Secrets of the looking g.., p.14
Secrets of the Looking Glass, page 14
She didn’t think she would have been able to tell the two apart except for the large brass nameplate reading Mssr. Humpty in front of the one on the left and Mssr. Dumpty in front of the one on the right.
“What rhymes with applesauce?” Humpty asked.
“Albatross,” Dumpty replied instantly. “Or semigloss. In a pinch, elbow floss or spoon-leaved moss.”
“About time,” Ty called from a flowered couch where he was sitting beside Lia. “I thought you were going to chicken out.”
“More visitors?” Dumpty grumbled, looking up from his work. “Who are you?”
“Tyrus Weller,” Tyrus answered, moving quickly to stand on firmer ground.
Humpty’s bulbous eyes narrowed behind the surprisingly delicate gold frames of his spectacles. “And what does Tyrus mean?”
Tyrus blinked. “Rock, I think.”
“Nonsense,” Dumpty barked. “You are clearly not a mineral. I declare that henceforth Tyrus shall mean ‘burdened with raptulation.’”
Ty shook his head. “‘Raptulation’ isn’t a real word.”
“It wasn’t until he made it up just now,” Humpty said, writing on the paper in front of him with a large quill pen. “Tyrus—one burdened with raptulation.”
“Raptulation,” Dumpty repeated. “The excitement of meeting a famous writer.” He licked the tip of his pen, leaving a dark smudge on his tongue, and nodded before jotting a quick note. “See Tyrus.”
“My name is Celia,” she offered. “It means heaven, but my parents got it from the play As You Like It by William Shakespeare.”
Lia sniffed, her eyes red and puffy. “Could we ged bag to why we’re here?” she asked in a nasally voice.
Humpty frowned. “You look nothing like a Celia.” He pointed his pen at Lia. “What you look like is her.”
“It’s because she’s my mirror image,” Celia said, feeling a distinct tickling in her nose.
Humpty shook his enormous head, making his entire body wobble. “No. It’s the eyes. You both have two of them. Two ears as well. And a single nose. You might as well be twins.”
Celia felt something twining itself around her ankles. She looked down to see a furry gray creature rubbing against her leg. At first, she thought it was a cat, but as she reached down to pick it up, she realized it was a word.
Holding it out at arm’s length to keep it from nuzzling against her chin, she recognized its shape. “Fluffy.” She sneezed abruptly. “I think I’m allergic to your pet.”
“Don’t mind her,” Humpty said. “Adjectives are friendly little things. They just want attention. It’s the verbs you have to look out for. Some of them have quite a temper.”
A creature that looked like a prickly porcupine spat from the hearth of the fireplace.
“Attack,” Tyrus read.
Dumpty nodded. “You’ll want to keep your distance from that one. Not helpful at all like our verbs were and should.”
Looking around the small room, Celia realized the entire house was filled with nouns, verbs, prepositions, adjectives, and conjunctions. Words were literally climbing the walls, crawling under furniture, and occasionally linking together to form sentences only to break apart with a chorus of hisses and howls.
No wonder her head felt so fuzzy. She looked at Lia, whose face had taken on a greenish tinge. “Are you okay?”
Lia sniffed and wiped a sleeve across her nose. “I’b feelink berfect,” she stated although it was clear she could barely breathe.
A pair of pronouns chased a conjunction onto the couch, jumped over Lia’s head, and landed on the floor where they tangled for a minute before joining together and marching happily away.
“You keep your house filled with words?” Tyrus asked.
Dumpty blinked. “What writer doesn’t?”
Something with bright red-and-yellow feathers flew into Celia’s arms, and Humpty just had time to shout, “Keep the adverbs away from the adjectives!” before the Fluffy Celia was holding exploded into a ball of fur and leaped away.
Celia sneezed twice in quick succession. “What was that?” she asked.
“I think it was a very,” Tyrus said.
Humpty snorted as the red-and-orange very flew back to its perch above the mantel. “Well?” he asked. “Where are our gifts?”
