Part 6 (1/2)
”They're reasonable even in the best of times! No, we need Wonder and riddles and sideways explanations. That's the kind of sense that will make sense of nonsense.”
”I have a helpful suggestion,” Maddie said. ”But I'm afraid to say it because it might be reasonable by accident.”
”Try saying it while standing on your head,” Kitty suggested.
”Hat-tastic idea, Kitty!” Maddie bent over, balancing the rim of her teacup hat on the floor, and then flung her legs up into the air. ”That's better. Anyway, we could go talk to Giles Grimm. The headmaster's brother? He lives in secret rooms beneath the library and only ever speaks in Riddlish.”
Lizzie often visited the library, paging through books that reminded her of home-not because the books spoke or flew or read themselves backward, but because they had tales and pictures of Wonderland. It was nice to be reminded that she did have a home, a real home, a setting.
She followed Maddie and Kitty into the library, through the stacks of books, out of the school entirely, past the sports fields, around a tree three times, back into the library, through a wall, down a narrow, dark, and properly eerie corridor, and into the Vault of Lost Tales.
”There wasn't a more direct route?” Lizzie asked.
”Probably,” Maddie said, and gestured to the pile of rags sitting at a desk. ”This is Giles. Hi, Giles!”
The pile of rags stood, and Lizzie realized it was a man wearing extremely raggedy clothes, so she thought she could be excused for mistaking him for refuse.
”h.e.l.lo, er...” Lizzie said, searching her mind for an appropriate way to address the man, ”Step-Headmaster Grimm.”
Once upon a time, Giles Grimm had been co-headmaster, but Lizzie can also be forgiven for not knowing that.
”Party finds awkward twists in an unfound s.p.a.ce made mist, la.s.s,” Giles said, smiling beneath his straggly gray beard.
”It does, indeed,” Lizzie said, and then whispered to Maddie, ”I'm not sure I caught all that. Usually I'm quite conversant in Riddlish. Perhaps this wretched reasonability confounds my brain.”
”Mine, too,” Maddie said. ”I'm not sure if it's the me-side or the he-side that has changed.”
Giles nodded. ”Wonders never cease. Just they find peace and pieces in creases. The bent land releases but queasy pieces, my Ms. Three nieces.”
”Wonderland, you mean?” said Maddie. ”Something about Wonderland?”
”When stare ye long into the face of bear become not bear but banders.n.a.t.c.h fair.”
”He knows about the banders.n.a.t.c.hes!” Lizzie said.
”Nay, fair is fare-though unfair-for the nightmare once cairned.” Giles Grimm smiled kindly. ”Don't forget the b.u.t.ter!”
”The b.u.t.ter?” Lizzie asked.
Giles nodded. ”For the banders.n.a.t.c.h.”
”Is this what it's like for the Ever Afterlings when they talk to us?” Lizzie asked. ”Very frustrating.”
”Maybe it would help if he stood on his head,” Maddie whispered.
”Try this,” Lizzie said. ”Mr. Step-Headmaster Grimm, tell us, in the most unclear, confusing way you can imagine, whether or not things are changing.”
Giles Grimm furrowed his brow as if thinking hard to come up with an incredibly difficult riddle. He cleared his throat, held up a finger, and said, ”Yes.”
”That was a silly question,” Kitty whispered in Lizzie's ear. ”We already know things are changing.” Kitty disappeared and reappeared to whisper in her other ear. ”What we need to know is why or how. And is there a cake or a pie in it for us? Lots of questions with more point and less silly were available.”
Lizzie shrugged. ”I didn't hear you speaking up with alternate questions, Catworm.”
Maddie laughed. ”It's catchy, right?”
Kitty did not appear to think it was catchy.
”Oh, Bookworm,” Maddie said, presumably addressing the Narrator, though the Narrator had expressly expressed that Narrators must never be directly addressed.
Without warning, Giles Grimm vanished, and where he'd been standing a pile of books clattered to the floor.
”Oh, no, he disappeared!” Lizzie said. ”Just when I had a better question about whether or not to behead Kitty.”
Kitty sniffed the books. ”He didn't disappear. Disappearing things have a smell like the echo of a lemon. I think those books might actually be him.”
”Oooh,” Lizzie breathed out. Things changing into other things suddenly and without warning was a refres.h.i.+ng change of pace and slightly Wonderlandian. That giddy, popcorn-belly feeling returned.
Wonderland is coming to me....
A small nag caught in her thoughts. In Wonderland, Giles might have shrunk, or enlarged, or folded up on himself, but when things changed back home, they were still what they were. Not a person into a pile of books. That was magic, certainly, but was it the right kind? The wonderlandiful kind?
”Should I put the Grimmy books in my hat and take him with us?” Maddie asked.
”I wouldn't,” Kitty said. ”What if he turns back?”
”While stuck inside my hat?” Maddie said. ”Good point.”
”I didn't mean to make a good point,” Kitty whined. ”Making good points is not what I do!”
”Leave the book-man be,” said Lizzie. ”We'll tell Headmaster Grimm about him when he gets back.”
”If he gets back,” Maddie said, and then coughed. ”Sorry. Frog in my throat. Ribbit.”
Maddie stuck out her tongue, revealing a small blue frog perched upon it. The frog leaped off and hopped away. Maddie's eyes went wide.
Lizzie smiled. Wonderland found me.
CEDAR WOOD WAS FEELING LIKE A HOLLOWED-out log. Though she'd fled Raven's room the moment the session ended, her unhappy encounter with Poppy seemed to chase after her. Quick steps down the corridor rattled her knee and elbow joints with a jangle of metal and wood, but she didn't slow down till she reached the safety of her dorm room.
Cedar opened her paint box. Black paint smeared on her index finger and seemed to tingle, as if beckoning her to lose herself in her art. Cedar knew the sensation was as false as everything else she felt. If I were you, Faybelle had said, I'd do anything to finally be real. Perhaps Cedar was not a person at all but just a piece of wood who imagined she was a person.
She squeezed her creaky eyelids shut, trying to close off thoughts about wood and people and what she was or wasn't. Bits of sadness-imagined or not-were already worming into her heartwood. Maybe she could paint them away.
Today she set aside the traditional canvas and instead placed a wide wooden plank on her easel. She started to paint a scene of a garden early in the morning, when the colors were still hushed and full of grays, more shadow than not, shapes not yet fully revealed.
The paint couldn't completely hide the wood plank, its rough grain, lines, swirls, and knotholes as much a part of the picture as what she painted over them. It took some time before Cedar realized she was painting her own experience, bringing a kind of life to the dead wood but never changing what it was, never hiding it completely.
And that's what she loved about art. It spoke the unspeakable, revealed truth before the mind had a chance to think it.
It's not a real garden, Cedar thought, standing back to look at her painting, but perhaps still worthwhile?