Wonderland (Intergalactic Fairy Tales Book 1) (4 page)

The tendrils emerged from their holes and started disgorging the various boxes and bags from the ship’s hold. Despite their large quantity, and in some cases, extreme weight, they were removed with impressive speed. In a matter of a couple minutes everything inside the ship was put out on the pavement, including a large pile of mushrooms.

Alice had lost sight of the approaching shape while watching Rabbit unload. She peeked through the left—no, starboard—hatch and found him standing there. He was on about a hundred tiny legs that still didn’t seem sufficient to support his dark blue bulk, half of which arched up into the air in an S shape so that he could face them.

“Hello Absolem,” said Rabbit, a nervous hitch in his voice.

“You’re late,” said the creature. His voice was a smooth rumble. It soothed Alice, despite his strange appearance.

“Yes, I had a bit of a complication,” said Rabbit, nudging Alice out onto the pavement with a few of his tendrils.

“Oh, what have we here?” asked Absolem, eyeing Alice in a way that no longer left her feeling soothed. He held up a hose with a metal mouth piece on one end and sucked on it. “You would fetch quite a nice price.” Each word was punctuated with a ring of smoke as it exited his mouth.

Alice coughed and waved her hand in front of her nose. The smell was heavy and sweet, like pipe smoke. Then she recognized the device the creature was using. It was a hookah. And a second later she realized that the creature was, in fact, a giant blue caterpillar. “This is the strangest dream.”

“If this is your idea of a dream, then I’d hate to see your version of a bloody nightmare,” said the caterpillar, a soft laugh coloring his words.

“What use could a caterpillar possibly have with all of this stuff?” asked Alice, stepping closer to Absolem, her curiosity getting the better of her.

Slightly behind Absolem, in his considerable shadow, were two average looking men. They stood there as if waiting in line for a particularly fascinating show. Not bored, excited. They didn’t look to Alice like they wanted to make conversation, or like they considered her someone to make conversation with. She decided to ignore them, but rested her hand on her sword just in case.

“I don’t have use for most of it. That’s why I’m probably not going to pay the ship very much,” said Absolem, idly chewing on the mouthpiece of his hookah. “Now you, on the other hand, may be valuable. You surprise me, ship.”

“Wait,” said Alice, stomping her foot. “Are you trying to buy me? I’m not for sale!”

“Everything is for sale,” said the caterpillar, puffing more smoke in Alice’s face. “The only real question is, ‘How much?’”

Alice spluttered and coughed and then turned to Rabbit in disbelief. “Is that why you brought me here? To sell me to some mad blue caterpillar? I bet you only told me to get off in order to make sure I would stay.”

Rabbit laughed rather rudely. “You’ve only been in Wonderland for a few minutes and you’ve already gone mad. That has to be some sort of record.”

Absolem silently puffed on his hookah until they’d finished their exchange and then spoke up again from behind a haze of smoke. “So, like I said, how much do you want for the girl?”

“The girl isn’t for sale. She was just a passenger. You know that I don’t traffic in people, Absolem. Never have and never will,” said Rabbit in a bored tone as if he’d had to repeat himself a hundred times over.

“Well, I’d give you two hundred for her,” said the caterpillar.

“Just give me whatever you’ll give me for the rest of the stuff, and I’ll be on my way.”

“Fine, I’ll put a hundred on your line of credit for the rest of this sorry lot. If you want to deal on the girl, get back to me.”

Alice let loose a scream of pure frustration and pulled her sword, leveling it at the caterpillar’s prodigious underside. She wasn’t entirely sure it would even pierce his chitinous body, but she wanted to be taken seriously. Having a sword pointed at someone tended to get them to take you seriously, or so she’d read.

Apparently it did, because the two goons lurking in Absolem’s shadow lurched forward, seeming much larger than average once they were within striking distance. Alice wouldn’t be deterred, though. “I’m not for sale. I stole this ship fair and square and gave him a new name, so that makes him mine by pirate law. So if anyone is due any money around here, it’s me. Everything on board the ship became mine the moment I commandeered it.”

“Ugh,” said Rabbit from behind her. “Always the same.”

The caterpillar laughed, a full belly laugh that shook his whole body, and waved away his goons. “You are quite the firecracker, little girl. What are you called?”

Alice groaned in frustration. Why was he laughing at her? “I’m called, Give-me-my-money,” she retorted.

Alice wasn’t sure what she would do with the money, but she was sure that she was tired of being disrespected. She was the owner of The White Rabbit and there was no way she was going to stand being treated this way.

“Well, little Give-me-my-money, I’ve already paid the ship for these goods, so you’ll have to take it up with him the next time you see him.”

“What do you mean, ‘the next time I…see’,” asked Alice, whirling around so fast that her dress fanned out around her. The White Rabbit was nowhere to be found. “…him?’”

“For someone so upset about being sold, you sure didn’t think much about how that ship would feel about you saying he was your property.” Absolem puffed more smoke in her face.

“I didn’t think,” started Alice, only to remember the Rabbit’s word of advice. “And now, I’m in a whole lot of trouble.”

“That does tend to happen here,” said the caterpillar sagely. He made a sweeping gesture with a few of his feet, indicating the goods that Rabbit had sold. The goons began to pack it up and lug it back toward the clean house with the plants in front.

“So now what am I supposed to do?” asked Alice.

“There is no ‘supposed to’ in Wonderland. Only want to,” replied Absolem.

“Well, I want to find The White Rabbit, and get back on board so I can build a pirate crew and start plundering,” said Alice, sighing heavily. She tucked her sword back in her sash since the caterpillar didn’t seem bothered and he had stopped talking about buying her.

“Who is The White Rabbit?”

“The ship!” shouted Alice. “Is that hookah smoke affecting your brain?”

