The Looking Glass Wars (14 page)

He trailed people alight with the glow of imagination, believing that one of them would lead him to Wonderland‘s princess, who couldn‘t fail to glow in this world.

He visited hat shops in the towns and cities of Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Bavaria, Italy, Prussia, Greece, Poland (to name but several). In 1864, five years into his search, having twice circled the European continent, he took the Calais ferry to Dover, England. Had Alice‘s Adventures in Wonderland been published by the time he arrived, any one of the salespeople in the hat shops and haberdasheries he visited would have been stung with recognition upon hearing the name Princess Alyss Heart of Wonderland issue from his lips, though they might have thought him mad—a man in search of a fictional character. As it was, they only tried to sell him hats he didn‘t need while complimenting him on the one he wore.

Hatter would be far from England a year later when Charles Dodgson‘s book was first published.

As he roamed the world in search of Wonderland‘s princess, maps sticking out of every available pocket, worn from use and much scribbled on with notes of where he‘d been and what routes he‘d taken, Hatter‘s legend grew. Though the languages in which it was told varied as widely as the terrain he covered—ranging from Afrikaans to Hindi to Japanese to Welsh—and the details of the story often changed, its basic premise was the same: A solitary man blessed with fear some physical abilities and armed with a curious assemblage of weaponry crossed continents on a mysterious quest that led him to headwear merchants the world over—whether a peddler of knitted caps operating from a tent in a North African Bedouin encampment or an exclusive hat shop in the heart of Prague.

Hatter sightings were reported in America, which was nearing the end of a civil war—glimpses of him stalking streets in New York and Massachusetts, tramping the snow-covered hills of Vermont, the icy roads of Delaware, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine. He traveled down through Mexico and South America, skirted the Antarctic Peninsula, and circled back up to California and Oregon. He passed into Canada and eventually made his way to the Asian countries and the Far East.

Then, in the third week of April 1872, thirteen years after he lost Alyss, Hatter entered a shop in a crowded bazaar in Egypt, in the shadow of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

―I‘m looking for Princess Alyss Heart of Wonderland,‖ he said to the shopkeeper. ―I‘m a member of Wonderland‘s Millinery. Any information you have pertaining to Princess Alyss will be highly appreciated and, in due time, rewarded.‖

He had uttered these exact words so many times, and not once met with success, that a normal man would have given up on their power to provoke a meaningful response. The truth was, he didn‘t expect the shopkeeper to have any information, so he was surprised when the man beckoned him toward a high shelf, where a book was leaning between a miniature sphinx carved out of sandstone and a basket of dried camel tongues. The man dusted it with his sleeve and handed it to Hatter. It was an English edition of Alice‘s Adventures in Wonderland.

Her name was misspelled, but…Wonderland? Surely, it was his Alyss. How could it be anyone else? The girl in the illustrations looked nothing like her, and yet it could not be coincidence.

Hatter‘s future path had become clear: To find Alyss, he would first have to find the book‘s author, Lewis Carroll.

CHAPTER 23

B ULLET-LIKE, DODGE raced headlong through the kaleidoscopic glitter of the Crystal Continuum. ―Yeah-ha! Wooooo!‖

Wonderlanders, struggling to get out of his way, were sucked up through crystal byways and reflected out of looking glasses into seedy restaurants or the homes of strangers—looking glasses out of which they had never meant to be reflected, on their way to other destinations.

―Yeah, yeah, yeah!‖ Dodge shouted. ―Come on!‖

Four Glass Eyes were chasing him. They looked like ordinary Wonderlanders except for the implants of reflective colorless crystal in their eye sockets. An artificial race with enhanced sight, strength, and speed, Glass Eyes were built for hand-to-hand combat, and they patrolled the Crystal Continuum with orders to annihilate anyone suspected of being an Alyssian. Their patrols had effectively limited rebel mobility, all but choked off a major channel for rebel communications. Handheld looking glass communicators had never been viable for anything but short, cryptic intelligence reports, as dispatches could be intercepted by anyone at any time. The most effective means of sending and retrieving sensitive Alyssian intelligence had been to use portal runners to traverse the Crystal Continuum. But that was before the Glass Eyes. Now being a portal runner meant dying sooner rather than later. Portal runs were one step removed from suicide missions. Dodge Anders had made more portal runs than any Alyssian and he always volunteered to deliver the most important messages, warnings, and intel updates. The occasion for this run: Redd‘s troops had been active and General Doppelgänger suspected an impending attack on an Alyssian outpost situated in the Snark Mountain foothills. The outpost had to be warned.

