Ever After High: A Wonderlandiful World Part 13

Shoved into the wall of the "well" were short wooden struts just wide enough for a foot. If they were very careful, they might be able to make it to the top without falling to a painful death.

All the wild confidence she'd felt in her Wonderlandian Grove fizzled out of Lizzie. All marchiness chilled out of her feet.

But she whispered, "Off with its head."

Maddie nodded.

Lizzie shakily ascended the stairs. They were wet and soft, like slushy snow, so she had to lean against the slime-coated wall for support. Even the shush, shush, shush of their feet seemed too loud. The Jabberwock could be anywhere.

At last, Lizzie climbed out of the well and into the light of a carpeted s.p.a.ce that was refreshingly hallway-shaped. It almost seemed like the normal school, but as they crept along, wrongness was everywhere. Slides instead of steps, curves instead of corners, the floor making soft ribbits with every press of her feet. So much had transformed that Lizzie stared at an innocent lamp, waiting for it to sprout legs and dance a jig.

Fear neither lamps nor jigs, Lizzie, she told herself. Just find the library.

Lizzie had spent hours in the library, reading the Wonderlandian books, gazing at the ill.u.s.trations. In the quiet grandeur of the library, she had let herself yearn for home, the way cheese yearns for cloth, the way bees yearn for b.u.mble. So she knew the exact location of every Wonderland-related book: which corner, which wall, which shelf, and even which hidden chests in the back of custodial closets.

"That's good," Maddie whispered.

"Hmph." Lizzie did not approve of Maddie's nosing around her royal and private thoughts, but at the moment she was occupied with the larger worry of actually finding the library in a Jabberwocked school.

"That's bad," whispered Maddie.

Lizzie parted some drapes, trying to let in more light, only to find that the drapes covered blank stone walls and were themselves dripping with b.u.t.ter and grape jelly.

Everything Lizzie saw was twisted, neither Ever After nor Wonderland. Brushrooms grew out of the floor, wiggling their bristles at them. Treacle tapestries dripped on the wall, their shiny-sweet images ever-changing. A pot of flowers seemed to smile at her. That was delightfully Wonderlandish! Except that the smile was a little too intense. And when they opened their mouths, instead of singing, they lectured on mathematics.

Lizzie took her safety scissors out of her pocket to cut off their heads but thought better of it. What if those flowers had been Dexter or Darling or someone?

The hallway seemed to go on forever, far and away into the distance, until it flickered and abruptly ended.

Lizzie and Maddie shrank back as large chunks of the walls fell away and resolved themselves into further hallways. A gigantic caterpillar, each segment of its body a fringed throw pillow with ta.s.sel legs, stampeded across their path from the right hall to the left.

"That's odd," Maddie said.

"No doubt," Lizzie said. "At the very least, things should be moving left to right. It's as if the very rules of civil behavior are being ignored."

A gang of cards chased after the caterpillar, paper flapping obscenely as they ran. These were not respectable cards, to Lizzie's mind-that is, they were not playing cards. These were greeting cards, if what each of them was shouting was any clue.

"Get well soon!" yelled the first to cross their path.

"Happy birthday," cheered the second. The third wetly spluttered, "I'm so sorry."

The last card in the group noticed them, stopped, and pointed its long, thin arm threateningly.

"Happy anniversary?" it asked.

"Happy anniversary," Maddie said.

The card nodded its front flap and ran to catch up with its pack.

"That was close," said Lizzie. "I was about to say aCondolences' and may have gotten us smooshed inside the card like pressed wildflowers."

They arrived in an open room that might have once been the Castleteria. All the tables, chairs, and benches were huddled against one wall, shivering. The s.p.a.ce left by their absence was empty, except for several upside-down bowls on the floor and a huge, lumpy gray ball in the center of the room under the chandelier. The gray ball sounded like it was giggling.

"Maybe we should go a different way," Maddie whispered. "This seems way too creepy to be safe."

"Laughing things are never dangerous," Lizzie said, marching forward.

The ball stopped laughing.

"You," Lizzie announced. "Giggling Thing! We need directions!"

The lumpy ball spun around, exposing raisin eyes and a wide-open mouth. Whatever it was, it looked needy. It plopped forward, its huge belly slapping the floor, its flat, walrus-like tail smearing porridge behind it.

