the Alyssians. How could the Alyssians have come into possession of these weapons if not from him? He knew where to find the thieves, he must have known where to find the weapons.”
“Interesting,” said a thoughtful Redd. “So, my well-fed informant has been taking advantage of the freedoms I grant him by supplying weapons to my enemies?”
“No! Absolutely not!” declared Jack. “Your Imperial Viciousness, this is ludicrous.” “We’ll see how ludicrous it is.”
Again, the sharpened point of Redd’s scepter was at Jack of Diamonds’ throat. But thoughts of Alyss had never completely left her head and, in a blink of imagination’s eye, she saw the princess surrounded by sparkling, effervescent surfaces.
“She’s in the Crystal Continuum!” Redd shrieked. “Smash the looking glasses! Every last one!” Redd’s face, wild with rage, flashed onto the billboards and government posters of Wondertropolis. “Every looking glass in the queendom is to be smashed! Now!”
But the force of her anger beat most Wonderlanders to it. In pubs and stimulant dens throughout Wondertropolis, in the homes of ordinary Wonderlanders, in the gated and patrolled mansions of ranking families, looking glasses exploded. Wonderlanders eager for havoc ran through the streets, breaking windows and anything that could even remotely serve as a reflective surface.
T HEY WERE trapped, marooned. They would be killed for sure: Glass Eyes ahead of them, Glass Eyes behind.
The Continuum, it’s…it’s…disappearing!
With every looking glass in the queendom smashed, the crystalline pathways that made up the Continuum were vanishing. The Glass Eyes advancing upon Alyss and the others were themselves being chased by a void. And the void was gaining.
To be swallowed by nothingness is to become nothing.
At least they wouldn’t suffer; one felt nothing upon becoming nothing.
The void rushed at the Glass Eyes, consumed the rear guards first and moved quickly up their ranks. No more Glass Eyes.
And still the void came fast.
“Anyone have a pocket looking glass?” Dodge asked.
Alyss and the others glanced at him, not understanding. “Quick!”
Bibwit reached into the folds of his robe and pulled out a looking glass no bigger than a tuttle-bird’s wing. Dodge took hold of it. No Wonderlander had ever attempted what he was about to do. There had never been a need.
He held the looking glass at an angle, aiming it so that it reflected a small portion of the Continuum, regenerating it. As fast as the void swallowed up what was behind them, the modest little mirror added the corresponding length of Continuum ahead of them. But now what? Were they doomed to race through the void, safe in this small portion of Continuum-which, had he been at leisure, Bibwit would
have pointed out was no longer strictly a Continuum since it connected to nothing, and without the pocket glass it would not, in fact, continue. Were they destined to be imprisoned in this mobile prism, zipping this way and that through pure emptiness until they perished from starvation, or fatigue caused Dodge to drop the glass?
What’s that? Is it…It is. A way out.
At least one looking glass in the queendom must have still been intact. Ahead of them in the void, a short distance off, was a crystal byway, a dead end. Where it had once connected with the Continuum’s main thoroughfare, it now simply stopped, connected to nothing.
“Dodge!” “I see it!”
With subtle shifts of angle in the way he held the looking glass, Dodge steered them over and they linked up with it. The additional light and increased play of translucent colors were like the dance of life itself. Dodge, Bibwit, and Alyss, General Doppelganger, Hatter-they emerged from the Continuum in the same order in which they’d entered, discovered themselves in a landscape resembling the open belly of a volcano, with clouds of sulphurous smoke drifting lazily into the upper reaches of the sky, and jets of flame spouting from the rocky ground between streams of bubbling lava: the Volcanic Plains.
CHAPTER 42
T HEY TREKKED single-file along a volcano’s narrow ridge, their noses and mouths covered with cloth torn from Bibwit’s robe to protect them from airborne ash. It was too hot to speak, almost too hot to breathe. No one had said a word since they first emerged onto the Volcanic Plains and Dodge had suggested they smash the exit portal just in case. Redd’s diabolically inventive mind was not to be underestimated; any remnant of the Crystal Continuum might cause her to reconstruct it in its entirety, providing her with the means to reach the plains that much sooner. Now Redd and her armies would
have to travel on foot or by beast.
“The looking glass must have been used by jabberwocky poachers,” Bibwit Harte had said. “Lucky for us, it was over-looked or we’d still be…” He’d shivered with the thought of the void.
“If Redd saw us in the Continuum, she might still be watching us,” General Doppelganger had observed. “Can’t be helped,” Hatter had said.
Dodge had been impatient. “Then let’s stop standing around and get to where we have to go.”
So Bibwit, who carried detailed maps of the queendom within his bald head, led them toward the Valley of Mushrooms. Picking their way along the rocky, irregular ridge, they constantly had to look down to be sure of their footing, all the time reminding themselves of how high they were and how dangerous their passage.
“Ah!”
A hardened chunk of lava hit General Doppelganger on the shoulder. The Alyssians paused, looked up. Another chunk of lava rock fell. Another and another.
The volcano’s moving.
Not the entire volcano, just the topmost layer of rock and earth on the steep slope above them. The ridge gave way, crumbling beneath the Alyssians’ feet, and they tumbled and rolled down into a gorge at the base of the volcano. General Doppelganger was half buried in earth and rubble. Bibwit came to rest completely upside down, his feet in the air, but he quickly righted himself, coughing and spitting, before he was suffocated. Alyss, being the lightest among them, had bounced down the volcano’s craggy lower slope and slid to a stop on a bed of gravel. Hatter and Dodge stood wiping lava crud from their coat sleeves as if surviving a landslide was something they did every day.
“Everyone all right?” asked General Doppelganger. “Alyss?” Dodge’s voice, concerned.
“I’m okay.” She didn’t want the others to think she considered a few scrapes and bruises serious injuries. She was supposed to be strong enough to defeat Redd. “Someone’s watching us,” she said.
A pair of yellow-green eyes were peering at them from the black mouth of a nearby cave. Before anyone could speak, the giant reptilian head of a jabberwock thrust forward from between two boulders. Its long tongue lashed at Bibwit, scorching a swath through the sleeve of his robe to his delicate skin.