Bargain price

CHAPTER 3

B IBWIT HARTE gathered together books and papers in preparation for his charge’s lessons the next day. Now that she had reached her seventh birthday, Alyss would begin her formal training to become

queen.

“And being a queen isn’t easy,” muttered Bibwit Harte. “The position comes with tremendous responsibilities. One has to study law and government and ethics and morality. One must train the imagination for the promotion of peace and harmony and the precepts of White Imagination, because Black Imagination is not what anybody wants at all, oh no. And if that isn’t enough, there’s the Looking Glass Maze to get through.” Bibwit Harte, alone in the library at Heart Palace, recited from an ancient Wonderland text, In Queendom Speramus: “A unique Looking Glass Maze exists for every would-be queen. The maze must be successfully navigated by the would-be queen if she is to reach her imagination’s full potential and thus be fit to rule.” The tutor returned to his usual tone: “And where the Looking Glass Maze is, only the caterpillars know.”

Mr. Bibwit Harte was an albino, seven feet tall, with bluish green veins pulsing visibly beneath his skin, and ears a bit large for his head-ears so sensitive that he could hear someone whispering from three streets away. He was rather intelligent, but he had the habit of talking to himself, which more than a few Wonderlanders found strange, particularly members of the Diamond, Spade, and Club families, not one

of whom had ever forgiven him for his decades-long schooling of the Heart daughters as opposed to their own. Not that Bibwit paid much attention to what others thought of him. He talked to himself because there weren’t many people as learned as he, and he liked to talk to learned people.

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you!”

Bibwit threw open a pair of doors leading to the royal gardens, and the chorus of voices might have become painfully loud to his finicky ears if it had been any other song sung to any other princess. But he found nothing too much when it was in appreciation of Alyss. Among the assembled guests being led in song by the garden’s sunflowers, tulips, and daisies, Bibwit spied various members of the suit families (he bowed to the Lady of Diamonds when he caught her eye) and General Doppelganger, commander of the royal army, who suddenly split in two and became the twin figures of Generals Doppel and Ganger, so as to lend two voices to the song instead of one. Bibwit bowed to the blue caterpillar-that oracle of

oracles, sage of sages, wisest of the wise-sitting curled in a corner of the garden, puffing on his hookah while a gwynook-a small creature with a penguin’s body and an old man’s wrinkled face-waddled about on his back.

“Waddling is an underappreciated art,” Bibwit heard the gwynook say to the caterpillar. “Say, let me have a puff of that.”

“Ahem hmm hem,” grumbled the caterpillar, who never shared his pipe with gwynooks, even on the happy occasion of Alyss Heart’s birthday. “Smoking’s bad for you.”

“It is indeed a special day when a caterpillar comes all the way from the Valley of Mushrooms to partake in the celebration,” Bibwit Harte murmured, watching two spirit-danes pull a giant cake toward Alyss, a host of tuttle-birds glowing and flapping their wings in place of candles. Next to the birthday girl stood the queen, and behind her, Hatter Madigan, leading member of Wonderland’s elite security force known as the Millinery, and the queen’s personal bodyguard. Carrying the backpack common among Millinery

men, wearing a long coat and bracelets, and the top hat he took off only in times of violence, he alone in the crowd remained stoic, alert.

The song ended. The guests applauded, and Queen Genevieve said, “Make a wish, Alyss.”

“Besides wishing that Father had never gone on his trip,” Alyss declared, “I wish to be queen for a day.” Her mother’s crown lifted into the air and floated toward her head. The guests laughed-all except

Hatter Madigan, who never laughed.

“Hatter Madigan,” sighed Bibwit, “even you should relax sometimes and enjoy yourself.”

“You’ll be queen soon enough,” Genevieve said to her daughter. The queen’s imagination was not exactly weak, and the crown floated back onto her head.

Alyss noticed Bibwit standing at the library doors and decided to have a little fun. It was the least she could do until she found Dodge. She whispered, “Do you want some cake, Bibwit Harte?”

The tutor nodded and she brought him a slice of cake on an edible chocolate plate.

“Happy un-birthday to you,” she said. “It’s raisin-butterscotch with peanut butter, marshmallows, and gummy wads. It’s the best.”

Bibwit stared at the cake. “Yes, well…thank you, Alyss. But I’m afraid you won’t be so nice to me after we begin our lessons tomorrow.”

“I won’t need any lessons,” Alyss said. “I’ll just imagine that I know everything and then I will, so you won’t have to give them to me.”

Bibwit picked at the cake, examining it, squinting at it. “My dear,” he said, “you can’t imagine everything because you don’t know everything there is to imagine. That’s precisely where the lessons come in. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. I taught your grandmother and your mother when they were your

age, and yes, I did try to teach the woman who shall not be named-namely, your aunt Redd-but we won’t go into that.”

Not at all sure that it was the right thing to do, Bibwit put a bit of cake into his mouth. He chewed once, twice, but something was amiss; the stuff in his mouth felt like it was moving. Alyss started to laugh. Bibwit spat the half-chewed cake into the palm of his hand and saw that it wasn’t cake at all; it had turned into a handful of gwormmies.

“Got you!” Alyss shouted, and ran away.

The gwormmy prank hadn’t been nice, not nice in the least, but Bibwit was willing to forgive. Alyss was young, she needed to be taught. She might remind him of Redd in certain things, but he was confident that she wouldn’t grow up to be like her. He wouldn’t let it happen. Besides, he couldn’t blame Alyss for needing to occupy herself somehow. There were hardly any children her age at the palace.

He cast a last gaze about the gardens. The blue caterpillar had slithered off somewhere. Frog, the palace’s internal messenger, was hopping about in his finest clothes, no doubt longing for some guest to entrust him with a message for another guest. Generals Doppel and Ganger were again in one body and they, or rather he, General Doppelganger, was conversing with Sir Justice Anders, head of the palace guardsmen. Hatter Madigan, following the queen like a protective shadow, remained as unexpressive as ever.

Bibwit retired to the library, where picture books from Alyss’ earliest youth sat on shelves next to a ten-volume chronicle of the civil war, written from various points of view-the card soldiers who’d

fought on the front lines; members of the chessmen militia; General Doppelganger and his sergeants; even Queen Genevieve herself. It came complete with lists of those killed in each of the battles and explanations of the strategies that had called for the sacrifice of Wonderlander lives. Bibwit took down the first volume of the chronicle and set it with the other books and papers he’d collected for Alyss’ lessons. The book contained a catalog of atrocities committed by Redd-torture, the slaughtering of

prisoners, mass graves. The tutor had always viewed Redd’s fall into the diabolical as his fault, a failure in her education.

“It’s never too soon for a future queen to become familiar with the uglier contingencies of ruling a land,”

he said to himself.