As usual, Dickie was right. Within minutes, they came across a long set of iron train tracks, and one of those old-fashioned steam engines puffing black smoke she hadn't seen since her early childhood. “Don't we need tickets, or something?” Brett insisted as they rushed towards the train. “They're just going to throw us off again if we don't pay!”
He managed to scramble onto the little red caboose first. “We'll deal with that when we come to it! Right now, let's just get on.” Jimmie flapped into an open window, but the rest of them didn't have that option. Orson handed everyone off to Richard. Brett made the best running jump she could manage in strap shoes with slippery soles before the train went through a long, dark tunnel.
“Tickets, please!”
When the train emerged from the stiffing darkness, Brett found herself seated in a full room, with her sons on either side of her. “Hey lady,” grumbled a familiar gruff voice, “gimmie the ticket! Everyone else has, and you're holding up the rest! You too, kids!”
“Huh?” She blinked as Joey Bishop in a conductor's uniform thrust his hand through the door to the private room. “Um, sir, I have no idea how we ended up here. We have no tickets.”
“Yeah!” David frowned. “Really, Mr. Bishop, we have no idea how we got here, or where our other friends are.”
Joey gave her one of his eye-rolling “I can't believe this” looks of disgust. “Lady, look, I don't want your excuses. I just want a ticket for you and the kids! You should have bought one from the engine driver!”
“I'll pay for her, sir.” Richard pushed into the car, followed by the others. “She doesn't know how things work here.” He now wore something closer to one Gene's elegant suits, this one all in gleaming white. Even his carnation was snowy white. “I'll pay for everyone.” He handed him several coins as Marcia and Bill ducked in.
“Black Prince, coming through!” Jimmie plopped on the first seat he could find, only to discover he was in the lap of a husky goat with a craggy round face, curly beard on his chin, and thick eyebrows. “Oh, sorry about that, sir! Didn't know this seat was occupied.”
The goat wrinkled his velvety gray nose. “Could you not put your feathers where I am?” He sounded an awful lot like Ed Asner, a friend of Betty White's and another panelist who was famous for being grumpy.
Brett made a face as the Conductor inspected her through a telescope, then through a microscope. “See anything you like in there, Joey?”
He shrugged. “Lady, whatever. I don't care. The knight paid. All I can say is, you're going the wrong way.”
“Don't mind him.” The man in the newspaper suit and square black glasses frames nodded. “You'll get to where you're going soon enough. Just take a return ticket every time the train stops.” He wrinkled his nose over his thick black mustache.
The goat peered over his newspaper before eating a corner of it, then taking off the arm of the round-faced man with the black rimmed glasses' suit. “She ought to know her way to the ticket-office, even if she doesn't know her alphabet.”
Brett narrowed her eyes. “What did you say, Mr. Asner?”
“He said, Mom,” Adam piped up, “that you ought...
“Adam, honey, I know what he said!”
The Beetle, who resembled Scoey Mitchill smoking a cigar in a Victorian suit and cap and shiny black shell on his back, looked up over Richard's head. “Man, she'll have to go back from here as luggage!”
A hoarse voice – she swore it belonged either to an actual horse or Kate Jackson, a slim starlet with high cheekbones and a thin nut-brown mane – started to say “Change engines!” but David cut her off.
“What do you mean?” Her son's voice cracked, and he coughed. “I mean, I know my name. Everyone knows their name!”
“Right!” Gary the Doormouse yawned. “And it wasn't very nice to say we'd go back as luggage.” He curled up in Orson's lap and went back to sleep.
“Miss Brett,” buzzed a little voice in her ear, “I know who you are.” That little voice sounded terribly familiar. “
“Joyce?” Brett swiveled in an attempt to see where the voice came from, only for her nose to bonk into Adam's back. “Joyce Bulifant? Honey, where are you?”
“I'm right here.” Joyce's little voice kept buzzing around her left ear. “Remember who you are! The Red King is after you. He doesn't want you to remember, and he's no one's friend. I am your friend, even if you tease me a lot.”
Jimmie swatted at his ear. “What is that little thing?”
“Miss,” Richard called calmly, “please reveal yourself.”
“Oh, I know you're my friend, Sir Richard.” Joyce's teeny voice fluttered around his ear now. “You're friend to all in Looking Glass Land, especially those who follow White King Gene.”
“The White King?” Little Gary leaned over his father's elbow to hear her better. “You know the White King Gene? Is he all right?”
Joyce hovered around his perfectly square tanned nose, so much like his father's. “You'll see when you jump to his square, little one, not before. That's the rules. You can't know until you get to that square.”
Brett nearly flew out of her seat as the car went over a major bump. Joey nearly fell through the window and on her lap. “Sorry, lady,” he grumbled as he removed his head from her person, “but we're about to jump a brook. The train always gets a little bouncy before it makes a jump.”
“It WHAT?!” Her screech nearly drowned out the wail of the engine.
“It'll take us into the fourth square,” Kate whinnied. “That's some comfort.”
“Not to us!” Bill grabbed Marcia with his big white paws. “I don't like the idea of trains jumping!”
Brett didn't like it, either. The moment the train rose into the air, she grabbed the nearest thing at hand, which happened to be the goat's beard.
That did it. The train came to a literal screeching stop the moment it landed with a heavy bump. Everyone was thrown into each other. “Dickie,” she yelped as she untangled herself from his limbs, “this is a lot closer to you than I ever wanted to be. Get us off this vehicle!”
Joey Bishop was the only creature who remained standing. “Lady,” he shouted, “all you needed to do was tell me you wanted to get off at the next stop, not yank the goat! Everyone off! Off this train!”
