Wonderland and Beyond: A Twisted Fairy Tale

By Amanda Knapp

Meet Celia, a quirky, sassy, much-older version of Wonderland's Alice than you might remember. Celia's been to Wonderland and back a few times, and she's a bit of a master at magic now. In fact, she's so good that the bad g

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Sep 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885909884

Amanda Knapp

Amanda Knapp is a writer who loves music, traveling, reading and spending time with family. She credits her brothers, who forced her to watch horror movies, and parents, who allowed her to read V.C. Andrews and Stephen King novels at a young age, for her vivid imagination. She currently lives in South Carolina

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

CELIA

F

reedom was running across the sand, pretending I was flying, just pretending, period. The only thing I’m good at is pretending. I never had any time where I was completely alone, except in my room and in my dreams.

I reached the house and slowed down, inching in through the screen door, quiet as a dormouse. The last thing I wanted was to run into Max, my ‘uncle’ and part of the protector group.

In the ‘Alice’ realm, Max was known as the crazy Hatter character, but here he was simply my wild and crazy but extremely nosey uncle-slash-protector. He had a way through his rambling speeches and simple facial expressions to get anyone to give away any secret they had, whether they knew it themselves or not.

Luckily, he was in the kitchen cooking dinner. I had been building up a secret, and I wasn’t ready to give it away yet, so I’d been avoiding Max like the plague as often as I could.

I snuck through the living room area, where the furniture was retro ‘80s, and the carpet was still shag checkered. The blue, yellow, and green squares kind of reminded me of Wonderland, so even though they were cheesy and probably extremely nasty if you got down and looked hard, I liked them. The shag had a vague resemblance to the Mome Raths, and I always expected to see one pop up randomly.

My imagination was the best part of my magic, and it hadn’t been allowed loose lately. It was bottling up and needed an outlet. Soon.

Sometimes in my dreams, everything is crimson and black, and I’m whirling around in a dark red cape fighting the mammoth Jabberwocky with a dripping blood-red paintbrush. I uppercut him with a right hook to the jaw, and he goes down in a spiral of black cloud. Or sometimes he doesn’t, and he gets angry and spreads his jaw open wider than logistically possible, so wide his bottom jaw almost touches the floor, and he scoops me right up, and I disappear down his gullet with a big gulp of air, and I wake up every time breathing hard but exhilarated.

I’m ready to fight him again, ready to do anything if it means I can use this magic that’s lying dormant in me, smothered and insulated. But I can’t, or bad things way worse than the Jabberwocky will be released, and I’m not strong enough for that yet. And I don’t want to put that fight on my friends and my ‘protectors.’

Still, I crave magic, I crave the insanity of the world I accidentally became a part of years ago, but I have to hide it…because to people like Martha, to release it is to invite evil, which has to be combated with good, as most people believe.

But to me…to my kind…it’s not a question of if we’re good or evil. It’s are we mad…or madder?

The lines between good and evil start to blur when madness takes reign.

I made it to my room without any incidents and locked the door behind me. My room was my refuge, my only place for freedom and peace and quiet. The walls were the same shade they were when we moved in: a soft, sweet lilac color. I loved the chaos of colors in Wonderland, but in my room, I wanted tranquility to rest my mind and be able to think.

My bed was my own, and I adored it. It was a king-sized high top, coming about four feet off the floor before you could climb on it. I made it girly, frilly, and lacey with a down comforter almost the same shade of purple as my walls. I spent so much time sleeping, the only place my imagination had an outlet, I was grateful to have such a comfortable bed. My only decorations in the room consisted of the mini-figurines I had on shelves on the walls.

I had a collection of every fairy tale person or creature that I could find. No, I’m not a little girl playing dolls, but I am obsessed with tracking down and learning about everyone that I could affect if I messed up with my magic.

Most mortals didn’t realize that their fairy tales were based somewhat loosely on real people or creatures from other realms, realms I supposedly had control over. My newest additions were still in boxes on my dresser, but I planned to remedy that very soon.

