Seeing Redd

CHAPTER 38

A LYSS AND her advisers were gathered in the palace’s war room, Alyss shifting uneasily in her seat as

Dodge and the others tried to decipher what they thought was the entirety of Blue’s message.

“He said he would teach you about yourself,” Bibwit questioned thoughtfully, “but then you didn’t appear in anything he showed you?”

Alyss nodded. “Most curious.”

“I don’t like it,” General Doppelganger said, and began punching buttons on the crystal communicator’s control pad strapped to his forearm.

Zzzz! Flink! Zzzz! Flink!

From the vision nozzle on the general’s ammo belt, real-time images of Ten Cards stationed at outposts throughout the queendom were projected onto the air. No sign of trouble, every lieutenant reported, or of anything unusual. But then a Ten Card posted in Outerwilderbeastia caught sight of Bibwit.

“Back already, Mr. Harte? I knew the tutor species was fast, but not that fast.” “Whatever do you mean?” Bibwit asked.

“Just one quarter of a lunar hour ago I saw you hurrying toward the demarcation barrier. I assumed you were on some scholarly pilgrimage to Boarderland, as you were headed directly for gate crossing 15-b.”

Bibwit’s ears danced a dance of perplexity atop his head. “Was I…alone?”

“I didn’t get much of a look at the others. Being so pale, you stand out against Outerwilderbeastia’s vines, you know.”

“Yes. Yes, I’m sure I do,” Bibwit said absently.

“Your Majesty.” The Ten Card bowed to Alyss. “General.” The Ten Card saluted and his image dissolved.

“I’m starting to get a bad feeling,” the tutor said. “Starting to?” Dodge guffawed.

The general’s crystal communicator beeped. He pressed a button on its keypad and an image of the white knight formed in front of him.

“General, all the soldiers guarding the pool are dead,” the knight reported.

Dodge was instantly on his feet, checking his weapons-the ammo clip in his crystal shooter, the trigger of his AD52. “Any evidence of The Cat?” he asked. “Slash marks or anything like that?”

“Hard to tell what exactly killed them.”

Beep, beep beep. The general again pressed his communicator’s keypad and an image of the white rook appeared next to the knight.

“Listen,” the rook said.

After several moments the general frowned. “I hear only silence.”

“Yeah, and I’m standing in the Whispering Woods,” said the rook. “Every mouth here has been glued shut.”

Bibwit was tugging on an ear, his brow as furrowed as a rumpled bedsheet. “In the scheme of all that is conceivable,” he said, “it’s possible that another villain might be responsible for the deaths at the pool, but it would irresponsible of us not to assume the worst-by which I mean, that Redd has returned.”

“Already there, Bibwit.” Dodge was checking his supply of razor cartridges and whipsnake grenades. “What’s the plan, General?”

“It’s difficult to prepare adequately when we don’t know where the front line is. Or the enemy.”

“All of Wonderland is the front line,” Dodge countered. “The enemy could show herself anywhere at any time.”

He was being careful not to look at Alyss-the exact opposite of Bibwit, who was watching her intently, almost as if, with his acute hearing, he could hear her mounting discomfort.

A responsible queen would probably be searching for Redd in her imagination. But a responsible queen wouldn’t have let her advisers believe she’d told them the whole of Blue’s message.

Her parents’ words nagged at her conscience: Her duty was to secure the greatest good for the greatest number; she could not put Wonderland at risk to save a single citizen.

I must own the truth. For the queendom. For myself.

“I think,” Alyss said suddenly, “I would like to go over again what Blue presented to me.”

Confusion showed on the faces of Dodge and the general, but Bibwit looked as if he’d been afraid of this. “Yes?” he said.

“Blue told me that he, an unnaturally large caterpillar, would reveal to me that of myself which yet I know not. I’m pretty sure those were his exact words. He showed me Arch pulling on the whisker of a colorless caterpillar, but before that…” her eyes swiveled to Dodge, “…he showed me Redd.”

“Why didn’t you say so before, Alyss?” Bibwit asked.

“I don’t know.” She and Dodge were looking steadily at each other now. “It was wrong of me not to say anything.”

“What did he show you of Redd?” asked General Doppelganger.

Dodge had turned away, needlessly adjusting the hang of his thigh holster.

“I saw her fumbling with a crystal shaped like a door key,” Alyss said. “She was with a tutor. And I saw her gripping something that looked like an old, much neglected scepter.”

Bibwit groaned. “It’s worse than I thought,” he said. “Much, much worse. Alyss, I haven’t had the luxury of educating you as fully as I would’ve done in a time of peace. Certain finer points of monarchical theory I either summarized or skipped altogether. As I did with certain historical details or facts I have hoped would be irrelevant. Of this last sort are particulars related to Looking Glass Mazes. I neglected to tell

you every little thing about them-everything that is known, I should say. But I see now that my neglect was the result of my own wishful thinking. I’ve been hoping that if I did not name the possibility, if I ignored it, it would not exist.”

“The possibility of what, Bibwit? No one has any idea what you’re talking about.”

“I was certain that if Redd returned in a recognizable form, she would never discover it on her own. I hadn’t counted on her uniting with one of my species and actually learning anything. But assuming Redd has returned, I fear that the tutor the Ten Card mistook for me was, in fact, Vollrath-one of my kind who long ago succumbed to Black Imagination and had to fling himself into the Pool of Tears. I’ve always assumed that he’s been causing trouble on Earth, and Blue’s warning to you, Alyss, makes it plain: If Redd has not accomplished it already, she intends to enter her Looking Glass Maze. The tutor must have told her about it. She will retrieve her scepter and, in doing so, become stronger than before.”

“I don’t understand,” Alyss said. “I’ve already navigated the maze.”

“What difference does any of this make?” Dodge asked Bibwit. “Redd is back and we’re not going to surrender to her, no matter what. As long as we don’t underestimate her capacity for blood and mayhem-”

“It might be impossible for us to do anything but underestimate her, such could be her strength. Alyss, I will explain all, but we must confirm whether or not Redd is among us, and whether what Blue showed you of Redd with her scepter is the future or the past. If the future, it may still be prevented. If the past…I’d rather not think about it. General?”

“It should be coming online now, Bibwit.”

Doppelganger had activated the holo-crystals embedded in the demarcation barrier’s pylons at gate crossing 15-b. Real-time images of both Boarderland and Outerwilderbeastia appeared on screens in the war room.

“What’s that?” Dodge asked, seeing movement in the distance of the Boarderland terrain.

General Doppelganger directed the holo-crystal to zoom in, and there, by an outcropping of rock as if waiting for someone, were a male and female of no known Boarderland tribe. They might have been Wonderlanders. Then again, they might have been earthlings. The third figure, however, with his long ears and nearly translucent complexion, was unmistakable.

“That,” Bibwit said, “is Vollrath.”

Just then, Redd’s only feline assassin stepped around a boulder into view.

“The Cat,” Dodge whispered. He had thought himself prepared, but the actual sight of his father’s murderer-smudged somehow, as if seen through a greasy window-made all of his earlier professed hopes for self-restraint now sound hollow, false.

“Dodge?” Alyss said, watching the hand with which he gripped the handle of his father’s sword. It was shaking.

“Dodge?”

But he was no longer with her. His world could fit only two: himself and The Cat.