CEDAR WOOD LIED. CEDAR WOOD LIED!

You all were scrambling around the Grove, searching for the book, but Cedar could only wander, her mind spinning and tumbling about with the thought: I lied!

Apparently, when the Jabberwock’s magic triggered her deep-rooted transformation into a real girl, it also undid that thorny honesty curse. She was free! She didn’t have to blurt and blab. She could choose her own words—she could choose her own life!

Cedar knelt down, relishing the press of the grass against her knees, the tickle of a dangling flower on her ankle. She leaned over to look for the book under a bush of white roses dripping red paint, when a thought caught inside her like a fish on a sharp hook.

If her honesty curse was undone, was her “caring” and “kindness” curse undone, too?

Cedar straightened up and let her feelings probe her fast-beating heart. No more lies. Now she would have to discover the truth. Who was she really, beneath the wooden body and cursed-to-care-ness? Without the Blue-Haired Fairy’s magic, was she still the girl who would do anything for her friends?

Or, when faced with danger, would she and her tender body run away?

Cedar looked up and found Maddie looking back. Maddie, as the Narrator, knew Cedar’s thoughts. She smiled encouragingly. Cedar nodded, but her heart still beat in rapid, shallow gasps. No more lies, not even to myself. So who am I?

Y/N: Come on, come on! Where is it?!

You scoured the Grove three times over. Cedar checked her pockets, even though they weren’t big enough to hold a book. Yet another truth fell on her, heavy as a stone—they might have to go back into that Jabberwock-infested school to find the book. The search could take forever! Lost things were always in the last place you looked.

Maddie: That’s so true, Cedar! You always find things the last place you look, so let’s skip the middle part and just look in the last place.

Lizzie: You make perfect sense, Hatworm.

Maddie: Okay, let’s all decide we’re done looking after the next place.

Lizzie shut her eyes.

Lizzie: I am done.

Kitty: So done.

Y/N: Yeah, yeah. I'm done.

Cedar: Done!

Wonderland logic could be fun.

Maddie got a serious look on her face. Well, she couldn’t see her own face, but it felt impressively serious. She put out her hands and let them lead her to the Last Place. She crouched down by Cedar, unlaced Cedar’s left boot, pulled it off, and removed the book.

Cedar: Whoa! I’m feeling everything today. You’d think I could feel a book in my boot.

She opened the letter and read:

Princess—
We were overjoyed to receive your letter! You are beamishly correct, of course. The only way to defeat the Jabberwock is with the vorpal sword, which is thrust in the left-most bole of the fourth wabe of Tumtum trees. Alas, I cannot send it to you with words. I consulted with an owl, who informed me that with just the right picture, meticulously painted in fluxberry shades, you might be able to pluck it out of Wonderland, though such has never been done. Good luck!

Lizzie threw a handy hedgehog at Cedar.

Lizzie: Paint.

Cedar: The letter said the sword is in Wonderland.…

Lizzie: So what are you waiting for?

Lizzie made shooing motions with her hands.

Lizzie: Go do art!

The Narrator had some distance from the action and was able to see how, sometimes, Lizzie just didn’t explain things very clearly. Especially to people outside her own head.

Maddie: Cedar, we can’t get to Wonderland, but maybe if you paint the sword here in this Wonderlandish Grove, the magic of Wonderland could make it real and within our reach.

Cedar: Really? But I can’t.

She pulled a leather pouch out of her skirt pocket.

Cedar: I have my brushes but they’re useless without paints, and I don’t even know what it is supposed to look like!

Lizzie: It’s a sword.

She pulled a butter knife out of her own pocket.

Lizzie: Like this, but bigger.

She held it up and closed one eye.

Lizzie: Also with more vorpal. Like, twenty percent more vorpal.

Cedar: But…

Cedar looked at her hands. Her real, fleshy, soft hands. She’d never drawn anything with a real hand before. Doubt pumped through her like blood.

Cedar: Well, to begin with, I’m going to need a better description than just ‘sword.’

Lizzie: A vorpal sword.

Litty: It seems to me that descriptions of things, especially the good ones that actually make you brain-picture something, come from Narrators.

Lizzie: Good idea.Maddie, narrate a detailed description of the vorpal sword for Cedar.

Good descriptions come from good Narrators. Okay, then.

