To my play­ers: It is Hallowe’en now, a fit­ting time for draw­ing endeav­ours to a close. And thus the Changeling game, which has flagged in recent months, is no more. I would like to sin­cerely thank you all for tak­ing part in a game that has lasted well into its third year and churned out nearly 200,000 words of some of the most enjoy­able and amus­ing fic­tion I have ever had the plea­sure of read­ing. More than any­thing else, I hope you have all had as much fun with this game as I have.

This is my present to you — the end­ing for the game that never ended, the finalé and the epi­logue of “Changeling: In Love and War” as I hoped they would be.

Part I. An Old Friend

Never could one have imag­ined a stranger group of Lords and Ladies than that which stood at the foot of the Black Rose tower. Politi­cians of renown they were not, and nor were they lead­ers of war – those lay dead or dying across the sacred Queen’s Square where the final bat­tle between Red and White had found its crescendo.

Duke Cain and Duchess Ilan­dra Hon­ey­suckle, and Duke Abel Poppy, attired in their ducal robes and armour. Vis­count­ess Sale­denre, whose eyes had seen more than most, and Serin, the Pop­pies’ ulti­mate weapon in the bat­tle that never came. Earl Nyano, and his father Serendil, for whom Pol­i­tics has brought more dan­ger than they thought pos­si­ble. Akane, as mys­te­ri­ous as ever, and Albert, the pawn who came good in the end. Gustafssen, who chuck­led to him­self as he reviewed page after page of doc­u­ments stolen from the tower itself by his vitamin-rich task force. Azi­mov, who had saved House after House in bat­tle but still had not returned to his own.

And Hugh who, with the unmis­tak­ably British battle-cry of “No time like the present, eh chaps?”, kicked open the heavy oak doors of the tower and led the rag-tag group inside.

As each faerie stepped inside the tower, they were sur­rounded by black­ness. No ordi­nary shadow was this, but a per­va­sive force that stamped out all traces of light. The cold white sun­light in the Square out­side per­me­ated a bare few inches into the gloom. They trudged ahead, hold­ing hands and call­ing qui­etly to each other so that none were left behind.

The cor­ri­dor car­ried on for for­ever, many times the exte­rior width of the tower or so it seemed. Voices were raised to a nor­mal talk­ing level as one by one the inter­lop­ers won­dered if they were going around in cir­cles, or were being led into a trap.

Sub­tly, almost on the edge of their per­cep­tion, there was a quiet, polite, fem­i­nine cough. All talk­ing ceased as the light faded from pitch black to shades of grey.

The cor­ri­dor fanned out into a cir­cu­lar cham­ber in which stood, dead-centre, the one woman every­one was expect­ing to see.

“Well,” said Elaine, “I hope you’re all happy.”

“Happy about what?” asked Nyano.

“Oh, I don’t know.” the Black Rose agent replied, her gri­mace vis­i­ble despite the gloom. “The death toll, perhaps?”

Nyano yelped and ducked behind Azimov’s legs, before remem­ber­ing that he was an Earl now and needed to show composure.

“You speak as if the war was our fault,” said Abel. “But we all know that wasn’t the case. The Coun­cil began this stu­pid power game, and even after your fac­tion grew in power you did noth­ing to stop it.”

“The Houses were insuf­fi­ciently com­mit­ted to stop­ping the war. Had they accepted the offer of our pro­tec­tion, the Reds and Whites would have been left bereft of allies and eas­ily mopped up. How­ever, by and large, they elected to stay in their fool­ish war. A deci­sion that, in sev­eral notable cases – Poppy, Hon­ey­suckle, Wil­low, But­ter­cup, Heather – was aided by none other than your­selves. The deaths of thou­sands are on your conscience.”

There was a moment’s pause whilst the appro­pri­ate response was con­sid­ered. In the end, it was Gustafssen who spoke.

“Ah,” the sci­en­tist mut­tered, “but they are not quite dead, ja?”

“What do you mean?” asked Elaine.

“Well, death is not exactly per­ma­nent. The soul is rein­car­nated, correct?”

“Of course. That has always been the way of things.”

“So we have not truly… killed any­one. Not destroyed any souls.”

“You think that makes it bet­ter? What, exactly, is your point?”

“You would have.”

“Would have what?”

“Destroyed souls. Fraulein Elaine, I have seen more of the Black Rose Committee’s activ­i­ties than most peo­ple realise. And, from what I know of your organ­i­sa­tion, I think I have seen more than even you. After all, you are but a pawn, are you not?”

“I… I…” Elaine stuttered.

“But you knew enough about the Committee’s inten­tions, ja? And like all Fae, you know about iron and what it is used for.”

“To med­dle with iron? A despi­ca­ble prac­tice that I believed to be con­fined only to the likes of you, Gustafssen!”

