Alice In Chains (2 page)

No, she must do this properly. Nothing must distract her from believing, when the moment came, that there was something more there than a silvered pane of glass. She peered at it closely, noting the dust and careless fingermarks on the mirror. That wouldn’t do.

She ran downstairs, thankful that her parents were out, found a cloth and spray can of glass polish, rushed back up to her room and gave her mirror the most intense clean and shine it had ever had. By the time she
had
finished she was breathing heavily and the mirror looked perfect.

What else did you need when setting out on a journey? A destination! As she was going to be her own pilot and means of transport, so to speak, she had to know exactly where she wanted to end up. It might be just one step away, but it had to be the right step.

She grabbed the book and sprawled face down across her bed with it wedged between her elbows, covering her ears so that no external sounds intruded. Then she read the story line by line more intensely than she had ever done before, fixing it in her mind. As she did so she tried to recall the unique quality of Underland. The freshness of the air and the improbable greens of the woods, the pearly bright but sunless sky and the dim twilight that was the closest it ever came to night; immersing herself in the smell and touch of Underland, letting it fill every corner of her mind.

She reached the last page as though in a dream.

Calmly she got up from her bed and walked towards the wardrobe mirror. All she had to do was reach out and let her fingers slip through into Underland.

From downstairs came the sound of a key turning in the latch, then her mother’s voice calling out, ‘Hello, Alice, it’s only me.’

No, not now! Alice wailed in silent rage, and in her frustration she beat her clenched fists against the mirror.

And met no resistance.

Her arms sunk into the mirror as though it was no more substantial than a soap bubble.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Alice stepped through the looking glass.

Alice stood in a perfectly reversed simulacrum of her own bedroom hardly daring to breathe. She was filled with a dizzy sense both of elation and disorientation. Everything was exactly reproduced down to the smallest detail.

No, not quite. The image in the wardrobe mirror she had just stepped through was now misty and somehow distant, and she could see no sign of her own reflection. Also the daylight coming through this bedroom window was muted and green-tinted. Where the roofs of houses across the road should have been visible there was only an indistinct blur. She was reaching out to pull the net curtains aside when she realised there was no time to indulge her curiosity. What if her mother came in looking for her and saw Alice walking about on the other side of the mirror? She ran to the door, wondering if her whole house was duplicated in reverse as well, and pulled it cautiously open. But there was no landing outside.

Alice stepped onto lush green grass and shut the door behind her.

The mirror copy of her bedroom door was embedded in the side of a towering oak, giving the disconcerting impression that it had been there for a few hundred years while the tree had grown round it. The oak was one of a few dozen ringing an open glade, illuminated by a pearly bright but sunless sky. Though she had never seen this exact spot before she had no doubt she was in Underland. Nowhere else could you find nature so unspoiled, with sweet air, multicoloured flowers carelessly dappling the ground, flitting butterflies and, yes, little clumps of improbably perfect red-and-white spotted toadstools nesting between the tree roots. It was too good to be true, yet at the same time somehow more intense and alive than the world she had just left.

Alice looked back at her door thoughtfully. The Underland end of the portal through which she had chased the White Rabbit had terminated in a hollow under a similarly massive oak tree. Was that significant, somehow? She dismissed the detail from her mind. What mattered was that she had made it! Now she had a chance to …

Suddenly a shiver ran like an electric current through her. Somebody has walked over my grave, Alice thought in alarm, suddenly appreciating the old saying more keenly than ever before. She glanced quickly about her, overwhelmed by the uncomfortable sensation that she was not alone. But she saw only the perfect woodland and the feeling gradually faded. A delayed reaction to her interdimensional hop? she wondered. Well, she couldn’t stand here all day. She had a cure to find.

A track had been worn in the grass close to her tree, as though by regular use. It was as good a way to go as any other so she set off along it.

But she had hardly gone twenty paces when the background buzz of insects suddenly grew louder. An angrier buzzing came to her ears, like the whir of miniature outboard motors, and a pair of huge dragonflies shot past her.

As she turned to watch the bizarre creatures go with a smile, she heard a woman’s voice cry out: ‘I see you, spies!’

