Day: Alice and the Mad Tryst (Dog Roses)_Days of Blood and Roses: A Magical Girl Thriller

> ‘How would you like to live in Looking-glass House, Kitty? . . .’

> —Lewis Carroll,

> Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There,

> Chapter I: “Looking-Glass House”

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“Alice and the Mad Tryst”

By Linda Kouri

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Part III: Auna

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A sleeping ‘Alice’ appeared standing like a statue before a mirror within the four-pillared crossing of a cathedral and stayed that way for a time, while Princess Ozma’s handkerchief and the blank book lay at her feet, leaning against the pillar.

How long her slumber lasted may have been a few seconds or few decades, but when ‘Alice’ awoke, it was to the memories of another girl named Alice saying a French idiom, ‘La vie est drôle’ (or ‘Life is funny’), before pushing the double doors open into a ballroom and massacring all those masqueraders inside. And all at once, she felt herself standing on spaghetti legs, so she propped her hand against the mirror affixed to a pillar before her and blinked those thoughts away. For a time, she stood there, recuperating, then looked at her reflection and noticed the letters of her name (‘Alice’) flickering above her head and dissipating before her eyes.

At the sight, tears trailed her cheeks, for the name that ‘Lorina’ and ‘Edith’ had used was now null and void, so she put her hand to her face and said, “Who am I?”

Yet to her question, she received no answer.

After wiping her tears away, she peered at the reflection again and noticed three other mirrors on three other pillars. She turned and saw the pillars and the mirrors staring back at her in idiot indifference. She cast her gaze further off and saw the rows and rows of pews and the nave bisecting them from the crossing to the baptismal font just before the double doors of the narthex. Then she turned and looked towards the steps leading into the choir stalls funneling a throughway towards the altar, where stained-glass lancet windows filtered a kaleidoscope of colors over it. Wherever this place was, she hadn’t the slightest clue, so she did the next best thing.

She walked around to each mirror, turning clockwise as she went, and saw that each bore a suit from a card deck emblazoned on the crown molding of their frames: the Spades mirror behind her to her left, the Diamonds mirror before her to her left, the Clubs mirror before her to her right, and the Hearts mirror behind her to her right. She circled around the crossing again, stopping by each pillar and looking at each mirror as if she was making the rounds of the Stations of the Cross, till she returned to the Hearts mirror that she had stood facing when she awoke.

Then she cast her gaze down the nave towards the font and the double doors of the narthex. She figured she needed to walk off her qualms about her identity and ventured down the nave, passing row after row of pews and surveying her surroundings. Looking left and right, she saw the arcading of the nave with its piers supporting a foundation of pointed arches, on which sat a triforium and a clerestory above it, where rows of clerestory windows brought in the morning light slanting over the pews beneath the ribbed vaulting of its ceiling.

When she reached the font, she peered into the glassy waters of its basin at her face, but there was no reflection there. She then dipped her hand into it to make the sign of the cross, yet the water burned her fingers, and she pulled away, wincing and grimacing and clenching her hand into a tight fist. Then, when the pain subsided, she looked at it and saw soot there, and when she looked into the water basin again, she saw dog roses scattered at the bottom of the basin.

Fed up with the place, she ran towards the narthex and pulled on the handles of the double doors, yet neither door would budge. She pulled on them again and again, yanking against the handles till she was leaning back in a dangerous diagonal, yet they refused to budge even a little bit. Then she thought for a moment, figuring that the doors might have been barred shut from the other side. So she stalked towards the left aisle and found an alcove with a copy of Michelangelo’s Pietà, Mary cradling the body of Jesus in her arms, accompanied by rows of unlit candles on the surrounding ledge of the alcove.

Beside the lowest row of candles lay a trigger lighter, so she took it and attempted to light one of the candles, but it wouldn’t light. Thinking it was a defective candle, she attempted to light another candle, then another one, and then another, yet none of the candles took her flame.

She replaced the lighter on the ledge and looked at Mary’s dour face, her eyes almost closed as if she were staring into memories of happier times with her Son. She stared at her calm expression, as if Mary had resigned herself to the cruel reality that her beloved Son was dead after witnessing His crucifixion. She imagined that smooth stone face of hers with puffy eyes and tear-soaked cheeks and wrinkles in her brow left over from crying over her Son’s agony. And in that moment, in that empathetic bond between time and space and life and death, the girl reached out her hand and touched Mary's face as if she were wiping away her tears and comforting a grieving mother.

And amidst her reveries about her own mother who had died giving birth to a cursed child like herself, she cried tears of her own and gave voice to her thoughts, saying, “Mom, why have you abandoned me? Why did you have to die?”

No answer came back to her.

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Minutes turned into hours, but less than two hours into her first day inside the cathedral, just as her reveries over Michelangelo’s Pietà were waning, she heard the footfalls of an intruder echoing from somewhere in the crossing. She stalked her way along the narthex to the baptismal font at the back of the knave between the pews, but on hearing the metallic sound of a sword drawing from a scabbard, she footed it down the nave into the four-pillared crossing and looked into the Hearts mirror on the pillar to her right, and lo and behold!

There in the reflection was a girl wearing the blue tabard of a musketeer over a white shirt and a blue dress skirt, kneeling before the other side of the mirror and holding a broadsword with her hands cupped in a two-handed grip around its handle and its point on the ground like a giant cross, while the tip of her scabbard hung from her belt touched the ground. This girl was praying, though her observer couldn’t discern the words she was saying from the movement of her lips, so she waited for the girl to finish her prayer.

Once she thought the girl was done praying, she tapped the surface of the mirror, making the musketeer girl look up for a moment before standing up and sheathing her sword.

“Who are you?” the musketeer girl said.

“Um,” she said, blanking out on a response. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you ‘don’t know?’” the musketeer girl said. “Surely, you must have a name, don’t you?”

“Well,” she said, wondering how much she should tell this stranger, “I used to be called ‘Alice’ a few times, but now I know that’s not my name anymore.”

“What’s your name then?” her visitor said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “What about your name?”

The musketeer girl bowed and said, “I am Nico Cairns, a knight-errant of the blue musketeers.”

She stared at the so-called blue musketeer or knight-errant or whoever she was, who seemed more like a cosplayer or even a Halloween trick-or-treater, so she said, “Don’t blue musketeers have muskets and rapiers?”

“That’s why I’m a knight-errant,” Nico Cairns said. “I’m trying to earn my stripes as a blue musketeer.”

“I see,” she said without meaning what she said, because she couldn’t see any reason why a musketeer would wield a broadsword as a side arm. “Then what’s with the broadsword?”

Nico then unsheathed her sword and showed it to her, saying, “Actually, it’s a Vorpal sword.”

“A Vorpal sword?” she said, thinking back to that “Jabberwocky” poem she had read before. “Wait, you’re the Knight-Errant?”

Nico smiled and sheathed her Vorpal sword again, saying, “The very same, yes, but I’m not the only one. I have a twin sister named ‘Mara,’ who’s another knight-errant like me, but she wields a kodachi as her sidearm.”

“I see,” she said. “Why are you here?”

“I’m here to find two people,” Nico the musketeer Knight-Errant said. “One is named ‘Kendra,’ and the other is named ‘Celia.’ Have you heard of them before?”

“I’ve heard of ‘Kendra,’” she said and tried to remember if Princess Ozma or ‘Lorina’ or ‘Edith’ or Lewis Carroll or Mr. Foster ever mentioned anything about a girl named ‘Celia,’ but when she couldn’t, she added, “but I haven’t heard of ‘Celia.’”

“Have you seen ‘Kendra’ then?” Nico said.

She shook her head again and said, “I wouldn’t be able to recognize her even if I saw her. Say,” she added, “have you heard of the names ‘Lorina’ and ‘Edith’ by any chance?”

Now it was Nico’s turn to shake her head and say, “Nope, sorry. Their names don’t ring any bells. Are they the ones that used to call you ‘Alice,’ by any chance?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“I see,” Nico said and paused for a time, “but that’s not your name anymore, is it?”

She nodded that it wasn’t but said, “But a friend of mine told me that I’ll receive a name from a girl with glasses who does her hair up. Have you come across something like that?”

Nico shook her head and said, “Who’s this friend of yours?”

“Princess Ozma of Oz,” she said.

The musketeer girl paused for another moment, then said, “Tell you what: I can give you a temporary name, like a placeholder title, till you meet with that person with the glasses and the done-up hair. What do you say?”

She thought about her offer, rolling the pros and cons through her head, wondering if she could trust this girl, but then decided to risk it.

“Okay, sure,” she said.

“The Queen of Hearts,” Nico said. “Like it?”

“Eh,” she said, wondering if this chick was making fun of her or something, “that’s a really long-winded place holder.”

“It’s temporary, remember?” Nico said.

“Yeah, but . . .” She paused for a moment, then said, “Why would you even suggest that?”

So Nico put her hand on the other side of the mirror and said, “Because I followed my heart to this very mirror, and here you are inside a mirror with a Hearts symbol on it.”

“Oh, hardy har har,” she deadpanned.

Nico the musketeer Knight-Errant smiled and winked at her, then spun on her heel and said, “Now then, I must be off. If we meet again before you receive your name, I’ll just call you the Queen of Hearts for now. Till then, au revoir,” (goodbye) and she stalked off from the crossing in the reflection of the Hearts mirror, and the reflection itself blurred out her image and became a normal mirror again.

“Who was that?” she said to herself.

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After her encounter with Nico the musketeer Knight-Errant, the hours turned into days, and the days turned into her first full week inside the cathedral.

During that time, she explored the interior of the cathedral, walking the side aisles on the perimeter of the nave and entering the north and south transepts on either side of the crossing, where more rows of clerestory windows overlooked more empty pews on either side of the four-pillared crossing. She then walked the ambulatory of the apse, circling the altar table on its raised platform, and paused where she stood and stared at the throughway between the choir stalls and the crossing and the rest of the pews in the nave. She even stood before a pair of chevettes on either side of the apse and stared at the iconography depicting one trio of Marys (the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene and Mary Salome) in one and another trio of Marys (Mary Clopas and Mary Jacob and Mary Bethany) in the other.

Then she was about to go back to Michelangelo’s Pietà down the nave when heard the familiar footfalls echoing from the crossing, so she doubled back and headed towards the Hearts mirror again, where she spotted Nico the Knight-Errant kneeling before the mirror like before with her hands cupped around the grip of her sword like a cross.

So she waited, till Nico stood back up and sheathed her sword again and approached the mirror and said, “Bonjour (good morning), Queen of Hearts. How are you doing today?”

“I’m doing okay,” she said, then noticed the pallor of her face. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, sorry,” Nico waved it off, saying, “I was just wondering about something. I’m okay, don’t worry.”

“Did you meet ‘Kendra’ and ‘Celia’ already?” she said.

“Yes, I did,” Nico said. “I met Kendra first and Celia later, but that’s kind of a long story. Anyway, that’s not what I came here for.”