Maddie: There’s a tree in Wonderland. A Tumtum tree. And it looks as trees do. You know, with the trunk and the branches and the leaves that are sometimes green. And leaves are always moving about, so they’re the unpredictable lifey part of an otherwise predictable tree.

Y/N: Come on, Maddie, you can do it. Keep going. That was...good-ish.

Maddie: I’m new at this, and my brain is getting tired and isn’t as springy and bouncy as it was. Plus, it’s been so long since I saw a Tumtum tree. Or anything in Wonderland.

Cedar: Ooh, I bet other Narrators have described the vorpal sword and Tumtum trees. We should just go look for a book in the library!

She smiled. Then she frowned. Lizzie was already frowning. Kitty disappeared and then reappeared dangling upside down from a tree so that her constant smile seemed to turn into a frown. You face palmed with a groan.

At first, Maddie thought they must be playing a frowning game and, what fun! Even a frowning game was still a game!

But then Maddie realized that you were frowning because you had to get a book from the library. And the library was in the school. And the school was mad and haunted by the Jabberwock.

Now was a moment to find out who Cedar was without the curses. She took slow, deep breaths until she felt able to say what she absotively, never-aftery wanted to say.

Cedar: I’ll do it. I’ll go out there to get the book. It’s better that you Wonderlandians stay safe in here. If the Jabberwock captures me, it can’t use me to power the permanent transformation of Ever After.

Lizzie: Cedar, your knees are knocking together.

Cedar: No, they’re not.

But they were. She hadn’t realized, because in the past when her wooden knees knocked together, they made a tapping sound.

Cedar: I’ll do it. It doesn’t matter if I am afraid. You’re my friends, so I should do it.

Lizzie was watching Cedar very carefully.

Lizzie: You are brave, ex-puppet, to offer to do what scares you. But you must stay here, make paints, and prepare. I will retrieve the written word!

Cedar exhaled again and didn’t argue. But her real stomach flopped about, and she knew in a way that it wasn’t her imagination but what people with guts called “a gut feeling,” that this wouldn’t be the last time she’d have to make that choice. To risk her new life for her friends. Or to save her new, real life and run away.

Y/N: I'll go, too. I can....I can keep the Jabberwock at bay if need be.

Lizzie and you looked at each other. You smiled confidently which made Lizzie smiled back.

Maddie: Hold your sea horses!

Maddie popped up between the two of you, breaking your moment.

Maddie: If Lizzie and Ozzie goes, I should go with them because it will be dangerous, and that’s interesting, and Narrators are supposed to storytell the most interesting bits. But stuff will keep happening here with Cedar and Kitty that I wouldn’t be able to narrate. Good gravy boats, but this is getting more complicated than a tea party underwater!

Lizzie: I can go by myself, thank you.

Maddie: Not a fairy chance! I took a sacred oath to tell this story. And this story arc has two main characters: Lizzie and Cedar. A real Narrator would know what Cedar was doing when Lizzie was away, but I’m not a real Narrator and I don’t have all those powers. And since Y/N is the main character lf this entire story, I think I'm supposed to be with him.

Cedar: We’ll tell you what happened here when you get back.

Maddie: But that’ll be boring. Everybody knows you can’t just tell what happens. You have to show it.

Lizzie: I don’t think everybody knows that.

Maddie: ‘Show Don’t Tell’ is an entire chapter in the narration book! I can’t narrate Cedar’s action and go with Lizzie!

Kitty: I’ll do it.

Kitty was lying on her stomach in the grass, examining her nails.

Y/N: Do what?

Kitty: Narrate this part of Cedar’s story. What’s the matter with me, volunteering to do helpish things and being involved?

Kitty shuddered.

Kitty: But since I’ve always been able to hear the Narrator, same as Maddie, I must share the ability to step in as an emergency Narrator. So I will be the emergency Narrator to the emergency Narrator.

Maddie crouched down and gave Kitty a kiss on her cheek.

Kitty: Uck!

Kitty licked the back of her hand and then wiped it on her cheek to clean off the kiss.

Maddie: Try to be talkative, Cedar. That will make Kitty’s job easier.

Cedar: Good luck, you three! Or as they say, break a leg!

Lizzie straightened up taller and adjusted her crown.

Lizzie: Yes, we will break all the legs.

The heart-shaped door was waiting, hanging in midair with no wall to support it. Lizzie opened the door, revealing blackness beyond. She stood even straighter and stepped in first. Maddie took Earl Grey out of her hat, set him on the grass, and hopped after Lizzie. You then followed, playing with your ring. The door shut.

