Chapter one
The first few years of Alice's life passed somewhat uneventfully. Adeline
and I taught her all about wonderland, it's history, and how it's world
functioned just on the brink of madness. Whenever Adeline or I wasn't
around, Alice was taken care of by Felix, a gardener from the palace. Felix
taught her how to speak to the flowers, how to hear them sing and speak,
I taught her how to fight, and Adeline taught her how to lead. Alice was
growing into a strong confident girl who was shaping up to be a great
leader of Wonderland.
When Alice turned ten, it was clear she was becoming more and more
curious, exploring the palace and the world around her at every chance
she got. It was then that Adeline gave me a very important order. Adeline
was a seer, however this fact wasn't widely known. The only way that
Adeline was able to see the future was by looking into mirrors, and when
a vision came she was able to reach into the looking glass and trap it
there.
Adeline had amassed a hall filled with mirrors all holding prophesies,
this was where she summoned me to tell me my mission. As I walked in
Adeline looked unusually grave. Her golden eyes, usually so full of light
and life now lay dead on her face, like rusty coins. Even her hair, fiery red
and long, seemed limp and dull reflected a thousand times in her mirrors.
Slowly, she begins to speak, words falling of her lips like petals dropping
from a flower.
"Hatter, you must hide them, please just take them away."
"What?" I asked, stunned to hear the pain and fear in her voice. Adeline
almost never let her composure crack.
"The mirrors Hatter, the ones that tell of Alice and how she came to be
here, the ones that show Lepus taking her from the mortal realm. If she
ever saw them, realized that we stole her, it could set her on a dark path."
Suddenly, I understood, all her years of training would be for nothing if
she went dark. Even though we had kidnapped her, we hadn't kept her
prisoner, we'd raised her as our own. However, if Alice found the mirrors
and discovered she wasn't a Wonderling, that could be the thing that
pushed her out of the light and into the darkness, from which no one not
even Adeline could save her.
"Yes, of course my queen, what do you want me to do with them?"
"Take them to Pain and Panic, tell them to destroy the mirrors, tell them
it's a royal order." She said this decisively, like there was no room for
argument-there usually wasn't with Adeline. Still, I decided to try my luck.
"Adeline, if I may speak freely, I don't trust Panic, he's indecisive, and
Pain is even worse. If you're so set of having the mirrors gone, destroy
them yourself, you have the power-"
"No!" Adeline yells, suddenly, her whole face seemed to glow, a wind
whipped around the room shooting her fiery hair up in lethal spikes, and
her eyes glowed with fire, the memory of someone she no longer was.
"No, don't tempt me, I'm not that person anymore, just go, do it, destroy
the mirrors!"
Her voice reaches a crescendo and several of the mirrors shatter and
the glass flies around the room with the wind, faster and faster a sliver of
glass shoots by here and catches her cheek, slicing a tiny red line across
her face. The windstorm slows, the shards of prophecy fall to the ground,
she looked around as if waking from a dream and brings a hand to her
face, touching her cut and seeming shocked by the red on her fingers.
The collapses onto a chair and stares fixedly at the table for awhile.
Without another word, I scoop up the mirrors by the door and leave her alone with her demons.