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Shimmering and sparkling depths reflected not Darling’s face, but blinding rays of light, radiant in the deep dark night of the new moon. A bright, liquid rainbow gleamed and glimmered at the Charming princess from the bottom of an abandoned-looking well, its stones crooked and its mortar mossy. Wafting scents of tangy zest and sharp freshness swirled lazily through the air, hovering above the well in an invisible cloud, undetectable until you were in it, where it hit you with its full strength.
It was intoxicating.
Was it any surprise that an adventurous, craving, trapped and clamoring soul such as Darling’s found the pull irresistible?
And then she was falling
down,
down,
down.
Down the Well of Wonder.
- - - - - - -
The damp surface beneath Darling was hard and chilly. She blinked her eyes open, taking in gray tunnel walls, the water rushing in a canal to her left projecting wavering multicolored light onto the dripping stone slabs around her. Beneath the dank atmosphere, an aftertaste of saccharine sugar coated her tongue and stuck to the roof of her mouth.
Pushing herself up, she saw that her simple exercise clothes were dyed and decorated by the Wonder in the water, and her white running shoes glowed in the dimness.
“That’s odd,” she muttered, brushing off her joggers.
Deafening silence answered her, with no hint of an echo to alleviate it.
“You look lost,” a sultry voice murmured in her ear.
An absolutely gorgeous woman appeared at Darling’s side, lavender hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, exposing the sharp angles of her face that bordered on inhuman. Her purple lips pulled into a wide grin, the points of her canines catching the light in a distracting fashion. Her resemblance to a certain classmate of Darling’s was uncanny.
“Cheshire Cat, at your service,” she purred. “You could say I’m the resident… guide.”
“If you’re anything like your daughter,” Darling said. “I’m hardly going to take your word for it.”
The Cheshire Cat’s green eyes widened briefly, but she quickly smoothed out her expression.
“Ouch,” she delicately rested her fingertips on her collarbone. “Kitty’s still up to no good, then?”
“Why don’t you go ask her yourself,” Darling snapped, beginning to walk away. “If I found a way in, you can find your way out.”
“By that logic, princess, if I found my way here,” the Cheshire Cat smirked, “then you should be just fine finding a way out. Best of luck!”
She disappeared, her smile lingering a second longer than the rest of her.
“Ugh!” Darling stomped down the tunnel, pausing when the path forked in several twisting directions, not all of them obeying the laws of gravity.
The Cat’s sarcastic well-wishing echoed in her ear.
“No,” Darling shook her head. “I got this.”
She began walking upstream.
The water had to be coming from a source, after all.
- - - - - - -
Darling’s feet squished once more over springy mushrooms growing in the moist environment of underground Wonderland. If nothing else, this gave her fond and exasperated memories of a similar problem cropping up in Ever After High’s halls. She drew up short when, once again, she found herself passing by the same scattered gears of a gutted stopwatch strewn on the floor.
The twisting sense of wrongness sinking into her stomach wound tighter.
Perhaps it was time to listen to the tales.
Darling plucked a mushroom growing between flagstones and took a hesitant bite out of it, grimacing at the texture as she chewed. Blood rushed to her head, her surroundings stretching around her in a dizzying fashion. Shaking her head to clear it, she found herself swelling like a balloon, drifting on air currents in her enlarged form. She was buffeted about, bouncing off walls, newfound inflatedness absorbing the impact without consequence. At last, in a great rush, she was flung up a vertical tunnel, shooting out of the ground and faceplanting in the dirt.
She landed near a thorny bush, an extended twig puncturing her, and she deflated back to normal. She lay there, stunned, watching green-tinted clouds swirl above her, appearing closer than they should. A bitter aftertaste settled on her tongue from the sugar-scented air.
Gathering her wits, she staggered to her feet, clutching her head.
“Ow,” she groaned, freshly unsquishable body feeling every spot where a pebble had dug into it.
Suddenly noticing how closely she had been laying to the hole she’d emerged from, she scrambled backwards.
“Fairy-cursed-godmother,” Darling exhaled.
A rocking-horsefly bobbed through the air, past her surprised face.
She had fallen into Wonderland.
- - - - - - -
She wandered for hours before stumbling to a halt, fatigued beyond words.