“What brings you here today then?”

“Let me explain first,” Nico said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other and looking pensive, “Kendra and I were trying to infiltrate a certain mansion filled with masqueraders, so we snuck in through an English garden path to avoid detection, I experienced jumble of visions in my head, and I fainted. When I woke up again, I found myself in an underground cavern shimmering from the light of an underground pond next to Mara, my sister, but I can’t seem to wake her up.” Then she shifted to her other foot and said, “I think Mara’s been put under a spell, so I was just wondering: do you know how to wake her up?”

And for a time, she just stared at her, wondering what the heck brought this up, till she noticed Nico’s blushing face. That’s when it came to her, so she smiled and said, “You don’t have to be shy about it, you know?”

“W-what?” Nico said, blushing more.

So she crossed her arms over her chest and said, “Come on, don’t be so bashful. Haven’t you heard of Sleepy Beauty? Why not just wake her up by kissing her?”

“B-b-but we’re sisters!” Nico said, putting her hands to her blushing cheeks. “Our mom said we’re sisters, not lovers, so I can’t do that!”

“I’m not telling you to make love to your sister,” she said. “I’m just telling you how to wake her up.”

“I know,” Nico said, “but—”

“Don’t knock it, till you try it,” she said.

“Yeah, you say that now,” Nico said, “but what would my mom say about it?”

“You’re mom’s not here, though, is she?” she said.

Nico stayed silent for a moment, then said without looking at her, “No, but I’d feel guilty about it.”

“Why?” she said, then happened on the answer in the next breath. “Is it because you’re kissing your sister? Or is it because you’re kissing another girl?”

“Why would I answer you, you perv?” Nico yelled.

“Or is it because you’ve kissed your sister before?” she said, and when Nico averted her eyes and then turned around, she knew she was right. “Nico, kissing a girl is not the same as kissing your sister.”

Nico turned around, crossing her arms around her chest and tapping her foot and saying, “And how would you know that, huh? Have you kissed another girl?”

“I have,” she said, remembering how she woke up after Princess Ozma had kissed her in the throne room of the Royal Palace of Oz, “but I was on the receiving end of it. That’s why I know. It was a bit embarrassing, too, because it was my first kiss, but that’s okay. When you wake up your sister, just think about it as if you were kissing another girl and not your sister.”

At her words, Nico just gaped and stared at her, then laughed like she’d just told a crude joke and said, “Are you Venus in disguise or something?”

“No, I’m not,” she said, uncrossing her arms and smiling, “but I am the Queen of Hearts, remember?”

“All right, all right, I’ll do as you say,” Nico said and spun on her heel, then looked back over her shoulder. “You know, if Mara wakes up, then I’ll find you again and give you a kiss as a thank you. Till then, au revoir,” (goodbye) and she stalked off from the crossing in the reflection of the Hearts mirror like before, and the reflection itself blurred out the naughty Knight-Errant’s image and became a normal mirror again showing a blushing girl that looked just like her.

“You perv,” she said.

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The next day, she explored the interior of the cathedral some more to take her mind off of her awkward second encounter with Nico, walking the side aisles on the perimeter of the nave and entering the north and south transepts on either side of the crossing, where more rows of clerestory windows overlooked more empty pews on either side of the four-pillared crossing. She then walked the ambulatory of the apse, circling the altar table on its raised platform, and paused where she stood and stared at the throughway between the choir stalls and the crossing and the rest of the pews in the nave. She even stood before a pair of chevettes on either side of the apse and stared at the iconography depicting one trio of Marys (the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene and Mary Salome) in one and another trio of Marys (Mary Clopas and Mary Jacob and Mary Bethany) in the other.

Yet as the novelty of exploration waned, she found herself languishing in the front row of pews for the next few days and sleeping away her boredom with dreams.

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And before she knew it, she found herself descending onto a field of pansies and lilies and kingcups and daisies and primroses and violets. And just as she came to rest, she realized she was not alone on this field and sat up. She looked and found two other girls lying asleep on either side of her, their faces still entranced with the charm of dreams and their clothes bloodied and torn, and recognized one of them with the same face as Nico’s and wondered if she was ‘Mara.’ ‘Mara’ wore a short-sleeved shirt tucked into the waistband of her blue dress skirt, both items stained with blood, but the other girl wore a frayed mandarin dress with a small slit in the stomach, also stained with a big patch of blood.

So she checked on ‘Mara’ first, pulling the shirt from the waistband of the dress skirt and lifting up both items, but she saw no injuries on her legs or her stomach. Then she did the same thing for the other girl, tearing open the mandarin dress along the bloody slit over her stomach, but she saw no injuries there, either. Then she looked down at herself and saw splatters of blood all over her sky-blue Sunday dress, so she patted her chest and stomach and ran her hands across her thighs but found no injuries on herself. Yet through it all, she felt a sense of déjà vu from checking for injuries with her mind skirting on the edges of realizing something important, yet what it was remained a mystery to her just like her own name.

She then reached out and shook their shoulders, saying, “Wake up! Come on, wake up,” yet her efforts proved fruitless as neither girl stirred from their slumber.

She stared at them.

After a time, she touched the cool grass below her and ran her fingers over some of the nearby pansies and kingcups, confirming that this ground was solid to her and her sleeping companions. She then took another look at the two sleepers and ran her hands across their faces again, then looked up at the storm clouds beginning to leave traces of blue in the sky.

She turned back to the sleepers and said to the unknown girl, “Who are you?” She paused and looked at the bloodstains on all of their clothes, including her own, and added “Geez, what happened to us?”

Of course, no answer came back to her.

But then came overhead the sound of two birds calling to her, so she looked up and saw ‘Lorina’ the Lory and ‘Edith’ the Eaglet swooping down and landing on either side of her. And she got up and hugged both of them, saying, “Oh my God, I’ve missed you!”

“I know,” ‘Edith’ said. “We’ve missed you, too.”

“But we have to go back soon,” ‘Lorina’ added. “I’m sorry to say, but we can’t stay with you for much longer.”

She let go and said, “Why not?”

So ‘Lorina’ said, “We’ve come to wake up your friends,” and she looked down at the mysterious girls sleeping before them and pointed at the girl in the mandarin dress. “The girl is ‘Kendra,’ and she’s the one we saw with you in the field of giant lily buds earlier.”

“And this one’s ‘Mara,’ right?” she said.

“Yeah, that’s ‘Mara,’” ‘Edith’ said, “and she has a twin sister named Nico looking for her and ‘Kendra’ aa I speak. Have you met her before?”

“Yeah,” she said, “but why won’t they wake up?”

“They’re both lost,” ‘Lorina’ said, “but ‘Edith’ and I are looking for them along with Nico and their mothers. It’s just that we’ve kind of hit a snag along the way, but at least we’ve found you awake here.”

“Look after them for us,” ‘Edith’ added, “and make sure to give that book to its rightful owner.”

“Book?” she said. “Oh my God, I almost forgot!”

“Try to keep it in mind,” ‘Lorina’ said.

Then both birds transformed into her teenage doppelgängers, ‘Lorina’ into Akami the Red Queen in a red Sunday dress and ‘Edith’ into Shiromi the White Queen in a white Sunday dress. After that, both girls kneeled beside the bodies of the two sleepers, Akami beside Kendra and Shiromi beside Mara, and bent over their dreamy faces and planted kisses on their lips again and again and again.

She put hands to her mouth, saying, “W-what are you doing?”

When they stopped what they were doing, they looked up at her with smiles on their faces.

“What’s going on?” she said, feeling her cheeks flushing at their mischievous looks. “Why did you do that? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Akami and Shiromi stood up, and Akami said, “We’re here to wake you up, too.”

Then both girls lunged at her in a two-person hug, tackling her into the verdant earth in a flutter of pansies and lilies and kingcups. And when she tried to say something, her doppelgängers put their fingers to her lips and planted greedy kisses on her eyes and cheeks and lips. So she shut her eyes, and in that blink of infinity, she caught glimpses of a future in which her beast of a father would drag her into his bedroom, kicking and screaming, where he’d commit an atrocity against her that would haunt her next life like a nightmare growing inside her, and that nightmare’s name was Alice.

Yet the kisses Akami and Shiromi shared with her were not the kisses of a pedophile or even the kisses of two mischievous sisters: they were the urgent kisses of two girls trying to wake her up from her slumber, for she too had been lost and was now on the verge of being found. She, too, had been waiting like Sleeping Beauty for someone to get her out of the stirrings of that godless night, for someone to kiss away her tears and remove the sour taste of her father’s crime from her lips, for someone to care about her for who she is.

So she cried and hugged her companions close to her on the ground, saying, “Please, don’t go! I don’t want you to leave me, so please, don’t go!”

“It’s okay,” Akami said.

“We’ll come back to you soon,” Shiromi added.

“No,” she said through her tears. “Please, don’t go! I’m begging you, please, don’t—”

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“—go!” she said as she stirred from her slumbers on the pew, all hot and bothered and breathing hard, her cheeks flushed and slick with tears, one hand between her legs over the skirt of her white Sunday dress and the other on her left breast over her bodice. For a time, she lay on her back on the pew in the afterglow of her exertions, then sat up and looked towards the pillars in the crossing.

And there, by the far right pillar of the crossing, stood ‘Mara’ with her back to the Clubs mirror, still fast asleep with her eyes closed and her body set like a human statue.

She got off the pew and ran towards ‘Mara’ and shook her shoulder again, saying, “‘Mara,’ wake up!”

But the girl kept on slumbering.

Then she remembered the book that ‘Lorina’ and ‘Edith’ had mentioned and looked to her left, and lo and behold! At the base of the pillar beneath the Hearts mirror leaned a small hardcover book over the handkerchief that Ozma had given her.

She crouched and picked it up in her hands and read the title and the by-line and wondered if the name on the cover, Linda Kouri, was also the name of the woman Ozma had mentioned, but the more she thought about it, the more she thought of it as an alias. If this woman, whoever she is, was the one to set her free, as Ozma had said, then how would she approach her?

She hadn’t a clue.

With these thoughts rolling around in her head, she put the book back on the floor, leaning it against the pillar like before, and picked up Ozma’s handkerchief and stood back up thinking of what she was going to do with it when she happened to catch something in the reflection of the mirror.

She turned and found ‘Kendra’ standing by the far left pillar with her back to the Diamonds mirror.

So she ran towards ‘Kendra’ and shook her shoulder, as well, saying, “‘Kendra,’ wake up! Wake up!”

But the girl kept slumbering on like the other one. Even though ‘Lorina’ and ‘Edith’ had said they would wake them up, neither girl had succeeded, it seemed. And when she checked up on ‘Kendra’ and ‘Mara’ again, looking at their peaceful expressions in turn, she found them still asleep in their standing positions like human statues. It was the eeriest thing, looking at these two, till the thought of kissing them sent her cheeks flushing again.

