Page 2 of Wondrous

I stepped back, stricken. I simply couldn’t walk back up the stairs, back to the bedroom I’d said goodbye to and the life I’d abandoned. It would feel like stepping inside of a ghost.

Someone snickered. Slowly, I turned.

Behind me stood Edith’s four-year-old daughter, Tansy, in her white nightgown. She looked a little like me and a little like Edith, with Edith’s dark hair and my wide-set blue eyes. Ordinarily, Tansy was deceptively adorable, but at that moment her hair was in disarray and woven with cobwebs and dead bugs. She must have been up in the attic again, where Edith and our parents had repeatedly forbidden her to go.

Edith liked to say that Tansy was half wild. This was inaccurate, because Tansy was more than half wild, in my estimation. Three-quarters at least. I spent as little time with her as possible, because I did not much care for having my hair pulled or unpleasant things plopped into my tea.

Tansy opened her mouth, ready to shout for my father and land me in a world of trouble. She’d get in trouble, too, but Tansy was immune to punishment, having learned to behave even worse in the face of it, which made my family hesitant to give her what she deserved.

So I said the only words I knew that would quiet her.

“Tansy,” I whispered, “do you want to get into trouble? Big trouble?”

The child went still. Then, slowly, a smile spread across her face.

“Good,” I said, smiling back. “Show me how you sneak into the garden after Grandfather locks the doors.”

I had no actual evidence that Tansy knew how to sneak out, and I didn’t need it. When it came to disobedience, Tansy left no stone unturned. Another thing Edith liked to say, particularly when I complained about my niece, was that I had been just as wild as Tansy when I was a child. I found this hard to believe, though admittedly I remembered little from when I was four.

“A story,” Tansy whispered back. “If I show you, I want a story. You can tell me tomorrow.”

Her chin jutted in a way that I knew meant argument would be fruitless. I had often told Tansy stories of Wonderland, even when she was too little to understand them—I’d needed to tell someone, or at least, someone who wouldn’t tell me to keep my imagination to myself. Mother and Father had ordered me to stop when they found out, but by then it was too late, and Tansy was captivated. She particularly loved hearing about the White Rabbit, with his waistcoat and pocket watch, living in his pink cottage in the woods.

“All right,” I murmured, guilt prickling. “I’ll tell you a story—as soon as I get back.”

It wasn’t necessarily a lie, I reasoned. True, I didn’t intend to ever come back, but the rabbit hole might have closed, or the Queen of Hearts might throw me out of Wonderland. Anything was possible. My conscience, though, turned its nose up at my reasoning, and the guilt grew heavier. Tansy’s dust-smudged face lit up, and she nodded, not recognizing the difference between what she’d demanded and what I’d promised.

Tansy turned and dashed up the hall. She veered right, up the servant’s stairs and down a narrow empty corridor that I barely recognized, then made a beeline for a window at the end. She stuck her small fingers into the bottom and heaved it open.

“We’re too high up,” I protested. Tansy ignored me and lifted herself onto the sill.

When I peered out, I drew in a breath. Vines of ivy climbed up this side of the house, and Tansy was already clambering down them like a ladder. Surely the ivy was too fragile to support my weight.

But the ivy held. It was old, old ivy, the vines like witch’s fingers, rough and callused and swamp gray. Once I was certain of my footing, I reached back through the window and lifted my suitcase over the sill, then dropped it below me. I made it to the bottom, where Tansy waited, watching me with glee. I believe she would have laughed if I had fallen, but she seemed to enjoy the drama of my success and clapped when my feet touched the ground.

“Thank you,” I said. I knelt before my niece, feeling that I ought to say goodbye, ideally in a wise way that Tansy would remember as she grew older.

But before I could, the little girl turned and dashed away. Our adventure was over, and now she was off to stuff herself with strawberries until she was sick.

Shoving aside the guilt, which was accompanied by an odd pinch of regret, I hefted my suitcase and set off.

My father’s estate was large, consisting of fields and forests woven with paths and streams, and it took me a long time to cross it. I couldn’t help glaring at the fields as I went by. I had overheard my parents talking in hushed voices about those fields just the other day, and about how, if I didn’t marry the Baron and soon, they would have to consider selling them.

The fields were pretty in the daylight, a mixture of sheep-trimmed grass and wildflower meadows, now hidden in darkness. I felt a familiar anger rise up within me. I am not a field! I wanted to shout, and it was true. My parents didn’t equate us at all. A daughter could be bartered away, while a field could not.

I hurried on and at last came to the public park that bordered Father’s estate. Everything was so dark and unfamiliar, and I had the strangest sense that, if I turned around, I would see someone following me. Once or twice, I thought I could hear their footsteps. Or perhaps my own ghost was behind me, the ghost of the girl who had first fallen down the rabbit hole, chasing me as I’d chased the White Rabbit.

Naturally, these ghoulish thoughts only made me run faster.

At last I reached the rabbit hole, which glowed faintly in the moonlight. I shoved my way in, scraping my knees in my haste. It was a narrower fit than it had been a year ago. I reached the edge, where the rabbit hole sloped down, down, down, and there I stopped.

“Ready, Hedgewitch?” I said. The hedgehog bit me encouragingly. Oh, how I missed Dinah, my sweet-tempered cat! But my parents had taken Dinah away from me last year and given her to a distant cousin, partly as a punishment and partly as a reward to dangle in exchange for my good behavior.

I supposed I would never see her again.

A strange assortment of smells wafted up from that dark hole: the salty brine of the ocean, freshly baked biscuits, lush gardens and trees. I drew a steadying deep breath, because I didn’t know if I would ever go back home.

And I didn’t care.