Page 55 of Wondrous

“Your world?” Alex repeated.

I looked down. “Our world, I mean. Maybe it isn’t as bad as the one the mock dragons came from. But there’s still plenty of cruelty in it. That’s why I planned to stay in Wonderland this time, and never go back.”

“Cruelty?” Maria said in disbelief. “You think you can escape that in Wonderland? What about the Queen of Hearts? Also jabberwocks—most of them, anyway—bandersnatches, double-rumped warblers—”

“All right,” I said, throwing my hands up. “Wonderland can be cruel. Some of the people are selfish. But they—they can’t help it. Wonderland creatures don’t change—they just are. But we have a choice.”

I began to pace. “My parents could have chosen not to lock me up in my own home. Or to have me dress up and parade around in front of an old man who isn’t evil or even unpleasant, but he’s the only one who would have a girl with ‘waking dreams,’ and so I must have him. My friends could have chosen to listen to me, instead of pretending that I never existed after I became a little strange. What’s so terrible about being strange, anyhow?”

I fell silent, breathing hard and feeling as if I wasn’t explaining myself well. The truth was, my life hadn’t been awful, back in my world. Not as awful as it was for some people, anyway. Would Maria and Alex think I was selfish, or a fool?

“Oh,” Maria said slowly. “I see. You don’t just want to stay in Wonderland. You want to become one of them—a citizen of Wonderland. You want to stop being an Uplander altogether.”

I stopped pacing. No, of course I didn’t want to become like the Mad Hatter, or the White Queen, or any of them. I was about to say that, but a different answer was rising within me, and it came from somewhere deeper.

“Yes,” I said almost angrily. “Yes, I want to be like them, and talk nothing but nonsense, and wear ridiculous hats and dresses made of pancakes, or have an unbirthday party every single day, or make up foolish songs about soup, or call myself a knight and ride through the forests and mountains, waving my sword about for no reason. As long as it’s my path, not one that someone else has put in front of me.”

“Of course you want that,” Maria said. “So do we.”

She said it so simply, and with a faint question in her voice, as if I’d stated something as obvious as the color of a spider tree.

“You do?” I said.

“Well—not exactly,” Maria said with a smile. “I don’t want to be a knight, particularly. But I’d love to go back to the three sheep and learn more about weaving. And then I’d like to sail the Southern Sea, and see if it really ends at an endless field of emerald grass where we all go after we die, like the sheep believe. And I want to learn how to read.”

“You don’t know how to read?” I said.

Maria colored. “I don’t like saying this, but—well, I’m a princess. Back home. And, no, we’re not taught how to read. We don’t go to school at all—it’s considered unladylike. Next year, if I go back home, I’m going to be married to a nobleman. I’ve never met him, but”—her mouth thinned—“I know he isn’t good. His reputation—the stories people tell—it’s awful. But there’s nothing anyone can do about it, because he’s rich, and of noble heritage.”

“I don’t particularly know what I want to do, if I stay in Wonderland,” Alex said. “But I want the chance to figure it out. I didn’t even have a home before I came here. My parents died when I was thirteen. I took up with some other kids, and we’d steal what we could and sleep in old warehouses, but half the time we were hungry and cold. I think I would have lost it if I hadn’t known this place was here.” She shrugged, sighing. “Or maybe it would have been easier. I don’t know. Most of the other kids—they don’t hope. All they think about is surviving. Sometimes I thought that would be easier.”

“I think it’s like this for most of the Alices,” Maria said. “The ones I’ve talked to are all running away from something. Well, who else would choose to return to a place like Wonderland and join a quest like this?”

I felt like a fool after having lectured the two of them about the cruelty of our world. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I suppose—I suppose I’ve only been thinking about me.”

Alex nodded without any apparent anger. “That’s how it is sometimes. When we’re so wrapped up in our own troubles, we forget other people have them, too. Sometimes the same ones.”

My face was hot, and I looked down at my hands. “You’re right,” I said. “You’re both right. I know that, but—”

I thought about the story I had told myself for so long, that I couldn’t trust anyone from my world. It was one I’d repeated so many times that it had gone deep inside me, like ink seeping through the pages of a notebook.

“But you still don’t trust us,” Alex finished for me. “Well, we haven’t known each other that long. No offense, but I don’t trust you, either. You did betray us, after all.”

“It’s all right,” Maria said, knocking my shoulder with hers. “It was just a little betrayal—you never officially agreed to work with us.”

Alex rolled her eyes. “I should have known you would forgive her.” But her tone was more affectionate than annoyed.

“I think you should give us a chance,” Maria said. “Don’t you see that we make a good team?”

I did. I should have seen it before, but I had been too determined to escape my world and win the competition on my own. But Alex and Maria didn’t belong to that world.

No, that wasn’t right—Alex and Maria were from my world. But perhaps I didn’t know my world as well as I thought I did. Perhaps there were as many people who didn’t like the shape of it as ones who did, or more, with so many of us thinking we were the only one. That we were alone.

Before I could say any of this, though, I heard a rustling sound behind us. I turned and found the streambank deserted.

“Jack?” I rose and hurried toward the forest. “Jack, is that you? Where—”

A dragonish shape burst from the trees, a shape with a huge fanged mouth, silver-gray feathers, and an impossibly long tail. Alex and Maria screamed and dove for the ground, and the monster passed over them. He coiled around on himself in midair and flew right at them again, teeth bared.