> For yesterday is but a dream

> And tomorrow is only a vision,

> But today well lived makes

> Every yesterday a dream of happiness

> And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

>

> —Kalidasa (attributed)

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1

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It was now 8:21 a.m.

While the red musketeers were using a pilloried Ronald Hamilton as target practice on the raised platform in the Phantom Realms, and while Colbie was about to ask her mother what was going on during their drive to the Arcana Bookstore in the waking world, naughty dreams roused Ozma from her slumbers. She opened her eyes and found Dorothy asleep beside her amidst the faint splashing of the water fountain at the end of the sitting room outside the double doors of her bedroom. Dorothy lay on her side with her forehead resting against Ozma’s shoulder, her bare leg entwined around Ozma’s thigh, and her hand resting over Ozma’s bare stomach. Turning onto her side, Ozma viewed Dorothy’s adorable face, her eyelids closed and her lips open just enough for her breathing to tickle the flesh of her bosom, and Ozma remembered last night’s doings. What began in the sitting room with holding hands and exploratory kisses on blushing cheeks had escalated to fervent French kisses and tickling and fondling and soft moans, till they moved into Ozma’s bedroom to further their explorations into these new and exquisite sensations.

She took Dorothy’s hand beneath the sheets and pressed it over her bosom, letting her fingers run across her nipples, then leaned in and kissed her lips and said, “Wake up, Dorothy,” and she kissed her again. And again. And again.

Till Dorothy’s eyes fluttered open, and she pulled her hand from Ozma’s grasp and raised the sheets up to her eyes and said, “What were you doing?”

“Waking you up, silly,” Ozma said and pulled the covers down, revealing her friend’s rosy cheeks, then ran her finger across her bangs and propped herself on her forearms and kissed her forehead in a sisterly way. “Come on, hop to it. No time for lazing,” she added and sat up and stretched her arms, arching her back as she yawned, then swung her legs over the bedside and saw their garments strewn on the floor. The sight sent Ozma’s heart racing and confirmed last night’s doings in her mind, so she looked back at her playmate and smiled like a precocious nymphet. “Did you enjoy last night, Dorothy?”

Yet instead of answering her with words, Dorothy answered her with actions. She discarded the bedsheets and crawled up to Ozma and wrapped her arms around her shoulders, returning her kisses on her forehead, then on her cheeks, and then on her mouth.

“Dorothy, wait,” Ozma said, yet her friend continued kissing her and brushing her hands up Ozma’s stomach and over her pudgy bosom, so Ozma relented and let Dorothy have her way with her the way Dorothy had her way with her last night.

That is, until the double doors of the sitting area opened, and a knock came at the double doors of Ozma’s bedroom, and Jellia Jamb said on the other side, “Your Highness, may I come in?”

Both girls stopped what they were doing, and Ozma put a finger to her lips, indicating Dorothy to be quiet, and the girl nodded. Then Ozma said, “Um, not yet, Jellia Jamb. I’m still changing into my clothes. What’s the matter?”

“Her Highness, Princess Dorothy, is missing,” Jellia Jamb said. “Their Highnesses, Princess Betsy and Princess Trot, are looking for her, along with the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger and the Clockwork Man and Captain Bill and the Shaggy Man and all the rest. Should we also send word out for the Tin Woodsman and the Scarecrow to join the search?”

Both girls traded glances, and Dorothy shook her head at Ozma and mouthed, “Don’t tell her I’m here!”

“It’ll be okay, trust me,” Princess Ozma whispered to her, so Dorothy retreated and pulled the sheets over her head, as if she was pretending to be a ghost. “There’s no need, Jellia Jamb. She’s with me at the moment, but don’t come in just yet. We’re . . . still getting dressed.”

There was an audible sigh of relief on the other side of the double doors, followed by a long pause, till Jellia Jamb said, “What was she doing in your room, anyway?”

Ozma looked back at Dorothy beneath the sheets, and the girl opened the sheets just enough to reveal her eyes, making the Princess chuckle.

“She’s been playing hide-and-seek,” Ozma said, which was’t too far off the mark at that moment. “That’s why Dorothy wasn’t in her room this morning. Go tell everyone she’s with me, so they won’t have to worry.”

“Will do, your Highness,” Jellia Jamb said.

When the maid’s footsteps echoed away down the hallway, Ozma turned back to her bashful playmate and removed the bedsheet from Dorothy’s body, revealing her friend’s blushing face as she held onto the sheet covering herself. Ozma chuckled again, saying, “You know, Dorothy, for all your forcefulness, you’re really cute sometimes.”

Dorothy pouted and glared at her, yet her gaze softened as Ozma closed the distance between them and kissed her again, and then again, and yet again. And soon enough, Ozma began making moves on Dorothy, as well, holding her hands and planting more kisses on her playmate’s lips and chin and neck, renewing the sweet exertions of last night’s doings, pushing Dorothy on her back and bringing out soft moans from her friend as she nibbled on the base of her neck and returned the pleasures Dorothy had bestowed on her the night before.

Then Ozma paused her doings and looked back at the double doors, saying, “We shouldn’t keep them waiting.”

Yet Dorothy wrapped her arms around her neck, looking up at her with pleading eyes, and said, “Just a little bit more,” and proceeded to plant more kisses on her lover’s lips.

And through the onslaught of kisses, Ozma put her finger to Dorothy’s lips and said, “Later. I promise.”

When Dorothy nodded, Ozma kissed her once more before rolling herself out of bed and picking up her unmentionables and putting them on, while Dorothy got off the bed and did the same in hurried movements. Ozma then snatched up her robe of gauze from the floor and pulled it back over her head and shoulders, while Dorothy (for her part) snatched up her knee-length dress and slipped it on. Ozma then snapped her fingers, manifesting the magic belt over her slim waist, but then she remembered Glinda’s advice from her letter to keep it hidden under her robe. So she snapped her fingers again, and it disappeared from view, fitting itself against her bare waist like a fat loss belt.

Which wasn’t lost on Dorothy, who said, “You’ve been wearing it below your clothes for a while now.”

“Glinda advised me to keep it hidden on my person,” Ozma said, “lest Mr. Prospero catch wind of it,” and she put her fingers to her lips. “So keep it between us, okay?”

Dorothy nodded again, then helped Ozma position her tall crown atop her head and adjusted the two big flowers on the sides of Ozma's head just above her ears, and before Ozma could react, Dorothy planted a kiss on Ozma’s lips and said, “Make sure to keep our other promise, too, your Highness.”

Ozma smiled at her again and returned her kiss, saying, “Have a bit more patience.”

So Dorothy nodded again, then bent over and picked up her Sunday hat from the floor and leveled the brim just above her eyes, while Ozma snapped her fingers again, replacing the crumpled sheets back into their uniform appearance over the bed.

They were both slipping on their footwear when Jellia Jamb knocked on the double doors again and said, “May I come in, your Highnesses?”

Ozma looked back at Dorothy, who nodded her head that it was okay to let her inside, so Ozma said, “Yes, come in.”

And the double doors opened up, revealing a young woman with green eyes and curly green hair with a bow on her head, wearing a green maid uniform. She came in pushing a serving cart filled with covered platters and plates on separate trays and bowed to both princesses, picking up the hems of her knee-length skirt in a curtsey, and said, “Breakfast has been prepared.”

Yet Ozma felt a little queasy eating in the same place where she and Dorothy had made love the previous night, so she said, “Send it to the banquet room and invite the others. I’m sure they want to see me and Dorothy as soon as possible, so we’ll eat there for today.”

“Will do, your Highnesses,” she said.

Both Princesses thanked their dutiful maid and left the room, holding hands with each other as they walked through the sitting room out into the hallway, keeping up their pretense about playing hide and seek. Yet for all their pretending, they couldn’t fool the observant Jellia Jamb, who approached the bed and noticed the sweet scent they had left behind on the bedsheets.

“Oh my, oh my, oh my,” Jellia Jamb said to herself, smiling at the clandestine doings of her two naughty charges. “Our Highnesses are growing up.”

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2

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It was now 8:50 a.m.

While Lt. Anne Granger was at the Bangsian revealing herself as General Jinjur to Inspector Stephen Larking and Sgt. Rousseau of the Phantom Office and Col. Roosevelt and Lt. Scott Hamilton of the Rough Riders, in another part of the Phantom Realms, a mirror appeared in the middle of an empty back alley with ghost lanterns floating above the street. And for a moment, that mirror reflected a radiant girl with a belt around her waist—

Till a hodgepodge of travelers stepped through the reflection, one after the other, consisting of Amelia Hearn and Cooley and Blaze stepping out first, then the blue musketeer Monsieur Dolan coming in next, then the trio of mothers Ramona Tellerman and Bridget Barton Wenger and Lucy Cairns following in afterward, and then Nico Cairns and Akami and Shiromi bringing up the rear. And at that same moment, just as the mirror had reflected Ozma’s image moments before, Nico and the others were experiencing a collective vision of the most beautiful Lolita girl ever to flash through their imaginations, until the mirror dissipated behind them.

“Whoa!” Cooley said.

“Who was that chick?” Blaze added.

“A goddess, if ever there was one,” Monsieur Dolan said.

“But where did she come from?” Nico said with the afterimage of such a beauty still lingering in her thoughts.

“I’m unsure,” Amelia said, stretching out her hand and summoning her mirror in front of her, but the image of that anomalous girl refused to resurface in her mirror. “I know we all saw her just a moment ago, but my mirror hasn’t captured her image. That’s never happened before.”

And while Amelia Hearn was trying to figure it out with Cooley and Blaze and Monsieur Dolan crowding around Amelia’s mirror and offering their suggestions, Lucy and Bridget and Ramona were left speechless. In fact, everyone seemed too stunned to say anything intelligible at the moment, till Nico broke the silence and said, “Is she dangerous?”

Yet before Amelia could answer her, before anyone else could say anything, Shiromi beat everyone to the punch and said, “She’s an ally of ours—”

“—so you don’t have to worry,” Akami added.

They all turned and saw the Red and White Queens each holding onto the handkerchiefs that Ozma had given them back in her palace throne room, along with the sheathed broadswords attached to their belt straps around the waists of their Sunday dresses.

Nico’s companions just stared at them.

Yet Nico herself was thinking back to her previous dream sequences of drinking tea with the Queens in Katherine’s dream library, then waking up a sleeping Auna under a tree and stealing the equipment off of a sleeping pair of knights under another tree by the yellow-brick road, and then meeting with three blue musketeer on horseback along the same stretch of road as they were headed to . . .

“I remember those swords,” Nico said, pointing out the new additions the Queens had, “but where did you get those handkerchiefs?”

Both girls put their handkerchiefs in the band of their belts and smiled at Nico and Lucy and Bridget and Ramona and Monsieur Dolan and Blaze and Cooley and Amelia, who all eyed their newly acquired items.

“Take a guess,” Shiromi said.

Lucy crossed her arms over her chest, saying, “We don’t have time for games, you two.”

“Then I’ll give you all a hint,” Akami added. “She’s the girl who appeared in all of your minds a moment ago.”

At her words, everyone started trading glances with each other.

“Then who is she?” Amelia said.

“She’s Princess Ozma of the Emerald City,” Akami said, “and the ruler of the land of Oz.”

“She’s the one who appeared in your minds,” Shiromi added, “as well as the one who gave us these handkerchiefs,” and she patted her handkerchief folded over the band of her belt. “As long as we keep these on us, she’ll know where we are.”

“And where are we?” Nico said, looking around at a neon cityscape of some weird Chinatown or Koreatown or Japantown or whatever this place was.

