures that normally crowded the paths and byways of Wonderland. There weren’t even any woken flowers.

  (“Mome rath! Bandersnatch! I remember all of them now, and all the funny names, too!” Alice realized with joy.)

  She felt very unsettled and anxious, as if something terrible had happened or was about to happen, like descriptions she had read of the battlefields in the American Civil War, when brother found brother in battle, wearing the opposite side’s colors. Things were familiar but horrible. Everything was red and terrifying. If photographs came in color she was sure her picture of the Queen of Hearts would have been in all these shades of red as well.

  She walked to the portcullis—for this was Wonderland, despite its strange new mood, and what else was there to do? You went to the obvious thing, the thing that provoked your interest, following whatever intrigued you like a child. That’s how things progressed.

  Her body remembered trotting across the grounds of Wonderland with little-girl excitement; her adult legs were a little less prone to such movements. Still she strode quickly and threw in an occasional half gallop when she could resist the urge no longer. Whether it was her perspective or her imagination or Wonderland itself, the wall grew taller much more quickly than it should have as she approached, suddenly looming over her like a cat about to pounce upon a helpless ball of yarn. Its façade was smooth, of course, except for lines and bumps where stone blocks met, and the occasional heart-shaped decorative keystone. There was no portcullis anywhere.

  “Of course,” Alice muttered.

  The door had disappeared, as doors always seemed to in dreams when someplace didn’t want to be found.

  But a man had appeared in its place, as if he had always been there, and at this too Alice was unsurprised.

  He was all in black, the tired worn black of a high-end suit bought at a secondhand market by a farmworker who harbors some misplaced notion about impressing his peers with an outfit ill-suited to outdoor toiling. Fashionably wide trousers were tucked into high, hard leather riding boots. His waistcoat was crisscrossed with nautical-seeming belts that held muskets and bullets. The short jacket he wore seemed very proper, except that the golden fob clipped to a pocket led to a dagger, not a pocket watch. The man’s hat was a dusty old bowler but had a giant black plume sticking out of it like that of a child playing dress-up.

  His face was so real Alice did a double take; there was nothing dreamy or hazy about his narrow, sharp nose, the pronounced ridges above his lip, the tired crow’s-feet around his eyes, or the sharpness of his dark red pupils. If she had any doubt at all that she was awake, this cleared it up immediately.

  He held a scroll and a pen and was going over what was written there very closely—and seemed utterly unsurprised that Alice now stood in front of him.

  “All the VIP seats for today’s teatime executions have been filled,” he said, looking up only at the last minute, and then myopically, as if he were gazing at her over a pair of glasses. “Come back tomorrow. There are sure to be more then.”

  “Executions?” Alice asked in shock. Although from the terrible sounds and the hunched movements and the general redness of the place, this development wasn’t entirely unexpected. Plus—the Queen of Hearts and all.

  “Beheadings, you know. ‘Off with his/her/its,’ et cetera,” the man said, casually swiping his finger across his neck. “If you haven’t shown your patriotism yet this quarter, I suggest you appear posthaste for the standing-room-only section. There’s a waiting list that opens up at thirteen-thirty.”

  “I beg your pardon. I feel I am a bit confused. May we begin again? I am Alice.” She performe
d the tiniest curtsy, feeling like a child again. “And who might you be?”

  “I’m the Knave of Accounts,” the man responded with dry surprise.

  “The Knave of…” Alice blinked. “But why…”

  “I know, why am I out here acting like an overglorified usher?” he agreed with a shake of his head. “Dashed useless waste of my skills—but on the other hand, I am also in charge of the schedule, so maybe it all makes sense. Speaking of which, you look like a VIP. Can I pencil you in for tomor—oh, no, no executions tomorrow. It’s Cricket Day. The Thrumsday after next?”

  Alice hated to disappoint; he seemed so eager. She was the only living thing within sight and very possibly the only one who ever actually took a moment to talk to him. Did he stand here all day, waiting?

  “I’m sorry, but who’s to be executed today, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Oh let’s see, that would be…” He rolled and unrolled the scroll, lines of illuminated red hearts sliding in and out of the margins like a zoetrope. “Ah yes, the Hatter, the Dodo, and the Dormouse. Quite an A-list lineup, if you ask me.”

  “The Hatter! The Dormouse! The Dodo?” Alice cried. “To be killed? No! That’s terrible!”

  “That’s very funny,” the Knave said, squinting at her again. “Most people, after I read off the names, say, ‘What did they do?’ It’s treason, probably, if you want to know. That’s usually the reason given.”

  “But the King—or something—always intervenes!” Alice protested. “No one is ever actually killed!”

  “Yes, tell that to all the corpses swinging in the rose garden. As for the King—well—I don’t suppose you’re from around here, then, are you?”

  Far from it. She would definitely follow up on the King business later. As for now, she had friends in trouble.

  “I should say not. But please—when are they to be executed?”

  The Knave pointed his right boot; at the tip of it was a watch Alice hadn’t noticed before. On the left boot was a brandy glass.