Mad Hatters and March Hares Read online

  The cat manifested fully, giving him—he was quite clearly male—weight as well, and the limb began to sway precariously. He was not as large as I had feared. I stood up on my hind legs, partly to show him my length as well as girth, partly to grab hold of the branch above us in case I had to swing away from the perch.

  He didn’t seem terrified. Rather he burled around my legs as if trying to bind them with magical unseen threads.

  “Well played, ape,” he said. “Have you escaped from the zoo? You smell too much of the drawing room, a softer prison. I met a man once named Tarzan who smelled a bit like you.”

  “And how do I smell?” I asked. Not an idle question.

  “Not like dinner,” he said. “More like a friend.”

  “Soft sawder,” I whispered. “Have you met Barnum?”

  “That bunkum!” he said. “You and I are the real deal.”

  I nodded.

  “Ready to meet Wonderland?” he asked.

  I thought I already had.

  * * *

  I followed him into the zoo, but that was not our actual destination, it seemed. We headed off to a dark corner of the zoo, where there was a black hole under the lions’ cage.

  “Let me go first,” he said. “Then they will only smell cat.”

  “Isn’t that dangerous…?” I began, making sure there was no tremor in my voice.

  But he didn’t answer. It seemed he’d already offered as much of a plan as he was going to. And surprisingly, it worked. No one in the lion house woke, and we didn’t come up into their territory, only went into a tunnel beneath it. The floorboards over our heads held, as did the mesh under them, placed there to keep the lions from escaping. Even if they’d smelled us, they could do nothing to get to us.

  I relaxed and followed the cat further down into the hole, which canted downward in a kind of slide.

  “Is there danger…?” I began again.

  The smile turned toward me without the cat. “There is always danger,” he said, and disappeared down.

  Are you a man or an ape? Scolding myself silently, I stepped off into space.

  The hole slowly widened into a tunnel filled with some sort of wind that held me up even as it let me down. I did not so much fall as float.

  There were open cupboards on either side of the hole, lit by some kind of phosphorescence. They looked a bit like the ones in Barnum’s private railroad carriage, which I know well, for it’s there we play chess.

  Ahead of me, the cat, with a velvet paw, batted at an occasional object in the cupboards as we floated down: comb, bottle, bangle, even a small book, which he then chased until the next cupboard, where the game began again.

  Sitting cross-legged in the air, I let the wind earn its keep.

  I have no idea how long we floated down the tunnel, but we came at last, unannounced, to its end.

  When my bottom hit the tunnel’s bottom, I stood up carefully. Ape erectus once again.

  * * *

  “Wonderland,” the cat said with a swish of his tail before disappearing through a door that was only roughly large enough for me to go through as well.

  When I finally managed, by turning sideways, I found myself in a massive rose garden.

  The cat, though, was long gone.

  I sniffed, but all I smelled was a heavy rose scent, which reminded me so much of The Fat Lady, Mary, I sat down amongst the flowers till the memory passed.

  I must have fallen asleep because I was awakened by soft quarreling around me, the voices of women—both young and old—squabbling over whether I was a man or a manqué. When I opened my eyes, it took a moment to realize that it was the flowers who were speaking, but I could see their tiny budlike mouths opening and closing, as they turned and nodded on their stalks.

  I stood to my fullest height and said, “I am neither. And both.”

  They immediately stopped their gossip.

  “Which way did the cat go?” I asked.

  “The Cheshire?” asked one carefully.

  I shrugged. “The disappearing one.”

  “That’s him,” they said together, and pointed their thorny arms toward a door that suddenly appeared in the garden wall. “He’s off to the queen’s party. Crashing, we believe. It’s what he does best.”

  “A crashing bore,” said a bud in its tiny voice, then tittered. The other roses joined in the laugh, which sent a leafy scent into the air, like a trail of vapor.

  “I like parties,” I said, lying. We orangs prefer solitary pursuits. Having my hair brushed by The Fat Lady, Mary, and playing chess with Barnum were the usual extent of my reach. When I had to perform in the Barnum show, I mostly closed my eyes and thought of Sumatra.

