Unbirthday

by Liz Braswell

  The landscape did that thing it always did: seamlessly and silently roil into something entirely different. The vague seaside air with its accompanying grasses and black-and-white-checkered floor became more of a golden meadow, which, as often happened in late afternoon, wound up in deep, lush shadow from some hill or knoll no one could see. A lovely forest sprang up rather suddenly, like a fog had disappeared and revealed what it hid: soft pine and cushy oak and dappled spots of sunlight like a painting by Corot. A ridiculously straight-running brook—almost a canal—bordered it, but was apparently natural, insomuch as anything in Wonderland was natural.

  “I’m remembering it all now,” Alice mused to herself. “Everything here changes unexpectedly…but somehow you always wind up right where the next thing, the next bit of action is. When I was little I just went and did and followed my impulses and wound up at the next place. I should keep that in mind. Wonderland knows where it’s taking you. I should trust that.”

  There were only two off notes to the otherwise perfectly Arcadian scene. One was a whiff of smoke that came from somewhere beyond the forest. It wasn’t from a wood fire and smelled foul.

  The other was a sign hammered up on an otherwise innocent oak, whitewashed and red painted:

  FREE OF TRAITORS

  INSPECTED BY W. RABBIT

  WEDNESDAY

  A crude symbol of a rabbit was hastily daubed on at the bottom.

  “Which Wednesday, I wonder,” the Gryphon mused, scratching his chin. “One from the last batch, I assume?”

  “I think the next ones are all full,” the Dodo said, pulling out a pocket watch.

  “Is it still always teatime with you, Hatter?” Alice asked curiously.

  “Oh, Time and I made up a long time ago,” the Hatter said moodily. “He wanted to make amends before he went. And with the Queen of Hearts in charge, there is never tea anymore. For anyone.”

  “Isn’t it funny,” Alice said, reaching out a hand to tentatively touch the sign. “Last time I was here, all I wanted to do was find and chase the White Rabbit. And this time, no matter how hard I try to avoid him, his presence is everywhere.”

  “All right, here we go, then!” the Dodo said, puffing out his chest and reaching with one large and awkward foot to step over the stream.

  “Not you, foolish bird!” the Hatter cried, pulling him back. “We need to fish out clean Alice on the other side, when she’s back to the way she was. An empty girl. We can’t do that if we’ve forgotten who we are and what we’re about as well.”

  “Empty girl?” Alice said. “I don’t think—”

  “Off you go!” the Gryphon cried gamely and pushed her over the stream.

  She stumbled and fell against the trunk of a comfortable tree but nearly lost her shoes in the stream.

  “Dear me, what just happened? I tripped over—wait, is this the forest I’m supposed to be in?” she wondered, taking her shoes off and tipping the water out of them. “I’ve forgotten…where…I was going….”

  She put her shoes back on and looked around. The stream seemed wet so she went the opposite way. The grasses she trod on were sweet and the pine woods she entered also smelled lovely. A bread-and-butterfly flapped languorously by, proboscis out, looking for weak tea.

  “Do you know where I was going or who I am?” she asked, half addressing the insect. She was not the least bit worried, only a little perplexed. “I’m fairly certain I’m a girl—from my dress, I mean. And, well, I just feel like a girl. Oh, but wait! What if I am a lizard or a satyr going to a fancy-dress party? How frightening that would be to discover—only because I can’t remember my life at all….” She spread one hand before her and felt her head and face with the other. “No, smooth and lovely. No scales. No horns. Wouldn’t that be a horror, to have forgotten who I was and then found out I was someone else entirely.”

  She ducked under the bread-and-butterfly and skipped a little. “Well, I suppose that now I can be anyone I want, since I am no one at all. I can do anything I want as well. And no one shall be able to chastise me later: How dare you do this or that; don’t you know who you are? And I shall say: But I don’t know who I am. So it’s hardly fair.

