“I have decided to let Alyss meet with the caterpillars,” she announced. “We’ll maintain close surveillance on that goody-goody little Heart, and when she leads us to the Looking Glass Maze’s location, we’ll attack and I will enter it myself. Cat, bait the seekers.”
“But what about Lord Diamond?” the feline whined. “He may prove useful yet.”
Jack gave Redd’s furry assassin a taunting little smile. The Cat was to blame for his trouble, the bruises he felt forming all over his body. He would have to return the favor somehow.
“I see you don’t treasure your lives as much as I’d supposed, Cat, or you would have obeyed my order by now,” Redd said.
As The Cat sulked off to bait the seekers, Redd again focused her imagination’s eye on Alyss. How wonderfully cruel it was going to be! Miss Prissy Heart would serve as personal guide to the Looking
Glass Maze and thereby become the agent of her own downfall. How deliciously nasty.
The Cat could hear the seekers’ frenzied screeching even before he reached the end of the corridor, shouldered open the heavy door, and stepped inside the chamber carved out of Mount Isolation itself. It was impossible to hear his own footfalls or breathing because the seekers’ cries-like the sound of pain itself-were so loud. The chamber was dimly lit by faint, glowing crystals embedded in the walls. Hundreds of cages hung from the ceiling, with several seekers in each of them: Redd’s bloodhounds,
bred out of her distrust and paranoia; creatures with bird-of-prey bodies and the heads of blood-sucking insects.
Walking up and down the chamber, The Cat stopped beneath each cage to wave Alyss’ London wedding dress-a souvenir from his raid on the Alyssian headquarters. He teased the seekers with its scent and they pressed eager faces against the bars of their cages.
The baiting complete, The Cat flipped a lever in the floor and a wall retracted-a wall that, from the outside, looked like part of the mountain. The cages fell open and with wild shrieks the seekers flew out into the night, on the hunt.
CHAPTER 45
T HE ALYSSIANS emerged from a small wood to find themselves on a mountaintop, the Valley of Mushrooms spread out before them. The suns were setting on the distant horizon, their slanting rays shining down on the mushrooms nestled within a ring of twilight-blue mountains. No two mushrooms were alike, their colors ranging from earthy pink to unearthly brown to nearly translucent and, with the
play of the suns on their caps and the multihued shadows they cast on the valley floor, the Alyssians were greeted with a sight of impressive kaleidoscopic brilliance.
The colors of the valley were like the sprouting of renewed hope in the breasts of Alyss and her friends and, for a moment, it seemed unlikely that Redd could survive their rebellion. They may have been few in number, but they were strong and determined. They believed. But this optimism lasted only a moment, because as they descended into the valley, they saw that it wasn’t as beautiful as it might have been-indeed, as it once was. Mushroom stalks showed the marks of The Cut; mushroom caps lay butchered on the ground. Prayer temples were blasted apart.
In silence, Bibwit led the Alyssians through the unexpected desecration to a clearing, where they came upon five giant caterpillars whose bodies were coiled beneath them as they smoked from the same ancient hookah. Each of them sat on a mushroom as distinct in color as himself: red, orange, yellow,
purple, and green. The caterpillars showed no sign of surprise upon seeing the Alyssians, had in fact been aware of their presence for some time.
“The caterpillar counsel,” Bibwit informed the others, and then stepped forward to address the oracles. “Wise ones, we are in need of your assistance. We-”
The orange caterpillar raised his frontmost right leg, as if to say shush, and all the little legs behind it echoed the gesture. “We know why you’ve come.”
“What sort of oracles would we be if we didn’t know that?” said the yellow caterpillar.
The hookah burbled, the purple caterpillar inhaling deeply. His eyes rolled up into the back of his head and smoke streamed out his nostrils.
“Whooah.”
Dodge and General Doppelganger exchanged an uncertain glance. Hatter stood at the ready, a hand at the brim of his top hat, his eyes scanning the surroundings for trouble.
“O wise, all-seeing caterpillars,” said Bibwit Harte, “we offer you our humility and respect, and hope that-”
“I’m having the weirdest sense of deja vu right now,” said the green caterpillar.
“Duh!” said the yellow caterpillar. “Do you think, just maybe, that’s because you predicted this?” “Oh, yeah.”
The caterpillar counsel tittered.
“We are saddened to see that even your home has suffered from Redd’s reign,” Bibwit pressed on. “Knowing who we are and why we’ve come, then you already know…”
But here, the caterpillars added their voices to his: “…that we come for the health of the queendom, to install the rightful queen on her throne and end these years of brutal tyranny.”
Being able to see the future (and/or possible futures) didn’t always make the caterpillars agreeable conversationalists.
“Have you brought us anything to munch?” asked the orange caterpillar. “Some tarty tarts perhaps?” the yellow caterpillar hoped.
“Well,” Bibwit said, checking his robe but finding no tarty tarts.
I’ll conjure a dozen tarty tarts. It’ll be good practice. Alyss started to concentrate, to focus her imaginings, when a series of blue smoke rings floated overhead, coming from somewhere deep within the mushrooms.
“Blue has summoned Alyss,” the orange caterpillar said. “He will tell her everything she needs to know.” The counsel fell silent, puffing intently on their hookah as if able to communicate with one another through
it.
“Go on, Alyss,” said Bibwit Harte. “It’s all right.”
The princess followed the trail of smoke rings back through the mushrooms to a ruined temple. Over its front door were the words “Did Lao Tsu Dream the Butterfly or Did the Butterfly Dream Lao Tsu?” Sitting on a blue mushroom out front was the blue caterpillar, smoking from a hookah of his own.
“Thank you for seeing me,” Alyss said with a bow.
“Ahem hum hem,” the caterpillar grumbled, exhaling a cloud of smoke, in the middle of which Prince Leopold appeared. The prince was in a London drawing room, pacing anxiously back and forth while his mother, Queen Victoria, sat fanning herself in a quilted chair. Dean and Mrs. Liddell were there too, sitting close together on a settee. Prim and erect, the commoners looked uneasy, cowed by the queen. Is this the past I’m seeing? The present?
“Even in that world,” the caterpillar said, “where no one knew you were a princess, you were to marry
royalty. It seems that destiny will not let you deny who you are.” “I don’t mean to deny it, Mr. Caterpillar.”
The caterpillar frowned, puffing at his hookah. “Call me Blue.”
“All right. I don’t want to deny it, Blue, it’s just that my time away from Wonderland has confused me. I’ve been through so much and all I do is run from those more powerful than myself, which doesn’t strike me as being…well, as very queenly.”
“Ahem hum mmm,” Blue said, and in the cloud of smoke he exhaled from his caterpillar lungs appeared the words: It is sometimes braver to run. “By running, you live to face further uncertainty and trouble,” he explained. “It would be much easier for you to give up. You should not doubt your courage, Alyss Heart. She who runs from her enemies until she has the strength to do otherwise is both brave and wise.”