Wonderland Read online

  “Charles Dodgson,” Mr Walters answered. “Or should I say, Lewis Carroll? Another patriot who was hidden by trivialities, just like you. His work as a codebreaker went undocumented by the public. They only remember him for his stories now. Just as they only remember you as the object of those stories. It seems grossly unfair to you both.” He smiled triumphantly. “Your second question?”

  “Is to Miss Hansen.” Lady Hargreaves turned in her seat again. “Young woman, are you listening to me?”

  “Of course, Lady Hargreaves,” Lucy replied.

  “Good. Pay attention.” The elderly softness had gone from Lady Hargreaves; there was no gentleness left, only taut skin and rigid bone, and a curious distance in her eyes, as though she were considering chess pieces. “There is no way you can possibly understand the full scope of what you’re asking. But I suppose you’d tell me that you’re old enough to know your own mind by now. That’s what a great many young men said, twenty years ago. So answer me for yourself, young woman, and not for your commander or your Leader or whatever. Is this truly what you want?”

  Lucy didn’t dare glance over at Mr Walters, in case it seemed that she was looking to him for guidance. But she already knew what he would want and what she would answer. This was all new to her, all unexpected, but she wasn’t going to risk a refusal by seeming less than certain. “Madam, it’s everything that I want. Please say yes.”

  “The power to kill people?” Lady Hargreaves demanded.

  “The power to make a difference,” Lucy answered. “Anyone can kill people. I’ve learned how to use a gun, madam. I can pull a trigger. But this is something different. This would be helping England—helping Great Britain, helping the world. Wasn’t it the same for you, madam? Didn’t you want to do the right thing?”

  “I just wanted to go home,” Lady Hargreaves said, very softly.

  “But it won’t be like that for me, madam!” Lucy pleaded. “I’m older than you were, I understand how important this is. I read the news. I’ve been told the truth about what’s going on in the world around us. Someone has to act. Why can’t that someone be me?”

  “You can see that she’s sincere,” Mr Walters broke in. “What more do you need, Lady Hargreaves?”

  “Nothing.” The old woman sighed. “Nothing at all. Thank you both for making my duty clear to me.”

  It should have been surrender—but it wasn’t. Mr Walters and Lucy shared a glance of warning. “Now, Lady Hargreaves, I hope you’re not thinking of anything foolish—” he started.

  She held up a wrinkled hand, age-spotted and shaking. “What do you think I’m going to do, young man? Leap out of my seat and rip you apart? I’m over eighty years old. The flesh is very weak. No, I’m going to give in to this young lady’s demands. She wants to be the new White Queen’s Pawn? My dear, the title is yours.”

  And the light in the room rippled and changed. The glass that covered the portrait of the Leader silvered as though fog was covering it from the other side, becoming as reflective as a mirror.

  “Seventy years ago I made a bargain,” Lady Hargreaves said dreamily. “And like any child entering a new world, I didn’t realise what I’d done at the time. I only found out later. Dear Charles did his best to cover it all up. He turned what I’d told him into a story, and then told it back to me again until I almost believed it. He lied for me so much that I was employed as a spy and they believed that nonsense about hysterical strength. Those cold men in government were glad to take advantage of me. Just as you said, young man, kings and queens always need assassins.”

  “Dodgson lied?” Mr Walters asked warily. His eyes moved to the dossier on his desk, as if he was wondering just how much of it was true.

  “He was a storyteller. He blamed himself and did his best to protect me. But it wasn’t his fault that I had a debt to pay. Once you make a promise over there, you’re bound by it for life.”

  “Over there?” Mr Walters echoed. His hand slipped into a desk drawer and brought out a gun—an anonymous little pistol, the sort that Lucy herself had trained with. “Lady Hargreaves, if this is some sort of attempt to frighten us—”

  “Come now,” the old woman chided him. “Why so scared, young man? I’m just a frail old lady who can be decoyed off to a quiet back street in London and murdered if anything goes wrong. What is there about me that could possibly frighten you?”

  “We know you’re not an ordinary woman,” Mr Walters snapped. “You’re the White Queen’s Pawn!”

  “I was.” She spread her hands in mock benediction. “But now someone else is taking my place.”