  “I wonder what I always wanted to do that I couldn’t do before, before I forgot everything. Fly? Could I fly now, I wonder? Or grow a moustache?

  “If I am no one now, that means I could be anyone. Perhaps I get to choose. Let’s see: I could be queen, I suppose. But I think despite all the parties and parades, it would mostly be boring and stodgy and I would have no time for myself.

  “I could be married with a sweet little husband and some enormous strapping children in a cottage with a garden and painted eaves. That would be lovely, if a bit dull. Perhaps someday.

  “I suppose what I would truly like to be most of all is myself, whoever that is, and have all sorts of adventures in wonderful fairylands when I wanted. But not all the time. I would need days to think about them and tell my stories to friends and strengthen up for the next adventure—oh!”

  She had been really enjoying herself and this flight of fancy when she nearly stumbled over another inhabitant of the otherwise empty forest. He was a lazy-looking, thin fellow stretched out at the base of the tree. But he must have been someone a bit fancy, for he wore a lovely sharp hat with long feathers and a beautiful bloodred velvet tunic over black breeches. There were crumbs on his lips and what looked like a hint of raspberry jam—or blood—on his cheek.

  “I beg your pardon. How do you do?” she said politely.

  “Haven’t the slightest,” the man said with a smile. She was struck by the light in his eye and the ironic yet plaintive expression on his face. “I can’t seem to remember either how I do or what I do at the moment.”

  “I can’t, either. Did you have a pie?” Alice asked interestedly, pointing at his face.

  “A tart, actually. Raspberry,” the man said with relish. He still wasn’t getting up, which was a trifle rude. “I found several of them with me when I ran in here. I would offer you one, but I ate them all.”

  “Oh, how gluttonous!”

  “I suppose,” he said with a casual shrug. “There was no one else here at the time. If you had been here, I would have shared, of course. They were quite tasty.”

  He leapt up rather suddenly springily—on account of his pasteboard thinness, Alice supposed. Crumbs fell out of the rich fabric on his lap and he brushed off the remainder with artistically graceful and narrow fingers. His fine feather bobbed and swayed with a life of its own, matching the arch of his insouciant eyebrows.

  She found herself quite taken for a moment.

  He wasn’t at all like—

  —like—

  “Mr. Nobody of Nowhere,” he said grandly with an intricate bow wherein he touched his middle with one hand and threw out the other behind him and then immediately somehow took her hand and brought it almost to his lips, but not quite. “At your service.”

  “Miss Nothing of Neverbeen,” Alice answered with a smile and a curtsy. “Shall we walk on together?”

  “Nothing would give me greater pleasure,” he said without a wink, and she found herself laughing.

  She took his proffered arm and they strolled down a little path, tan and dusty between the pine needles. Everything was delightful. She wasn’t even concerned about her inability to remember anything. It was like…a holiday for her brain. She did wonder vaguely what was happening in her life that meant her brain required a vacation. She looked down at her clothes and skirts again to see if they would reveal her occupation, but couldn’t come to any conclusions. They were cleanish and well sewn and mostly comfortable, though a little restricting.

  “Just being by your side is utterly pleasant,” the man next to her said eventually. “I’m sorry to not be making conversation, but I seem to know and remember Nothing—and Nothing is more pleasant than you in my sight. So there isn’t much to say, is there?”

  “‘Lovely weather,’” she remarked wryly. She gave
his arm a squeeze. It was fine and hard. “This is quite all right. Let us do just…be.”

  Too soon, or after many hours, or somewhere in between, the trees came to a sudden halt as if ordered by a mean sergeant. A narrow stream ran by at the trees’ edge that was inhabited by chunky golden fish who stayed solidly on the bottom, waddling only a little hither and thither on their fins with great effort. On the other bank, sitting with their backs toward the strolling couple, was an odd collection of creatures warming themselves in the sun. They made black silhouettes free of fine detail—which only accentuated their strange shapes: tall heads, long beaks, too many legs.

