Chapter 40 #2
“There!” The queen clapped. “Do you see now? You are worth the things you receive for you are good and just!” The queen was delighted, sitting further forward in her chair again. “Now you know who you are and what it is you seek! Simple as that.”
Alice looked at the queen, uncertain what to say.
“What powers do you possess?” Gayelette asked quite abruptly.
“I do not possess powers,” Alice said frankly. She knew without question Gayelette was a witch, as the glittering libre told her so.
“I will admit, I have the upper hand with that inquiry,” Gayelette said, after a moment of intensely searching Alice’s eyes. “You speak the truth, but you are wrong.”
Alice was a bit dumbfounded, and before she could press the matter, Gayelette continued.
“I will tell you something of yourself now.” Gayelette leaned forward, and Alice held her breath.
“You have greater gifts than the matters you mentioned. I can see your light, and also your storm. You are a witch—make no mistake. One with great potential. You must simply know it. Then, you can harness it.” Gayelette leaned back with a resolute nod. “Now you may ask me one question.”
“I don’t see how I could be,” Alice began.
“Nonsense. You are a witch. Facts are facts. You have yet to connect to it. And I’m not an oracle, so I cannot tell you how and when, but what I say is law. So, please, a question for me.” The queen waved.
Alice, confused and a bit perturbed, blurted, “Who are you?”
Gayelette smiled with exuberance, seeming to indicate she thought Alice a worthy opponent.
“I am a queen who is exceptionally beautiful and both extremely good and extremely just. I am, however, not lenient. Some may say I am merciless.” She nodded grandly.
“I want things to be their greatest and most beautiful. Beauty is the most important goal for which one should strive. When that potential is not met or, worse, it is disrupted, it must pay a price. Now, if I were to offer you advice, would you take it, deep in your heart, and use it when you have forgotten to be honest with yourself, or even when you have begun to doubt yourself?” The queen’s gaze pierced Alice, as though she saw through the swirling storm of contradictions that floated inside her.
Alice shifted rigidly in her chair before nodding.
“Yes,” Alice said as a feeling settled in her for the Ruby Queen—trust. Yet, her unease remained.
Why had she been sent here? She would have preferred returning to the Munchkin country, and she suddenly missed Blinkem, Tinkerton, Nimmie and Tick Tock.
Where had they been sent? What were they doing right now?
“When you, Alice, do everything in your power to do what is just, you will need to accept the outcome, good or bad, for it is no one’s responsibility but your own.
You will accept that it is yours to bear, and you will do so with surrender, for you have done what is right.
You will do this?” The queen waited as Alice processed her words.
“I have once been told this before, but in truth, I did not accept it,” Alice admitted, thinking of Wendy again. “But I promise to do so.”
“There.” The queen sat back in complete satisfaction with a smile that beamed.
“Now I know your heart, Alice. You must yourself trust it. You must trust yourself.” The queen’s smile faded.
“Alice, chaos pursues you, that is clear. The reasons may not be, but when you meet it, you must know and trust yourself, even when we don’t have all the answers, or it will win. ”
Alice nodded, as the overwhelming dread that rushed into her with Gayelette’s words caught in her throat.
“Enough of that,” Gayelette stood, extending a hand to Alice. “Let us see if we can’t bring a little levity to our situation.” Alice smiled, taking her hand, hoping terribly there were no more games.
“How do you like how you’ve been done up?” Gayelette asked, leading Alice across the room as she gestured to Alice’s elegant dress and perfectly styled hair.
“The dress I like very much,” Alice replied, which was true.
“And your hair?” Queen Gayelette smiled. It seemed she knew it was not to Alice’s liking.
“Oh, the curls are a bit much.” Alice pulled at the tight ringlet that fell from her forehead.
“Simple.” The queen stopped Alice to stand before her, then waved a hand, and Alice felt the structured hairstyle loosen and flow over her shoulders, moving as if guided by someone’s hand. That little trick would have made the primping process much faster!
“How?” Alice asked, reaching up to touch it.
The queen smiled, delighted by Alice’s amazement. “I am a witch, if you’ve not gathered.”
“This is all real?” Alice asked, mostly to herself. Dragons and gnomes and strange creatures were one thing, but a queen with magical abilities was much more perplexing to her. Why? She did not know.