I slid off my green and blue polka dot bikini and went to my attached bathroom to shower off the beach sand and salt. The jets pulsed hot and strong, and I cleaned off, coming out feeling awake and refreshed. I toweled off and glimpsed myself in the mirror over the sink. My eyes looked funny, so I wiped off the condensation and looked closer.

Normally my eyes are what you’d expect—that startling cornflower blue from the Alice tales, and yes, my hair is long and blond. I’ve tried chopping it off, but somehow every time I do, I wake up and it’s long and blond again. I even dyed it pink, blue, and purple once. It lasted the day, long enough to freak out Aunt Martha and Uncle Max, so it was worth it.

It’s the Wonderland magic at work, keeping me forever sixteen, the age I was, and how I looked when I went back into Wonderland the last time years ago when I decided to stay and make it my home. Wonderland encompasses an unlimited universe of magic that runs alongside the non-magical universe of humans. I found not one but multiple ways into the magical universe, and of course, being the curious child I was, I became hooked. All those trips through portal magic messed up my DNA in ways none of the Wonderland Council experts could quite figure out.

After years of my visits, connecting with citizens there, and showing that I had a weird potential for learning magic easily, the Council offered me Wonderland citizenship or a ban against coming back for my safety. Since my parents were already aging, and I knew I didn’t want to live without this new world I’d found, I accepted. That’s when I lost my full human status and became something that no one really understands yet. What we do know is that I haven’t aged since then, and the bad guys think I have a lot of untapped magic and want their share of it.

What I know is that instead of figuring out what kind of magic I was capable of, I got to have extra rules and restrictions, as the Council declared, again, for my safety.

Technically I was decades older than sixteen, but I’ll be forever a teenager and monitored until I’m deemed fit enough to not destroy worlds accidentally with my powers.

Magic, youth, and immortality aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. It’s like the saying goes, though. Can’t have your cake and eat it, too.

Anyway, instead of that cornflower blue, now my eyes looked…different. I couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but it was almost as though they were getting lighter. Less vividly blue, more pastel. Maybe I was imagining it. I already said I had a strong imagination. Maybe it was the lighting.

I shook my head and stuck my tongue out at myself in the mirror, making a funny face at my wild thoughts, and wrapped the towel around myself. Going back to my room, I grabbed my underwear, a pair of cutoff pajama shorts, and a t-shirt that read ‘Crazy is My Middle Name’ out of my dresser and threw them on.

I had just dug through my desk for my scissors and opened my newest doll addition, Aladdin, when I felt the breeze I’d been starting to get used to that signaled a presence behind me.

I looked up at the shelf where her figurine should have been, and sure enough, it was missing.

Did you tell them about me yet? asked Snow White from behind me.

CHAPTER TWO

I

set Aladdin down and my scissors back in the drawer and closed it, then turned around to face Snow. Most people think she is sweet and innocent, but I’d been getting to know her for over a month now, and I knew better.

Snow had that vanilla-scented, child-like Enchanted Forest magic about her, but it was mixed with vines of wild Wonderland magic that were making her naughty side come out.

For lack of a better analogy, picture the lands in the Wonderland universe like the planets in the non-magical universe. Each planet in Wonderland is its own settled world, or as magical creatures call it, a realm. No one leaves these settled areas except through portals because wild Wonderland magic surrounds each realm but can’t enter. It’s a rule of magic that can’t be broken—or so we thought.

Now, realms were overlapping in sections at a pace slow enough that most people hadn’t noticed yet, but she did, and she had come to me about it. The problem was I had no clue what to do, and she was enjoying her newfound magical powers a tad bit too much.

No, I haven’t, and you know that as soon as I do, they’re going to freak out and do whatever they can to make sure you can’t get in my room, so what’s the rush?

Snow reached around me and picked up my Aladdin doll, then turned him around, upside down, all angles. He’s kind of cute, in an exciting kind of way. My prince is cute but terribly, terribly boring.

