My Jeb is alive.
I flutter to the ground and reabsorb my wings. I don’t want to leave. But before I can help mend Jeb, find Mom, and fix Wonderland, I have to get Morpheus and face Red.
“I’ll be back,” I whisper, and lock the door behind me.
Two rooms left to explore.
I stop at the rose-petal door. I don’t even hesitate this time. One tap of the diary, and I’m inside.
The walls, also lined with red roses, curl overhead and meet in the middle, forming a dome. Tiny clear globes float above me, tinkling as they bump into one another. They each harbor vivid moving scenes—like miniature silent films.
One in particular catches my attention. Inside, an ashen funnel drops from the sky. Out falls Queen Red in her giant zombie-flower form, along with Jeb and Morpheus. It’s the moment they first got to AnyElsewhere. The guys are still wearing their prom clothes, and Jeb has on a half mask.
I capture the globe to watch the scene unfold up close. Red looms over Jeb and Morpheus, casting a long blue shadow. A distorted, snarling mouth widens in the midst of her flowery head, and rows of eyes blink on every petal. Her ivy tangles around the guys as they wrestle, trying to escape. Jeb breaks one arm free and digs in his pants pocket, dragging out a knife. Morpheus distracts Red—strong-arming the vines until she slips several more around him to keep control. Jeb saws through his restraints—just like he did when we faced the garden of monstrous flowers on our trip to Wonderland.
Once he’s loose, he grabs the severed ivy, using it to bind Red’s other limbs and help Morpheus.
Red teeters, then hits the ground, helpless.
As the dust clears, Jeb and Morpheus glare at each other. Still clutching a vine, Jeb rips off his prom mask, shouts something, then turns to walk away. Morpheus jumps him from behind. They fight on the ground and Morpheus ends up on top, wings enfolding them in a tent. The outline of Jeb’s face presses against the black, satiny membrane from the other side. He’s suffocating. Anger boils up inside me.
The scene ends. Ivory told me weeks ago that Morpheus’s actions are where the truth lies. Last year when he used that smothering trick on Jeb, he was knocking him unconscious to be alone with me. So he had to have a reason to want Jeb unconscious this time. And there’s only one way to find out what it was.
The moment I turn to go, the remaining globes drop down, insisting I look inside. An uneasy tremor quakes through me with each glimpse. One is an image of Queen Red’s mother when Red was young; there are also moments between Red and both her parents—drinking tea, laughing . . . planting flowers; and Red dancing with her father as her mother claps from a distance.
These are all things Jeb can’t possibly know. Things only Red would know.
Before I can piece together what that means, an image of Charles Dodgson takes shape inside a globe that’s floating away. I stretch up to grab it.
He’s walking on a flower-strewn path alongside an older, distinguished gentleman. As they stroll beneath some shady trees, the older man’s appearance shifts and I see—so clearly—Red wearing the professor’s imprint. Just like Hubert said, at the inn.
My heartbeat thunders.
Charles carries a journal filled with handwritten equations and longitude/latitude directions. Together, Charles and Red’s professor-imprint step through some shrubbery, coming to stop at the little-boy sundial statue—the gateway to the rabbit hole—that once hid Wonderland’s entrance before I destroyed everything.
The image goes dark. I’m about to release the globe when it lights up once more to another scene and a group of people having a picnic. Several children, a mother and a father, and Charles. Alice Liddell’s face comes into view. She looks just like the seven-year-old in the picture Mom had hidden in Dad’s recliner. This family must be hers . . . the Liddells, close friends with Charles.
Alice’s face is alight with excitement as she scampers alone through a haze of vintage spectators. Scones, teacups on lace doilies, and parasols abound. She circles a familiar set of shrubs. Eyes wide with wonder, she stands head-to-head with the sundial statue. It’s been pushed aside, exposing the hole underneath.
Two fuzzy white ears appear from within, and a bunny face complete with wriggling nose and endearing whiskers comes into view. Alice gapes as the bunny motions with a pink, padded paw for her to follow. What she doesn’t see is the shift of the imprint, and Rabid White’s bony hand, old man’s face, and white antlers.