At her words, Akami and Shiromi and the rest looked around at the floating papers lanterns above their heads and the bright blue sky shimmering above with the glow morning sunlight, then at the many wrought-iron fire escapes on the brick walls of on either side of them, and then at the streets teeming with the astral bodies of dreamers and ghosts and yokai passing by the entrance of the alley up ahead of them.

“Beats me,” Shiromi said. “I’ve never been here before.”

“I have,” Akami said. “I remember this place.”

“You’ve been here before?” Bridget said.

Akami nodded and added, saying, “The last time I was here, I was with your daughter, Mrs. Wenger.”

Then Bridget stomped over to the girl and grabbed her shoulders and said, “Do you know where she is?”

“The last time I saw her,” she said, “I was at Chess Cathedral, but that was a while ago. I’m not sure if she’s there anymore. I’m sorry, Mrs. Wenger.”

Bridget deflated with a sigh and let go of her shoulders, saying, “I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.”

“We’ll find her, Mrs. Wenger,” Akami said. “I promise.”

Bridget looked at her, smiling a weak smile, and said, “Have patience.”

“Hey,” Amelia said and beckoned the Queens over to her side with a wave of her hand. “Can you two come over here for a minute? I need to see something.”

So Akami and Shiromi came over to Amelia with her mirror in front of her, while Cooley and Blaze and Monsieur Dolan moved from their places before the mirror. Then Amelia had both Queens put their palms up against the surface and said, “Show me Princess Ozma,” and the mirror glowed beneath their palms and manifested a quaint little gathering with Princess Ozma and three other beautiful Lolitas enjoying their breakfast at a table inside a massive throne room, along with a quaint cast of characters consisting of a giant lion and tiger and a mechanical robot and a shaggy tramp and an old sailor with a wooden leg accompanying them at the breakfast table.

Now everyone crowded around the mirror, looking at the quaint scene, while Nico was beginning to get hungry at the sight of others enjoying a hearty breakfast.

“That’s Princess Ozma,” Akami said, pointing out the most gorgeous girl sitting on a big throne before pointing out the three other gorgeous girls and the big lion and tiger around Ozma, “and I think those other girls are princesses, too.”

“While Akami and I were there,” Shiromi added, pointing out the two massive felines eating some sort of stew, “we also met the lion and tiger.”

“What about the other three?” Amelia said, indicating the mechanical robot and the shaggy vagrant and the old sailor with the wooden lag.

“We’ve never seen them before,” Akami said.

“Wait a sec,” Cooley said, “how did you end up there in the first place?”

“It’s a long story,” Akami said.

“We’re all ears then,” Blaze said. “Lay it on us.”

“Um,” Nico said, feeling her stomach grumble at the sight of a sumptuous breakfast in Amelia’s mirror, “can we go somewhere to eat, first? Just looking at them while they’re eating breakfast is making me hungry.”

“You haven’t eaten yet?” Lucy said.

Nico shook her head.

“Breakfast first,” Lucy said to Amelia.

“All right, all right,” Amelia said, dissipating her mirror again, and looked around once again at her surroundings. “From the look of this place, there might be some good buffets around. Follow me, everyone,” and she led the way through the alley into the teeming streets.

While following along with the rest, Nico was thinking about chow mein and lo mein noodles and egg foo young and General Tso's chicken and orange chicken and Kung Pao chicken and wonton soup and . . .

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3

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It was now 8:51 a.m.

A minute after Akami and Shiromi stepped out of Amelia’s mirror, through which Princess Ozma had sent them back to their friends with a wave of their handkerchiefs, in yet another part of the Phantom Realms, Lewis Carroll and Wantowin Battles appeared at the edge of a bluff overlooking a walled town inside a cavernous world. With the rocky firmament above their heads, Lewis Carroll and Wantowin Battles pocketed their handkerchiefs and looked out over the rooftops and floating lanterns lighting the streets below them. Wantowin Battles stood the butt of his gun on the ground next to him, then took off his tall hat from his bald head and pulled out a spyglass and peered through it into the teeming streets and thoroughfares.

“What do you see?” Lewis Carroll said.

“Red musketeers,” the tall soldier said, “though most of them appear to be teenaged doppelgängers with bobbed haircuts and flintlock muskets and pistols.”

“What about the others?”

“They seem to be young men and women,” the soldier added, “all of them of different countenances, though the way they carry themselves reminds me of vassals to a lordship.”

“Also red musketeers?” Lewis Carroll said.

“Yes,” the soldier said.

“What about Mr. Foster?” Lewis Carroll said. “The last time I saw him, he was pilloried on a raised platform in the middle of the square. Do you see him?”

At his words, Wantowin Battles aimed his spyglass at the square near the center of the bustling town and extended the focus barrel little by little and held it there in a strong grip. After a few moments, he said, “I see the platform and the pillory, but I don’t see anyone held there. Ah, I found him! He’s in the stocks on the other side of the square.”

“Give me that,” Lewis Carroll said, and when the man gave it to him, he put the spyglass to his eye and focused it on an empty pillory bestrewn with rotten tomatoes and other rotten vegetables, blurring it into focus and confirming his companion’s observations. So he readjusted the focus barrel and scanned the other side of the square, till he spotted more red musketeer doppelgängers of ‘Alice’ kicking at an unconscious and disheveled Mr. Foster, whose feet were secured in the stocks on a gravel yard several yards from the pillory. “My God, what have they done to him? He’ll be dead weight.”

He gave the spyglass back to Wantowin Battles, and the soldier looked and winced at what he saw, then said, “We’ll have to form a diversion of some kind. Any ideas?”

“I was about to ask you that,” Lewis Carroll said. “Tell you what I’ll do: I’ll go in their incognito, and you create the diversion.”

“All right,” the soldier said and took off his tall hat and placed his spyglass inside and put it back atop his bald head. “I’ll keep watch up here, and when you get down there, I’ll fire a warning shot to tip you off. Then I’ll create as much havoc as I can, so you can get your man and yourself out of there scot-free, but I need a signal from you to let me know you’re out of danger. Only then will I stop firing, so what’s the signal gonna be?”

“It can’t be gunshots,” Lewis Carroll said.

“Of course not,” the soldier said. “I won’t be able to distinguish them from enemy fire or my own.”

“And it can’t be flares,” he said, “lest I reveal your position to the enemy beneath their glow. I can only think of one thing.”

“What’s that?” the soldier said.

So Lewis Carroll thought back to Princess Ozma’s observation that one sally into enemy territory could never decide a war, wondering what his options were without recourse to any of his friends in Wonderland or the world of the Looking-Glass. In the end, he bent down and picked up a pebble and put it into his vest pocket, then smiled up at his companion and said, “My signal will be the most conspicuous thing you will see. Hence, our enemy will see it, too.”

“Wait,” Wantowin Battles said, taking up his long rifle in both hands, “what do you mean by that?”

“You’ll know when you see it,” he said and reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulling out a ‘Drink me’-bottle, and gave it to his companion. “And keep this with you, till I come back with Mr. Foster. And when I return, for God’s sake, keep the enemy off of my tail.”

Then Lewis Carroll stood up and leaped from the bluff, transforming into a raven amidst a flutter of loose plumage, and descended towards the enemies’ rooftops.

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4

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It was now 8:54 a.m.

Pocketing the ‘Drink me’-bottle, Wantowin Battles decided not to waste any time, so he ran along the crown of the bluff, cradle-carrying his gun across his forearm, and headed down the curve of the bluff surrounding the left side of the underground town. He backed a few paces from the edge of the bluff and stomped his foot and raised his hand and snapped his finger, splitting into a row of doppelgängers of himself that formed the first rank along the curve of the bluff overlooking the town from one end to the other. Then all the doppelgängers of himself raised their hands and snapped their fingers and then took one step forward as one, splitting into another row of doppelgängers that formed a second rank along the bluff. With both ranks formed, the second rank kneeled, while the first rank remained standing, all of them with their rifles primed and cocked and at the ready.

The original Wantowin Battles and another copy of him stood in the center of both ranks. And while his copy took out a revolver from his shoulder holster and waited on his command to fire, Wantowin Battle stood the butt of his gun on the ground and took his spyglass out of his hat and aimed it over the main street, where he sighted Lewis Carroll’s raven-shaped form flying towards the square.

“You will fire on my command, got it?” he said.

“Yes, sir,” his double said.

Then he addressed the rest of his doubles, saying, “The rest of you, stand by. Do not fire, unless I give you the signal with my own gun,” and he patted his own rifle by his side.

Then came a whole series of ‘Yes, sir’ responses from the rest of his doubles along the bluff.

Then he waited.

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5

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It was now 8:57 a.m.

As Lewis Carroll flew along the main street towards the square, where it teemed with battalions of red musketeer girls resembling ‘Alice’ and other red musketeers from Rancaster’s retainers, he saw their lighted faces from the glowing lanterns over their heads. Upon reaching the square in the center of the town, he started circling above the square and focusing on Mr. Foster in the stocks, unconscious on the gravel yard across from the pillory as the last discontented doppelgängers said something about how useless it was getting a rise out of a corpse and left the man alone. With the coast clear of lingering eyes, he swooped down towards his target and fluttered in a soft thud beside Mr. Foster’s head, where Carroll’s raven-shaped self dwarfed the man’s head with his massive corvid bulk.

Mr. Foster was a study in human degradation: his face was bruised and soiled from thrown rotten vegetables; his clothes were stained with the juicy pulp of flung rotten tomatoes, especially his pants around the crotch area; there were even bruised discolorations around his wrists and neck where he had struggled against the yoke restraining him on the pillory.

“Looks like they really roughed you, old boy,” Lewis Carroll said in his croaking raven’s voice.

Without further ado, he hopped to one end of the yoke where the lock was and poked and picked at it, then clutched it up in his beak and began yanking on it over and over again. He then looked around the square and saw a few of the red musketeers from Rancaster’s retainers looking his way and pointing him out, which got the attention of a few doppelgängers of ‘Alice’ loitering on the edge of the square. When he looked closer, he noticed that these were the same doppelgängers that had been kicking at Mr. Foster’s body earlier.

He croaked at them, imitating a raven the best he could, and redoubled his efforts at the lock again, yanking and pulling at it over and over and over. And little by little, the top latch connecting to the top part of the yoke came loose from its nails, and he managed to slip the lock off the latch. Then he hopped towards Mr. Foster’s feet and tried lifting the top part of the yoke from his ankles, but his corvid strength failed him.

That’s when Lewis Carroll found himself swooped up into the arms of a red musketeer doppelgänger, who said, “What are you doing, you naughty thing?”

He turned his head and found himself hugged like a big teddy bear and felt the pudgy bosom of a teenager pressing against his feathery body beneath her tabard. Had this been at any other time in his human form, he would’ve grown an erection, but now was not the time for that.

He croaked out his protests and flapped his wings and poked his beak at the girl molesting him (“Ah, stupid bird!”) and fluttered back to the ground near Mr. Foster’s feet. Then he transformed back into his human form before a perplexed group of Alice-doppelgängers and retainers and smiled at them, saying, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I’m a cousin of this man over here,” and he turned his head to Mr. Foster lying on the ground, then back to his audience. “He is a crow, and I am a raven, and his family sent me here to fetch him. Now I admit that we ravens and crows don’t always get along with each other. God knows we have our differences, but we are still part of the corvid family. With this aim in mind, I was wondering if any of you could answer my question.”

More red musketeers began to gather around him, both doppelgänger and retainer alike, and one of them said, “Okay, sure. What is it?”

