Page 9 of Wondrous

“I thought we had wandered off,” said the taller knight. “We’re quite lost, after all.”

“Yes, but she wandered off first. So we have lost her.”

“That doesn’t work. We can’t lose anyone if we’re lost ourselves. It would be better to say that she has lost us.”

“Nothing wrong with being lost once in a while,” I said, not sure whom I was agreeing with but wanting to add something to the discussion, as the host of the tea party. “It’s nice to have a change of scenery.”

“Exactly!” the taller knight said while the shorter one sighed.

“Where did you last see the White Queen?”

“By the clock tower in the town square,” the taller knight said. “She was arguing with it. She always says that clocks should run both ways, like her memory.”

“That wouldn’t be very useful,” I said. “Except for the White Queen, perhaps.” I didn’t know anything about a clock tower or town square, but there were lots of places in Wonderland I’d never visited.

I had met the White Queen only once, as a child during my second visit to Wonderland. I recalled her well, though—a tall woman who claimed to remember everything, including events that hadn’t happened yet. She had lost her shawl, and I had found it for her, and then we’d had a short nonsensical conversation, after which she had turned into a sheep. By Wonderland standards, it had been a fairly unremarkable encounter.

“Is the White Queen still a sheep?” I asked.

“A sheep?” the taller knight said. “Not to my knowledge. I suppose it’s possible. We’ve not seen her for three days. A person can change a great deal in three days.”

“We should be off,” said the other knight, setting his teacup down. “Thank you for the tea. What do we owe you?”

I pointed to the words by donation written in small letters at the bottom of my sign.

“Of course.” The taller knight smiled at me. He removed a knife from his pocket and sheared off a lock of his hair, then handed it to me. “A token for the fair lady to remember me by.”

“Oh—but that’s—” I couldn’t think of a reply that wouldn’t be rude. I realized abruptly the shortcomings of my business model, which had seemed like such a good idea at the time.

“Thank you,” I said finally, accepting the lock and trying not to grimace. The knight clearly hadn’t bathed in some time, for the hair was greasy.

“If you wander up that way, mind you don’t stray from the path,” he told me. “There’s a new hollow round the next bend.”

“Oh,” I said, puzzled. That word again! And what on earth did he mean by the hollow being new? I didn’t know much more about geography than I did about maths, but I knew that valleys didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Though perhaps it was different in Wonderland.

The knights bowed to me and mounted their horses. “That was the best tea I’ve ever had,” the shorter one said. “And those scones! We’ll send everyone we meet to Alice’s Traveling Tea Shop. Wrong Way Path, two minutes’ ride from the main crossroads, by the old inn.”

“Thank you, but I’m not—” I began, but the knights were already cantering away.

“—staying,” I finished with a sigh. Perhaps the Cat had been right.

I watched the knights fade into the tree shadow. Their poor horses moved in the same shambling manner as their riders did, which meant they required a rather broad path, else they tended to bang into things. As I watched, the black horse cantered forward two steps before leaping into the trees, and a branch walloped the knight in the face. “Mind yourself, Midnight!” he called cheerily, wiping pine needles from his mouth.

I wondered, as I packed up the tea things, if I would meet the White Queen again. In Wonderland, despite its size, it was not uncommon to meet old acquaintances when one wandered about, particularly if one happened to be thinking about them; coincidences seemed woven into the fabric of the world. But the hedgehogs and I did not come upon the White Queen around the next bend, as I had half expected to, though I kept a lookout for her shawl, carried on a breeze or caught upon a tree.

But I did find the hollow.

It was difficult to miss. It was perhaps twenty paces off the path and not a hollow at all, at least not in the conventional sense. In an unconventional sense, there was no other word for it.

I leapt from the cart, which carried on along the path a little ways, then halted. Legs trembling, I lifted my skirts and picked my way through the blackberries and underbrush, stopping at the edge of the hollow to gape at it.

It was as if the forest had been blasted apart, leaving a hole perhaps the size of the Hare’s garden, with absolutely nothing inside it, only an expanse of swirling dark. The edges of the world curled back from the hollow, as paper curls back on itself when singed.

Dizziness overcame me. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it—something had made a hollow in the world itself, destroying a small piece of Wonderland and leaving in its place something that resembled a hole in a book.

I walked around the hollow, not wanting to get too close. It was the most curious thing I had ever seen, for the hollow was roughly circular—or, more accurately, spherical—although it seemed to change shape slightly depending on the angle. The wind stirred through the ashen edges of it, and a few scraps drifted free. I caught one, and it felt like burnt paper; it crumbled against my palm and blew away.

“This is what the Hatter was on about,” I murmured. “But the hollow the White Rabbit saw was over by the Hatter’s lake—this is a different one.”