The white rabbit disappears back into the hole. Looking around her, Alice hesitates. But the curious light in her eyes burns brighter than her fear, and she plunges in. Queen Red creeps from behind a rosebush and coaxes the sundial statue back into place over the hole, locking it. She’s gone before Charles and Alice’s father appear, looking for the missing child.
Neither one knows there’s a hole beneath the statue, apparent by the bewilderment on their faces. Charles had found the gateway, but never figured out how to open it.
I know the rest of the tale by heart: Alice was missing for days. Then later, after she returned, Charles, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll, wrote her story out on paper. But it wasn’t Alice who returned at all. It was Red.
The globe goes dark again and I release it.
I stand in place, numb.
All this time I thought Alice accidentally stumbled into Wonderland. But Red planted the possibility of the nether-realm in Charles Dodgson’s mind as his colleague. When Charles found the sundial statue and nothing more, he figured his calculations were wrong. So instead, the tale blossomed to fiction within his storyteller’s imagination. He filled Alice and her siblings’ heads with fanciful notions and fairy-tale enticements, made the mistake of mentioning the statue, even took the family to see it during a picnic, never realizing the repercussions.
Red wanted Alice to go down the rabbit hole. She arranged for it.
An uncomfortable warmth niggles in my skull—my netherling intuition waking . . . nudging. Either because Red’s spirit once shared my body, or because her memories are still on the back burner of my mind, I know that this epiphany is fact, not speculation.
Hubert said Red wanted to improve the netherling lineage. That she thought the humans were better somehow.
What makes human children better? Why does Sister Two steal them and string them up in the garden of souls?
Dreams and imagination . . .
The diary wriggles at my neck, further validation. The forgotten memories on these pages shaped Red’s motivations long before she chose to forget them. But the problem is, she did choose to forget. She forgot why she wanted to bring dreams into Wonderland.
I flutter to the ground and reabsorb my wings. I don’t want to leave. But before I can help mend Jeb, find Mom, and fix Wonderland, I have to get Morpheus and face Red.
“I’ll be back,” I whisper, and lock the door behind me.
Two rooms left to explore.
I stop at the rose-petal door. I don’t even hesitate this time. One tap of the diary, and I’m inside.
The walls, also lined with red roses, curl overhead and meet in the middle, forming a dome. Tiny clear globes float above me, tinkling as they bump into one another. They each harbor vivid moving scenes—like miniature silent films.
One in particular catches my attention. Inside, an ashen funnel drops from the sky. Out falls Queen Red in her giant zombie-flower form, along with Jeb and Morpheus. It’s the moment they first got to AnyElsewhere. The guys are still wearing their prom clothes, and Jeb has on a half mask.
I capture the globe to watch the scene unfold up close. Red looms over Jeb and Morpheus, casting a long blue shadow. A distorted, snarling mouth widens in the midst of her flowery head, and rows of eyes blink on every petal. Her ivy tangles around the guys as they wrestle, trying to escape. Jeb breaks one arm free and digs in his pants pocket, dragging out a knife. Morpheus distracts Red—strong-arming the vines until she slips several more around him to keep control. Jeb saws through his restraints—just like he did when we faced the garden of monstrous flowers on our trip to Wonderland.
Once he’s loose, he grabs the severed ivy, using it to bind Red’s other limbs and help Morpheus.
Red teeters, then hits the ground, helpless.
As the dust clears, Jeb and Morpheus glare at each other. Still clutching a vine, Jeb rips off his prom mask, shouts something, then turns to walk away. Morpheus jumps him from behind. They fight on the ground and Morpheus ends up on top, wings enfolding them in a tent. The outline of Jeb’s face presses against the black, satiny membrane from the other side. He’s suffocating. Anger boils up inside me.