Celia looked at Lia, who was blowing her nose into a handkerchief. “Gifts?”
The poets looked up sharply, their large foreheads furrowing until Celia feared they might crack.
“Don’t you know what today is?” Dumpty asked.
Celia vaguely remembered a similar question being asked in Through the Looking-Glass, but she couldn’t recall it exactly.
Tyrus concentrated for a moment, muttering under his breath, before looking up quickly. “Your un-birthday?”
“They remembered,” Humpty said, his mouth splitting into an enormous grin as he clapped his hands.
Dumpty tugged at a scarf wrapped around his neck and fastened with a gold pin. “Did you bring us another cravat? Chocolate? Power tools? Cowboy boots?”
“What’s an un-birthday?” Ty asked.
Celia wondered why an egg would need cowboy boots, but Lia wiped her nose angrily and stood up. “We don’t have time for this nonsense. What do you know about the vorpal sword?”
All around the room, the words stopped playing and fighting.
Humpty’s eyes darkened. “I find your tone impudent, your manners audacious, and your meaning obtuse.”
Dumpty nodded. “I haven’t been this insulted since the king brought all his horses and men here in case we fell. The nerve! I’m afraid I must ask all of you to leave at once.”
“No, please,” Ty said. “We didn’t mean to offend you.” He held out Tyrus’s copy of Through the Looking-Glass. “We were hoping you could help us with a poem.”
Humpty’s face lit up as if Ty had said a magic word, and an orange-striped intrigued stretched across the poet’s feet. He rubbed his hands together with a delighted chuckle. “Why didn’t you say that in the first place? This is the best un-birthday present ever. You brought us . . .”
Chapter 22
Poetry
Humpty and Dumpty leaned toward Ty at the same time, and the house tilted to the left with a terrifying groan.
Tyrus reached for a wall to steady himself, and as Celia stumbled backward, a calico to and a calico go scampered in different directions.
“Try not to split the infinitives,” Humpty said.
He took the book from Ty, slid his glasses down on his nose, and turned the novel about, examining it from all angles. “Case binding appears sturdy enough, but the joints are quite loose.”
“I once knew a bookbinder with loose joints,” Dumpty said. “He tripped and accidentally glued himself to his own autobiography. It was his story, and he stuck to it.”
As both poets roared with laughter, Celia leaned toward Tyrus and whispered, “And I thought you were a nerd.”
Lia wiped her eyes. “Can we please get to the poem?”
“Yes, yes,” Humpty said, his lips pulled down, clearly annoyed at being rushed.
“Uncivilized boor,” Dumpty muttered under his breath.
Holding the book so they could both read it, they opened it to a section near the middle. “‘The Walrus and the Carpenter,’” Humpty read. “Clearly a commentary on nobility and the working class.”
Celia stepped forward, trying to stay balanced in the center of the house. “That’s not the poem—”
“Shh,” Dumpty said. “Literary genius requires a scarcification of sound and a stupendosity of silence.”
He ran his finger down the page. “Note the feminine personification of the moon, the sanctity of her lunar dominion defiled by the male interloper sun. This is obviously a statement on the ongoing struggle between invertebrates and olive trees.”
Celia cleared her throat. “Don’t you mean ‘men and women’?”
Humpty snorted. “That’s what he said, isn’t it? Invertebrates mean ‘men’ and olive trees mean ‘women.’ It’s a metaphor.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s not,” Tyrus said.
Dumpty shook a finger at him. “It is precisely what I say it is, neither more nor less.”
“We’re not interested in that poem,” Lia said.
“I mean, I’m kind of—” Ty began before Lia glared him into silence.
“Very well.” Humpty flipped the pages. “What’s this? ‘Haddocks’ Eyes.’ A not-so-subtle jab at the victimization of cod and the philosiphication of the ocular world as a whole.”
