Seeing Redd

CHAPTER 33

T HE TWIN Wonderland suns had risen full above the horizon, the Wondertropolis skyline gilded, backlit, with their morning rays. In the palace courtyard, the sunflowers planted around the war memorial were yawning and shaking off the dew. Dodge-wide-awake despite having been up the entire night-was standing at his father’s grave.

“In everything, father, I aspire to do as I believe you would have done. I know that my behavior reflects on you and, despite my failings, I hope I’ve made you proud.”

The Hereafter Plant growing from the mulch of Sir Justice’s grave-its blossom the perfect likeness of the beloved guardsman-bobbed on its stem.

“But this idea that I’m supposed to maintain my proper place in relation to my queen…” Dodge went on, “I love Alyss, father. Why should her title demand her to favor the affections of ranking sons when they’ve done nothing but win the lottery of birth? I won’t ignore my heart just because it’s not considered proper for a guardsman to love his queen. I hope you understand.”

For the first time this morning, Dodge looked directly at the Hereafter Plant’s complicated blossom-the overlaid petals that formed the familiar cheekbones, the pistil-eyelashes. Even the buds of the eyes were accurate; Sir Justice’s irises had been precisely that shade of turquoise blue.

“I miss you, dad.”

It sounded so weak, so inadequate. Words given the impossible task of conveying a family’s tragedy. I

miss you.

He wiped his eyes. The sunflowers were sniffling in sympathy and one of them lifted its voice in song, the melody somehow evoking the melancholy beauty of loss, of surviving in the face of seemingly unbearable loss.

“Give me the wisdom and courage to face the future, whatever may be coming,” Dodge prayed.

The kitchens and servants halls were buzzing with news of Hatter’s defection, but Alyss, alone in the palace’s sovereign suite, had stopped spying on him. She’d learned little from her numerous remote viewings of the Milliner, in which, inevitably, she’d see him attending some leisure event with Boarderland’s king, apparently unconcerned for Molly’s safety.

Which means either that Molly’s safe or that he’s doing what he must to ensure she becomes so. I will not give up on him, not when he has so often risked his life for my mother’s as well as my own.

Her mother. Alyss stared into the looking glass hanging above the hand-chiseled water basin. You said you’d always be with me. On the other side of the glass.

“I must be staring into the wrong mirrors,” Alyss said aloud. In one of the parlors, she lowered herself into a floating chair. Dodge’s packet in her lap, she took out the first of his letters.

Alyss,

You would have been fourteen today if you’d lived. Happy birthday. I’m not so mad about what’s happened to us right now, I don’t know why. Bibwit would probably say it’s because it’s impossible to be angry all the time, but he’s wrong. Tomorrow or even sooner all of my rage and hurt will return. Total. All-consuming. I believe in my rage and hurt. I need them if I’m to survive long enough to kill The Cat. After that, I don’t care what happens. Especially now that you and father are gone.

The letters were not dated; it was impossible to tell in what order they were written. Alyss chose another at random.

Best friend,

I can’t live according to the principles of White Imagination or even by the guardsman’s code my father and I used to value. Try to understand. It isn’t that I don’t believe in them, but I can’t allow room for belief. The Cat must, and will, die. Wonderland isn’t a city that cares about honor codes anyway. If I lived by some code, my actions would become predictable. The enemy would take advantage of this and I’d be killed. An honorable death doesn’t exist. Death is death. But it’s funny that survival and revenge require the same thing: no honor codes, no supposed higher principles to aspire to, no mercy. Would you still recognize me, Alyss? I avoid looking glasses, not wanting to see my own reflection.

Another letter was stained with what might have been tea or something worse. Alyss,

There are those who still think me young, but I feel as old as Bibwit after everything I’ve been through. Early this morning, a platoon of Alyssians was ambushed while carrying supplies to HQ. I was with them. I thought I was used to the sight of blood, but when it belongs to your friends…I lost more than a few

today. What kind of life is this, that I live only to take the lives of others? I don’t want to believe I could have changed so much. I want to believe that somewhere beneath all this anger there is still the Dodge Anders you used to tease for his love of guardsmen and Milliners, and who felt absolutely giddy to have your attentions-you, heiress to a queendom and keeper of my heart.

Tears were trickling down her cheeks. Alyss folded the letters and returned them to their packet. Queens aren’t supposed to cry as often as I do, especially warrior queens, but how can I-

“Alyss.”

She shot a glance at the looking glass on the wall behind her: nothing but the expected reflections. Nothing but the usual reflections too in the looking glass above the water basin.

“You must be mistaken,” a male voice said. “I don’t see her.” “I’m not mistaken. She’s here.”

The voices-her parents’ voices-seemed to be coming from a compact lying open on a side table.

