Page 43 of Wondrous

Not this again, I thought, frustrated. “Why is this so important to you?”

“Because we’re hunting dragons,” Alex said slowly. “You can’t hunt a dragon by yourself. Or a mock dragon, for that matter.”

“Jack and I sent one of the mock dragons packing yesterday,” I said. “Now we’ve tracked down the second—she’s only an hour west of us. So we don’t need—”

“Really?” Maria’s eyes widened. “That’s wonderful! Oh, Alice—but how did you do it?”

I stared at her, and then at Alex—neither of them looked angry in the slightest. Maria was beaming; Alex’s expression was a mixture of skepticism and hope.

“But I’m not surprised,” Maria went on. “Out of all of us, you’ve spent the most time in Wonderland. You’ve befriended the Cheshire Cat and learned teacup magic from the Mad Hatter. I suppose that’s why we’re so curious about you.”

I realized it was true—they gazed at me with open fascination, as if I were a creature of Wonderland myself! I felt a stab of pride, which I quickly buried.

“This is a competition,” I said. “I just told you I defeated a mock dragon. Aren’t you afraid that I’ll be declared the Alice and you’ll be thrown out of Wonderland?”

“Well, a bit,” Maria said. “But, look, the Queen of Hearts is impossible to predict. If the three of us—plus your, ah, sidekick—defeat the other two dragons, who’s to say that she won’t let all of us stay in Wonderland?”

“Who’s to say that she won’t cast us all out, for changing the rules of the contest?” I retorted.

“Exactly!” Maria said, infuriatingly undeterred. “We don’t know what will happen. The Queen’s general is a reasonable person, and so is the King, even if he pretends otherwise. They might convince her to declare all three of us ‘the Alice.’ Isn’t the wisest path the one that gives us the best chance at defeating the mock dragons? One Alice on her own isn’t going to get very far. Isn’t that why you have Jack?”

“That’s—” I couldn’t deny the logic of what she was saying. And yet, gazing at Maria and Alex, I felt the same prickly jealousy surfacing as when I’d met Alicia. Mixed with this was resentment, because I had thought myself free of my world for good, and now here it was again, intruding on my adventures. This wasn’t helped by the fact that Maria reminded me painfully of Caroline, with her warm manner of speaking and wide-eyed enthusiasm.

“Did you fight the mock dragon or take it back to the Long Hall?” Maria said.

“No,” I said after a pause, wondering how much I should tell them. “He—he isn’t a danger anymore. His fire went out.”

“Really?” Alex looked skeptical. “If so, that’s good news. I didn’t know that was possible. And it’s kinder than making him leave.”

“Alex has a theory about the doors,” Maria said, nudging her.

Alex frowned. Her gaze grew abstracted as she said, “Well, it’s a theory about Wonderland, too. You see, I stumbled upon a locksmith when I came here as a child. The Queen of Hearts threw me into her dungeon, because she—oh, never mind; it’s a long story. After I escaped, I needed to remove my manacle, so I went searching for the locksmith who lives deep in the Tulgey Wood. She was—well, completely mad, of course, but also not very nice. She thought it would be a fun game to lock me inside the labyrinth beneath her house, which had a series of talking doors that would only unlock if you recited a poem about donkeys or another word with key in it—”

“Alex,” Maria said.

“Right, sorry.” Alex shook her head. “Anyway, I stole one of the locksmith’s key rings. And one of those keys opened a door at the end of the Long Hall—maybe you saw it. It’s plain oak, and the doorknob is covered in dust.”

“I’ve never looked too closely at the other doors,” I said. “Or doorknobs—I’ve only spoken to one of them.”

“Well, behind that door is the most dull world imaginable. I’ve been calling it Dustland. The people don’t speak in nonsense but morals. Everyone you meet has a lecture for you about manners or good hygiene or listening to your parents—that’s a popular one. Their cottages are all neat and tidy, and cozy in a way, I suppose, with one perfectly pruned tree in front of each, but that doesn’t make it any less awful. After I left I started thinking about the people I met in Wonderland and comparing them to Dustland, and I thought—what if the lands behind the doors are all stories?”

“Stories?” I repeated.

Alex seemed to be warming to the topic, gesturing as she spoke. “What if Wonderland and the other worlds behind the doors are where the characters in stories go when their stories are forgotten? Think about it—everyone in Wonderland has an occupation, usually a silly one, just as everyone in Dustland has a moral to preach at you. They all have a point.”

I didn’t say anything. It was true that the creatures of Wonderland had often reminded me of storybook characters, but I didn’t like sharing my opinions about Wonderland with anyone, just as I didn’t like sharing Wonderland itself.

“It makes sense,” Maria said. “Dustland is where characters from the morality stories go—the ones that teach children how to behave. Wonderland is where characters from silly nonsense stories go.”

“Or just the characters who don’t fit anywhere else,” Alex said in a daydreamy voice.

Maria looked like she was about to contradict Alex, and I sensed they’d had this argument before. She waved her hand instead and went on, “And the mock dragons’ world—”

“Briarland,” I said.

“Briarland,” she repeated with a grimace. “That would be the world of horror stories.”

“It would explain why the mock dragons are so destructive to Wonderland,” Alex said. “They don’t fit, so their presence makes it unravel. Like a story with a hole in it.”