Shoooooooomph!

Dodge flew through the Continuum, the Glass Eyes gaining on him. These contests of navigational skill and strength were the only times he felt anything even approaching happiness.

It didn‘t matter that he might be killed. He was being useful and it made him feel that much closer to exacting his revenge.

In front of him, the Continuum splintered in many directions. He threw his body weight to the left and made a sharp turn at the last minute. He looked behind him: One of the Glass Eyes hadn‘t made the turn. Three more to go. And he had to lose them quick, before others joined the chase.

Spinning to avoid the Glass Eyes‘ gunfire, Dodge removed his sword from its scabbard and held it firmly with both hands. With a great effort of will, he came to a sudden stop. The Glass Eyes weren‘t expecting it, came rushing upon him, and the frontrunner impaled himself on Dodge‘s sword. Before the two remaining Glass Eyes could regain their equilibrium, Dodge relaxed, surrendered his body to the pull of the nearest looking glass, and was sucked up out of the Continuum, reflected out of a glass in the lobby of an apartment building. In less time than it took a galloping spirit-dane to make a single stride, he pressed himself flat against the wall next to the looking glass. The Glass Eyes flew out of it and past him. He smashed the glass with the handle of his sword. As fragments of mirror scattered and fell, Dodge squeezed his entire body back into the Continuum through a reflective sliver no larger than a jabberwock‘s toe—a feat the Glass Eyes hadn‘t mastered, for when they tried, they couldn‘t get their entire bodies into the Continuum, only those parts that had been reflected in the fragment. Zooming through the looking glass‘ fast-disappearing crystalline byway, the void racing up behind him, Dodge looked back a final time and saw one Glass Eye with half a face, a shoulder, and little else, the other with a head and torso but no arms. The Glass Eyes had no strength and were swallowed by the void. He too would have become part of the nothingness if he hadn‘t hooked up with the Continuum‘s main artery when he did.

Dodge continued on his way, heading for a certain looking glass not far from Snark Mountain.

He emerged from the Continuum and made the rest of the journey on foot. But the joy he‘d felt during the chase quickly vanished. He had reverted to his usual tightly contained self by the time he arrived to warn the leader of the Alyssian outpost of a possible attack from Redd.

Mission completed. What now? He could head back to the Everlasting Forest, but all he‘d probably find there would be General Doppelgänger and the others sitting around talking strategy. Anything was better than just sitting around.

So he risked an extra portal run, emerged near the Whispering Woods, and passed through them to the Pool of Tears. He came here every once in a while, stood on the cliff overlooking the pool, thinking about the life that had happened to him. Like his father, he had once believed in the principles of White Imagination—love, justice, and duty to others. But he knew better now: An adherence to higher principles got one nowhere in this world. It was not, as his father had preached, its own reward. What sort of reward allowed others to conquer and murder and do away with all you held dear?

He had been reckless to come to the pool. Shouldn‘t have taken the unnecessary risk. He had to stay alive. His vengeance required it.

CHAPTER 24

A LICE WORKED hard to enter into the world in which she found herself and refused to see Dodgson whenever he came to the house. Pained by her refusals, he came with less and less frequency until he ceased coming altogether. The book he‘d written for her was published for the public‘s enjoyment under the title Alice‘s Adventures in Wonderland. It was widely known that Alice‘s fantastic stories had served as its inspiration—fodder for poking fun at her, if ever there was—but so well had she adapted to the customs and beliefs of the time, so well had she adopted the inclinations of other girls her age, that she‘d befriended those who used to tease her mercilessly. And although Mrs. Liddell never discovered the cause for Alice‘s tantrum that fateful afternoon at the river Cherwell, she was more than pleased with her daughter‘s behavior ever since. Far from being flattered by Dodgson‘s silly scribblings, it was as if they had brought home to Alice, as nothing else had been able to, just how inane all her Wonderland talk had been. She distanced herself from the book and its author, and Mrs. Liddell took this to mean that she was finally growing up—which, indeed, she was.