The edges of her vision had turned fuzzy about a half hour ago, and she seemed to keep glimpsing flashes of color in the corner of her eye.
She stood under the shade of several stripy trees, a kind she’d only ever seen pictures of. Slightly off center in the tumtum grove, a sword’s hilt stuck out from a tree’s trunk.
Darling blinked.
Dragging her reluctantly moving feet over, she grasped the hilt, pulling with all her remaining strength. The sword slid out with no resistance, and she fell straight onto her back, air knocked out of her lungs.
Short of breath, she lay under the cursed sky, dizzy and woozy. A Charming princess, in stretchy pants and a torn T-shirt, lying on Wonderlandian grass a foot away from a sword and desperately in need of a shower. Darling started giggling.
If only people could see her now.
She hummed absent-mindedly, scrabbling to take hold of the sword. She gripped it by the blade, ignoring how it sliced into her palms, and brought the sword to rest on her chest with bleeding hands.
She laughed.
Her vision greened.
When the green dissipated, Darling felt unsteady and it took her several seconds to notice a figure with long ears holding a knife above her.
“Bunny Rabbit?” she said earnestly, voice rough. “Why do you have a knife?”
“I’m a hare, actually,” the hare said, sheathing its weapon. “We need to get you higher up before this has time to settle into permanence.”
Darling tried to speak but all that emerged was a rasping croak, her vocal cords having somehow been strained.
“Okay,” the hare took a step forward, and everything turned green once more.
Darling came back to herself winded and on bruised knees, the hare eyeing her warily.
“Hi,” she wheezed, throat aching.
“I take it you’re out of the Craze for the time being?” the hare asked, gloved hands raised defensively.
The side of its raincoat was slashed and bloody.
Darling eyed the sword in her hand, trying to decide if the blood on it was solely from the cuts on her palms or not.
She tried to stand, only to tip over onto her side.
“Alright,” the hare hefted her weakly protesting form over its furry shoulder. “Let’s go.”
It dragged her limp body, huffing and puffing its way out of the grove. Darling’s chin dug into its back and her shins bounced against the rocky ground of the steep slope they wound up. The hare valiantly fought through the coughing that afflicted both of them as they hit the low-hanging fog about an hour later, and it collapsed moments after they emerged into cleaner air.
Darling staggered to her feet, promptly threw up, then fainted as undaintily as she could.
- - - - - - -
Darling opened her eyes, a surprisingly soft surface beneath her. Looking around, she found herself on the couch of a small house, the furniture low to the ground and built for non-human proportions.
A buck-toothed hare, grayer than the one who’d no doubt brought her here, was rocking in a homemade rocking chair. He held an empty teacup and a crumby butter knife that he had clearly wiped on his waistcoat at some point, and a small fedora with holes for his ears perched on his head.
The other hare entered the room, a cup of tea in its now ungloved hand, which it placed on the coffee table in front of Darling.
“Welcome to the March ancestral home,” it said.
Darling gestured at the comatose hare in the chair in question.
“My cousin,” the hare said sadly.
The March Hare looked at them with glassy eyes, ears pressed flat against his head.
His eyes were unnaturally green.
“The curse,” Darling realized. “Is he safe to be around?”
“Once removed from the lowlands, yes,” the hare said. “Although, Wonderstorms are still an issue.”
It nodded at the window, where faint green mist gathered.
“That’s a pretty good sign that it’s about to rain,” it said. “Which means the environment will reawaken the Craze in him. Help me move him.”
Darling aided the hare in moving its cousin to a room padded by blankets and bare of furniture. They then retreated to the living room to share some tea, studiously ignoring the muffled thuds from behind the locked door that began soon after the storm.
Outside, toxic clouds roiled and hissed, lighting up with flashes of electricity, and thunder boomed. Darling watched the tinted raindrops hit the window panes, sliding off and leaving sizzling trails. A bandersnatch ran by, hide scalded by roiling drops, eyes glowing green as it churned up the mud underfoot.
Darling shuddered.
“It will pass rather quickly,” the hare assured her. “The highlands are mostly safe, especially if you have a roof over your head. Most poisoned people stick to the always infected areas, even when the curse rises upwards briefly. And the Craze you get through the storms is relatively mild, not to mention temporary.”