So Lewis Carroll took out the pebble from his vest pocket, which turned into an ‘Eat me’-cake in his hand, and said, “I’m willing to give this cake to anyone who can answer this question: Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

The doppelgängers just stared at him, trading glances with each other and shaking their heads at his question.

“Is that a trick question?” one doppelgänger said.

“It is when you don’t know the answer,” he said, “but I assure you that it’s quite logical.”

The Alice-doppelgängers just stared at him, while some of the other doppelgängers and retainers eyed the suspicious-looking cake in Carroll’s hand.

“Is that poisoned?” one retainer said, pointing to the cake in his hand.

“I assure you, it’s not,” he said. “Any guesses?”

“Are you a madman?” another Alice-doppelgänger said. “Because only a madman would ask a question like that.”

At her observation, Lewis Carroll smirked and said, “Maybe, but please take a guess, if you will.”

“And why should we?” another retainer said.

“Because questions need answers,” he said, “which includes the one I just asked.”

“And if we guess the right answer,” yet another doppelgänger said, “what will you do?”

“If you guess the right answer,” he said, “then I’ll give you this cake as your prize and join my cousin in the stocks and catch up on good times,” and he indicated Mr. Foster with a wave of his hand. “Now, which of you will take a crack at it?”

“What’s the question again?”

“Why is a raven like a writing desk?” he said.

So an Alice-doppelgänger ventured, saying, “Because ravens are black and . . .”

Lewis Carroll grinned at the doppelgänger’s idiotic response and chuckled at her pause and said, “Nice try. Next!”

Then one of Rancaster’s retainers stepped forward and said, “Because they both come from . . . living things?”

Lewis Carroll grinned again and said, “Nice try. Next!”

Then a female retainer said, “Because . . . God, I don’t know! Because . . . Ah, your question is so hard!”

Lewis Carrol chucked again and said, “Nice try, though. Next!”

And so, one by one, more guesses issued from the mouths of more doppelgängers and retainers, yet none of them could come up with a suitable answer to Carroll’s question.

“Is there even an answer to that question?” another doppelgänger said. “Because there doesn’t seem to be any, as far as I know.”

“Does that mean you all give up?” he said.

All of them nodded that they have.

“All right then,” the man said and ate the ‘Eat me’-cake in front of his flummoxed audience members, whose mouths watered at their lost prize getting chewed up in Carroll’s mouth and then swallowed down his throat. “Now, to answer your question,” he added, turning to the flummoxed questioner. “Yes, there is a perfectly logical answer to my question. And to answer my own question, ’Why is a raven like a writing desk?’ It is this: because the great Edgar Allan Poe wrote on both when he wrote his poem, ‘The Raven,’ on a writing desk. There! One logical answer to one question, like I said. Now, if you will excuse me,” and he crouched down and lifted the top yoke from Mr. Foster’s ankles, “my cousin and I must return home.”

“Oh, no, you’re not,” another doppelgänger said as the red musketeers grabbed at Carroll’s arms and pulled him away. “You’re not going anywhere!”

Then a shot echoed through the cavernous world to their left, and all heads turned in that direction.

So Lewis Carroll ducked and twisted his way from their grasp and eyed them with a sardonic smile, in which his eyes had all the seeming of a demon's that was dreaming, and his smile had all the grinning of a demon’s that was sinning, as his body then transformed into a giant raven’s that threw his growing shadow across the square. Soon he was about the size of a two-story building, and his high-pitched croak rippled through the red musketeers like a sonic boom and toppled them off their feet.

The red musketeers scrambled to their feet, some of them take up their muskets and taking aim, others running for their lives, till a thunderous volley of smoky plumes sent a wall of death through their ranks in the square, culling their numbers and sending the rest fleeing for cover. Then another thunderous volley of plumes cut down the remainder in the square, leaving behind several corpses of fallen red musketeers bleeding out on the flagstones, filling the air with the stench of blood.

Lewis Carroll looked to the bluff, where the plumes of gun smoke dissipated, revealing Wantowin Battles and his one-man army waving their hands and yelling out, “Hurrah!”

At this, he croaked out a friendly salute to his ally, then turned his attention back to Mr. Foster and picked up the unconscious man in his beak. He then took off flapping his wings, creating a whirl-winded across the square, and flew out of there as the rest of the red musketeers sent their own volleys after him, stinging him on the back of his legs. Through it all, Lewis Carroll climbed and climbed with all his might, till he reached the bluff, where his allies returned fire (Wantowin Battles yelling out, “Fire at will!”) and sent more volleys upon his enemies.

Smarting from the nicks on his legs, Lewis Carroll flew several yards from the edge of the bluff, out of the sight line of enemy fire, and touched down. The ranks of Wantowin’s doubles retreated from the edge of the bluff and dissipated into thin air, leaving the original to run to Carroll’s side. Lewis Carroll himself flapped his wings once more, shaking off the ache of not using his avian abilities for a few years, and placed the unconscious Mr. Foster on the ground.

“Do you have the bottle with you?” he said to Wantowin Battles in his croaking raven’s voice.

His ally took it out of his pocket, saying, “This one?”

“That’s it. Now let me drink it,” Lewis Carroll said, bending his legs, till his whole massive bulk touched the ground, and he opened his giant beak. “Come on, quickly.”

The soldier did as he was told, emptying the contents of the bottle into the giant beak of a mouth, and Lewis Carroll shut his beak and stood back up and gulped. After that, the author began shrinking down and transforming back into his human shape, at which he wiped the creases from his vest and the sleeves of his jacket and shook his legs, shaking out the smarting stings there.

Then Lewis Carroll and Wantowin Battles stalked up to the still-unconscious Mr. Foster, and Carroll put his ear over the man’s chest, where he heard the heart beating and felt his subtle rise and fall of his chest against his cheek.

“He’s breathing, at least,” he said, raising the man’s head to keep his airway open. “I think he’s just knocked out. Check what’s happening over the bluff.”

So Wantowin Battles stomped his leg and snapped his fingers, taking a step forward and leaving a copy of himself behind him. He said to his copy, “Reconnaissance, report!”

“Yes, sir,” his double said and ran back towards the edge of the bluff, while the original stayed behind.

“Will he wake up?” Wantowin Battles said.

“Maybe,” Lewis Carroll said, wondering how he was going to wake him up without having to put his lips to another man’s mouths, then: “I have an idea,” he said and reached into the other inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out the third handkerchief that Princess Ozma had given him in the throne room, then placed it over over the man mouth and proceeded to perform the ‘kiss of life,’ his epithet for CPR. He said a prayer in his head, took a deep breath, bent down over the man’s mouth, and exhaled through the handkerchief into Mr. Foster’s lungs.

Which had the intended effect: Mr. Foster’s legs jerked, and the man sat up coughing and almost head-butted Lewis Carroll on his forehead, still coughing and now cursing.

“Good God, what was that?” Mr. Foster said.

“That was me waking up you,” Lewis Carroll said. “Don’t worry. I used a handkerchief.”

“By God,” Mr. Foster said, “of all the Godawful things I’ve been subjected to—”

“Oh, come, come,” he said. “It’s not even a real kiss. Get over it already,” and he picked up the fallen handkerchief and handed it to the man.

“And what’s this?” Mr. Foster said.

“Take it,” Lewis Carroll said. “Her royal Highness, Princess Ozma, intended for you to have it.”

“Princess who?” Mr. Foster said, taking it from his hand.

“Princess Ozma,” he said. “Now all you have to do is—”

Shots echoed down range from the edge of the bluff, and Wantowin Battle’s lone scout came back running, yelling at the top of his lungs, “Enemy reinforcements are coming!”

“How many?” Wantowin Battles said.

“Whole battalions are coming here,” he said, out of breath, pointing down range towards the moving silhouettes of one battalion and after another approaching their position from their left, the vanguard carrying lamps and lighting the way for the rest of their ranks in the distance. “All of them are marching, double time, to get here. They’ll be on us before we know it,” he added, then dissipated into thin air.

“We have to get out of here!” Wantowin Battles said, digging into his pants pocket for his own handkerchief.

Lewis Carroll took out his own and said to Mr. Foster, “We’ll make this quick. All you have to do is wave that handkerchief in the air, and you’ll be safe!”

“How is that even—”

“Don’t ask questions,” Lewis Carroll said. “Just do it!” And he waved his handkerchief and disappeared.

Then Wantowin Battles said to him, “See you on the other side, sir. Don’t dawdle now,” and he waved his handkerchief and disappeared along with his companion, leaving Mr. Foster as the odd man out with no clue as to what was going on, nor any idea how his rescuers pulled off a Houdini trick like that.

“What the hell was that?” he said.

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6

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It was now 9:05 a.m.

Left all by his lonesome again, Ronald Hamilton (a.k.a., Mr. Foster) wondered what the hell had just happened. For all he knew, he could still be asleep in the stocks back in the square of that blasted town, dreaming of escaping his fate at the hands of those sadistic red musketeers.

Yet before he could dwell on his miseries, more shots popped off from down range at the edge of the bluff, whizzing past him, as more red musketeers appeared and fired on him. With dust and clots of dirt flying around him, Ronald scrambled to his feet, yet he winced from the pain in his groin, dropping his handkerchief on the ground, cursing in his mind (Fuck! Fuck it all! Fuck it all to Hell!) and gritting his teeth at the sadistic cruelty of his captors. Yet as more shots came his way, whizzing past him and biting off more dirt clots and dust clouds around him, he pushed past the pain and scooped the item up off the ground and waved it, as if he was surrendering to the enemy, and prayed like he had never prayed before.

And Lewis Carroll answered his prayers, appearing behind him and saying, “For God’s sake, man!”

And he seized Ronald’s collar in one hand, then waved his own handkerchief in the other yet again, and disappeared amidst the streaks of enemy fire whizzing past his face, taking Ronald with him.

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7

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It was now 9:00 a.m.

Five minutes beforehand, Nico and the nine other members of the group came across Monsieur Dolan’s two musketeer friends, messieurs Todd Curvan and Frank Shaefer, and another man named John Crane while looking for a place to eat. Monsieur Dolan shared a group hug with his two compatriots and thanked John Crane for looking after them, and Nico and the Red and White Queens ran up to greet them, as well. Messieurs Curvan and Shaefer asked Nico and the Queens where Auna was, and Akami said that she last saw her at Chess Cathedral. Then Nico and the Queens asked messieurs Curvan and Shaefer what had happened to them after Alice’s red musketeer doppelgängers had separated their ranks back in Wonderland, but they said it was a long story and that they would talk about their adventures after breakfast. After that, Monsieur Dolan introduced his two compatriots and John Crane to the rest of the group, and John Crane suggested they eat at a place called the Nishimura Buffet, a Chinese-themed buffet specializing in Chinese-American dishes in the phantom realms.

Everyone agreed to go, so the group followed John Crane through the streets, till they arrived at the buffet and entered through the double doors and passed the foyer into the waiting area of the reception behind a line of other customers waiting for the receptionist and call out their ticket numbers. Amelia took one ticket for the group, now consisting of thirteen members, and they all sat at the waiting area along with other customers. Meanwhile, the Red and White Queens were talking to Cooley and Blaze and the rest about their misadventures with Auna in Wonderland and in the throne room of the Royal Palace of Oz, including the involvement of Princess Ozma and Lewis Carroll and a woman named General Jinjur and a tall soldier named Wantowin Battles, all of whom they had either met or seen.

As for Nico, she all but ignored the Queens’ story. At that moment, she felt like she was going out with her mom and dad and Mara at the Dragon Buffet back in the waking world, where the smells of chow mein and General Tso’s and other familiar flavors wafted at her nose and made her mouth water, though she wiped away the drool before anyone else noticed. Just waiting with her mom and the others left her chest feeling tight with nostalgia, and Nico found herself wondering where Mara and her father were right now.

