Unbirthday Read online

  She chose her route at random, left right right left and up a little ramp. The paint had pooled underneath the bushes into thick, goopy lines on the ground, an ugly mess of red sludge over dust. Her hair was entirely undone now, and when she cut a corner too close it whipped against the wall and came away heavy and sticky.

  Sound echoed strangely amongst the high bulwarks of red bushes and trees, and just like last time, it was unclear if the sky above her was the same as it was outside the maze or just a very high ceiling. But the noise of the cards grew quieter behind her, and Alice began to feel a little safe: as safe as a mouse in a maze escaping a cat. Out of the frying pan and into the laboratory.

  She slowed her pace, and her own footsteps grew loud. Loneliness increased exponentially as a function of time away from the entrance of the labyrinth.

  She swallowed an incipient sob and nearly choked on the dust and her own dry throat. Her ears rang with the beats of her heart. Her breath came in short gasps.

  “When I return to Angleland, I really must engage in a routine of physical exercises and calisthenics,” Alice told herself, focusing on being out of shape rather than lonely and scared. “One never knows when one will be forced to run away from an army of playing cards. Or angry dogs.”

  She turned down a path at random, because what did it matter? She crossed an intersection. At the end of one of the paths was a figure: a strange fellow, mostly human, wearing a bell-shaped garment of bright red that went to the ground and a sort of matching upside-down bell-shaped hat. The stitches were large and obviously hasty. Alice was pretty sure she saw a bent nail or two put to use in holding it together in place of pins.

  “Bless you, my child,” the strange man said, making a gesture with his hand.

  “Beg pardon?” Alice asked politely.

  “We are all pawns hoping to make it to the end of the Game.”

  “Pawn? You look more like a bishop,” Alice said, pointedly looking at his hat.

  “We are all pawns,” the man repeated, also pointedly. “We arrive at the end equal and unafraid. Actually very, very afraid. All hail the Queen of Hearts!”

  “What game?” Alice said, advancing on him. “Not cards? Is it chess? Or have we wandered off into entirely different realms now, like pachisi or quoits? Does this have something to do with the executions?”

  “May She be the last standing!” He looked around nervously. “Say it,” he urged her in a desperate whisper.

  “Why?” Alice also whispered.

  “Everywhere they are listening, you know that! SAY IT!”

  “I don’t want her to be the last one standing. I don’t want her anywhere at all, much less standing in it. She seems to have grown completely out of control since the last time I was here. Wonderland looks like it was razed to the ground by a terrible cyclone or other act of God. Now I repeat: what game, what ending, and why has her murderous behavior suddenly become so—rigorous and systematic? And why is everyone just kowtowing to her whims? She’s ridiculous. Together you needn’t be afraid of her.”

  The man saw something past her, over her shoulder, and went pale in despair. “Look! They heard me! Here they come!”

  Alice spun around. There was no one.

  When she turned back the man was gone.

  “People come and go in the most curious ways here,” she said.

  “You never answered. Are you for the Queen of Hearts?” came a whispering voice from inside the wall next to her head.

  She peered in between the thorny, desiccating, and blood-colored branches. Therein crawled a tiny serpent, pale green with large black eyes. It looked adorable and utterly harmless, but Alice had read several cautionary tales about snakes from Africa whose poison was so strong it could kill a man in ten steps after he was bitten.

  Also, the Bible and all.

  “I can’t be for anyone or anything unless I know the full situation,” Alice said politely. “But I would say probably not. Are you the reason that poor man disappeared? Are you the one listening for the Queen of Hearts?”

  “Why does a silly girl need to know the full situation? And anyway, I work for the White Rabbit, not the Queen. It’s a simple question: are you for her, or against her?” He pulled a twig aside to get a better view of Alice: she was fairly certain he didn’t even have his pale, almost translucent front appendages before.

  “Oh, put a sock in it,” she said crossly. “A serpent in a walled garden indeed. Very subtle. I doubt the devil was so rude.”

  “I shall record your recalcitrance and reluctance to respond posthaste!” the little thing screeched.

