Part Two

CHAPTER I: Looking-Glass house

One thing was certain, that the white stray kitten was much more playful and friendlier than her Buttercup back in District 13. For the white kitten had been playfully chasing after Prim's loose bootlaces from the leg she had hung over an armchair for the last quarter of an hour. The kitten had not tired one bit from the mischief, but Prim had.

Prim could do all she could to keep herself from falling asleep after a long day of medic training where the rebel army had set up a camp in the heart of District 2's Victor's Village. The rebel army had immediately commenced with training exercising to prepare for the big push into the Capitol. This location, at least, gave Prim and the other handful of 14 year-old-girls a temporary sanctuary, allowing them to shelter in one of the victor's abandoned homes rather than select tents in the rebel encampment, a place fraught with its own dangers.

A black stray kitten that had been finished with Prim's laces earlier scurried busily unseen out of Prim's view. And so, while Prim was sitting curled up in a corner of the great arm-chair, half talking to herself and half asleep, the black kitten had a grand game of romps with a ball of yarn Prim had been trying to wind up, rolling it about the room till it had all come undone again. And there the yarn was, spread over the hearth-rug, all knots and tangles, with the kitten running after its own tail in the middle.

"Oh, you wicked little thing!" cried Prim, scooping up the black kitten, and giving it a little kiss to make it understand that it was in disgrace. "Really, your mother ought to have taught you better manners! She ought, Dinah, you know you ought!' she added, speaking playfully in as cross a voice. She then looked reproachfully at an old cat with an elaborate embroidered collar with said name. Cracking a smile, Prim scrambled back into the arm-chair, taking the kitten and the yarn with her before winding up the ball again; however, she didn't get on very fast as she was talking all the time, sometimes to the kitten and sometimes to herself.

The kitty sat very demurely on her knee, pretending to watch the progress of the winding, and now and then putting out one paw and gently touching the ball as if it would be glad to help, if it might.

"Do you know what tomorrow is, Kitty?" Prim began. "You'd have guessed if you'd been up in the window with me—only Dinah was making you tidy, so you couldn't. I was watching the soldiers gathering wood for their bonfires—and they need plenty of wood, Kitty! Only it got so cold, and it snowed so, they had to leave off training to avoid getting frostbite..." Prim's mind became filled with memories of blackened toes and fingers recently seen, leaving her staring at the burning fire in the hearth.

"Never mind, Kitty, we'll go and see the main bonfire tomorrow." Here Prim wound two or three turns of the yarn loosely around the kitten's neck just to see how it would look; this led to a scramble in which the ball fell from her lap down upon the floor and yards and yards of the soft thread unwound once more.

"Do you know, I was so angry, Kitty," Prim went on as soon as she had untangled the kitten from the mess, winding the yarn once more in the chair, "when I saw all the mischief you had been doing, I was very nearly opening the window, and putting you out into the snow. And you'd have deserved it, you little mischievous darling. What have you got to say for yourself? Now don't interrupt me." Prim held up one finger. "I'm going to tell you all your faults. Number one: you squeaked twice while your mother was washing your face this morning. Now you can't deny it, Kitty; I heard you. What's that you say?" (Pretending that the kitten was speaking.) "Her paw went into your eye? Well, that's your fault for keeping your eyes open—if you'd shut them tight up, it wouldn't have happened. Now don't make any more excuses, but listen. Number two: you pulled Snowdrop away by the tail just as I had put down the saucer of milk before her. What, you were thirsty, were you? How do you know she wasn't thirsty too? Now for number three: you unwound every bit of the yarn while I wasn't looking.

"That's three faults, Kitty, and you've not been punished for any of them yet. You know I'm saving up all your punishments for Wednesday." Reflecting on the recent events that had left her paralyzed with fear, Prim said, talking more to herself than the kitten, "Suppose they had saved up all my mistakes. What would they do at the end of a year? I should be court martialled, I suppose, when the day came. Or, let me see, suppose each mistaken took away a meal ration; then, when that miserable day came, I should have to go without fifty dinners at once. Well, I shouldn't mind that much. I'd far rather go without them than eat them. Katniss fed mother and me better than any army cook did."

Prim became lost in memories of home, her District 12 home, until the sound of large snowflakes blown into the panes of glass grabbed her attention. "Do you hear the snow against the window-panes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds. Just as if someone was kissing the window all over outside. I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, 'Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.' And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about whenever the wind blows—oh, that's very pretty." said Prim with a faint smile, letting the ball of yarn fall from her hands. "And I do so wish it was true. I'm sure the woods look sleepy in the autumn, when the leaves are getting brown."

