Page 8 of Wondrous

“I…” the monster began. A gust of smoke-scented wind played through my hair. The monster had yawned.

“I will have a nap first,” it said. “All that cream—yes, very tiring. Just a short nap, and then…”

I heard a shuffling sound, and the leaves stirred behind me. I turned then and caught sight of a long, long black tail that narrowed to a point, disappearing into a grove of oak trees. There was a tremendous crunch, as if the monster had fallen onto a drift of leaves, and then the sound I had been hoping for: a deep growling snore.

Chapter 4

I had never packed so quickly in my life.

I didn’t bother folding the tent up, merely wrenched the pegs from the ground and tossed them and the oilcloth into the back of the cart. I yanked my dress on backward at first and smashed two teacups in my haste to be off, though not the one for sleepiness, fortunately, which I had served the monster—I thought that one might be useful again. I had been trying to make a teacup that would create a sense of wakefulness, good for a morning tea service, but instead the spell had come out opposite my intentions, and anyone who drank from the cup became overwhelmingly weary. I was relieved to learn it worked just as well on mysterious monsters as it had on the March Hare.

The poor hedgehogs I stuffed in my pockets, though they squeaked in protest. They did not like to be treated like objects, perhaps because it reminded them of their croquet games with the Queen of Hearts.

We clattered along Thisaway Path. The cart made an appalling amount of noise, which I had somehow failed to notice before. At the first fork, I turned east onto Yonder Path. I had decided—around the time I’d realized a hungry monster was outside my tent—that the maiden voyage of Alice’s Traveling Tea Shop had lasted quite long enough and it was high time to return to the Hare’s cottage.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying enough attention, and somehow I missed the next fork entirely. When I finally came to the familiar jumble of signs nailed to a red oak, I found I was no longer on Yonder Path, but Bandersnatches Live Here Path, which was exactly the path I did not wish to be on.

So I turned onto a path I hoped would continue east. The problem with Wonderland paths was that they might start off in the direction you wanted and then abruptly double back. The sign pointing to it merely read Wrong Way.

“Is that the name of the path?” I wondered aloud. “Or merely an opinion?”

Well, a path labeled Wrong Way in Wonderland was more likely to be the right way, I told myself as the cart trundled along it. Indeed, though the path started out narrow and rocky, it soon grew gentler, and one side opened onto a clearing with a marshy area, where I saw fish jumping in the moonlight and heard the pleasant croak of frogs. Frog song is such a soothing sound that I considered making camp again—I was nearly asleep in my seat. But I wanted to put as much distance between myself and the monster as possible.

At last, the sky grew light, and I began to catch distant glimpses of the Queen of Hearts’ castle through the trees, which meant we were indeed drawing closer to the Hare’s house. I found an abandoned cottage just off the path and hid the cart behind it. Then I curled up in the straw with the hedgehogs and fell asleep.

I awoke again sometime between breakfast and lunch, judging by the tone of the light through the trees. Someone was knocking on the side of the cart.

“Hello?” he said.

It was a knight. Two knights, rather; the second stood a little ways off, tying their horses to a tree. Their tunics bore a queen chess piece, marking them as the White Queen’s men.

“Miss?” the knight said. “Is your shop open?”

“Oh! Yes,” I said, pleased that I had thought to put an Alice’s Traveling Tea Shop sign on the back of the cart. I was so relieved to have proper customers at last that I fell out of the cart as soon as I stood up—my legs, it seemed, hadn’t woken up as quickly as my business instincts.

“Let me help you, miss,” the knight said, helping me to my feet and flashing me a toothy smile. He was handsome in a scarred and rugged sort of way, like all the knights I’d ever encountered here, with sandy hair and light skin. His companion was shorter, with dark skin freckled from the sun and a charmingly lopsided smile.

“What sort of tea suits?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. Knights had unadventurous palates.

“Black, and as strong as you can make it,” came the expected reply. “Just the tea, thank you.”

“Are you sure?” I said, drawing back the cloth on the basket of peaches-and-brown-sugar scones.

“Ah,” the knight said, his attention sharpening. “Perhaps I could manage one of those. Just the one—a knight mustn’t overindulge in worldly pleasures!”

“Of course,” I said, then tried not to gawk as the knights approached, which they did in a very peculiar manner.

Unlike the Queen of Hearts’ soldiers, the White Queen’s knights were not monstrous. They looked like men, for the most part, with the exception of a waxy sheen to their skin that put me in mind of ivory. The knights’ peculiarity was that they moved like knights—specifically, knight chess pieces. For every two steps forward, they lurched one step left or right, and vice versa, as if an invisible person had taken them by the arm and yanked. Consequently, though they reached their destination eventually, it took rather longer than it would an ordinary person and was achieved with rather less dignity. And yet, like the Queen of Hearts’ men, they showed no consciousness that anything strange was afoot and strode forward—and sideways—in the swaggering manner I expected of knights.

I found a flat stump and threw the lace tablecloth over it, then opened the folding chairs. While I served the tea, I made small talk about the weather, and the distance the knights had traveled, and how many jabberwocks and bandersnatches they’d slain—knights, I’d found, weren’t much for conversation about anything else.

I had always loved hosting tea parties. I liked to watch the relaxation settle over my guests as they set aside their worries, at least for the moment, and I delighted in discovering just the right tea to suit each temperament. It filled me with a sense of power that seemed strange to associate with a tea party. And the inhabitants of Wonderland were so varied and curious that their company was never boring, as it so often was back home, where my friends would only talk of the things they’d bought or sold, horses or clothes or carriages, or gossip about scandals and courtships. That is, until my friends had stopped coming round at all.

I shook my head. I was not going back home, so there was no need to think about it.

“What sort of quest are you on?” I asked, once the knights were on to their second cups of tea.

“Looking for the White Queen, of course,” the shorter knight said. “We’ve lost her again. She’s always wandering off.”