A Red So Wild
Contributed by Frankie Jo Blooding
Really, it came down to one of two choices: remain in the castle as a veritable prisoner or wander this crazy land in search of a child.
Red opted for the latter.
Muggs met her at the large front door to the castle, her white feather and lace dress immaculate, a white and silver parasol in hand.
Red stopped, her boots clicking a fine clomp on the gray tiles. “I had thought we were on a mission to save a child, sister, not an outing to the garden.”
Muggs winced a pretty smile but looked deeper into the large room behind them. “This is Wonderland, sister, not the English countryside.”
Red rolled her eyes and gestured to the door. “Shouldn’t we be going, then?”
“Not quite as yet.” Muggs took in a large breath and let it out. “You need a guide.”
“A guide?” Red smoothed her scarlet leather tunic over her dark pants. It felt quite remarkable to be in pants again. She wasn’t entirely sure why her sister had relegated them to the Victorian era of fashion, but Red much preferred the twentieth century, thank you very much. “Are you afraid you’ll get lost? I thought these were your lands by design, though I don’t understand what that means entirely.”
“They are, but I am not going with you, if you must know.” Muggs paced away. “I have other things to attend to, dreamers to take back home and such.”
“Oh,” Red said, pulling her head back, her hands out, a dark twisting of inferiority spiraling like a vacuum in her chest. “Lah-dee.”
Muggs let her parasol fall as she slumped her shoulders. “Oh, Dot.”
Red rolled her eyes and headed for the open door.
“How are you going to find the child on your own?”
Red didn’t stop. “I’ll figure it out, I suppose. Or I won’t. Either way.”
“Dottie!”
Red stopped and thumped her fist against the metal door. Why did she pause? Why did she care? The best part of feeling nothing was not caring. Not caring. So, why wasn’t she leaving?
“Am I la’e to the party?” a man asked behind her.
Red turned and saw a man in brown trousers and a green jacket with long tails. His dark hair curled up and around the brim of his wide-topped hat.
He raised dark eyebrows at the White Queen.
She flattened her lips and tipped her head in Red’s direction.
He pushed his shoulders back and bowed with a flourish of his hat. “Hatter, at your service.”
Red blinked coolly. “Your name is Hatter.”
“No.” He straightened and put his hat back on. “But it’s wha’ I allow people t’ call me.”
“And what would your real name be?”
“Would ya prefer I called you by your real name, or by the name ya chose for ye’self?” His dark eyes held hers.
A corner of her lips rose in a half smile. “Indeed.” She turned to her sister. “Can we be off now? Or must we wait for an entire circus to join us?”
“I’m the only guide you’ll require.” Hatter brushed past Red on his way out the door. “Now, then, if you’re quite ready, I’d say we should be off. Yeah?”
A full smile found its way across her lips as she followed, a slight saunter to her gait. “Where are we going?”
He stopped at the last silver step and scoped out the countryside.
The bulbous trees from earlier were gone, leaving a rolling hillside landscape of green grass and tall flowers of varying colors, mostly yellows, reds, and blues. Bugs flew about, buzzing from one flower to the next.
Hatter clucked his tongue then cleared his throat. He pointed to his left. “In that kind o’ direction, I think. Yeah. It should do.”
Red frowned and headed in the direction he pointed. “Do you know, are you guessin’, or is this some fragile attempt to ‘save’ me?”
He gave her a rakishly cocky grin as he passed her. “Why in the world would I want t’ save you? I quite like ya the way ya are.”
“That would make you the first,” she muttered under her breath.
They walked over quite a few hills when she saw another castle on the horizon, but off to their right. “What is that?”
He glanced at it, but didn’t alter his course. “Tha’d be your castle should you wanna take it.” He frowned. “You’re sister is one strange apple.”
Red threw her head back and laughed, something strange and light filling her chest. “In that, we can agree.”
He sidestepped a particularly large flower that roared at his passing knee. “You should do tha’ more often.”
“What?”
His lips curled as he shot her a look over his shoulder. “Smile.”
