Corbin Read online

  My head still pounded, and my face ached. But it was worth it. I wasn’t going to let anyone hustle me at pool. After all, that was my con. A little twitch of Al’s wand always made things go my way. Unfortunately, the pool shark and his friend hadn’t taken kindly to my cutting in on their territory. Yet in the end, they’d looked a lot worse than me.

  But they hadn’t gotten arrested.

  “Thanks,” I said, exiting the cell. The garda walked me down a long hall, then left me for processing and to collect my things. When I was done, I exited the holding expecting to find my mate, Laferty, on the other side. What I didn’t expect was to find a stranger dressed in a fancy suit wearing a top hat. He looked like he was about to step on stage to perform a Dickens play.

  I stopped in my tracks.

  Everyone in the station was staring at him.

  But then, I saw it. On his side, he was wearing a teacup. And he was having a full-on conversation with his feet—or something by his feet that no one else could see. Regardless, he was talking in a rapid, hushed tone. A moment later, he abruptly stopped then looked up at me.

  “Corbin,” he said, removing his top hat and bowing to me.

  “I think I’ll go back inside,” I told the officer.

  The officer chuckled. “He paid up, so you’re all his…”

  “If you would,” the stranger told me, motioning to the door.

  I followed the man outside. My senses bristled. The man stank of the weird business that had always surrounded Al.

  He walked toward a massive old Cadillac parked at the side of the station house. The vehicle’s windows were covered in dust, aside from the small clean spot someone had rubbed in the front window.

  “You’re driving that?”

  “In theory. But it would be better if you drove,” the man said, handing me the keys.

  I stared at him. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “Of course not. I’m going with you. Where are we going?”

  I frowned at him. “Look, buddy, I don’t know who you are—”

  “Hank.”

  “Sorry?”

  “My name is not Buddy. It’s Hank.”

  “Okay, Hank. Thanks for bailing me out, but why don’t you get into your massive tugboat and sod off. I don’t know you,” I said, looking at the keys in the man’s outstretched hand.

  “No, but I know you.”

  “And just how do you know me?”

  “I’m your cousin.”

  “I don’t have a cousin.”

  “Sure, you do. I’m the son of Al’s husband…by another woman, but still. We have the same grandfather.”

  Al. He knew Al? “What?”

  “We are cousins, Corbin. I’m Hank. Hank Haberdasher.”

  “You knew Al?”

  “Of her.”

  “So, where have you been hiding all these years?”

  The man grinned mischievously at me. “Wonderland, of course. Now, come on. We have a lot to discuss,” he said then tossed me the keys. “Unless, of course, you don’t want to find out what that wand is for and what happened to Alice.”

  I stared at him. I felt like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over my head. I knew Al was dead. I had seen the blue fire. But how and why she’d died never made sense to me.

  Yet, in a single sentence, this stranger had said enough.

  Wonderland.

  Wonderland had happened to Alice.

  And if I got into that car, it would happen to me too.

  But the allure of answers was too hard to resist.

  “Fine,” I said, then opened the door. I knew very well that I had just opened myself to a world of trouble.

  But sometimes…well, sometimes things were just curiouser and curiouser.

  6

  The Other Alice

  The stranger said nothing the entire ride back to my flat. We headed up the stairs to my small apartment. Before I got to the door, I felt something off.

  I paused.

  “It’s all right,” Hank told me. “My associate is inside.”

  “Associate?”

  “Florin,” he said with a grin. “The dormouse.”

  I shook my head, then opened the door. There was a light on in the kitchen.

  “That you, Hank?” someone called in a small voice.

  “It is.”

  “You got Al’s boy?”

  “So I have.”

  A moment later, a slip of a man appeared. He was no more than five feet in height and might have weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet.

  “What in the hell are you doing in my flat?” I asked, anger rumbling through my chest.

  “By the Bandersnatch, he’s a bruiser. Look at all those tattoos,” the little man said. “He’s going to stick out like a sore thumb in Wonderland.”