But the sci­en­tist did not reply. From the pocket of his lab coat he had with­drawn a sac­ri­fi­cial lemon, raised from birth to this even­tual end. Gustafssen sliced it neatly in half, and impaled each half with a thin sliver of metal. With one brief investi­ture of glam­our into the sep­a­rated fruit, sparks began skip­ping between the two prongs. And, with a greater one, those sparks began to jump between them and Elaine as well, leav­ing tiny scorch marks in her oth­er­wise immac­u­late dress.

“Aha!” shouted Gustafssen, vis­i­bly beam­ing with pride at his achieve­ment. “At last, die ver­fluchte Sache works! Und as I sus­pected, this one has the essence of iron about her.”

Elaine shot a glare at Gustafssen before sweep­ing it across the rest of the group, dar­ing any­one to act.

Against all odds, it was Nyano who dared to speak. “She has iron? That’s… that’s horrible!”

“I am not the only one present to do so,” she said, return­ing her gaze to Serin.

Nyano glanced ner­vously at the gypsy woman. “But she’s… she’s a nice per­son! And she said she’s never used her exploding-crossbow on any faerie before!”

“That’s about to change,” said Elaine.

The Black Rose agent’s right hand spurted black and pur­ple fire, cor­us­cat­ing with light­ning that burned the eyes. The corona stretched out­wards, encom­pass­ing the umbrella that she had once held so dain­tily but now gripped as if her life depended on it. And then, with that was begin­ning to be a rather famil­iar gut-wrenching lurch, the world went wrong.

Where once that umbrella had been, Elaine of the Black Rose Com­mit­tee now bran­dished a sword of bru­tal, soul-devouring iron.

A sec­ond later, there was a noise both sud­den and loud beyond comprehension.

When their brains had set­tled and they had assessed their eardrums for hav­ing exploded, they came to the con­fus­ing real­i­sa­tion that it was Elaine that was lying on the floor. Almost as one, they turned to look behind them.

Where Serin stood, smil­ing sweetly, through a haze of gun­pow­der smoke.

Elaine twitched, shud­dered and slowly got to her feet. Serin scowled, and set about reload­ing her mus­ket. Every­one else just stood there, shocked.

“Run, idiots!” Serin shouted, and with that jolted life back into the faeries. “I’ll deal with her, you carry on!”

All bar Azi­mov turned and sprinted past the slowly-standing Elaine, head­ing for the stairs at the back of the cham­ber. The Snap­dragon noble, though, charged straight for the Black Rose risk­ing his life as a dis­trac­tion. As his glamour-glass sabre clashed against Elaine’s iron, the magic died imme­di­ately and the glass shat­tered in sym­pa­thy. He drew his bronze blade, and charged again…

The drum-beat foot­steps of the remain­ing faeries sprint­ing up the stone stair­case was enough to drown out the metal-on-metal clashes of swords below. But no mat­ter how high they got, noth­ing seemed to dis­guise the reg­u­lar rum­ble of gun­fire, and noth­ing dis­guised the screams.

Part II. The For­est, and What they Found There

The long ascent gave the faeries almost too much time to dwell on what had hap­pened over the past few months, and what was yet to hap­pen. Fairy­land had awoken from its Win­ter lack­ing a King and Queen; with only the Coun­cil of thir­teen Dukes and Duchesses to rule the land. And what a job they’d done! Within weeks of the begin­ning of Spring, the Coun­cil were divided down the mid­dle by the charis­matic Rose Dukes, and war was declared. All for to decide which of them would become King and take a bride as Queen.

And now, the Coun­cil was no more. A cou­ple of its mem­bers had sur­vived, by pulling out of the war just as the enemy reached their gates, but the major­ity of them lay dead on fields of blood along­side the Roses.

No King, no Queen, no Coun­cil. The power vac­uum was not eas­ily filled, not least because nobody wanted the job any­more. The most pow­er­ful fac­tion in the land was the Black Rose Com­mit­tee, but the group now ascend­ing the tower was deter­mined not to let them fill it. Using iron, seal­ing away magic, geno­cide that killed the very souls of their oppo­nents – the Black Roses’ list of crimes was immense.

But the final piece of the puz­zle was still miss­ing. Who were the Black Rose Com­mit­tee, and what did they want? Who was in charge, and what would they do if all Fairy­land bowed at their feet? What, for that mat­ter, would hap­pen if they were defeated?

Quiet con­tem­pla­tion had led them at last to the top of the spi­ralling stairs, but what greeted them was not a room — not even an expan­sive cham­ber — but a for­est. The steps rose up through a gap in what oth­er­wise looked like solid earth.

They spread out, to the limit of their sight in each direc­tion, but did not dis­cover an edge or indeed any sign that they were still in the tower.

Thor­oughly lost and con­fused, they regrouped and fol­lowed the only slight indi­ca­tion of a path. Min­utes passed before at last Abel voiced what they had all been thinking.

“We’ve been tricked, haven’t we?”

“I… don’t think so,” Sale­denre said care­fully. “I’m sure I would have felt it if we’d been moved somehow.”