  “Do. Please. I insist,” she said, letting the branch snap back. The cry of the flung lizard grew immediately softer as he fell into the shadow depths of the bush.

  Alice sighed and set off again. “Now, how to best get out of here and find my friends?”

  As she wandered down a long narrow path, she thought about how strange that was; the term friends. None of the three creatures she’d helped save was precisely her friend, much less even polite to her. Yet she thought of them as such—dear old friends she missed and hadn’t seen in years and was very anxious to become reacquainted with. Which was strange, because until the photographs, she had forgotten most of them. It was obvious that whatever note their relationship had ended on before—Alice stomping angrily out of a mad tea party to which she hadn’t even been invited—the Hatter, at least, thought of her the same way: with hope and nostalgia. She had seen it in his eyes.

  Thank goodness they had managed to get away, despite Alice’s failure to mount a dramatic rescue. It was unsettling the way the tiny cakes and Wonderland tea had no effect on her whatsoever. The last time she was here she couldn’t eat or drink a single thing without something happening. Mushrooms, elixirs, cakes…even smelling perfumed gloves had altered her physical self dramatically.

  Was the Queen of Hearts responsible for this change as well, somehow? She seemed to have literally taken over most of Wonderland—did she now have sway over its rules and effects?

  “What terrible things have happened while I was gone,” Alice thought sadly.

  Of course the denizens of Wonderland had been afraid of the Queen of Hearts before, but not in the crazed sort of way the Red Bell Man was, or the beaten-down crowds who came tiredly on demand to watch the execution of their fellow fantasy citizens. And what was all that about being the last one standing?

  She explored the maze a little diffidently, no goal in mind beyond avoiding the soldiers and trying to find the Hatter and get to the bottom of things.

  “But you were never supposed to be gone.”

  Alice whirled around: there was nothing there.

  She waited impatiently.

  She crossed her arms and tapped her foot.

  Eventually a mouth full of teeth appeared, but its smile wasn’t the moon-sliver grin of old; it was wry. A pair of eyes eventually appeared above it, more resigned than mad.

  “Cheshire! About time. What do you mean, ‘I was never supposed to be gone’?”

  “You were saying—oh, you were thinking—” The rest of the cat appeared in the air and twisted languidly there like he was rolling on a particularly soft and tufted couch. “I have it out of order. It’s a problem with hypercativity. In your head a while ago, not aloud just now. But it’s just as true as it ever was. You were never supposed to be gone, the both of you.”

  Alice had to resist reaching up to scratch his neck the way Dinah would have liked. One probably didn’t touch sentient creatures without their express permission—at least not on first meeting. She wondered if there was a children’s book in Wonderland somewhere full of useful rules of etiquette and proper Wonderland behavior for good girls and boys.

  “But whatever do you mean, I was never supposed to be gone?” she asked. “I didn’t ask to leave, although I was terrified for my life—the Queen wanted to kill me. I just, as you know, sort of woke up.”

  “Yes, but you woke up too early. You didn�
��t see it to the end, because Mary Ann didn’t end it then.”

  “Mary Ann—the White Rabbit’s Mary Ann? But she was the one with the message about the Unbirthday! She—called me here!”

  “Like calls to like,” the cat said, now bored. “One or the other. You save, she saves, he she it saves, we all save. In Latin it’s pipsquo.”

  “It isn’t, either. But…” Her last memories of being in Wonderland were of chaos: a large-headed queen screaming bloody murder and off with her head and soldiers and everyone running which-aways and Alice wanting to shout and cry. “Mary Ann was supposed to save you? But—why wait for me, then?”

  “Why not you? You’re not from here, but you were there. You’re Alice from another Land—Angleland. Not as good as Mary Ann, but you tried. You rose to the occasion. Literally.”

  “But I cannot rise at all now,” Alice protested. “Not like bread or anything. I had the Eat Me cakes and the drinks and nothing at all happened to me.”

  “Well, of course.” The cat twisted again, but only his striped purple-and-orange body: it rolled all the way around while his head stayed fixed and his eyes on hers. “You’re finished shrinking and growing now. You’re at your tip-toppiest. You can’t be taller than your tallest, my Alice.”