  “Not much we can do about that. Corbin, this is Florin. Florin, this is Corbin, Al’s grandson.”

  “He’s got Alice’s blue eyes, I see. Takes after her,” Florin said.

  “For all our sakes, let’s hope so,” Hank answered, removing his top hat as he flopped down onto my sofa.

  It was at that exact moment that I’d finally run out of patience. “All right. Enough of this. Who the hell are you people, and what do you want from me?”

  “We’re here to take you to Wonderland, of course,” Florin said.

  “What’s he talking about?”

  Hank frowned then turned to Florin. “I don’t think Al told him anything.”

  “What? That’s impossible. He’s got her wand.”

  Something inside me froze. How did they know about that? “What did you say?”

  “You have Alice’s wand. You must know about Wonderland, don’t you?”

  “I… It’s just a story.”

  At that, Florin sighed heavily, then sat down and held his head with his hands. “This cannot be happening. She didn’t tell him.”

  “Perhaps she never got the chance,” Hank said. “Why don’t you sit, Corbin.”

  I stared at the man. My mind swept back to when I was a little boy, watching Granny Al repair all the broken teacups with the wiggle of her fingers. I remembered. I remembered the magic…and a story about a princess.

  “Why don’t we start with six impossible things,” Hank said. “First, there is another world beyond your world. Wonderland. Like the book. Second, your grandmother Alice was the Alice. That Alice. Third, you are the grandson of the Mad Hatter. So am I. Fourth, there is an immortal Caterpillar who wants to speak to you. He is a prophet, so he probably has something important to say. Fifth, Wonderland is at war, and Alice’s heir is prophesized to help protect the Kingdom of Stars, and sixth, magic is real.”

  I stared at him.

  “Any of this ringing a bell?” Florin asked.

  Hank sighed, then pulled the teacup from his belt and waggled his fingers over it like I’d seen Al do a million times before. The teapot on the oven—apparently the little man had made himself a pot—lifted and floated across the room. Hank set down his cup. The floating pot poured him a cup of tea. “Oh, and sugar, please,” Hank called, motioning to my pantry. The cupboard opened, and the sugar bowl gently floated across the room and daintily added two lumps of sugar into the cup.

  “Thank you,” Hank said, then stirred the sugar, his finger moving clockwise above the cup. The liquid in the cup spun.

  Florin cleared his throat. “Corbin, once, long ago, Alice tried to save Wonderland. She tried and failed. There were terrible consequences for our people. The White Kingdom, the Kingdom of Stars, was destroyed—cursed. The Red Kingdom, Hearts, rules Wonderland with a merciless hand. Alice knew this terror was coming. She tried to stop it. She barely escaped Wonderland with her life. But the Caterpillar said that one day, Alice’s heir would return. We thought it would be your father, but—”

  “My grandmother…is she…?”

  Hank nodded.

  “And my father. Where is he?” I asked.

  Florin looked at Han
k.

  “We don’t know,” Hank said.

  “Is he still alive?”

  “We believe so, but we cannot find him,” Florin said.

  “Please, come to Wonderland. See what the Caterpillar wants. Surely, you must have learned something all these years. Saw something. Maybe Alice told you something?” Hank said.

  “A princess…” I whispered.

  Hank smiled. “Yes. That’s right. There is a princess, and she needs our help.”

  “Who is she? Some girl in Wonderland?”

  Hank shook his head. “She’s like you. She’s here. And she has no idea what or who she is. We have made arrangements to bring her to Wonderland. She will study at Wonderland Academy. Very soon, she will be brought through the looking glass.”

  “Unless Hearts gets to her first,” Florin said.

  Hank frowned at him.

  “This girl…what’s her name?” I asked.

  “They named her Alice.”

  7

  Through the Looking Glass

  “How, exactly, does this work?” I asked.