“But this doesn’t look like the inside of a tower,” said Nyano.

“You’re right,” said Abel. “But I don’t see we have a choice but to carry on. Assum­ing this isn’t the top — and it doesn’t feel like the top — there must be a way up somewhere.”

“It can’t hurt to keep going a bit fur­ther,” said Ilan­dra. “After all, the path still goes on…”

“Right. Let’s stay together and keep on going,” Abel said, turn­ing. “Wait. Akane, where’s Albert?”

“Oh, sh-”

Albert had only wan­dered a lit­tle way from the group, and was eas­ily found. He was star­ing up into a tree, ask­ing some­body for directions!

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” asked Albert.

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the voice from the trees. An unnerv­ing voice, as if its owner were a lit­tle less hinged than is normal.

“I don’t much care where –”

“Then it doesn’t mat­ter which way you go.”

“– so long as it’s up,” Albert added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the voice, “if you only walk long enough.”

It was begin­ning to dawn on the nobles that they had heard this dia­logue before some­where before. The voice in the tree… The Cheshire Cat! Of course, Albert was a peas­ant, he didn’t know!

“Just turn around,” said the Cat, “and walk… that way. You’ll see, soon enough.”

“Albert, no!” cried Akane.

Albert stopped just short of turn­ing his back on the Cheshire Cat, and span to face the Pooka. The cat, for his part, just grinned, and faded away.

“Be see­ing you,” he whis­pered as he flick­ered into a gri­mace, and was gone.

Part III. The Story of the Alice Game is Told

Once their heart rates had set­tled after their brief moment of panic, they began to walk again. This time they did not move so casu­ally. At the edges of the group the war­riors amongst them paced steadily, their eyes flick­er­ing back and forth across the for­est and their hands rest­ing uneasily on weapons. Toward the cen­tre, Akane was debat­ing with her­self just how much she could tell Albert, what with him being a com­moner and all.

Sale­denre had no such reser­va­tions, how­ever, and with­out wait­ing for Akane to stop look­ing trou­bled, she decided to tell the tale for Albert’s sake anyway.

“Once upon a time,” the Eshu began, “there was a Duchess who was thor­oughly Unseelie of thought and sadis­tic in par­tic­u­lar. No-one in all of Fairy­land much liked her, nor she them, and so she fre­quently found her­self alone. But being alone is bor­ing, and so since she could abide none of her own kind, she sought out humans to enter­tain her.

“Now there has long been a his­tory of us bring­ing humans to our land, whether as slaves — the Unseelie way, of course — or as lovers, or by mere acci­dent.” She shot a look at Hugh, who was too busy dis­cussing beet­root with Gustafssen to notice. “But noth­ing pleased the Duchess more than tor­ment­ing peo­ple for her own amuse­ment. So, she would take a human child, and she would cre­ate a story for it — a twisted, dis­turb­ing tale that embod­ied the very essence of Arca­dia that is anath­ema to the humans. One of her favourite plot devices is none other than the grin­ning cat you have just encountered.

“I most strongly advise that, should we meet him again, you do not turn your back for even a moment.

“This ‘game’, for want of a bet­ter word, this method of tor­tur­ing humans for amuse­ment, spread quickly amongst those who were that way inclined. It became known as the ‘Alice Game’ after the one human girl who even­tu­ally, after the almost com­plete loss of her san­ity, escaped.

“And now, that tale has become woven into the very fab­ric of our world — the only ‘Fairy Tale’ that we, not humans, cre­ated. The cat and the other char­ac­ters of Alice’s story turn up all over the place, though why here is anyone’s guess.”

“These other char­ac­ters,” asked Albert, “wouldn’t hap­pen to include a dandy-looking chap and some kind of rodent, would they?”

“Dor­mouse,” said Sale­denre. “Ye– why, yes, absolutely. How on earth did you know that?”

Albert merely looked wor­ried until Sale­denre finally turned to see what stood ahead of them on the path. The group had bunched together and stopped.

Ahead of them in a small clear­ing stood not only the grin­ning cat, who was non­cha­lantly preen­ing him­self as if there was no ten­sion in the air at all, but a refined gen­tle­man with a fine top hat and cane, and a vastly over­sized but still some­how cuddly-looking dormouse.

“Ah,” said Saledenre.

“You there,” shouted Cain, stand­ing for­ward from the rest of the group. The dor­mouse snarled, reveal­ing unex­pect­edly sharp teeth. The gen­tle­man poked it with his cane, and it went back to look­ing inno­cent again.

“Do you seek to hin­der our progress?” Cain asked.

“Most assuredly we do!” replied the Mad Hat­ter. “You must be weary of your jour­ney, hav­ing been lost in the woods for so very long, and I would invite you to have tea with us!”

Cain nar­rowed his eyes, strug­gling to stay polite. “No, thank you. In case you were not aware, who­ever is in charge of the Black Rose com­mit­tee has thor­oughly desta­bilised the entire world, thou­sands of sol­diers lie dead and dying at the foot of this tower, and we are on our way to sort this mess out once and for all!”

