by anyone at any time. The most effective means of sending and retrieving sensitive Alyssian intelligence had been to use portal runners to traverse the Crystal Continuum. But that was before the Glass Eyes. Now being a portal runner meant dying sooner rather than later. Portal runs were one step removed from suicide missions. Dodge Anders had made more portal runs than any Alyssian and he always volunteered to deliver the most important messages, warnings, and intel updates. The occasion for this run: Redd’s troops had been active and General Doppelganger suspected an impending attack on an Alyssian outpost situated in the Snark Mountain foothills. The outpost had to be warned.
Shoooooooomph!
Dodge flew through the Continuum, the Glass Eyes gaining on him. These contests of navigational skill and strength were the only times he felt anything even approaching happiness.
It didn’t matter that he might be killed. He was being useful and it made him feel that much closer to exacting his revenge.
In front of him, the Continuum splintered in many directions. He threw his body weight to the left and made a sharp turn at the last minute. He looked behind him: One of the Glass Eyes hadn’t made the turn. Three more to go. And he had to lose them quick, before others joined the chase.
Spinning to avoid the Glass Eyes’ gunfire, Dodge removed his sword from its scabbard and held it firmly with both hands. With a great effort of will, he came to a sudden stop. The Glass Eyes weren’t expecting it, came rushing upon him, and the frontrunner impaled himself on Dodge’s sword. Before the two remaining Glass Eyes could regain their equilibrium, Dodge relaxed, surrendered his body to the pull of the nearest looking glass, and was sucked up out of the Continuum, reflected out of a glass in the lobby
of an apartment building. In less time than it took a galloping spirit-dane to make a single stride, he pressed himself flat against the wall next to the looking glass. The Glass Eyes flew out of it and past him. He smashed the glass with the handle of his sword. As fragments of mirror scattered and fell, Dodge squeezed his entire body back into the Continuum through a reflective sliver no larger than a jabberwock’s toe-a feat the Glass Eyes hadn’t mastered, for when they tried, they couldn’t get their entire bodies into the Continuum, only those parts that had been reflected in the fragment. Zooming through the looking glass’ fast-disappearing crystalline byway, the void racing up behind him, Dodge looked back a final time and saw one Glass Eye with half a face, a shoulder, and little else, the other with a head and torso but no arms. The Glass Eyes had no strength and were swallowed by the void. He too would have become part of the nothingness if he hadn’t hooked up with the Continuum’s main artery when he did.
Dodge continued on his way, heading for a certain looking glass not far from Snark Mountain. He emerged from the Continuum and made the rest of the journey on foot. But the joy he’d felt during the chase quickly vanished. He had reverted to his usual tightly contained self by the time he arrived to warn the leader of the Alyssian outpost of a possible attack from Redd.
Mission completed. What now? He could head back to the Everlasting Forest, but all he’d probably find there would be General Doppelganger and the others sitting around talking strategy. Anything was better than just sitting around.
So he risked an extra portal run, emerged near the Whispering Woods, and passed through them to the Pool of Tears. He came here every once in a while, stood on the cliff overlooking the pool, thinking about the life that had happened to him. Like his father, he had once believed in the principles of White Imagination-love, justice, and duty to others. But he knew better now: An adherence to higher principles got one nowhere in this world. It was not, as his father had preached, its own reward. What sort of reward allowed others to conquer and murder and do away with all you held dear?
He had been reckless to come to the pool. Shouldn’t have taken the unnecessary risk. He had to stay alive. His vengeance required it.
CHAPTER 24
A LICE WORKED hard to enter into the world in which she found herself and refused to see Dodgson whenever he came to the house. Pained by her refusals, he came with less and less frequency until he ceased coming altogether. The book he’d written for her was published for the public’s enjoyment under the title Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It was widely known that Alice’s fantastic stories had served as its inspiration-fodder for poking fun at her, if ever there was-but so well had she adapted to the customs and beliefs of the time, so well had she adopted the inclinations of other girls her age, that she’d befriended those who used to tease her mercilessly. And although Mrs. Liddell never discovered the cause for Alice’s tantrum that fateful afternoon at the river Cherwell, she was more than pleased with her daughter’s behavior ever since. Far from being flattered by Dodgson’s silly scribblings, it was as if they had brought home to Alice, as nothing else had been able to, just how inane all her Wonderland talk had been. She distanced herself from the book and its author, and Mrs. Liddell took this to mean that she
was finally growing up-which, indeed, she was.
Beginning in her sixteenth year, while on Sunday strolls along High Street with her mother and sisters, it was as the wardens of Charing Cross had predicted: Young men of rank paused in appreciation as Alice passed, took pains to learn who she was, invited her to parties where they did their best to impress her with their wit and knowledge of worldly affairs. They did not find Miss Liddell lacking in intelligence. Some perhaps even found her a bit too intelligent. She was a thoughtful, well-read young woman, with opinions on a variety of topics such as the responsibility that came with Britain’s military power, the nature of commerce and industry under a monarchy, how to care for the poor and neglected, the sensationalist tendencies of the Fleet Street papers, and the convolutions of the legal system as exposed by the eminent author Charles Dickens.
Many well-to-do dandies-even those uncomfortable with any woman who appeared smarter than themselves-thought it unfortunate that she’d been adopted. It meant that they could never marry her. Of course, these fellows took it for granted that Miss Liddell would have considered herself lucky to marry any one of them. But she was not easily impressed, nor prone to fall in love. The vicissitudes of her life had caused her to keep her feelings for others in check: It was dangerous to care for people; inevitably, you got hurt. She talked with young men, accepted their invitations to parties and galas, but more