With a crack of displaced air, a spear of red light lashed out through the trees and one of the dragonflies exploded into a shower of smoking fragments. By reflex Alice threw herself off the path into a carpet of tangled ivy as another form raced along the path. But this was no insect.

It was a very tall woman in a red dress and billowing cloak. She sped past Alice, sparing her the briefest of glances as she did so, running at tremendous speed. Running? No, she was flying!

She was bent sharply forward with arms spread wide, her legs making long lazy gliding strides, her red slippers delicately pointing as she skimmed over the ground without quite touching it, as though the air itself gave her support and traction. In her right hand she held a rod-like device which she pointed ahead of her. Another bolt of fire flashed from the rod. ‘You can’t escape me!’ the woman cried, and was gone.

For some moments Alice lay on the ground, too stunned to move. What had that all been about? Who was the woman in red?

A crack and bang echoed through the trees, followed by a triumphant: ‘Now I’m rid of you!’

An image from the book came back to Alice of a figure half flying, half running in a very similar way to that she had just seen. Of course, it was the local version of the Red Queen. That would fit if she had arrived in a twisted version of the Looking Glass scenario, though as she knew to her cost she could not take the book as a firm guide. As the White Rabbit had warned her at the start of her first adventure, Underland was a mad place, and people and places changed here in strange ways. What was the Red Queen doing zapping insects, and when did she get a laser gun, or whatever it was, built into her sceptre?

Alice was just climbing to her feet when there was a flicker of red through the greenery and the Queen was striding back along the path and dropping out of the air onto the ground. Her eyes were narrowed and her face was a mask of suspicion as she looked Alice up and down.

‘What have we here?’ she said as though half to herself. ‘A native child? No, a girling. How fortunate. I was seeking a girling. But not one so strangely dressed, or even dressed at all.’ She circled round Alice. ‘Another spy, perhaps?’ She sniffed. ‘But you do not smell like one of her creatures. Who are you, girling, and where are you from?’

But Alice was temporarily speechless, not only from surprise but because the Queen was far more beautiful than the original illustrations had portrayed her. Like all the human inhabitants of Underland, the Queen was very tall, though perfectly proportioned, and seemingly built to a slightly larger than normal scale. The top of Alice’s head would not reach her shoulders. This alone
would
make her imposing, but it was her eyes that caught the attention. They were large, clear and dark-lashed, not brown but true feral red. Intense, passionate and dangerous, they complemented the perfect firm full scarlet bow of her lips. Her nose was strong and slightly aquiline and her cheeks high, reinforcing the impression of an imperious and commanding nature. A slender neck was emphasised by a pompadour of upswept hair, on top of which was perched a red filigree crown. The long gold-embroidered crimson silk dress she wore under her cloak moulded itself about the curves of her slender body and small but prominent bust. The dress was ankle-length but slashed up the front. As the Queen moved it parted to reveal a slice of creamy smooth thigh.

As the sceptre jabbed at her chest Alice recovered herself and said quickly, ‘My name is Alice Brown and I’m from Wellstone.’

‘And I am Her Royal Highness Magenta Alizarine Fuchsine Carnelian, Queen of Stauntonia,’ the Queen replied grandly. ‘I see no collar on you so I claim you as my own.’ She smiled for the first time: a calculating, hungry, masterful smile. ‘Now remove those ridiculous clothes. It is not right a slave should be dressed in front of her mistress.’

There, she’s said the ‘S’ word already, Alice thought. Hardly five minutes in Underland and already she was the property of another! It must set some sort of crazy record. At least last time she had resisted a little longer. But she was not the same innocent as she had been. The Queen’s eyes were boring into her: imperious and expectant. Alice’s heart gave a little leap as a sickening sense of inevitability crept over her. How stupid to think she could avoid the fate Underland held in store for anybody of her sort. It just took a little courage to make the transition …

Heart pounding, her insides turning to jelly, Alice pulled her T-shirt over her head, then unclipped her bra
and
dropped it to the ground. Her full pale breasts hung bare and free, her nipples standing up proudly, as though welcoming their release. Taking a deep breath she unbuttoned her jeans, hooked her thumbs through the waistband of her panties and slipped both down to her ankles. She sat down and tugged off her trainers and socks, then shed her jeans and pants.