"Hugs?" it lisped.

"No hugs," Lizzie said, more certain than ever that she was not a hugger.

"I know that smell," Maddie whispered. "That used to be the peas porridge in the pot nine days old. No way I'm eating it now."

"No way I was eating it then," said Lizzie.

"Hugs!" it said.

"Hugs?" other voices whispered. The bowls lifted up like half of an oyster sh.e.l.l.

The Porridge Thing kept advancing, its eyes wider, its mouth wetter, and its laugh louder. The girls backed into a wall.

"Do something!" Lizzie shouted to Maddie. "Narrate us out of this!"

"That's not how it works!" Maddie shouted back.

The Porridge began to whimper. "Hugs..."

"Poor thing," Maddie said.

From beneath the clacking bowls, lumps of raisin-studded porridge rolled out, sprouted muddy legs, and began to run. The Porridge squealed with delight and took chase.

"Can't catch me, can't catch me!" the lumps chanted in little gurgles.

The girls edged toward the door through which they had come. Several lumps careened off the ceiling they had been running on and fell splat at their feet.

"Whee!" roared the Porridge Thing, slamming into the door and nearly crushing Maddie in the process. The lumps skittered over Lizzie's foot and the Porridge chased on.

Lizzie reached for the door only to find it had shrunk, the walls puckering around it like a mouth after eating something sour.

"Shrinking potion!" Lizzie shouted. "Give me one now, Maddie!"

Maddie pulled off her hat, rummaging through the contents.

"I don't-" she started, but Lizzie yanked her out of the way of a careening lump. Maddie's hat fell from her hand and rolled away.

Lizzie grabbed the hat and was clipped by a galloping Porridge. Lizzie spun like a top two, three, four times, and came to a dizzy stop. She handed Maddie the hat.

"Right," Lizzie said, eyes angry. "That is about enough of that. You! Table!" she shouted at the furniture shivering against the walls. "Get up!"

The table got up.

"Go there," Lizzie said.

The table started to move.

"Wait!" Lizzie shouted. "Not yet! When I tell you."

One by one, Lizzie addressed every piece of furniture in the room in her most imperious voice, giving them instructions, pointing, and occasionally stamping her foot. After she had relayed her orders, she watched the erratic Porridge chase, held up a finger, and then shouted, "Now!"

The tables, chairs, benches, and one wiry little stool trotted to their a.s.signed places.

"A maze!" Maddie shouted. "You made a maze, Lizzie! A-mazing! Hee-hee."

The Porridge chase continued but inside the furniture maze and out of the girls' way.

"Now," Lizzie said, turning to Maddie, "shrinking potion."

"Oh nose, it broke," she said sadly. At her feet lay pieces of gla.s.s and several dozen tiny shoes for every occasion. "It spilled on my shoe collection. Now I'll have to make an army of little me-dolls just to keep using them."

"Ugh!" Lizzie yelled. "Everything is pell-mell and mishmash and broken! This is why we need leaders! A good king or queen would rein all this mush in! Someone needs to be in charge!"

"I think the wall agrees with you," Maddie said. "It wiggled when you were talking."

The chandelier began to swing back and forth in a friendly kind of wave.

"The chandelier, too. Hey, maybe the whole school is alive," Maddie said.

"Of course it is," Lizzie said, though she hadn't thought of it till now. "School!" Lizzie shouted upward. "I'm sure you're tired of having impolite and filthy creatures worming about your hallways. Show us the library, and we will fix it for you!"

The walls shuddered, something akin to a laugh or a growl, or perhaps a rumbly intestinal thing that happens after eating some nine-day-old peas porridge. A new door appeared in the wall to their right and opened by itself.

"You could've asked nicer," said Maddie.

"Directness gets results," Lizzie said. There was no time for lollygagging. That peas porridge could escape the maze at any moment, or those greeting card abominations might return. "Watch as we walk comfortably left to right as civil people should."

The two girls entered a low hall. The walls were covered with dusty yellow wallpaper with a complicated black print that moved between shapes like quills and scrolls. As they walked, the patterns in the wallpaper undulated. Lizzie stumbled, her shoe catching on a wrinkle in the carpet. From her half-stooped position, she saw words in the wallpaper. When she stood, they vanished.