She sighed, held Aladdin up to her face, and gave him a little flick on the top of his head before setting him down on my desk and flopping onto my bed. Her flowing yellow skirt billowed out almost completely from one edge of the mattress to the other.

She hated that dress, but it’s what she was wearing as my doll, so she was stuck with it. I suppose I could have magicked her a new one or even bought one for the doll to see if it transferred to reality. But I still wasn’t sure I actually liked her enough for that yet, and her powers weren’t strong enough to counteract the portal magic and change her gown.

Eyeing me with a look equal parts disdain and pity, she said, Celia, you know that this problem is not going to go away. Every time I go back to the forest, I see more and more of your wild Wonderland magic creeping in. Today a tree talked to me, but I have no idea what it said. It spoke my language, but in meaningless Wonderland riddles. No one has caught on yet but me, but believe me, when they do, and they will, it’s going to create mass panic. The authorities—and that means you and yours—need to be prepared. And you promised that if it got worse, you’d do something. I’m telling you—it’s worse.

I knew this was true, but I also knew it would mean further tightening on my already strangling restrictions. It had been almost two months now since she’d first noticed it. Snow and I had been waiting to see if it would go away— and trying to find a solution in case it didn’t—for a month now, and we were no further ahead than we were when she first visited me.

I’m not sure how she originally was able to come through her doll. She said it was kind of like a window she saw while she was walking in the Enchanted woods, where the magic was encroaching onto her palace perimeter. She could see me in my room when I looked in my mirror and she could see her doll behind me on the shelf on the wall, and it was glowing.

She felt this overwhelming urge to touch the doll through the portal, and when she did, poof, there she was behind me. I don’t think it’s too much of an exaggeration to say that, for someone who was used to wild surprises every time I turned a corner, seeing her appear in my room was the biggest surprise I’d seen yet. It’s a good thing I don’t age, or she’d have scared ten years off my life.

After she came through the first time, she and I put a small cloaking spell on both sides of my mirror. It really creeped me out that someone could see into my room, and I didn’t want to chance that happening again. Of course, by then, Snow already knew where I was and how to get there, so the cloak didn’t stop her from popping in whenever she felt like it.

She only came in now in the evenings unless we had agreed otherwise beforehand. I’d had to set some boundaries—like I said, I like my freedom and my privacy, and my bedroom is my only sanctuary.

Was my only sanctuary. After I told Martha and Max about Snow, I doubted I’d be allowed to pee without supervision. But she was right. They had to know.

Snow was laying on my bed on her stomach, my earbuds in her ears, feet up in the air, and kicking along to my iPod. She loved this world’s music more than anything she’d seen here yet. I never let her out of my room, but we did have a few marathon movie sessions. The problem was that everything she saw on fantasy TV, she had to try to create with magic.

That was how we realized her Enchanted magic had mixed with wild Wonderland magic, probably when she went through the Wonderland portal to my room. There were some pretty tame creations, such as the vanilla milkshake she wanted that turned out to be purple passion berry mixed with vanilla. It was so pretty—deep purple swirls surrounding vanilla twirls in a tall glass flute—but it didn’t taste very good, and the passion berry made her fall in love with every man on the TV for the next couple of hours.

Luckily I’m pretty immune to Wonderland magic, so I sat back and watched and laughed as she planned marriage after marriage to at least twenty guys. (Contrary to the stories, she and the Prince never got married. From what I gathered, that would mean consummation, and in the Enchanted Forest, that’s not approved, so she was on a perpetual extended engagement.)

Then there were some pretty wild concoctions, like the fur coat she tried to magic on that ended up still attached to a gryphon’s back legs when the magic crossed over. Needless to say, the gryphon was not pleased, and it took a silencing spell around my room and lots and lots of smooth-talking to avoid the two of us being his dinner. I made her promise to chill on the magic once we got the gryphon back to its original homeland.