“Come.” The queen took Alice by her hand and turned her to face a tall mirror embedded in ornate molding on the wall. The mirror’s glass held a tint, like the smoke from a flame had burned too close to it.
“You do not wish to be more beautiful, but that is truly my most dazzling ability. I was but a plain thing, and by my own volition I am…”
“Very beautiful,” Alice said, gazing upon the queen’s reflection in the glass.
“May I try something? With your hair. If you hate it, we can put it exactly the way it was.”
Alice had no hesitation. She wanted to see the queen wield magic again. “Please!”
“Your hair, it’s not quite gold and it’s not quite wheat,” the queen mused. “Something of it pales in the comparison of your beautiful face. I would love to see what you look like framed with a gold that has the tint of ruby.”
“Red hair? My sister Emily had red hair!” Alice was astonished. The Ruby Queen did know her heart, even the frivolous parts of it. “I was always so envious of how radiant it was.”
“Let us see if it is meant for you.” The queen removed her ring and satin gloves, placed them on a table beside the mirror, twirled her finger with a strand of Alice’s not quite gold or wheat hair, and closed her eyes behind Alice.
The strand shimmered and the dull hair slowly began to saturate with red—like the lightest patches of fox fur.
The color stretched from tip to root and, once the full strand was red, the rest of Alice’s hair took the same color.
Alice could not believe her eyes, and not just regarding the astonishing trick. The color seemed more fitting for her than the one she had always had.
“Oh my,” said the queen.
“Does it not suit?” Alice asked, gazing upon herself, suddenly self-conscious that the queen didn’t see her as this version of herself.
“Oh, it does, Alice. I believe I have seen you like this in a dream. I feel like I am truly seeing you! The luminance inside is now properly shining on the outside.”
The words spread deeply inside of Alice, and tears came to her eyes. She quickly wiped them away, but they came faster and with tremendous volume. How silly this was!
“My dear, tell me what is it that has you so touched?” The queen turned Alice to her, touching the tears that fell, like a mother would.
“My sister, and mother, really… I was so young and spent so much time in the keep of others. I don’t believe I have had someone, a woman, who…”
“Doted over you? Told you just how beautiful you are?”
“Cared enough to see me for that.” Miss Molloy, as much as she’d doted on Alice in her way, had always been so distracted.
“As silly as it is to think a tint of hair could make me feel this way.” Alice felt like she was going to sob unpleasantly.
This was not what she wanted at all! She couldn’t compose herself.
“Here,” the queen said. She took Alice’s head and rested it against her chest, wrapped her arms around her and hushed her, slowly petting the lovely red hair as Alice cried. How long had grief over her mother lived just beneath the surface of her skin? She cried without any way to control it.
“You are never too old to have that sort of love and care, Alice,” the queen said softly. “Accept it when you can. Accept my admiration now.”
And so, Alice did accept it. She did not wish to have hair that was neither this nor that.
She wished to feel seen as the queen saw her.
She wished to see herself as such. Alice didn’t mind being alone in her life, but she realized now that it would be much easier if she thought more highly of herself.
“I am beautiful, and good, and just,” Alice whispered in the queen’s arms. “Thank you, Your Majesty,” she said, closing her eyes in acceptance of the queen’s tender affection.
Rosemarie woke not on the marble floor but propped in her Roseland chamber with wet cloths over her forehead and sternum.
Bernard stood dutifully at her door. “Your Majesty.” He approached at her waking.
As she cupped her belly to check the wellness of her child, reality came crashing back in like a screaming shrew.
Her husband was in league with Mombi and Roquat, and somewhere Alice was in peril.
“Have you heard word of Alice?” Rosemarie spoke through the tight dryness in her throat.
“However you sent word worked. She is safely at the Ruby Palace.”
But how had word come in return? “Does the king know?” Rosemarie struggled to sit up.
“Yes, the message came from Queen Gayelette by albatross.”
“Bernard, please, take me to the greenhouse,” she said as panic rose and sharp pains struck her abdomen. Her husband would inform Mombi of Alice’s whereabouts. He may have done so already! “There is no time! The roses may be the only way to warn her!”