…………

…………

…………

Cedar: Um, Kitty? Are you narrating? Kitty? You’re not narrating, are you, Kitty?

Kitty: Kitty shrugged.

Cedar: Kitty, I don’t think you actually need to say what you’re doing. Not out loud, anyway. Maddie said she narrated by thinking out loud.

I would like to pluck all the petals off those roses.

Cedar: Kitty, you didn’t take the oath! I hope this works without taking the Narrator’s Oath. Just remember to think aloud about what’s happening so it gets written down somewhere.

My fingernails look amazing. Maddie’s dormouse smells like waffles.

Also, waffles are gross. I don’t know what Gus and Helga were going on about.

Cedar: Try not to just think about what you would normally think about, Kitty. Don’t use the word I. Observe what’s happening and think your observations in nice, clean sentences. And make sure after I speak, you aloud-think ‘Cedar said.’

Cedar said.

Kitty Cheshire, the girl formally known as “I,” observed things. She observed that Cedar Wood used to look like a scratching post. But now she was fleshy and soft. And now she was picking fluxberries in every shade from black to green to orange to pink and smooshing them onto big, broad leaves to use as paint. She also seemed more confident than normal, which somehow made Kitty Cheshire feel proud of her.

Kitty Cheshire was really bad at narrating. And the fact that she noticed a flaw in herself worried her. Clearly, Kitty Cheshire was no longer her perfect, indifferent self. Kitty Cheshire had been changed by the Jabberwock’s magic.

Kitty Cheshire was actually starting to care about other people’s Happily Ever Afters.

The change magic was definitely getting stronger.

You followed as Lizzie marched through her heart shaped door with what she hoped was absolutely no fear. But she feared there was fear. The hallway that had been on the other side of the door when they went in was gone.

You had to stay low to avoid hitting your head since you were not as smaller as the Wonderlandians. You were actually quite tall. Perhaps you should buy a top hat. That would be fairy neat.

Instead, you entered a dark and cramped space, the only light trickling down from a dim circle at least thirty feet above your heads. The walls were old stone and slick with mossy slime. It felt for all the world like you were at the bottom of a well.

Lizzie reached behind her to feel the coarse wood of the heart-shaped door. She could go back. Cedar had said she would do it, and queens commanded other people...

Maddie: There are stairs.

Shoved into the wall of the “well” were short wooden struts just wide enough for a foot. If you were very careful, you 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.

Lizzie: Off with its head.

Maddie nodded. You held their hands.

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 space 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 ribbit s 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 illustrations. 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 bumble. 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.

Maddie: That’s good.

Lizzie: 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.

Maddie: That’s bad.

Y/N: Stop talking. You'll draw the Jabberwock.

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 butter 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.

You all 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 tassel legs, stampeded across your path from the right hall to the left.

Y/N: That’s odd.

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

Y/N: Yes. That's the issue here.

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.

Card: Get well soon!

Card: Happy birthday.

Card: I’m so sorry.

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

Card: Happy anniversary?

Maddie: Happy anniversary.

Y/N: Happy 50th.

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

Lizzie: That was close. I was about to say ‘Condolences’ and may have gotten us smooshed inside the card like pressed wildflowers.

You 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 space 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.

Y/N: Maybe we should go a different way. This seems way too creepy to be safe.

Lizzie: Laughing things are never dangerous.

The ball stopped laughing.

Lizzie: You! 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?

Lizzie: No hugs!

She was more certain than ever that she was not a hugger. Hugging you was a fluke.

Maddie: You two had a moment too? Why, now I just feel left out.

Y/N: I know that smell. That used to be the peas porridge in the pot nine days old. No way I’m eating it now.

Lizzie: No way I was eating it then.

Porridge: Hugs!

“Hugs?” other voices whispered. The bowls lifted up like half of an oyster shell.

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

Lizzie: Do something! Narrate us out of this!

Maddie: That’s not how it works!

The Porridge began to whimper.

Pirridge: Hugs…

Maddie: Poor thing.

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.

Porridge: Can’t catch me, can’t catch me!

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

Porridge: Whee!

It slammed 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. You quickly kicked it away.

Lizzie: Shrinking potion! Give me one now, Maddie!

Maddie pulled off her hat, rummaging through the contents.