“Well, that doesn’t sound very jolly.”

“It’s not!”

“I’m going to have to insist you stay for tea anyway.”

The cat and the dor­mouse, either side of the gen­tle­man, started to move for­ward and out­ward into some­what more threat­en­ing posi­tions. And still, the Cheshire Cat did not stop grinning.

Albert stepped for­ward. “I’ll deal with this,” he said solemnly.

“Don’t be ridicu­lous!” Akane shouted. “You don’t know what you’re fac­ing here!”

“I already know more than I am sup­posed to. And there was some truth in what that fool Jebo­diah said all along. Nobles do things– Some nobles do things that didn’t ought to be done. And this par­tic­u­lar… game, or what­ever it is sup­posed to be, ought to end now.”

“But you’re… I mean, no offence, but you’re a com­moner! You couldn’t pos­si­bly take them on!”

“I nearly ended up killing most of the Red lead­ers, didn’t I?”

“Well… yes, but that was poi­son­ing. This is– I don’t know what this is going to turn out as, but it’s not going to involve subtlety!”

“Albert,” said Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, inter­ject­ing him­self between the com­moner and the Pooka. “You’re seri­ous about this, aren’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Then you should prob­a­bly take this,” he said, prof­fer­ing a small black jar from his bag. “I did some very care­ful tests on that sub­stance that Indigo Some­thing had — the sub­stance that he actu­ally wanted you to poi­son us with. It turns out it’s quite com­mon in the human world — rather than being a vicious poi­son like it is to Fae, some of them even like it!”

Albert took the bot­tle, and gazed blankly at the glyphs on the label that to any human would have spelled “RIVER COTTAGE FINEST YEAST EXTRACT”.

“Never mind what it’s called,” said Hugh. “Spread some on the blade of that sword of yours, and give them what for!”

“Right,” Albert said with con­vic­tion. He began coat­ing his sword with the strange, vis­cous substance.

“Well…” Akane looked lost for words. “If you’re stay­ing to fight, so am I!”

“Akane!” Ilan­dra shouted.

“It’s okay,” Akane said softly, with a smile. “It’s not as if I’d let some­thing tri­fling like this fin­ish me off, is it?”

“I… I guess you’re right. We’ll be back for you on the way down!” Ilan­dra called after her as she and the rest of the group made off at speed into the for­est, leav­ing Akane and Albert to deal with their adversaries.

Akane took aim with her pis­tol, and knocked the hat clean off the Hatter’s head to reveal a bald patch under­neath. The gun works! But of course, why wouldn’t it? Though the fae cre­ated these things, it was human sto­ries that gave them life. Mod­ern human sto­ries. The Mad Hat­ter, the Dor­mouse and the Cheshire Cat came from a world that knew about firearms!

As Albert rushed their oppo­nents, his sabre trail­ing glob­ules of Mar­mite behind him, a grin spread across Akane’s face to rival even the Cheshire Cat’s.

Part IV. What was Lost is Found Again

They looped around the clear­ing, trust­ing Akane and Albert to emerge the vic­tors from the com­bat still going on behind them. Even as the path started to incline steadily, the faeries quick­ened their pace at Abel’s insis­tence. After all, who knew what destruc­tive deeds were being planned by the Black Rose Com­mit­tee now that the Rose Dukes were dead, and how long their plans might take them to carry out? Every moment they dal­lied, they thought, some dis­as­ter loomed closer…

Before very long, they reached stone steps that led up to a plateau. In the cen­tre of which stood–

“Mother!” shouted Abel, rush­ing for­wards, for it was Regara! But he stopped short — some­thing was wrong.

There was a faint sug­ges­tion of a black shadow over her hunched form, though there was noth­ing above her to cast such a thing. And, faintly vis­i­ble, her eyes seemed red rather than brown.

They approached cau­tiously, Cain and Abel in the lead. When they were about fifty feet away, Regara’s head jerked upwards and she looked directly at her sons, but with vacant eyes that did not recog­nise them.

“Intrud­ers!” she shouted. “Guards! Off with their heads!”

Before they knew it, playing-card sol­diers wield­ing spears and swords leapt from behind bushes and rocks in a seem­ingly end­less stream. Cain, Abel and their friends fought bravely, card after card falling at their feet, but still Regara called for more and still more appeared. Before long, they were being pushed back by sheer weight of numbers.

“It’s no good!” shouted Hugh. “We’ll have to go for the Duchess, we’ve got no choice!”

“No!” Nyano squeaked. “You can’t hurt her! Please say you won’t hurt her!”

“I…”

“I will deal with it,” said Serendil.

“Father!” Nyano shouted.

“Hold the guards back!”

As the guards were defeated one by one, Serendil took step after step back­wards, then ran up, jumped, span in the air, and with an almighty cry of “Really Not Too Dan­ger­ous Rolling Thun­der Ultra Kick!” placed a boot squarely on Regara’s forehead.

