After Alice by Gregory Maguire
“All right,” said the Tin Bear. He unfolded from his valise a baker’s dozen of brightly colored kites, in patterns of red and black and white. Each had a string attached to one corner. The Tin Bear tied the other ends of the strings to various limbs of the traveling troupe.
“I’m afraid we don’t have any extras,” said the Tin Ballerina to Ada. “But you may hold my hand for comfort and guidance, if you like. Perhaps you will be lifted up by our society.”
“There does not seem to be much uplift in my day today,” said Ada, “but I’m willing to try.”
“Good. You run ahead. When the wind catches the kite, launch it,” said the Tin Ballerina.
“How do you do this when you’re all alone?” she asked.
“Privately,” said the Tin Ballerina. “Run!”
Ada ran. When the string stretched taut and a wind came up, she tossed the kite up into the fog. Before it rose and disappeared into the mist, it turned once or twice. The kite was made of a playing card.
“That was a Three of Diamonds,” she shouted to the troupe of players.
“The sky is improved by additional diamonds,” said Humpty Dumpty. “Next kite, hurry! That creature is getting closer.”
It took only a few moments before all thirteen kites were launched. They disappeared into the low cloud cover. Ada now saw that the creatures had been transformed into marionettes. The tin cutouts and Humpty Dumpty were each suspended a few feet in the air by four kite-card strings. Humpty clenched the string to the Ace between his teeth, perhaps because he was top-heavy.
“We are now in fine hands,” said the Tin Ballerina, glancing skyward.
“My hand is finer than yours,” mumbled Humpty Dumpty. “I have a royal flush.”
“Oh,” said the Tin Bear to Ada, “I forgot; we do have one final kite. We rarely use it, but you are welcome to it if you like. It is a Joker.”
“Ah.” Ada wasn’t sure if this was a good idea. It seemed impolite to turn the offer down, though, so she launched herself a kite. She gripped the string as the wind began to lead them in a direction that had no whether-or-not to it. They weren’t lifted far off the ground but skipped and hopped as marionettes do, untroubled by gravity, drawn by strings directing them from the sky.
“How do you know this is the right way?” she asked.
“We do not question our higher power,” said Humpty Dumpty. “It knows best.”
“We are but tugged at the whim of the Creator,” agreed the Tin Bear.
“Though we struggle in fog, our fate is in the cards,” called the Tin Ballerina. And who knew but that she was right, for the sound of the menacing creature that pursued them began to recede a little. The kites dragged Ada, the Tin Ballerina, the Tin Bear, and Humpty Dumpty so quickly that there was no more breath for talking. It reminded Ada of going for a walk with Miss Armstrong.
At length the mist began to dissipate. It seemed they must have covered many miles. The wind slackened. The kites drooped and failed. They found themselves pausing in a mature beech woods, right at the door of a small, stately home made of stone and, it seemed, crumpets and old boots.
They untied their strings and rolled them up, and they crammed the kites back in the valise of the Tin Bear. “You are most admirable marionettes,” admitted Ada.
“We have no say in the matter,” said the Tin Ballerina, without remorse. “Life blows us where it will. Hither, thither, and whether. We play our little witty roles. I should have liked to run a boardinghouse, but life has not given me that.”
“Hush,” said the Tin Bear. “Is that the wind, or has the Terror of the Fog followed us even here?”
Sure enough, a strangled iron cry reverberated a good ways off. If it had followed them this far, alas, it would come nearer. Ada rapped on the door, hoping for the best.
In short order the door was opened by a sleepy-looking housemaid in a mob-cap. “They’ve all gone off,” she said grumpily. “Go away.”
“They’ve gone, and we’ve come,” said the Tin Bear. “Let us in.”
“I’m not scared of a dancing bear with a portmanteau stuck on his noodle,” said the housemaid, but she opened the door just the same. “Very well, if there’s no stopping you.”
“Who’s gone off?” asked Ada as they crowded into the filthy kitchen. A pot of soup had bubbled down to grime and was gently scorching upon the hob.
