“This diary is for me as much as it is you, Hatter. I hope I’ll be able to tell you what I have to say in person, but circumstances here are dangerous. Just because I’m alive today is no guarantee that I’ll be so tomorrow. You probably already know that Redd has destroyed the Millinery. Her goal is genocide, to wipe the Milliner breed from existence. It’s believed that she salvaged the ID tracking system from the Millinery and is using it for this purpose, after which she’ll destroy it. You often told me that one born a Milliner still needs the proper training to make the most of his or her natural gifts, but Redd puts more credence in the birth than in the training. As soon as the first Milliner was ambushed by Redd, I hid out here, not sure if I’d be targeted too. There are rumors that a few Milliners have so far managed to escape their assassins and are hiding undercover somewhere. If the rumors are true, I hope they will continue to evade their would-be murderers so that once the rebellion succeeds-and I believe it must-they will come out of hiding and you can lead them in a new Millinery.”
Hatter felt a twinge; reestablishing the Millinery was the last thing he felt like doing.
“I understand that our relationship was difficult for you, Hatter,” Weaver went on. “I know that despite how thoughtful and loving you always were to me, a part of you was angry with yourself for succumbing
to your feelings for anyone, let alone a civilian. A master of self-control as all of Wonderland believes you to be, you shouldn’t have been consorting with me. You thought your feelings a mark against you, an
indication of weakness.”
“I no longer think so,” he said aloud.
“I always knew your duties could call you away,” Weaver continued. “It was wrong of me not to tell you when I first found out, but…Hatter, my love…I’m sorry.” She wiped her eyes. “I should’ve told you before you left…I was pregnant.”
Hatter remained perfectly still. Pregnant? With his child? So long did he remain unmoving that, when he again became conscious of his surroundings, he thought he had paused the diary. But then he saw Weaver’s chest rise and fall, rise and fall; she was breathing, struggling with her own emotions.
“I know how you feel about halfers,” she said at last, “and I was never sure how you’d react to hearing that you had fathered one. Every time I thought to tell you of my joy-of our joy-I found an excuse not to. I did plan to tell you the next time we’d be on Talon’s Point together. But as you know, there was no next time.”
Too preoccupied with the vision before him, Hatter didn’t hear the pop that sounded-either the bursting of an air bubble in one of the fire crystals or an explosion from outside the cave.
“I couldn’t give birth alone, so I risked an overland journey to the Alyssian camp in the Everlasting
Forest. Doctors there delivered me of a beautiful baby girl.” With the saddest smile Hatter had ever seen, the smile of one who had long ago resigned herself to a life incomplete and unsatisfactory, Weaver said, “It’s time you knew your daughter’s name, Hatter.”
But just then, as if surprised by an intruder, she looked off at someone or something not recorded by the diary, and the pop that Hatter had failed to hear a moment before proved to be the opening salvo in a battle raging on the nearby mountain, which Hatter now heard without hearing, his whole being fixed on Weaver’s image, already fizzling to nothing as she whispered, “Molly.”
CHAPTER 13
“W HAT DO you mean you can’t locate an enemy to fight?” the general cried, indicating the havoc surrounding them in Genevieve Square, then splitting into the twin figures of Doppel and Ganger so as to worry twice as much, both of the generals pacing and rubbing their brows.
The white knight and rook exchanged an uneasy glance.
“My chessmen have canvassed the vicinity and found no one,” explained the knight. “We have a great many injured among the civilian population, but no casualties as of yet.”
“Let’s keep it that way,” said Doppel.
“Yes, let’s,” said Ganger. “But someone caused this!”
“Or something,” offered the rook. “Whoever or whatever it was, it’s made the continuum impenetrable.” As if to prove the point, a panicked Wonderlander with blood-matted hair sprinted past. “Must get home
to my family,” he was saying. “Must make sure they’re safe.”
The chessmen and generals watched as the traumatized fellow ran straight for the nearest looking glass portal and was knocked back, repelled, when he tried to enter it. The generals called for a nurse, who led the victim off to a triage center located in a tailor’s shop on the corner.
“That’s what happens whenever anyone tries to enter the continuum from any portal whatsoever,” the rook said. “It’s impossible to gain access and we’ve no idea if the condition is temporary or permanent.”
“Not good,” fretted Doppel.
“Not good at all,” agreed Ganger.
“Sir!” A young pawn approached, accompanied by a pair of Wonderlanders. “These men were in the continuum when that, uh…thing happened. I thought their experiences might be able to give us some insight into what we’re dealing with.”
“Let’s hope so,” said the knight.
At a nod from the pawn, one of the men offered what he could: “I don’t know exactly how to describe it, really. It was like a feeling, like I was a piece of junk being carried along on a tidal wave or-”
“Not for me, it wasn’t,” said the other. “I’m not sure if this will make any sense, but a bright nothingness came up and knocked the breath out of me. I don’t remember anything after that, except that once I could see and breathe again, I wasn’t in the continuum. I was stranded high in the branches of an unappreciative tree, and my wife-we’d been returning home from a barbecue at her cousin Laura’s, she makes the best barbecued dormouse you’ll ever taste in your lives, so tender that the meat slips off the bone, and she seasons it with a scrumptious glaze just the right amount of sweet and tart and spicy, oh
and her corn relish!”
The knight cleared his throat.
“Right. So anyway, I landed in a tree and my wife was half a block away, sprawled on top of a citizen who-the nerve of him-complained that she’d landed on him purposely.”
The pawn waited, eager to learn how helpful his civilians had been. The generals resumed their pacing and the rook blinked at the men with something like disbelief. Only the knight remembered himself.
“You’ve done the queendom a great service, providing such a smorgasbord of helpful information,” he said. And to the pawn: “See that these gentlemen are examined by a physician before you release them.”
“Yessir.”
The pawn saluted and led the Wonderlanders off.
“We’ll have to station guards at all the portals,” said Doppel.
“And see if we can’t analyze whatever’s contaminated the continuum,” said Ganger. “What is that bleeping?”
It was coming from the rook’s ammo belt, which looped over his battlements and crossed in an X on his chest. “It’s the latest model crystal communicator, Generals,” he said. “I press this button here…” the chessman pressed a button on the miniature keypad strapped to his forearm, “…the incoming message alert stops sounding, and then this little hole here…” he pointed to a nozzle-like opening on his ammo belt, “…shoots out a visual of the transmission that all of us can view equally well.”
A screen formed in the air before him, on which appeared a frantic pawn patrolling Wondertropolis’ Obsidian Park neighborhood.