  “Lady Hargreaves,” Lucy said, trying not to let her voice shake, “what’s going on?”

  “The right questions, my dear, but too late.” She turned to smile at the glazed portrait. “I always needed a mirror to bring them through. If they couldn’t have me yet, then they’d take someone else, and that kept them happy for a while. It put off the final reckoning. Of course, there was some unpleasantness, some violence. They don’t see things the way we do. I found that easier to understand as a child. These days… well, one grows old, young man. One wonders if one did the right thing.”

  “They?” Mr Walters demanded. “In heaven’s name, who are they?”

  “But I did so want to go home…” Lady Hargreaves whispered.

  The air shivered with footsteps, soft, invisible, like the footfalls of a huge cat. Lucy looked around frantically; there was nobody else in the room but them. She had no gun of her own. Incoherent panic yammered in her brain, breaking down the pride which had made her so certain she could stand and fight. She thought of running to the door, but instead found herself looking at the portrait. The painting of the Leader was completely hidden now, and the glass showed a clear reflection of the room—all three of them, but also something else.

  “Dear merciful God,” she murmured, the words coming unbidden and unwanted. The huge feline which leaned on the corner of the desk in the reflection leered at her, huge mouth opening in a toothed smile that never seemed to end. It raised itself to loom over Mr Walters, far larger than any normal cat, as outsize as a tiger beside a human child.

  Mr Walters followed Lucy’s gaze. His mouth tightened. He waved a hand behind himself, but it passed through empty air. “Pull yourself together, Miss Hansen! We will not be frightened by these party tricks, these hypnotic illusions!”

  “Off with his head,” Lady Hargreaves murmured.

  In the mirror, the great cat opened its mouth even wider and took Mr Walters’ head between its jaws. It was like a lion-tamer at the circus, Lucy thought hysterically, and surely any moment now it would simply sit back again and roar at the ceiling…

  In the mirror, the cat closed its jaws.

  Mr Walters fell to the ground in two pieces. Both head and body dropped behind the desk, so Lucy couldn’t see them, but blood gushed out, all over the dull beige rug and the wood and all the way to the walls. She fell to her knees, her hands going to her mouth as she tried not to be sick. This wasn’t happening, this couldn’t be happening, she was a good girl, she was strong, she was a loyal member of the Party and this was some sort of hypnotic trick and any minute now the hypnotist would snap his fingers and she’d wake up.

  But the room was silent, and nobody was snapping their fingers.

  “Look in the mirror, young woman,” Lady Hargreaves said. While her voice was gentle, there was no sympathy in it, no pity, no human reaction to having seen a man decapitated in front of her. It was like someone telling a story, a very long way away.

  Lucy looked up. The cat was still there, sitting on the desk, but as she watched it began to fade from the outside in, till there was nothing but those bloodstained teeth hanging in the air. A moment’s held breath, and they were gone as well. Briefly, she dared to hope.

  And then in the mirror she saw the figure standing behind her. It was a woman all in white, her skin as pale as her gown, her face all sharp angles, brow and nose and thrusting chin. She w
ore a crested helmet rather than a crown, and her draperies hung on her like a shroud. Her long nails glittered like diamonds, and her eyes were like holes into molten steel.

  “Your new Pawn, Your Majesty.” Lady Hargreaves levered herself up from her chair, movements slow and aching. “By her own wish and her own consent. Maybe she’ll wish to make her own bargain with you, or maybe you’ll keep her for good, but that’s not my business.”

  The woman in white leaned forward abruptly, like a vulture seizing a corpse, her fingers biting into Lucy’s shoulders.

  And Lucy felt it.

  She turned. There should have been nothing there. But the woman was there, she was real, and her hands were still locked in Lucy’s flesh like claws. And behind her there were other figures, stretching into the shadows in an expanding wave—a woman in red, a knight, two conjoined men, a long writhing thing, flowers that spoke, things that were wrong in too many ways to be sure, except that Lucy couldn’t bring herself to even look at them long enough to be certain…

  “And that concludes our contract. I’m free of you.” Lady Hargreaves looked around the room. “Dear me, I hope it’s not too difficult to get a taxi home. I don’t want to have to walk from here. Wherever here is.”