“Are you okay, honey?” Lucy said to her.

Nico nodded and said, “I’m fine,” but that was a lie. For all of her happiness at having her mom with her right now, Nico was still thinking about the whereabouts of Mara and her father.

“Are you sure?” her mother said.

Nico nodded once again, then waited in silence beside her, till the Red and White Queens had finished their story and now approached Nico and her mother.

“Mrs. Cairns,” Akami the Red Queen said, “we’d like to talk to your daughter for a bit, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure, I don’t mind,” she said but hedged her words with a question. “Is it important?”

Akami and Shiromi both nodded that it was.

“Is it about Mara?” Lucy said.

“Not her,” Akami said. “It’s about Kendra.”

And Nico and Lucy looked over at Ramona Tellerman talking to Amelia Hearn and Bridget Barton Wenger about her daughter Kendra, telling them about her interest in guns because of her cop husband taking Kendra out to the gun range for target practice. Ramona added that Kendra was a tomboy that had inherited much of Ramona’s looks but took after her husband’s interests in marksmanship and cop stories, saying that Kendra really was her father’s daughter.

“Don’t tell her yet, Mrs. Cairns,” Shiromi said.

“If not now,” Lucy said, “then when?”

“After breakfast,” Shiromi said.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“We’ll tell everyone about it,” Akami added, “but only after breakfast. We just wanna pass it through Nico first.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.

With that, Nico got up and followed both Queens out into the foyer of the buffet right next to the double door entrance. A few customers came in and passed by, nodding at the girls as they passed, and then Nico said, “What’s going on?”

“Kendra’s somewhere around these parts,” Akami said, “but I don’t want to get Mrs. Tellerman’s hopes up too soon.”

“How do you know she’s here?” Nico said.

“After we told Princess Ozma about Kendra,” Akami said, “she helped us get here just as we all stepped out of Amelia’s mirror into this place—”

“—and that’s what we’ll say to everyone after breakfast,” Shiromi added, “but that’s not all.”

“There’s more?”

Both Queens nodded.

“Did she know Kendra’s location?” Nico said.

“I don’t think so,” Shiromi said. “Ozma just sent us here.”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” she said. “How did she know to send you here if she doesn’t know where Kendra is?”

“She said, ‘Just think of that girl and wave your handkerchiefs, and I will send both of you to wherever she is,’” Akami said. “She can send us to places where she herself had never been before, because Shiromi and I were the ones thinking about Kendra’s whereabouts.”

“And that’s why we’re here,” Shiromi added.

Nico paused for a few moments, wondering if just by thinking of Mara would lead her straight to wherever she was, but if that was the case, then how would she get one of those queer handkerchiefs hanging over the bands of their belt straps.

“We know what you’re thinking,” Akami said and removed her handkerchief from her belt and gave it to Nico, wrapping her fingers around it. “After we find Kendra, we’ll have to go to Princess Ozma’s location. All you have to do is think about Princess Ozma and wave this handkerchief, and you’ll arrive at Ozma’s palace.”

And all at once, the image of that gorgeous Lolita girl flashed through Nico’s mind, the same one whose image was reflected in Amelia’s mirror just before everyone got to this dream world. Nico put the handkerchief in the pocket of her dress skirt and said, “Was she the girl on our minds when we got here?”

“That’s the one,” Akami said. “After you get there, she’ll help you get to Mara’s location the same way she helped us get here. Do you understand now?”

Nico nodded that she did, but then she said, “This Princess Ozma, what’s she like, anyway?”

“Don’t get any ideas, lover girl,” Shiromi said.

“I wasn’t thinking that!”

“Sure you’re not,” Shiromi said.

“Ugh, why are you such a cringe-freak all the time?” Nico said as Akami snuck back into the waiting area.

“Not all the time,” Shiromi said. “Only when I’m with you.”

“And why’s that?” she said.

“Because I like you,” Shiromi said, then grabbed her shoulders and leaned in close and whispered into Nico’s ear, “And I said that when all this was over I’d make love to you like you wouldn’t believe. You remember what you said in return, right?”

And Nico gasped, taking in one big gulp of air into her lungs as the very words (‘I’ll hold you to that.’) surfaced through her thoughts, making her blush in front of Shiromi and gape at the sheer stupidity of her own words.

“Oh my God,” Nico said. “Why did I say that?”

“Because you want me,” Shiromi said.

“No, I do—”

Shiromi kissed Nico, yet Nico found herself unable to resist the White Queen’s advances, letting her indulge herself on her lips the way she had let Mara indulge herself in bed with her. And by God, Nico was letting Shiromi do it even as other patrons came in through the double doors and gawked at them, garnering looks of disgust and amazement as they passed into the waiting room, talking about two kissing girls amongst themselves and attracting Lucy’s attention.

Meanwhile, back in the foyer, Shiromi relented and said, “I’ll hold you to that, lover girl.”

But before Nico pushed her away and cursed her out, Lucy came in from behind and doubled Shiromi over into a headlock, saying, “That’s the last time I’ll ever let—”

“Stop it!” Nico said and grabbed her mother’s arm, trying to yank her forearm from Shiromi’s throat. “Mom, stop! It’s okay, it’s okaaaay!”

Lucy let go of her, letting Shiromi slip her head through the crook of her hold, and just stared at Nico for a moment, then looked back at Shiromi recovering from her headlock before turning back to her daughter again.

“Nico,” Lucy said, “do you actually like that girl?”

Nico gulped and looked away from her mother.

“Tell me the truth, Nico,” Lucy said.

“Maybe a little,” she said.

Lucy looked at her.

“Okay, okay,” Nico said. “I like her a lot, so there!”

So Lucy grabbed Nico’s hand and then went over and grabbed Shiromi’s hand and said to both girls, “Are you two serious about this?”

Nico and Shiromi traded glances, then nodded that they were, with Shiromi saying, “Look, Mrs. Cairns. I meant no disrespect to you, but I really do care about your daughter.”

Which made Nico gape at Shiromi.

“Then take good care of her,” Lucy said and pulled Shiromi into a motherly embrace. “Oh, and you can call me ‘Mom,’ too.”

Which made Nico gape at her mother.

“Really?” Shiromi said.

“Only if you want,” Lucy said.

Shiromi smiled and said, “Sure, Mom.”

Lucy let go and looked at a smiling Shiromi and a blushing Nico and said, “Now this is a public place, you two. That means no sexy stuff while we’re here.”

“Mom!”

“Then does that mean,” Shiromi said, “that we can do it?”

“Just find a room, you two,” Lucy said.

“MOM!”

“I love you, too, honey,” Lucy said and went back into the waiting area, where several customers (including Amelia and Ramona and Bridget and Cooley and Blaze and the others) were now asking her about Nico and Shiromi’s relationship. And to all of their questions, Lucy said that Nico and Shiromi were now engaged, which garnered several cheers of congratulations and back-clapping and hand-shaking going on all around her, all of them with bright smiles and sunny faces and gleaming eyes and encouraging words for Nico’s mother and the lucky couple loitering in the foyer.

“Oh my God,” Nico said, bringing her hands to her face to hide the blushes blooming on it like a bouquet of roses caught in the hands of the next bride-to-be. “What just happened?”

“I don’t know,” Shiromi said, “but your mom is really cool,” and she wrapped her arm around Nico’s waist. “And I’ve always wanted to have a wife.”

“Oh my God, not you, too!”

Shiromi pulled her hands from her face and said, “Come on, let’s go and introduce ourselves to everyone.”

So Nico entered the waiting area with Shiromi by her side, where several customers Nico had never met before congratulated her, making her blush all the more. Yet for all of the embarrassment, even as Amelia and the rest of the group were congratulating her and Shiromi, Nico still found herself smiling and enjoying all of the attention.

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8

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It was now 9:01 a.m.

Meanwhile, in the throne room of the Palace of Oz, which doubled as a banquet hall for celebrations and balls and other public events, the Princesses Ozma and Dorothy and Betsy and Trot were finishing off their impromptu breakfast of steamed and baked rice cakes and cassava cakes and washing it down with ginger tea, while the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger were still gorging on pork blood stew and washing it down with ginger ale. And accompanying them during breakfast was the mechanical Clockwork Man, who ate nothing, and the Shaggy Man with his shaggy beard and clothes and Captain Bill with his one wooden leg, both of whom partook of the pork blood stew and the cakes and washed them all down with swigs of ginger ale.

Meanwhile, the topic of discussion at the breakfast table had been on Dorothy’s clandestine hide-and-seek game with Ozma, for which Trot and Betsy Bobbin said that if they were going to play that game this morning, they should’ve at least told the others about it last night, so they could’ve played along. And the Shaggy Man and Captain Bill agreed, if only to prevent unnecessary confusion over Dorothy’s unexpected disappearance from her room this morning.

At their observations, Princess Ozma said that she’d make sure to let everyone know the next time she and Dorothy decide to play hide-and-seek. And when Betsy Bobbin and Trot asked Dorothy to let them join next time, she promised to let them when that happened, yet when they asked if she’d be playing it tonight, Dorothy bit on her lower lip and looked to Ozma for help.

“I haven’t decided,” Ozma said, hedging it with a half-truth.

“If you’re having trouble deciding, your Highness,” Captain Bill said, “then why not decide it by a vote?”

“That sounds reasonable,” the Shaggy Man added, then said to the Clockwork Man across the table from him: “What do you think?”

“It takes out the guesswork,” the robot said.

“I agree,” the Hungry Tiger added after finishing off his stew. “There’s no need to chew the fat over it.”

“And no fuss, either,” the Cowardly Lion said after finishing off his own stew.

“All right then,” Trot said. “Who’s for playing hide-and-seek? Say, aye,” and she raised her hand.

And Betsy Bobbie and Captain Bill and the Shaggy Man and the Clockwork Man and the Hungry Tiger and the Cowardly Lion all raised their hands and said, “Aye.”

Yet Ozma and Dorothy neither raised their hands nor said anything, which got everyone else around the breakfast table trading glances with each other and looking askance at their silent dissenters.

“Why the silence?” the Clockwork Man said.

“Oh, it’s nothing major,” Princess Ozma said, hedging her bets with a white lie. “It’s just that I haven’t—”

Then, in the middle of throne room (turned banquet hall) appeared Wantowin Battles and Lewis Carroll, both huffing and puffing in the center of the room, smelling of burnt gunpowder that roused the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger from their spots at the breakfast table, growling at the two intruders, till they saw the handkerchiefs in their hands.

Princess Ozma stood up from her throne at the head of the table, saying, “Mr. Carroll, Wantowin Battles, what’s going on?”

“Oh, we’re back, is all,” Lewis Carrol said.

“You smell like a bloodbath, though,” the Tiger said, sniffing and growling at Lewis Carroll.

“Oh, it was a ‘bloodbath,’ all right,” he said.

“And you both smell like you’ve been in a war,” the Lion said, sniffing and wrinkling his nose at Lewis Carroll and Wantowin Battles.

“More like a rescue mission,” Lewis Carroll said, then nodded to his companion. “He did all the shooting, though.”

“And he did all the rescuing,” Wantowin Battles added, nodding to his companion in arms, then looked for their rescued prisoner of war, who wasn’t anywhere in sight, and turned to Lewis Carroll: “Where is he? Wasn’t he with us a moment ago?”