“What about the burns?” Darling said.
“Those last a bit longer,” it said. “If you leave, I’d recommend some kind of protective gear.”
She nodded, and they traded no more words as they sipped their tea and nibbled on their sandwiches.
- - - - - - -
Darling spent several weeks in the March Hare’s house. The Evil Queen was rumored to be back in town, and the Manxome Foe had been pushed through a portal to its homeland, so they avoided going outside for more than supply runs. Every meal was scavenged teatime, and every hour of downtime was passed playing chess and cards. Darling’s ability to shuffle had much improved.
What began the end of her stay was the moment she thought to ask where the sword she’d picked up was. The hare hemmed and hawed before admitting to stowing it in the basement in case of a Jabberwock attack.
“It’s that close?” Darling asked.
“It stays well away from the Curse, as even Wild things succumb to it eventually, so it stands to reason that it’s nearby,” the hare said.
Without saying a thing, Darling pivoted on her heel and descended the basement stairs.
In addition to the sword, which had to be the Vorpal Sword for the hare to be so protective of it in the face of a potential Jabberwock encounter, there was a suit of mildly rusted armor, perfect to defend against rain and claw.
“I’m taking this,” Darling said to the hare, who’d followed her down, and began donning the armor.
It fit well enough, all things considered. The cuirass hung a bit loose and the faulds were tight at her hips, but her movements were fluid as she raised her gauntlet-enveloped hands to lower the armet’s visor.
“You’re insane,” said the hare.
“No,” Darling said, grinning from behind the helmet. “I’m just the right amount of mad.”
- - - - - - -
Tracking had never been Darling’s strong suit.
She huffed, annoyed as she lost the trail once more.
Then, as the direction of the breeze shifted, the smell of rot hit her.
She swung her gaze to and fro, until the glint of a pocket watch caught her eye.
A wave of nausea rolled through her.
Hidden in the undergrowth were decaying bodies, broken and bloodied.
“Hello, Fwend,” burbled a voice behind her, before she could even begin processing the sight in front of her.
Darling turned around and felt her knees wobble.
An enormous winged monster touched down on the ground from where it had been hovering up above. Its body, long and sinewy as a sea serpent, was covered in razor-sharp scales. Its six legs ended in feet that were more like hands, each foot having two of its seven clawed toes serving as opposable thumbs. Its many eyes were varied in size, all colored a pearlescent white, and its crooked maw was filled with teeth that were round and heavy as grindstones. Its mouth was made for breaking bone, its talons made for rending flesh, its dexterous paws made for crushing the life out of other beings.
And the only reason she was alive was because it didn’t know she was capable of being a threat.
Darling had few precious, precious moments to act before it spotted the weapon at her side, and so she drew it and swung it in one swift motion.
The Vorpal Blade went snicker-snack.
One slash. Two.
And Darling cleaved the Jabberwocky's head from its snakey neck.
Silver lifeblood sprayed from the stump, showering Darling’s armor. The ichor slid off to the ground, bleaching the metal to a ghastly bone white and withering the grass at her feet. The sword now glowed silver, no longer possessing a blue-purple coloring, as it had absorbed the blood it had come into contact with.
The Jabberwock fell, both spiked head and barbed body thudding to the ground, and she left it there to decompose alongside the carcasses of its nameless victims.
- - - - - - -
Darling stared through the fence bordering Wonderland High.
She rubbed her eyes.
The view didn’t change.
Kitty, Lizzie, Maddie, Briar, Apple, and Raven were running from a pack of card soldiers and a Red Knight.
What the hex.
She had come here to seek refuge, or perhaps employment. She’d never considered she’d find a potential way home.
She climbed the fence, grateful for her armor even as it weighed her down, for it protected her from the myriad of hooks and barbs. She landed on her feet with a clank, between the girls and the cards, and drew the Vorpal Sword.
It glowed silver, and the people surrounding her gasped in recognition.
“They are cutting class, fellow knight,” the Red Knight said, barely-concealed awe in his voice. “As Attendance Officer, I bid you, stand aside.”
“I claim this knight as my champion,” Lizzie declared. “And we challenge you for the right to see the Vice-Principal.”