  I got to the door in three large steps, and was halfway out when one rose cautioned in a wild voice, “Ware the Jabberwocky,” which, at the time, was just jibber-jabber to me.

  * * *

  The door opened onto a real forest, trees from northern and southern climes crowding together. I happily swung from limb to limb, and when at last I climbed high, I spotted a bunch of white tents—not unlike Barnum’s—with colorful flags flying in different directions as if the breezes couldn’t make up their minds.

  Did I really want to go down there to the party? To sit on seats too small for my nether parts, drink tea? (Barnum had cautioned me long and hard about drinking anything stronger than herbals, and one black-out night convinced me he was right.)

  Did I really want to chatter and chitter and make small talk with strangers? Most humans had trouble enough with my language skills anyway. I write much better than I speak. Barnum’s veterinarian says it has to do with the make-up of my vocal chords.

  “Seals, walrus, and sea lions,” he told me, “pinnipeds, are closer to humans than you apes in the vocal apparatus area.”

  Though here in this odd, wonderful land, it seemed I had no trouble so far making my wit be known. Perhaps, if roses and cats could talk with ease, I could, too.

  But I needed to find that cat.

  Right, I thought, party it is. And made my way mostly by tree till I reached the meadow where the tents had been set up.

  * * *

  Close-up, those tents were a bit threadbare, the flags faded, the whole looking remarkably like an old, crackled painting, or the palimpsest for the painting.

  I was greeted by a rather large rabbit. Almost a hare, I would have said, but he gave me little time to ask.

  “You’ve left it very late,” he scolded, glancing at an oversize pocket watch that had some scribbles on the silvered back. In ape count that silver back made the watch quite old. Whether valuable, I didn’t know. Barnum had taught me much about the meaning of value, and how to implant it in a mark’s mind. “The value,” he used to say, “is not what a thing is worth intrinsically but what someone is willing to pay for it.” And this he demonstrated time and time again whenever he sold merchandise before and after the shows.

  The rabbit was tapping the watch. “No time left. You’re on.”

  “On what?” I asked. It was the most sensible question I could come up with.

  “Why, you’re the queen’s champion, of course,” the rabbit said. “No one like you in all of Wonderland. The cat was quite specific about that.” He shook the watch again. “Except for the Villain, you are the largest creature here.” If a rabbit could be said to beam, he beamed.

  I looked around for such a large beast, saw only walking cards, the ghost of a Cheshire smile, a rather odd caterpillar weaving in and out of space like a sailor on a three-day drunk, a man with a top hat that over-topped his head, and a small, spindly girl who was dressed in an out-of-date pinafore and a worried look.

  Behind me something roared menace.

  Jibber-jabber, I thought.

  “What do I get for a weapon?” I asked, flight no longer an option out here in the open.

  “What’s a weapon?” the rabbit asked, shaking the watch a third time.

  Which kind of made nonsense of my asking. I ben
t over and picked up a round cobblestone from the walk. It fit comfortably in my right hand.

  The rabbit ignored me and gazed mournfully at his time piece as if he and the watch were only marginally acquainted.

  I wanted to know more about the fight—the Villain’s real name, his misdeeds. I needed to ask about the queen: what she stood for, how she treated her champions. I wondered if I would have to fight again after this one time.

  The rabbit looked over my head, blanched. If a white rabbit could turn any whiter, he did. Then he passed out at my feet.

  My questions were not only left unanswered, they hadn’t even been uttered. I stepped over the comatose hare, then turned, and looked up and up and up and up at the Villain.

  And then I knew. Jabberwocky! Who else could it be?

  I am large.

  The Jabberwocky was much, much larger. And he was green. Like a giant lizard. Or a dragon crossed with one of Barnum’s dinosaurs. I’d seen clippings of Barnum’s American Museum in New York City, which had burned down the year before I became part of his troupe, where he’d had pictures of dragons. And when The Fat Lady, Barnum, and I—in my new tux—visited the National History Museum on one of our Eastern swings, I’d seen fossils for the first time. The Jabberwocky reminded me of them.