Even though Snow was determined to tell Martha and Max, I was able to get her to swear secrecy as long as nothing else in her land was being affected. I still had hopes it was a fluke. I had promised that if anything else changed, I’d tell them, and a Wonderland promise was binding.

She’d called me out on it, and now I could feel the promise flickering in my head like someone shuffling playing cards. Shuffle, separate, riffle, shuffle, separate, riffle. The faster it shuffled, the hotter my body was getting. I knew Snow was right, and I knew I’d have to make good on my promise before it burned me from the inside out. But I wasn’t happy about it.

Okay. I’ll tell them at dinner tonight. She was still listening to my iPod and didn’t hear me, but the shuffling in my head slowed down a bit. Only a slight reprieve, I was sure, but it gave me a little time to think about what I was going to say and how I was going to be able to keep my small freedom and Snow and, I’m sure, my other figurines that they’d be suspicious of after Snow told her tale.

Oh yeah, and save the Enchanted Forest and Wonderland in general and keep my magic cloaked to avoid the entire world of evil villains swooping down to kidnap me for their nefarious purposes (yes, I used nefarious. I’d only heard it a thousand times from Martha and Max, who read way too much).

One thing was for certain—I may have the potential to be the most powerful magic wielder in multiple realms, but when it came to being grounded in this world, I was just a helpless teenager.

CHAPTER THREE

S

now went home after a TV show and a promise from me that I’d talk to Martha after dinner. I wished, not for the first time, that we had some way of sending a signal through the portal so that I could get her attention when I needed her. But short of taking off the cloaking spell and allowing who knew what to see me and maybe even get through, I couldn’t think of anything.

Watches did not work in the Enchanted Forest, and sending Snow with any sort of technology would be a waste of time. We had tried that once after I realized how much she loved our music.

I lent her my iPod and when she crossed over it turned into a silvery glitter. The ensuing dust made the grass it landed on shrivel up and die. Not only did that suck for her land, but I had to be very convincing when I told Aunt Martha about the wave that came from nowhere and grabbed my iPod right off my beach chair. Blah blah, we’re not made of money blah blah money can’t be magicked. I get it.

Although I did try playing the lottery once, thinking using a teeny bit of my magic to help my luck wouldn’t be too bad. Freaking laws about underage gambling and my permanent teenage state. Oh well.

I wasn’t looking forward to dinner, so of course, it came fast. Dinners in our house were a bit unusual. We’d learned the hard way that Martha was never going to be a good cook, but Max took to cooking in this realm like a duck to a pond.

The problem was I’d developed an affinity with animals here that I hadn’t had in my trips to Wonderland, so cooking was a bit of a chore. Food was so tasty, but there had to be enough degrees of separation between whatever I was eating and me to where I couldn’t feel the energy.

I wasn’t vegetarian exactly. I mean, in Wonderland, we ate meat, and it was no big deal. But here I seemed to absorb the energy from whatever I ate, and with the energy came the memories.

Basically, if I ate chicken from a local farm, I’d absorb enough energy to stay up for three days, but I could feel the chicken getting its head chopped off. However, if I ate chicken from KFC, I didn’t absorb much energy at all, and I could only feel remnants of the chicken’s death. A sad argument for eating junk food, I know, but Mcdonald’s is so far removed from real beef that I don’t feel anything when I eat it.

The first few times I ate meat before I knew what was happening, I’d had nightmares for weeks about being in a cow processing factory, riding the conveyor belt to my death in a meat grinder, or getting my neck chopped off and running around wildly with no head, squawking incoherently.

Because of this, Max was great about ensuring that my food was healthy but not too healthy. Tonight’s dinner was homemade macaroni and cheese (I’d noticed with real dairy products, I received a slight influx of energy with the memories of a relieving kind of pressure, maybe from the squeeze of the udders) and sweet potatoes with a salad. A perfect blend of food to give me energy but not keep me up all night. I’d be doing that myself with my thoughts, I was sure.