"Kitty, can you play chess? Now, don't smile, my dear, I'm asking it seriously. Because, when we were playing just now, you watched just as if you understood it, and when I said 'Check' you purred. Well, it was a nice check, Kitty, and really, I might have won, if it hadn't been for that nasty Knight that came wiggling down among my pieces. Kitty, dear, let's pretend—"

And here I wish I could tell you half the things Prim used to say, beginning with her favourite phrase 'Let's pretend.' She had quite a long argument with her sister the year before—all because Prim had begun with 'Let's pretend we're kings and queens,' and her sister, who liked being very exact, had argued that they couldn't because there were only two of them. So Prim had been reduced at last to say, "Well, you can be one of them then, and I'll be all the rest." And once she had really frightened her mother by shouting suddenly in her ear, "Mom! Do let's pretend that I'm a hungry hyena, and you're a bone."

But this is taking us away from Prim's speech to the kitten. "Let's pretend that you're the Red Queen, Kitty. Do you know, I think if you sat up and folded your arms, you'd look exactly like her. Now do try, there's a dear." And Prim got the Red Queen off the table, and set it up before the kitten as a model for it to imitate; however, the idea didn't succeed, principally Prim said, because the kitten wouldn't fold its arms properly. To punish it, she held it up to the Looking-glass so that it might see how sulky it was. "And if you're not good directly," she added, "I'll put you through into Looking-glass House. How would you like that?"

"Now, if you'll only attend, Kitty, and not talk so much, I'll tell you all my ideas about Looking-glass House. First, there's the room you can see through the glass that's just the same as our drawing room, only the things go the other way. I can see all of it when I get upon a chair, all but the bit behind the fireplace. Oh, I do so wish I could see that bit. I want so much to know whether they've a fire in the winter; you never can tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too, but that may be only pretence, just to make it look as if they had a fire. Well then, the books are something like our books, only the words go the wrong way; I know that because I've held up one of our books to the glass, and then they hold up one in the other room.

"How would you like to live in Looking-glass House, Kitty? I wonder if they'd give you milk in there? Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn't good to drink. But oh, Kitty, now we come to the passage. You can just see a little peep of the passage in Looking-glass House, if you leave the door of our drawing-room wide open, and it's very like our passage as far as you can see, only you know it may be quite different on beyond. Oh, Kitty, how nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking-glass House. I'm sure it's got, oh such beautiful things in it.

Let's pretend there's a way of getting through into it somehow, Kitty. Let's pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze so that we can get through. Why, it's turning into a sort of mist now, I declare. It'll be easy enough to get through." Prim was up on the chimney-piece while she said this, though she hardly knew how she had got there. And certainly the glass was beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist.

In another moment, Prim was through the glass and had jumped lightly down into the Looking-glass room. The very first thing she did was to look whether there was a fire in the fireplace, and she was quite pleased to find that there was a real one, blazing away as brightly as the one she had left behind. "So I shall be as warm here as I was in the old room," thought Prim aloud, "warmer, in fact, because there'll be no one here to scold me away from the fire. Oh, what fun it'll be, when they see me through the glass in here, and can't get at me."

Then she began looking about and noticed that what could be seen from the old room was quite common and uninteresting, but that all the rest was as different as possible. For instance, the pictures on the wall next the fire seemed to be all alive, and the very clock on the chimney-piece (you know you can only see the back of it in the Looking-glass) wore the face of a little old man, which grinned at her.

They don't keep this room so tidy as the other, Prim thought to herself as she noticed several of the chessmen down in the hearth among the cinders, but in another moment, with a little "Oh!" of surprise, Prim was down on her hands and knees watching the chessmen walking about, two and two.

"Here are the Red King and the Red Queen," Prim said—in a whisper for fear of frightening them. "And there are the White King and the White Queen sitting on the edge of the shovel, and here are two castles walking arm in arm. I don't think they can hear me," she went on, as she put her head down closer, "and I'm nearly sure they can't see me. I feel somehow as if I were invisible—"

Here something began squeaking on the table behind Prim, which made her turn her head just in time to see one of the White Pawns roll over and begin kicking. She watched it with great curiosity to see what would happen next.

"It is the voice of my child!" the White Queen cried out as she rushed past the King, so violently that she knocked him over among the cinders. "My precious Lily! My imperial kitten!" And the Queen began scrambling wildly up the side of the fender.