She perished her thoughts and walked away.

She went back to the pillar with the Hearts mirror and tried to figure out what to do with Ozma’s handkerchief. Unlike ‘Kendra’ and ‘Mara,’ she was awake, and since Ozma had asked her to keep it so she’d be able to send her to wherever she needed to go, she didn’t need it anymore. She was already here, but then she looked at her two sleeping companions standing next to their respective mirrors.

At first, she thought about tearing the handkerchief in two and giving it to both girls, but after failing to rip it, she decided on another course of action. So after giving it some thought, she exited the crossing and stalked down the nave between the rows of pews and passed the baptismal font and stopped at the double doors of the narthex. She crouched at the foot of the doors but saw no space under them to lay the handkerchief flat across the threshold, so it won’t act as a marker to anyone outside the cathedral.

Then she thought of the Three Marys in the chevettes and thought of giving the handkerchief to—

She shook her head at the notion that pictures could do anything, but then she thought about ‘Kendra’ and ‘Mara’ appearing before mirrors like she did, as well as the actions of ‘Lorina’ and ‘Edith’ and Princess Ozma and Lewis Carroll Wantowin Battles and even Nico the musketeer Knight-Errant, all of whom did incredible things. If they could do something, maybe those Marys could, too, right?

She doubled back through the nave and passed the four-pillared crossing and the throughway between the choir stalls, then cut across the raised platform of the altar towards the left chevette, where the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene and Mary Salome were kneeling and crying before Jesus’ crucifixion.

But on viewing the anguish on their faces, she was second-guessing herself and was about to walk away when the Virgin Mary said, “What is it, child?”

“Is there something you need?” Mary Magdalene added.

She stared, agape, at the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene and Mary Salome standing up and walking towards her in the picture, filling up half of the scene depicted, followed by Mary Clopas and Mary Jacob and Mary Bethany walking into the picture from the other chevette and filling up the other half.

“Oh my God,” she said, then covered her mouth. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.”

The six Marys traded knowing looks, and the Virgin Mary said, “It’s all right, child. Tell us what you need.”

“Um,” she said, “I was wondering if you could give this to someone who can help my friends, ‘Kendra’ and ‘Mara,’” and she pressed the handkerchief against the surface of the picture before the six Marys, and the Virgin Mary took the article and showed it to the other Marys.

Mary Jacob then took up the handkerchief and said, “Child, do you want someone to find your friends?”

“Yeah,” she said.

Then the six Marys talked amongst themselves, Mary Salome and Mary Magdalene debating with Mary Clopas and Mary Bethany on what they’ve heard about the nefarious doings of a man named Mr. Prospero, with the Virgin Mary acting as their mediator. Then, after listening to their arguments, the Virgin Mary whispered something into Mary Jacob’s ear, who nodded at her words.

Then Mary Jacob said, “Child, we’ll give this handkerchief to a girl who remains outside of Mr. Prospero’s influence.”

“How do you know about him?” she said.

“We heard the prayers of your friends,” the Virgin Mary said. “’Lorina’ and ‘Edith,’ I believe?”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “That’s them.”

“Ah, good,” the Virgin Mary said. “They sought the help of a woman named Linda Kouri to contact the ghost of a murdered man, and afterwards they sought our help to bring his murderer to Lady Justice, but it’s been difficult. But you’ve given us a good lead,” and she took the handkerchief from Mary Jacob. “I’ll give this to Colbie right away,” and she was about to go.

When the girl said, “Wait a minute.”

The Virgin Mary paused and said, “What is it, child?”

“When will I meet Linda Kouri?” she said.

“Ah, fear not,” the Virgin Mary said. “You’ll see her in a week’s time in three instances. On the third instance, give her that book you were given.”

And the girl looked across the altar and the throughway between the choir stalls at the crossing, where the small book that Princess Ozma had given her leaned against the base of the pillar under the Hearts mirror. She then looked back at her and said, “I’ll do that.”

“Good,” the Virgin Mary said.

But then the girl looked over at the front pew where she had pleasured herself in her sleep before looking down at her feet in shame and wiping her eyes.

“What’s the matter?” Mary Clopas said.

“Oh,” she said, “I was just thinking. It doesn’t matter.”

“Don’t be ashamed, child,” Mary Salome said. “What are you thinking?”

So she took a deep breath, blinking back the visions of that godless night stealing across her mind, and said, “I know what will happen to me after I get reborn, and I wish . . . I wish for it not to happen. I don’t wanna be born into that world!”

All six Marys covered their mouths, and the Virgin Mary said, “Why would you say that, child?”

“Because I’m scared!” she said as tears welled up in her eyes. “I know what’s gonna happen. I know I’m gonna get— . . .” She couldn’t say it, so she just said, “Something’s gonna happen to me, and I can’t do anything about it!”

“Who’s this about, child?” Mary Bethany said.

The girl wiped away her tears and said, “In my next life, my father is gonna do something to me.”

Mary Bethany shook her head and said, “Blasted pigs!” Then she sighed and said, “Listen, child. This world is full of evil men, and I know. When I anointed Jesus’s feet with perfume, Judas Iscariot rebuked me for being wasteful and not caring about the needs of the poor when he was the one stealing from the money bag.”

“But that’s not the same,” she said.

“Of course, it’s not,” Mary Bethany said. “We all suffer in our own ways, because we all live different lives. But whatever our sins, whatever our struggles, whatever our circumstances, we have one thing in common.”

“And what’s that?” she said.

“We’re all here in this place,” Mary Bethany said.

“What she’s trying to say,” the Virgin Mary added, “is that you’re not alone, even when it feels like you are,” and she turned around as the other Marys parted before her, revealing the scene of Jesus’ crucifixion. “They crucified my Son on that cross even when He did nothing wrong, and I wept for my child that day, me and everyone here,” and she indicated the five other Marys now coming into the picture again. “Child, whatever happens to you in your next life, we’ll all be with you, just as we were with my Son to the very end.”

She wiped away more tears and sniffled, thinking of one more question that niggled at her insides, and said, “Do you know anything about my mom?”

The six Marys all traded looks with one another in the picture, and the Virgin Mary said, “I’ve heard of her, but she goes by countless names, because she’s lived countless lives.”

“Do you know her name?” she asked.

“I don’t know what her name will be when she’ll have you,” the Virgin Mary said, “but I know of her original name: Lilith, the first wife of Adam.”

“Then,” she said, “can you tell me my name?”

The Virgin Mary shook her head, saying, “I’m sorry, child. It’s not in my power to reveal the name to you, for I descend from the line of Eve, not Lilith.”

At her words, she looked back through the throughway towards the crossing, where Linda Kouri’s book was, and said, “Then does Linda Kouri know?”

“Not yet, I’m afraid,” the Virgin Mary said, “and she won’t know until after you meet her.”

“Then who else knows my name?”

That’s when the Virgin Mary furrowed her brows and said, “Besides your mother, there are only three others privy to your name: God, the Devil, and Mr. Prospero, though I’m unsure how Mr. Prospero found out.”

Hearing her words made her think back to the aftermath of the massacre in the ballroom that she had witnessed through the mirror at the start of this tale, in which she had seen Alice’s lips reveal her name to Mr. Prospero. Even though she had witnessed it, even though she had listened to the exchange between Alice and Mr. Prospero in that brief encounter, why couldn’t she hear her own name from her lips? It just boggled her mind, till the answer dawned on her like a revelation.

“What is it, child?” the Virgin Mary said.

“I saw Alice reveal her name to Mr. Prospero,” she said, “and he called her ‘Bambina’ afterward. What does ‘Bambina’ mean?”

“It means ‘Child,’” the Virgin Mary said, then discussed it in whispers with the other Marys in the picture for a time. But once they were finished discussing it, she said, “That man used a spell-word to obscure your true name in order to adopt Alice as his own daughter.”

“In other words,” Mary Jacob said, “he replaced your name with a spell-word to hide your existence from your mother.”

“What a thing to do!” Mary Clopas said.

“He should be ashamed of himself!” Mary Salome added.

“But why me?” she said, tears trailing down her cheeks anew. “Why would he do that to me? I didn’t do anything to him, so why would he do that?”

“Because he’s evil,” Mary Bethany said.

“And controlling,” Mary Magdalene added. “In fact, he murdered his own kin to get his throne, and when they killed him off, he came back to torment his family in revenge. It’s the worst kind of feud, a family feud, a blood feud!”

“That’s why his family moved away from Transylvania,” the Virgin Mary said, “and married into a family of witches to break his influence over them. And you’ll meet a descendant of that family in a week’s time.”

“You mean Linda Kouri?” she said.

The Virgin Mary nodded and said, “Make sure to give that book to her when you meet her, and show her what you saw between Alice and Mr. Prospero. I think she’ll need some convincing.”

“Will do,” she said.

“Okay,” the Virgin Mary said, taking up Ozma’s handkerchief in her hand, “it’s time for me to go,” and she walked off beyond the confines of the picture, while Mary Magdalene and Mary Salome took up their places by the cross in Jesus’ crucifixion, and the other three Marys left the picture and took up their own places in the picture of the other chevette.

With that, the girl made her way back across the throughway between the choir stalls and the crossing and entered the front pews. She took a seat and kneeled her knees over the kneeler and clenched her hands together. Remembering her Sunday school prayers, she bowed her head and recited Ave Maria in English, saying, “‘Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you; / blessed are you among women, / . . .’”

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Now that we’ve come to the crux of this tale, in which a cruel fate has crossed our destinies with those of ‘Alice’ and Alice, let me say a few words, so that you can stay the course to the end. We all have three faces: one is a public face the public at large gets to see, and one is a private face we allow our closest friends and family members to see, but the last is a hidden face we see in the mirror when we are alone. It’s with this hidden face that I confess my secrets to you.

Of my parents, I come from honest and kind ones that have tried their best to raise a wayward girl like me, and of my lineage, I come from a line of vampires and a line of witches through a secret marriage. Because of this marriage, my forebears became outcasts from their native lands and had to move across an ocean to find a new home.

Now comes the hard part of this confession. I was born in 1950 and grew up in the 1960s, till I found myself staring one day into the mirror with no reflection at all when I was sixteen years old. I asked my parents what was going on, but neither said anything to me for the next few days, till I became sick of their excuses for not telling me after a week. So I stormed out of the house and cussed out my parents with f-bombs and left to stay at a friend’s house. Later on, I returned and snuck back in the house and stole a secret spell tome, in which I found and used a forbidden spell with a drop of my blood over a body of water to time-travel from 1966 to 1913. Long story short, I’ve found out what my parents tried to keep away from me, and I’ve tangled myself in it too much to survive unscathed, if I survive at all.

Be that as it may, though, I believed and still believe that it was worth the risk, for I got to meet the protagonists of this tale, ‘Alice’ and Alice, two sides of the same coin, two faces of one soul I have loved. Even if it was not meant to be, even if my parents would faint if they knew, the nights I’ve spent in their arms have eased the burden of my fate.

