Excerpt

Chapter 1

(1870; Age 18)

Alice had been expecting Mother to order her and her older sister, Ina, to Mr. Dodgson's rooms while she, Mother, attended to some other, more important, appointment; anything to avoid the man whom she had tried to ruin. However, Alice had quite ignored Mother's ability to eradicate any of her own memories which might cause her actions to come into question or cast her character in a less than favorable light: Mother had quite forgotten that she had ever wanted Mr. Dodgson destroyed as one of the rogue undead, a danger to himself and others.

Mr. Dodgson, who was a photography enthusiast, was one of the most fashionable photographers in England, and had been for some years. But he only offered his services to friends, especially friends with little girls they wished to have photographed.

It had made Alice shrink, years ago, to realize that Mr. Dodgson, who was one of the undead, had quite recovered his interest in little girls, after having been so roundly been put off them in the case of the three Liddells, nearly eight years ago.

"Oh, I wonder why Mr. Dodgson never comes to see you children any more," Mother said as they walked across Tom Quad. "I remember the days when he used to take Henry and Ina out on the river."

Mr. Dodgson had never had any sort of fondness for little boys whatsoever, and, as far as Alice knew, had never taken her brother Henry with him anywhere. It had been Alice, her older sister Ina, and Edith, their younger sister, who had most been favored by his expeditions and attentions upon the Thames outside Christ Church College, at Oxford.

Alice made no response to her mother's comment, and carefully schooled her face into blankness. To have allowed any criticism to be written upon her features was to invite a tantrum of the severest sort: and a complete ending of the chance to see Mr. Dodgson at all.

Why did Alice want to see him?

He was a poisonous, evil old zombie who had tried to eat her once, and, if she had deserved it (and she had, at least a little), well, he ought to have known better than to try. He might have been killed.

And yet, as the June sun beat down upon Alice's carefully-coiled hair and her stiflingly hot dress, and she and Ina and Mother crossed Tom Quad, she found herself wishing, nevertheless, to see him. They entered the shadows of the cloister building and ascended the staircase; Mr. Dodgson had, ironically, after having been banished from the presence of Mrs. Liddell and her daughters, been moved to better rooms. The rooms were closer to the deanery, and one might see him walking about from time to time. Mr. Dodgson still worked for Alice's father, the Dean, and the two men were either the closest of friends or the bitterest of enemies—depending upon the date, or some other obscure calculation.

As Alice climbed the ancient stairs, she touched the railing gently: here Mr. Dodgson had touched.

Her mother chattered away in a trifling manner. Ina held herself perfectly erect, as though she had an iron rod strapped to her backside. Ina always walked as though that were the case, but today it was doubly true, as she was about to be photographed, and dreaded a stray breeze maligning the set of her curls, or a particle of dust upon her dress.

Mother led them to Mr. Dodgson's new rooms, and knocked upon his door.

From the other side of the heavy wood came the sound of an iron ball being dragged upon the floor, making a small thump as it rolled off a rug. Mr. Dodgson had, Alice supposed, put his ball on especially for them, as he was allowed not to have to wear it while he was within his rooms.

Alice stared at her feet to save herself that first moment of surprise at seeing him so closely: had he changed, or had he not changed at all? She was unsure which would be the worse.

The door opened.

Mr. Dodgson's voice, at least, had not changed. He greeted Mother pleasantly, without any trace of resentment or rancor, then said, "Hello, Ina. My goodness, you are looking quite grown-up today. How did you find the puzzles I sent you?"

Puzzles? Mr. Dodgson had sent Ina puzzles?

Alice looked up angrily as Ina tipped her head to the side and smiled. "I found them quite charming, Mr. Dodgson, but of course I haven't finished them yet."

"I see, I see," he said, and Ina passed inside, following Mother, and leaving poor Alice quite alone with him.

He seemed much the same, and yet altogether different: he wore different clothing, and his hair had become rougher in texture, and less well-tended. But the main difference, she knew, was in her reading of his features. Her perspective had changed. She was much taller now, of course, although still not as tall as the fantastically lanky Mr. Dodgson. But, in addition, she was able to mark his face as foolish, vain, and slight: the sort of man who was used to being thought witty and amusing, but whose frown lines had long since overswept those of laughter.

She wished to sweep past him without a greeting, but knew that Mother listened to their every word. She must not give Mother any sort of excuse to hurt Mr. Dodgson. For Alice to snub the man would only open the floodgates of mockery and worse abuse.

Alice gave him a polite, distant curtsey. "Mr. Dodgson."

He grimaced. "And so you must meet the old Dodo again at last."

His expression was so comically, so tragically regretful that she was forced to smile. But to do more was to invite disaster: he stepped aside and allowed her to step over that forbidden threshold.

The rooms were different, yet much the same: there were new photographs along the walls, and one of the chairs had been replaced. But it was the same carpet, the same furnishings, the same standing desk in the corner, only moved to a different setting. Being undead, Mr. Dodgson had no need of sleep, but spent the night-time studying, writing his seemingly countless letters, and working. Alice had heard about the endless letters, for the postman had laughed and told Cook about it once while Alice had been standing at the edge of the kitchen, to beg for a bit of cake.

Mother and Ina had already been seated upon a loveseat, where Alice joined them.

"I should like to take the photographs in that chair, in the sunlight just now," Mr. Dodgson said, gesturing to a corner of the room, where the paper had been covered over with fabric and a lone leather chair with wooden arms rested. "As you can see, I have all the equipment ready, and the daylight through that window is quite fine."

"It is such a plain leather chair," Mother said. "I have a chair in the study which is altogether finer, with roses."

Patiently, Mr. Dodgson said, "This one, although plain, will not distract from one's subject. To place the girls in more luxurious setting would distract from their faces."