  It was like a joke. Three gents walk into a bathroom: a tattooed ruffian, a modern-day dandy in a top hat, and a mouse-sized mouth-breather.

  “You say where you want to go, then step through the looking glass,” Hank explained.

  “Looking glass,” I whispered, remembering my father at the side of the stream. He’d used the water as a reflective glass. “Can it be anything mirrored?”

  “I suppose,” Hank said with a shrug, then took my arm.

  I yanked my arm back.

  “Cousin,” Hank said gently. “We must go together.”

  I frowned then let him hold on to me.

  Florin set his hand on Hank’s shoulder. “Let’s get on with it then,” he said.

  Hank nodded. “Right. To the Caterpillar.”

  The mirror above my bathroom sink wavered. Hank reached out and touched it. And then, the mirror sucked us in. The feeling that swept over me was like riding a fast roller coaster. I felt like I was spinning and whirling, being stretched and pulled in every direction, my head feeling like it was being crushed in a vice. A moment later, the mirror spat me out.

  I landed with a thud onto the ground.

  It took me a moment to get my bearings. I looked up to see Hank staring down at me. He held out his hand to help me up.

  Frowning at him, I rose on my own. I didn’t know the man. While, apparently, he was family, I didn’t much care for him. I’d always had good instincts about people, and something about my cousin put me off.

  Brushing off my clothes, I looked around.

  I was standing in the middle of the woods. Tall trees surrounded me. A cobblestone path led off before us. Flickering gaslamps lit the trail. I looked behind me to find a tarnished mirror. The beveled glass was pocked and yellowed around the edges. The forest was eerily quiet.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Neverwood,” Hank replied. “This is the closest mirror. Come on.”

  I turned to look for Florin, but was surprised to find a mouse—a real mouse—standing there. The mouse was strutting before us on his hind legs, wearing the same clothes the man in my apartment had worn.

  A laugh erupted from my lips.

  Hank looked back at me. “What is it?”

  “I must be bloody mad to dream up the likes of the two of you.”

  “You’re not dreaming. Sorry.”

  I looked at the mouse. “Florin?”

  Florin sighed. “Yes.”

  “So, you’re telling me Wonderland is real? Just like the kids’ book?”

  “Yes and no. Lewis Carroll is considered a nuisance here. He did come to Wonderland. He did see things. But he didn’t understand anything. And then he ran off and concocted his own version of events, most of it fiction.”

  “But wait, there is no way Granny Al was old enough to be the Alice in Carroll’s story.”

  “Time works very differently in Wonderland. Carroll fussed about with time and space and got himself quite confused. He understood there was an Alice, but he didn’t quite understand our Alice.”

  “He got a few things right,” the dormouse protested. “At least he understood what Hearts was all about.”

  “That he did.”

  “And the talking animals,” I said.

  At that, both Hank and the dormouse stopped.

  Florin turned and glared at me. “We are not talking animals. We are cursed men.”

  “Don’t be angry, Florin. Al didn’t tell him anything,” Hank said then turned to me. “There are six kingdoms in Wonderland. Red and White—Hearts and Stars—are the two largest. Then Diamonds, Clubs, Spades, and Roses. The White Kingdom, however, was decimated in the war known as the Greatest of Disasters. The descendants of Stars, like Florin, are cursed to stay in their shifted form. All people from the Kingdom of Stars are shapeshifters.”

  “So that’s why you were a man there,” I said, pointing to the mirror behind me.

  “Overthere,” Hank said.

  “Sorry?”

  “Your world. We call it Overthere.”

  “Fine. Overthere.”

  “Yes, that’s why,” Florin explained. “Now, how about we cut the chitchat before we wake up something in these woods that we’re better off leaving asleep.”

  “Like the Bandersnatch,” Hank said with a mischievous grin.

  “Yes, the Bandersnatch,” the dormouse replied.

  “Right,” Hank agreed with a grin then said nothing more.

  I had no idea what a Bandersnatch was, but I wasn’t interested in finding out.

