Page 46 of Wondrous

“Thank you, but I’d rather keep all my fingers.” I drew my knees up and hunched over them. “Forget it. Clearly you don’t mean what you say, either.”

“No, that was rude of me.” The Cat reappeared and put his paw on my foot. “Ask a few questions so I can pick. That’s at least a little less boring.”

“All right.” I ticked them off on my fingers. “Did the prophecy actually say ‘blue Alice,’ or did it say ‘blue chalice’? How much time have these other Alices spent in Wonderland? Did you make friends with any of them, or just me?”

“Most of the Alices only came here once, as children,” the Cat said. “They had a grand adventure and returned home. They never found the door to Wonderland again—until now.”

“I found the door again,” I said. “The rabbit hole was always there when I wanted it. And then there was that time when the door wasn’t a rabbit hole at all—when I came through a mirror in my house.” I paused. “I’ve always wondered about that. Can all the mirrors in Wonderland turn into doors, if they feel like it?”

“It’s like I said,” the Cat said. “We’re all a little mad here.”

“I wasn’t speaking of you. I was speaking of doors.”

“Exactly. The doors are mad, too. Sometimes they’re doors, and sometimes they lose all sense of themselves and become walls. Why, I once saw a door turn into a coatrack.”

I sighed. “I know it’s silly of me, but I wish you would just say something reasonable for once in your life.”

The Cat’s smile grew even more enigmatic. “There were more Alices than this,” he said. “Some of them stopped looking for the rabbit hole. If you do that, you never find it again.”

Chapter 23

I must have dozed off, my chin resting on my knees, because when I lifted my head again, the Cat was gone and the fire had burnt down to the embers.

Someone was approaching.

A very large someone, who charged through the understory in a frantic way, like a spooked horse. I froze in horror, my thoughts turning instantly to the mock dragon. But then I heard a crash and a loud curse in a very human voice.

Alex and Maria burst out of the trees.

I gave a strangled shout and nearly fell off the rock. “I thought you were in bed!”

Maria stumbled over a root, barely catching herself against the trunk of a tree. “We—we never went to bed.”

“What?” I took in their sweaty faces and glazed expressions. “What happened?”

“No time,” Alex said between breaths. She made her way to their tent and disappeared inside. “Mock dragon—on her way—”

“What?”

“We tracked her down,” Maria said. She leaned over, pressing her hands to her knees. “Oh, Alice, I’m so sorry. We didn’t know what else to do!”

I felt cold. “What are you talking about?”

Alex reappeared with something clutched in her hand. “We didn’t think you would change your mind! So we thought, Well, she’s already taken on one dragon—why not another? We were going to do it together, obviously!”

“You lured her here,” I murmured. “In the middle of the night. With Jack sick. You lured the mock dragon here.”

“We didn’t realize!” Maria looked as if she was about to cry. “You made it sound like it was easy, with the other mock dragon. But then we saw—we saw her, and—”

“We have to run,” Alex said decisively. “Forget the plan, Maria—we’re not taking that thing on.”

Alex grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the trees, followed closely by Maria. But then, abruptly, we froze.

Ashes spilled out of the forest ahead of us. They looked like shreds of burnt leaves, carried on a breeze hot as breath. At the same time, something was rustling through the undergrowth, moving at a leisurely pace.

“She found us,” Maria whispered. “We have to run.”

I reached over my shoulder, instinctively feeling for the teapot strapped to my back. But I’d left it by the campfire, and it wouldn’t have helped me anyway.