Dumpty snorted. “An enlightening treatise on man’s search for meaning as seen through the eyes of a vendor. Mutton pie, perhaps?”
“It doesn’t matter what kind of vendor,” Humpty said. “It’s irrelephant.”
A wrinkly gray creature no bigger than a butterfly suddenly landed on the desk, dunked its trunk in an inkpot, and shot a spray of tiny black droplets into the air.
The poet nodded, clearly pleased. “A smaller cousin of the bumblephant.”
“Pay no attention to her,” Dumpty said. “Whipple is constantly sticking her nose into places she doesn’t belong.”
Seeing Lia’s rising anger, Celia took the book from the squabbling poets. “We were hoping you could tell us about the ‘Jabberwocky’ poem.”
Both men stared at her.
“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” Humpty asked.
“It’s the first thing you should have mentioned,” agreed Dumpty.
Humpty rubbed his cheek with an ink-smeared hand. “We met the fellow who wrote that poem. Big chap with beady little eyes.”
“No, no,” Dumpty disagreed. “He was a little gentleman with big eyes.”
Celia nearly dropped the book. “You met Charles Dodgson?”
Humpty nodded. “He came right through the front door, same as you four. Asked if we knew what a Jabberwock was, and where it could be found.”
Ty leaned forward. “Did you tell him?”
“Yes,” Dumpty said just as Humpty said, “No.”
“Which was it?” Celia asked.
Humpty snorted peevishly. “We couldn’t tell him where to find it, because we’d never heard of a Jabberwock at the time. Could have been one of those hooligigs for un-dampifying laundry, for all we knew.”
Dumpty tugged self-importantly at the lapels of his jacket. “But then he mentioned having seen the creature near swarms of slithy toves and mobs of mimsy borogoves.”
“Don’t forget the mome raths,” Humpty added.
Celia looked at the book in her hands. “He mentioned all of those in his poem, but I didn’t think they were real.”
“Real as rain and roses, but quite rare. That’s why we suggested he record his hunt for the beast in an epic ballad. There’s nothing like a good poem to educate the uninformed.”
Lia wheezed and leaned forward. “Did he say anything about the vorpal sword?”
Humpty scratched a spot where his chin might have been if he’d had one. “There may have been mention of a sword. It was quite a while ago.”
“What are toves and borogoves?” Ty asked.
Humpty swiveled around, crossing a pair of legs so thin Celia wondered how they could support his weight. “Toves are a part of the badger family with silky white fur and a taste for cheese. They use their spiral horns to bore out dens in the sides of hills.”
“Which quite annoys the borogoves,” Dumpty added, heaving a deep sigh. “Colorful, wingless birds with upside-down bills they use to catch the confused worms which fall from the sundials under which the borogoves nest. When they aren’t being disturbed by the digging and boring of the nasty toves, that is.”
Lia scowled. “Ty and I have explored almost every part of the Looking-Glass World. We’ve never seen anything like what you described.”
Dumpty shook his head so vigorously his beret nearly fell off. “I daresay you haven’t seen a mome rath either—with its thick green shell, backward-bending forelegs, and mouths filled with sharp teeth they use to crack open mussels.”
Celia’s legs wobbled. “I’ve seen those before.”
“What?” Lia demanded, standing up. “Where? Why didn’t you tell us?”
Tyrus gripped Celia’s arm as she stumbled into a chair. “Are you okay?”
“I think so.” She took a deep breath. “I was looking in a mirror in the White Queen’s library when I saw . . . I thought I must have imagined it. But what you just described is exactly what I saw—along with strange purple trees.”
“Tumtums,” Dumpty said. “Quite lovely. And deadly, of course.”
Lia crossed over to the two men, resting her hands on their desk. “But what about the Jabberwock? We need to find that in order to find the vorpal sword.”
Humpty shuddered. “As I said, we’d never heard of it before Mr. Dodgson’s visit. According to him, it was a terrifying beast with gnashing teeth, sharp claws, and such. He was insistent on finding it—seemed in a great rush.”