  “That’s an assonance,” Alice pointed out smugly. “Of course I’ll help you—and Mary Ann—if I can. But what precisely is happening here? What game is the Queen of Hearts playing at?”

  The words, the tit for tat, came rolling off Alice’s tongue as if they had been waiting all her life for someone else’s dialogue to play with. It felt like a game, a grown-up one, and she hadn’t played for years. It felt good.

  The cat regarded her with an eyebrow raised.

  “‘Hands she has but does not hold; teeth she has but does not bite; feet she has but they are cold; eyes she has but without sight,’” he recited.

  He fell to the ground—feetfirst, of course—and looked up at her inscrutably. Like a normal cat.

  “Oh, you’re no help,” Alice said crossly. “All recrimination and riddles.”

  “You’re not much help yourself. You’re certainly no Mary Ann. She’s the real hero. If you want my advice…you’ll figure out my riddle, and find her. The hero.”

  It looked like it physically pained the Cheshire Cat to speak so plainly. He went green and chuffed and coughed up a fur ball—which opened bright pink eyes and then went running off into the bushes.

  “Fair enough.” Despite a strange incipient jealousy of this superior girl, Alice had to focus on the fact that whatever kind of hero she was, she was in trouble. She needed help. All of Wonderland did. “But how do I do that?”

  “Ask around…” the cat said, drifting up into the air again. He yawned and put his head on his paws. “Keep your ear to the Grunderound, if you please.”

  “Grunderound?” Alice asked. “What? Where? How? Oh—he’s gone.”

  The smile remained, inanimate, in the air.

  “Of course,” Alice sighed.

  “The answer is doll, by the way,” she added, sticking her tongue out at the smile. “Oldest one in the book. Are you saying the Queen of Hearts is a doll? That Mary Ann is?”

  Then a distant squawk caught her attention.

  In the glary sky above her an undiminishing speck resolved itself into a large awkward bird and its larger-hatted rider. They bobbed and burbled as they went. Someone from the castle must have finally found a suitable antiaircraft weapon and was firing giant crossbow bolts at them. Alice flinched, but the heavy things, made out of dark orange cheese, all fell far short of their mark.

  “Hatter! Dormouse! Dodo! I’m coming!” she cried, and took off after them.

  Alice tried to keep an eye on the trio flying above her but soon lost them behind the high walls of the maze. She paid little attention to the twists and turns now, ducking in and then out of the cul-de-sacs haphazardly and not bothering to memorize the changes of direction she made as a result of this. Things crept behind her and pattered away in front of her, and she paid them no mind. All she really did mind was the length and breadth of her skirts, which impeded her speed and occasionally caught on curlicued signs that pointed to nowhere.

  At some point the maze happily disappeared.

  The sides of the labyrinth were replaced with thick and wild shrubs that poorly mimicked the boxwood. A spectacle-bird, perched with its giant toes wrapped around a low branch, eased from one foot back to another as if guarding—or perhaps merely watching—the imaginary entrance to the labyrinth.

  “Pardon me, but have you seen the Mad Hatter?” Alice asked it politely.

  The bird thing looked at her inscrutably, not an iota of kindness, interest, or curiosity in its strange eyes. And this was the most alien thing of all. The last time she had been here Alice was gently accosted by all sorts of odd, harmless creatures—curious fauna who wanted to play with her, or run away from her, or perhaps loom menacingly over her to keep her away from their territory. But never had they displayed this frigid disinterest.

  “I wonder if I am entering the Tulgey Wood again,” Alice said with forced casualness, turning away from the bird and feeling strangely embarrassed, as if she were the cause of some Wonderland faux pas.

  (Tulgey Wood! She remembered it so clearly, the name and the place. But if asked what street she lived on back home, she would have said, “Baxterflashenhall!” And then, “No, that’s not right at all….”)

