A Lease on Wonderland II: Through Fragmented Glass

Digging out Skullduggery

"Where did he go!?" cried Matthias.

"Mr. Adhikari!?" gasped Esther who saw indeed that he had disappeared.

White was still with them looking grave, and he sighed with a heavy shake of his head.

"We'll all meet him again very soon," said White. "But what's past is past now."

"You mean that already happened before it... happened?" Matthias blinked and shook his head.

White shrugged. "A bit like that. Though, perhaps you don't recall it in the same way as it was represented to you in the shards of other reflections."

Matthias gulped. He downright gulped. He turned roughly Esther and touched her, just to makes sure she was there. She was there and looking at a book. Or she had been before his outburst.

"Did you see that?" he asked.

"I..." Esther looked down at the book puzzled as though she was not sure how the book had gotten into her hands at all. "I saw the tunnel. Then the Red Queen and Mr. Adhikari disappeared."

"Exactly!" said Matthias relieved that at least they were on the same page.

"Did she turn into a book?" Esther asked White.

"No," said White. "I'm pretty sure that's your book."

"Unpacked Guilt by Matthias Haddler?" asked Esther reading the cover; she gasped and handed it to Matthias fumblingly.

Matthias made it harder as he did not take it in any clean motion but was blinking in surprise and suspicion; unsure he wanted the book at all. He glanced at White. Then he leafed through the pages a little once the book was between his fingers. Some pages were dog-eared. Others were stained, and one or two were even ripped and taped.

How many hands had it gone through? It was like the whole world and his brother were rooting around as much as a loose terrier in the neighbor's flowerbeds. Those dog-ears certainly could have been flapping on the sides of a little dog's head.

At first he felt angry, but as he threw his head at White he had to wonder whether it mattered if Wonderlandian people read embarrassing things about him or not. It was not like it was going to hurt him, but he still could not shake the irritation.

It was left over from his experience with Mercury.

Had Mercury read the book?

He grimaced.

But what was even in the book?

He was just paging back to the table of contents when a gust of wind blew through the open window. The train had never been going very fast, but the suddenness and the chill bite was enough to flutter the pages angrily as though it wanted to read it first. In its frustration it knocked his hat clean off in petty resentment. Though, it only landed on the floor.

"Snow?" Esther asked meanwhile looking out at the blinding white all around them in piles as pristinely untouched as a winter wonderland in a Christmas card, and yet there was nothing Christmas-like about it.

In fact it was more nightmarish in its vacancy with the overcast sky not bright enough to be white but not gray enough to be stormy. It was a miserable smoky sort of sky that looked as old and melancholy as a dusty pair of faded white gloves on an old chipped dresser. It was as heavy as the beard of a gloomy old man sagging his head between his knees.

And Matthias noticed something in the huge flat flakes that were still falling. It was just a little thing, but he could find no play on words about it or any other Wonderlandian joke to warrant it. It caused him to shiver more than the wind or the oppressive sky. The flakes were fat and globby, but there was no humidity. They were more like shriveled pieces of thin steel wool fragments. It was dry as an oven but as cold as a fridge out there.