The scene ends. Ivory told me weeks ago that Morpheus’s actions are where the truth lies. Last year when he used that smothering trick on Jeb, he was knocking him unconscious to be alone with me. So he had to have a reason to want Jeb unconscious this time. And there’s only one way to find out what it was.
The moment I turn to go, the remaining globes drop down, insisting I look inside. An uneasy tremor quakes through me with each glimpse. One is an image of Queen Red’s mother when Red was young; there are also moments between Red and both her parents—drinking tea, laughing . . . planting flowers; and Red dancing with her father as her mother claps from a distance.
These are all things Jeb can’t possibly know. Things only Red would know.
Before I can piece together what that means, an image of Charles Dodgson takes shape inside a globe that’s floating away. I stretch up to grab it.
He’s walking on a flower-strewn path alongside an older, distinguished gentleman. As they stroll beneath some shady trees, the older man’s appearance shifts and I see—so clearly—Red wearing the professor’s imprint. Just like Hubert said, at the inn.
My heartbeat thunders.
Charles carries a journal filled with handwritten equations and longitude/latitude directions. Together, Charles and Red’s professor-imprint step through some shrubbery, coming to stop at the little-boy sundial statue—the gateway to the rabbit hole—that once hid Wonderland’s entrance before I destroyed everything.
The image goes dark. I’m about to release the globe when it lights up once more to another scene and a group of people having a picnic. Several children, a mother and a father, and Charles. Alice Liddell’s face comes into view. She looks just like the seven-year-old in the picture Mom had hidden in Dad’s recliner. This family must be hers . . . the Liddells, close friends with Charles.
Alice’s face is alight with excitement as she scampers alone through a haze of vintage spectators. Scones, teacups on lace doilies, and parasols abound. She circles a familiar set of shrubs. Eyes wide with wonder, she stands head-to-head with the sundial statue. It’s been pushed aside, exposing the hole underneath.
Two fuzzy white ears appear from within, and a bunny face complete with wriggling nose and endearing whiskers comes into view. Alice gapes as the bunny motions with a pink, padded paw for her to follow. What she doesn’t see is the shift of the imprint, and Rabid White’s bony hand, old man’s face, and white antlers.
The white rabbit disappears back into the hole. Looking around her, Alice hesitates. But the curious light in her eyes burns brighter than her fear, and she plunges in. Queen Red creeps from behind a rosebush and coaxes the sundial statue back into place over the hole, locking it. She’s gone before Charles and Alice’s father appear, looking for the missing child.
Neither one knows there’s a hole beneath the statue, apparent by the bewilderment on their faces. Charles had found the gateway, but never figured out how to open it.
I know the rest of the tale by heart: Alice was missing for days. Then later, after she returned, Charles, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll, wrote her story out on paper. But it wasn’t Alice who returned at all. It was Red.
The globe goes dark again and I release it.
I stand in place, numb.
All this time I thought Alice accidentally stumbled into Wonderland. But Red planted the possibility of the nether-realm in Charles Dodgson’s mind as his colleague. When Charles found the sundial statue and nothing more, he figured his calculations were wrong. So instead, the tale blossomed to fiction within his storyteller’s imagination. He filled Alice and her siblings’ heads with fanciful notions and fairy-tale enticements, made the mistake of mentioning the statue, even took the family to see it during a picnic, never realizing the repercussions.
Red wanted Alice to go down the rabbit hole. She arranged for it.
An uncomfortable warmth niggles in my skull—my netherling intuition waking . . . nudging. Either because Red’s spirit once shared my body, or because her memories are still on the back burner of my mind, I know that this epiphany is fact, not speculation.
Hubert said Red wanted to improve the netherling lineage. That she thought the humans were better somehow.
What makes human children better? Why does Sister Two steal them and string them up in the garden of souls?
Dreams and imagination . . .
The diary wriggles at my neck, further validation. The forgotten memories on these pages shaped Red’s motivations long before she chose to forget them. But the problem is, she did choose to forget. She forgot why she wanted to bring dreams into Wonderland.
