The Clockwork Alice by DeAnna Knippling

Author:DeAnna Knippling [Knippling, DeAnna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: steampunk, historical fantasy, dark fantasy, mystery, robots, wonderland, alice
Publisher: Wonderland Press
Published: 2017-02-28T07:00:00+00:00

Afterword

Where did the Alice in Wonderland books end? Did they end when Reverend Dodgson was expelled, as it were, from the Liddell house? Did they end after the second book, written when Alice was altogether too grown-up and ladylike for such things?

Or did they end with the picture that the Reverend Dodgson gave Alice for her wedding to Reginald Hargreaves?

Did they end when Alice, now an adult and finally out from under her mother’s thumb, failed to repair her relationship with the don? Did they end when she named her son Carryl, then denied that his naming had anything to do with her old friend?

Did they end on those nights that Alice would be unable to sleep, and would stand in front of the picture for hours, trying to work up the courage to go through?

Did they end when the Mainspring wound down, or when the false Reverend Dodgson was beheaded?

Or do they end when you close this book?

· · ·

Alice stumbled out of the throne room filled with frozen clockwork: the daylit Wonderlandians, the moonlit Wonderlandians, the palace itself. She appeared to be the only one still capable of movement, or life, or thought.

The sun had resumed its path through the sky, and the rays of sun had finally begun to descend the tower in the center of the palace. The shifting shadows made it seem as though the frozen statues were moving in the corner of her eye.

She wandered the glass-topped Mainspring, looking into its depths: it was still slowly moving inside, the metal ribbons unwinding from their center slowly, then with a sudden jerk that made the ribbons swish against each other, then slowly again.

What was the meaning of all this?

She had put Reverend Dodgson on trial and found him false.

She did not wish to be here any longer, but hadn’t the slightest idea of how to depart: finally she stopped where she was and waited for the sun to touch her. It didn’t take long. It bathed her in golden light: and then she was gone.

· · ·

She did not return home, but to a giant cherry tree whose branches were heavy with fruit. A court had been held there; she knew it by the wooden throne that had been grown into the trunk. Hearts had been carved into the bark: RQ marked the center of each.

The leaves of the tree seemed to be turning yellow—the machinery of life could be unwound, just as sure as that of a mechanical watch. The leaves rustled in the breeze and fell in a lazy golden drizzle; otherwise, the tree was silent.

Death. She had faced it often enough before: her sister Edith…her father…Reverend Dodgson…her first love, Leopold…and more, always more. Things were always becoming unwound.

Would she ever know what had happened here? Had Reverend Dodgson really switched places with a clockwork version of himself? She had been fooled by a clockwork version: why not all of England?

Who had been behind the plot of the Great Unwinding? The Pocket-Watch, with

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