Page 73 of Wondrous

I tucked the watch into my pocket and turned away from the mirror. “The Queen may have destroyed the rabbit holes,” I said, “but they aren’t the only way to Wonderland.”

Chapter 37

The mirror wasn’t very pretty.

It was cracked, for one thing, a narrow line slicing across the lower half of the glass. Its frame was plain wood, and though the wood was polished and the corners rounded neatly, it was missing one of the screws that held it to its standing frame. There was a faint suggestion of a floral engraving around the edge of the glass, but the mirror was too dirty to make it out.

“Will this do?” Tobias asked. We were in the Hare’s garden, and behind us the Hatter and Hare were bustling about, getting tea ready. The smell of freshly baked gingersnaps mingled with that of wet grass and trees. It had rained that morning, and Wonderland shone in the sunlight as if woven with silver.

“I think so,” I said, swiping a finger through the dust. One of my blue eyes gazed back at me. “It’s not cracked too badly.”

Tobias excavated a handkerchief from one of his folds and polished the glass. “I’m sure I can find more—the castle has storerooms full of furnishings the Queen of Hearts has tired of, or broken in one of her rages. No one will notice if a few go missing.”

I sighed. “I’ll need more than a few. Though I wouldn’t need so many if I could figure out how to make the magic work more than once.”

I watched as he carefully wiped away the dust and grime, our reflections appearing piece by piece. Mine was visibly worried, a line creasing her brow.

Several weeks had passed since I’d been named Queen Alice, and I’d spent them in a muddle of topsy-turvy feelings. Of course it was wondrous to return to the Hare’s cottage, to see my old friends again, as well as Alice’s Traveling Tea Shop, only a little scorched and safely stored in a shed behind the house for the happy day when I would venture out with it again. I was perhaps—though I was embarrassed to admit it—just as happy with my new title, though it didn’t seem to bestow any particular respect upon me; the creatures of Wonderland didn’t use it unless I reminded them to. I supposed that if I wanted to be seen as a true queen, I would need to live in a castle with an army of strange monsters, or wander about delivering mysterious prophecies.

And to my astonishment, I missed the other Alices. Not all of them, perhaps, but certainly Maria and Alex and Alistair.

I eyed the mirror dubiously. Though I’d mostly used the rabbit hole, I had once traveled to Wonderland through the looking glass in my sitting room, so I’d known it was possible to rescue the Alices that way. It had taken several confusing conversations with the Hatter and Hare, though, before I’d realized the truth: that all the mirrors of Wonderland were magic.

The Hatter called them two-way mirrors, because they worked in two ways. There was the usual way, by showing your reflection, and the unusual, by making a door.

I still had a lot of unanswered questions. How could a young girl simply gaze into her mirror one day and see Wonderland reflected back at her? Why had it worked for me, and had it worked for others in the past? I doubted I would ever know. But I did know the magic faded after one use; the mirror in my sitting room had refused to show me Wonderland again, no matter how many times I asked.

Which meant I needed to gather quite a few mirrors. I had found two in the Tulgey Wood, not far from the Hare’s house, and used these to rescue Alex and Maria. But I still had a long way to go to reach all the Alices who wanted to return.

Tobias went off to chat with the Hare, and Maria came to stand beside me. She had a rag she’d dipped in the stream and used it to clean away the last of the grime.

“I hope she hasn’t given up,” I fretted. “I hope none of them have. I hope I’m not too late.”

Maria smiled. “You sound like the White Rabbit.”

I laughed. I supposed I did. But that was to be expected, given that I had essentially taken over his job for the time being.

“Can anybody work the magic?” Alex said. She had been helping the Hatter set the table—which one had to do sneakily, as the Hatter hated it when his guests lifted a finger to help their host—but now she set down a stack of plates and came toward the mirror.

“Probably,” I said. “Would you like to try?”

“I was thinking he could,” Alex said, gesturing. “Isn’t he supposed to be a sorcerer? Maybe he can figure out how to make the spell work more than once. Then we could just bring all the Alices through this mirror.”

We turned to where Jack was sprawled on the grass, having a nap. Jabberwocks, it turned out, napped often and could sleep anywhere, so long as it was outside. The hedgehogs were napping with him, mostly curled up on his chest or tucked against his side. Hedgewitch had nestled into the crook of his elbow. We’d found them all, to my relief—none had been drowned by the chalice, though most had lost a spine or two in the fire. I had forgotten something in my panic: Hedgehogs float. So they had simply floated away from the flames on the tea river and then, a day or two later, had come trundling into the Hare’s garden with leaves speared on their spines.

I went over to Jack and was astonished to find the Cheshire Cat curled up against his other side.

“Cat!” I exclaimed. “Whatever are you doing?”

“I like the way this one smells,” the Cat said, stretching.

“And what does he smell like to you?” I said crossly, deeply envious and trying not to seem so. “Monsters and terrifying forests?”

The Cat’s grin widened. “Precisely.”

I sighed. “Dear Cat,” I said, “perhaps you can help us. We are trying to use the two-way mirror, and—”

“Cats know nothing about mirrors. We are not vain creatures like you humans.”