Darling gave a sharp nod, and Maddie and Kitty inhaled between clenched teeth with a hissing whistle.
“Guys?” Raven asked.
“Narrator stuff,” Maddie said. “We can trust him.”
“Very well,” the Red Knight said. “En garde!”
Their blades met with a clash of steel.
- - - - - - -
After watching the girls get condemned to detention, Darling rushed to the Hearts palace, Lizzie’s pleas for her to check in on her mother spurring her onwards. It was a grueling run, but she gritted her teeth and endured. She stumbled when she arrived, a disembodied voice echoing through her mind.
The girls that fell to Wonderland froze
An intense chill set in as she was escorted to the throne room, fighting with inertia the whole way, and once she’d reached there she felt stuck in place. But she could still speak, and so she was mid-warning to the queen when eight figures appeared out of nowhere.
No sparks, no sounds, no fanfare.
One moment they were not there, and the next they were, just like that.
And she couldn’t move. In fact, of the involuntarily teleported people, it appeared that only the straggler wasn’t bound in magical restraints. The Red Knight could still act. And, much to the Jester’s chagrin, he did.
- - - - - - -
On Maddie’s insistence, the knight they’d met along the way joined the six girls (plus Alistair, Chase and Bunny) on their journey back through the tear in realities, stepping out with them onto the scorched floor of the Grimmnasium.
Grimm stood there, alongside Baba Yaga, Mother Goose, the White Queen and Gepetto, a disapproving frown on his face.
“You better have a good explanation for this,” he said threateningly. “Conspiring with either the Evil Queen or the Rebels will have extreme consequences.”
“You’re lucky we hadn’t sealed this one yet,” Baby Yaga informed them clinically. “We’re monitoring portals very closely after the two rebellious forces fought whilst jumping between.”
“Speaking of which.” Grimm scribbled something down with his golden quill, and the tear collapsed in on itself with a sad squelch.
“You realize that converting this tear into a stable portal was what allowed the Evil Queen’s forces and the rebels to move their battle from Wonderland to our school in the first place?” Gepetto said in a disappointed tone.
Raven hung her head.
“I requested she do it,” Lizzie came to her defense.
“Regardless, I see you brought illegal immigrants with you,” Grimm said. “The son of Alice, the daughter of the White Rabbit, and some Red Knight are acceptable, but who is this freelancer?”
“This freelancer can be trusted,” Maddie said. “He carries the Vorpal Blade, and has felled the Manxome Foe.”
“Then he won’t mind removing his helmet,” Mother Goose said. “Being so trustworthy and everything.”
Darling slowly took it off, and her tangled hair tumbled down to frame her face. Her white gold hair was now streaked with pale silver and blue. She was unsure of when that had happened.
Lizzie, Briar, Raven and Apple gasped.
"You are of Wonderland now,” Mrs. Her Majesty the White Queen murmured. “It has marked you as its own."
“Miss Charming,” Grimm turned red. “What is the meaning of this? You disappear for over a month, and return in such an unbecoming state?”
“One moment, Milton,” Mrs. Her Majesty the White Queen said. “Darling, your blade.”
Darling mutely handed over the Vorpal Sword.
“Kneel.”
She got to her knees.
“Do you swear allegiance to the White Pieces?” Mrs. Her Majesty the White Queen asked, placing the sword on Darling’s shoulder.
“I do,” she said.
“Rise, Darling Charming,” the queen commanded. “White Knight of Wonderland, Slayer of the Jabberwocky.”
The sword resting on Darling’s bone-colored armor lifted, and with it, a rush of magic flowed through it like an electrical surge, shocking Darling to her feet. The armor brightened, shifting and adjusting, tailoring itself to fit perfectly, molding itself for its new purpose; servicing a knight of Wonderland.
Milton Grimm annotated something with his golden quill on a piece of parchment, meeting Darling’s eyes, anger replaced with a calculating gaze.
“White Knight,” he said. “We welcome you into our hallowed halls, in preparation for your heroic destiny.”
He emphasized the final word, staring Darling down.
“I am bending the rules for you, Miss Charming,” the headmaster said. “I can always straighten them back out.”
Darling inclined her head, hair falling in front of her face in a streaked curtain, hiding her defiant expression.
Sometimes the best tactic was lying in wait.