But enough about me.

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In the next few days, after exploring the cathedral and viewing more religious iconography and talking with the five other Marys, she would lie down on the front pew to sleep, perchance to dream of things she would forget soon after waking. Yet one day she just lay with her eyes closed without falling asleep, just drifting from thought to thought—

(such as watching Alice’s entrance into the ballroom through the mirror, talking to the Marys, watching Alice kill all those masqueraders, talking to the Marys, stopping by Michelangelo’s Pietà, talking to the Marys, meeting with Mr. Foster in the street, talking to the Marys, meeting ‘Lorina’ and ‘Edith’ for the first and second times, talking to the Marys, meeting the Dodo and later Lewis Carroll, talking to the Marys, spying on Ozma’s audience with Lewis Carroll and General Jinjur, talking to the Marys, getting caught, talking to the Marys . . .)

—till the screams of Alice’s victims and the voices of everyone she had met since she started this journey merged into an incomprehensible swirl of mental static. It was as if her brain had switched to a zen-like stake of existing in the here and now between the past and the present, between life and death, between her worst nightmares and her deepest yearnings, in which the fluttering glimpses of dreams opened her mind’s eye without her knowing . . .

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Then she opened her eyes and found herself in the same enclosure of a dead end, but there was a different mirror on the wall. She looked back over her shoulder at the other end of the alley and saw the same hanging paper lanterns throwing a warm glow over the street ahead, tipping her off that this was the same spot she had found herself at the start of her night journey.

Knowing this, she looked back into the mirror, expecting to see Alice or even Mr. Prospero, but saw instead a bespectacled girl with her hair done up in a Gibson girl’s look. So she put her fingers to the surface of the mirror and blinked, then saw her future self running her fingers along a spine of books in a bookstore in her future and stopping at the title her hand was on, a title authored by Linda Kouri.

In that blink of recognition, she opened her eyes and saw Linda herself entering into Alice’s bedroom prison at night, stepping through the reflection of her teleportation mirror and looking up at the giant censer hanging from a tapered ceiling made up of five walls surrounding her. Linda paused to let her eyes adjust to the light of a pair of candelabra and found a pair of ottomans next to a four-poster bed, which was set against one of the five walls. She spied the door to her right and the armoire cabinet and vanity table and chair to her left against one of the back walls opposite the door, so she moved her mirror, blurring the reflection on the other side of it, till it was between the bed and the door.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

When she could see what was going on again through the mirror, she saw Linda approaching the bed and pulling the curtain aside to reveal Alice there, sound asleep upon a bed of roses. And for a moment, Linda just stared at her before reaching out and touching her face—

And jerking her hand away.

And Linda’s observer had an idea that Alice on the bed had been dead for a while now, though her white Sunday dress showed no bloodstains whatsoever.

Despite this, Linda looked at Alice’s body lying on those roses in her white Sunday dress with a skimmer hat lying beside her head. Observing through the mirror, Linda’s observer saw the girl looking at Alice for so long that she seemed entranced or even charmed at Alice’s presence, and Linda’s question confirmed her thoughts.

“But how?” Linda said under her breath.

Linda sat on Alice’s bedside with her hand hovering over Alice’s face, and the girl observing through the mirror thought she was trying to check for breathing or bodily warmth.

Then Linda looked back at the mirror she had used to enter Alice’s bedroom and jumped from the bed, looking from the mirror to the bed and vice versa, because Linda’s observer was there looking in on her. Then Linda turned back to Alice’s body still on the bed before looking into her mirror again, and Linda’s observer got the feeling that Alice’s body was missing from the bed in the reflection.

As such, the nameless girl waved at Linda.

So Linda placed her hand on Alice’s forearm atop the bed and jerked her hand away again and looked back at the mirror at her visitor again, at Alice’s nameless doppelgänger looking on and waving back to her.

Again Linda looked to Alice on the bed and ‘Alice’ in the mirror and said, “‘Alice?’”

“Is that my name?” the girl in the mirror said.

“Of course, it is,” Linda said, “but how . . .” And she looked back at the body of Alice on the bed and stalked back to the bed and shook Alice’s body, but to no avail, so she turned back to ‘Alice’ in the mirror. “Why can’t you wake up?”

Yet the designated ‘Alice’ smiled at her, wondering if Linda was here to get her out of the cathedral, and said, “Are you here to rescue me?”

“I am, but . . .” Linda said, then: “Listen to me, ‘Alice.’ You need to wake up now! [Mr. Prospero] could be here at any time, so I need you to wake up. Otherwise—”

“I can’t wake up,” she said.

“Why?” Linda said.

“That man,” she said, “took away the most important thing I hold dear.”

“What’s that?” Linda said.

“My name,” she said.

“But your name’s ‘Alice Liddell’ of the Liddell baronetcy,” Linda said. “‘Alice,’ don’t you know who you are?”

But she shook her head, knowing that Linda couldn’t understand her words without experiencing what she saw in the mirror in this dead-end alley at the start of her journey, so she placed her hand on the reflection again and said, “Remember me as you see me now, for the next time you see me, I’ll be a different person.”

“What do you mean?” Linda said as her image began to fade away in the reflection. “I don’t understand.”

“Remember me,” she said, before Linda’s reflection faded out and left only her disembodied voice to linger in her dream for a few moments longer.

‘Alice,’ don’t go! she heard Linda say as she was banging the surface of her mirror with her fist, the thumps on the mirror becoming lighter and lighter. What do you . . . ?

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Yet Linda’s thumps and Linda’s words dissipated from her dream, replaced with the slow-wave oblivion of half-remembered scenes and words of her first encounter with Linda flitting across her memories. And here she stayed for a time, till she was floating to rest on someone else’s bed and rustling over a bed of roses with someone else’s body as she began to stir.

When she opened her eyes again, she was in another dreamscape altogether and noticed Linda rushing to her bedside and saying, “Thank God, you’re awake!”

She propped herself up on her shoulders, focusing her eyes on the woman she thought was her mother, saying, “Mom?”

“What? No, I’m not your mom,” Linda said, checking the girl for injuries of any kind. “Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere? ‘Alice,’ talk to me.”

Once her eyes fully adjusted, she wondered who Linda was talking about and said, “‘Alice?’ Is that my name?”

“Of course, it is,” Linda said. “I already said your name. Don’t you remember?”

She did, but she wondered why she was calling her that name, then wondered if she had met ‘Lorina’ and ‘Edith,’ but that couldn’t be the case, could it?

Linda then put the back of her hand against her forehead and said, “You’re still so cold. You must be freezing,” and she took off her jacket and draped it over her bare shoulders, then took her hands and bade her to stand up over the cold wooden flooring. “Geez, your hands are so cold!”

Linda cleared the roses off the bed, where they fell and collected in clumps on the floor, and took the bedsheet and wrapped it around her body.

Yet the girl paid no mind to the chill or Linda’s act of concern, still wondering why she was calling her ’Alice,’ but when Linda then grabbed her hands again, she noticed her pausing for a moment and looking down at her hands and then up at her face. Because of this, she was about to ask her what’s wrong, but Linda beat her to the punch.

“Stay close,” Linda said.

She nodded and was guided up the steps towards the mirror she had been in moments before—

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And stepped onto the deck boards of the pier in her dream realm, wherein Linda added, “I’ll get you something warm to wear when we get to my shop.”

She nodded again, holding onto her hand, and followed the Gibson girl for several paces before turning left onto another pier, their footsteps creaking along the deck boards as they went. As she followed, she had a lot on her mind. Almost a week had elapsed since Mara and Kendra had appeared inside the cathedral. After talking with the Marys about both girls, she was informed that Mara and Kendra had gone missing from wherever they came from, and both were connected with this Mr. Prospero fellow, but now that she had Linda with her, she hoped that Mara and Kendra were closer to being found.

When she sighted the gazebo in the distance, Linda said, “We’re almost there, ‘Alice.’ How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine,” she deadpanned.

Linda glanced back at her for a moment before walking on in silence.

So the designated ‘Alice’ wondered what was going through her mind. Did Linda know anything about the whereabouts of Mara or Kendra? Or did she meet with ‘Lorina’ or ‘Edith’ before she came here to get her? Or did she know that the person she had talked to on the other side of her mirror was in fact a different person? Or did she even know all of this beforehand? Or did she have any idea of any of this at all? She had so many questions yet kept silent on them as she followed her guide.

Then, upon reaching the threshold of the gazebo and passing between two pairs of columns of the circular colonnade, Linda picked up the hems of her dress with one hand, while leading her charge past the threshold with the other.

“Watch your step now,” Linda said.

She nodded and now followed Linda up a set of steps—

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That led towards a wall sconce above the wainscoted sidewall, which she turned on, lighting the top of the stairs and the entrance into the backroom of her shop. Linda then reached into one of the pockets of her jacket that draped over the designated ‘Alice’s shoulders and pulled out a pocket watch and read the time.

“It's past midnight,” Linda said and turned back to her charge. “Are you hungry?”

She shook her head.

“You sure you don’t want anything to eat?” Linda said.

“I’m sure,” she said.

Under the light of the wall sconce, Linda looked at her eyes and put her hand on her cheek and said, “We’ll go straight to Superintendent Leon Larking in the morning and clear everything up, but for now, you’ll stay with me. Do you understand?”

The girl nodded that she did, though she wondered who Superintendent Leon Larking was. Was Linda an agent of Superintendent Leon Larking? Or was she a private investigator? Or was she even a proactive private citizen with a killer good-Samaritan streak?

While she was thinking of the possibilities, she followed her savior up the stairs and through the backroom and past the front counter of what seemed like a shop, then ascended another set of stairs leading to a dining area and kitchenette.

“You want some tea?” Linda said.

Again she shook her head. She wasn’t thirsty.

So she followed Linda into the dining area and past the kitchenette to another set of stairs leading to a bedroom loft overlooking the dining area. In this loft stood a wardrobe and a vanity table and chair, with a body-length mirror leaning against the wall. The ceiling slanted above their heads, so Linda added, “The ceiling’s a bit low on the headboard side of the bed, so watch your head when you wake up.”

Linda helped her unwrap herself from the old bedsheet and took off the jacket from her shoulders, dropping both items in the corner of the loft, and pulled aside the sheets of her bed for her to climb into—

Which she did, pulling the sheets up to her eyes as she now observed Linda putting her spectacles on the nightstand by the bed and undoing her hair, letting it drop past her shoulders and down her back before taking off her shoes and dress and blouse, till she was wearing nothing but a loose chemise.

Linda spotted her looking from the corner of her eye, and so she smiled and said, “What are you looking at?”

But instead of answering, she slipped out of her Sunday dress beneath the sheets and pulled it over her shoulders, then pulled the sheets up to her eyes again to cover her body and her blushing face when Linda caught her looking again.

Linda turned and said, “Aren’t you cold?”