The for­mer Duchess col­lapsed, the shadow lift­ing from her.

“See?” Serendil said. “You knew I wouldn’t let her come to any harm.”

“But…”

Serendil sighed. “Nyano, you go on ahead. I will stay and explain things to the Duchess.”

“But… father!”

“Hush, Nyano. It’s time.”

“But…”

“You out-rank even me now, Earl Nyano-Sgiathatch. It’s time.”

“The rest of you, too,” said Cain. “Abel and I will stay. We’ve got a lot of explain­ing to do when she wakes up.”

Five, in the end, marched onwards. Ilan­dra, Nyano, Sale­denre, Hugh and Gustafssen, reluc­tantly leav­ing yet another group behind, started to make their way up the steps at the far edge of the plateau. And, as they ascended, light rose up from the ground in swirls and sparkles, sur­round­ing them and envelop­ing them.

Part V. Atop the Black Rose Tower

The light cleared around them, dis­ap­pear­ing into the floor in heli­cal pat­terns just as swiftly as it had sprung up. No longer did they stand on stone steps ris­ing up out of the for­est, but rather they were back inside some­thing iden­ti­fi­able as a tower again.

Obsid­ian glass, which had looked black as night from a dis­tance, now resolved itself to be translu­cent from up close. It sur­rounded them on three sides, the fourth being taken up by an impos­ing black-carpeted and gilt-etched stair­case ris­ing up into the tower’s peak. Scat­tered across it lay black roses, as if some jilted lover dis­carded them one by one dur­ing her sad descent.

Atop the stairs and through an open arch­way lay another expanse that was undoubt­edly wider than the tower, although this time at least it gave the pre­tense of being a room rather than an entire for­est. At its cen­tre rested a gigan­tic table, tak­ing a good ten sec­onds to walk each of its sides, on which were etched var­i­ous con­nect­ing wavy lines and mod­els of cas­tles and soldiers.

“Is this a… map?” asked Nyano, sit­ting on Hugh’s shoul­ders so he could see the table from above.

Hugh sighed. He had quite for­got­ten that most faeries had no con­tact with humans, and thus had lit­tle expe­ri­ence of cartography.

“That’s right,” Hugh explained. “It looks like a map of all of Arca­dia!” He pointed enthu­si­as­ti­cally around it. “Look, here’s where we are, right in the mid­dle. This one looks a bit like the tower we’re in. And over there, doesn’t that look like Cas­tle Poppy?”

Nyano, rather than mir­ror­ing Hugh’s excite­ment, looked shocked. “But… does that work? The scouts make lit­tle maps of places, but Mis­ter Chicken said that spi– um, I mean ‘researchers’, go far away really quickly ‘cos of some­thing called sub-jec-tive geog-ra-phy.”

“Ja,” said Gustafssen. “Who knows, per­haps the map dis­torts some­times. Or the Black Rose ser­vants rearrange the pieces?”

Out­side, just vis­i­ble through the glass walls, the sun was set­ting and the clouds — below them, at this height — were dark­en­ing. Thun­der rum­bled in the distance.

“Isn’t this Wil­low land?” asked Ilan­dra, point­ing to a sec­tion over to one side of the map table.

“Looks about right,” said Hugh.

“This bit of the table is black, and they were Black Rose allies.”

“Seems rea­son­able.”

“But the black is… spreading.”

That drew everyone’s attention.

Sure enough, as they watched, the black patch was expand­ing into neigh­bour­ing areas. Now that they had seen it once, they started notic­ing it else­where on the map too — dark­ened areas spread­ing slowly out­wards, ooz­ing almost, into nearby kingdoms.

“That’s not good, is it?”

“I am guess­ing not.”

“Onwards and upwards?”

“With haste.”

The only way up was a small spi­ral stair­case in the back wall. They ascended in sin­gle file, closed in by walls of glass that here were mer­ci­fully thick enough here to be opaque.

It was only a few turns of the stairs before they reached another floor. The baroque black-and-gold excess con­tin­ued unabated here, as they stood inside a recep­tion room that was dom­i­nated by impos­ing black doors at the far end. Above them, through the near-transparent sub­stance of the tower, the sky had quickly dark­ened to leave only flick­er­ing torch­light illu­mi­nat­ing the room.

But there was sky above, not more tower! At long last, after hours trapped in tun­nels and lost in woods, after leav­ing friends behind and encoun­ter­ing only foes, they had reached the top.

“Let’s get this over with, shall we?” said Saledenre.

Nyano gripped his boomerang tightly. “Right.”

With the rac­coon in the lead, and Ilan­dra, Gustafssen, Hugh and Sale­denre steadily pac­ing behind, they approached the end of the room.

The dou­ble doors swung open with­out a sound as they approached. Beyond them was only dark­ness, a thick gloom into which the torch­light did not pen­e­trate. With hearts beat­ing fast, they stepped inside. Behind them, the doors shut tight.