  I followed along behind the odd pair as we wove through the woods into a glade where the trees were slowly replaced by what I realized were tree-sized mushrooms.

  Oh, yeah, I was definitely dreaming.

  Mushrooms? Had someone slipped me something in the pub?

  There was an odd hush in the woods, and just underneath that, the soft sound of whispering voices.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Could be any number of things,” Hank said with a shrug. “Fairies. Flowers. Cheshire cats. Or…other creatures. We are on the borderland with the old Kingdom of Stars. There are many strange things still roaming about the ruins of this old land.”

  “Then, no one lives here anymore?”

  Hank shook his head. “Those who survived left the lands of the White Kingdom, went with Diamonds or Clubs. A few to Spades,” he said.

  Florin, who’d been leading the way, looked back at him, a warning glance in his eyes.

  Hank shrugged.

  Now, what was that about?

  Following the path, we moved into an area that was dense with fog. As we walked, the bank of mist thickened. Soon, we reached an old, wrought iron gate.

  Hank opened it, the gate swinging wide with s squeak.

  “You go in,” he said, motioning for me to step inside.

  “Why?”

  “Because the Caterpillar asked for you, not us. Go on. We’ll wait here for you.”

  I frowned at him. I didn’t like the bloke, and especially didn’t like the sense that I was probably hallucinating. Despite Granny Al’s stories, I was never much for the whimsical. And this was whimsical beyond any stretch of my imagination.

  I headed inside the gate and into the fog, following the cobblestone path. Soon, I spotted two yellow lights before me. They blinked off and on. But as I grew closer, the fog began to thin.

  And then, I saw.

  Those were not lights at all.

  They were eyes.

  There, sitting on top of a mushroom, was a dog-sized caterpillar wearing a pair of spectacles and smoking a hookah.

  “Hello, Corbin,” he said in a low voice. He took a toke then blew a smoke ring at me. “Welcome, at last, to Wonderland.”

  8

  What the Caterpillar Said

  I coughed, waving the smoke away. If what they were saying about Lewis Carroll was true, ther
e was one thing the author had gotten right. The Caterpillar perched before me was every bit the creature from the book.

  “Who are you?” I asked him.

  “The Caterpillar. And who are you?”

  “You already know my name.”

  “I do. I know you are Corbin. But are you Corbin from Overthere or Corbin from Wonderland?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Corbin from Overthere is not a very useful Corbin. Corbin from Wonderland, however, has an important task ahead of him.”

  “Which is?”

  “To protect the princess. To watch her. To keep her safe. In fact, you might say, aside from being the princess, you have the most important job in all the land.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because, you fool”—he said then blew another smoke ring at me—“without the princess, Wonderland has no future.”

  “You expect me to believe all this? You expect me to think any of this is real?”

  “No. Not at all. Not you. You must decide everything for yourself. Things like a prophecy don’t mean much to you, do they? Not even if it’s a prophecy you’ve heard before. Yet here you are, aren’t you?”

  I frowned at him. How did he know the story Granny Al had told me? “And what is it, exactly, you expect me to do?”

  “What you were told you would do.”

  “Protect the princess.”

  “Protect the princess,” the Caterpillar agreed. “Is that so hard? Is it below you to keep a young woman safe from harm?”

  “You see my face, don’t you?”

  At that, the Caterpillar chuckled. “So I do. Now, don’t you think it’s time to do the job you’re destined for?”

  “But I don’t know anything about this place, this world.”

  “Admitting what you don’t know is an excellent way to start. I’ll see you soon, Corbin from…well, we’ll see about that,” the Caterpillar said, then blew smoke at me once more. When the cloud cleared, he was gone.

  “Terrific,” I grumbled.

  Turning, I headed back to join the others.

  Al had told me that one day I would be in charge of looking out for a princess. I thought it had been a bloody metaphor for my wife. Now they were telling me there was a real princess who needed me? What the hell?