Page 12 of Wondrous

Not back to the cart, though I wished I could—it was too slow and rickety to function as a vehicle of escape. Instead I fled into the Tulgey Wood, across Wrong Way Path—which, it turned out, had actually been the wrong way. As I ran, I caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye, close to where I had left the cart.

I plunged into the forest on the other side of the path. Someone was shouting—not Alicia; it was a man’s voice, deep and commanding.

The shout came again, closer this time. “There! She went that way!”

I cried out, unable to stop myself. Did Alicia have allies? Had she brought others from our world into Wonderland with her? I was trying to make sense of it, and flee for my life, and navigate the treacherous understory of the forest, all at the same time, when I plunged through the draping boughs of a cherry tree and straight into the chest of one of the Queen of Hearts’ soldiers.

Chapter 6

To call it a chest wasn’t entirely accurate. The Queen’s soldiers didn’t have bodies in the conventional sense, and what I bounced off was flat and slightly springy, with an uncanny texture and warmth, almost like skin.

I screamed, but before I could flee the other way, a different soldier was manhandling me to my feet. A third motioned at me menacingly with the lance they each carried, which came to a sharp point. My vision swam, and I felt a nosebleed starting from my collision with the soldier. They dragged me back to the path, which was abruptly swarming with more card soldiers, several of whom were examining the cart. Two held Alicia immobilized between them. She was panting and disheveled, and one of the soldiers gripping her had a tear in a corner of his paper body.

“Might I ask what this is about?” I demanded in my most coldly polite voice. “It isn’t gentlemanly to treat young ladies with such little respect.”

Alicia snorted and muttered something that sounded a lot like “stuck-up toff.”

“Orders from the Queen, miss,” said the soldier who’d pointed his weapon at me, in an offhand and entirely unapologetic manner. He was sallow-faced, with permanent scowl lines between his eyes. “We’re to escort you to the castle with the others.”

“The others?” I repeated. “What others are you—”

“I’ve been pestered with these questions too many times today,” he snapped. “You—all of you—ask far too many questions. Close your mouth and do as we say.”

I drew back at his tone, not daring to press him further. Of all the creatures I’d encountered in Wonderland, I found the Queen’s soldiers the most troubling. I suspected they’d been men at one time, in the same way I suspected the March Hare had once been something other than a hare. But now they were something—else. Their arms and legs were ordinary enough, and everything from the neck up, but their bodies had been warped and stretched into the shape of playing cards.

This wasn’t the worst part of it. The worst part was that they didn’t know they weren’t men.

Most of the time, anyway. They ate and drank as if they were ordinary men, but when the food and drink reached their mouths, it bounced off as if encountering an opposing magnet and tumbled to the ground. The soldiers, though, chewed away on thin air as if nothing had happened, as if they couldn’t see what was going on.

I didn’t know for certain that they were enchanted—Wonderland worked in strange ways, and perhaps the card soldiers had always been thus, or perhaps they were cards that had been turned partway into men, rather than the other way round. But I still remembered the soldier who had visited the Hatter for tea. For a brief moment, he’d seemed to notice the tea slopping down his card chest and had let out the most dreadful cry I’d ever heard. And then, even more strangely, he’d flinched and gone oddly blank, as if an invisible hand had slapped him across the face. For the rest of the day, I couldn’t stop shivering.

“What are you doing, soldier?” a sharp voice demanded. Another card soldier marched into the fray. He looked to be a few years older than me, and boyishly handsome, with dark eyes and a warm smile.

“Tobias!” I cried, nearly weeping with relief. The soldier’s name wasn’t really Tobias, because the card soldiers didn’t have names—not that they remembered, anyway. But after we became friends, I had asked if I could give him one. His brow had furrowed briefly, as if at a memory, but then one of his bright smiles had broken across his face, and he’d said it sounded like a fine idea.

“Alice!” Tobias winced at the sight of my nose. “Are you all right? I instructed them not to touch you. I knew you’d come with us willingly if we just explained the importance of it.”

“The Queen gave us an order, not a request,” the severe-looking soldier snapped.

Tobias gave the man a cold look. “The Queen gave you nothing. She gave me an order, which I will decide how to execute. Leave us, soldier.”

The man looked as if he wanted to argue. But Tobias’s rank, or perhaps something in his expression, seemed to make him think better of it, and he merely saluted and marched away with the others.

“You’re—you’re in charge?” I said.

Tobias smiled his familiar bright smile, which made his eyes crinkle up. “I was promoted to captain last week,” he said. He drew a handkerchief out of some unseen fold in the card, as if it were a pocket, and dabbed gently at my nose. This would have been disturbing if his entire person weren’t already too disturbing to dwell on.

“Congratulations,” I said slowly, wondering if this wouldn’t put Tobias at greater risk of being in the blast radius of the Queen’s temper.

“I’m sorry about all this,” he said, rubbing his hand over his black hood. I’d often wondered, idly, if the card soldiers had hair—though whether this would make them appear more human or merely more uncanny, I didn’t know.

“I’m ever so glad to see you, Tobias,” I said. “What on earth is going on?”

“Ahem,” Alicia said loudly. She was not close enough to hear our conversation and clearly felt she deserved to be included in it. I ignored her.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” Tobias said, frowning. “I’m sorry, Alice—but I’m under orders to simply escort you to the palace.”

I swallowed but didn’t bother to argue with this—I had seen no evidence that the card soldiers were capable of ignoring an order from the Queen of Hearts. “Who is she?” I said quietly, gesturing with my chin toward Alicia.