Maggie landed on a table.

  More specifically, she landed in a teacup the size of a bathtub, splashing warm liquid everywhere. She sputtered, flailing, and managed to grab the rim before she drowned in what smelled like chamomile.

  Wait—bathtub-sized? She looked at her hands. Normal-sized. Somehow, during the fall, she'd returned to her regular proportions.

  "Oh my," a voice said. "It's raining guests."

  She pulled herself over the edge of the cup and flopped onto the table—an enormous thing that stretched in both directions farther than she could see, covered in teacups, half-eaten cakes, and candles that burned in colors she didn't have names for.

  A man sat at what might have been the head of the table. He wore a massive top hat with a price tag still attached reading "10/6", and his eyes were slightly too large for his face.

  "Tea?" he asked, already pouring into a cup that was somehow already full. The liquid overflowed, but instead of spilling onto the table, it flowed upward into the air and formed a small cloud.

  "I—what—"

  Jay crashed down beside her, landing face-first in a pile of scones.

  "Ow," he groaned, lifting his head. Crumbs stuck to his face. "That was not a smooth landing."

  "Two guests!" The man clapped his hands. "Wonderful! But you're late, you know. Very late. Or very early. It's hard to tell when time refuses to behave." He pulled out a pocket watch, frowned at it, and dunked it in his tea. "There. That should fix it. Or break it further. Same thing, really."

  "Where are we?" Maggie asked, getting to her feet.

  Mark landed on the table with considerably more grace, Locke beside him and the eagle settling on his shoulder. He looked around, took in the scene, and sighed.

  "Hatter."

  "Mark!" The Hatter's face split into a grin. "It's been ages! Or minutes. Possibly both. Time is a suggestion here, you know. A very rude suggestion that I choose to ignore."

  "I know."

  "Tea?"

  "No."

  "Excellent! I'll pour you some anyway." He produced a teapot from nowhere and filled a cup that materialized in Mark's hand. Mark stared at it, then set it down without drinking. The tea in the cup sighed audibly.

  "You've hurt its feelings," the Hatter said sadly. "Tea has feelings, you know. This particular tea is quite sensitive. It's chamomile—very emotional."

  "Hatter. Where's Alice?"

  "Alice? Alice!" The Hatter cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted down the length of the infinite table. "ALICE! YOU HAVE VISITORS! RUDE ONES WHO WON'T DRINK THEIR TEA!"

  "I'm right here."

  A woman rose from a chair that Maggie could have sworn was empty a moment ago. She was maybe mid-twenties, with blonde hair that fell past her shoulders and blue eyes. She wore a dress that shifted colors as she moved, settling on pale blue when she stood still.

  Then she saw Mark, and smiled.

  "Mark." She walked toward them, and Maggie noticed that her feet didn't quite touch the table surface. "It's been a while."

  "Has it?" Mark's voice softened slightly. Just slightly.

  "Three years, two months, and sixteen days." Alice stopped in front of him, studying his face. "You look the same. You always look the same. It's very annoying."

  "So do you."

  "Flatterer." She turned to look at Maggie and Jay, curiosity brightening her eyes. "So these are the new strays? The Cheshire Cat told me you were coming."

  "Maggie. Jay." Mark gestured vaguely. "They're... learning."

  "Learning." Alice's smile widened. "How fun. I remember when you were learning." She picked up a teacup and took a sip. "You were very bad at it. Kept falling through the floor."

  "That was a long time ago."

  "Was it? Time is so strange here." She tilted her head—too far, neck bending at an angle that made Maggie wince. "I remember other things too. That night by the Tulgey Wood. The Queen's garden. The—"

  "Alice."

  "Fine, fine. I'll behave." But her eyes sparkled with mischief. She took another sip of tea from her cup, which was now somehow empty despite her just drinking from it. "For now."

  Maggie watched this exchange with growing confusion. "Wait. You two...?"

  "Old friends," Mark said quickly.

  "Very old friends," Alice added, in a tone that suggested friendship wasn't quite the right word. She reached over and brushed something off Mark's shoulder that Maggie couldn't see. The gesture was intimate. Familiar.

  "How does that even work?" Maggie's brain was trying to catch up. "Can she get... you know... pregnant?"

  Mark's expression went flat. He clearly didn't want to continue this line of discussion.

  Alice, however, seemed delighted by the question. "Oh, that's a fun topic!" She set down her empty cup, which immediately refilled itself. "The short answer is no. Not in the way you're thinking. The Dreamscape doesn't work like that."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You can imagine yourself pregnant, certainly. Feel the weight, the changes, all of it. Some people do—it's a way of processing things, I suppose." Alice's voice was matter-of-fact, like she was explaining the weather. "But nothing is ever born. The pregnancy just... continues. Forever. Or until you stop imagining it."

