Frank Beddor - The Looking Glass Wars (Looking Glass Wars, Book 1)

THE L OOKING G LASS W ARS

BY

F RANK B EDDOR

Dial Books
A member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Published by The Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Copyright 2006 Frank Beddor

All rights reserved

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Logo Design: Christina Craemer

Card Soldiers & Part 2 art: Doug Chiang

Part 1 & Part 3 art: Branislav Hetzel

Front cover: Brian Flora

Map Design: Cold Open

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Beddor, Frank.

The Looking Glass Wars / by Frank Beddor.

p. cm.

Summary: When she is cast out of Wonderland by her evil aunt Redd, young Alyss Heart struggles to keep memories of her queendom intact until she can return and claim her rightful throne.

ISBN: 1-4295-8964-7
[1. Fantasy.] I. Title.

PZ7.B3817982Lo 2006 [Fic]dc22 2006001672

Dedicated to my niece

Sarah

for her sense of wonder

THE LOOKING GLASS WARS

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

Oxford England. July 1863.

Everyone thought she had made it up, and she had tolerated more taunting and teasing from other children, more lectures and punishments from grown-ups, than any eleven-year-old should have to bear. But now, after four years, it had arrived: her last, best chance to prove to them all that she had been telling the truth. A college scholar had thought enough of her history to write it up as a book.

She sat on a blanket on the banks of the river Cherwell, the remains of a picnic lunch in a basket at the Reverend Charles Dodgsons elbow. She held the book in her hands. He had written and illustrated it himself, he said. It had a nice weight and heft, felt substantial. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with a black ribbon. Dodgson was watching her, anxious. Her sisters Edith and Lorina were hunting minnows at the rivers edge. She untied the ribbon, carefully undid the wrapping.

Oh! Alices Adventures Underground? What sort of title was that? And why was her name misspelled? She had told Dodgson how to correctly spell her name, had even written it out for him. By Lewis Carroll? she read with growing concern.

I thought it would be more festive than saying it was by a reverend.

Festive? She had told him little that was festive. Concern was fast turning to alarm, but she swallowed it. What mattered was that he had faithfully recorded her history in Wonderland as she remembered it.

She opened the book and admired its rough-cut pages, the neatness of the handwriting. But the dedication took the form of a poem, in which her name was again misspelled, and she didnt think the lighthearted rhyme scheme appropriate, considering the material it was supposed to introduce. Her gaze caught on one of the stanzas:

The dream-child moving through a land

Of wonders, wild and new,

In friendly chat with bird or beast

And half believed it true.

Dream-child? And what did he mean by half believed?

She turned to the first chapter and immediately felt as if her insides had been scooped out, like the half grapefruits Dean Liddell ate for breakfast every morning, after which only raw, pulpy hollows remained. Down a rabbit hole? Where had the worrisome White Rabbit come from?

Alice, is something wrong?

She skipped ahead, turned page after page. The Pool of Tears, the caterpillar, her aunt Redd: It had all been twisted into nonsense.

I admit that I took a few liberties with your story, Dodgson explained, to make it ours, as I said I would. Do you recognize the tutor fellow you once described to me? Hes the White Rabbit character. I got the idea for him upon discovering that the letters of the tutors name could be made to spell white rabbit. Here, let me show you.

Dodgson took a pencil and small notebook from the inside pocket of his coat, but she didnt want to look. He had indeed said it would be their book, his and hers, and she had found strength in thatstrength to suffer the indignities that came from insisting on truths no one else believed. But what she held in her hands had nothing to do with her.

You mean you did it on purpose? she asked.

The grinning Cheshire cat. The mad tea party. Hed transformed her memories of a world alive with hope and possibility and danger into make-believe, the foolish stuff of children. He was just another in a long line of unbelievers and thisthis stupid, nonsensical bookwas how he made fun of her. She had never felt more betrayed in all her life.

No one is ever going to believe me now! she screamed. Youve ruined everything! Youre the cruelest man Ive ever met, Mr. Dodgson, and if you had believed a single word I told you, youd know how very cruel that is! I never want to see you again! Never, never, never!

She ran, leaving Edith and Lorina to make their own way home, leaving the Reverend Dodgsonwho considered children to be spirits fresh from Gods hands, their smiles divine, and who thought there could be no greater endeavor than devoting all of his powers to a task for which the only reward was a childs whispered thanks and the airy touch of her pure lipsshaken, unsure of what had just happened.

He picked up the book, still warm from Alice Liddells touch, not knowing that it was as close to her as hed ever be again.

PART ONE

C HAPTER

T HE QUEENDOM had been enjoying a tentative peace ever since the time, twelve years earlier, when unbridled bloodshed spattered the doorstep of every Wonderlander. The civil war hadnt been the longest in all of recorded history, but no doubt it was one of the bloodiest. Those who had entered a little too quickly into the carnage and destruction had trouble adapting to life during peacetime. When hostilities ceased, they ran amok on the streets of Wonderlands capital city, looting and pillaging Wondertropolis until Queen Genevieve had them rounded up and shipped off to the Crystal Minesa spiderweb-like network of tunnels carved in a far-off mountainside, where those unwilling to abide by the laws of decent society lived in windowless dormitories and labored to excavate crystal from the unforgiving mountain. Even after these people were taken off the streets, the peace that settled on Wonderland was nothing like that which had existed before the war. A third of Wondertropolis quartz-like buildings had to be rebuilt. The smooth turquoise amphitheater had suffered damage in an air raid, as had the public works towers and spires sporting fiery, reflective pyrite skin. But the scars of war are not always visible. Although Queen Genevieve ruled her queendom judiciously, with care for the well-being of her people, the monarchy had been forever weakened. The coalition of Diamond, Club, and Spade dynasties that made up Parliament was falling apart. The matriarchs of the families were jealous of Genevieves power. Each thought she could rule Wonderland better than the queen. Each watched and waited for an opportunity to wrest control from her, keeping a none-too-friendly eye on the other families in case they happened to make a move first.