“Once children have grown,” Nolan mused, “they want as little to do with their parents as possible. Woe are we whose only daughter finds us an embarrassing spectacle.”

Alyss approached the side table and saw her mother’s face occupying the whole of the compact’s palm-sized mirror. “I don’t think you’re an embarrassing spectacle,” she said.

Nolan thrust his face into view. “Alyss!”

“Father. I miss you both every day. I’ve been staring at my own reflection for so long, hoping to see you, that I’m beginning to hate the way I look.”

“Impossible!” Nolan exclaimed. “You’re beautiful. And I understand that a dashing guardsman thinks the same.”

Alyss glanced at her skirts, bashful. “You look tired,” Genevieve said. “I’m fine.”

“Even in times of crisis, you must rest. And you’ve been crying.” “I’m fine, mother.”

Nolan was squeezed out of view. Genevieve’s face again filled the compact’s glass, her voice tender. “Alyss, I am sorry you’ve had these tremendous responsibilities thrust upon you.”

“It’s not your fault, mother. You were murdered.”

“But perhaps I should have been better fortified against Redd’s coming. There are moments when I wish you’d been born with no extraordinary ability, into an average Wonderland family. It’s a weakness in me, I know. To wish for a past that can never be. What would have become of Wonderland if you were not who you are?”

“I have more weaknesses than you know, mother. Lately, I’ve been thinking that my sacrifices-all of our sacrifices-haven’t been worth it.”

“You cannot ignore the gifts with which you were born. Your duty is to the queendom, above all else.”

“To secure the greatest good for the greatest number,” Nolan added, crowding his face into view. “You can’t put Wonderland at risk to save a single citizen, not even your favorite guardsman.”

“Since when has wearing the crown meant being told what I can’t do?” Alyss muttered. But when her mother looked on the verge of a lecture, she quickly added: “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in a larger glass? Maybe the one by the floating chairs?”

Genevieve shook her head, knocking temples with her husband. “We’re all right.”

“Perfectly comfortable,” Nolan agreed. “Smell.” His nostrils expanded to take in the sweet, earthy fragrance that had drifted into the room.

“That means it’s time for us to go,” Genevieve sighed.

Turning from Alyss, the couple walked hand in hand into the far reaches of the glass, shrinking in the distance until they were gone from view altogether. The smell had grown pungent. A funnel cloud of blue smoke was coming from the bedroom, where Alyss found the blue caterpillar curled snugly around his hookah at the end of her bed.

“Blue,” Alyss said. “I’m honored to have your company and wish only to have it more, that I might not interpret your coming as an ill omen.”

“Ahem hem hem,” Blue burbled, exhaling a cloud that formed the words Oh well. He puffed on his hookah for a time, the soft peh peh peh of his lips the only sound in the room. “I, an unnaturally large caterpillar, will reveal to you that of yourself which yet you know not,” he said at length. He exhaled a cloud, which briefly took on the shape of a butterfly before transforming into a jumble of scenes: Redd, struggling with a crystal in the shape of a locksmith’s key, with Bibwit at her side-or no, it was just a member of the tutor species; King Arch tugging on the whisker of a colorless caterpillar; Redd taking hold of a dusty, time-ravaged scepter. The cloud then resumed the form of a butterfly, which folded its wings and-

Alyss awoke. Only a faint hint of sweetness in the air. Blue was gone, Dodge sitting on the edge of her bed.

“Do you smell that?” she asked.

He nodded. “A caterpillar was here.”

Alyss sat up, annoyed. “If Blue has something to tell me, why can’t he just come out and say it? Why does he have to bother with all of his inexplicable scenes and symbols? No wonder so many Wonderlanders think the oracles are useless.”

“But you don’t, Alyss. What did he show you?”

Despite her parents’ warnings, despite agreeing with Dodge about the impossibility of protecting him from his own worst impulses-

I don’t want to tell him. No, because, at the very least, the caterpillar’s warning meant that Redd would soon return to Wonderland. Or that she already had.

“He said he would reveal myself to me and then I saw King Arch trying to pull a whisker off a caterpillar.” She sought Redd with her imagination’s eye, but since she didn’t know where to look, it was

like knocking on any random door in Wondertropolis and hoping her aunt would answer it. “That’s all?” Dodge asked.

“Yes.”

“We should inform Bibwit and the general,” he said, standing. But on his way out, he paused in the doorway and delivered the news that had originally brought him to the suite: “None of the card soldiers at the Pool of Tears has checked in with Central Command. Not one is answering his crystal

communicator. The knight and rook have been sent to the pool and will soon report back.”

Redd. So Dodge knew she’d been lying, was already preparing himself for a confrontation. She wanted

to explain-explain what, exactly?-but words wouldn’t come, and her lie hung heavy between them like a fog.