Slowly she stood straight again, so the Queen could see both her golden pubic down and pale trembling buttocks. A lingering instinctive reflex told Alice she should try to cover herself, but she ignored it and let her arms hang passively by her sides. She must abandon coyness and shame now.

‘Spread your legs,’ the Queen commanded.

Alice obeyed, splaying her legs wide and automatically clasping her interlaced fingers behind her neck to show off her breasts to best advantage. It was a display posture she had learned under the tutelage of the Mad Hatter and March Hare, known in Underland as Topper and Lepus: girling brokers and trainers.

The Queen walked round her, looking Alice’s naked body up and down with almost clinical intensity.

‘Bend forward. Display your rear aspect.’

Alice bent over, her legs still splayed, raising her bottom high and resting her palms on the grass, acutely conscious of the open air caressing her exposed groin. Looking back up through her legs she saw the Queen’s gaze lingering on the open cleft of her buttocks, the dark pit of her anus, the golden-feathered mound of her lovemouth split by the impudent crinkled tongue of her inner lips.

A growing thrill of dark pleasure coursed through Alice as memories of her slave training flooded back. She had felt like this before. Would she once more straddle that narrow dangerous divide between helpless outrage and perverse delight? Oh God, she was getting excited! Now she was lubricating. The Queen would see
the
exudation on her vagina and know her for what she was: a submissive, a natural slave and a plaything for any with the force of will to use her. And the Queen had just such a will, of that Alice was certain. She would be putty in her hands.

‘Stand straight,’ the Queen said and Alice obeyed, trembling now with nervous excitement. Suddenly it was important that the Queen approved of her.

The trefoil head of the sceptre brushed over her pubic feathers and idly ran along her cleft. Alice groaned as it teased her. The Queen withdrew the sceptre and brought the tip, glistening with Alice’s secretions, up to her nose. She sniffed thoughtfully, then smiled.

‘I smell passion which is good. And your looks are most pleasing. But these feathers. I have not seen the like on a girling before. Are they natural to you?’

‘Well, it’s a long story, Your Majesty, I …’

‘You will address me as “Mistress”,’ the Queen said sharply. ‘You are slave to my person above all else.’

Alice shivered at the words. ‘Yes, Mistress. Well, there was a potion I took when I was in Underland before and the effects haven’t quite gone away. I came back to find a cure.’

‘Back to Underland?’ the Queen frowned. ‘Where is this “Wellstone”? Is it not in the Boardland or over the far hills? That is where girlings usually come from.’

‘Wellstone isn’t in Underland, Mistress. It’s in the Overworld.’

The Queen’s frown deepened. ‘I have heard tales of this “Overworld” compared with which perfect nonsense would seem as sensible as a dictionary.’ She moved a step closer, looming menacingly over Alice, her red eyes almost seeming to glow. ‘Are you lying to me, girling?’

Alice gulped. ‘No, it’s real, Mistress,’ she said, her voice breaking into a shameful squeak. It was hard to concentrate with those magnificent eyes shining upon her. ‘There’s a doorway. It’s just along the path …’

‘Very well then,’ the Queen said. She reached out and her slim strong fingers tipped by long red nails closed about a handful of Alice’s golden bob of hair at the back of her neck. ‘Show me this doorway to Overworld and perhaps I will believe you are not in league with those insect spies!’

As Alice walked back along the path, her head held stiffly in the Queen’s grasp, fearful thoughts ran through her mind. What happens if the door won’t open, or is gone? She realised she had no idea how long the portal between worlds she had apparently opened would last. If it had vanished could she return via another mirror somewhere else?

But the door in the oak tree was as she had left it and opened without any resistance. The Queen, pushing Alice ahead of her, ducked her head under the doorframe and they stepped into the reversed version of Alice’s room. Alice glanced anxiously at her mirror but there was no sign of life on the other side.