“Why, the Duchess, of course, and the Cook. The Duchess went to the garden party in high dudgeon, but the Cook wasn’t invited, so she went to her sister’s in low spirits.”
“High Dudgeon and Low Spirits,” said Humpty Dumpty. “Very fine addresses, both. I don’t suppose you have a bite to offer us?”
“There’s naught to eat, what with that pig about,” said the housemaid, “so keep a proper tongue in your head or we’ll see how large a soufflé you might make.” She sat on a stool and picked up her knitting. She seemed to be devising a morning coat out of seaweed.
A terrible roar, all too close, descended upon the house. Through the window they could see crumpets falling off the roof. A glory of soot emitted from the chimney. Ada and the marionettes clung to one another, but the housemaid only yawned. “I wonder if that’s the Baby wanting its brekky,” said the housemaid. “Baby likes eggs.”
“I adore babies myself,” said Humpty Dumpty, flashing some pointy teeth.
“Is that the noise of the Jabberwock?” asked Ada.
“I couldn’t say. I wouldn’t know a Jabberwock from a Wockerjab. Could be Baby in a state. Perhaps Baby knows.” The housewife opened a little iron door to a bread oven. A pig poked his head out the aperture.
“Is that you making such a horrid row?” asked the housemaid. The pig shook his snout. The stertorous commotion seemed to have landed on the eaves, as the room was showered with crumbs and dust. The housemaid said to the guests, “Baby has a wicked chest cold, but that cough belongs to something else. Maybe that Jockerwab you was collecting, for a specimen, was it?”
“And what is a Jabberwock?” asked Ada.
At this the Baby turned his little snout up and rolled his little piggy eyes at her. He began to speak.
“And what’s a Jabberwock, you ask?
To answer is a gruesome task.
It is not ape though ape it may.
To be a bee it cannot be.
‘Not carp?’ you carp; ‘Not carp,’ I say.
Nor dog, though dogged, I decree.
It is not ewe—how you amuse!—
Nor fish, although you fish for clues—”
“Intolerable nonsense,” interrupted Humpty Dumpty.
“You’ve ruined my line of thought,” snapped the Baby.
“Just finish up, and then we’ll know what a Jabberwock truly is,” said Ada peaceably enough. “Knowledge comes at the end.”
“The end part goes like this,” said the Baby sharply.
“The only sound it makes is sproink,
And on the matter, by my bladder, that’s my final oink.”
Then the Baby wiggled out of the bread oven, fell on the floor, and turned and bit his own curly tail in annoyance.
“We didn’t hear all the other animals it isn’t,” said Ada. “So how will we recognize it when we find it?”
“It’ll find you,” said the Baby grimly, snuffling for crumbs under the pastry table.
“Does either of you know the way to the garden party?” said Ada. “That’s where we are headed. The marionettes are performing, and I am looking for a friend.”
“You’ll never find a friend, not with that attitude!” said Humpty Dumpty.
The housemaid said to Ada, “I’ll show you how to get to the garden gate, though I’d not go inside myself. I’m not invited.”
“And a good thing, too,” said the Baby, eating a tea towel off the airing rack. “You??
“No sugar-water for you,” said the housemaid, “if you’re going to make personal remarks.”
“It’s the only kind I know how to make.” The Baby began to run around the table, oinking up a storm. “I think the Jabberwock is eating the roof! Everybody hide.”
“Quick,” said the housemaid. She stood and put on the seaweed jacket. It now seemed as broad as a cape, and somehow it was capacious enough for all of them to huddle under. Crumbs of plaster dust like caster sugar showered upon them as she drew the edges of the coat together. “I always find if you’re caught at home without a vorpal blade, a seaweed frock serves as a fine caution against germs and Jabberwocks.” She fastened a snap somehow. They plunged into darkness.
CHAPTER 26
Lydia had had no difficulty persuading Siam to return with her to the Croft. “Your Mr. Winter will find us there,” she said. “He’s on an errand of foolishness or mercy, or perhaps both.”