She scoffed at him, but her smile remained. She paid attention the flowers they passed, listening to them chatter and yell at they passed. “What is this place, anyway?”
“Dreamland? Or this tiny island o’ it?”
She dodged a wide bush of magenta horn flowers. They plucked at her tunic as each trumpet blew at her, filling the air with noise and ranker. She had to raise her voice to be heard. “Yes.”
Once past the tangle of trumpet flowers, they shushed, the air almost ringing with quiet.
He held his hand out for a pixie that passed by.
The little thing, no bigger than a large dragonfly, was the brightest, clearest blue Red had ever seen. The little thing chittered and carried a fuss, tossing glitter this way and that. A small poof of it rose when she stomped her foot. Red leaned in to see if she could understand the daft, little thing, but was disappointed to discover she could not.
“Hmm,” Hatter said, then lifted his hand with a slight bounce.
The pixie flew off in quite the huff and nearly knocked a flying rocking horse out of the air.
Red stared at the buzzing bit of equine wood in consternation. What was her sister thinking to create something as ridiculous as that? “What did she say?”
“What would ya like answered first? The bit about the world? Or the bit about the pixie?”
She narrowed her eyes and pressed her lips together.
He smirked and continued. “Well, this here’s Dreamland. What that means to the likes o’ us is that we’re meant to protect the dreamers.”
A bitter tang covered her tongue and singed her throat. “I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not the kind that protects poor, innocent, little children.”
“Yeah. Knew about that already. That daft sister o’ yours won’t hear none about it, though. Says you’ll come to yer own soon enough.”
Red cupped the head of a singing, yellow rose. “So, why are you in Dreamland? What do you do?”
“Well, we’re not real sure about that, really. All we really know is that I came on m’ own. I’m not a dustman like her.” He held out one hand as if representing the sides of a scale. “And I’m not a dreamer. More’n that, we just don’ know.”
She frowned, watching the forest they approached. Long, spindly arms pierced the air. Gaping maws hung open along their wide trunks. The roots didn’t move, didn’t shake, or quake, or give any other indication of living.
“The dreamplanes, as the people what actually live here call ‘em, are built from the imagination of their dustman. In this case, that’s yer sister. However, apparently, this one’s a bit different in the fact that we seem to be gatherin’ the likes of you and me. Those what don’t belong nowhere else, but they can’t seem to get rid of either.”
“Where did you come from?”
He shot her a long, dark look over his shoulder as he breached the perimeter of the wood. “From nowhere.”
“The accent?”
“Always had it.”
Right. “If you didn’t want to tell me, all you had to say was it was none of my business.”
He turned back to watch his progress. “I would never be so rude. No. I simply don’t remember, is all. Now, you asking leaves me with a funny feeling like you do remember where you come from.”
She didn’t reply for a long moment, but finally nodded.
“Right like. I read ya. The White Queen mentioned they’d tried to make a nightmare of ya. Didn’t take, I see?”
Her hand trembled slightly as heat found its way to her cheeks. “I’m not the nicest person I’ve ever met, but I couldn’t become that dark.” She didn’t want to admit out loud that she’d failed because she was too dark to be a nightmare, that there was no light of hope in her rock of a heart.
“Hmm,” he said. “Well, and I read ya there, too.” He stopped.
She skidded, nearly falling into him.
He stayed where he stood and didn’t move. “Red, do me a favor.”
She raised her chin and looked him warily. “What?”
“You decide right now. Are ya saving that child, or are ya saving ye’self?”
Red ran her tongue along her molars.
“Because what we’re about t’ do can’t be done if you’re only in it fer yeself.”
In the short span since she’d met this man, slight shifts of emotion had rattled through her existence, but even she doubted it was enough to say she cared about some nameless, faceless, lost child.
He nodded, his lips flat. “That’s what I thought. Ye’d best work on that. Otherwise, the dream lords are gonna find ya, and this time, there’ll be no escapin’.”
The story continues in Frankie Jo’s Storyland on Substack, a reading app where authors share stories, chapters to new books, author and character interviews, articles, and more! Continue reading A Red So Wild Parts 1 & 2 at https://fjblooding.substack.com/.