Bargain price

CHAPTER 35

S HE HADN’T really intended to sleep, had just wanted to be alone to think things over. How long since

I was standing beside Leopold in Westminster Abbey? It seemed so long ago, such a terribly long time ago. What’s become of him? And the Liddells? What do they think has happened to me? What are they doing this very moment? She had grown to love them, perhaps as a kidnapped person grows to love those who hold her captive, but it was love. Alyss knew that now.

All of this thinking solved nothing and it was a relief when Bibwit entered the tent carrying a small, neatly folded stack of clothes.

“Please put these on, Alyss,” he said. “I’ll wait for you outside.”

It was an Alyssian uniform, makeshift as all things Alyssian had to be in the Redd-controlled queendom. The shirt and trousers didn’t match in color. Their particular weave of nanofibers was coarse by Wonderland standards, and yet, rubbing the hem of the shirt between her index finger and thumb, Alyss knew it to be smoother and softer than the finest silk in England. Yes, they were plain garments, as plain as anything worn by the poor in Genevieve’s time, but with one difference: the faded badge of a white heart on the end of the right shirtsleeve.

Alyss stripped out of her wedding gown and, torn as it was, carefully laid it on the general’s cot. She dressed herself in the Alyssian outfit and wanted to know what sort of figure she made in the unfamiliar clothes, but there were no looking glasses in the tent.

Nothing left to do. Must face the future, whatever it holds.

With a decided breath and a firming up of the shoulders, she stepped out of the tent. Bibwit came forward with beaming countenance and took both her hands in his. He looked her up and down, approving of what he saw.

“Were you to wear one, Alyss, you could make the saddle blanket of a spirit-dane look regal.” “Thank you, Bibwit, but-”

“Ah, ah, no buts. You’ve just returned to us and it is too soon to express whatever doubts you undoubtedly have with that most cowardly of words, that qualifier of qualifiers, but.”

Alyss smiled-more a matter of facial muscles than of feeling. “It’s good to see you’re still the same old Bibwit Harte,” she said. “After our recent clash with The Cat, I thought you might have become a man of heroic action and no longer cared for the subtleties of the intellect.”

“I, a man of heroic action? Tut tut. I leave such things to others. But of course I am the same old Bibwit Harte, Alyss; I am the same precisely because I am old. I tutored your great-grandmother’s grandmother, and-”

“Yes, I remember.”

“-I’ve seen enough political upheavals to fill countless heads. Nothing has changed me yet. I admit that this Redd business is the worst I’ve experienced, but I’m much too old to change. Now enough about me, though I am a fascinating subject. Come.”

He led her to an arrangement of weathered, empty ammunition containers that served as a seating area. Lowering himself onto a container that had once held orb generators fresh from Redd’s factory, Bibwit’s expansive, brown robe puddled around him. He looked like a small brown volcano with a white head. Tea was brought by a young girl wearing a homburg hat and cracked leather overcoat, so timid in Alyss’ presence that she didn’t dare raise her eyes to look at the princess.

“She’s a shy one,” Alyss said after the girl had hurried off. “Not usually. It’s you that makes her so. She was born here, in this very camp. Do you know what they call themselves, all of these people?”

Alyss shook her head. How could she know? “Alyssians.” Bibwit spelled it out.

Her heart gave a little jump. Alyssians? They ask too much of me. “I don’t think I’m ready for all of this,”

she said.

Bibwit studied her a moment. His ears twitching and swiveling in response to every passing sound, he described the changes that Wonderland had suffered in the past thirteen years, and though his wisdom covered many subjects, there were things even he didn’t understand, most of which concerned her. So then it was her turn to talk, to try to explain what felt inexplicable.

“I had to turn my back on all my Wonderland memories,” she said. “I had to shut my mind to them in order to survive in a world that didn’t believe. I resisted for a long time, but it became…”

“So that’s why you were to be married?”

Alyss nodded. “I will always belong partly to that other world now.”

“Wisely put. You can’t spend so much time in a place and not carry a bit of it inside you. But this is your rightful home, Alyss. This is where you belong.”