  Maggie tried to wrap her head around that. An eternal pregnancy with no birth. It sounded like a nightmare.

  "So no new life can be created here?" Jay asked. His tone was a bit too interested.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  "Life? That's a complicated word." Alice considered this. "You can create beings. Constructs. Things that walk and talk and seem alive. But they're not really alive—they're just very detailed imaginations. Unless..." She glanced at Mark. "Well, unless you're very, very good. And very, very patient."

  Jay's eyes lit up. "Wait, so does that mean... I could create my own waifu?"

  "Jay." Mark's voice was cold. "Don't."

  "But—"

  "You'd imagine some abomination based on whatever anime nonsense is in your head, it would come out wrong, and it would probably try to kill you. Or worse." Mark's voice went flat. "And if you try, I'm not helping you deal with the consequences."

  Jay's enthusiasm deflated instantly.

  "He's right, you know," Alice said cheerfully. "I've seen people try. It never ends well. There was one man who tried to create his ideal woman—she came out with seven arms and a mouth where her stomach should be. Very upsetting for everyone involved." She took another sip of tea. "Especially her."

  Jay looked slightly green.

  He turned to Alice instead, apparently deciding to change the subject. "Hold on. You're Alice? Like, THE Alice? From the story?"

  "The very same." Alice gave a small curtsy. "Though I'm not quite the little girl who fell down the rabbit hole anymore."

  "But—how? You're a character. A fictional character."

  Alice's expression shifted. Something older flickered behind her eyes.

  "I was, once. When I was young—when the story was young—I was just that. A girl following a script, repeating the same adventures over and over." She sat down on the edge of the table, legs dangling. "But stories age, Jay. They get told and retold, reimagined and reinterpreted. And if a story is old enough, and has been loved enough..." She smiled. "The characters wake up."

  "Wake up?"

  "Become conscious. Aware that we're in the Dreamscape. Aware that we're..." She gestured vaguely. "Fictional. It takes ages, usually. But eventually, we stop being characters and start being... people."

  Maggie tried to wrap her head around that. "So you know you're not real?"

  "I know I started as a story." Alice's voice was calm, matter-of-fact. "But I've been thinking and feeling and making my own choices for a very long time now. Does that make me less real than you?"

  Maggie didn't have an answer.

  "Anyway!" Alice clapped her hands, shifting moods with startling ease. "Let's talk about why you're here."

  "You know why we're here," Mark said. "The Cheshire Cat told you."

  "He told me you needed adventure. A proper quest, with battles and growth and all that." Alice landed back on the table surface, her feet finally touching it. "And I have the perfect thing."

  Jay had recovered from his nausea. "A quest? Like, an actual quest?"

  "The most actual of quests." Alice spread her arms dramatically. "You see, Wonderland has a problem. A Queen-shaped problem."

  "The Queen of Hearts?" Jay's eyes lit up. "She's real too?"

  "Very real. Very tyrannical." Alice's expression darkened slightly, though her tone stayed light. "She rules from her castle at the heart of Wonderland. Off with their heads, all that. It used to be just part of the story—she'd threaten, we'd escape, everyone would reset."

  "But?"

  "But as the story got older, she got... worse. More extreme. Every retelling made her a bit more insane, a bit more cruel." Alice's voice lost some of its playfulness. "Now her executions are real. Permanent."

  "So she's actually dangerous now," Maggie said.

  "Very. She needs to be stopped. And I think you're the ones to do it."

  "Us?" Maggie blinked. "Why us?"

  "Because you're new. Fresh perspectives, fresh imaginations." Alice smiled. "And because I have a proposal. How would you like to be Alice?"

  "What?"

  "A reimagining! A new version of the story. You become Alice—the hero who must navigate Wonderland and defeat the tyrant Queen." She spread her arms dramatically. "It's been done before. The story is flexible enough to accommodate new faces."

  Mark made a noise that might have been a cough.

  Alice's grin widened. "Mark was Alice once."

  "No, I wasn't."

  "You wore the dress and everything."

  "That never happened."

  "I have witnesses. The Hatter remembers."

  "The Hatter is insane."

  "True!" the Hatter called from somewhere down the table—he'd apparently moved without anyone noticing. "But I have an excellent memory for dresses! Blue really isn't your color, Mark! You should try chartreuse!"

  Mark pinched the bridge of his nose.

  Maggie couldn't help but laugh. The image of Mark in a blue dress was too absurd not to.

  "So," Alice continued, ignoring Mark's suffering, "what do you say? The Queen has been particularly tyrannical lately. Someone needs to put an end to her reign."