“Oh, God! Just wait a moment,” Lewis Carroll said and waved his own handkerchief again, disappearing from the throne room one moment and reappearing the next, collaring a frazzled man in soiled clothes who seemed on the verge of dropping. “Here he is, your Highness, the one I talked to you about. He’s a bit worse for wear, as you can see, but he’ll live.”

“I’m a ghost, you moron,” Ronald said and winced when he took a step forward on his own.

“Well, at least he’s here,” Lewis Carroll said and hooked his arms under Ronald’s armpits when he couldn’t move.

“Can someone get a chair for him?” Princess Ozma said. “He looks like he’s in a lot of pain.”

So the Clockwork Man got up from his chair and slid it over towards Lewis Carroll and the ailing man, saying, “Well, bust my bolts. What on earth happened to you?”

“You don’t want to know,” Lewis Carroll said for him.

And with Carroll’s help, Ronald sat down with his thighs spread apart, then winced when he settled himself on the seat cushion. Ronald leaned forward with his forearms resting on his knees but winced again, so he leaned back against the chair and leaned on one side as if trying not to put any pressure on something painful.

Seeing the man in such distress, Princess Ozma round the table and approached the ailing man and said, “Are you all right, sir? Should I notify a witch doctor?”

At Ozma’s approach, he just stared for a time as if transfixed under a spell and said, “I feel a little better, thank you.” Yet when he shifted in his seat, he winced again and said, “Argh, just a little bit of discomfort, is all, your Highness. It’s nothing that a little bed rest won’t cure for a sinner such as myself. Please, don’t worry.”

“But is there anything you need now?” Ozma said. “Just name it, and I’ll make it so.”

“You’re too kind,” he said, then paused and rifled through his pants pockets and deflated somewhat. “I need to let Inspector Larking know I’m safe. Can you bring me to him?” And he attempted to sit up but winced again.

“Please, don’t get up, sir,” Princess Ozma said. “I can’t send you in good conscience while you’re in such pain, but I can let you contact him,” and she manifested a mirror in her hand and handed it to Ronald. “Do you know his full name?”

“He’s Inspector Stephen Larking,” he said. “He’s the head of the Phantom Office, with which I’m tenured for an ongoing investigation.”

So Ozma took up Ronald’s hand, which held the hand mirror, and a spectral glow like that of the full moon seeped through her hands into the mirror he was holding, till the reflection flashed before his face.

“What is this?” Ronald said, blinking for a few moments, and looked in on an indoor scene with five persons in the reflection. “There’s Inspector Larking! But who are the others? Wait, that’s Lt. Granger, but why is she wearing such a weird uniform? Don’t know that guy,” and then he paused with his mouth gaping open as if he was seeing a ghost.

Princess Ozma circled around Ronald’s chair to see what he was looking at and saw, among the five gathered around a large desk in an office suite, two cavalrymen standing together while consulting a topographic map with the others. Thus, with the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger and Lewis Carroll and Wantowin Battles all looking on with her, Ozma’s curiosity stirred the others from their places at the breakfast table into joining in on what they were all looking at.

“Do you know these men?” Ozma said.

“That man with the glasses and mustache is Col. Theodore Roosevelt, the leader of the Rough Riders and president of the United States,” Ronald said. “And the man standing next to him . . . is my father, Lt. Scott Hamilton,” and the man shed a tear from his left eye, which he wiped away. “I’m sorry. It’s the first time I’ve seen my father in so long. I want to talk to him, if I may, your Highness.”

The Princess obliged and took up the mirror from Ronald’s grasp, then touched her finger on the reflection, making it glow, and whistled a high-pitched tune resembling birdsong. And the people in the reflection turned their heads in different directions as if they were looking for birds that had somehow slipped into the room beneath their notice, till Lt. Granger manifested a mirror just like Ozma’s in her hand, and the image changed into a close-up of Lt. Granger’s face.

“Your Highness,” she said. “I was going to call you after the meeting here. Did something come up?”

“Yes,” Princess Ozma said. “I’m calling to inform you and Inspector Larking that Mr. Foster is in my custody at my Palace at the moment, and he wants to speak with Col. Roosevelt and Lt. Hamilton,” and she gave the mirror back to Ronald.

Ronald took it, and when the reflection changed to that of Col. Roosevelt and Lt. Hamilton behind the desk, he said, “Father, is that really you?”

“My God, I thought I’ve lost you!” Lt. Scott Hamilton said. “Are you hurt anywhere?”

“I’m all right, father,” Ronald said. “I’m a bit roughed up, is all, but it’s nothing that a few hours of bed rest won’t cure, honest to God.”

“So this is your son, eh, Lieutenant?” Col. Roosevelt said, clapping Ronald’s father on his shoulder and smiling in the reflection. “He’s a bully young man, he is.”

“Thank you, sir,” Lt. Hamilton said, “but I must be frank. He was a bit of a handful when he was younger, and he still is to some extent, so help us God.”

Then another man, Inspector Stephen Larking, walked into the reflection and said, “Ronnie, you scared the shit out of us! What happened out there?”

“Oh, nothing much,” Ronald said. “I only got captured and pilloried and violated against my will, till I got rescued by these fine gentlemen,” and the man tipped the mirror to show them his two saviors.

“I’m Wantowin Battles,” the whiskered soldier said, waving at them in the reflection, “and I did the shooting.”

“And I’m Lewis Carroll,” the author added, waving at them as well, “and I did the rescuing.”

“God, bless you both!” Lt. Scott Hamilton said.

“You two have my thanks, as well,” Stephen Larking added. “Looking after Ronnie was a serious pain.”

Lewis Carroll and Wantowin Battles laughed, accompanied with more laughter from Captain Bill and the Shaggy Man, while Ronald just folded his arms over his chest and said, “Oh, hardy har har, Steve. You’re the one who ordered that fire team to go. I was just doing my part, is all.”

Yet before Stephen said anything, Col. Roosevelt cut in and said, “We need brave men like you, Mr. Carroll, Mr. Battles. Why don’t you two come over in person and help us with the fight we’ve got brewing here?”

“Actually,” Lewis Carroll said, “I was thinking of the same thing myself. From what I’ve seen today, Wantowin Battles is a good man to have with you in a fight, and I vow to do my own part, as well, since I’ve got some skin in this whole affair myself. That is,” he added, looking at Princess Ozma, “if we have your permission to go, your Highness.”

The Princess smiled, knowing full well that the fighting spirit of the willing was as uncontrollable as a tempest, so she said, “You both may go. Just stand a little ways from us and wave your handkerchiefs as you did before, and I’ll send you there.”

So Lewis Carroll and Wantowin Battles separated from the gathering and waved their handkerchiefs, disappearing from the throne room for their new destination.

Afterwards Princess Ozma turned back to the mirror in Ronald’s grasp and said to Lt. Granger through the mirror, “Lt. Granger, are you there?”

The reflection changed, and the General said, “I’m here, your Highness. And I’ve already revealed my true name to these men. I trust them, and so can you.”

“Ah, good,” the Princess said. “Then if anything happens over there, keep me informed.”

“Will do, your Highness,” she said.

Then Princess Ozma turned to Ronald and said, “Mr. Foster, do you have anything left to say?”

“Yeah, I do,” Ronald said. “Um, father?”

“Yes, my son,” Lt. Hamilton said. “What is it?”

“Be careful over there,” he said. “This isn’t any kind of battlefield you’ve been in.”

“Oh, I will, my son,” Lt. Hamilton said.

“Don’t worry yourself, old boy,” Col. Roosevelt added. “I’ll make sure to get your father out of trouble when it arises.”

“Thank you, sir,” Ronald said, then to Princess Ozma: “I’ll right, your Highness. I’m done for now.”

So Ozma touched the reflection again, blurring out the glowing image of the people in the mirror, till it turned into a normal mirror in Ronald’s hand. Yet when Ronald gave it back to her, Ozma said, “You hold onto it.”

Ronald smiled, saying, “Thank you, your Highness. Oh, and my real name is Ronald Hamilton. ‘Mr. Foster’ is but one of my many aliases.”

“Oh?” Ozma said. “What are the rest?”

“Well,” he said, “besides Mr. Edward Foster, there’s the Oyster, the Crow, Chuang Chou the philosopher, a Chippewa elder and a Hopi elder (I can’t remember their actual names), the ever-quarrelsome Tweedledum and Tweedledee, an old White Knight and a young Red Knight (I can’t remember their names, either), and every once in a while the Cheshire Cat, but that’s only when I’m feeling extra playful and witty and perplexing.”

And as the man continued talking, and as Ozma kept asking more questions, he kept answering them with ever-more elaborate explanations to each of his aliases, starting with the sleeping Oyster on the beach dreaming that he was a Crow flying over a stretch of yellow-brick road, who happened to spot a wayward girl walking on that road. And so began his tale of the unnamed Auna Wenger with her queer way of walking backwards into the woods while keeping the old iron sights of her gun trained on him. And when Ozma asked why she did that, he just chalked it up to the girl’s ignorance of the the crow-language, but still, he observed, she was a mighty queer girl. . . .

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9

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It was now 9:06 a.m.

A giant floating lantern hovered above their table amidst more lanterns hovering above other tables, casting the tables and chairs and the inlaid paneling of the walls and tile floor in chiaroscuro hues of gleaming red and shadowy black. And within this Orientalist’s dream of old Cathay, Nico and the rest took their seats at their table and began eating and drinking and being merry. While sitting between Shiromi and Akami to her left and Lucy Cairns to her right in a boisterous cafeteria setting filled with the clinking of plates and glasses and silverware and the hum of voices and lo-fi Chinese music in the air, Nico was eating cashew chicken from a full plate of chow mein with a side of General Tso's chicken and a helping of fried rice and drinking lemonade to wash it all down. Her mother Lucy was eating a side of almond chicken and then attacking her side of moo shu pork and fried rice, till she looked over to her left at Shiromi and Akami still struggling with their chopsticks.

Lucy nudged Nico’s elbow. “Call the waiter.”

Nico looked to her left at the Queens struggling with their chopsticks even after she had demonstrated how to use them moments before. So Nico caught a waiter’s attention with a wave of her hand, and when he came over, she said, “Do you have a pair of forks and spoons for these two?” And she indicated Shiromi and Akami with a nod in their direction.

The waiter said, “Hǎo de” (Sure, will do), and he left to get the requested utensils.

While they waited for him, Lucy said to the flustered pair, “I know it takes some practice using chopsticks, but don’t worry. They have forks and spoons, too.”

“Ah, that’s good,” Akami said and waited, looking down on her food like an embarrassed school girl.

“You’re too stiff, Akami,” Shiromi said and skewered a piece of General Tso's chicken with one chopstick and ate off of it like a BBQ skewer, then leaned over to Nico’s side. “She’s really shy in public, you know.”

“And you’re really rude in public,” Akami said and picked up her egg roll and dipped it into a bowl of duck sauce, then took a bite out of it with sidelong glares at her white counterpart.

When the waiter came back with the utensils, setting them on the table before them, both Queens were then back in their element. After finishing off her egg roll, Akami used a fork to eat her orange chicken, while Shiromi just used a spoon to shovel mounds of fried rice, then a piece of Beijing beef and General Tso’s chicken into her mouth and chewed like a face-stuffed squirrel.

After finishing off her cashew chicken, Nico dug into her side of General Tso’s and drank some more of her lemonade, then listened to Monsieur Dolan ask Monsieur Curvan what had happened since they had split up after spotting Alice’s musketeer doppelgängers back in Wonderland. Monsieur Dolan just looked at him, dipping a big roll of sushi into a bowl of wasabi and soy sauce and eating it, while shaking his head, meaning that it wasn’t time yet. Monsieur Dolan got the message and continued eating his sesame chicken and another piece of his fried dumplings and chasing it down with a draft from his black tea.

