Page 72 of Wondrous

The ground swayed ominously, and for a moment I was certain I would faint. “Are you saying he’s—he’s stuck like this?”

“Oh, no,” she said with a shrug. “His memory is coming back bit by bit. An hour ago, I caught him trying to put on his waistcoat. I mean, he’d also been chewing on it. But still. The rest of him will come back eventually. And if you ask me,” she added, giving the White Rabbit a sympathetic look, “he could use some time off. To just be a rabbit, and not the White Rabbit, you know? The Queen of Hearts was running him ragged.”

“But not now!” I said. “I need him!”

Mary Ann just gazed at me with her black eyes, which looked disturbingly like holes in her face. After a moment, she simply turned and left.

“Alice, it’s all right.” Jack drew me into his arms, and I pressed my tear-stained face against his chest. He smelled of forest and wind currents. Jack wasn’t very good at hugging yet—his elbows stuck out awkwardly—but it was comforting nevertheless.

“We’ll just have to wait for the White Rabbit’s memory to return,” Jack said. “Then he can make more rabbit holes to Upland.”

“But we don’t know when he’ll get better,” I said. “What if it takes months, or years? What if, in that time, the other Alices give up hope and stop looking for the rabbit holes? They’ll never find their way back then—the Cat said so.”

I thought of how I would feel, trapped in my world, the door closed behind me. Losing my tea shop, my friends. Being made to marry the Baron.

And many of the other Alices had been thrown back into darker fates than mine. As Maria had said, there was a reason we’d all been willing to risk our lives for the chance to remain in Wonderland.

“Do you know a spell that might help him?” I said.

“I don’t know many spells,” Jack said doubtfully. “I actually failed my sorcery exam. Twice.” He added quickly, seeing my expression, “I’ll try, though.”

Jack knelt by the White Rabbit and spread his hands. Ripples in the air appeared, brushing over the White Rabbit’s fur. He continued to sit there, nibbling at a bit of hay. Jack crooked his wrist, and a dark mist appeared, which passed over the White Rabbit, also without any noticeable effect. Grackle, displaying his usual lack of decency, fluttered over to the White Rabbit’s closet to scavenge for silk.

I wandered over to the dresser, where I found the White Rabbit’s pocket watch lying silent and unwound. A tear ran down my cheek. I picked it up and wound it, then stood listening to the reassuring tick-tick.

“Would you like to borrow that?” Mary Ann said behind me, and I jumped. I hadn’t heard her reenter the room.

“I—won’t he need it?” I said.

She snorted. “What does a rabbit need a watch for? When he remembers himself, he can fetch it back.”

She upended her basket of carrot greens onto the floor.

I watched her. “What—what are your duties for the White Rabbit, exactly?”

“Housekeeping,” she said. “I clean, cook. Sometimes I help him with the rabbit holes. Working out where to put them, I mean. I don’t dig. It’s a big job, so he needs all the help he can get, poor thing.”

“What do you mean?” I said. “Working out where to put them?”

But Mary Ann only held my gaze, making me shiver.

“Aren’t you supposed to go back where you belong?” she said. “Isn’t that how it’s supposed to go? Have an adventure. Save Wonderland. Return home. The end.”

“It seems to me that this is my home,” I retorted. “So I will spare myself the bother of returning to a place where I already am. And I have never understood why people care so much about supposeds. That was always my mother and father’s favorite word. Supposed to this and supposed to that. If you ask me, it’s a way to get out of thinking things through.”

Mary Ann seemed satisfied by this. She nodded and left before I could ask her any more questions.

I turned and caught my reflection in the White Rabbit’s standing mirror. The reflection looked very pale, and she was gripping the watch anxiously in a way that reminded me of the White Rabbit himself.

“Oh,” I murmured, transfixed by the mirror—or, rather, by the memories it drew to the surface. I remembered another mirror, and the other world lurking behind it.

“What is it?” Jack said, coming to stand beside me. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror and looked briefly nauseous. Though I thought Jack looked handsomer than ever in his purple waistcoat with matching trousers and jacket, which he’d selected from a peddler’s wares (he’d left the shoes), he was still getting used to himself.

“I could invite Edith to visit,” I murmured. “She could bring Tansy. Oh! Tansy would love Wonderland. If she doesn’t end up burning it down herself.”

I began to laugh. Jack looked surprised; well, I had surprised myself. I had been so focused on the Alices that I hadn’t noticed a corner of my heart had been missing Edith all along. And Tansy! I hadn’t thought I would miss Tansy. The little girl was as wild as a storm, and I was used to thinking this a dreadful inconvenience—and yet, in truth, it was only an inconvenience within the tightly woven confines of my world. In Wonderland, the wilder and braver you were, the better. One day, Upland would stamp the wildness out of Tansy—I knew it would, because it had very nearly done the same to me.

And how many other Tansies were there in the world, Alices of another name?