Sec­onds passed, or per­haps min­utes. Hav­ing lost their sense of place in the dark­ness and the silence, their sense of time was slip­ping too. But a can­dle lit, some­where, a sin­gle white flame in the black­ness. Then another, and another, and two more, dozens, hun­dreds. Flames danced from can­dle to can­dle, each illu­mi­nat­ing the area around it. Soli­tary lights became can­dles, can­dle­sticks, mantle­pieces on which they rested and chan­de­liers in which they hung. And at the cen­tre of the room, a throne.

Its occu­pant stood, a face dimly vis­i­ble atop a dress that the light illu­mi­nated only as black. Dark brown hair fell razor-edge straight over her shoulders.

“Good evening,” she said in a voice sweet as tof­fee. “I am glad finally to make your acquain­tance. My name is Alice Pleas­ance Liddell.”

Part VI. Through the Looking-Glass

Sale­denre arched an eye­brow, thought for a sec­ond, and promptly low­ered it again.

“Oh.”

“Sally,” piped up Nyano’s high-pitched voice, “who’s-” But Alice interrupted.

“Deary me, where are your man­ners? I have intro­duced myself, now it is your turn.”

No mat­ter what thoughts were form­ing in their minds, no mat­ter what they were scream­ing at their voice-boxes to do, all that escaped their mouths was the politest of intro­duc­tions and all their bod­ies would do is bow or curtsey.

“Ilan­dra, Duchess Honeysuckle.”

“Nyano-Sgiathatch, Earl Poppy.”

“Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Vis­count Poppy.”

“Sale­denre, Vis­count­ess Poppy.”

“Gustafssen, Baronet Poppy.”

“Well then, now we are ami­ca­bly acquainted, may I enquire as to the pur­pose of your visit?”

The mag­i­cal com­pul­sion to be for­mal seem­ing to have been dropped, Sale­denre blurted out her train of thought.

“You’re Alice. The Alice. Alice-in-Wonderland Alice.”

“Indeed I am,” said the girl with a smile. “I do beg you par­don for not offer­ing you to sit and to take tea, but as you see this room is rather ill-equipped for such.” She ges­tured at the floor, which was almost entirely cov­ered by flick­er­ing can­dles. “In fact, you’re my first guests in quite some time!”

“But why are you here? The story goes that you were the only-” Sale­denre paused, think­ing of a more tact­ful way to put it. “You returned to your world! Who brought you back, and for what?”

“My Lady Poppy, you mis­un­der­stand entirely. Allow me to explain — I was not brought here, not this time. Pray allow me to tell you the story.” Alice sat down on her throne, and as she did so it became more plush and com­fort­able, devel­op­ing padded arm-rests and a footstool.

“Oh, it sim­ply won’t do to leave you stand­ing after all. Come.” She waved her arm expan­sively, and can­dles cleared from the floor to make way for two long couches and a low table which sported five china cups and a steam­ing teapot. The faeries sat, and tea was poured for them by some force unseen.

“It has been a very long time, by the reck­on­ing of my old world, since I last vis­ited. I was but eleven years of age, and now I am six­teen. I have had five years in which to con­sider what occurred back then, five years to grow stronger and more resis­tant to the ways in which your kind plays with the thoughts and per­cep­tions of mine.

“Now since my sec­ond visit to this world, the looking-glass mir­ror that I had used for a means of pas­sage had lain dor­mant. This remained the case until not so long ago — by my reck­on­ing, which doubt­less means lit­tle you you, this would be the year 1871. A good friend of mine, a young gen­tle­man by the name of Samuel McGregor-Matthews, helped me to make it work again.

“Not long after that, there was a falling-out in our house­hold con­cern­ing whether or not Samuel was fit to be a hus­band — for some rea­son my idi­otic father insisted I should seek a ‘real’ man, by which he of course meant a wealthy one. I resorted to the mir­ror as my means to escape that ridicu­lous inci­dent, but it turned out that Samuel’s spell was not quite as good as was desired and when I attempted to return I found that I could not. No mat­ter — I had a lit­tle some­thing to take care of in the way of revenge.

“Pre­vi­ously, this place had had quite an effect on me. But this time, older and wiser, it was I who had an effect on it! You have of course enjoyed the delights of the tower I cre­ated with mere will, and met those ser­vants of mine that I con­jured with but a thought. But faeries them­selves — I have found you a lit­tle less tractable than I had hoped. How­ever, with­out a King and Queen, you squab­ble like chil­dren! So eas­ily manip­u­lated and made to turn against each other! So eas­ily played like pawns!”

Alice could barely sup­press a giggle.

Nyano stood, indig­nant, but Alice turned to glare at him.

“Sit,” she said gen­tly, and the raccoon’s feet dis­ap­peared from under him leav­ing him sit­ting once again.