For the next several minutes, everyone at the table ate and drank and talked little during the sumptuous meal. Cooley and Blaze both ate lo mein and a big helping of Mongolian beef and a side of spicy hulatang soup, and messieurs Dolan and Shaefer and Curvan went to work on their serving of chop suey and General Tso's and fried tofu, and John Crane took a swig from his oolong tea and ate more bites from his pepper steak and sesame chicken, and Ramona Tellerman ate a side of Kung Pao chicken and egg foo young and a few rolls of sushi, and Bridget Barton Wenger feasted on tilapia and a side of ginger beef and orange chicken, and Amelia Hearn ate oxtail soup and a side of Chinese chicken salad and General Tso’s. All the while, Nico ate more of her chow mein and General Tso's and some fried rice, going through all three with bite after bite after bite.

Then, when they had finished eating and washing their meals down with their drinks, the waiter returned with a tray holding the bill and thirteen fortune cookies. Since John Crane had suggested this buffet, he offered to pay for everyone’s meal.

“Are you sure?” Amelia Hearn said.

John Crane looked at the amount on the bill and grimaced.

“How much?” Amelia said.

“113 dollars and 75 cents,” he said.

“Then let’s split the difference,” Amelia said, and John Crane agreed, and they each paid 56 dollars and 88 cents.

After that, everyone took a fortune cookie from the tray and passed it to the next person, and they all broke theirs open and read out their fortunes. Monsieur Roy Dolan’s fortune said that a cynic is only a frustrated optimist, which garnered laughs and sniggers around the table, and Monsieur Frank Shaefer’s said that he was cleverly disguised as a responsible adult, which garnered more sniggers, and Monsieur Todd Curvan’s said that the person who eats fortune a cookie gets a lousy dessert, which garnered even more laughs, and John Crane’s said that a wise person needs either good manners or fast reflexes, which garnered even more laughter. Meanwhile, Amelia’s fortune said that the easiest way to find a lost object was to buy a replacement, which garnered sniggers from Bridget and Ramona and Lucy, and Bridget’s said that some people dream of fortunes while others dream of fortune cookies, which garnered laughter all around the table, and Ramona’s said that flattery will go far today, which garnered more laughter, and Lucy’s said that it takes less time to do something right than it does to explain why you did it wrong, which garnered even more laughter all around the table.

“What’s going on here?” Cooley said.

“What kinds of fortunes are those?” Blaze added.

“I don’t know,” Lucy said, “but whoever made these is an ass I’d like to kick really hard right now.”

“Me, too,” Bridget said.

“Me, three,” Amelia added.

“And me, four,” Ramona added.

“Hey, look on the bright side,” Monsieur Shaefer said. “At least you’re not a ‘frustrated optimist,’” which garnered another round of laughter around the table.

Then they all looked at Cooley and Blaze and Nico and the two Queens, and Lucy said to them all, “Don’t be scared now. They’re just fortune cookies.”

“With an odd sense of humor,” Blaze said.

“Yeah, I know,” Lucy said.

Nico looked down on her hands covering the broken fortune cookie over the table, still refusing to look at her fortune, whatever it was, and hoping it had nothing to do with her relationship with Mara or any other girl in general or anything else embarrassing in front of everyone present.

“I’ll go first,” Cooley said and read out, “‘The person who rests on laurels will get a thorn in the backside.’ Good God, really? REALLY?”

The table exploded in a chorus of sniggers.

Then Blaze read hers, saying, “‘It’s about time I got out of that cookie.’ What the hell kind of fortune is this?”

More laughter erupted around the table.

“That’s just messed up,” she said. “I want my real fortune, damn it. This is bullshit!”

“Now, now,” Cooley said. “No cursing at the table.”

“Okay, okay,” Blaze said. “I’m sorry.”

Now it was down to Akami and Shiromi and Nico, so Akami read her fortune, saying, “‘He who throws mud loses ground.’”

Snickers erupted around the table, including Shiromi who said, “I think that sounds quite apt.”

“Oh, shut up,” Akami said. “What’s yours?”

Shiromi read hers, saying, “‘The greatest danger could be your stupidity.’ Oh, you fucker.”

Now the whole table broke out with laughter, catching the attention of the other patrons.

“I’d say that’s an apt one for you,” Akami said.

“I swear,” Shiromi said. “If I find out who made these fortunes, I’m gonna murder that bastard!”

“Now, now,” Akami said and looked at Nico. “It’s your turn.”

Nico just looked down at her broken cookie and gulped down her qualms, then picked up the slip and read aloud, “‘If you think we’re going to sum up your whole life on this little piece of paper you’re crazy.’ Oh my God, whoever wrote these fortunes is really trying to troll us, I swear!”

And yet more laughter erupted around the table.

“Wait,” Nico said when she turned the slip of paper over, “there’s something on the back.”

“Really?” Lucy said. “What does it say?”

“‘Kendra,’” Nico said.

“That’s it?”

“It’s just one word,” Nico said, looking at everyone else at the table holding onto their fortune slips, when a brainwave hit her. “Everyone, turn your fortunes over and read out what it says.”

And everyone did so and read aloud what they had, starting from Monsieur Dolan onward: “Come—”

Monsieur Shaefer: “—to—”

Monsieur Curvan: “—the—”

John Crane: “—Secret—”

Amelia: “—Garden—”

Bridget: “—and—”

Ramona: “—you’ll—”

Lucy: “—find—”

And Nico: “—Kendra—”

But when it came to Shiromi and Akami and Cooley and Blaze, they all shook their heads, and Cooley said, “Ours are blank.”

“But why, though?” Nico said.

“Beats me,” Cooley said. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Wait a minute,” Amelia said and counted every person sitting at the table, starting from Monsieur Dolan and counting herself and ending her count at Nico. “You’re the ninth one, Nico,” she added, then counted that last four from the Queens to Cooley and Blaze, “and you’re the last four without anything on the backside of your fortunes.”

“Do you know what’s going on?” Cooley said.

“Maybe,” Amelia said, appearing to roll something totally incomprehensible to Nico, as far as she could tell, till Amelia looked at her watch on her wrist and tapped the dial face with her finger. “Mine’s stopped for some reason. Does anyone know what time it is?”

So Nico looked to her left at the clock face over on the wall just above the entrance of the bar area and said, “It’s 9:15 a.m. What does your watch say?”

“It stopped at 9:06 a.m.,” Amelia said.

“That was nine minutes ago,” Cooley said, then pointed Nico out, adding, “Nico, you’re the ninth and last person with anything written on the back of your fortune slip,” and she continued counting from Shiromi and Akami to herself and Blaze. “And since we’re the last four not to have any, I think we should stay here for at least four more minutes, till we find out what our slips say.”

Then Nico remembered asking messieurs Shaefer and Dolan what had happened to them before they arrived in this dreamworld and said to the two blue musketeers, “Okay, since we have time, why don’t you tell us what happened to you in Wonderland?” And she directed her gaze at the two men in question.

“Ah, I almost forgot you asked us about it,” Monsieur Curvan said. “Well, there’s quite a bit that happened from that time to this moment, but I’ll try my best to make it brief. Anyway, back in Wonderland, just after Monsieur Shaefer and I split up from mademoiselles Auna and Akami and Monsieur Dolan here, we hightailed our steeds out across the field to head off our pursuers and . . .”

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10

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It was now 7:15 a.m.

Gunfire thundered behind two blue musketeers, scraping off chunks of lawn and soil and yellow brick all around them. Yet through the onslaught of enemy fire, messieurs Shaefer and Curvan rode across the widening spiral of roads and lawns back into the labyrinth of forty yellow-brick roads going in forty different directions, leading away most of Alice’s red musketeer girls from Monsieur Dolan and Auna and Akami at Dorothy’s ranch house. Brandishing their flintlock pistols, they veered left in a wide arc ahead of their enemies and sighted their ranks on their left flank and returned fire just as the labyrinth of roads translated their positions somewhere else without their knowing. In fact, they continued the trajectory of their arc, till the echo of their two-gun volley caught their ears, and they looked to their right and saw the red musketeers a couple of fields away in the opposite direction, halting their steeds amidst the lingering gunsmoke as if the pair had just ghosted them.

With their enemies bewildered, the pair of blue musketeers wheeled their horses around and checked their surroundings and found themselves back on the spiral of roads and lawns leading towards Dorothy’s ranch house at their center, but it took on a different aspect on a second glance.

When they holstered their guns, Monsieur Curvan fished out his spyglass and held it to his eye and said, “Wait, it’s not the same house as before.”

“What do you see?” Monsieur Shaefer said.

“It’s different,” Monsieur Curvan said, looking through the scope at a one-story single family residence with a yellow-brick driveway and a yellow-brick entrance walkway on the side, all of this behind a sunflower field the size of two football fields. “And those damn sunflowers are tall enough to hide an entire regiment. Keep a lookout.”

His friend nodded and held out his hand for the spyglass, saying, “Let me see the house.”

So Monsieur Curvan gave him the spyglass and kept a lookout over the tall sunflower stalks as they headed towards the house, the fat bulbs of the sunflowers up to their elbows.

Monsieur Shaefer said, “I don’t know what to make of it,” and he gave back the spyglass and glanced back over his shoulder, then took a double take and wheeled his horse around.

Monsieur Curvan copied his friend’s movements and looked, expecting to see the far field where the red musketeer girls had stopped their steeds, but neither field nor enemy were there. In place of the open field of pansies and tulips and sweet peas were groves of zelkova trees growing in clumps on the various lawns within the tangled clusterfuck of yellow-brick roads going off in countess directions in the glare of the morning sun, and in place of the red musketeer girls on horseback was a different scattering of on-foot uniformed girls concealed in the shadows of the zelkova groves, all of them with repeating rifles and long spikes hanging from their baldrics, a few of them carrying war hammers, all of them at the ready with their weapons.

So both men shielded their eyes from the sun’s rays, getting a good look at these newcomers in the shadows, then waved their hands at them.

“Who’s there?” Monsieur Shaefer shouted.

“We mean you no harm,” Monsieur Curvan added.

Then, from the shadow of the closest zelkova grove stepped out a college-aged girl wearing a pre-World War I military uniform with a knee-length skirt and high boots over her legs and a purple shako atop her head. This young woman held up one hand in a closed fist and turned it into a two-finger gun, and all at once, a whole battalion of her fellows rose up from the stalks of sunflowers, and the musketeers’ steeds rose on their hind legs and neighed, almost throwing off their riders. Purple banners in the hands of flag bearers rose up amidst the sunflower stalks, and a battalion of teenagers surrounded the pair of men with their repeating rifles aimed and ready to fire at their captain’s signal.

And for a moment, the pair of blue musketeers just sat and looked all around them, then stared back at the zelkova groves and saw more uniformed girls emerging from the underbrush. One of these uniformed girls, a lieutenant or a scout, whispered something into the captain’s ear while pointing at the two men on their horses.

At this, messieurs Shaefer and Curvan raised their hands above their heads, neither man making any motion towards their rapiers or flintlock pistols hanging from their belts. In fact, Monsieur Curvan sat on his saddle wondering whether the gun pouches hanging from their saddles would set off their captors.

“Stand down, girls,” their captain said.

Then the whole battalion lowered their weapons, and the men lowered their hands but kept them within sight on the reins of their horses.

With that, the captain strode forward on long marching strides like the march step of a marching band and said, “What’s in those bags, boys?”

“Guns and powder and shot, ma’am,” Monsieur Curvan said.

“Ranks? Names?” the captain said.

