Seeing Redd Read online

  Hatter felt a twinge; reestablishing the Millinery was the last thing he felt like doing.

  “I understand that our relationship was difficult for you, Hatter,” Weaver went on. “I know that despite how thoughtful and loving you always were to me, a part of you was angry with yourself for succumbing to your feelings for anyone, let alone a civilian. A master of self-control as all of Wonderland believes you to be, you shouldn’t have been consorting with me. You thought your feelings a mark against you, an indication of weakness.”

  “I no longer think so,” he said aloud.

  “I always knew your duties could call you away,” Weaver continued. “It was wrong of me not to tell you when I first found out, but…Hatter, my love…I’m sorry.” She wiped her eyes. “I should’ve told you before you left…I was pregnant.”

  Hatter remained perfectly still. Pregnant? With his child? So long did he remain unmoving that, when he again became conscious of his surroundings, he thought he had paused the diary. But then he saw Weaver’s chest rise and fall, rise and fall; she was breathing, struggling with her own emotions.

  “I know how you feel about halfers,” she said at last, “and I was never sure how you’d react to hearing that you had fathered one. Every time I thought to tell you of my joy—of our joy—I found an excuse not to. I did plan to tell you the next time we’d be on Talon’s Point together. But as you know, there was no next time.”

  Too preoccupied with the vision before him, Hatter didn’t hear the pop that sounded—either the bursting of an air bubble in one of the fire crystals or an explosion from outside the cave.

  “I couldn’t give birth alone, so I risked an overland journey to the Alyssian camp in the Everlasting Forest. Doctors there delivered me of a beautiful baby girl.” With the saddest smile Hatter had ever seen, the smile of one who had long ago resigned herself to a life incomplete and unsatisfactory, Weaver said, “It’s time you knew your daughter’s name, Hatter.”

  But just then, as if surprised by an intruder, she looked off at someone or something not recorded by the diary, and the pop that Hatter had failed to hear a moment before proved to be the opening salvo in a battle raging on the nearby mountain, which Hatter now heard without hearing, his whole being fixed on Weaver’s image, already fizzling to nothing as she whispered, “Molly.”

  CHAPTER 13

  “WHAT DO you mean you can’t locate an enemy to fight?” the general cried, indicating the havoc surrounding them in Genevieve Square, then splitting into the twin figures of Doppel and Gänger so as to worry twice as much, both of the generals pacing and rubbing their brows.

  The white knight and rook exchanged an uneasy glance.

  “My chessmen have canvassed the vicinity and found no one,” explained the knight. “We have a great many injured among the civilian population, but no casualties as of yet.”

  “Let’s keep it that way,” said Doppel.

  “Yes, let’s,” said Gänger. “But someone caused this!”

  “Or something,” offered the rook. “Whoever or whatever it was, it’s made the continuum impenetrable.”

  As if to prove the point, a panicked Wonderlander with blood-matted hair sprinted past. “Must get home to my family,” he was saying. “Must make sure they’re safe.”

  The chessmen and generals watched as the traumatized fellow ran straight for the nearest looking glass portal and was knocked back, repelled, when he tried to enter it. The generals called for a nurse, who led the victim off to a triage center located in a tailor’s shop on the corner.

  “That’s what happens whenever anyone tries to enter the continuum from any portal whatsoever,” the rook said. “It’s impossible to gain access and we’ve no idea if the condition is temporary or permanent.”

  “Not good,” fretted Doppel.

  “Not good at all,” agreed Gänger.

  “Sir!” A young pawn approached, accompanied by a pair of Wonderlanders. “These men were in the continuum when that, uh…thing happened. I thought their experiences might be able to give us some insight into what we’re dealing with.”

  “Let’s hope so,” said the knight.