“As I was say­ing, you have all been most com­pli­ant, and have thor­oughly failed to notice your immi­nent down­fall. To think, Fairy­land ruled by a human! Pre­pos­ter­ous! And yet, about to occur.”

“You’ll never be Queen!” shouted Ilan­dra. “And no-one would be your King!”

“Quite right,” said Alice. “I have no inten­tion what­so­ever of allow­ing two rulers to co-exist. For what rea­son would I need any­body else? No, by the time the Black Rose poi­son has seeped its way across the land, into the hearts of every liv­ing thing, the world will have quite for­got­ten its imag­ined need for a King or Queen. Only one absolute ruler will be required, and every­one will know in their very souls that that ruler is me!”

“You are mad!” said Gustafssen. “Even by our stan­dards, you are mad!”

“Alas no, I’m afraid it is you that are mad. I am quite sane.”

“Fol­low­ing white rab­bits und walk­ing through mir­rors? Even other humans vould pro­nounce you mad.”

“That is of no import. I care not for human stan­dards, nor for their world — this world is mine now!”

“Und yet, you had not counted on us.”

Alice scoffed. “Hah! You think I am impressed that you have defeated — no, not even that, you have avoided my min­ions? And now you sit here tak­ing tea with me rather than fight­ing me. You can­not even lay a fin­ger on me!”

WHUMPH.

All of a sud­den, the room exploded into life. Can­dles flick­ered a mil­lion colours, the walls and floor flick­ered and dis­torted, thick black strands of fate flick­ered into exis­tence in the air, and at the cen­tre of it all, Alice col­lapsed to the ground with a scream. Ilan­dra, Nyano, Sale­denre and Hugh looked around wildly, until at last their sights set­tled on the one man who was just sit­ting and grinning.

Gustafssen stood slowly, reveal­ing in his hand a throb­bing, glit­ter­ing device with one big red but­ton and a sticky note say­ing ‘Really, really DON’T TOUCH THIS ONE.’

“Exper­i­men­tal high-Glamour field,” said the sci­en­tist. “Ein tri­fling inven­tion zat I had dis­carded a few years ago, recently res­ur­rected using a most use­ful veg­etable that Hugh intro­duced me to, ze kale. Kale ist high in iron, und is thus ze per­fect cat­a­lyst. Und being human, ze lit­tle girl could not han­dle ze sud­den increase in Glamour.”

“So,” asked Nyano, “is she… dead?”

“Alas, nein. Given some min­utes, ze Glam­our vill fade and she will return to con­scious­ness. Ve must dis­pose of her quickly.”

“I don’t want to kill her,” said Nyano. “Besides, what if she comes back? Like faeries do?”

“You are right, mein diminu­tive friend. How­ever, ve must do some­thing!”

“I have an idea,” said Ilan­dra. The rest turned to face her. “We must send her back to the human world. And we must do it in a way that sev­ers her ties to this world.”

“But she will always remem­ber our world,” said Sale­denre. “She’s in too deep, she won’t forget.”

“I…” Ilan­dra began. “I can sever her ties.”

“Her what?”

“These black strands, that Gustafssen made vis­i­ble. I know what they are. They’re fate lines, they join every per­son to every­thing that is impor­tant to them. And I know how to cut them. But… there’s a lot of them. Maybe too many. I don’t know how many I can cut before I… I…”

She stopped there, for every­one under­stood what she was imply­ing. A minute passed in silence, each con­tem­plat­ing Ilandra’s sac­ri­fice, until–

“Push them through!”

“What?”

“Push them through!” repeated Hugh. “The fate lines, or what ever they are, push them through into the human world!”

“That hasn’t made it any clearer.”

“Sale­denre, re-enchant the mir­ror! Abel showed you, right?”

“Right!” said Sale­denre, and set about it.

“Nyano! Your boomerang, has it always returned to you?”

“Always. That’s what a boomerang does, right?”

“Right! Ilan­dra, start grab­bing fate strands!”

“Okay!”

As the mir­ror flick­ered and glit­tered into life, reveal­ing a dusty Vic­to­rian attic behind it, Ilan­dra pulled down a sec­tion of the fate web that tied Alice to the world. She tied them around Nyano’s boomerang, and he threw it — straight through the mir­ror, tak­ing the strands with it.

Sec­onds passed.

And the boomerang returned, fate-free.

The room at the top of the tower res­onated with cheers.

Start­ing slowly, but then larger and larger sec­tions at once, Alice’s con­nec­tion to Arca­dia was stripped from her, passed through the mir­ror and became an anchor that tied her to her own world instead. By the time they had fin­ished, the room was almost clear of black strands — only one giant bunch flowed between Alice and the mirror.

But the can­dles were no longer flick­er­ing so strongly; the Glam­our was return­ing to nor­mal! With no time to lose, Gustafssen rushed over to Alice’s still prone body, hoisted her into the air, and all but threw her at the mirror.

She dis­ap­peared into it, and left noth­ing behind but rip­ples across its sur­face. Sale­denre dropped her spell, and the mir­ror reflected only the tower-top room.

