CHAPTER ONE
ALIX
"I like that man's hat. It's shiny and tall like in the storybooks. Nobody wears a hat like that anymore."
Heart suddenly pounding wildly, Alix scanned the pedestrians filling the street around them. "What man?" She squeezed Alyss' small hand a little too tightly. "Where do you see him?"
"He's just there." A small finger pointed across the street.
Alix stared where Alyss pointed. People moved around a particular spot, like it was occupied. He had to be there. She remembered the last time she'd seen him. When she was seven, he'd worn a red suit and top hat.
Wonderland and its inhabitants didn't conform to rules of the normal world, and she couldn't protect Alyss' against an unseen threat. She would
not
let her cousin be taken.
Resigned, Alix imagined the locked door in her mind behind which she kept the part of her that had never left Wonderland. It might be more accurate to admit part of Wonderland had never left her.
An ornate, old-fashioned, brass doorknob elongated to reveal a keyhole. Alix imagined a shiny, golden key, inserted it into the lock, and turned it with a click.
What should have been an insignificant noise sounded like a thunderclap. She twisted the knob. The door opened an inch and stopped. Something giggled from the other side, and the door creaked open a little more.
A wild presence peeked around the edge of the door. Sensing freedom, it sidled out, little feet scuffing in tentative steps.
Oh,
seven-year-old Alix said.
We are much bigger now.
The older Alix struggled not to be overwhelmed by curiosity as her younger self whirled through their mind.
Hatter.
She fought to keep her thoughts on target.
We need to see Hatter.
We can't see him?
the little Alix asked.
Why ever not? He is quite tall. Not a mile high, but when he wears his high hat, almost!
Alix snorted.
I'll give you six-and-a-half feet. Maybe seven with the hat. But how can I see him?
Then we must simply not believe it is not possible. How will we ever see six impossible things before breakfast if we simply cannot see them?
Trying to follow that way of thinking lay madness. With a mental shrug, Alix tried to take her own advice without thinking too much. Leaving her seven-year-old self free to roam made her nervous, but Alix might need her help again.
I don't believe I can't see him.
Alix focused her eyes on the place Alyss pointed. Across the street, the air shimmered like a heat mirage in the desert. Then, there he was.
Hatter stood in the previously empty space, watching them like a creepy pervert.
Well, to be fair, he wasn't watching
them.
His eyes were on the seven-year-old, blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl at her side. Looks all the Liddle women shared.
A run-of-the-mill creep would be almost welcome.
Hatter was something else entirely, and far more dangerous.
A run-of-the-mill creep could be dispatched by a phone call to the police. They took even remote threats to young children seriously enough to at least ask a few questions and warn potential danger away.
There was no easy way to be rid of Hatter.
He stood out once she'd spotted him. His clothes were outdated. In a crowd of people dressed in trainers and dungarees, he wore an old-fashioned suit in dark blue, a matching tall hat, and a long high-collared black coat that reached the tops of his shiny black boots.
Straight red hair parted in the middle to frame his face. Piercing green eyes, that seemed old and young at the same time, returned her stare.
He was as huge as she recalled, well over six-feet tall, with broad shoulders. She'd thought that might be different now that she was grown up and not a seven-year-old girl forced to look up at everyone.
The sword sheathed at his hip was new. He hadn't carried a weapon the last time she saw him. Not that she remembered, anyway. It had been nearly sixteen years since she'd been to Wonderland. Things must have changed.
On the crowded city street, people moved around him without paying him any attention, like they couldn't see him, but somehow knew he was there. Acknowledging that he was aware she'd seen him, he touched his hat with two fingers in a salute to her.
"Come on Alyss." Alix tugged her cousin's hand and hurried her around the next corner. "Let's get home. It looks like rain and I need to get dinner started."
Her cousin lifted her face to the cloudless blue sky and raised an eyebrow. "After we get ice cream?" she bargained.
"Okay. Ice cream, then home." They'd planned to spend the day out, but now Alix had things to take care of. Hatter hadn't tried to talk to Alyss yet. They always tried to talk girls into going willingly at first.
Content with the new arrangement, Alyss nodded and let Alix pull her along the street.
Why had he come instead of the White Rabbit? That was who Alix had been keeping a watch for since her cousin turned seven a few days ago.
Every girl in the Liddle family disappeared soon after her seventh birthday. Sometimes it was only for an hour or two. When it was longer, the girls weren't the same when they came back. If they returned.
A few never had.
Or so the legend went. The Liddle women spoke of the stories, but not the men. The fathersB, brothers, and sons in the family never saw anything.
Mother seemed to be fine until Alix turned five. Then the talk of white rabbits, smoking caterpillars, grinning cats, croquet playing queens, madness, and Hatter had begun.
Alix had spent her fifth year terrified to set foot outside the house. When she turned six, her mother had lost her mind, and taken to moving to a new place every month.
Think of it as turning over a new leaf, mother always said. It was her go-to-that-explains-everything adage.