“We’re both privates from the 36th regiment of King Louis XIV’s musketeers, ma’am,” Monsieur Curvan said. “I’m Monsieur Todd Curvan, by the way.”

“And I’m Monsieur Frank Shaefer,” his friend said.

“Since you’re on those horses,” the captain said, “do you see any distinguishing landmarks?”

Monsieur Curvan traded glances with his friend, then looked over at the anomalous one-story single family house beyond the field of sunflowers and said, “Don’t you see that house over there?” And he pointed at the man-made landmark.

The captain looked off in that direction, putting her hand over her brows, but said, “No, I don’t.”

“Wait, really?” Monsieur Curvan said. “But it’s right there in front of us.”

“You can see it on that horse?” the captain said.

“As sure as I can see you,” he said and extended his hand to her. “Come on, and you’ll see for yourself.” So the captain placed her foot on the stirrup next to his and took up his hand, and he hoisted her up and over the cantle of his saddle behind him and added, “Do you see it now?”

The captain gasped behind him and said, “There it is! My God, we’ve been walking around and climbing trees just to get a better look at our surroundings, but we’ve never been able to see a landmark in this area. This place is enchanted.”

“It looks normal to me, ma’am,” he said.

“Come down from that horse, and you’ll see what I mean,” the captain said, swinging herself up and over the cantle and pivoting herself on the stirrup and coming down.

So Monsieur did as he was told, coming down to the level of the captain and other foot soldiers within the field of sunflowers, and lo and behold! The house with its yellow-brick driveway and side entrance way disappeared against the horizon, and he said, “My God, it’s not there!”

“That’s what I mean,” the captain said. “We couldn’t see that house from any of the groves skirting this field even when we climbed the trees, and no matter how far we walked in this field, we couldn’t get out of it. I thought there was a cloaking enchantment or a reflection spell over this field, but I had no way of knowing without your help.”

“Does it depend on the height of the observer?”

“In this field, yes,” the captain said. “We had no fixed point of reference to help us, but now that you’re here, can you boys guide us to the house? We’ll follow you.”

“Will do, ma’am,” Monsieur Curvan said, grabbing the pommel of the saddle and hoisting himself up onto the saddle.

“Thank you,” the captain said and smiled. “I’m Captain Nell of the Gillikin Battalion,” and she took off her shako, revealing Venetian blonde hair cut in a bob at the level of her ears and dark blue eyes. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Monsieur Curvan grinned at her and said, “The pleasure’s all mine, ma’am.”

With that, a flustered Captain Nell ordered her battalion to line up in four columns behind the two musketeers and added, “These gentlemen are our fixed points in this field, so keep your eyes on them and don’t look anywhere else. Does everyone understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” they all said.

After that, the four columns of 250 Gillikin soldiers followed the pair of musketeers across the field of sunflowers, their eyes fixed on the riders before them, while Monsieur Curvan thought about their next move as the house grew more distinct in the morning sunlight. In fact, the house glistened in the sun, picking up a yellowish hue on its exterior siding and a blinding glare on its gridded windows, the eaves of its roof jutting over its windows like the brim of a hat shading the wearer’s eyes.

To Monsieur Curvan, the house seemed to stand guard and keep a lookout for hidden enemies approaching it like a lone sentinel on a battlefield or a scout in the thicket of the woods or a certain knight waiting to return a promised blow. Then his thoughts shifted back to those godless moments when he and messieurs Dolan and Shaefer stood banging their fists against an invisible barrier, barring their entrance into the square of White Chapel where the promised blow occurred before their eyes. Three solemn winters haven’t dulled the anguish of it, the clang of blades ringing through the air, the cry of pain and the splatter of blood on the grounds of the square. Monsieur Edmund Tellerman had lost his life on that appointed day when the Green Knight felled him to his knees with a slash of his sword across his stomach, and the doomed man bled through his fingers as he tried to stop the hemorrhaging. The last sight Monsieur Curvan and his friends witnessed of their doomed comrade on that day was his head falling from his shoulders and the sickening thud of his corpse hitting the ground.

In that duel between David and Goliath, Goliath had won as the Green Knight picked up Monsieur Tellerman’s head and raised it before the three remaining blue musketeers and said, “Look on and tremble, all ye who oppose me!”

“What was that?” Monsieur Shaefer said.

And Monsieur Curvan was on his horse again, approaching the clearing of a yellow-brick road, which made up the cul-de-sac of the one-story single family residence before them.

He turned to his companion, who also had a grim look on his face, and he knew what was on his friend’s mind. Only then did he realize what he must have muttered under his breath and said, “Poor Edmund never had a chance.”

For his part, Monsieur Sheefer nodded and continued in silence into the clearing of the yellow-brick cul-de-sac.

Then both men halted their steeds and wheeled them around and looked back on the battalion of women emerging through the stalks of sunflowers and pouring into the clearing before the shimmering windows of the house. They waited on their steeds for the rest of Captain Nell’s Gillikin Battalion to filter into the yellow-brick clearing, and after all of them made it out of the field, messieurs Curvan and Shaefer and Captain Nell led the way towards the house, walking up the driveway and heading into the side walkway beneath the eaves of the house, where the entrance door stared back at them in idiot indifference.

First, Captain Nell tried the knob, but when it refused to turn, messieurs Curvan and Shaefer brandished their flintlock pistols and took aim and fired, yet the guns had already been discharged. So Monsieur Shaefer took out a blunderbuss and fired at the knob, filling the entrance with smoke, then kicked the door in. Yet even as the smoke cleared, one look inside the lurid and ever-shifting haze of the Phantom Realms invited them inside.

Monsieur Curvan said, “Ladies first.”

Captain Nell shook her head and said, “Age before beauty,” and then waved the eldest of the trio inside first.

Monsieur Curvan nodded and entered, followed by Monsieur Shaefer, and then Captain Nell after him. Then the trio waited in the foyer as the rest of Captain Nell’s battalion of women—all one thousand of them—poured into the shifting kaleidoscopic haze of someone else’s dream, their steps making ripples on a flooded floor that seemed to go on for miles in front of them. And once everyone was inside, the door slammed shut, making several women jump, and everyone looked back at a door without a door jamb in the middle of God knows where.

Captain Nell tried the knob again, but it was locked from the inside with the keyhole on both sides of the knob, then turned to the musketeers and said, “Do you know where we are?”

And Monsieur Shaefer shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, saying, “I don’t know.”

Yet Monsieur Curvan remained silent and surveyed his surroundings, scanning a twenty-foot radius in his immediate vicinity, till he spotted something on the ground a few feet away. He walked over and crouched to get a closer look and said, “That’s a life line here.”

“Whose is it?” Captain Nell said.

So Monsieur Curvan picked up the silver thread and closed his eyes, till the image of Kendra Tellerman flashed through his mind’s eye. His eyes welled up with tears, so he wiped them away with a fold of his tabard and said, “It’s Kendra.”

“Edmund’s girl?” Monsieur Shaefer said.

He nodded, sick at heart, for he felt something pulsing through his chest in cruel and icy stabs, as if Kendra had been struggling under something breaking into her mind. All he knew was that something had happened to Kendra, something that capered on the edge of his thoughts whenever that godless day broke the surface of his mind, the day when Edmund . . .

Something caught his glance.

“What is that?” Captain Nell said, pointing at an image forming out of the shifting kaleidoscope of shapes within the mirror sheen of the flooded floor beneath their feet.

For below everyone’s feet shimmered one of Kendra Tellerman’s lucid moments before succumbing to whatever had happened to her. The dreamscape boomed with a shotgun blast, and there came into focus in mirror sheen below their feet the image of another girl whose stance began to falter before the Green Knight. This girl then lost her grip of her kodachi as the Green Knight’s blade—what was left of it—lay embedded inside her chest, dripping blood and dissolving in the water.

“Mara!” Kendra screamed through the dreamscape.

And as Mara’s eyes clouded over, she fell, motionless, into the water and sank below the surface towards the depths of slow-wave sleep.

“You bastard!” Kendra screamed, firing round after round after round at the blood moon on the reflection, sending thundering booms through the dreamscape, till she succumbed to a psychic force keeping her from pulling the trigger. “Fuck you!”

“Nah-ah-ah,” the Green Knight said. “Bad manners for a woman like you.”

But Kendra fought on, gritting her teeth and grimacing against the strength of the man’s psychic control, digging deep for some hidden reserves beyond those of her declining strength.

“The spirit is willing,” he said, “but the flesh is weak,” and he re-sheathed his blade and took up the same stance he held when Kendra encountered him in the garden. “I gave you my word, darling, and you heeded it not just like your father. Like father, like daughter: one blade, and two severed heads. Honestly, I pity your mother for what I’m about to do.”

As the Green Knight drew out his blade with a metallic swoosh, like that of a chef’s knife swiped across a wet stone, ready to cleave Kendra’s head from her shoulders, Kendra fought through his psychic grip and struggled to pull the trigger—

Till there arose a tumult of screams and yells from Captain Nell’s battalion, and Monsieur Curvan realized he was sinking below the mirror sheen. He yelled for Monsieur Shaefer and Captain Nell to run, yet one look behind him sent him screaming and struggling to pull himself out of the relentless suck of terror beating in his chest with stabs of panic, for the dreamscape was pulling everyone under . . .

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11

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It was now 9:19 a.m.

With the details of Monsieur Curvan’s story hanging over her mind, Nico waited on the man to continue his story, yet the man seemed preoccupied, so she said, “What happened next?”

Monsieur Curvan looked her way but said nothing for a few moments, then said, “I’m not sure what exactly happened, but the next moment we all woke up and found ourselves in an empty square with people looking at us. We got up and asked them where we were, and they said we were in the Coventry Gardens neighborhood a few blocks away from this restaurant. For a little while longer, Monsieur Shaefer and I accompanied Captain Nell and her battalion looking for Monsieur Dolan here and Auna and Akami. Then we came across John Crane here,” and nodded to the man sitting next to him, “and Captain Nell asked him if he had come across another battalion of women like just them.”

“And I said I did,” John Crane said. “I told her that I had come across the Quadling Battalion under the leadership of another woman named Captain Imogen. Her flag bearers carried red flags instead of the purple ones from the Gillikin Battalion. Captain Nell then asked for directions, and I pointed the way.”

“After that,” Monsieur Curvan added, looking at Nico from his seat, “we said our goodbyes to Captain Nell and her battalion and went our separate ways. Only afterwards did we feel the grumbling in our stomachs, so John Crane suggested the Nishimura Buffet. We were on our way there when we saw you and Monsieur Dolan and the everyone else at this table, and that concludes our little adventure tale. Say, what time is it now?”

So Nico looked to her left again at the clock face over on the wall above the entrance of the bar area and said, “It’s 9:20 a.m. now,” and she looked over at Shiromi and Akami and Cooley and Blaze. “Anything written on the back of your fortunes?”

All four girls said yes.

“Okay, let’s all read them out again,” Nico said.

And everyone did so and read aloud what they had, starting from Monsieur Dolan onward: “Come—”

Monsieur Shaefer: “—to—”

Monsieur Curvan: “—the—”

John Crane: “—Secret—”

Amelia: “—Garden—”

Bridget: “—and—”

Ramona: “—you’ll—”

Lucy: “—find—”

Nico: “—Kendra—”

Shiromi: “—inside—”

Akami: “—Looking-Glass—”

Cooley: “—House.”

And Blaze: “Ozma.”

And for the next several seconds, they all just sat there in silence as Nico began piecing together the details like a jigsaw puzzle, and she wasn’t the only one seeing it come together.