I entered the dining room after the meal had already been served. Squeezing into my high-backed mahogany chair behind the matching table, I offered a quick apology for being late, and my guardians continued on with their conversation.

Martha was telling Max about the turtle from earlier, avoiding the magic part. They were discussing when the eggs would hatch and whether we should go fortify the hole with more sand.

I knew I needed to tell them about Snow and the Wonderland issue, but I didn’t want to interrupt and have my—yes, I’d already adopted them—baby turtles get forgotten about and neglected. Thoughts flitted about in my mind, and I didn’t even try to focus on the actual conversation at the table. My fork moved of its own volition, and I barely tasted the food.

I was having a hard time concentrating with the shuffling going on in my head anyway. My body was burning hotter than earlier, and I didn’t know how to let the secret out yet. Shuffle, separate, riffle, shuffle, separate, riffle. Burn, baby, burn.

Martha was looking at me expectantly. Oops. Apparently, I had been lost in my own thoughts of burning alive. I jerked to attention. I’m sorry, I didn’t hear the question.

She put her fork down and used the cloth napkin in her lap to wipe her mouth daintily. Fae were always well mannered, one of the reasons she was chosen to be my guardian. (Supposedly, I was a little too brash to have ruling powers yet. The Council’s words, not mine. I thought I was just fine, and they could use a little letting loose.)

Max and Martha looked at each other pointedly and then looked at me. Yup. This was not going to be good. Max had a serious look on his haggard face as he continued to eat his meal, letting Martha take the lead. They’d obviously discussed this beforehand.

Celia, Martha hesitated. I know things have been somewhat boring for you lately, with the temporary moratorium on your magic and leaving your home, but we’ve noticed that you’ve been quite…well…quite distant and distracted recently. Is something wrong?

Well, there we go. The perfect opening. Unexpected, and I hadn’t built myself up to it yet.

I had a process for dealing with bad experiences. Like going for vaccinations when I was back in the human world before the magic mirrors took me to Wonderland.

I could handle them, but I had to build myself up to them. Psych myself out, stress unnecessarily, consider every horrible option that could happen and how much pain I’d be in. That way, when it actually happened, it was never as bad as I’d imagined.

I was somewhat irrationally aggravated that Martha and Max took that intense dramatic climax away from me—but I’d go with it since I obviously wasn’t as sneaky as I thought I was. Shuffle, separate, riffle, shuffle, separate, riffle. Burn.

I drew in a deep breath and looked at Max, letting his soft brown eyes ground me. I knew he was safe, and therefore so was I. He’d help me, no matter how upset he was. Martha would freak out and he’d keep his cool.

Max didn’t have a temper, but he was fiercely protective and great at problem-solving—hence him being appointed my other guardian. Plus, they were both top of the game in magic.

I cleared my throat and pushed my still-full plate away. Yes. Yes, there is, and in fact, I was going to bring that up to you after dinner, but since you asked…umm…there is something unusual going on back in the Enchanted Forest. And possibly…other lands…

Pffffffftttttttt…relief! The burning left my body in a rush of air like a deflating balloon. I scrunched down in my seat and waited for the berating—in the form of attack questioning—to begin.

Martha started, as I knew she would. Inquisitively, she asked, What? What other lands? And what do you mean, unusual? She hadn’t asked how I knew. I guess she assumed that, since I was a magical conduit and all, I’d have a connection or something. I wished it was that easy.

I looked back at Max and immediately regretted it. He was looking at me with that disappointed father look I hated so much, eyes slightly squinted, head tilted, graying-brown mustache in a twisted pout. Max and Martha were the closest things to parents I’d had since I was about fifteen, which was way longer ago than I’d like to admit.

And that look could get me to spill every secret I’d ever kept. So, I did.

I took a deep breath and went with it. In for a penny, in for a pound, right?

