Bargain price

CHAPTER 18

A LYSS DIDN’T get along with the other children living at the foundling hospital-children who had seen their share of heartache and sorrow, as she had, but who were no less eager to lose themselves in games like jacks, hopscotch, and hide-and-seek. All so silly and immature. Thoughts of Redd, about what might have become of Dodge, clouded Alyss’ head. She couldn’t for the life of her muster up any enthusiasm for games.

The wardens of Charing Cross took a special interest in her and this only served to further alienate her from the rest of the orphans. Anyone could see that she was going to grow into a beautiful woman. It was thought that her beauty might gain her entry into ranks of society rarely attained by orphans, which could bode well for Charing Cross, leading to donations from wealthy families on the hunt for unearthly beauties of their own. Whenever Alyss mentioned Wonderland, she was shushed more harshly than she would have been if the wardens hadn’t taken an interest in her.

“That’s all in your head, little miss, and no one will want a daughter who talks rubbish all the time. Unless you want to live here forever, you’ll clear your mind of that ridiculous, fantastical stuff.”

Dr. Williford, the doctor on the staff at Charing Cross, listened patiently to Alyss’ ridiculous, fantastical stuff.

“I’m sure you’ve had to face things that no young girl should ever have to face,” he said. “But you cannot hide in fantasy, Alice. Accept what has happened to you and know that you are not alone in misfortune. Try to focus on the sights and sounds around you, because they are reality. There is still a chance for you to lead a normal, fruitful life.”

She stopped confiding in Dr. Williford and spent her days staring out a window at a dirty, leaf-strewn courtyard, which was where one of the wardens found her on an afternoon that would (yet again) change everything.

“Alice, I’d like you to say hello to the Reverend and Mrs. Liddell.”

Alyss turned from the greasy window to look at the couple-the woman with the hard eyes and uneasy smile, the doughy man in overcoat and gloves. All strangers were the same to her: strange, far removed, unable to reach her.

“She is pretty,” Mrs. Liddell said, “but a haircut and a thorough scrubbing are in order, I think.” “Quite,” said the reverend.

The Liddells lived in Oxford, where the reverend was dean of Christ Church College. Nothing happened, it seemed, that didn’t bring with it an element of misfortune. No sooner had Alyss left Charing Cross than she found herself in circumstances hardly more pleasing.

“Not another word!” Mrs. Liddell scolded when Alyss described the Inventors’ Parade to her new siblings.

“Animals can’t talk because they’re dumb beasts,” she rebuked when Alyss claimed otherwise. “Flowers can’t sing because they don’t have larynxes,” she insisted when Alyss told of flowers with

beautiful voices. “Keep talking nonsense and I’ll wash your mouth out with soap.”

“I’m a princess and I’m waiting for Hatter to come and rescue me,” Alyss said. “You’ll see.”

“Alice, if you want to amount to anything in society,” Mrs. Liddell warned, “or at the very least show appreciation for what we’ve done by welcoming you into our home, you’ll stop embarrassing this family and live with your head firmly in this world and do as others do.”

As punishment, Mrs. Liddell would send Alyss to her room, where she had to stay for days, sometimes a whole week, at a time; meals would be brought to her. That suited her perfectly well. It meant she wouldn’t have to see them. Wrong! Though she couldn’t go out, her new sisters weren’t forbidden from visiting, and the second afternoon of one of her confinements Edith and Lorina marched into the room

and sat on Alyss’ bed, studying her. She tried to ignore them, working hard to remember every gemstone of Heart Palace, every turn of every heart-shaped passage. Numerous drawings of the palace were tacked to her walls. Fourteen steps leading from the lower courtyard into the ballroom, seventeen bathrooms in total, and-

“Why don’t you draw something else for a change?” Lorina asked her. “Because I don’t want to forget where I came from.”

“Better draw the orphanage then!” Edith shrieked, and she and Lorina ran off, laughing.

Alyss sat with pencil poised above her drawing. I shouldn’t care what they think. I don’t. But their mocking laughter had caused a twinge of…what? Embarrassment? Shame? Princesses didn’t like to be made fun of any more than ordinary people. Alyss pushed the drawing away from her. It would remain forever unfinished.

“All right, girls,” Miss Prickett, the Liddells’ governess, announced, “seeing as this is Alice’s first day at our lessons, let’s wish her well and encourage her to work hard.”