Amelia chimed in, saying, “Monsieur Curvan, didn’t you just say you woke up in a place called Coventry Gardens?”

“Yes,” he said, nodding his head. “We’d found ourselves in a local square in the center of that neighborhood.”

“So I’m guessing,” Amelia said, “that the ‘Secret Garden’ is actually a public square in the Coventry Gardens neighborhood, is that it?”

“Yes, it is,” Monsieur Curvan said, nodding again. “I must say, Princess Ozma is very clever. You’d never think that the garden she was referring to was a public square teeming with people inside a neighborhood with ‘Gardens’ in its name.”

“And that same Ozma,” Nico added, “was the one we all saw in our minds when we stepped through the mirror. Do you think she could have planned this?”

“There’s no way,” Amelia said. “I made sure to randomize the way I hid Kendra and the others back at Chess Cathedral, so Rancaster wouldn’t know or at least couldn’t get to them. But damn, if it wasn’t for Princess Ozma, I doubt we’d find Kendra in time, if at all,” and she got up from her chair. “Let’s go. You two lead the way,” she added, indicating messieurs Curvan and Shaefer with her gaze.

And everyone rose from their chairs.

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12

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It was now 9:21 a.m.

In the throne room of the Royal Palace of Oz, Ronald Hamilton had just finished his story of his many transformations in Wonderland and the underground realm, where Lewis Carroll and Wantowin Battles had found and rescued him. So Princess Ozma called for Jellia Jamb, and when she approached, Ozma asked her to take her newest guest upstairs to his own suite so that he could rest. Jellia Jamb bowed and escorted Ronald Hamilton out of the throne room, while Princess Ozma excused herself from the table and waved goodbye to the Clockwork Man and the Shaggy Man and Captain Bill, then to the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger, and then to Princesses Trot and Betsy before asking Princess Dorothy to follow her.

Dorothy nodded, and both Princesses headed out into the great hall and greeted the morning visitors. Princess Ozma informed them that she’d be back after a short recess, putting their minds at ease, then continued through seven corridors and up one flight of stairs into a series of hallways leading towards her private suite with Dorothy following close behind.

On reaching her suite, Ozma pushed open the double doors and led her friend past bookcases and ottomans and a tea table and chairs and a coffee table and a salon sofa (on which both girls had indulged in last night’s intimacies) and stood before her magic picture on the wall of her sitting room. The picture, framed in gold and showing ever-shifting images of meadows and forests and lakes and even villages, stood five feet high and seven feet across, while the fountain to their right gave off a sweet fragrance from its splashing green waters.

After witnessing the mirror-to-mirror conversation between Ronald Hamilton and his father Lt. Scott Hamilton, as well as Lewis Carroll and Wantowin Battles volunteering for a fight neither man had anything to do with, Ozma shifted her thoughts onto the Red and White Queens, wondering what they were up to in their search for a missing girl named ‘Kendra.’

“What is it, Ozma?” Dorothy said.

“I’m a bit curious about our friends,” Ozma said. “Dear Magic Picture, I wish to see the Red and White Queens.”

And at once, the shifting landscapes faded from view and manifested a real-time motion picture of the Red and White Queens with a group of four men and seven other women, thirteen in all, walking the streets of a teeming Chinatown. Three of the men wearing blue musketeer outfits led the group through many turns and thoroughfares to a ‘secret garden’ that was not a garden to find a girl named ‘Kendra’ in ‘Looking-Glass House,’ yet Ozma sensed that girl’s presence somewhere else.

“I see them,” Dorothy said, pointing out the Queens in the picture, “but who are the rest?”

“They’re friends of theirs,” Ozma said and smiled at Dorothy, “and friends of theirs are also friends of ours,” and she winked at her before turning back to the picture. “Dear Magic Picture, I wish to see where ‘Kendra’ is.”

And at once, the previous motion picture faded from view and manifested a split screen of two real-time motion pictures of ‘Kendra’ fast asleep in both halves. On the left half of the picture was a naked ‘Kendra’ sleeping on a bed with heart-shaped pillows surrounded by recessed shelves stocked with dildos and vibrators and rubber toys and several dirty magazines.

Both girls put hands to their mouths.

“Oh my,” Ozma said.

And on the other half of the picture, the same girl, wrapped up in the folds of a blood-colored shroud, lay asleep on a sofa with a man leaning against the armrest at her head and three other girls sitting on an adjacent sofa, all of them talking except for ‘Kendra’ and one of the three other girls. Of the three on the adjacent sofa, Ozma thought they might be sisters and noticed the youngest one in between her elder sisters staying silent as if in thought and looking at ‘Kendra’ on the other sofa.

Looking from one ‘Kendra’ to the other ‘Kendra,’ Ozma stretched out her hand and touched the surface of the picture and felt the strand of a single silver thread buzz on her fingertips and said, “‘Kendra’ has been split in two, her soul from her body, and now occupies the realm of the living and the dead.”

“Will she survive?” Dorothy said.

“I hope so,” she said.

“What about that girl in the middle?” Dorothy said, pointing out the youngest one between her sisters on the adjacent sofa. “Do you think she could be her friend?”

“Yeah.” Then Ozma thought about the other girl whose real name she couldn’t pronounce with her own lips and said, “Dear Magic Picture, I wish to see where ‘Alice’ is.”

And at once, the previous split screen faded from view and manifested another split screen of a pair of real-time motion pictures of ‘Alice’ in both halves. On the left half of the picture was one ‘Alice’ fast asleep inside a mirror with a Hearts symbol on its frame attached to one of the four pillars of a cathedral crossing, the same ‘Alice’ that Ozma had sent away from the throne room yesterday afternoon. And on the right half was a different Alice that wore the predatory eyes of a she-wolf and the hint of a slasher’s smile curling on her lips, accompanied by troops of red musketeer doppelgängers of herself as she marched through a hotel reception area past the bodies of a concierge and a bellman and exited through the spinning glass doors of hotel out into a thoroughfare stained with dark pools of blood. She walked out wearing a coronet atop her head and a blue Sunday dress with a red heart over the bodice, and in her hand she carried a kodachi, and on her feet she wore . . .

“The silver shoes!” Dorothy said. “Alice got the shoes after I lost them on my way back to Kansas!”

So Princess Ozma manifested her hand mirror again, and a spectral glow seeped through her hands into the mirror, till the reflection flashed before her face and revealed the gathering of General Jinjur and Wantwin Battles and Lewis Carroll and Inspector Larking and Sgt. Rousseau and Lt. Hamilton and Col. Roosevelt in a deep discussion around the table in the hotel suite. Seeing this, Ozma touched her finger on the reflection, making it glow, and whistled a high-pitched tune resembling birdsong and set heads turning, till General Jinur manifested a mirror, and the image changed to the general’s face.

“Your Highnesses, what is it?” she said.

“Alice just entered the field,” Ozma said, “and she’s brought reinforcements.”

The general cursed and said, “I know, your Highness, and pardon my French. Based on what we’ve seen, we’ve estimated a brigade’s worth of manpower with Alice’s doppelgängers alone and another brigade consisting of Rancaster’s retainers, as well. 10,000 in all, at least.”

Ozma looked over at Dorothy, who nodded her head, so she said, “There’s more, general.”

“What is it, your Highness?” she said.

“Alice has obtained the silver shoes,” Ozma said.

“Wait,” the general said, “how on earth did she find them?”

And for the first time in a long time, Princess Ozma struggled to come up with a good answer but said, “I don’t know, but this has become serious. Not since the Wicked Witch of the East have we seen another enemy wearing the silver shoes.”

“Which means,” Dorothy added, “Alice can teleport from one place to another.”

“What will you do?” General Jinjur said.

“Dorothy and I will think of something,” Ozma said, “and we’ll have to talk to Glinda later, but for now—”

“Send me over there,” Dorthy said.

“Wait, what?” Ozma said. “I won’t do that!”

“Please, you Highness, send me over there,” Dorothy said, bowing to her fairy princess on one knee as Ozma’s most loyal subject. “I was the last person to wear those shoes on my first visit to Oz before I used them to get back to Kansas with Glinda’s help. I lost those shoes on my way there, and Alice must have found them afterwards, so I’m responsible for this. Please, your Highness, let me go and help them.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Dorothy nodded and said, “Please, your Highness.”

For a time, Ozma remained silent before saying, “All right, Dorothy, I’ll let you go.” Then to General Jinjur: “General, I’ll prepare Princess Dorothy and send her to your location, so wait for a little bit, okay?”

“Will do, your Highness,” General Jinjur said.

With that, Ozma touched the reflection again, blurring out the glowing image of the general, till it turned into a normal mirror in her hand. She dissipated it in her hand again and walked to her fountain, saying, “Follow me, Dorothy.”

So Dorothy followed.

Ozma stretched her hand over the fountain’s splashing green waters, stilling the flow and changing its dappled surface into a mirror sheen, and said, “Dorothy, look into the water and tell me what you see.”

Dorothy did so, and when her face and shoulders appeared over the reflection, she said, “I see myself, your Highness.”

“Now close your eyes,” Ozma said, “and tell me what you see.”

And the girl did so and gaped, putting her hand to her mouth as she said, “I see a blindfolded woman holding a sword in her right hand and a balance in her left hand.”

“Reach out for that sword and grasp it,” Ozma said.

And Dorothy stretched out her hand over the mirror sheen of water and grasped something solid. Then the watery sheen glowed a bright emerald hue, and a broadsword manifested in Dorothy’s hand, making her gasp at its weight with the grip wavering in her hand and the tip of its blade skimming the water.

“Open your eyes now,” Ozma said.

The girl did so, holding the sword in both hands and saying, “Who was that woman?”

“She is Lady Justice,” Ozma said, “and she has lent you her sword, for you are just and true. Now look into the water again and tell me what you see.”

And the girl did so, peering at her glowing prepubescent reflection, and said, “I see myself.”

So Ozma passed her hand across Dorothy’s eyes, changing her appearance to that of a girl in her late teens wearing a pre-World War I military uniform with a knee-length skirt and high boots over her legs and her sheathed broadsword hanging from a baldric slung diagonally from her shoulder. Then she manifested a handkerchief in her hand and gave it to Dorothy and said, “Please, be careful while you’re there.”

“Will do, your Highness,” she said.

But just before Ozma was about to send her away, Princesses Betsy and Trot burst into the sitting and ran up to Dorothy and wrapped their hands around her waist and said, “Don’t go!”

“Betsy? Trot?” Ozma said. “Why are you here?”

“Don’t send her away!” Betsy said.

“Please, don’t!” Trot added.

So Dorothy crouched and hugged Betsy and Trot, saying, “I have to go, girls. Part of the reason why things turned out this way was mine, and I must go and rectify it.”

Then both girls started crying.

“Please don’t cry,” Dorothy said. “Otherwise, I’ll cry, and I don’t want that. Please.”

So the sniffling pair let Dorothy go and wiped the tears from their eyes like two good little girls, while Ozma struggled to keep her composure as the gravity of the situation became apparent. This was a foreign conflict that had nothing to do with her kingdom of Oz, yet here she was sending her beloved Dorothy off to a faraway battlefield to face a dangerous foe.

“Dorothy,” Ozma said, “for their sake, for the sake of this kingdom and all who reside in the land of Oz, and for my sake, come back to us when it’s over.”

And before she knew it, Ozma was crying, so Dorothy came over and hugged her, saying that will return. By God, she will.

After that, when Ozma began wiping away her tears, Dorothy separated herself from her friends and stood before Ozma’s magic picture. She looked once again at each of her friends in turn and lingered on Ozma as she waved her handkerchief—

And disappeared from the room.

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