Beginning in her sixteenth year, while on Sunday strolls along High Street with her mother and sisters, it was as the wardens of Charing Cross had predicted: Young men of rank paused in appreciation as Alice passed, took pains to learn who she was, invited her to parties where they did their best to impress her with their wit and knowledge of worldly affairs. They did not find Miss Liddell lacking in intelligence. Some perhaps even found her a bit too intelligent. She was a thoughtful, well-read young woman, with opinions on a variety of topics such as the responsibility that came with Britain‘s military power, the nature of commerce and industry under a monarchy, how to care for the poor and neglected, the sensationalist tendencies of the Fleet Street papers, and the convolutions of the legal system as exposed by the eminent author Charles Dickens.

Many well-to-do dandies—even those uncomfortable with any woman who appeared smarter than themselves—thought it unfortunate that she‘d been adopted. It meant that they could never marry her. Of course, these fellows took it for granted that Miss Liddell would have considered herself lucky to marry any one of them. But she was not easily impressed, nor prone to fall in love. The vicissitudes of her life had caused her to keep her feelings for others in check: It was dangerous to care for people; inevitably, you got hurt. She talked with young men, accepted their invitations to parties and galas, but more because it pleased her mother than because of any affection for the men themselves.

The Reverend Dodgson published a sequel to Alice‘s Adventures in Wonderland entitled Through the Looking-Glass. Again, his scribblings met with popular success. Alice herself did not read the book, but not long before its publication, and against her wishes, she found herself in the same room with its author. Oxford was not a big town and she‘d often seen Dodgson in the street, or crossing the college grounds, but she had taken care not to get caught in conversation with him; she would offer a word of greeting as good manners required, but that was all. Alice‘s eighteenth birthday having passed, Mrs. Liddell thought it time to document for posterity the young woman her daughter had become. She wanted Alice to sit for a photographic portrait and she asked Dodgson to be the photographer.

―Mother, please. You know I don‘t wish to see him,‖ Alice said.

―A lady might not like a man,‖ Mrs. Liddell said, ―but she shouldn‘t show it so explicitly as you do.‖

So Alice agreed to sit for the portrait. On the appointed day, she heard Dodgson enter the house and begin setting up his equipment in the parlor.

Detestable man, how can you not understand what you did to me? Should I forgive? I can‘t, I can‘t. Must be polite. But be quick about it. Get in and get out.

Alice could not completely hide her feelings, and when Mrs. Liddell called her down, she moved with the briskness of one overburdened with appointments.

―Good afternoon, Mr. Dodgson,‖ she said, and fell into a chair.

She slumped there, hands in her lap, head tilted toward her right shoulder as she eyed Dodgson from under her darkened brow until—as fast as he could: her behavior made him uncomfortable—he took the picture. Then she heaved herself up out of the chair.

―Thank you, sir,‖ she said, looking not at him but over his head as she left the room.

By Alice‘s twentieth year, Mrs. Liddell was becoming anxious for her to choose a husband from among her many suitors.

―But I don‘t feel anything for a single one of them,‖ Alice complained, shaking her head to fling out the unwanted memory of a boy left behind long ago. Don‘t think of him! I mustn‘t!

Then, one Saturday, the Liddell family attended an outdoor concert by a quartet at Christ Church Meadow. They were about to take their seats when a young gentleman, under the pretense of introducing himself to Dean Liddell, approached. He was Prince Leopold, Queen Victoria‘s youngest son, and he had been sent to Christ Church so that Dean Liddell might oversee his education. This was his first time meeting the family.

Mrs. Liddell became fidgety and excited as she was introduced.

―And these ladies,‖ said Dean Liddell, presenting his daughters, ―are Edith, Lorina, and Alice.

Girls, say hello to Prince Leopold.‖

Alice held out her hand for the prince to kiss. He seemed reluctant to let it go.

―I‘m afraid you can‘t keep it, Your Highness,‖ she said. And when he didn‘t understand: ―My hand. I may have use for it still.‖