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“Tea,” they answer.
“What I don’t understand,” Peter ventures finally, “is what you’re doing here.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“If it was all real, why don’t you go back? When the lights have gone out and…your boys have gone…why stay here, in this dreadful world?”
“I never went on purpose. It just happened. I saw a white rabbit one day. I touched a looking glass. I never decided to go. It decided to take me. It’s never decided since. Wonderland is like my son, my last son. It’s just so awfully awkward for him to see me the way I’ve ended up, it avoids me as much as it possibly can.”
“I suppose I should scour the countryside for bunnies and mirrors,” Peter laughs despite himself.
“I suppose I should,” Alice giggles, and for a moment she is that child on the cover of a million novels, the English Girl, rosy and devious and brilliant. The check appears as if by magic, and Peter pays it, as good as his word. Alice stands and the waiter brings their coats. “No, Peter, it’s best as it is. Whatever would I say to the White Queen now? Give me my bloody damned jam, you old cow? I gave up weeping for my lost kingdom years ago. I made my own, and if it crumbled, well, all kingdoms do. The world’s not so dreadful, my dear. It is dreadful, of course, but only most of the time. Sometimes it rather outdoes itself. Gives us a scene so improbable no one would dare to put it in a book, for who would believe in such a chance meeting between two such people, such a splendid supper, such an unlikely moment in the great pool of moments in which we all swim?” She kisses his cheek. She holds her lips against him for a long time. When she pulls away, there is a thimble in his hand. “Oh, goodness,” Alice says with a shine in her blue eyes. “What a lot of rubbish old ladies have in their bags!”
They walk arm in arm out into the New York street. People shove and holler by. The lights spangle and reflect in the hot concrete. The air smells like rotting vegetables and steel and fresh baking rolls and summer pollen. Alice stops him on the curb before he can cross the road.
“Peter, darling, listen to me. You must listen. You’ve got to answer the Caterpillar’s question—you’ve got to find an answer, or else you’ll never find your way. I never could, not until now, not until this very night, but you must. It’s the only question there is.”
“I can’t, Alice. I want to.”
Alice throws her arms round his neck. “I like you better, Peter. Ever so much better than him. Peter Pan was always such an awful shit, you know.”
They start across the long rope of the street, but being English and unaccustomed to traffic, they do not see the streetcar hurtling toward them, painted white for the new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum. Peter hears the bell and leaps back, hauling Alice roughly along with him, barely missing being crushed against the headlamps. When he collects himself, he turns to ask if she’s all right, if he didn’t hurt her too much, if the shock has ruffled her so that they need another drink to steady them.
There is no one beside him. His arm is empty.
“Alice?” Peter calls into the darkness. But no answer comes.
London Is the capital of Paris, and Paris Is the capital of rome
Olive stood on the stage of the Tumtum Club in the brash glare of the spotlight. She could barely make out all the glittering scales and claws and furs and shining eyeballs of the Looking Glass Creatures in the audience.
“Go on,” hissed the marble raven. “I’m not doing this alone. You do your bit, then I’ll do mine. Mine’s better, obviously, so I’ll close.”
“My bit? I haven’t got a bit! I didn’t even sing in the school concert!”
“Do something! You’re sure to, if you stand there long enough!”
Olive felt like her heart was dribbling out of her mouth. Everyone just kept looking at her. No one had ever looked at her for so long. Certainly not Father Dear or Darling Mother who ignored her benignly, not Little George who was more interested in painting the sheep, not the Other One, who seemed never to notice her until they collided in the hall. She could hardly bear it. What could she possibly do to impress these aliens out of her own bookshelf? In the book, Alice always had something clever to say, some bit of wordplay or a really swell pun. Olive could never be an Alice. She wasn’t quick enough. She wasn’t endearing enough. She wasn’t anyone enough.
Really, she only had one choice. She’d only ever practiced one thing long enough to get really good at it.
“It’s…ahem…it’s dreadful here,” Olive complained. Her voice shook. Everyone liked the pig screaming about its mother. Would they understand her talent? “Even the toadstools and the cocktails are depressed. There’s only one pub and you can’t even play darts here. Alice got to meet a Unicorn and dance with Dodos and learn something about herself on her holiday.” A great gasp ripped through the crowd. A tiger lily burst into tears. The White Queen looked like she might faint.
“It’s not allowed!” the chess piece whispered. The cat grinned and began, slowly, to disappear.
Olive pressed on. “But what do I get? The saddest country I’ve ever seen! If any of you so much as breathe wrong, the government passes out from the scandal of it. I can’t even pronounce half of the stuff the Jabberwock says! A more cramped and dreary place I’ve never dreamed of. It’s clear no one ever planned nor built Wonderland so much as as piled it up and gave up on it several times. Somebody obviously thought there was nothing so splendid in the world as Victorian allegory and crammed it in anywhere it would fit, and rather a lot of places it wouldn’t. The martinis aren’t even close to dry. How do you even have electricity? And the local politics are appalling, I’ll tell you that for free. Stuff all Queens, I say! Except Elizabeth, she’s all right.”
Olive bowed, then curtseyed, then settled on something halfway between. A smattering of uncertain applause started up, growing stronger as the Looking Glass Creatures recovered from their shock. The smattering became a thundering, became a roar.
The raven hopped up into the spotlight to soak up a bit of adoration for himself. He coughed and shook his stone feathers. The audience quieted, leaned forward, eager, ready for more—so ready they did not hear the thumping outside, or the terrified squeak of the Dormouse in his teapot armour.
“Ho
w,” said the marble corvid, “is a raven like a writing desk?”
“It’s a raid!” a Dodo shrieked from the back of the Tumtum Club.
The club fell apart into madness as playing cards flooded in from all sides, grabbing at the collars of egg and man alike, shouting orders, taking down names. Looking Glass Creatures bolted, down rabbit holes and up through the mossy rafters, behind the posters advertising THE CHESHIRE CIRCUS and MISS MARY ANN SINGS THE BLUES. Olive froze. She saw the turtle who’d sung so beautifully being dragged off by a pair of deuces. A Knave of Clubs swung his rifle into the scaly ankle of Edward, the poor Jabberwock, who roared in anguish. Tears shone on Olive’s cheeks in the footlights. But she couldn’t move. The sound of the raid slashed at her ears horribly.