  Lucy wrenched herself free, blood running down her coat where the creature behind had clutched at her, and staggered forward to grasp at Lady Hargreaves, but her hands met cold glass. Her understanding made the jump before she could piece out the idea in conscious thought, and she clawed at the mirror surface in front of her, seeing the room on the other side, the dead body of Mr Walters, Lady Hargreaves with her hand on the door—everything that was actually real. She would not, could not bring herself to look behind her, to see what was waiting for her on this side of the mirror, the side of the unreal and impossible.

  The image began to fade. With terror, Lucy realised that the mirror effect on the glass was vanishing, that in a moment it would be nothing more than the covering of the Leader’s portrait, and that she would have no way out of wherever she was. “Let me go!” she screamed. “Lady Hargreaves, please, let me out, I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I didn’t want this!”

  The door shut behind Lady Hargreaves with a click, and the last of the image dulled and vanished, leaving only bare wall behind it. Bare wall, in a plain house, on the other side of the mirror.

  Lucy heard the footsteps approaching behind her, and for as long as she could she stared at the wall as if she could force it to become the mirror again, unwilling—unable—to turn and look behind her.

  But finally she had to turn, and see the Queen who waited for her service.

  Dream Girl

  CAVAN SCOTT

  “Is the White Rabbit late?” the Queen of Hearts inquired.

  “Oh yes, Your Majesty,” the Hare replied, bowing so low that his long ears dragged across the freshly mown lawn. “I killed him myself.”

  “I hope the poor thing didn’t suffer,” the Queen of Spades said, her mount snorting as it pawed the turf.

  The Hare smiled up at the most compassionate of the four matriarchs. “Don’t fret, Your Maj. He died with a smile on those little coney lips.”

  The Queen of Clubs shifted in her saddle, her ghoulish interest piqued. “How did you do it?”

  The Hare waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Oh, I pulled a funny face, that’s all.”

  The Mad Hatter suppressed a shudder, the memory of the Rabbit’s demise still in his mind. The Hare had indeed pulled a funny face; the Rabbit’s face, pulled right off the bone when the now ex-bunny refused to talk, a detail the Hare was keeping close to his tabard-clad chest, the jerkin speckled by dried blood and clumps of pink matted fur.

  “So, what did you learn?” the Queen of Diamonds asked, her steed gleaming like a precious stone.

  “I’m sorry?” the Hare lisped, playing for time, one ear cocked in the direction of the regal playing cards.

  “She said…” the Queen of Hearts bellowed, both of her faces scowling down at him, “what did the traitorous cottontail tell you before his untimely demise?”

  The Hare shook his head. “It’s no good, Your Highnesses. I can’t hear a word you’re saying, not with Tweedledum bawling like a lovesick banshee.”

  The Hatter sympathised. Dum-Dum, as his friends and many of his enemies called him, had been crying for days, ever since his twin brother had disappeared. It was a good job the rest of Wonderland didn’t follow his example and weep for those they had lost. No one would be able to get anything done.

  “Perhaps if you could come down from your High Horses?” the Hare suggested, a proposition that caused outrage among the ruling quartet.

  “Come down?” the Queen of Clubs exclaimed from where she sat forty feet in the air, her horse’s spindly legs making it look like a giraffe wearing stilts. “Come down?!”

  “The cheek of the fellow,” the Queen of Diamonds blustered.

  “Off with his head,” the Queen of Hearts added, which was hardly a surprise as she had ordered at least twenty-seven beheadings since morning tea.

  The Queen of Spades leaned over conspiratorially. “I think he needs his head, dear, if he is to find that wretched girl.”

  “I do, most definitely!” the Hare agreed, suddenly able to hear above Dum-Dum’s boisterous lamentation. The threat of decapitation always focused the mind, even one as addled as the March Hare’s. “It’s only a matter of time before I complete my task.”

  “I should think so,” the Queen of Clubs said, glancing over her paper-thin shoulder at the tower that dominated Wonderland. “It is almost a quarter past unease. Do I have to remind you what will happen if the Alarm Clock strikes disaster?”

