Chapter 24
The carriage wheels jostled along the cobblestones of the port of Ev.
Alice’s heart still quickened from her dream as she sat up straight, taking a few deep breaths.
Queen Rosemarie was waking, too. Outside, people buzzed about, walking haphazardly every which way.
As the carriage sped past merchants selling wares and throngs of wayfaring travelers, Alice feared they would strike someone.
She spotted a group of women in black robes wearing matching emblems dangling around their necks.
They clustered, whispering to one another beneath large hoods.
“Worshipers of chaos,” Rosemarie said quietly.
Alice was about to ask for clarification but noticed the queen’s reflection in the carriage glass. Her face showed devastation and fear.
“You asked what became of Roquat’s followers.
Those women, witches, are some.” Rosemarie’s voice trailed off as the carriage passed the women who now looked up from beneath their hoods.
Hard, weathered faces locked eyes on Alice.
She quickly looked away, but from the corner of her eye, she could see their heads turning beneath their hoods to follow her.
“The Adepts smile on us today,” the queen said, peering out from the carriage and tilting her face toward the bright sun.
She seemed to have shaken off her unease about the cloaked figures.
Alice, on the other hand, scanned the crowd around her for a moment, before finally dismissing the feeling of being watched.
“The Adepts, Your Majesty?” Alice asked, offering her hand to Bernard after he had escorted the queen down the carriage steps.
“The Adepts were the most powerful beings in our lands, chosen by the Great Goddess Lurline to protect the realm of Oz. They now watch over us from beyond,” Rosemarie explained, with the reverence of a devout believer.
A sharp snickering followed, as Princess Languidere sauntered toward them, twirling her parasol.
Rosemarie turned her back to the princess immediately and began to dictate instructions to Bernard. She truly despised her husband’s niece. “Alice, is it?” Languidere said, with a limp wrist outstretched.
“How do you do?” Alice took the princess’ hand and, as she did, gave a semi-curtsy out of caution.
“Aren’t you charming,” Languidere said, with the same taunting snicker. Alice felt her face heat up as Languidere’s eyes crawled from Alice’s toes to her face. “Tell me,” Languidere continued, cocking her head to one side. “How does a vagabond find themselves riding in the queen’s carriage?”
“It’s quite miraculous…” Alice stammered, feeling her cheeks flush further under Languidere’s scrutinizing gaze. Why was she smiling like that?
“That’s not very specific, is it?” Languidere teased, twirling her hair around her fingers. “Please, indulge my curiosity. How exactly?”
“Alice is a guest,” Rosemarie said, turning from Bernard. “She needn’t suffer your inquisition.”
“I’m only getting to know her, Your Majesty,” Languidere said, in a pouting tone far too childlike for someone of her age and stature.
Rosemarie nodded, hardly concealing the shuddering roll of her eyes, and turned again.
“I thought you would be prettier,” Languidere said quickly and quietly, getting closer to Alice as Rosemarie was escorted to the boat ramp by Bernard.
“I beg your pardon.” The comment caught Alice so off guard she wasn’t even sure if she’d heard it correctly.
“No need to beg,” Languidere said.
Alice prickled. The princess knew exactly what Alice had meant. “What I meant,” Alice said, trying not to slip into a condescending tone, for she had a feeling that the princess could out-condescend her, “was could you please repeat what you said?”
“Oh! You have a strange way of speaking, don’t you?” Languidere teased, still avoiding Alice’s request.
“Etiquette was very important to my baroness,” Alice said, knowing full well Languidere mocked her accent.
“My, isn’t Alice touchy!” Languidere gave her a limp little shove on her shoulder, but Alice didn’t find it very playful.
“I said I thought you would be prettier.” Then she tilted her head to the other side, grinned, and downright fluttered her eyelashes.
Alice’s face did not flinch, nor did she respond.
She just looked blankly at the tinsel-tongued twit.
“Oh, come now. You are pretty enough. You are just plain for the King to have taken some interest,” Languidere said.
Alice suddenly felt like everyone knew about the greenhouse incident.
“He mentioned you when I saw him last night.” Alice now understood who the King was expecting in the greenhouse.
“I’m to get to know you, on his behalf.” The princess grinned and pressed a shushing finger to her mouth.
“But… our little secret. Come, there’s so much for me to learn.
” Languidere turned abruptly to follow the queen.
“I’ll be just a moment…”
The princess had waved her hand over her shoulder before Alice even finished making up an excuse. She did not care that Alice did not follow, and Alice certainly did not care to follow her.
Alice stood at the dock, watching the grand spectacle unfolding before her.
Queen Rosemarie was being led up the ramp to the deck of the opulent emerald enamel-covered yacht, while Princess Languidere successfully distracted a man in a tailored scarlet jacket who leaned out of what looked like a gypsy’s cart, or what Alice imagined, from books, a gypsy’s cart to look like.
If Languidere were not flouncing about the man in the cart, Alice would have liked to peruse the odd lamps and apothecary jars displayed on the shelves outside the cart’s window, but not with her there.