  At a nod from the pawn, one of the men offered what he could: “I don’t know exactly how to describe it, really. It was like a feeling, like I was a piece of junk being carried along on a tidal wave or—”

  “Not for me, it wasn’t,” said the other. “I’m not sure if this will make any sense, but a bright nothingness came up and knocked the breath out of me. I don’t remember anything after that, except that once I could see and breathe again, I wasn’t in the continuum. I was stranded high in the branches of an unappreciative tree, and my wife—we’d been returning home from a barbecue at her cousin Laura’s, she makes the best barbecued dormouse you’ll ever taste in your lives, so tender that the meat slips off the bone, and she seasons it with a scrumptious glaze just the right amount of sweet and tart and spicy, oh and her corn relish!”

  The knight cleared his throat.

  “Right. So anyway, I landed in a tree and my wife was half a block away, sprawled on top of a citizen who—the nerve of him—complained that she’d landed on him purposely.”

  The pawn waited, eager to learn how helpful his civilians had been. The generals resumed their pacing and the rook blinked at the men with something like disbelief. Only the knight remembered himself.

  “You’ve done the queendom a great service, providing such a smorgasbord of helpful information,” he said. And to the pawn: “See that these gentlemen are examined by a physician before you release them.”

  “Yessir.”

  The pawn saluted and led the Wonderlanders off.

  “We’ll have to station guards at all the portals,” said Doppel.

  “And see if we can’t analyze whatever’s contaminated the continuum,” said Gänger. “What is that bleeping?”

  It was coming from the rook’s ammo belt, which looped over his battlements and crossed in an X on his chest. “It’s the latest model crystal communicator, Generals,” he said. “I press this button here…” the chessman pressed a button on the miniature keypad strapped to his forearm, “…the incoming message alert stops sounding, and then this little hole here…” he pointed to a nozzle-like opening on his ammo belt, “…shoots out a visual of the transmission that all of us can view equally well.”

  A screen formed in the air before him, on which appeared a frantic pawn patrolling Wondertropolis’ Obsidian Park neighborhood.

  “Glass Eyes are in the city!” the pawn shouted. “Repeat: Glass Eyes have infiltrated Wondertropolis! Alot of them!”

  Behind the pawn, fleet-footed Glass Eyes could be seen rampaging through the streets, overpowering one chessman and card soldier after another.

  “Unable to locate their point of entry!” the pawn shouted. “They seem to be coming from everywhere!”

  A Glass Eye was rocketing up fast behind him, getting closer and closer—

  “Look out!” the rook cried.

  The transmission went dead.

  The generals were already barking commands into their flip-screen, older model crystal communicators:

  “All available decks deploy to Obsidian Park!”

  “For White Imagination’s sake, get civilians off the streets!”

  But neither the generals nor the chessmen voiced what all knew to be true: They were not equipped to counter a major attack on the capital city, not with the continuum rendered useless, and the numerous decks that had been dispatched to military outposts stranded along the edges of the queendom.

  “The queen must be informed,” the knight said.

  “There’s no need.”

  They all turned to see Alyss Heart, gifted with the most powerful imagination ever to legally occupy Wonderland’s throne, walking toward the middle of the square with scepter in hand. The sight of her, so matter-of-factly confident, might have been enough to give even the walrus-butler courage, but the chessmen and generals weren’t the walrus-b
utler. Their courage didn’t need bolstering. They would not whine about the Glass Eyes’ superior numbers. They would not disappoint their queen. The rook unholstered his AD52, checked the supply of projectile decks in its ammo bay. The knight unsheathed his sword and stood at the ready. Generals Doppel and Gänger each split in two, and the four generals each divided again, forming eight generals in all—four Doppels and four Gängers. The more bodies to aid in Wonderland’s defense, the better.

  “There!” the knight said.

  Alyss had already seen them: a contingent of Glass Eyes bearing down from Slithy Avenue, keeping close to the buildings, darting from vestibule to vestibule. The rook started forward, not one to wait for trouble if he could help it.

  “No,” Alyss said. “Let them come.”

  “It’ll be the last thing they ever do.”

  Alyss spun to her left and—

  There stood Dodge, sword in one hand, crystal shooter in the other. They held each other’s gaze. What’s he doing here? I told Bibwit—

  “Shouldn’t you be guarding the palace?” the rook asked with a knowing smirk.