"But it would speak much toward their status," said Mother.

"Madame," said Mr. Dodgson, "any one who should need proof of your daughters' status through the evidence of a chair, I should think, would be of an inferior status altogether. Everyone knows of Dean Liddell, his beautiful wife, and his charming daughters."

Mother put up a few token protests, but it was clear that she no longer had any real objection to the location, the photographer, or the chair.

Mr. Dodgson said, "Would any of you like a pot of tea before we begin? I know that being photographed—or, indeed, sitting about and waiting for someone else to be photographed—can be quite tiresome, and perhaps some fortification would be in order."

Mother accepted Mr. Dodgson's offer without consulting either Alice or Ina.

Alice stared out the window, which overlooked Aldgate, with a fixedness that Mr. Dodgson kindly ignored. She wanted to say a thousand things. Soon Mr. Dodgson was handing her a cup and saucer, and there was a silver tray of tea things in front of them. Ina was talking to him about the puzzles he had sent her, and about his latest sermon, and about philosophy, and about books, and about all sorts of things that Alice couldn't care less about. (One couldn't care less than nothing unless one was a mathematician, which she wasn't.)

Yet if Alice were to steal into Ina's room (and she intended to do so) and take the little book of puzzles that Mr. Dodgson had given her, Alice knew she should be able to solve them inside a hundred heartbeats each.

They continued the discussion of such diverse subjects as the effect of the weather on the vegetable plots that served as the Deanery's kitchen gardens and whether the petits choux might be saved from a certain species of fungus, and whether King Leopold II would continue with his father's policies in the Congo Free State.

The entire time they were speaking, Alice wished instead to rail at Mr. Dodgson for accepting so placidly the injustices that had happened to him, for pottering about with things that he loved at the expense of his integrity, for moving ever so politely along the edges of society, a well-behaved zombie gentleman who was sinking slowly into smugness and placidity.

And yet she had seen other zombies, and she found it harder to feel proper Christian sympathy for them: they were so dirty. They mainly worked the fields and brought in the harvest and repaired the roads and a thousand other menial tasks; their wages were sent to their surviving relatives and allowed many a widow who would otherwise have ended up in the poor house to live in comfort.

Mr. Dodgson, in contrast, was clean and well-bred and allowed to teach his puzzles, mainly due to the influence of her father.

Alice's tea became cold, and she put it undrunk on the table next to the cream.

Drink me, the tea seemed to say to her.

But she could not, which fact surely had not gone unnoticed.

It had been claimed that Mr. Lewis Carroll, author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, must be an opium fiend to have come up with such things, and that the Caterpillar smoking his hookah proved it. To think of writing such nonsense without recourse to opium was absurd; Mr. Carroll must either be drugged or mad! And yet Mr. Dodgson's strongest fortification was only this: tea.

If Mr. Dodgson's critics only knew what had been in the book before Mr. Dodgson had changed so much of it, and removed the zombies entirely!

Alice wished that he had changed her name as well, when he had published it. Now all the students wished to know if she were named after the book, or the reverse. (As if they were unable to do simple subtraction between the publication date of the book and her age, which was obviously more than five.) From time to time one of Mr. Dodgson's new child-friends (whose mothers were scrupulous about watching them, but couldn't resist the lure of befriending a famous, if undead, author) would ask Alice if she were the "real" Alice, and she would tell them gently that no, she wasn't. It was an easy lie, for the girl in the book had long, pale hair. Alice's hair was kept long enough to coil prettily on top of her head these days, but dark it had stayed, and thankfully so.

Drink me.

Mother had started speaking again as Mr. Dodgson made his final preparations: there were rumors of a fresh outbreak of zombieism; the serum, she had said, was supposed to have but ill-luck against this new infection, and Father had said that another type would have to be developed, or many deaths would happen, and had Mr. Dodgson heard of it?

He had, he said. Then: "I believe that everything is ready. Who would like to go first?"

Ina would, most definitely, for she was still terrified of her hair spontaneously mussing itself and wished to have her photograph taken as soon as possible. Mr. Dodgson popped back and forth from behind his camera-curtain like a magician or an actor at the theatre, one who had to drag a heavy iron ball along behind him. Alice watched the clouds, the birds, the leaves in the trees, the carriages along Aldgate, anything rather than to listen to Mother or watch Ina, who bore such a fixed expression upon her face that she seemed a wax-work at Madame Tussaud's.

Suddenly, Mr. Dodgson said, "It's your turn, Miss Alice."

Alice started, and was so surprised that she allowed Mr. Dodgson to take her by the hand and lead her to the chair. He wore kid gloves, for which she was thankful; she wished to have no sensation of his undead flesh upon her own. He told her how she was to sit, then slightly arranged her skirts around her legs, touching her not at all. She felt as though he saw her as a captured photograph: everything perfectly arranged, as if for a funeral. He stepped behind the camera and threw the cloth over his head; some slight scraping and sliding sounds emitted from inside that shadowed cave, and then he looked out again.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Sit up, Alice," Mother said. "And do change the expression on your face to something more pleasant."

"We begin," Mr. Dodgson said, removing the lens.

Alice stared into its darkness. The longer she stared, the darker and wider the lens seemed to become, until it occupied her entire world, like a black pool into which she was falling.

After a time, Mr. Dodgson returned the cap to cover the lens.

Alice's head tipped forward. Mother was saying something; probably telling her that she had told Alice to sit up and have a more pleasant expression, and why did Alice never listen? Alice's stays pinched her cruelly but she ignored them to let her head rest in the crook of her shoulder and the leather of the chair. Her eyes closed and, perhaps because she had slept only fitfully the previous night, she fell fast asleep.