They all made a flying leap into the grass alongside the tracks, with Jimmie being the last to flutter off before the train started up again. “I think,” Bill the White Rabbit groaned as he rubbed his fuzzy rear, “we need to stop leaving places that way. It's murder on my tail!”
Jimmie fluttered to the ground with a grin on his big black and pink beak. “I like it! Give me more, man!”
Brett sighed. “You would.” She dusted off the apron of her much-abused blue gown. “Well, now what? Where are we?”
“You're in the fourth square.” The gnat who buzzed in front of her was five times the size of a regular bug, more like a blonde chicken with gossamer wings. “None of you look very happy! Don't you like insects?”
“It's not that.” David helped his brother to his feet, then ducked away from her sharp nose. “It's just...well, you're a lot bigger than the insects where we're from!”
“And none of them talk, either,” Orson added as he tried to shake the Doormouse awake with his big brown paw.
The gnat with Joyce's voice buzzed regretfully. “I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to scare you.” She fluttered around Marcia as she dusted off her now rather soiled black gown. “What sort of insects do you rejoice in where you come from?”
“Honey, we don't really rejoice in them at all.” Marcia made a face and swatted her away. “Where we come from, all you do is get into our hair and give us itchy bites.”
“I'm sorry,” squeaked Joyce, “but that's how we get sustenance. We can't help it if you react badly!”
David waved his hand. “We know the names of some insects. I learned about biology in school. Are they anything like our insects?”
The little golden gnat buzzed over his head. “Well, there used to be. I don't see them as often as I used to. Rocking-horse flies that are half-horse, half-fly, and snap-dragon flies that are plum pudding with holly wings.”
“And they live on molasses,” yawned the Doormouse, “treacle, like in my sisters' well...”
“Wow.” Adam ducked away as a yellow and white butterfly fluttered around his head. “And that was a bread-and-butterfly, right? I saw the butter on its wings.”
“Naturally.” She let out another little, sad sigh. “At least, they are right now. Our muchness is fading. The Red King's taking it, you know. See?”
Indeed, the train behind them vanished as if it never existed. The bugs dissolved, and even the grass faded from emerald green to a gritty gray. No sound reached their ears. The gravel didn't even crunch under their feet. It was like living in a vacuum.
“Now you understand what Fannie and I are fighting against,” Richard explained. “Miss Gnat, we're here to stop the Red King and make this lady,” he nodded at Brett, “queen. We need to make our next move. Can you help us?”
She let out another sigh, this one more hopeful. “I'll take you there, if you bring my friends back. I've been so lonely out here since they all started vanishing!”
Brett patted the gnat on its yellowish back. “There there, dear. We'll bring your friends back.” The little insect had a surprisingly soft orange and yellow flowered belly under its smooth and hard gold shell.
That gnat gave her a dimpled smile almost eerily like Joyce's. “Follow me, everyone.” She fluttered into the dark woods.
Richard was the only one who didn't hesitate. “Do we have to go in there?” Bill gulped, clutching Marcia's arm. “Looks like a repository for old ghosts.”
Orson shivered. “You know, it's tea-time somewhere, and we really should be getting back to ours...” The Doormouse snored on his arm.
“Oh, come on!” Mark, Dickie's oldest boy, stomped to his father's side. “What about Looking Glass Land? And taking down the Red King? The woods aren't so scary, are they, Dad?”
Little Gary paled. “N...no, they're not! Right?”
“'Tis hardly a terrible thing to be scared.” Richard explained as his armor replaced the suit, shining dully in the waning daylight. “All living beings are scared at one time or another! I was frightened to death at that trial. I thought I would be thrown in jail for no reason, and I'd lose you boys.” Her sons and Orson had long since ditched their jackets and were down to their shirtsleeves, and Marcia pulled the sleeves on her gown as far down as decency allowed.
Brett made a face. “We really don't have much of a choice about going through them, do we?” It really was dark in those woods. Shadows lurked in knotty corners; twisted limbs and roots reached out to catch on their clothes and trip their feet and paws. She had to admit, she felt a bit nervous herself. “Either we get through those woods, or we don't finish the game.”
“At this point,” Adam muttered as he ducked away from a hooting owl, “I'm not sure we're going to live to finish the game!”
Bill gulped, his paws having a death grip on Marcia's arm. “What's that?” He nearly jumped out of his fur as a rustling could be heard behind him. “And that?” He cringed at a hiss. “There's animals in these woods! Bigger ones than us! Why did I come here?”
“Oh, knock it off,” Marcia grumbled as she managed to pry his paws off her tender skin. “You were ordered here, remember? I'm starting to wonder if we might have had a better chance with the Card Guards. At least we'd die in our own world.”
Richard ignored them all. “It's all right, everyone. We're finding those we seek.” He pointed upwards to two wooden signs on a fork in the road. “To the House of Tweedle Patti,” he read, “and Tweedle Don's Bungalow. I've seen the same signs on every fork in the road in these woods. 'Tis the proprietors of these gloomy lands.”
“Don? Patti? As in Donald and Patti Deustch Ross?” Brett groaned. “Those two? I like them well enough, but they can be, well...”
David tapped his mother on the shoulder. “Isn't Mrs. Ross the one who always comes up with the really weird answers on the show? Like, if I said 'name a pudding,' she'd say 'my pig' instead of rice or chocolate or something.”
“Yeah,” Brett admitted with a sigh, “but she means well, and there's usually some warped logic to her answers. She's a nice girl. It's just the way her brain works. Donald's not what you'd call normal, either. Those two are perfect for each other. They both have the most bizarre minds I ever saw.”
No comments:
Post a Comment