Siam made no reply. Perhaps, Lydia thought, that description characterizes Mr. Winter’s attention to Siam, too.
Lydia thought it wouldn’t be proper for them to walk abreast, though she wasn’t sure why. She pressed ahead, remarking over her shoulder, “Mind the burrs,” and “We’ll turn here, it’s quicker.” They passed into a grove of saplings. For a moment they were out of sight of any rooftops or chimney pots, cows or river. The June greenery gave off its smell of sour and sweet fervor. She almost felt drunk. How wild the world was, when you paused to look over the stile, out any window, across the herbaceous borders of propriety, 1860s version.
She stopped and turned, without forethought. She faced Siam. He had just leaped over a spot of puddle and so he was right at her chin. He couldn’t back up because of the mud. She didn’t retreat either.
“How do you find it, traveling about with him?” she said.
How fast the shutters flew up, how fast the drapes were drawn! A look of uncomprehending stiffness such as one might catch from a Welshman. Siam said, “Mr. Josiah he make all the bookings and such.”
“Tell me about where you were born. Tell me about your family.”
“Nothing to say ’bout that. It’s all—” He made a gesture with his hand. “All gone.”
“We have little in common, but we have that,” she said. “My mother is gone, too. She died some months ago.”
He shrugged. She guessed that he knew there was nothing to say. They had nothing to give to each other. Grief cocoons the newly bereaved, and sometimes they never escape.
“I am going mad,” said Lydia. “Always responsible for Alice, always tending to my desperate father. Neither the matron of the house nor the daughter.” Oh, but she was sounding like Miss Armstrong now. “How do you manage, going from here to there? Are you escaping owners who would enslave you and bring you back to whichever southern state you fled from? Or do you have a destination? Is there a home for you ahead?”
“Mr. Josiah my home,” he said. His eyes were glazed. He looked over Lydia’s shoulder. A wind pushed the leaves about. It was like being swamped in a green tide rolling in.
“Are you being followed even in England?” she asked. He would not answer.
“You was looking for your sister,” he said at last.
“She can look after herself. She’ll show up when she’s hungry. I want to know more about Mr. Winter.”
“I can’t say. He away with that blue jay woman.”
She took that to be a caution. Calling Miss Armstrong a blue jay! “Is he often scarpering off with single women?”
“Let’s go.”
“I see,” she said. It wasn’t so much pity as irritation that turned her heel once more. She heard in his avoidance of the subject something untoward about the character of Mr. Winter. Her annoyance was shot through with a surge of bile and regret. The resulting admixture might have been called rage. She kept her voice still as a tyrant adult might. “Very well. Back to the morgue.”
A tension had arisen between them. When he stopped to pick up a stone or a feather or whatever attracted him, she didn’t wait. By the time she reached the Croft, he was quite a few steps behind. She didn’t hold the gate.
“Well?” asked Mrs. Brummidge.
“Alice is out larking somewhere with Ada Boyce, it seems. Miss Armstrong is rounding them up.”
“Quite right, too. And Mr. Winter’s young charge? What did you do with him?” Mrs. Brummidge looked foul and censorious.
“What do you think I did? I slaughtered him and pushed him in the river.”
“You need a nostrum for your wild panics, my girl. But one distress at a time. Mr. Darwin rang for your Mr. Yankee to walk him to the privy. His bowels are unsettled, he said.”
“Father will have to do it. For all I know, Mr. Winter has gone into town with Miss Armstrong. Perhaps they have eloped.”
Along, now, came Siam. Shuffling at the door.
“I think not. My laddio, you can attend Mr. Darwin. Go to the parlor and see if he will come with you.”
“T’aint my place,” he said.
“Well, it certainly isn’t mine!” snapped Mrs. Brummidge. “This house is in an uproar today. Go and offer some help. I’ve luncheon to get on the table.” She turned back to the oven and peered inside, batting against the steam and sniffing judiciously. “Not one of my better efforts, but it’ll have to do.” She turned. “What are you waiting for, child? Do as I say.”