She said nothing and discarded the item on the floor beside the bed and raised the sheet back up to her eyes.

“We’re both girls, so it’s okay,” Linda said.

“Are you sure?”

Linda smiled and climbed into bed and sidled up next to her, so the designated ‘Alice’ turned onto her side beneath the sheets, till she felt Linda’s hand on her forearm.

“Geez, you’re cold!” Linda said. “Did [Mr. Prospero] leave you outside or something?”

Yet she didn’t speak, afraid to meet her gaze, so Linda leaned in and kissed her forehead . . .

> And lay down by the Maiden's side!—

> And in her arms the maid she took,

> Ah wel-a-day!

In that sisterly embrace, as she felt Linda hugging her close to her body, she reached past the hems of Linda’s chemise and rested her icy hands on the hot bare flesh below her shoulder blades and heard Linda gasp. Then she entwined her legs around the heat of Linda’s thighs and hugged her cold breasts against the hot warmth of Linda’s stomach as she felt Linda cradling her head against the rising and falling swell of her bosom. Even though she was breathing hard against the base of her neck, Linda allowed her to stay that way for a time.

Then Linda got up and said, “God, you’re so cold. I’ll go make some tea.”

“It’s not that,” she said and put Linda’s hand up to her chest, letting her feel the weak pulses against her palm.

“Blood flow,” Linda said.

She nodded.

Linda stared at her for a moment, till she blushed and said, “Do you really want to get warm that way?”

Again she nodded, knowing what the flush on her face meant, because the idea of making love to another girl surfaced through her mind at the same moment.

But Linda looked down on her, eyeing the mounds of her breasts and thinking, though the designated ‘Alice’ could only guess what was going through her mind.

She waited for Linda to make her first move on her, till Linda lowered herself and planted a kiss on her lips, touching and caressing her. So the designated ’Alice’ did the same, taking part in a mutual contract between two sinners in time and space, two souls separated by half a century of human pain, two women mixing cups in a covenant of love. She allowed Linda to indulge herself in her kisses and caresses and rubs on her body, till she felt her cold breaths becoming hot steam and the winter chill in her body becoming summer heat.

Thus, with newfound strength and ardor, she returned Linda’s kisses with affectionate hickeys along her neck and between the parting of her breasts and down her stomach and lower still, wanting more and more of Linda to her greedy self, wanting Linda to be hers for tonight . . .

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Till her mind floated up from her body like an out-of-body experience, and she was now looking down at another version of herself pleasuring Linda with cunnilingus. She saw Linda pulling faces, biting down on her lower lip and grimacing before letting out a moan of relief through gasping breaths.

That’s when she realized, looking down on her doppelgänger, that she had been occupying Alice’s body, till Alice herself had returned to finish Linda off.

So she yelled down at Linda, saying, “Wake up! That’s not me, so wake up! Please, WAKE UP!”

But it was no use. Linda couldn’t hear her, and even if she could, Linda had already succumbed to Alice’s spell as the body-length mirror against the wall began to shimmer and warp the reflection, warping the mirror of her mind and turning her desires onto those of her bedmate’s. And as with her body and mind, so went her soul into a spider’s web of fluttering strands, till . . .

> Out flew the web and floated wide—

> The mirror crack'd from side to side;

> "The curse is come upon me," cried

> The Lady of Shalott.

In horror, she witnessed Linda wincing and gritting her teeth at a bolt of pain shoot through her. And before she knew it, before Linda’s witness could do anything else about it from her vantage point over the bed, she saw Alice grabbing Linda’s wrists and holding her down over the bed as Linda herself grew weaker beneath Alice’s domineering strength.

“Why?” Linda said, ceasing her struggles and succumbing to the whims of her bedmate. “Who are you?”

“I wish I could say,” Alice said, who lowered herself and planted her own kiss on Linda’s lips, making her turn away. “We all have our masks, my love, and I’ve worn so many that I have forgotten the name my mother gave me. I am the daughter of Lilith, the daughter of Night, the blight of all women cursed to bear me into their world. So welcome to my world, dear sister!” Then she smiled and kissed Linda’s lips and said, “But just between you and me, I kind of like the name you’ve given me. So Alice Liddell I’ll be, and you . . . Who do you want to be?”

Looking down on the scene, she saw Linda’s eyes entranced in Alice’s spell, her eyes like that of a girl on the verge of becoming a woman against her will, on the verge of succumbing to the perpetrator’s mischief and partaking of the corrupting union of forbidden desires coming to the surface from unfathomable depths. And Linda’s answer, as her observer looked on, broke her heart to smithereens.

“Anything you want me to be,” Linda said.

So Alice planted another kiss on her lips, and they made love for the rest of that night, while their observer watched and cried and put her own hands between her legs to make herself feel better, if only to mask the turmoil she felt inside. She kept rubbing herself there, squinting her eyes shut at the pleasure building up inside her.

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She woke up gasping out a moan on the pew with the hem of her skirt raised past her hips and her hand in her panties, huffing and puffing and cursing in her mind (God, damn it!) when she heard it echoing through the cathedral. She pulled out and wiped the residue over the skirt of her Sunday dress, hoping that the five Marys had not heard . . .

Till there came a whistle by the chevettes, and Mary Bethany said, “Somebody’s had wonderful stirrings this evening.”

“My blushes, Bethany!” Mary Magdalene said.

“Be gentle to her, please,” Mary Clopas added. “Can’t you see it was in her sleep?”

“I know,” Mary Bethany said, “and I wasn’t castigating her. I was just making an observation.”

Hearing their words, she got up on the pew and stalked through the four-pillared crossing and the throughway between the choir stalls and across the altar towards the chevette beside the central apse and saw the five Marys gathered there. She bowed her head to them and said, “Sorry about that. I was just . . . preoccupied, is all.”

“Don’t worry your pretty little head over it,” Mary Magdalene said. “We get reports from concerned mothers and flighty daughters about stuff like that all the time.”

“In other words,” Mary Bethany added, “it’s just a part of growing up as a woman.”

“Wait,” she said, “you did it, too?”

Now there was utter silence from the five Marys, who all traded wide-eyed glances with each other and raised their hands to cover their mouths.

“Sorry!” she said, bowing her head once again in a grimace. “That was forward of me, sorry.”

“Yes,” Mary Bethany said. “I did it when I was younger, but now that I’m older, I don’t do it as much.”

“As much?” she said. “Do you mean that you— . . . Sorry!”

“That’s all right,” Mary Bethany said. “At least this old bird still has the pluck to say it, even if it’s embarrassing. As for the others, they’re a bit flaky about it.”

“I understand,” she said, then: “You’re not angry?”

“Why would we be angry, child?” Mary Jacob said. “We’re all women, you know. Just don’t think too much of it, lest a small sin becomes a bigger one. Got it?”

She nodded that she did.

“Then no harm done,” Mary Jacob said.

She deflated somewhat, relieved that these Marys were far more reasonable than the uppity Puritanical prudes in the mortal realm, so she excused herself from their company and was about to go back to the pews and sleep—

When Mary Salome said, “Wait, child.”

She stopped. “What is it?”

“There’s something else,” Mary Magdalene added and pointed towards the crossing. “We’ve got another visitor.”

So she stalked across the altar and past the choir stalls and entered the crossing again, where she found a redhead standing with her back turned before the Spades mirror, standing across from Mara and the Clubs mirror. She stalked up to this other woman and noted the long wavy red hair reaching down to her waist and a complexion and overall similar presence to that of Linda Kouri and wondered if this woman and Linda were sisters.

Then she called out to the five Marys, saying, “Hey, do any of you know who this woman is?”

“She’s the daughter of Linda Kouri,” Mary Jacob said, “though her name escapes me. Oh, I almost forgot,” she added and pointed towards the crossing. “Check over there and see if there’s something missing.”

“Something missing?” she said.

“Just go check if anything’s missing,” Mary Jacob said.

So she stalked back across the altar and through the throughway between the choir stalls and entered the crossing, where she looked at the mirrors and the three girls and saw nothing wrong. Then she looked at the Hearts mirror (“What the . . . ?”) and ran up to it looking around the base of the pillar for the book she had placed there earlier, then said, “It’s gone!”

“What’s gone?” Mary Jacob said.

“The book,” she said. “It’s not here anymore.”

“Then check if our visitors have it,” Mary Jacob said.

She did just that, approaching Mara by the Clubs mirror and rifling through the pockets of her blue dress skirt and found nothing there. Then she approached Kendra by the Diamonds mirror and saw that she had no pockets on her tattered Mandarin dress but patted her down to make sure and found nothing on her person. Then she stalked towards Lima by the Spades mirror and spied a book clutched in her hand, so she took it and read to title and by-line on the cover.

“I found it,” she called out, “but why does Lima have it?”

“I don’t know,” Mary Jacob said, “but maybe she knows something about that book.”

So she went back to the pillar with the Hearts mirror and replaced it besides its base on the floor like before. Then she walked past the choir stalls and across the altar back towards the chevette and said, “Like what?”

Mary Jacob shrugged her shoulders.

“I see,” she said, figuring that the presence of Linda’s daughter here presaged Linda’s appearance, as well, but then she remembered the Virgin Mary saying that she'd meet her in ’three instances’ this week. If her dream about Linda was the first instance, then she’d have to dream of her a second time before she’d get to meet her in person the third time. “What time is it?”

“It’s almost midnight, dear,” Mary Jacob said and yawned. “It’s about time we all get some sleep. Good night.”

“Good night,” the other Marys said.

“Good night,” she said and left the crossing for the front pew, this time going to the other front pew on the other side of the nave, where she sat and lay down on her side, once again drifting from thought to thought—

(such as the appearance of a third woman in the crossing, her awkward conversation with the Marys, the Virgin Mary’s errand to give that handkerchief to someone else, her awkward conversation with the other Marys, the imminent second meeting with Linda Kouri, her awkward conversation with the Marys, the appearance of Mara and then Kendra in the crossing, her awkward conversation with the Marys . . .)

—till the words of the Marys and the appearance of three girls in the crossing merged into another incomprehensible swirl of mental static. And just like before, her brain switched to a zen-like stake of existing in the here and now between the past and the present, between life and death, between her worst nightmares and her deepest yearnings, in which the fluttering glimpses of dreams opened her mind’s eye to another encounter with Linda Kouri . . .

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Once again, upon opening her eyes, she found herself back in the enclosure of a dead-end alley looking into the same mirror she’d seen when she first saw Linda Kouri in her dream. She looked back down the alley and saw the same hanging paper lanterns throwing a warm glow over the street ahead and knew this was the same kind of dream space, so she peered into the mirror.

Through the mirror, she saw Linda waking up in her bed in the morning and looking for her bedmate, Alice Liddell, in her arms beside her, but she was no longer beneath the sheets with her. Linda sat up in the nude and grimaced, putting her hand to her bosom for a few moments as if she were experiencing a sudden burst of pain there.