  “Wait—” she said vaguely as the gentleman made to cross the stream.

  “Whatever is the matter?” he asked, concerned.

  Alice frowned, trying to think. “I feel as though once we pass over, everything will change.”

  “Change isn’t always a bad thing,” he said, patting her arm for comfort. “There’s no adventure without change. And no buying sweets, either. Have you ever tried to buy a lolly with a thousand-pound note? Disastrous.”

  “I suppose—” Alice said tentatively. His point made cents, although it didn’t seem to apply specifically to this situation. Clutching his arm, she made a wide step over the water….

  “I’m Alice!” she cried. “Always and forever Alice!”

  For some reason the thought cheered her immensely. She was a young woman from Angleland with nice hair from a nice household who had a lovely camera and aunt and boring sister and everything was generally good. “And I do have a lovely home to return home to, and Wonderland adventures! Isn’t that just perfect!” she cried.

  Her gentleman friend had a similarly joyous reaction: he leapt over the stream with as much grace and skill as Jack o’er the candlestick and landed with triumph on the other side.

  “Well, what do you know!” he cried, laughing. “I’m a knave! How fortuitous!”

  The shadowy figures on the berm beyond had heard the shouts and leapt up. Alice ran forward to meet them.

  “No! No more this way, no further,” the Hatter implored. “One or two brooks is fine, but then you cross another or another, and then after the eighth one you’re no longer our little Alice, you’re a queen….”

  “I think I’d make a rather good queen,” Alice said, her desire to gather her friends in a great reunion hug tempered by his words.

  As her memories came back, they took a faster route than normal, as when one is trying to push through a crossword puzzle and can’t remember the right word. Empty Alice became full Alice in less than a minute; she saw, through new eyes, her nearly adult height and all the changes and growth she had gone through in the last eleven years. All the subtle things that made her who she was today—which her Wonderland friends couldn’t see. Subtle wasn’t a function of Wonderland.

  “But not yet,” the Hatter begged.

  “Alice! Step away from that man!” the Gryphon cried, hissing at the pretty fellow who ate tarts, and grabbing her with his talons. He could have done with a good trimming, Alice thought peevishly as they pinched her skin through her dress.

  “Oh, alarm clocks and bearbells!” the Dodo said, shaking his head. “Alice, do you not know who you’re standing with?”

  “Knave of Hearts, at your service,” her companion said with a bow, this time doffing his beautiful hat and winking at her.

  “He’s a shill for the Queen!” the Hatter whispered far too loudly to do any good. “He’ll report us all!”

  “Oh, I don’t think so, not anymore,” the Knave said with a sigh, dramatically brushing more crumbs off his waistcoat. “I’m on her wanted list now. I stole all her tarts, the ones she was saving for tea.”

  The Hatter raised an eyebrow skeptically. “You stole the Queen’s tarts? But why? You were her favorite, her second-in-command.”

  The Knave shrugged. “They were delicious.”

  “And she made them herself, didn’t she?” Alice said, remembering the rhyme:

  The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts

  All on a summer’s day

  The Knave of Hearts, he stole the tarts

  And took them right away.

  “Fancy her having time to make tarts with all her wars and killing and executions,” the Dodo said, tsking. “But no wonder you ran away. She would have your head on a pike, she would.”

  “No—the King would beat him,” Alice said. “That is all, and he would return them. According to the rhyme, anyhow.”

  “Alice, the King has been dead or imprisoned or otherwise out of commission for over a fortnight…. Have you not been paying attention?” the Hatter asked, exasperated.

  “Well, I can’t very well return the tarts anyway, now can I?” the Knave said with a sigh. “The Dodo’s right—the Queen would have my head and then decorate her ramparts with it. Silly of me to run into the Forest of Forgetting. I forgot and ate them.”

  “You could have at least saved one,” Alice said, vexed. “I could use a tart to see if I could grow again.”

