Seeing Redd

There are those who still think me young, but I feel as old as Bibwit after everything I’ve been through. Early this morning, a platoon of Alyssians was ambushed while carrying supplies to HQ. I was with them. I thought I was used to the sight of blood, but when it belongs to your friends…I lost more than a few

today. What kind of life is this, that I live only to take the lives of others? I don’t want to believe I could have changed so much. I want to believe that somewhere beneath all this anger there is still the Dodge Anders you used to tease for his love of guardsmen and Milliners, and who felt absolutely giddy to have your attentions-you, heiress to a queendom and keeper of my heart.

Tears were trickling down her cheeks. Alyss folded the letters and returned them to their packet. Queens aren’t supposed to cry as often as I do, especially warrior queens, but how can I-

“Alyss.”

She shot a glance at the looking glass on the wall behind her: nothing but the expected reflections. Nothing but the usual reflections too in the looking glass above the water basin.

“You must be mistaken,” a male voice said. “I don’t see her.” “I’m not mistaken. She’s here.”

The voices-her parents’ voices-seemed to be coming from a compact lying open on a side table.

“Once children have grown,” Nolan mused, “they want as little to do with their parents as possible. Woe are we whose only daughter finds us an embarrassing spectacle.”

Alyss approached the side table and saw her mother’s face occupying the whole of the compact’s palm-sized mirror. “I don’t think you’re an embarrassing spectacle,” she said.

Nolan thrust his face into view. “Alyss!”

“Father. I miss you both every day. I’ve been staring at my own reflection for so long, hoping to see you, that I’m begi

“Impossible!” Nolan exclaimed. “You’re beautiful. And I understand that a dashing guardsman thinks the same.”

Alyss glanced at her skirts, bashful. “You look tired,” Genevieve said. “I’m fine.”

“Even in times of crisis, you must rest. And you’ve been crying.” “I’m fine, mother.”

Nolan was squeezed out of view. Genevieve’s face again filled the compact’s glass, her voice tender. “Alyss, I am sorry you’ve had these tremendous responsibilities thrust upon you.”

“It’s not your fault, mother. You were murdered.”

“But perhaps I should have been better fortified against Redd’s coming. There are moments when I wish you’d been born with no extraordinary ability, into an average Wonderland family. It’s a weakness in me, I know. To wish for a past that can never be. What would have become of Wonderland if you were not who you are?”

“I have more weaknesses than you know, mother. Lately, I’ve been thinking that my sacrifices-all of our sacrifices-haven’t been worth it.”

“You ca

“To secure the greatest good for the greatest number,” Nolan added, crowding his face into view. “You can’t put Wonderland at risk to save a single citizen, not even your favorite guardsman.”

“Since when has wearing the crown meant being told what I can’t do?” Alyss muttered. But when her mother looked on the verge of a lecture, she quickly added: “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in a larger glass? Maybe the one by the floating chairs?”

Genevieve shook her head, knocking temples with her husband. “We’re all right.”

“Perfectly comfortable,” Nolan agreed. “Smell.” His nostrils expanded to take in the sweet, earthy fragrance that had drifted into the room.

“That means it’s time for us to go,” Genevieve sighed.

Turning from Alyss, the couple walked hand in hand into the far reaches of the glass, shrinking in the distance until they were gone from view altogether. The smell had grown pungent. A fu

“Blue,” Alyss said. “I’m honored to have your company and wish only to have it more, that I might not interpret your coming as an ill omen.”

“Ahem hem hem,” Blue burbled, exhaling a cloud that formed the words Oh well. He puffed on his hookah for a time, the soft peh peh peh of his lips the only sound in the room. “I, an u

Alyss awoke. Only a faint hint of sweetness in the air. Blue was gone, Dodge sitting on the edge of her bed.

“Do you smell that?” she asked.

He nodded. “A caterpillar was here.”

Alyss sat up, a

“But you don’t, Alyss. What did he show you?”

Despite her parents’ warnings, despite agreeing with Dodge about the impossibility of protecting him from his own worst impulses-

I don’t want to tell him. No, because, at the very least, the caterpillar’s warning meant that Redd would soon return to Wonderland. Or that she already had.

“He said he would reveal myself to me and then I saw King Arch trying to pull a whisker off a caterpillar.” She sought Redd with her imagination’s eye, but since she didn’t know where to look, it was

like knocking on any random door in Wondertropolis and hoping her aunt would answer it. “That’s all?” Dodge asked.

“Yes.”

“We should inform Bibwit and the general,” he said, standing. But on his way out, he paused in the doorway and delivered the news that had originally brought him to the suite: “None of the card soldiers at the Pool of Tears has checked in with Central Command. Not one is answering his crystal

communicator. The knight and rook have been sent to the pool and will soon report back.”

Redd. So Dodge knew she’d been lying, was already preparing himself for a confrontation. She wanted

to explain-explain what, exactly?-but words wouldn’t come, and her lie hung heavy between them like a fog.