Whatever it was, Linda’s observer could only guess its source, but on seeing Linda reach for her glasses on the nightstand, she saw hickeys down the parting of her breasts and down her stomach and further down, she imagined, where she and Alice indulged themselves last night. When Linda put on her glasses, she turned the sheets aside and saw drops of blood there in the center of the bed and looked around the room for Alice.

“‘Alice?’” Linda called out. “‘Alice,’ where are you?”

Thinking that she was referring to her, the designated ‘Alice’ said through the mirror, “Are you sure that’s my name?”

Linda turned to her direction and said, “Of course it is,” and she got up and walked up to the mirror facing ‘Alice,’ “but how are you even inside my mirror? And why did you—”

“You don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not her. I’m not ‘Alice.’ I’m not the girl you slept with,” though she refrained from adding that she had been possessing Alice’s body for much of the time she was with Linda, up to the first few moments of their making love last night.

“Then,” Linda said, “who are you? What’s your name?”

“I wish I knew,” she said.

“What do you mean by that?” Linda said and reached out and put her fingers on the surface of the reflection. “Surely, you must have a name.”

She shook her head again, crestfallen over the fact that Linda still couldn’t understand her meaning, so she just said, “I wish I knew.”

Then the reflection began dissipating from the mirror.

“‘Alice!’” Linda said and began tapping at the mirror, till she grimaced and gritted her teeth at the pain in her chest again before her image blurred out, leaving Linda’s disembodied voice to linger in her dream again. ‘Alice,’ come back!

Linda was gone again, leaving the girl to wonder what it would take for Linda to understand, but she left that aside for her third encounter with her. Right now, she wondered about Alice’s current whereabouts for the next several minutes alone in the dead-end alley. At least, she thought she was alone, for there came a breeze swinging the hanging paper lanterns above her head, and on that breeze was whispered the name of ‘Alice.’

She turned around and looked towards the bustle of the street at the end of the alley between an izakaya bar and a bustling cafe, where there stood a man in a sack suit and an ulster with a derby hat atop his head, tipping his hat to her.

“Cheerio, ‘Alice,’” he said in a familiar voice.

“Mr. Foster, is that you?” she said and ran towards him.

“The very same,” he said and offered his hand, which she took. “I trust your journey was enlightening?”

“It’s more confusing than anything else,” she said, “and my name isn’t ‘Alice’ anymore.”

“Ah, I see,” he said, guiding her along the teeming storefront sidewalk full of yokai and ghosts and other spectral entities going about their business. “How many times have you met with Linda Kouri then?”

She stopped in her tracks, making her companion stop and look down on her, so she said, “How do you know that name?”

“I’m just a messenger, my dear,” he said. “How many times have you met with her?”

“Twice so far,” she said.

“Come along then,” he said, pulling her along with him through the crowded sidewalk and turning into another alley between the back of a Western-themed saloon and a Chinese-operated opium den, where the ammonia-like pungency made her cough. “Ah, sorry about that. Kids like you aren’t used to the smell of opium, but we’re almost there.”

Past the odors of the opium den and the yelling of late-night gamblers inside the saloon, she accompanied her companion down the alley for some minutes before coming to a stop at a dead end. And just like before, she saw him reaching into a pocket of his ulster and pulling out a small vial and cupping her hands around it.

“You know the drill now,” he said. “Think of the place you want to go, and I will bring you there.”

So she thought of the cathedral where she had met with the six Marys and the crossing where she and three other girls had appeared and the front pews in the nave where she’d had those weird dreams about meeting Linda Kouri . . .

Which made her blush.

“Naughty thoughts, eh?” he said with a smirk.

“No,” she said, shaking her head, “I’m not like that!”

“Well, whatever it is,” he said, “have you thought of it?”

She nodded without saying anything.

“Good. Keep that thought in your mind,” Mr. Foster said and took the vial and threw it against the dead-end wall, whereon a swirling kaleidoscope of ever-shifting images manifested before their feet, but before her eyes, Mr. Foster’s form glowed and shifted into the wizened form and the flowing robes of a Chinese philosopher. “Ah, sorry about that.”

“Chuang Chou?” she said.

“Indeed, that’s me amongst my many faces,” Chuang Chou said before taking up her hands and pressing his palms against hers and lacing his fingers with hers as if he was joining hands with her across the mirror reflection. “Okay, this is a little trick I learned from Linda Kouri long ago, so repeat after me. Widdershins, widdershins, look at my life.”

“Widdershins, widdershins, look at my life,” she said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, take me away,” he said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, take me away,” she said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, take me to Hell,” he said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, take me to Hell,” she said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, where Lima dwells,” he said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, where Lima dwells,” she said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, find her today,” he said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, find her today,” she said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, help end the strife,” he said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, help end the strife,” she said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, help me to find,” he said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, help me to find,” she said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, my peace of mind,” he said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, my peace of mind,” she said.

“When you meet with Linda Kouri,” Mr. Foster said, “do exactly as I say while keeping your hands laced together, and then you and Linda say it again as one. Got it?”

She nodded that she did.

“Good,” he said, letting go of her hands. “All right, go on and be careful on your way there.”

“I will,” she said and ran towards the portal and jumped in and fell down the rabbit hole of lucid sleep, feeling her body becoming weightless once again amidst the slow-wave nausea of repressed emotions flooding up her soul with sensations of guilt and bliss dancing on the edges of her thoughts over pleasuring herself above the scene where Alice was pleasuring Linda between her legs in her bedroom loft—

----------------------------------------

Till she awoke again on the pew (this time without her hands between her legs) and propped herself up to a sitting position, then put her hand to her bosom and felt the thumps of her heart beating against her palm like a drum. She then looked around the interior of the cathedral, noticing a distinct change in the atmosphere around her, like the smell of thick ozone lingering overhead as if storm clouds were brewing. But when she looked into the four-pillared crossing, she gaped. There by three of the four pillars were the floating bodies of Lima in front of the Spades mirror, Kendra in front of the Diamonds mirror, and Mara in front of the Clubs mirror, all three girls hovering horizontal like the assistants to a stage magician’s levitation trick.

She stalked towards the crossing and turned them back to their standing positions like before in front of their mirrors, then stalked past the choir stalls and said, “Hey, do you know what happened to them?”

No answer came back to her.

So she stalked across the altar towards the chevettes, saying, “Do you have any idea what’s going . . . on?”

She stared up at the iconography depicting Jesus’ crucifixion and noticed that Mary Magdalene and Mary Salome were now missing from the picture. So she walked through the ambulatory that encircled the apse surrounding the altar and came to the other chevette, hoping to find Mary Clopas and Mary Jacob and Mary Bethany visiting Jesus’ tomb after the crucifixion, and stared at the scene without any of the Marys were there.

She was about to call out to them when she heard somebody’s footfalls echoing in the crossing, so she stalked back through the throughway between the choir stalls and headed towards her Hearts mirror. Through the mirror, she found Linda Kouri surveying her surroundings in the middle of the crossing and something else that wasn’t there when she turned to look at the crossing on her side of the mirror and saw nothing in there but the girls standing before the mirrors on three of the pillars.

Mystified, she looked at the mirror again, where she spied a throne atop a raised platform in the middle of the crossing over a checkerboard floor, before hearing Linda say, “This is Chess Cathedral.”

Then when she saw Linda turning her attention to the large looking-glass mirrors in the reflection, she found her turning clockwise and looking at each mirror in turn, overlooking the Hearts mirror for some reason and checking the crown moldings of each one bearing a suit from a card deck in their frames: the Spades mirror, the Diamonds mirror, the Clubs mirror, and the Hearts mirror.

She ducked away under the mirror as Linda passed by the Hearts mirror, then looked up and saw Linda peering at the three girls standing inside three of the reflections, each with their backs turned to her, and started tapping those three mirrors, saying, “Hey, can you hear me?”

None of the girls responded or moved in any way whatsoever, as if they were statues or photographs.

Yet when Linda took a closer look at Kendra and Mara in the Diamonds mirror and the Clubs mirror, respectively, she tapped the surface of the Diamonds mirror again and said, “Kendra, can you hear me?”

Again, no response from Kendra.

So Linda moved to the mirror of Clubs and tapped it, saying, “Nico, can you hear me?”

And again, no response from Mara, either.

Linda then approached the Spades mirror and stared at the mysterious girl with long red hair and put her hand up to the reflection and closed her eyes. What she was thinking at that moment, Linda’s observer could only guess at, till Linda said her next words.

“Are you my daughter?” Linda said. “Are you Lima Kouri? Please, turn around. Nod your head. Do something. Say anything, please! I’m begging you!”

But like the other two, there was no response from her, either.

So Linda’s observer said, “She’s asleep. They’re all asleep.”

“Lima?” Linda said, raising her hand up between the girl’s shoulder blades in the reflection. “Is that you?”

Her observer raised her voice, saying, “Over here.”

Linda turned her head and looked at the Hearts mirror she had neglected and froze upon the sight of her, so she walked up to it and said, “Do you know what’s going on, ‘Alice?’”

“That’s not my name,” she said once again. “Why do you keep calling me that?”

“I’m sorry,” Linda said, looking down and averting her eyes from her observer, then: “I can’t help it. I keep thinking of you as ‘Alice’ whenever I see you, but tell me something. Do you know what’s going on?”

The girl knew that look, thinking of Alice taking control of her body just as she was making love to Linda in her bedroom loft above her shop, and said, “I can’t directly say what’s on my mind, lest my shadow self know my intentions and foil me, but I can give you a hint,” and she bent down and reached for the small book leaning against the base of the pillar and stood back up with a book, entitled,

> Entering the Secret Room,

by Linda Kouri, and held it up for Linda to see. “Does this book seem familiar to you?”

“How did you get that book?” Linda said.

“Do you recognize this?” she said.

“Yeah,” Linda said, putting her fingers to the surface of the mirror where she held the book. “My daughter’s friends are looking for that book.”

So she passed the volume through the reflection, holding it there for Linda to take.

Taking it in her hands, Linda turned the cover and flipped through the pages, only to discover—

“It’s blank,” Linda said, putting her thumb against the edge of the pages and flipping through it like a flip book. “Why are all the pages blank?”

“Because it hasn’t been written yet,” she said.

Linda then looked at her through the mirror for several seconds and said, “Do you know who wrote this book?”

“Only as an acquaintance, and barely even that,” she said, “but this very meeting is the third time I’ve met the author of that volume you’re holding.”

“Wait a minute,” Linda said, looking at the book in her hand and then back at her through the mirror. “What are you saying?”

“Take a guess,” she said. “You might be right.”

Linda flipped through the empty pages again before turning back to the cover with the name, Linda Kouri, and said, “You’re saying that I wrote this book?”

“That’s correct,” she said.

“Why would I use a pseudonym?” Linda said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Only you can know that.”