Still he did not move. He juggled his hands in his pockets.
“What do you have there?” said Mrs. Brummidge, all glower. “Pocketed something from the Master’s vitrine, have you? Turn out your pocket, let me see, or I’ll be sacked for theft. I won’t find another position at my age, not like this one.”
Siam brought out a handful of treasures. Rather than hold them out in his open palm, he dropped them on the tabletop. Two stones from the riverbank. A bit of old conker shell, its auburn shine from last September all weathered to grey. A black ebony pawn from a chessboard.
“That isn’t from the set in the parlor. Upon my word, I believe it is.” Mrs. Brummidge turned pale. “Mr. Clowd’s chess game is useless without all its pieces. As I’ve been told often enough and no mistake. You’ve no right to go sneaking about and lifting things from us. I don’t care what your heathen background. You ought to know better by now. You’re in England.” She pronounced that with especial force, as if every knee should bow. “Miss Lydia, make him put it back, and bring him to apologize to the Master.”
“I only holded it,” said Siam. “I warn’t taking it.”
“You took it out of the house.”
“Didn’t know I was going out. Anyhows, now it’s back.”
Mrs. Brummidge wouldn’t discuss it further. “Miss Lydia.” In that tone, the cook’s word was law. She turned to withdraw the joint from the oven. “Drawing room, young lady. Have him replace the object at once. Then to the parlor, where you will see that this fellow apologizes for his behavior, and offers to help Mr. Darwin, poor soul, with his cramps and ailments.”
Lydia had been docile, almost amused at seeing Siam upbraided. “Come along,” she said. She led him up the steps and through the passage to the front of the house. Her father was in the parlor with Mr. Darwin. The door across the corridor, the door to the drawing room, was closed. “We don’t even come in here anymore,” she said. “I can’t think when you found the moment to steal around our house on your own. You might have opened any door and . . . found me unprepared for company.”
“When Mr. Josiah took Mr. Darwin out to visit the necessary. I just standing in the hallway. And your father, he crying or something. I coon’t go back in there. So I look around in this room ’stead.” His hand on the doorknob.
“Very well. Go in again.”
He opened the door. The drawing room was still shaded with curtains. Outlines, dus
“Why they cloths up on the picture?”
“It’s not a picture. It’s a mirror,” said Lydia at the doorway, gasping in small silent intakes, keeping her voice level. “A practice in this country to drape the mirrors when someone dies. It’s outrageous that you’ve made me come into this place. Put back the piece now, I don’t like to be here.”
“Who do,” he muttered.
“That’s a rude thing to say as a guest, in this house, in this nation.”
“I’d leave iffen I could.”
“You may get your chance.” She felt light-headed and fiery. “I’ll tell your dallying Mr. Winter, when and if he ever returns, that you’ve stolen from us. Perhaps he’ll reconsider whether to keep on endorsing your bid for freedom.” She went further then, swayed into recklessness by the miasma of loss in this chamber. “I do believe it may be the law of the land that thieves are exported. Certainly a fair number of felons have been marched to World’s End and sent down under, never to return.”
“Down under.” He said it with the sound of an oracle, slow and horrified at what was emerging from his mouth. He set the pawn upon the chessboard so softly there was no little click of ebony upon marble tile square. None of the other ebony pieces, nor their ivory twins, shuddered or flinched. The world was dead.
“Down under,” she said again. “Oh, what’s the bother?” There was noise from the kitchen, a warm deep note, Mr. Winter. He’d expected to meet up with Lydia again but she rejected him summarily, for his courtly attention to that stupid governess. He deserved whatever he got. “There he is. I shall go tell him at once of your perfidy. Wait here.”
She closed the door. He was alone in the dark, waiting.
Down under. Back home. What was the difference, what difference did it make? In a half hour, had he undone everything merciful that had happened to him in his otherwise merciless existence?