  It might indeed have been the forest from her previous visit: the trees were thick-trunked with storybook branches, and darkness grew under their leaves like a living, breathing entity. Ghostly green moss glowed and flowed around roots. Little flowers—eyeless, mouthless—poked star-shaped blossoms up from the forest floor. Strange pastel lights flickered off and on at unpredictable distances. It all felt very familiar.

  And yet.

  Once there were signs everywhere espousing nonsense: THIS WAY or THAT WAY or OVER HERE, nailed several to a tree, roughly carved into pointing shapes. The signs were still there, but in place of the friendly and useless words were bloody hearts painted slapdash upon them. Thick, ugly drips of red ran down their fronts like tears.

  “‘All ways are the Queen’s way,’” Alice repeated to herself with a shudder.

  She walked into the woods.

  The first thing she noticed was how silent it was; the beeps, warbles, burbling streams, and qworking duck-bulbs were silent. There were of course no paths and she had only a vague idea of which way her friends had gone. It was like chasing the White Rabbit all over again.

  “And where is the White Rabbit, anyway?” Alice mused. “He wasn’t at the executions. Usually he’s right up front with the Queen and other important people. But of course the Queen wasn’t there…so perhaps he is out with her, wherever she may be. What did that lizard thing say? That he worked for the White Rabbit? What does that even mean?”

  Suddenly Alice spotted something at the base of one of the gloomy trees: a little flash of unnatural color. She bent down and saw a single mome rath, a bright pink one, desperately trying to pretend it was a flower.

  “Excuse me,” Alice said gently. “I understand that you may not be able to tell the difference between regular people, especially girls, but I am not at all associated with the Queen of Hearts. And I could really use your help. If you please.”

  The little tufted head lifted up just a smidgen so that the tops of two large and innocent eyes could gauge her trustworthiness.

  “Really,” Alice said as patiently and calmly as she could. “You can see there isn’t a spot of red on me. I just freed my friends from the Executioner, and now I’m looking for them. It’s the Hatter, the Dodo, and the Dormouse. Although if you knew anyone else who was left—the March Hare, for instance—I would love to see him again, too.”

  The mome rath raised itself up out of the ground on a pair of purply-pink and cautious legs. Keeping both of its large eyes on hers, it tottered, unconvinced, around her feet. Ali
ce stayed perfectly still, resisting the urge to scrunch and unscrunch her toes away from it.

  Finally the tiny thing made up its mind and went whirling into the woods. Alice wasn’t entirely sure if it had decided to help her or was off on a mission of its own, but she followed nonetheless.

  “I thought you fellows always traveled in crowds,” she said to make conversation. “When I was here last, I only saw you in packs. Or flocks, rather, or—what do you call dozens of mome raths? A herd? A murder? A blessing?”

  The creature stopped long enough to look back at her with sad, baleful eyes. Then it spraddled its legs out and fell to the ground, eyes closed.

  “Oh. I see. They were stepped on,” Alice said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

  The mome rath gave her another look that was impossible to interpret without a mouth or other point of reference. Then it leapt up and toddled on. Alice followed, continuing her conversation—but with herself this time. That way there was no more chance of her accidentally saying something hurtful to the other party.

  “Eleven years later and I’m still mucking things up,” she chastised. “I used to laugh at little Alice for telling the Dormouse all about Dinah. What an improper thing to do, bragging to a mouse about a cat! And now here I am in a war-torn land asking about the Queen of Hearts’ latest victims as if they were no more than a—background image, a picture or illustration with no real feelings. Naughty Alice. Be more careful! Think before you speak! Remember what happened last time and learn from it!”

  She opened her mouth to say something nice and soothing to the little creature, but the mome rath was gone. It had just faded out of consciousness as if it had never been there at all. Alice found herself beside a small brook that broke apart and foamed over rocks into a lovely little pool below—but it was all absolutely silent. Impossibly silent.

  “No, none of that. Nothing is impossible in Wonderland,” Alice said with a sigh, dipping her hand into the water and whipping it around with her fingers. Even that made no noise.

  Then she heard the faintest bit of something. A song that was started and then stopped suddenly…a chorus? In the middle of the woods?