“Oh, how clever, I never really noticed how much he resembled a rabbit until you said that,” offered Absolem, providing exactly no help at all.

“So, how should I go about finding my ship?” asked Alice through gritted teeth. The longer she stood there, the less sense the caterpillar made. Which would normally be just fine, considering he was a caterpillar, but just then, Alice was in desperate need of a little advice and he was the only one around to give it.

“How am I supposed to know what you should do? Only you can know what you should and shouldn’t do,” said Absolem between puffs on his hookah.

Alice felt a familiar burning sensation come to her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. She wasn’t about to cry on her first successful day as a pirate, not even tears of frustration. She took a few deep breaths and tried to rephrase her question in a way that might get her a coherent answer. “Where do you think my ship has run off to?”

“Oh, I should think he’s gone back to the queen’s palace docks. If he’s not there during the count, he’ll be in quite a heap of trouble,” said the caterpillar stroking his chin. “All the better for me. If someone I owe money to loses their head, I’m not obligated to pay them.”

“What is all this nonsense about people losing their heads?”

“Well, now you’re not making any sense. Maybe The White Rabbit was right after all, you have gone mad.”

Alice stomped her feet in frustration and a sob escaped her mouth of its own accord. Once one sob escaped, all of its friends came out to play and soon she was a crying mess. “Maybe I have gone mad. This has to be the longest, maddest dream of my life. When I wake up, maybe I’ll find myself in an asylum.”

“Oh, come now, Alice, things aren’t that bad. You’re at the beating heart of Wonderland’s underworld with its most powerful player feeling sorry for you, and a nice shiny sword at your side. How could this day get any better?” He raised one of his feet up in the air, a gesture of inspiration. “I know just the thing.”

The caterpillar lumbered over to the pile of mushrooms on the ground and plucked one up, and then held it out to Alice. She took it because it was the polite thing to do. “How will this make things better?”

“Oh, if you eat that, you’ll soon feel like you’re ten feet tall,” said the caterpillar, laughing at some private joke that Alice didn’t have the context for.

“Thank you,” said Alice, tucking it into the small pocket on the side of her dress. She already did feel a bit better, just listening to the caterpillar talk his nonsense. His voice really was rather soothing. The mushroom was just a worthless toadstool that her mother had warned her never to eat when she was a small child, but at least she knew where to start looking for her ship.

“Oh, you’re welcome my dear. The first one is always free.” He once again fogged her in a wreath of smoke. She didn’t even cough that time.

“Now, can you point me in the direction of the palace? I’ve got to find my ship.”

“You might want to be careful calling him your ship, Alice. The queen owns everything in Wonderland and claiming possession of her things is a—”

“Let me guess, a beheading offense,” finished Alice.

“Oh-ho-ho, the girl does learn. Maybe she won’t be killed by tea time after all,” roared Absolem.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” said Alice. “Now, about the palace?”

“Just over that way, my dear,” said the caterpillar, gesturing vaguely off to Alice’s right. “But I really don’t think you ought to go there. Today is the big croquet match. Nothing gets her majesty in a heads-will-roll mood like a game of croquet.”

“Croquet? Really? I do so love a good game of croquet,” said Alice.

“All right, off you go then, I’ve got business to attend to, and you’ve got your funeral to get to. We shouldn’t keep each other from our appointments.”

Alice found herself giggling at the idea of attending her own funeral. Maybe that hookah smoke had gone to her head too. Either way, she was certain that everyone was being silly about the whole beheading thing. Nobody could find joy in chopping off someone else’s head. “You really are the funniest caterpillar I’ve ever had the joy of speaking to,” said Alice by way of a good bye.

“You really are the most peculiar little girl,” said Absolem, waving as she departed.

CHAPTER FOUR

Alice set off down the nearest street that headed in the direction the caterpillar had indicated. It was called Bandersnatch Boulevard. A rather strange name for a street that looked so completely ordinary. People milled about, stepping in and out of shops, none of them paying any particular attention to her.

She guessed that was a little strange in itself, considering she was a thirteen-year-old girl walking alone on a street in the middle of the night. It made her feel like more of an adult. The further she walked, the more neon lights and advertisement screens appeared.

The people also got more strange. One person in three didn’t look human at all. There were some people who looked like angels from religious stories with white feathery wings, and some who looked like devils with red skin and horns. Some didn’t resemble humans at all, more like animals, like Absolem; though none of them looked like a caterpillar.

While she couldn’t see anyone noticeably watching her, Alice could feel the pressure of eyes on her skin. She made a couple of turns at random, but the feeling stayed with her. Her pace quickened, her shoes smacking on the sidewalk with loud slaps. Her hand drifted down to the hilt of her sword. It didn’t make sense that she couldn’t see the eyes she could feel boring into the back of her head. If they were following her, she should have been able to see them by now.

“Where are you?” she asked herself.

“Now that’s a silly question to ask. You’re always exactly where you’re standing,” said a sly voice directly behind her.

Alice practically jumped out of her skin, turning about on her heel so fast that it made her dizzy. But there was nobody there. Not even so much as a mouse digging through the trash. “Just the wind,” she said, though there didn’t seem to be the slightest breeze.

“Oh yes, now you’re talking to the wind, that’s ever so much better than asking yourself silly questions,” came the snide voice again, still behind her somehow, even though she’d just turned around.

“You might be better served by asking who you are. Knowing yourself is much more useful than knowing someone else,” said Alice, spinning again in an attempt to find the source of the voice.

“Oh, wonderful. Who are you then?” asked the voice, behind her yet again.

Alice didn’t bother spinning this time. Someone was obviously playing a trick on her and getting dizzy spinning around in circles would only make them laugh all that much harder. “I’m Alice.”

“Mrew, disappointing,” said the voice, this time directly in front of her with no visible source.