  This, the Mad Hatter mused, was part of the problem. No one actually knew what would happen when the Alarm Clock tolled. The tower had appeared the day the Cheshire Cat had vanished. This, in itself, wasn’t unusual. The mischievous moggy was always popping off. But this time, the Cat didn’t return, and neither did the Eternal Labyrinth, which had disappeared with him. Soon other Wonderlanders were vanishing, great chunks of the Dream Realm melting away like cucumber ice cream left out on a hot summer’s day.

  No one could even remember the Clock arriving. They were too busy debating what was happening to the rapidly diminishing kingdom. If you believed the rumours—and the Queens certainly did—the dissolution coincided with the arrival of the Dream Girl, a blonde-haired human who had been running amok from one end of the map to the other. The sovereigns had decided that she was responsible and had called for her head, appointing a pack of Jokers to bring her to justice. The blithesome bounty hunters set out, brave in tabards emblazoned with the sigils of all four houses—a heart, a club, a spade and a diamond. None returned. Only the March Hare was left, Wonderland’s last line of defence.

  Meanwhile, the Clock kept ticking, inexplicably synchronised with every timepiece in Wonderland, from the sundial that rose every morning to the White Rabbit’s beloved pocket-watch, which now hung from the Hare’s gore-smothered vest.

  Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

  High on her thoroughbred, the Queen of Hearts sulked, peeved that the Hare’s head was still on his scrawny shoulders. “Can’t we just lop off a bit of his head? Surely he won’t miss his brain?”

  The Queen of Spades sat back in her saddle, considering this. “A little off the top, you mean? Well, I suppose we could…”

  Before the others could agree, the Hare booted the Hatter in the back, sending the smaller man stumbling towards the tetrarchy. The Hatter dropped to his knees in front of the Queens, his back aching and his pride bruised. It hadn’t always been like this. The Hatter could remember when they did nothing but eat cakes and drink tea, back when they spent time with the Dormouse. Now the Dormouse was gone, the Queen had somehow split into four separate cards and the Hare wasn’t so much mad as criminally insane. The Hatter missed the good old days.

  “We have fresh information,” the Hare insisted, his ears folded over
his straw toupée to protect what little grey matter sloshed around in his skull. “Tell him, Hatta. Go on.”

  “Well?” the Queen of Diamonds said, peering down at the hatmaker.

  The Hatter swallowed. “The Dream Girl has been spotted in the Concrete Jungle.”

  “The Concrete Jungle?” squawked the Queen of Hearts, the hands on the Alarm Clock shifting to half past consternation. “But the Concrete Jungle holds up the sky!”

  “Only on Tuesdays,” the Queen of Spades pointed out. “Today is Wednesday… at least, it was the last time I looked.”

  “Oh, I see,” the Queen of Hearts said, her printed face still etched with concern. “But even so, the Jungle can’t vanish. We’ve lost too much already.”

  “Indeed, we have,” the Queen of Spades agreed. “The Dream Girl must be delivered to us to pay for her crimes. Why, only yesterday I heard that the Isle of Flight has fallen from the sky.”

  The Queen of Diamonds gasped. “Say it is not so!”

  “If only I could. One minute the Isle was up where it belonged, and the next, it had dropped like a hippopotamouse who has forgotten how to float.”

  The Diamond Queen covered her mouth with dainty cardboard hands. “And the people? Our subjects?”

  “Gone. Every last one of them.”

  “That settles it,” the Queen of Hearts said, gripping her reins in fury. “This ends today. It’s bad enough that the White Rabbit was colluding with the enemy, but to know that she’s still at large…” The Queen’s voice trailed off in frustration. “Do we even know what she’s doing in the Jungle?”

  “Planning a teddy-bear’s picnic, if our informant can be believed,” the Hatter replied, wringing the brim of his topper.

  The Queen’s eyes narrowed. “Infiltrate this picnic. The Dream Girl must be brought to justice.”

  “You can rely on us,” the March Hare promised as the Alarm Clock struck a quarter to trepidation.

  * * *

  “I don’t like it here,” the Hatter admitted as they snuck into the Concrete Jungle, tiptoeing between colourless trees that stretched up to a canopy of slab-like leaves. “It is a screepy place and no mistake.”