Well, to start with, I didn’t want to worry you guys over something that might have been nothing and would just go away, and then I waited, and it got worse, so now I have to tell you so we can fix it because I made a promise. Basically, wild Wonderland magic is leeching over into the Enchanted Forest. It started really small, but now it’s spreading throughout the whole realm.

And you know this you tell us, but how do you know this that you tell us exactly? asked Max, in his roundabout way that I’d gotten used to. Conversations with him were never quick. And who did you make a promise to with the promise that you told us you made a promise to someone to?

Yup. Here it came. Martha’s blowup. Wait for it…

I know it because apparently…my-mirror-is-a-portal-to-at-least-one-other-land-and-Snow-White-came-through-it-to-my-room- and-told-me-about-the-magic, I expelled the words and covered my face with my hands. Yes, I’m supposedly all mighty and powerful, but I still felt like a teenager caught sneaking back in after a late-night party.

I may seem selfish and all, but I really did understand the implications of what I’d hidden. If Snow could get in, so could others…and that could be catastrophic if the wrong people found me.

WHAT? Martha bellowed. Yes, bellowed. I didn’t know she could get that loud. I think the windows shook, but that might have been my eardrums.

She stood abruptly, hands on the table, breathing through her nose like a dragon. Your mirror is a portal, and you didn’t tell us? How long ago did she come through? Who else has come through? If looks could kill, I might not be dead, but I’d sure be like those little shrunken heads you see in movies.

I cringed. I know, I know, and I’m sorry. As soon as we figured out what happened, she helped me cloak the mirror with a spell using her magic mixed with mine, so my magic was muted out and no one else has come through. She showed up about a month or so ago, and, well, we’ve kinda become friends of a sort, so she comes through a few nights a week to let me know how things are going. I put my hands up in an innocent shrug. She noticed the changes in her land about two months ago, but it was only a month ago that she was walking through the forest and saw the portal to my room.

Don’t tell them about the dolls…don’t tell them about the dolls…

Max cleared his throat, finally crossing his fork and knife down on his plate. And how did she know to enter this portal that you say that she entered through the portal?

Fudge. (I was working on the swearing thing. Apparently, magical rulers didn’t swear…another thing I might change when I’m in charge someday. What was the point of finally getting to be seen as a grown-up if you couldn’t express your feelings in a vulgar fashion without the threat of soap in your mouth occasionally?)

She kind of said that she saw a little mini-her shining through a sort of window, and she reached out to touch the vision and ended up in my room.

A dainty feminine eyebrow raised. She saw a mini version of herself shining?

Yes. She said it was like this irresistible urge to touch it.

Martha inclined her head and rubbed the back of her neck. So anyone who sees this portal can find their way to your room?

Double fudge. Now I’d have to calm her down by telling them about the doll theory. And it was just a theory. I had no basis for it in fact.

Actually…she’s pretty sure it was her doll on my shelf that she saw that drew her to me. So, we think only the dolls that I have would be able to come through. It makes sense because when she comes through, her doll disappears, and she is always dressed like it, no matter what she was wearing.

Max nodded and rubbed his chin pensively. That does make sense in the way that it makes sense. For someone of magical intent to transport to a place they’ve never been, they have to be invited, or there has to be something of theirs on the other side of their side. Otherwise, we’d have people showing up left and right and right and left to where they want to show up.

He stood up and put his napkin on his plate. Show me your room again. I want to see this mirror that you say is the portal through your mirror.

Martha pushed her chair in and led the way out of the dining room. Yes, we need to figure out how it became a portal and how we can shut it down. I stumbled into the curio cabinet, and Max deftly caught one of the little glass figurines Martha collected before it could smash and really upset her. He returned it to its spot, and we kept walking.

I knew it. No more portal. There went my only friend and entertainment. I followed them to my room, pouting.

CHAPTER FOUR

"M

aybe not shut it down, Martha, the portal may not need to be shut down. That’s a little too hasty, shutting it down," Max murmured as we walked through my bedroom door.