“Is it?” She looked around. How can they call themselves Alyssians when I hardly feel Alyssian myself? It’s too much. They ask too much. “It seems to me that I no longer quite belong anywhere. And what about the family I left behind? What about Leopold, the man I was to marry?”

“We will provide for the people who nurtured you as their own, if we have the luxury to do so in the future. As to this Leopold character, we have more important things to consider than one man’s love, be he of this world or any other.”

Alyss caught sight of Dodge staring at them from behind a tent. She raised a hand to wave, but he ducked out of sight and didn’t show his face again.

“You have a powerful imagination, Alyss,” said Bibwit Harte. “The Alyssians will need it, and the fate of the queendom depends on it. In what little time we have, my job is to educate you in its uses and limitations, according to the precepts of White Imagination.”

“It’s gone.”

Bibwit’s large ears crimped in perplexity. “Your imagination has not gone, Alyss, because there is nowhere it can go to. It is within you whether you like it or not. You will see. You were born to be a warrior queen, like your mother.” But here the wise tutor paused, remembering Alyss sitting backward on the spirit-dane after she’d emerged from the Pool of Tears. She had been disorientated, of course. Yes, better to think positive thoughts. “You will fight alongside your army,” he continued, “and you will face Redd because only you have the strength and power to defeat her.”

“A warrior queen?” Alyss guffawed. “What do I know of warfare or weaponry? The only time I’ve lifted a sword was when Dodge and I used to play our juvenile games.”

“By successfully navigating the Looking Glass Maze, you will evolve to warrior queen. The maze will release what’s inside you.”

Alyss shook her head, doubtful.

“How the Looking Glass Maze will accomplish this, even I can’t say,” Bibwit continued. “In Queendom Speramus once stated, ‘Only she for whom the Looking Glass Maze is intended can enter.’ I look forward to the day when you can tell me what’s inside.”

“I don’t know, Bibwit. I just don’t know.”

Wasn’t it possible that she might no longer be the rightful heir to the crown? Her years and experiences in that other world had severed the girl she was from the woman she was supposed to have become. Redd did away with two generations of Heart rulers that horrific afternoon.

“Tell me about Dodge,” she said.

Bibwit was quiet for a long time. “None of us is the same since Redd’s return. Some of us are more changed than others. As to the man Dodge Anders has become, I think it best to let you discover that for yourself.” The tutor hopped to his feet. “Well, we’ll soon be making a trip to the Valley of Mushrooms, where the caterpillars will instruct you. Finish your tea, collect your thoughts, and then we will begin the lesson we should have begun thirteen years ago.”

Alyss watched Bibwit scurry off. Not having touched her tea, with no thought to what she was doing or where she was going, she stood and walked through the camp. Alyssians gathered outside their tents or cooking food over gemstone fire pits bowed to her as she passed. Some shouted, “In Alyss we trust!” Others declared, “May the light of White Imagination again shine on Wonderland, my princess!” Alyss tried to look as hopeful as she could under the circumstances.

Alyssians. They call themselves Alyssians. Now see where I’ve ended up.

She stood outside a tent, not just any tent-his-her feet carrying her there almost without her knowing. Should I announce myself or…?

But no need. Here he was, stepping out of the tent. “Hello,” she said.

Dodge tensed, pushed out his chest, and stood with his back straight. “Princess.” He was surprised, caught off guard-she could see that.

“Was there something you wanted,” she said, “before, when I-”

“Bibwit’s told you that we’ll have to risk a journey to the Valley of Mushrooms?”

“Yes.” Had thought, hoped, it was something else. But what, exactly? “Dodge, do you really think I can lead a battle against Redd’s forces?”

“I do.”

“That makes one of us. I’m sure it’s too late for whatever Wonderland expected of me. I’d ask you to take me home, but I no longer have any idea where that is.”

She felt unbearably sad all of a sudden and wished that someone, anyone, would put a comforting arm around her. But her pout only seemed to harden Dodge, to make him even more callous toward her. “There’s something you need to see,” he said.

If the future of the queendom weren’t at risk, and if Dodge weren’t being so cold and distant toward her as he led her out of the Alyssian headquarters, Alyss might have been able to convince herself that they were heading off on a harmless adventure, as they used to do in simpler times.