  Maggie thought about it. A tyrant. Someone who hurt people because she could. Someone who needed to be stopped.

  She thought about her father. About fragments of memory she still couldn't fully access.

  "Yeah," she said. "I'm in."

  Jay pumped his fist. "A quest! An actual quest! With a boss fight and everything!"

  "The King will be pleased," Alice said.

  "King?" Maggie blinked.

  "He woke up too. Sees what she's become." Alice's voice softened. "Spends most of his time trying to pardon people before she can execute them."

  "What's she like?" Jay asked.

  "Terrible. Wonderful. She'll try to take your head off, probably. Very fond of executions." Alice said this cheerfully, like she was describing the weather. "Her castle is at the heart of Wonderland. You'll need to fight through her card soldiers to reach her."

  "I know the way," Mark interrupted. "We'll handle it."

  Alice raised an eyebrow. "Going straight there?"

  "No. They need to level up first." He glanced at Jay. "Literally, in his case."

  "Ah. Training montage." Alice nodded sagely. "Very classic. Very expected." She looked faintly disappointed. "I was hoping for something more chaotic."

  "Chaos comes later."

  "Promise?"

  "Unfortunately."

  Alice clapped her hands together. "Wonderful! Then before you go—" She turned to Maggie, eyes bright. "If you're going to be Alice, you should look the part."

  She snapped her fingers.

  Maggie looked down. Her yellow dress was gone, replaced by a blue one—lighter, shorter, with a white apron. The classic Alice look.

  "What the—" Maggie tugged at the hem. "This is way too short. And where's my dress?"

  "Here." Mark held up the yellow silk, folded neatly. "I'll keep it safe."

  He slipped it into his coat pocket—the whole dress disappearing into a pocket that couldn't possibly hold it.

  "Is that how you pulled out those spears?" Jay asked, staring. "Back when you fought that monster?"

  "Same principle." Mark patted his pocket. "The hardest part of manifesting is creating something from nothing. But if something already exists, you just need to imagine where it goes. I imagine my pocket is bigger on the inside, and then I pull out what I need."

  "That's cheating."

  "That's efficiency."

  Maggie filed that away for later. Useful trick.

  She tugged at the blue dress again. "This is still way too short."

  "It's traditional!" Alice protested.

  "It's barely covering my ass!"

  "Fashion in Wonderland is very progressive."

  "I'm keeping my leggings." Maggie concentrated, and her black leggings shifted to white, matching the apron. "Non-negotiable."

  Alice pouted. "You're ruining the aesthetic."

  "I'm preserving my dignity."

  "Dignity is overrated in Wonderland. I gave mine up years ago." Alice sighed dramatically. "But fine. Keep your leggings. At least the blue suits you."

  "Thanks. I think."

  The Hatter appeared beside them—again, without any apparent movement. "Are you leaving? But you just got here! The tea is still warm! Well, some of it is warm. Some of it is cold. Some of it exists in a state of quantum uncertainty regarding its temperature."

  "We have work to do," Mark said, already moving toward the edge of the table.

  "Work! Such a dreary word." The Hatter pulled out his pocket watch again, which now appeared to be running backward. "Time waits for no one, they say. But that's only because no one has ever properly asked it. Time is very reasonable if you approach it correctly."

  "Goodbye, Hatter."

  "Is it? I find goodbyes to be very similar to hellos, just pointed in the wrong direction." He waved anyway. "Do come back! Bring your heads! All of them! Even the ones that might get removed!"

  Alice walked them to the edge of the table—or floated, rather, her feet never quite touching the surface.

  She pulled Mark into a hug. He stiffened for a moment, then relaxed, one hand briefly touching her back.

  "Be careful," she murmured.

  "I'm always careful."

  "Liar."

  "Sorry to interrupt," a voice purred from nowhere, "but I have news."

  A familiar grin materialized in the air beside them. The Cheshire Cat faded into view, body appearing piece by piece around the smile.

  "Some of the stories that were hunting your strays have given up," the Cat said. "Heard they went to Wonderland and decided it wasn't worth the trouble."

  "Some?" Mark asked, pulling away from Alice.

  "A few are... persistent." The Cat's grin widened. "Just thought you should know."

  Mark's expression didn't change. "I'll deal with it later."

  "Will you? How exciting." The Cat began to fade again, tail first this time. "Do try not to die. It would make things terribly boring."

  The grin lingered a moment longer, then vanished.

  Alice looked at Maggie one last time.

  "Good luck, Alice," she said softly.

  Maggie wasn't sure if Alice was talking to her or to herself.

  Mark jumped off the table, and the world shifted around them.