  Dodge shrugged, didn’t take his eyes off Alyss. “First they’re in Wondertropolis, next thing you know they’re marching through the palace halls.” He looked at the rook and winked. “Besides, I have to make sure you do the job right, don’t I?”

  The Glass Eyes were letting civilians climb out of ground-floor windows, burst from doorways, and escape into the distance. Unconcerned with ordinary Wonderlanders now that they’d located the queen, they holed up in the suddenly abandoned shops and office towers, took aim with their AD52s, crystal shooters, spikejack tumblers, and orb cannons.

  Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch!

  They strafed the square, orb generators burning a path through the air toward Wonderland’s queen. Even before Dodge, the knight, the rook, and eight generals could dive for cover—

  Alyss used the power of her imagination to hurl the missiles back upon the enemy. At the slightest dip of her scepter, the orb generators reversed directions and broke into smaller orbs, each of them homing in on a Glass Eye.

  Bloosh! Kabloosh! Bloosh-bloosh! Bloosh!

  A rapid series of blasts as Glass Eyes exploded into millions of Glass Eye bits. Not one of the enemy was left functioning, alive.

  “A second wave,” Alyss breathed, because more Glass Eyes were streaking in from Slithy Avenue’s horizon.

  “They’re on Whiffling Heights,” called the rook.

  “And Gimble Lane,” said Dodge.

  “And Brillig,” said the knight and generals.

  Not the most life-affirming news: Glass Eyes storming Genevieve Square from every available street. Alyss and Dodge, the chessmen and generals—they were surrounded.

  CHAPTER 14

  IF THE ever-wise Bibwit Harte had been with Hatter on Talon’s Point, he would have bent his ears in sympathy, sensitive to the news divulged by Weaver’s image.

  “The diary has left you with more questions than it has answered, Hatter,” he might have said, “but you shouldn’t be surprised. The most important questions are always answered with yet more questions.”

  Which wisdom would have comforted the Milliner not at all.

  If Weaver had given birth at the Alyssian camp within the Everlasting Forest, why had she left the safety of the camp? Why had she abandoned her daughter? Merely to place the diary at Talon’s Point in case he returned? It hardly seemed worth it. There must have been another reason, but…Here Hatter was overcome with a peculiar feeling. He’d been having peculiar feelings for a while now, but this one was really peculiar. He was feeling paternal. How old had Molly been when Weaver left? What did she remember of her mother? Had she been told anything of him? Hatter thought back to the time he had spent with the girl—the battles they had fought against Redd and her forces. He’d been impressed with her fidelity to Alyss, her courage and fortitude in helping the princess recover Wonderland’s throne, and he hoped he had said as much when he recommended her to be Alyss’ bodyguard. But he could recall nothing that definitively told him she knew who he was. Her sass and occasional disregard for his opinions could have been either the lashing out of a bitter daughter or the antagonism of a teen determined to elbow a space for herself in the adult world.

  He repeated the fact to convince himself of its reality: Homburg Molly is my daughter, Homburg Molly is my daughter. How could he act the recluse, pining away on a mountaintop for a woman who would never return, while her daughter—their daughter—lived? Because it’s in Molly that Weaver most lives. Yes, and for Weaver’s sake, for his and Molly’s sake, he had to return to Wondertropolis. He got to his feet, would prepare immediately.

  Blooooachchch! Kablooooomshkkrkkkrk!

  He’d been hearing explosions outside the cave for some time, he realized. He stepped out onto the ridge and saw, on the nearby mountain below, the comet streaks of orb generators, the fiery blossoms of exploded barracks and munitions caches; a Wonderland military post was under attack.

  In an instant, he returned to the depths of the cave. From the dust-covered pile of Millinery gear, and with the skill of a footballer chipping the ball into the goal, he kicked up his top hat, sent it flipping onto his head.

  Shoulder to shoulder and ankle to ankle, the card soldiers locked themselves together to form a shield around the communications bunker. How many of their deck were still alive they had no way of knowing. Perhaps only the pair of Ten Cards inside the bunker. And themselves. It had been a while since they’d sighted anyone else. Yet they would defend the bunker so long as they had breath left in them. Not a single soldier harbored any illusions: The attack had caught the base unprepared; they were outnumbered; they would not survive.