“But how can I know something I haven’t even done yet?” Linda said, snapping the book shut and waving it in front of the reflection before her. “Can you be more specific about this thing? I still don’t understand.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because I’m not you,” she said. “I can’t glean the thoughts of others without a direct connection to them, first, and I have to be careful about who I make connections with.”

“When you say ‘connection,’” Linda said, seeming to connect the logic of her prior statement about ‘Alice’ in her mind, “do you mean like you and Alice?”

She nodded her head, thankful that Linda was starting to get it, and said, “Words are swords, Linda, which can be wielded for good and for ill, to protect those you love and cut down your monsters. When you understand what that means, you’ll know what to do with that book. Peace be with you.”

And with that done, she was about to go away—

“Wait a minute,” Linda said, slipping the book in the inner pocket of her jacket, and placed her hand up against the surface of the Hearts mirror and tapped it. “Don’t go yet. I need to ask you something.”

So she stayed put and said, “What is it?”

“Do you have a name?” Linda said.

She shook her head.

“Well, since your name isn’t ‘Alice,’” Linda said, “do you want me to give you another name?”

At her words, she stared back at Linda with wide and wondering eyes, remembering the scene of Mr. Prospero taking away Alice’s real name in the mirror and exciting herself on the other side of the mirror in that dead-end alley at the start of her journey, then covered her gaping mouth with her hand and said, “You’d do that for me?”

“Of course I would,” Linda said. “Everyone deserves a name.”

“Tell me,” she said.

“Auna,” Linda said. “Your name is Auna. Do you like it?”

And for the first time since Alice gave up her true name and exiled herself in this topsy-turvy night journey of her soul, she let go of her deadpan expression with a smile and tears welling up in her eyes, till she nodded and said, “It’s beautiful.”

“Thanks,” Linda said. “It’s my mom’s name.”

So the newly named Auna said, “Then tell her she has a beautiful name for me.”

Yet now Amelia averted her eyes again and said, “I can’t.”

“Why?” Auna said.

“Because I can’t,” Linda said and leaned her hand against the surface of the mirror, keeping her eyes averted, but Auna could tell she was remembering hidden deep inside her, something painful by the look of her woeful face. “I said some hurtful things to my mom and dad before I came here,” she added, wiping away the tears welling up in her eyes, “and I did some things I can never take back.”

“Are you afraid to go home?” Auna said.

“Yeah,” Linda said. “As long as I’m the way I am, they don’t want me back. I’m dead to them after what I did.”

“What did you do?” Auna said, wanting to know what had happened between herself and her parents, but she amended her question. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, though.”

“It’s okay,” Linda said. “I’ve been wanting to get this off my chest since I came here.”

And so, Linda confessed the depths of her soul to Auna, and Auna listened as if she were her confessor. Auna then noticed Linda pressing her hand up against the reflection of the mirror during the most difficult part of her story, as if the mirror itself were a conduit relieving at least some of the guilt Linda had stored up in her soul. And so she talked and talked and talked in this way, while Auna listened in silence on the other side of the mirror and pressed her hand up against the reflection where Linda’s rested, and for a time, both girls found solace in each other’s company.

As she listened, though, Auna looked at the three girls standing before their respective mirror. While Linda continued with her sob story, Auna went to Kendra and dragged her towards the Hearts mirror, then went to Mara and dragged her towards the Hearts mirror, setting both girls side by side, then went to get Lima by the Spades mirror.

Then, after finishing her story, Linda said, “There, I’m done. What do you think?”

But Auna kept silent as she hooked her arms under Lima’s arms and tipped her over, so she could drag her. Then Auna looked in on Linda and saw her looking for Kendra in the Diamonds mirror and Mara in the Clubs mirror for a moment, then looking at the Hearts mirror where both girls now stood facing Linda in the reflection. She then saw Linda going to the Clubs mirror and the Diamonds mirror, only to find neither girl there.

“I’m over here,” Auna said and waved at her from the Spades mirror with one hand, while keeping her other hand hooked under Lima’s arm.

So Linda turned around and said, “Hey! What gives?” And she headed straight for that very mirror and added, “I just bore out my soul to you, and you just—”

“Don’t mind me,” Auna said, dragging Lima Kouri as though she were an actual statue. “I was listening to the last part you said as I’m doing this.”

“What are you doing?” Linda said.

“I’m moving them to a safer spot,” Auna said from the Hearts mirror, causing Amelia to head back to that very mirror, where Auna was now positioning Lima next to Kendra. “I can’t be too careful.”

“Why?” Linda said.

For a moment, Auna paused before responding, wondering if she should tell her what she knew, but decided against it and said, “You said you time-traveled back to 1913, but there were three others who did the same thing against their will.”

“Wait,” Linda said. “What do you mean by ‘against their will’?”

“Just what I say,” Auna said, then pointed to two of Kendra and Nico before the Hearts mirror. “These two. You called them ‘Kendra’ and ’Nico,’ correct?”

“Yeah,” Linda said. “They showed up at my shop a week ago asking about a missing sister. How did they end up in this place?”

“First of all,” Auna said, “this one you call ’Nico’ is actually Mara. Does that name ring any bells?”

It did, because Linda now said, “That’s the girl they were looking for!”

“I see,” Auna said, looking from Mara to Kendra to Lima before facing Linda through the reflection, and decided to tell her just enough for her to know what she needed. “Believe it or not, Mara appeared here last week, and Kendra appeared shortly after that. And this girl you call ‘Lima Kouri,’ your daughter,” she added, pointing the girl out between Nico and Kendra, “she appeared last night before you entered this cathedral, and she had in her possession the book I had given you. Something about her made me think of you when I checked up on her, which inexorably led me to you.”

Linda paused for a moment and said, “Is that why you appeared in my mirrors earlier?”

“Correct,” Auna said, “but that’s not the weird part.”

“You’re kidding,” Linda said. “What’s the weird part?”

“This ’Nico’ you mentioned,” Auna said, pointing out Mara in the reflection, “appeared inside of here twice: once two weeks ago, and again just before Mara appeared in this place. And on both occasions,” she added, “Nico appeared kneeling before this very mirror holding her Vorpal sword sheathed by her side. The first time Nico appeared, she said she needed to meet Kendra and another girl named ‘Celia.’ Does this ring any bells?”

“Yeah,” Linda said. “Nico and Kendra mentioned Celia when I took them to their destination last week.”

“I see,” Auna said. “The second time Nico appeared, she said she needed to wake up her sister.”

“You mean Mara?” Linda said.

Auna nodded her head and said, “That second time was a little over a week ago, shortly before her sister Mara appeared here. For two weeks now, I’ve been trying to figure out why all of these people keep appearing in this cathedral, when it was originally built to house me here. To be honest, I was baffled for the whole of those two weeks, till I saw you with Alice last night, and it all came together for me. It’s all because of you.”

“What are you saying?” Linda said. “That it’s my fault?”

“Not your fault,” she said. “You’re not the catalyst. For every shot fired from a gun, there must be a shooter to pull the trigger. Alice is the bullet, you are the gun, and—”

“[Mr. Prospero]’s the shooter,” Linda said.

“Correct,” Auna said. “Now do you understand?”

She did, and Linda gritted her teeth in a grimace and closed her hands into tight knuckle-white fists and said, “Why? Why would he do this?”

“I don’t know,” Auna said and stared at Linda as she remembered Mr. Foster’s instructions, “but whatever you do, don’t think of him. Forget about [Mr. Prospero] or Alice or anyone else you’ve met on your journey. Forget about all the pain you’ve seen in your life and all the things you’re running from. Just think of one thing, just one thought. Don’t overthink it. Just let it come to you,” and she waited for Linda.

When she thought Linda was ready, Auna said, “Do you have it in your mind?”

“Yes,” Linda said.

“Good,” she said, “With that thought in your mind, I need you to put your hands up against this mirror. It’s important.”

So Linda did as she was bidden, placing both of her hands flat against the reflection, and said, “Like this?”

Auna then placed her own hands up against the mirror where Linda had placed hers, then laced her fingers with Linda’s and joined hands with her across the reflection, praying that she was on the same wavelength as her, and said, “Repeat after me. Widdershins, widdershins, look at my life.”

“Widdershins, widdershins, look at my life,” Linda said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, take me away,” Auna said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, take me away,” Linda said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, take me to Hell,” Auna said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, take me to Hell,” Linda said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, where Lima dwells,” Auna said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, where Lima dwells,” Linda said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, find her today,” Auna said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, find her today,” Linda said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, help end the strife,” Auna said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, help end the strife,” Linda said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, help me to find,” Auna said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, help me to find,” Linda said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, my peace of mind,” Auna said.

“Widdershins, widdershins, my peace of mind,” Linda said.

“Now let’s say it together,” Auna said, and the interior of the cathedral began turning counterclockwise around the axis of their joined hands like two sides of a coin, like the flip of a coin with Auna as ‘heads’ and Linda as ’tails.’ And as one, as two sides of the same coin flipping in suspension like fate, both girls said, “Widdershins, widdershins, look at my life. Widdershins, widdershins, take me away. Widdershins, widdershins, take me to Hell. Widdershins, widdershins, where Lima dwells. Widdershins, widdershins, find her today. Widdershins, widdershins, help end the strife. Widdershins, widdershins, help me to find. Widdershins, widdershins, my peace of mind. Widdershins, widdershins . . .”

And both girls cycled through the incantation once again—

----------------------------------------

As the blurry kaleidoscope of shapes and colors and familiar and unfamiliar faces and places whirling past their vision like a merry-go-round. So Auna squinted her eyes for a time through the shift from 1913 to 1994, till the spinning in her head subsided, and she regained her footing on tenuous feet and opened her eyes. That’s when she found herself looking inside a different bedroom where Linda in the room on the other side of the mirror, so Auna looked from right to left (the credenza along the first wall, the bed and side drawer with the lamp turned on along the second wall, the desk and chair overlooking the window with the curtain pulled over along the third wall, and the low bookshelf along the fourth wall right next to her bedroom door) before laying eyes on Linda’s daughter, Lima Kouri, standing before the mirror.

That’s when Auna realized that Linda was possessing the body of her daughter, Lima Kouri, so she braced herself for Linda’s reaction. Then, when she saw Linda open her eyes, Auna noticed Linda’s hands pressed flat against the reflection of the Heats mirror hanging from the wall and wondered what was going through her mind right now.

“What’s going on?” Linda said, pressing her hand up to her new face, and looked down on herself wearing pajamas with long locks of red hair flowing past her shoulders. “Why am I—”

You’re possessing your daughter’s body, Auna said in her mind.

“You’re kidding me,” Linda said.

I’m not, Auna said.

“Where are you?” Linda said and inspected her surroundings from right to left across the room as if she couldn’t see Auna anymore. “How are you even doing this?”

And that’s when Auna realized that she was a ghost here, wherever ‘here’ was, so she said, We’re combined, you and I, and I’m not the one doing it. You are, for you are the living link between Chess cathedral and this place. Check your pocket, if you don’t believe me.