Dumpty tightened his scarf. “As soon as he mentioned the mome raths and borogoves, we knew where it had to be.”
“Where?” the four of them asked at once.
“The Isles of Illusion,” Dumpty said. “The places where reflections live.”
Tyrus frowned. “I’ve looked in the mirror thousands of times, and I’ve never seen anything other than myself.”
Humpty dipped his pen into the ink and scribbled on a piece of paper. “Only those who become obsessed with what they find looking back at them discover what is truly behind the glass. For some, the isles become real enough to enter.”
“That has to be where the vorpal sword is,” Lia said. “Charles must have left it there after he killed the Jabberwock, or someone would have seen it since then. How do we get there?”
“By entering a mirror,” Dumpty said. “But most of them were destroyed in the great mirror purge. Not that it would matter. A mirror might take you to an Isle of Illusion, but probably not the one you’re looking for.”
“How many isles are there?” Lia asked.
“As many as there are reflections, of course.” Humpty laughed so hard he nearly rolled out of his chair. “Every person who looks into a mirror creates their own isle. You could only find the Jabberwock if the person who saw it in their reflection takes you through the mirror where they first discovered it.”
Celia was almost sure she saw Lia biting the inside of her cheek. “Why would Charles Dodgson ask you how to get to the Jabberwock if he could reach it by going through his own reflection?” Celia asked.
“Maybe the reflection he saw it in wasn’t his,” Ty suggested. “Maybe someone else was looking in the mirror when he saw it.”
That made sense. The hair in the gold brush Celia had seen in the little room didn’t look like Charles Dodgson’s. But who did it belong to, and why was the Jabberwock in her isle?
Lia turned back to the poets. “Where did Charles Dodgson go after he talked to you?”
The poets looked nervously at each other.
“He couldn’t have killed the monster and written the poem if he hadn’t found it,” Ty said. “So there must be another way to get there besides the mirrors and reflections.”
Humpty licked his lips. “The Isles of Illusion are protected by deadly traps and tricks to keep trespassers out. They move about constantly, making maps useless. The Nix that surrounds them is treacherous. There are forests where those who enter wander forever, swamps from which they never return.”
“Obviously, that didn’t stop Charles Dodgson,” Lia said. “How did he get there?”
Humpty moaned. “We warned him not to go. It was a bad idea then and a worse one now.”
Lia grabbed his scarf, her eyes so cold that Celia barely recognized her. “I’m not going back without the sword.”
“Fine!” the poet wailed, raising his hands. “We might have mentioned a certain . . .”
Chapter 23
Black Sheep
“Hurry,” Tyrus said, scrambling down the ladder. “They’re right behind us.”
Celia trembled with fear as she stepped from rung to rung. But if she’d had any doubt about Lia before, it disappeared the moment her mirror image grabbed the poet’s scarf. The look Celia had seen in Lia’s eyes was pure greed. She was going to get the vorpal sword no matter the cost or who she had to hurt.
A second after Celia stepped off the ladder, Lia leaped to the ground, her face flushed with victory. “I told you the poets would have what we needed.”
“Don’t go,” Celia implored, taking one last shot at reason. “I saw the Isle of Illusion, and it was a nightmare. Maybe Mr. Dodgson left the sword there because both the blade and the place are evil.”
Ty released the ladder and dropped nearly ten feet to the ground, bouncing onto the grass with a laugh. “You read his message. ‘Find the weapon. Vanquish the foe.’ It’s what he wanted.”
“That message could mean anything,” Celia said. “Mr. Dodgson loved to play with words. Besides, you’ve nearly won the war already. Even the White Queen admitted her kingdom is going to fall. What other foe is there to vanquish?”
Lia hid her expression quickly, but Celia saw the hunger in her eyes before it blinked away. Lia didn’t care about defeating the White Queen. She wanted power as much as the Bandersnatch did. Being second-in-command would never be enough.