Are you crazy? If one magical being can get through here, who knows who else can? She looked around at my dolls, casing the joint like she was planning a robbery. Any of these creatures can know about Celia and mean her harm!

Max moved over to the dresser mirror and went through all of the prepositions, analyzing it—under, over, next to, behind. Thank goodness he skipped inside.

He stopped his investigation and ran a hand through his thick, wiry hair, the wheels almost visibly turning in his head. I know, I know. But…they could also be helpful to our cause, if we got more like Snow White over here through the portal, the magical beings could. Celia, can you call to her, ask her to come over, Snow White, through the portal?

I had given up on stopping Martha’s nosy snooping and was sitting on the edge of my bed, tensely waiting for the final word on my only freedom. I shook my head in response to Max’s query. No, actually. We’ve tried that, but it seems the portal doesn’t send messages, only people, and before you ask, no, I was not stupid enough to try to go through myself.

Martha made a snorting noise I took to mean it’s about time you showed common sense, and Max just nodded. OK, then if that’s the case, I’ll go through myself through the portal. It’s the only option that makes sense. I’ve been there, to the Enchanted Forest, once as a little when I was a little boy and as a Council member, so I can go back. That surprised me, but I schooled my response. I’d always assumed Max came from the mostly untamed Wonderland planet I’d first met him on, and I never thought about the traveling he’d had to do through the universe to become part of the Council. There was a lot about him I didn’t know.

He continued, We need to see what’s going on over there in the other lands, in the Enchanted Forest, and I can try to make contact with Snow White in the Enchanted Forest, and whoever else could be an ally, try to figure out what in the realms is going on. As he spoke, he moved away from the mirror and over to my shelves, analyzing my doll collection. I could see him cataloging each doll in his insanely organized file cabinet brain.

Max, for as crazy as he was portrayed in the Alice series, was actually only that crazy in Wonderland because his brain processed information at a high speed. It worked so fast that he couldn’t take in all of the insanity in his home realm and many of the other lands.

Here, he was able to sort through the matter around him, separate the strands of magic and reality, and calmly, albeit in a roundabout way, determine the best course of action. He was invaluable to me and an amazing resource to have on our side.

I looked at Martha and could see when she reached the same conclusion I did. She tipped her head down in quiet dismay.

We knew he was right, and we also knew once he got there he’d make excellent decisions. What we didn’t know was whether the Enchanted Forest would overwhelm his brain the way others parts of Wonderland did, and both of us were concerned.

I looked away from Martha and cleared my throat. Um, Max, what I do know is that our technology does not work over there. Something about it dissolves into a matter that actually ruins their land if it touches the ground, so we’d have no way to contact you. I agree that you are the best person to go, but I think we should wait at least until tomorrow, give Snow a chance to come back by, introduce you, then send you over with her. Compromise is always the best policy, right? It’s definitely not honesty. I learned that the hard way.

He crossed his arms over his chest, looking at Martha with concern but responding to me. You are right, and if she shows up before I am ready to leave, if Snow White shows through the portal, we will do it that way, the way you say. I’ll be ready at dawn tomorrow morning, at dawn to go through the portal, I have a few things I need to do and pack before I leave, things to get done.

He then nodded curtly at me, gave one last cursory look to my doll shelves, and left the room, leaving me to deal with Martha and the knowledge that if we got through this mess okay, I’d probably be grounded for the next eternity.

CHAPTER FIVE

S

now hadn’t made it through my mirror, regardless of how much begging and complaining and kicking my dresser I did through the night. Martha and I had a long talk about our concerns about sending Max through on his own, but we both knew I couldn’t be here completely unprotected. There was no guarantee once someone went through the mirror, they’d find their way back.

I had to put faith in Snow that she’d come soon. Then I’d be able to tell her about Max, and she’d track him down before he became completely loony. I knew he’d get there, but after that, I had to have faith he’d be okay.

Portals operated in a strange fashion, as Max had mentioned. The traveler had to have been to their destination previously, invited by someone already there, or had something they owned present in the area. Well, these are the usual rules, with me as the exception.