Alyss sat at the dining-room table with Edith, Lorina, and Rhoda, paper and pencil neatly arrayed in front of her. A blackboard rested atop the sideboard. The words “Welcome Alice Liddell” were written on it.

“That’s not how you spell my name,” Alyss blurted.

Miss Prickett looked at the blackboard, then at Alyss. “No? Perhaps you’ll be kind enough to come up here and show me how to spell it. I’ll let it pass this time, Alice, but in the future, you are not to speak out. You raise your hand and wait to be called upon.”

Alyss held her head high and stared straight ahead as she walked to the sideboard. At the blackboard, she erased ice from her name and wrote yss in its place. Edith, Lorina, and Rhoda erupted with laughter.

“That is enough!” scolded Miss Prickett. “Alice, you will write your name one hundred times on the blackboard. A-L-I-C-E. Now begin.”

So she was stuck there, in front of them, while Miss Prickett began the lesson. Edith, Lorina, and Rhoda peeked around their books at her, threw one another giggling glances. Alyss wanted their hair to fill with gwormmies, their eyes to seal shut, their laughing tongues to tie into knots.

Nothing happened.

Useless. White Imagination or Black, it doesn’t matter, because I can’t conjure. She’d written A-L-I-C-E ninety-nine times. Miss Prickett wasn’t looking. She spelled out A-L-Y-S-S on the blackboard and started toward her seat.

Miss Prickett turned to the board. “Just a moment, please! I’m sure you think you’re clever, Miss Liddell. But let’s see what such cleverness gets you. Wipe the board and start again. Another hundred times. A-L-I-C-E. Begin.”

Alyss did as she was told, no longer wanting to stand on exhibition.

“Maybe now you’ll remember how to spell your name correctly,” Miss Prickett scolded when she’d finished.

As she returned to her seat, Lorina whispered, “Odd Alice,” and the label stuck. It probably didn’t help that whenever the children of family friends thought they’d take a chance and chat with her, Alyss filled their ears with talk of Wonderland.

“She must think she’s better than all of us, calling herself a princess,” the children huffed.

Alyss got into fights and traded insults with her tormentors, often returning home scraped, bruised, and humiliated. She tried to shut her ears to it all, but doubts began to plague her. Can everyone be wrong? She grew tired of persisting in her convictions against the Liddells, their friends, everyone. Is it really possible that every single person I meet is wrong and I’m right? A whole lot easier if I could just forget. Might she have imagined that she’d been a princess in another world? What if I dreamed it up while sick in bed?

Then the simplest and yet most miraculous thing happened. She found a friendly ear-or rather, two. They belonged to the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the mathematics lecturer of Christ Church. He was a gentle, shrinking-violet type of fellow who lived at the college and sometimes came to the Liddells’ for tea. An amateur photographer, he took pictures of the girls. Alyss posed for him in a corner of the garden, wearing a light-colored dress with flared sleeves, white socks, and patent-leather shoes. She faced to the right of the camera and smirked at him, shy but proud, as if the two of them shared a secret. But it wasn’t until a boating trip to Godstow that she told him about Wonderland. They had stopped for a rest, were lounging on the grass while Edith and Lorina played in the shallows of the river Isis, as that particular stretch of the Thames was called.

“Don’t you want to join your sisters?” the Reverend Dodgson asked.

Alyss no longer bothered explaining to people that she didn’t have any sisters. “No,” she replied. Dodgson thought this a charming answer. “But why not?”

“After you’ve been a princess and had your queendom taken from you, as I have, it’s hard to get excited about a mess of fish and weeds in a river.”

The Reverend Dodgson laughed. “Alice, whatever are you talking about?”

Should I? Will he believe? He does seem different from the others. Should I, one last time? The restraint she’d been under gave way. Memories poured out of her as if they had to be spoken aloud, and quickly, to convince her of their truth or be forever forgotten. When she mentioned Dodge, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson started to take notes. Dodge. Dodgson. He was the boy. The reverend was flattered to be part of Alyss’ dream world.

“You have the most amazing imagination of anyone I’ve ever met,” he told her. Alyss knew better. She hadn’t conjured anything in a long time.

“Let me see if I understand you correctly,” Dodgson said. “People can travel through looking glasses, enter through one and exit from another?”

“Yes. I’ve tried it here but none of the glasses work.”

She watched him jot something in his notebook. “Are you really going to write a book about

Wonderland, Mr. Dodgson?”

“I think I might. It’ll be our book, Alice. Yours and mine.”

The book would prove that she was telling the truth. She would not give up on herself. Not yet.