“From the fellow onstage,” the bartender whispered. “He was very insistent that it arrive as he was performing, not before or beside or behind.”
The fellow onstage was an old-ish man in muttonchops holding an improbably large lavender top hat with the size-card still stuck in it. He watched the crowd solemnly as he drew object after object after object out of the hat: a croquet ball stained with blood, a pocket watch with a bayonet thrust through the fob, a silver tea-tray with a great, unhappy boot-print on it.
“Deposed?” Olive said to the White Queen, who went on calmly with her knitting. “But you’re the White Queen! Shouldn’t you be off Queening about with the other Queens?”
“I wasn’t red, so I wasn’t needed,” she sighed. “That’s what they said. There were four of us once. The perfect number for bridge. The Red Queen, the White Queen, the Queen of Hearts, and…” The White Queen suddenly clammed up, shaking her head in distress.
“The Other One,” the striped cat purred. “We aren’t allowed to say her name. The Queens have ears. Hush hush.”
“She kicked down the Queen of Hearts’ horrid cards and shook the Red Queen so hard she nearly broke her neck—more’s the pity she didn’t finish the job. Everything was going to be all right, you know. With the Other One here to keep those scarlet women in line.”
The cat licked his paws. “I met her. She was rather thick, if you ask me. And she kept going on about herself, which I think is very rude, when you’re a guest.”
“But you knew it wouldn’t be all right,” said Olive, who had a little brother, and therefore was immune to distraction. “Because of how you live backwards.”
“Yes, yes! What a clever girl! I knew, but no one listens to me because I’m always screaming about one thing or another—but you would scream, too, if you remembered the whole future of the world until Judgment Day and past it! You’d scream and scream and never stop! I knew she’d vanish like a shawl in the wind and she did and just as soon as she did, the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts would decide Wonderland needed taking in hand. Needed one crown. We were all conscripted. My Lily died on the Croquet Grounds. I wish I had. I wish…I wish a lot of things. The Other One came back, of course, nothing only happens once in Wonderland. But as soon as she was gone again, those red ladies holed up in their castles and started building their armies once more. We are not at war now, my child, but we soon shall be. Now, we simply hold our breaths and wait.”
“Something like that happened in my world, too,” Olive said softly. “Is happening. Germany and Russia and America and…well, everyone, I suppose.”
“The Tumtum Club is the only place the Looking Glass Creatures are allowed to be mad anymore.” The White Queen sighed. “Outside, we have to report for duty at dawn. In here, the Hatter can pull his heart out of his hat.”
The gorgeous butterfly slipped out of the curtain again to master further ceremonies, twirling on her tiny black feet in a sudden cloud of stage smoke. She peered into the audience as though she were speaking to each of them in particular, as though what she said were more important than anything that had ever happened to them, and the whole of the universe waited upon their answering her.
I am young, little darlings, the Butterfly crooned
My wings have become very bright
The larva I was drowned inside my cocoon
Growing up really is such a fright!
I hardly remember the old mushroom now
I liked hookahs, I think, and fresh dew
Yet I’ll still have my answer, I do not care how:
Who Are You?
Something knocked into their toadstool table and toppled Olive’s drink. She tried to keep mum for the sake of the Hatter and shout indignantly at the same time, which is impossible, but she tried anyway.
The marble raven capital blinked up at her.
“Come on, then,” he cawed. “This is
our five-minute call. We’re on, Olive, old girl.”
Living Backwards
The trio of musicians wind down. The lights are dim now. The restaurant nearly empty, nearly shut. Peter and Alice toy with the notion of eating their slices of plum-cake awash with double cream, but neither can fully commit to it. They speak of Wonderland, of cabbages and kings, of riddles and chess and what sort of tea could be got in the wilds. It is pleasant, there is a joy in it, but it is unreal. It is like listening to someone try to tell you the plot of a radio play you missed. Peter feels a chill. Perhaps another cold coming on.
“I want to believe you,” he says.
“Clap your hands and give it a go. Or decide I’m a barmy old woman and go on with your life. It won’t change what I know. Oh, Peter, how disappointing for us both. You thought we were the same. I thought we were. But Alice in Wonderland could never take me from myself, because it was myself, it always was. We’re both the victims of burglars, dastardly fellows who stove in our windows and bashed up our houses. But my robber only took the silver. Yours took the lot. Of course, Charles got it half wrong and put a great lot of maths in to amuse himself; and perhaps if I’d been the one to write it, I wouldn’t have to sell my first editions to keep the lights on in my house; but losing Wonderland didn’t ruin me. Losing…” and then she cannot continue. She grips her beer glass like it can save her, but it will not. It never has saved anyone. “…my boys…all my pretty boys…”
“My brothers, too,” Peter whispers. There is nothing more to say than that, than that they are people of a certain era, and people of a certain era know an emptiness in the world, a place where something precious was cut out and never replaced.
“Coffee?” asks the waiter.