  Too much smoke in the air to see the enemy, but suddenly—

  A series of whishing sounds like something repeatedly cutting the air, then a lull, the quiet that inevitably precedes the wind-shriek of an incoming orb generator. The card soldiers braced themselves for impact, but instead of the expected explosion—

  Thump. Thump thump. Thump thump thump.

  “What the…?” one of the soldiers said.

  The limbs of Glass Eyes clomped down around them. Arms chopped off at the shoulder joint, legs ending at the top of the thigh, hands and feet and torsos, all with a spaghetti of wires and lab-grown veins spilling from holes where no holes should have been.

  From the direction the card soldiers had expected their death to come, the silhouette of a Wonderlander appeared out of the smoke—a Wonderlander they would have recognized anywhere. The hat, the dramatic swing of the coat, the spinning blades on his wrists: Hatter Madigan.

  CHAPTER 15

  FOR A manufactured species with questionable brain power, the Glass Eyes were fighting with surprising intelligence. Rather than face Wonderland forces in the open of wide avenues, squares and parks, they used the cityscape to their advantage, as defensive cover. They moved purposefully from building to building, sheltered position to sheltered position, battling card soldiers as they converged on Genevieve Square.

  The moment Alyss had been located, the knowledge of it spread to every Glass Eye in the city—or so it seemed to Bibwit Harte, who, with the walrus-butler, was watching the invasion on the holographic viewing screens in the palace’s briefing room. Wonderland’s queen had been sighted, there followed the slightest hesitation in the Glass Eyes’ movements, and they all began to fight their way toward her.

  “Oh, oh, I can’t watch,” grieved the walrus. He tried to cover his eyes, but his flippers were too short to reach and he waddled around the room in even greater consternation. “I’m not watching, I’m not watching!” He turned his eyes anywhere but at the holo-screens. “What’s happening, Mr. Bibwit? No, don’t tell me! Oh, why can’t Queen Alyss simply defeat those horrid things with the strength of her imagination? Please tell me that something good is—”

  Clicketyclacketyclicketyclicket! Clacketyclicketyclack!

  “W
hat. Are. Thooooooose?” the walrus moaned.

  On the holo-screen airing the happenings in Genevieve Square, a swarm of scorpspitters released by the Glass Eyes was scuttling toward Alyss and the others. Never before had a Wonderlander seen these scorpion-like contraptions that could shoot bullets of deadly poison from their “tails”—not even Bibwit, who assumed they were the latest in a long line of armaments invented by Redd. But before a single scorpspitter curled its tail into a C to take aim at the queen, she imagined into existence a horde of disembodied boots with steel-plated soles, which hovered momentarily in the air, then—

  With a slight nod, she brought them down hard, stomping the scorpspitters flat, squishing their armor-carapaces and making abstract art of their wiry guts.

  “Ooh, now why can’t Queen Alyss do that to the Glass Eyes?” the walrus-butler cried.

  “Because Alyss cannot, even in her imagination, be in all places at once,” Bibwit explained, “not with the intensity required to defeat a scattered enemy. Whether she produces a construct with enough reality to deceive the eyes or she brings into existence an actual weapon or boot, imaginings require tremendous precision of thought and attention to detail. She could perhaps mount a successful defense in two locations simultaneously; she has the strength for that. But to imagine herself in every Wondertropolis neighborhood, battling all the invading packs of Glass Eyes simultaneously, would spread her gift too thin and she would fail.”

  Waddling laps around the room, alternately looking at the ceiling and the floor—anywhere but at the holo-screens—the walrus-butler heard none of this. Bibwit himself was hardly aware of what he’d said. In times of great stress, the pale scholar became more verbose than usual.

  “At least the palace has been locked down,” he observed, hoping to calm the walrus as, on the walls around them, the uncontrollable nightmare of battle raged in Wondertropolis’ streets. “So we are safe.”