Page 10 of Wondrous

Whatever was going on, I didn’t like it. Not only was this hollow too close to the Hare’s house, but it was fundamentally out of place in Wonderland, which had plenty of room for the eerie and the sinister but none for an uncomplicated horror like this. And if these strange anomalies were multiplying, who was to say that a hollow wouldn’t appear in the Hare’s garden one day?

I was about to hurry back to the cart when somebody tackled me from behind.

Chapter 5

A cry escaped me, but then the wind was knocked out of my lungs and it turned into a groan. My attacker dealt my side a vicious blow with their knee, then stamped on my foot. The stamp was clumsily delivered, though, and my attacker lost their balance. This gave me a brief reprieve, and I raised myself onto my knees and threw my body into theirs. I had no idea what I was doing—I had never fought anyone before and was driven more by terror than anything else.

Somehow my shoulder connected with their face, and my assailant fell back with a shriek. Whoever they were, they didn’t seem any bigger than I was, which gave me more courage. I flailed around some more, and one of my feet connected with the attacker’s stomach with a satisfying whump. I staggered to my feet, panting, and whirled to face my attacker, who was now lying on their side and moaning.

It was a girl a little younger than me, clothed in a well-worn dress of faded blue homespun. She had red hair in a long braid down her back and dark brown eyes, which were narrowed at me in confusion and outrage.

“Who on earth are you?” she demanded.

My mouth fell open in astonishment. Because it was clear at a glance that this girl was from my world, not Wonderland—every inhabitant of Wonderland has something strange about them, or sometimes just an aura of strangeness. How was this possible? In all my visits, I’d never met someone from my own world. I’d always assumed I was the only person who’d ever been daring enough to follow the White Rabbit, or perhaps the only one able to see him at all.

“You didn’t think to figure out who I was before you attacked me?” I finally managed.

The girl glared at me, but she was also blushing. She must have attacked me on impulse, though I couldn’t guess why. Her accent was one common amongst the servants I knew, which made me uncomfortable. Not because I was uncomfortable around servants but because it made me self-conscious about my own accent, which was so clearly highborn that even some of my friends had teased me about it. It wasn’t something I could help—my family spoke the same way, and all my tutors had slapped my hand with a ruler whenever I mispronounced a word.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” the girl snapped. “You’re an Uplander.”

I stared. Uplander was what the inhabitants of Wonderland called people from my world—because, of course, one reached Wonderland by falling down a rabbit hole. Sometimes they used Made-Uplander, because they saw Wonderland as the real world and my world as quite possibly imaginary. Though most didn’t call me that to my face, seeming to believe it rude to point out that I might not be real.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I said coldly. “First you declare you have no idea who I am, then you tell me I’m in the wrong place. If you don’t know the you you’re addressing, you can scarcely tell whether she belongs anywhere.”

“What nonsense,” she scoffed. “You certainly talk like one of them. All the same, I know you’re not supposed to be here, because you’re an Upland girl, which means you don’t belong in Wonderland.”

I felt myself redden. “Speak for yourself. Why is it that I must explain myself when you are just as out of place as me? Who, might I ask, are you?”

“I’m Alicia,” the girl said in a tone of voice that clearly added, You haven’t heard of me? How dense you are!

“I’ve never heard of you,” I said, just to irritate her. She didn’t look irritated, though—she seemed too astonished by my ignorance.

“I traveled to the sea with the Mock Turtle and taught him not to be afraid of soup,” she said. “I also stayed the night with the Daisy Farmer and helped her with the harvest. Surely you’ve heard of her. She lives in a cottage with the High Horse, who is a noble creature but a bit full of herself.”

“The Daisy Farmer?” I repeated. “I’ve never heard of farming daisies. Where I’m from, they grow everywhere like weeds.”

“She’s mad, of course,” Alicia said. “Everyone’s mad here. That’s what the Cheshire Cat said.”

I felt as if she’d knocked the wind out of me again. “You’ve met the Cheshire Cat?”

“Just the once,” she said. “When I came here as a child. I’ve not been back since then—I fell through a rabbit hole in the woods behind the manor where my father worked, but I couldn’t find it again, until yesterday.”

This was some comfort. The girl’s gaze had drifted to one side, and for the first time, she didn’t look fierce but wistful and a little tired. I didn’t feel sorry for her, though—I was filled with an unpleasant spiky sort of jealousy, which prompted me to say, “The Cheshire Cat has visited me loads of times. In fact, we had a fine conversation just a few hours ago.”

The girl stared at me as if I’d slapped her. But the hurt in her gaze only made me feel guilty for a moment before the anger and jealousy rose to swallow it. I didn’t understand who she was or why she was here, but I knew I wanted nothing to do with her, for the same reason I wanted nothing to do with anyone from my world. She was an unpleasant intrusion of the life I’d left behind, an intrusion into a place that was safe, and mine. In Wonderland, I could be who I wanted to be, do what I wanted to do, in a way that wasn’t remotely possible at home, and some part of me saw in the girl before me a threat to all the hopes and plans that were so dear to me.

“You should leave,” I told her. “Wonderland is dangerous, which you’d know if you’d ever spent more than a day here. I know the way to the Long Hall, which will take you back to our—”

“I’m not going back,” she said, so fiercely I fell back half a step. I noticed how thin she was, the dark circles under her eyes and unhealthy pallor of her skin. Her back was bent like an old woman’s, in a way that reminded me of housekeepers who spent most of their days bowed over their work. She must have been a servant, though I’d never seen a servant in such poor health.

“What,” she said in an oddly quiet voice, “did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t,” I replied. “But it’s Alice.”

“Alice,” she said in that same musing, quiet voice. I recognized the strange look in her eyes then, and in spite of myself, I fell back another step. It wasn’t anger anymore—it was hatred.

“Alice,” she repeated. “Alicia. That’s it, then. The White Rabbit thought you were me.”