Splintered

I struggle to find him amid the chaos, needing to see his face so I’ll know if he’s serious. “But how?”

“The moment your mind accepted the possibility of Wonderland being real, it released the vacuum of doubt that once held you trapped,” he says from somewhere above me. “Now, stop thinking like a human. Netherling logic resides in the hazy border between sense and nonsense. Tap into that logic, visualize the chess pieces coming alive; see it, and it will be.”

Skeptical, I twirl in a circle of weightlessness alongside everything else: the glass shelves, the hats, the table, and the chessboard. The bed’s watery curtain forms a fu

“There once was a child named Alice,” Morpheus says with a voice of soothing liquid. I still can’t see him. “She was i

“Curious,” I finish for him, and in that instant, the chess pieces grow to human size. I try harder to imagine them alive: visualize blood pumping through their carved bodies like clear mountain streams, envision their lungs expanding and sending oxygen to beating hearts of stone.

I’m concentrating so hard that I’m startled when the caterpillar, his hookah smoking in one hand, snags my wrist. “You look like a girl I once knew. Her name started with an A. Perhaps yours does, too?” The greenish smoke stretches into a thick, fragrant sheet around me, matching his jade sheen.

The cat floats up beside us. He holds out the sheet of smoke and, using his claws like scissors, cuts eight vaporous letters to spell the word: Allegory. He spreads the letters out like a strand of paper snowflakes. The smile on his green-tinged face widens.

“Ah,” the caterpillar says, his tobacco puffs making clouds around us, “she’s a figurative figure. She shall play on my side, then, as I’m the academician.”

The cat shakes his head, his smile vanishing. They start a tug-of-war, jerking me back and forth. I yelp, my arm sockets stretched to the limit. “Let go!”

“Tut-tut. The only things figurative here are you two idjits.” Morpheus breaks their hold on me, then folds one hand around my waist while snatching the caterpillar’s hookah with the other. “Now, take your places.”

At that, the animated chess pieces descend with the others through the fu

“Find your courage. Look down. Your show is about to begin.”

I shake my head, eyes clamped tightly. “We’re too high … it makes my stomach kick.”

He laughs and inhales a puff off the hookah then blows the smoke over me, saturating me in the comforting scent. “That’s how you know you’re alive, Alyssa. The kicks.”

Before I can respond, a loud rapping makes me brave a peek.

The fu

The queen’s husband, king of the Red Court, lounges upon a velvet throne. Another woman in royal robes stands at his right hand, crimson bows tied on every finger. There are bows on her barefoot toes, too. She keeps shushing the ribbons, as if they won’t be quiet. Queen Red stands before them both, locked in chains. The jurors’ box, which is actually a cage filled with jagged-toothed tigers and bubble-headed seals, sits on the right. Card guards line the walls.

Seated in the witness chair is little Alice, fussing with the hem of her carved dress.

Rabid White stands behind her, his antlers low and his shoulders slumped, looking drained and miserable. His jacket and boots are the same marbled hue of his shiny, bald scalp. A strange assortment of creatures sits upon wooden bleachers and snacks on peanuts and popcorn. Even the Ivory Queen and her elfin knights are in attendance.

A toad-faced creature stands behind a podium, though he’s dressed more like a ringleader than a judge. He bangs a gavel. “The Red Court is now in session!” His plumed wig wriggles. Only when it stands on long stick legs do I realize it’s a stork. After preening its jade feathers, it settles into place again, and the judge continues. “Queen Red, because The Alice entered our world through the rabbit hole, which is in the Red province, and because you failed to capture her before she unleashed her mortal mischief over all of Wonderland, you have been accused of gross negligence and havoc by association. How do you plead?”

Queen Red’s wings droop behind her. She glares at the king and the woman with the bows. “I plead temporary preoccupation brought on by a broken heart. My husband left me for Grenadine … I was too distracted by his betrayal to note something so insignificant as a mortal child in our midst.”

Murmurs explode from the jurors’ box. Grenadine looks remorsefully at the ribbons on her feet. The king shifts atop his velvet cushions.

“You’re the one who should be in shackles,” Queen Red says to her husband. “Wasn’t it enough that before his death, my father favored her over me, an amnesiac little brat not even of his blood? But your betrayal is so much worse. My simpering stepsister can’t remember what day it is unless one of her chatty ribbons catches her attention. She certainly can’t remember whom she’s supposed to love. You’re responsible for wooing her and distracting me from my duties.”

The judge leans over his podium, hugging it with his webbed hands. “Perhaps you should be grateful to your royal husband for bargaining with this court to waive the harshest sentence. Should you be guilty found, you will be exiled to the wilds. Preferable to losing your head, I should say.”

“And as to The Alice?” Queen Red shoots a scathing glance at the witness box. “What of her sentence?”

The judge points his gavel at Alice. “She has chosen to read her written confession in exchange for being sent home with the promise never to return and to forget everything she’s seen.” He nods at the child, urging her to stand.

I lean forward to get a better view, so invested in the outcome I no longer care how high I am, relying solely on Morpheus’s arm around my waist to keep me anchored to the chandelier.

Alice curtsies before taking out a piece of paper from her pinafore’s bib. She coughs twice, delicately, then reads aloud: “Perhaps my first mistake was whom I chose to befriend. Or did they choose me? The smiling cat and the smoking caterpillar … oh, they hatched such fine schemes!”

I glare over my shoulder at Morpheus, who coughs up his puff of smoke and smirks sheepishly.

Below us, the judge waves his gavel, disturbing the stork upon his head. It makes a clucking sound and snatches the gavel’s handle with its beak. “Descriptions of the schemes, if you please!” the judge screeches, wrestling the bird for its prize.

Alice clears her throat and inhales deeply. “We put an untimely stop to a tea party, spilled soup over a duchess so we could make her sneeze and steal her gloves and fan, unleashed an accidental ocean, and helped a hungry artisan trick his walrusy friend out of a bevy of very vocal clams, thank you.”