  Barnum had once said, matter-of-factly, “I made monsters, called them history, and was known as a bunkum. They found bones, called them fossils, and were known as scientists.” Then he’d winked at me. “But whose name will be both a noun and a verb in the future?”

  That made little sense to me at the time. But the longer I am with him, the more I understand.

  Here in this Wonderland the barnum is real. So real, I wondered that I didn’t have wings. At the thought, there was an itch between my shoulder blades. Only a small itch, you understand, nothing with feathers or flight. Yet. If I remained here in this strange land … who knew?

  First, though, I had to remain alive. And that meant fighting the Jabberwocky. I squeezed the stone tight. Wings would surely have been helpful in this fight. But I had what I had, not what I needed. So I had to make do. “Mother of Invention,” I said aloud, one of Barnum’s favorite tags.

  The Jabberwocky roared.

  I roared back, thinking: Someday they will make a moving picture show of this fight. Ape v. dragon.

  Whatever this fight was really about mattered little. All that mattered was that it had begun.

  * * *

  At first all I saw was the Jabberwocky. It filled every inch of my sight. But that way lay fear. I needed to know where I was, how I was situated, and so I took a step back and looked around.

  It was then I heard a loud sound. A familiar sound.

  It was the sound an audience makes in Barnum’s tent, a kind of restless anticipation, part holding of breath, part expelling it. Then a chatter as if a thousand tongues were warming up to speak. And then a roar.

  Not like the Jibber-jabber’s roar. This was a roar of approval. A roar of anticipation. A roar of delight.

  I looked past the dragon-beast, past the green tiles of his skin, past the massive jaws that could bite, the claws that surely could catch. Past the eyes glowing red as if they were banked fires about to flame. Past the odd burbling sound he was now making.

  And there, in front of the white tent, appeared a vast number of wooden bleachers slowly filling up with Wonderland folk.

  Now I knew the rules. I understood what was at stake. This was Entertainment. Blood, perhaps. Death, perhaps. But above all, it had to be memorable.

  I let the stone drop from my hand. There were more about should I need them.

  And then, without preamble, I leaped.

  Monkeys are great leapers. We greater apes, less so. But being larger—we cover more actual space. And when we land, we can shake the earth.

  The Jabberwocky took a step back, making a whiffling noise as he did so. He was no longer burbling.

  But he didn’t step back far enough.

  I leaped over his head and—before he could turn around—had scrambled up his back as if it were no more than a tree. There I grabbed his skinny, vulnerable neck with both my hands.

  He slammed me on my head with his tail, which had the force of a club. But even dizzied by the blow, I held on.

  His huge wings flapped on either side of me as if they could brush me off, but I had survived tropical cyclones in Sumatra we called the Biggest Wind. The wind from the Jabber’s wings was small and insignificant compared to that.

  The tail was raised once more to bang me on the head, but I let go of the creature’s neck. Then One, two! One, two! I boxed its ears with my powerful fists, thinking to stun him for a moment, till I could talk to him, tell him my plan.

  How could I have known that the dragon’s ears were the equivalent of a glass jaw. I had seen such bare-knuckle boxing at the Pelican Club in New Orleans when we had performed in that fair city, its steamy weather so reminiscent of Sumatra. It was Barnum who’d told me about a boxer’s “glass jaw” at the time. It had seemed an unlikely thing, yet here it was—though ears, not jaws.

  Of course, neither boxer at that fabled fight—Gentleman Jim or John L. Sullivan—had any such thing as a glass jaw. They battled twenty-one rounds before a knockout decided the winner.

  The Jabber barely lasted but one.

  His ears were his downfall, and indeed down he fell.

  The noise of the crowd was astonishing. The queen, all dressed in red—and one-faced as any playing card—put a gold medallion around my neck and a blue sash over my shoulder.

  “You shall have the run of the kingdom,” she said to me. “But you must come at my call whenever there’s a challenger.”