The guards bustled about, transferring trunks and burlap-covered rose bushes from the second carriage onto the yacht, which was adorned with an ornate plaque reading The Maiden Mist.
Finally, at the yacht’s loading ramp, Blinkem and Tinkerton wheeled the mysterious invention past the guards.
The bustle of people at the river’s edge and the foreign land in the distance left Alice feeling odd.
She had no idea where she was, let alone how she had gotten there, and yet here she was, preparing to board a royal yacht to travel to the Northern Quadrant of a place called Oz.
It was all so strange, but then again, nothing in her life had ever been straightforward.
But why was it they were traveling there, and at such great lengths?
Alice watched as other women her age went about their business, purchasing fruit and striding purposefully to their next destinations, likely to return to their homes.
There was no home for Alice to search for, no family—only Wendy.
For a moment, she imagined Wendy running through the crowd to greet her.
She scanned the faces of the women in the port, wondering if Wendy could be among them.
Wendy, if she were safe, was trying to find a way back to Alice.
Alice knew this; they were all they had in the world—or worlds, as it seemed.
From the corner of her eye, Alice saw a kitten flash across the cobble.
Although her sighting was brief, she saw that the cat, black with a white-tipped tail, was the spitting image of Dinah.
Alice wove into the crowd of people, looking to the ground for one more glimpse of the lookalike.
She spotted it hunched low beside a barrel and walked slowly toward it, as she would have as a girl when Dinah refused to come inside.
The cat wiggled its ears, which were pointed at attention, while its eyes focused intently on the yacht.
Alice followed the cat’s stare and saw for what it prowled.
A small mouse was perched on the timber of the levee, as the water lapped above the structure.
Then the water drastically bobbed, and another mouse came from below the timber on the other side of the levee.
Once more, the water bobbed below. It was a family being flooded from their home!
The black cat was ready to strike at any moment.
Alice then had the awful feeling one has when recalling a shameful moment of one’s past. Only she felt shame over a dream.
Alice tried not to recall the terrible things she’d said to the poor mouse who’d saved her from drowning in her Wonderland dream. Unfortunately, her own voice echoed in her head, telling the poor mouse that Dinah would eat him.
She shook off the thought and walked swiftly toward the cat to intervene in its attack on the mice. She saw Blinkem coming toward her down the ramp, but she kept walking.
The cat fled as Alice got closer, so she turned to check on the family of mice on the levee, when Blinkem stood before her. “I’d suggest we don’t say too much to our travel companions,” he said, with a glance over his shoulder.
Alice felt pique all over again that these were his first words to her since he’d failed to appear at the greenhouse last night—not even a hello, nor a word of apology!
“Is that all you have to say to me?” Blinkem looked as shocked as Alice felt that she’d said it aloud.
The exchange with Languidere had in fact left her very touchy.
“Where are we going, Blinkem?” Alice demanded. He looked around, then leaned close to her.
“We are going to the North. There is… a friend of mine, Tattypoo, and she will be able to help us. To help you.” He glanced around again.
“I don’t wish to say more, the port has many ears.
” Alice turned to see the women—witches of chaos, as Rosemarie had called them— peering at Alice through the crowd.
Alice nodded, though she felt incredibly uneasy.
Then her eye was drawn by an enormous eagle swooping down toward the levee as the mouse scurried over the sun-bleached wood.
“Oh no!” Alice shouted toward the mice. By the time it was said, the eagle had latched onto a mouse and ascended again, but the small mouse slipped free and fell into the water.
The eagle, which should have flown off to reposition, instead dove into the water, a behavior no eagle had shown in Kensington Gardens.
Suddenly, Alice felt a strange familiarity watching the mouse in the water, crossing as she had on the back of one in her dreams.
Blinkem set off toward the rodents, then turned quickly. “There’s nothing we can do,” he said, although he seemed pained by the fact. But Alice was now perplexed by the eagle’s behavior and the familiarity of the scene to her old dream. She walked past the boat ramp toward the levee’s edge.
The water ebbed and flowed. Alice watched as it dipped, and suddenly a swarm of mice emerged from a hidden crevice below, scurrying frantically in the water to cross to the other side, while the eagle flapped wildly in the water.
Alice watched the hoard of mice attempting to swim around the flapping eagle. Why were the mice risking their lives to reach the other side, where the river lay in wait to swallow them whole?
As the water rushed back again, Alice’s eyes fell upon the wood slats that submerged and re-emerged in the water, revealing a rotted knot from which sand and silt were being released.
Her eyes then followed the wet stone to the cobblestones above where the hole that leaked earth was located.
She observed as water seeped up from small, sand-filled cracks in the cobblestones.
The water lapped again, but this time there was not enough to splash over the edge, and the cracks did not bubble.
Alice held her breath and waited for the next gush.
It came, and on the opposite wall of the levee, a green algae rim about half an inch thick was suddenly exposed above the waterline.
Alice noticed how murky the water was becoming, with silt and sand actively rushing into the levee from somewhere beneath.
The road on which she stood was being flooded beneath her, and the earth leaked out into the levee.
“Blinkem!” Alice screamed, turning to find him jogging toward her. “The levee is going to collapse!”