throughout history. For your future welfare, for the welfare of your children and grandchildren, every one of you must etch your names into what will be the foundation of a new government in Wonderland: the Pledge of the Unimaginative!”
The Clubs stepped from the stage and the audience heaved, sympathetic Wonderlanders clamoring for a word from the wealthy couple or pushing to be among the first to add their names to the Pledge: an edifice of marbled dolomite sculpted to resemble an oversized In Queendom Speramus —the tome that for generations had provided the foundation of a queen’s education. In the commotion, Alyss’ hand was yanked from Dodge’s. No! Her freckles smearing, she struggled to reach him again, to be free of the pressing bodies, while he bumped people out of his way, clearing a path toward her as—
A news tweaker noticed the struggling Wonderlander with the stained cheeks. Something about her struck him as familiar. Then a stray arm knocked her wig askew. “Queen Alyss?” he breathed. He tugged at those around him, pointing. “The queen! Queen Alyss is here!”
His cries attracted the Clubs’ attention. Soldiers forced their way through the crowd, closing in fast on Wonderland’s sovereign and finding—
A dirty wig on the pavement.
“Block the exits!” a Five Card ordered.
Access to and from the lot was immediately cut off, blockaded by Club soldiers, and somewhere within the gathering of suddenly nervous anti-imaginationists, amid all that scrap Wonderland steel: Alyss Heart and Dodge Anders trapped.
CHAPTER 7
T HEY COULD not remain at Talon’s Point, the highest peak in the Snark Mountains, as oblivious to the world below as the Wonderlander they mourned. Hatter Madigan had said this more times than he remembered, trying to convince himself as much as his daughter. Yet they were still here.
“We can’t stay,” he said again.
Homburg Molly merely stared at the faded glow of fire crystals in the pit. Since the last new moon, they had ventured from the cave only to forage for winglefruit lower on the mountain. They spent nights sitting in meditative quiet beside Weaver’s grave, Molly fingering her mother’s crushed Millinery ID chip, which hung from a strip of flugelberry vine she wore around her neck, while Hatter ran his fingertips over the formulas in Weaver’s alchemy notebooks. The formulas themselves were meaningless to him. But Weaver had entered them into the books. Weaver, with her precise, delicate hands. He would have to learn to live with her absence. Molly too. Leaving Talon’s Point would not make it easier.
“She should have a Hereafter Plant,” Molly said, getting to her feet.
Hatter wasn’t at all sure the plant would grow in the shadowy atmosphere of the cave. “We’ll bring a seed on our next visit.”
In a moody silence, Molly packed blankets, along with her mother’s notebooks and diary, into the satchel left in the cave years earlier. She had allowed herself to watch the diary, once and only once . . .
Hatter pressed the covers of what resembled a pocket-sized hardback from Earth in every particular except that, splayed open, it projected on to the air an animated holograph of Weaver. Molly flinched when she saw her: Weaver concerned over what had become of the queendom under Redd, for the toddler daughter she’d left at the Alyssian camp in the Everlasting Forest. Everyone else supposed Hatter dead or lost to Earth forever, but not Weaver. She’d wanted to leave him word—at Talon’s Point, where the two of them had, in better times, made a refuge for themselves—of the daughter he didn’t know existed. Hatter said he hoped the diary would help explain things, but afterward, Molly was quiet and she never asked to view it again.
She stood at her mother’s grave with her head lowered while Hatter stepped to the hollow in which he’d stowed his Millinery gear: his top hat and wrist-blades; his belt that could flick out sabers with a punch
The Clubs stepped from the stage and the audience heaved, sympathetic Wonderlanders clamoring for a word from the wealthy couple or pushing to be among the first to add their names to the Pledge: an edifice of marbled dolomite sculpted to resemble an oversized In Queendom Speramus —the tome that for generations had provided the foundation of a queen’s education. In the commotion, Alyss’ hand was yanked from Dodge’s. No! Her freckles smearing, she struggled to reach him again, to be free of the pressing bodies, while he bumped people out of his way, clearing a path toward her as—
A news tweaker noticed the struggling Wonderlander with the stained cheeks. Something about her struck him as familiar. Then a stray arm knocked her wig askew. “Queen Alyss?” he breathed. He tugged at those around him, pointing. “The queen! Queen Alyss is here!”
His cries attracted the Clubs’ attention. Soldiers forced their way through the crowd, closing in fast on Wonderland’s sovereign and finding—
A dirty wig on the pavement.
“Block the exits!” a Five Card ordered.
Access to and from the lot was immediately cut off, blockaded by Club soldiers, and somewhere within the gathering of suddenly nervous anti-imaginationists, amid all that scrap Wonderland steel: Alyss Heart and Dodge Anders trapped.
CHAPTER 7
T HEY COULD not remain at Talon’s Point, the highest peak in the Snark Mountains, as oblivious to the world below as the Wonderlander they mourned. Hatter Madigan had said this more times than he remembered, trying to convince himself as much as his daughter. Yet they were still here.
“We can’t stay,” he said again.
Homburg Molly merely stared at the faded glow of fire crystals in the pit. Since the last new moon, they had ventured from the cave only to forage for winglefruit lower on the mountain. They spent nights sitting in meditative quiet beside Weaver’s grave, Molly fingering her mother’s crushed Millinery ID chip, which hung from a strip of flugelberry vine she wore around her neck, while Hatter ran his fingertips over the formulas in Weaver’s alchemy notebooks. The formulas themselves were meaningless to him. But Weaver had entered them into the books. Weaver, with her precise, delicate hands. He would have to learn to live with her absence. Molly too. Leaving Talon’s Point would not make it easier.
“She should have a Hereafter Plant,” Molly said, getting to her feet.
Hatter wasn’t at all sure the plant would grow in the shadowy atmosphere of the cave. “We’ll bring a seed on our next visit.”
In a moody silence, Molly packed blankets, along with her mother’s notebooks and diary, into the satchel left in the cave years earlier. She had allowed herself to watch the diary, once and only once . . .
Hatter pressed the covers of what resembled a pocket-sized hardback from Earth in every particular except that, splayed open, it projected on to the air an animated holograph of Weaver. Molly flinched when she saw her: Weaver concerned over what had become of the queendom under Redd, for the toddler daughter she’d left at the Alyssian camp in the Everlasting Forest. Everyone else supposed Hatter dead or lost to Earth forever, but not Weaver. She’d wanted to leave him word—at Talon’s Point, where the two of them had, in better times, made a refuge for themselves—of the daughter he didn’t know existed. Hatter said he hoped the diary would help explain things, but afterward, Molly was quiet and she never asked to view it again.
She stood at her mother’s grave with her head lowered while Hatter stepped to the hollow in which he’d stowed his Millinery gear: his top hat and wrist-blades; his belt that could flick out sabers with a punch
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