As long as one of those factors was present, Max could think of where he wanted to go, and the portal would take him.

Before he’d gone to bed, we had decided to use his hat as a touchstone of a sort, like the dolls in my room. We were hoping that if all else failed, it would guide him home. The thing was a monstrosity, dirty brown and about three-foot-high, toppling over to its side like a smushed cake, and wide-brimmed and wrinkled, but oh did Max love that hat.

It was rumored that the hat was given to him by his son before the boy went completely insane and had to be locked up in a Wonderland asylum. He had the same mental processing as Max but couldn’t handle it. You can imagine how insane you have to be to get locked up in Wonderland, where insanity not only runs rampant but is the main chosen language.

I wondered if Max wished he could have brought his son over to Earth before his mind completely snapped. I wondered if, when I truly was able to learn about this magic stuff I supposedly held, I could fix his son for him. If anyone deserved happiness, it was Max.

Anyway, such was my mentality as I digressed down the meandering path of depressing thoughts upon awakening. I was up before dawn after a fretful night, tossing and turning and worrying. The house was quiet, but I knew Max and Martha would be up making final preparations.

I threw my covers off and stumbled into the bathroom, bumping into a couple of pieces of furniture and the sharp edge of my dresser along the way. Amazingly, I didn’t fall as I usually do when I wake up so early.

I took a world record fast shower in the dark and, by the dim light of the bathroom window, threw on some jeans and a t-shirt that read ‘My canary ate your cat.’ Hitting the light switch, I squinted until my retinas could handle the brightness and leaned towards the mirror to put on some basic makeup.

As I applied my mascara, I noticed again that my eyes weren’t quite right. Not wrong, but not right. It seemed like a spoke of blue extending from my retina to the whites of my eye was not as blue as the rest.

I shook my head, poking myself in the eye with the mascara wand in the process. I said some cuss words I wouldn’t be allowed to say if I was a ruler, but I really didn’t care right then. Deciding I must be seeing things, I swiped on a bit of lip gloss and some moisturizer, and I was ready to face the world. Or whatever the world threw at me, whichever came first.

I was relaxing on my bed, staring at my dolls on the walls, and thinking about the mess I was in when I heard a gentle tapping on my door. I opened it to a nervous-looking Martha and a determined Max.

He carried a blue leather backpack with a canteen attached to it secured to his back and belted at his waist. Khaki pants (he never wore shorts, ever) and a white cargo shirt, with a safari hat perched on his head and tied under his chin, completed his ensemble.

I smiled, even with the seriousness of the moment. He looked like he was going on a jungle safari expedition, not a journey through a magic mirror to an enchanted land.

Let’s get this show on the road, he said, surprisingly without rambling, and walked through the doorway. After hugs and admonishments for us not to worry, he turned to my dresser. No stranger to magic mirror portals, he put his hands on the surface, closed his eyes, and pushed.

Martha and I held hands by the edge of my bed as we watched Max disappear piece by piece, stretching into a form of matter that didn’t even resemble a human after his shoulders made it through. The rest of him became a long, thin multi-colored spiral, so bright we had to shield our eyes as his remaining figure got smaller and smaller. When he disappeared completely, we sat on the bed without a word, holding on to each other until the sun came up.

* * * *

Max didn’t come back that day, and Martha and I tried to stay busy. We spring-cleaned the house top to bottom. I even dusted fan blades and washed windows without complaining. I cooked our meals because I wanted something edible. But staying busy didn’t keep my mind from wandering, and I worried fiercely about Max’s mental health. I tried to stay positive, though, because I knew Martha was even more concerned than I was.

Truthfully, although the Council would blow a gasket if they found out, I was pretty sure Martha and Max cared for each other a little more than sentries guarding the portal keeper. I was okay with that. I never pushed or pointed anything out. I wanted them to stay my guardians, and the Council frowned on mixing business with pleasure. Okay, so they frowned on