"What is it?" Maddie asked, even though she had just narrated it.

"The wallpaper says something," Lizzie said, "but you have to sort of creep along to read it."

Maddie crouched and crept behind Lizzie, reading the words aloud.

" a... blind you can get to the library but only if I guide you must lean against the wall and close your eyes and let it take you place your shoulder here and walk blind you can get to the library but only... ' It repeats itself."

"All right, then," said Lizzie. "I'm closing my eyes, School! Take us to the library!"

With eyes closed, they continued their crouched walk. The Narrator could no longer see what Lizzie was doing, but she could hear the rasping noise of her shoulder as it dragged along the wall. On they crept, legs trembling with exhaustion, feeling like a waddling duckling. It might have been fun, if not for the ache in her back and the possibility of a large Wonderlandian monster appearing at any moment to eat them.

Flappy things brushed by them. Their shoes caught on sticky spots. The air turned hot, then cold, then shivery, then scented with ham. Screeches echoed in the distance. At one point, something nipped Maddie on the pinkie of her left hand. She forced her eyes to stay squeezed shut, trusted the school, and kept on.

And then the wall was suddenly gone.

"Um, School?" said Maddie. "Are we there? Or are we facing some kind of unspeakable horror that has eaten the wall?"

"We're there," said Lizzie. "I peeked."

The library had always been a very tall room, high and narrow windows drizzling light onto eight stories of bookshelves. Now it was even higher and narrower. Lizzie couldn't even see the ceiling, but she could stretch out her hands and touch both walls at the same time. In the narrow s.p.a.ce between, books fluttered, hovered, and dived; glided, nested, and cooed. None of the books sat quietly on the shelves where they belonged.

"Hedgehog droppings," Lizzie said.

"There are thousands of books in here," said Maddie. "Maybe millions. Finding the one we want might be imposs-"

"Don't say it," said Lizzie. "Never say that word."

Maddie slapped her hand over her mouth. What was wrong with her? She'd almost said it! And meant it!

Nothing was impossible. Every Wonderlandian knew this from their toenails to their nostrils. And Lizzie more than most. Impossible, it seemed, that she could fulfill her destiny as the next Queen of Hearts. Impossible because she was in exile, her home tainted with bad magic, the way back sealed.

But nothing, nothing, nothing is impossible.

Lizzie put her hands on her fists and looked at the books. Looked hard. She remembered a card from her mother about lost things.

Things are never lost to you; you are lost to them.

If ever in need of a Thing that has lost you, simply stop hiding from it.

She had thought it was a secret message about how to return to Wonderland and had spent several days in obvious locations around the school (Castleteria, roof, front doors), being very Visible and Noisy. But Wonderland hadn't found her, and Lizzie had had to give up when Baba Yaga ordered her to stop scaring the cellar-dwelling baby goblins with all that racket. But maybe allowing a book to find her was the sort of thing her mother was talking about.

"h.e.l.lo, everyone!" Lizzie shouted, leaping up on a nearby table. "I am Lizzie Hearts. It has come to my attention that there are some Wonderland books that didn't know where I was. Know now. I am here." She held her arms out, attempting to mimic the inviting gesture Apple did with birds.

The cooing in the shelves paused. The only sound was the rustle of pages as books shifted on their perches. And then one took to the air. Lizzie lifted her hands, and the book landed on her palms. The t.i.tle read, Wonderland Through the Ages.

"Good book," Lizzie whispered.

Then more and more took flight, books landing on Lizzie's head and shoulders, and perching on her arms, pecking the tabletop at her feet, nipping at the hem of her skirt. She resembled Ashlynn Ella in the Enchanted Forest, but instead of being covered in b.u.t.terflies and pixies, Lizzie was papered with books.

"Here!" Lizzie said, picking one up from the table. "The rest of you are dismissed." She felt again a warm, gooey surge in her middle that was probably something common and unroyal like grat.i.tude. Perhaps her mother wouldn't approve, but Lizzie cleared her throat and added, "Thank you."

The books took to the air with a fluttering of pages and flapping of covers.

" aRich Descriptions of Amazing Places for the Curious Agoraphobe,' " Maddie read. "What's an agoraphobe?"