  “Oh! And how do you feel, little Alice?” the Hatter asked, dancing. “Fresh and new? Ready to start all over again? Are you unremembered now? Can you shrink and grow as the moment requires?”

  “Please don’t call me little. At least not until I shrink. You and I are about the same size,” Alice pointed out. “And I am full-gr—ah, an adult now. Just like you. I am not your little anything.”

  “Bah, sounds like she still knows her maths and all,” the Dodo said. “Failure!”

  “Well, we shan’t know until we find a treat of some sort. And anyway, one might just as well assume that life experiences and knowledge gained over the last eleven years have taught me to grow or shrink even better than I did before.”

  “And yet grow and shrink you don’t,” the Hatter pointed out. “Q.E.D.”

  “This is all a waste. We may as well go on to M—” the Gryphon started to say, but the Hatter took off his hat and hit him.

  “Where are you off to?” the Knave asked, catching on immediately that there was a secret.

  “None of your business, Queensman,” the Dodo said haughtily.

  “I told you, I’m no good to her now,” the Knave said, hands out and open in supplication. “I’m a dead card walking if I show up anywhere near the castle. So you might as well take me with you. Perhaps I can even help, if you’re—you know, planning something.”

  “Are you good with a sword?” the Hatter asked.

  “Or a bootlace?” the Dodo added.

  “Both, and both would be dedicated to—the cause,” the Knave said with a bow. “Or at least to your lady here.”

  “All right, but you’ll have to carry Bill, then,” the Dodo said, putting his wing out so the little capped lizard could scramble over and up the fancy card’s sleeve. The Knave’s painted face seemed to blur for a moment into a look of disgust but soon smoothed out. Alice couldn’t fault him that. She wasn’t sure she would particularly want a strange lizard suddenly so close, crawling on her skin.

  “Maybe after we had been properly introduced and chatted a bit it would be all right,” she said to herself.

  The group set off in a direction that was argued about several times before everyone managed to agree on it. The air seemed sunsetty—the sun, however, was feeling tardy and hung in the sky high away from bedtime. The moon sulked on the eastern horizon and turned away from its sibling, who always seemed to hog the attention.

  In that light, the grassy plain quickly became a cozy landscape of tangled scrub bushes, old apple trees, and an abandoned hazel copse whose woody residents preferred to grow their new shoots in spirals like a little girl’s hair gone wild and unruly—very hard to pick around. The mirrorbirds loved them for roosting, however, and Alice couldn’t help stopping now and then to see how she looked just for the novelty of the types of frames they sported. Some of the reflections even changed her hair and lip and skin color! Her friends hurried on ahead, chatting amongst themse
lves and listening a little too raptly to stories of the royal court in its current deadly phase, as told by the Knave.

  Alice lingered at one particular mirrorbird whose reflective face gave her image freckles. The fashion in Angleland was of course to try to minimize tanning and other effects of the sun, at least for young women of breeding, by use of either powder or sun hats. But she rather liked the healthy, friendly look they gave to her otherwise clear face.

  “I see Alice has spotted herself,” said a musing voice from behind her. Since Alice knew who it was, she didn’t turn around immediately, preferring to give herself one last nose wrinkle to see how witchy she looked with the freckles.

  The Cheshire Cat was of course lolling on a spiral branch behind her, like a series of circles himself: upon the circular branch, his head and his body wrapped around and around, and his eyes seemed to bounce a little in his face as if to emphasize the conceit.

  “How very original of you,” Alice said dryly. “But I still like cats, however jejune they appear—fortunately for you. Kittens as well as mangy old striped things.” She scratched him under the chin to soften the words.

  “Mmm…” The cat rolled his body and thumped his feet, obviously enjoying it. But his head stayed in the exact same position, of course: impossible.

  “Why don’t you come with us, instead of just popping up now and then?” Alice suggested. “I really would like your company, and I think you might help the Hatter regain a bit of his Nonsense. You could sit on my shoulders, if you like, or I could carry you.”