And, just to make the point, Hugh raised a fry­ing pan above his head and brought it down against the mir­ror, shat­ter­ing it into a thou­sand tiny shards of glass.

Part VII. A Brave New World

The sun slides below the hori­zon, end­ing another day in the emer­ald land of Arca­dia. It has been a year and a day since the Black Rose tower cracked and fell, shat­ter­ing into pieces and on into dust which blew away on the wind. Where the dark spire once stood, a rose bush now blooms — black-flowered, the only one of its kind in all the land. It remains as a memo­r­ial, and a warn­ing to all those who seek absolute power over the world of Faerie. For Glam­our and its peo­ple can­not be tamed, and even the Win­ter of human rea­son and dis­be­lief could not kill them.

Her fate-strands torn from all her vas­sals in Fairy­land, Alice Pleas­ance Lid­dell has been all but for­got­ten. Only five remem­ber her, for in the moment of Alice’s defeat a fate more pow­er­ful than any thread or web came to pass — they five had saved the world, and there is no greater des­tiny than that.

Though Alice is lost from mem­ory, the Black Rose Com­mit­tee and their actions are not. The War of the Roses, as it has become called, dec­i­mated the pop­u­la­tion of Arca­dia and left the land not only with­out King or Queen but with no liv­ing mem­bers of the High Coun­cil that had ruled Fairy­land in the roy­als’ absence.

And of those few who stepped out of the doors of the black tower mere moments before it shat­tered? They found them­selves at the cen­tre of a cir­cle of thou­sands if not mil­lions of sol­diers, wav­ing and cheer­ing, who had at last realised that there had been greater dan­gers afoot than mere bat­tle. The heroes’ faces appear in por­traits hung in every cas­tle and stat­ues in every city, and their deeds are told in story and in song in every cor­ner of the land, from noble courts to rowdy inns to school play­ing fields.

Sale­denre trav­elled for a while in Arca­dia, hop­ping from one Duchy to the next as they each slowly rebuilt their lands and reforged weapons into tools. But in all her trav­els, she did not find a sin­gle story that matched her own tale of how the Black Roses were defeated, and thus before long she set off for the human world again, trad­ing her own tales for new ones drawn from humanity’s bot­tom­less well of inspiration.

Hugh and Gustafssen, though for the major­ity of the time a world apart, trade tech­nol­ogy and culi­nary con­coc­tions reg­u­larly. For the sci­en­tist, a never-ending stream of obscure veg­etable vari­eties push his unfo­cussed and mani­a­cal inven­tions ever closer to real­ity, whilst the chef is pro­vided with arcane devices that add a touch of magic — and pos­si­bly a touch of dan­ger­ous chem­i­cal — to his recipes.

Azi­mov left the care of House Poppy shortly after the inci­dent, and carved out a swathe of the now vacant Queen’s Square to call his own. With a brand-new cas­tle ris­ing daily from the hill­top, he has exer­cised his right as the last liv­ing mem­ber of his fam­ily and cre­ated House Snap­dragon anew. His flower now blooms all over the human world, and not one man or woman remem­bers the years for which the flow­ers were missing.

Nyano con­tin­ues to be Regara’s favourite pet, although the once-Duchess chose not to re-assume her for­mer posi­tion. The Earl now serves as a trusted advi­sor to Duke Abel, and now and again stands in for the Duke at High Coun­cil meetings.

Ilan­dra returned to her Duchy, accepted her place on the recre­ated High Coun­cil, and set­tled down for all of a week. Nowa­days, she and Cain are as often to be found on an adven­ture miles from home as to be at home pre­sid­ing over affairs of state. In their absence, Akane takes their seat at Coun­cil, and has declared the schem­ing and plot­ting of the Faerie Houses to be as much of an intel­lec­tual chal­lenge as the great­est of human mys­ter­ies. She still refuses to be called a Princess.

With none of the heroes of the tale will­ing to appoint them­selves as King or Queen, and with no other Faerie noble dar­ing to declare their own inten­tions, the two royal cas­tles stand like museum pieces, empty and alone. Arca­dia is presided over by the High Coun­cil alone, its thir­teen new mem­bers cho­sen so as to avoid the Houses that were instru­men­tal in start­ing and pro­long­ing the war. Though many voiced fears at the time that the land would not tol­er­ate a lack of King and Queen, or that Glam­our itself would die, such sug­ges­tions are finally abat­ing now that so long has passed.

The sun has set now, and each of the heroes stands from the hill­top where they had sat to watch it. It is the first time they have all stood together since that day atop the tower. Their lives have taken them across worlds and across time, but in their hearts, they are inseparable.

Each turns out­wards, say­ing noth­ing, for there are no words to con­vey the weight of their mem­o­ries. Each puts one foot in front of the other, and walks away, onwards and upwards into the rest of their lives.

And they all lived hap­pily ever after.