And so Linda did just that, fishing for the book inside the inner pocket of her jacket, and said, “It’s gone.”

Then the book must be here somewhere, Auna said.

“How do you know that?” Linda said.

Because we’re here, Auna said. Do you recognize this place?

So Linda looked around the lighted bedroom and saw an unassuming key in the lamplight on a night stand, and Auna saw into Linda’s memories with a girl named Leslie and another girl named Ramona back in Linda’s dream realm. And all at once, Auna’s mind replayed Lima Kouri’s actions in the mirror sheen of Linda’s watery reflection spell as Linda (playing her daughter’s role) went through the motions of an incomprehensible play.

Linda then picked up the key and placed it in the box and opened it and peered inside, wherein she found the same book, Entering the Secret Room, by Linda Kouri. She took it out and flipped passed the cover and the dedication page to a table of contents showing thirteen titles, whereon the first story in the book, a novella entitled,

> "Alice and the Mad Tryst,"

caught her eye. Linda then turned the page to the story itself and said, “Should I read it?”

Auna nodded her head and said, It will become clearer to you once you read it.

So Linda read, saying, “‘Yes, we’ve all heard of that famous Alice who fell down the rabbit hole and entered the looking-glass and the real Alice Liddell—’” She broke off and said, “Wait, is this the same one I met last night?”

Yes, Auna said, but there’s a difference.

“What difference is that?” Linda said.

This difference is you, Auna said, for you are the writer of this story.

“What are you talking about?” Linda said. “You’re speaking in riddles here.”

Auna just stared at her through the reflection of the mirror and said, The woman you are right now is different from the woman you’ll become when you decide to write this story, for there’s something weighing on you right now. I’m sure you know what it is.

Linda paused for a moment and said, “[Mr. Prospero] asked me if I believed in fate.”

Do you? Auna asked.

For a time, Linda paused again at her question before saying, “I don’t know. Maybe he was just bluffing or something.”

Or maybe he’s telling the truth, Auna said.

“You’re kidding.”

I’m not, Auna said. Your friends may tell you what you want to hear, but it’s your enemies that tell you what you need to hear. Then Auna waited for Linda to digest the revelation before saying in her head, Now do you understand?

Linda nodded and read the story again, saying, “‘Yes, we’ve all heard of that famous Alice who fell down the rabbit hole and entered the looking-glass and the real Alice Liddell who inspired the books and crossed the Atlantic to visit America and lived to a ripe old age. . . .’”

----------------------------------------

When Linda finished reading, she just stood there looking at the last page of the novella with a faraway gaze, and Auna caught a glimpse of Linda’s thoughts about the nameless girl who had visited her teleportation mirror inside Alice’s bedroom prison and her body-length mirror in her loft above her shop. And just as Linda realized this, she started blinking as she got glimpses of Auna’s own memories about Alice massacring the masqueraders in the ballroom and the rest of the night journey Auna had undertaken, so Linda put her hand to her throat and gulped.

Then Linda placed the book back into the box upon the night stand, eyeing the cover title and her pseudonymous by-line beneath it, and said, “Oh my God, Auna . . . I . . . I . . . I don’t know what to say.”

Then don’t say anything, Auna said in her mind and manifested again in the reflection of her Hearts mirror before Linda’s eyes, then materialized in front of the woman and cupped her hands over her cheeks and looked into her eyes. “Just you knowing the truth is enough for me, but there’s a difference between knowing the truth and making it known to the world at large. Even when you’ve seen the truth inside his lie, Vlad III still has everyone else fooled with his own false name and his lying tongue.”

“Because he erased your real name?” Linda said.

“Not erased, for only God can erase names,” Auna said. “He only hid it from view.”

“And he did it by calling you ‘Bambina,’” Linda said, “which means ‘Child.’”

Auna nodded and said, “He took my true name and substituted it with his own spell-word, which you have broken by giving me another name. As of now, I am Alice to him and Auna to you, his ‘Bambina’ and your ‘bambina.’” And before Linda said anything else, Auna kissed both of her eyes and added, “With this kiss upon your eyes shall you see the truth behind the lie of false names and lying tongues.” She then kissed Linda’s lips and said, “And with this kiss upon your lips shall you speak the truth behind the lie of false names and lying tongues.” She then hugged Linda close to her and said, “Remember me as you see me now, for when you see me again, I will no longer be as I am.”

Linda pulled away and said, “What do you mean?”

“The next time you see me,” Auna said, knowing that her time was almost up as she wiped her tears welling up in her eyes, “I’ll be under [Mr. Prospero]’s influence as Alice, and I’ll corrupt your daughter just to get to you, and when I do . . .” And Auna let her words drift off and took Linda’s hand and pulled her towards Lima’s bed, wanting to do something for herself before her time was up, so she said, “I need you to do something for me.”

“What do you want me to do?” Linda said.

“Make love to me,” Auna said, “like you did with Alice.”

“But—”

“Please,” Auna said, climbing into the sheets and pulling Linda towards her. “I don’t have much time left, so I want to know what it feels like to love someone while I can. Please.”

And for several excruciating moments, Auna waited for Linda to make the next move, to take her own cup and mix it with Auna’s the way she had in Linda’s bedroom loft above her shop, even if she was forcing her to play along, for . . .

> . . . [was] there no play,

> To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?

And at that hour, at this moment of all moments, as Auna waited and waited with bated breath, Linda chose to play along with her part and got into bed with Auna, shifting into position below her and wrapped her arms over Auna’s shoulders, giving her implicit permission to do what she wanted.

So Auna rested her head over the swell of Linda’s bosom and cradled her forearms behind Linda’s shoulder blades just like before, feeling the contours of Linda’s flat stomach pressing against the swell of Auna’s bosom, yet it was too little, too late for Auna to fulfill her desires.

Even when Linda entwined her legs around Auna’s like those of a lover and said, “I’m here, Auna. Open your eyes,” Auna couldn’t do it as if an invisible foe had placed a sleeper curse over her. In fact, even when Linda tried propping herself up on her elbows, struggling beneath Auna’s added weight, movement for Auna proved much too difficult for her even now, making Linda plop back down on the bed and sink back into the padding . . .

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Because Auna’s mind floated up from her body like an out-of-body experience, and she was now looking down at another version of herself resting her head over Linda’s breasts, another version of herself with Linda’s legs wrapped around her waist, another version of herself making a mockery of Auna. Thus, even when Linda said, “I’m here, Auna,” the girl she was talking to was no longer Auna anymore.

So Auna yelled down at Linda through the waning static of her telepathy, saying, Wake up! That’s not me, so wake up! Please, WAKE UP!

But it was no use as Alice stirred from her slumber and pushed herself up from Linda’s body, catching Linda’s notice with her blank eyes seeming to phase in and out of unconscious slow-wave sleep as [Mr. Prospero]’s spell began to sever Auna’s connection with Linda completely before Linda could realize what was happening.

Linda, don’t fall for her! SHE’S NOT ME! Auna screamed but to no avail, her voice echoing around her as though she was inside an isolation chamber, her presence nullified by the cruel counterbalance of [Mr. Prospero]’s substitution spell, in which Auna’s true name lay hidden beneath that damnable epithet (’Bambina’) from which Alice took control of her body. Not since Lilith had uttered the true name of God in defiance to His will for her to submit herself to Adam has another being (alive or dead) uttered so binding and cruel a curse.

And floating above the scene, Auna could do nothing but watch as Linda said to her doppelgänger, "Hey, what happened to you? Are you all right?"

Yet Alice remained silent, unblinking, possibly unaware of her surroundings as far as Linda and Auna could tell, before propping herself up over Linda and raising herself into a kneeling position over Linda’s hips, now straddling Linda’s left thigh, her crotch above her knee cap.

"What's going on?" Linda said, reaching out and grasping Alice’s hand. "Auna, can you hear me? What's wrong?"

Alice remained silent, her expression blank, her eyes unblinking, as if she were looking into a different scene with those eyes, till she grasped both of Linda’s hands and pinned them above her head into the cushions.

“Stop it!” Linda said, struggling beneath an invisible force keeping her down on the bed and seeing the roving predatory eyes of a she-wolf. Those eyes lit up with mischief, hinting at forbidden desires coming to the surface like hellfire from unfathomable depths, for in those eyes was a cesspool of bodily urges that only wanted more, more of Linda’s body, more of her heart, more of her soul. “What’s happened to you?”

“Who’s this ‘Auna?’” Alice said and raised herself up and manifested a knife in her hand and pointed it at her face. “Have you grown tired of me already?”

Only then did Linda’s eyes fixate on who the imposter was and said, “It’s not like that, Alice,” and she tried to buck her hips to throw her off, keeping her eyes on the knife Alice held to her face, while Auna could only watch in mute despair.

“Have you been cavorting with that good-for-nothing girl-character?” Alice said and slid herself down to Linda’s thighs. “How naughty of you!”

“Stop it!” Linda said, struggling to break free of whatever was holding her down. “It’s not what you’re thinking!”

“And how do you know what I’m thinking?” Alice said and ran her knife down her pajamas, just grazing the fabric and tickling Linda’s skin beneath it. “Unless it’s true!” And she raised her knife and slammed it into the pillow cushion beside her head. “Since this isn’t your body, I won’t be able to do anything to you, but I can deal your daughter a lot of pain—”

“Don’t!” Linda said.

“—if you don’t play along,” Alice said . . .

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I can’t put to paper the events that transpired thereafter, for only those unlucky few who live could know it as it was: myself, my daughter, her two friends, and the tragic specimen of that defiled epithet, ‘Alice,’ hereby renamed as Auna. I don’t know the name of the woman who will birth this child of fate into this world, and I don’t know whether this child will grow up to become the heroine of her own life or whether someone else will fulfill that role, and I don’t know what will become of this story after I pen these words, but I know this.

Dearest Auna, no matter where you go, no matter what your circumstances, no matter who you are, no matter whether you’re even aware of this or not, I’ve immortalized you in these pages. You’re our perpetual link to our Mother, Lilith, and you’re the rightful ruler of Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts, because this whole world is your Wonderland, and we’re just players on your stage. Though the world at large may fear or hate you, you are loved: just as Lilith has birthed you into this world, so too have all your mothers to this day and the days to come; just as Lilith has named you, so too have all your mothers to this day and the days to come; just as Lilith has cared for you, so to have all your mothers to this day and the days to come; and just as Lilith has died for you, so too have all your mothers to this day and the days to come. You are worth it.

Even so, I can’t imagine the events that will transpire outside of these pages, outside of my knowledge of these events. What I have compiled together through my efforts, I invite others to add to it, as I have added my share to the work of my forebears. But beware: this journey’s not for the faint of heart. I don’t know what will become of me after I’ve penned these words or what you will decide after you read this tale, but I know this.

The rest is up to you, dear reader.

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つづく

Day: Alice and the Mad Tryst (Dog Roses)

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