"Imperial fiddlestick," said the King rubbing his nose, which had been hurt by the fall. He had a right to be a little annoyed with the Queen, for he was covered with ashes from head to foot.

Prim was very anxious to be of use, and as the poor little Lily was nearly screaming herself into a fit, she hastily picked up the Queen and set her on the table by the side of her noisy little daughter.

The Queen gasped and sat down, for the rapid journey through the air had quite taken her breath away. And for a minute or two, she could do nothing but hug the little Lily in silence. As soon as she had recovered her breath a little, she called out to the White King, who was sitting sulkily among the ashes, "Mind the volcano!"

"What volcano?" asked the King, looking up anxiously into the fire as if he thought that was the most likely place to find one.

"Blew—me—up," panted the Queen, who was still a little out of breath. "Mind you come up—the regular way—don't get blown up."

Prim watched the White King as he slowly struggled up from bar to bar till at last, she said, "Why, you'll be hours and hours getting to the table at that rate. I'd far better help you, hadn't I?"

But the King took no notice of the question; it was quite clear that he could neither hear her nor see her.

So Prim picked him up very gently, lifting him across more slowly than she had lifted the Queen, that she mightn't take his breath away. But before she put him on the table, she thought she might as well dust him a little as he was so covered with ashes.

She said afterwards that she had never seen in all her life such a face as the King made when he found himself held in the air by an invisible hand. For being dusted, he was far too much astonished to cry out, but his eyes and his mouth went on getting larger and larger, and rounder and rounder, till her hand shook so with laughing that Prim nearly let him drop upon the floor.

"Oh please, don't make such faces, my dear," Prim cried out, quite forgetting that the King couldn't hear her. "You make me laugh so that I can hardly hold you. And don't keep your mouth so wide open. All the ashes will get into it. There now, I think you're tidy enough," she added as she smoothed his hair and set him upon the table near the Queen.

When the King immediately fell flat on his back and lay perfectly still, Prim became a little alarmed at what she had done and went round the room to see if she could find any water to throw over him. However, she could find nothing but a bottle of ink, and when she got back with it, she found he had recovered, and he and the Queen were talking together in a frightened whisper—so low that Prim could hardly hear what they said.

The King was saying, "I assure you, my dear, I turned cold to the very ends of my whiskers."

To which the Queen replied, "You haven't got any whiskers."

"The horror of that moment," the King went on, "I shall never, never forget."

"You will, though," the Queen said, "if you don't make a memorandum of it."

Prim looked on with great interest as the King took an enormous memorandum-book out of his pocket and began writing. A sudden thought struck her, and she took hold of the end of the pencil, which came some way over his shoulder and began writing for him.

The poor King looked puzzled and unhappy, and struggled with the pencil for some time without saying anything, but Prim was too strong for him and at last, he panted out, "My dear, I really must get a thinner pencil. I can't manage this one a bit; it writes all manner of things that I don't intend—"

"What manner of things?" asked the Queen, looking over the book (in which Prim had put The White Knight is sliding down the poker. He balances very badly.) "That's not a memorandum of your feelings."

There was a book lying near Prim on the table, and while she sat watching the White King (for she was still a little anxious about him, and had the ink all ready to throw over him in case he fainted again), she turned over the leaves to find some part that she could read, "For it's all in some language I don't know," she said to herself.

It was like this:

ykcowrebbaJ

sevot yhtils eht dna,gillirb sawT'
ebaw eht ni elbmig dna eryg diD
,sevogorob eht erew ysmim llA
.ebargtuo shtar emom eht dnA

She puzzled over this for some time, but at last, a bright thought struck her. "Why, it's a Looking-glass book, of course! And if I hold it up to a glass, the words will all go the right way again."

This was the poem that Prim read:

JABBERWOCKY

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"It seems very pretty," she said when she had finished it, "but it's rather hard to understand." (You see she didn't like to confess, even to herself that she couldn't make it out at all.) "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don't exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something; that's clear at any rate—"

"But oh," thought Prim, suddenly jumping up, "if I don't make haste I shall have to go back through the Looking-glass before I've seen what the rest of the house is like. Let's have a look at the garden first." She was out of the room in a moment and ran down stairs—or at least, it wasn't exactly running but a new invention of hers for getting down stairs quickly and easily—as Prim reasoned with herself. She just kept the tips of her fingers on the hand-rail and floated gently down without even touching the stairs with her feet; then she floated on through the hall—and would have gone straight out at the door in the same way if she hadn't caught hold of the door-post. She had become a little giddy with so much floating in the air and was rather glad to find herself walking again in the natural way.