Maddie: I don’t....

But you 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 when you caught her. She handed Maddie the hat.

Lizzie: Right! That is about enough of that. You! Table!

She shouted at the furniture shivering against the walls.

Lizzie: Get up!

The table got up.

Lizzie: Go there.

The table started to move.

Lizzie: Wait! 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.

Lizzie: Now!

The tables, chairs, benches, and one wiry little stool trotted to their assigned places.

Y/N: A maze! You made a maze, Lizzie!

Maddie: A-mazing! Hee-hee.

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

Lizzie: Now, shrinking potion.

Maddie: Oh nose, it broke.

At her feet lay pieces of glass and several dozen tiny shoes for every occasion.

Maddie: It spilled on my shoe collection. Now I’ll have to make an army of little me-dolls just to keep using them.

Y/N: Of course it broke. Why would a single thing go our way?

Lizzie: Ugh!  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!

Maddie: I think the wall agrees with you. It wiggled when you were talking.

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

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

Y/N: Of course it is. I have an idea.

You stepped forward, looking up.

Y/N: School! 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.

Maddie: You could’ve asked nicer.

Lizzie: Directness gets results.

There was no time for lollygagging.

That peas porridge could escape the maze at any moment, or those greeting card abominations might return.

Y/N: Watch as we walk comfortably left to right as civil people should.

You 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 you 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.

Maddie: What is it?

Maddie asked out of curiously, even though she had just narrated it.

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

Maddie crouched and crept behind Lizzie, reading the words aloud. You and Lizzie looked at each other with raised brows.

Maddie: ‘… 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.

Lizzie: All right, then. I’m closing my eyes, School! Take us to the library!

With eyes closed, you continued your crouched walk. The Narrator could no longer see what Lizzie or you were doing, but she could hear the rasping noise of her shoulder as it dragged along the wall. On you 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 you.

Flappy things brushed by you. Your 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.

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

Lizzie: We’re there. 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. You couldn’t even see the ceiling, but you could stretch out your hands and touch both walls at the same time. In the narrow space between, books fluttered, hovered, and dived; glided, nested, and cooed. None of the books sat quietly on the shelves where they belonged.

Lizzie: Hedgehog droppings.

Maddie: There are thousands of books in here. Maybe millions.

Y/N: Finding the one we want might be imposs....

Lizzie: Don’t say it. Never say that word.

Maddie slapped her hand over your mouth. What was wrong with you?

You’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 fists on her hips 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.

Lizzie: Hello, everyone!

Lizzie shouted, leaping up on a nearby table.

Lizzie: 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. Or when you would try to get the students under control.

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 title read, Wonderland Through the Ages.

Lizzie: Good book.

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 butterflies and pixies, Lizzie was papered with books.

You couldn't help but smile. She looked like the princess she actually was. And I will stop right there because this is getting too personal.

Lizzie: Here! The rest of you are dismissed.

She felt again a warm, gooey surge in her middle that was probably something common and unroyal like gratitude. Perhaps her mother wouldn’t approve, but Lizzie cleared her throat.

Lizzie: Thank you.

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

Y/N: ‘ Rich Descriptions of Amazing Places for the Curious Agoraphobe.' What’s an agoraphobe?

Lizzie: I don’t know. It just seemed right.

You flipped through, finding a chapter describing the Tumtum Grove of Wonderland.

Y/N: We should get this to Cedar. I’m worried we’ve been gone too long.

Lizzie waved her hand at the comment.

Lizzie: Oh, Kitty isn’t that irritating. I’m sure she and Cedar have gotten along just fine.

Y/N: I meant the Jabberwock. And it wanting to get you and…and Maddie's…

Lizzie became aware that Maddie was quavering in the unsettling way that often meant someone was either about to weep or lash out like an army of sharp-toothed and singularly grumpy fairies. Both outcomes were equally unwanted, so Lizzie put a hand on Maddie’s shoulder and squeezed softly. She had a speech prepared about the dangers of ill-timed weeping and the awkwardness of fairy violence, but Maddie surprised her by giving her a sudden hug.

You smiled as you watched Maddie hug her back.

Maddie: Thanks, Lizzie.

Lizzie: You’re welcome.

Lizzie felt that warm gooeyness filling her core.

What was happening to her? She let go of Maddie and lifted her chin in the air.

Lizzie: Let’s go save the day.

Whoo-hoo!.....