  Then she turned to her knaves, who were buzzing about the fallen beast. “Carry the Jabber to the woods,” she commanded, “where our Red-headed Hero shall have him for dinner. Then come back for our victory celebration.”

  She turned again to me and spoke softly so that only the two of us could hear. “I can send my royal executioner to cut off its head if that will be easier.”

  I stumbled through my thanks, and ended with, “I prefer to prepare my meals myself, Highness.”

  She waved her hand at the wispy-looking child. “The Alice will clean up after you. She seems useless for anything else.” Then the queen was away, trailed by her court and their courtesies.

  The little girl came over, smiling sadly. She whispered to me in her wisp of a voice, “I rather liked the Wocky.”

  “I think I might like him, too,” I said.

  She shuddered, thinking I meant him as food.

  * * *

  I grabbed the Jabberwocky’s tail and pulled him behind me into the far trees. The child followed behind.

  “Do I have to watch you eat him?” she asked.

  “I don’t eat meat,” I said. “And besides, he isn’t dead. Just knocked out.”

  “What are you going to do with him, then?”

  I smiled, thinking about how much Barnum would like the Jabber. Probably call him The World’s Only Living Dinosaur. I thought how in exchange for adding the Jabber to our troupe, I’d convince the Tweedles to come down the Cheshire’s hole and live in Wonderland, there to be feted by the queen. They’d like being part of a royal troupe. And the queen needn’t ever know they’d once been conjoined.

  Besides, Alice could become The Fat Lady, Mary’s child and free me to be the grownup I now was.

  I was thinking about my ace in the hole: in exchange for leaving off performing, I would take Barnum once a year into Wonderland to poach wonders at will. My cards were the Grin Without a Cat, the White Rabbit with a Watch, a Caterpillar the Size of a Horse. And that would be on our first visit together. Who knows what other wonders he might bring back.

  Maybe even the Queen of Hearts—if he plays his cards right.

  MERCURY

  Priya Sharma

  The Duchess had a demanding fist. Alice knew she was at the door from the sharp, insistent raps.
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br />   The woman needn’t have knocked. She had a key. That she hadn’t let herself in meant she was on her best behaviour. She’d brought a visitor. When whoever it was had gone the Duchess would be back with an open hand, demanding.

  You can’t expect me to traipse around for nothing. I’m not at your beck and call. This is a debtor’s jail, not a hotel.

  The Duchess was a racketeer with stout boots and a bunch of keys. They’d only been in prison for a month but Alice knew her tariff by heart already, from the price of receiving a letter to clean sheets. The extortionate cost of having a room large enough to house her and her father.

  How much? Alice had exclaimed when the Duchess had held out her hand. You expect us to pay for my father’s cell?

  It’s a room for two. I’m paid to house your father, not you. If you insist on staying with him, then you’re robbing me of another prisoner’s bed. The woman sniffed. Besides, you have a view.

  A view of the prison yards and the main prison opposite.

  The Duchess’ name was Mrs Malfi, but she was called the Duchess by her affectionate husband and by everyone else because of her affectations.

  Alice tried to make her face look neutral, if not cordial, as she opened the door. The Duchess was nearly as tall as the man beside her. Mr Selby tipped his hat. Alice recognised it as one of her father’s. Or rather, one of hers.

  “May I come in?” His grin revealed white teeth in contrast to his face, which was red and full from good living.

  Alice blocked his way.

  “Father’s not well enough for visitors.”

  “Really dear, don’t be ungrateful to the kind gentleman.”

  “That’s quite all right, Mrs Malfi. Thank you so much for the delicious tea.” Alice couldn’t abide Selby’s snideness, which was lost on the Duchess. “I’d like to see him, child.”

  He sounded anything but paternal, brushing against her. He was always doing that. The Duchess hovered for a moment before realising that she’d been dismissed.

  Mr Selby of Selby and Sons, the finest purveyor of hats in England, sat down opposite Theophilus Hargreaves, handing Alice his top hat and gloves without so much as a please or thank you.