Free Playing Hearts by W.R. Gingell Page A

my cousin from Sydney. I did finally manage to send
him back into Underland through a particularly inviting puddle, but it was as
though a door that had been rusty and unwilling to budge was now oiled and
gradually widening. I saw Jack more often in mirrors and reflections, and even
his presence in puddles began to grow. I still made faces at him, but during
those two weeks we had become cautiously used to each other, even if we didn’t
particularly like each other; and if it hadn’t been for the Queen I would
probably have taken down all my mirror-covers except the bathroom one.

 
     

     
     
    After that, Jack came back every birthday.
Sometimes it was just to toss a wrapped gift at me and vanish again. Sometimes
it was to pull me into Underland with him and show me somewhere I’d never seen
before. And sometimes it was to spend a week or two wherever I happened to be
living at the time. It always began the same way: a card on my pillow, no
matter where I happened to be living at the time, and then Jack pushing aside
the sheet, towel, or curtain that covered the most convenient reflective
surface. I got used to him, arrogant, selfish, and annoying as he was. I still
saw Hatter and Hare in the ripples and reflections quite often—could call them
up in any reflective surface now—and somehow the real world and Australia began
to feel less real, and my unreal world of Underland began to feel somehow more real. From my twelfth to my eighteenth birthday I spent more time in
Underland than out of it, my foster homes changing with such regularity that at
last they spoke of keeping me in the group home years earlier than normal. I
couldn’t blame them– they thought I was running away. Maybe I was. I don’t
know. All I knew was that, despite the darkness and the feeling of storms
gathering that grew thicker the older I became, Underland felt more like home
than anywhere I’d ever lived.
    When I was with Hatter
and Hare, or Sir Blanc, we were always far away from the Queen. She was never
really far distant, though. There was always the feeling that she could appear
at any time, with her card sharks and casual violence, and cut off someone
else’s hand. When I was with Jack it was more complicated. The Queen was
technically closer—sometimes even on the same floor—but Jack was always a
buffer between us. I was never quite sure whether she knew I was there or not,
and I didn’t really want to know. I was afraid that she did know, and that it
was all a part of her plan for me to be there. And some days I was afraid she
didn’t know, and that when she found out she would kill me and stuff me and put
me in her curio room just like she had done with Sir Blanc’s wits. Me, stuffed
and under glass. Jack singing outside. It didn’t stop me going there, though:
nothing did. My file at the assessor’s office began to grow fat with reports
that said things like: Mabel is bright but disengaged; Mabel does not
connect well with the people in her life; and Mabel’s continued truancy
at school and disinclination to interact with the other children is severely
hampering both her grades and her ability to settle into the school. It
wasn’t long before they sent me to the school counsellor’s office; after that,
the state counsellor; and when that failed, a psychologist. I briefly
considered telling them about Underland—really give them something to take
notes about!—but I had the feeling that it would be much harder to sneak away
from a mental hospital and I didn’t like the idea of being locked up. They
probably wouldn’t let me put covers over the mirrors there, either.
    I did try to be more
careful about how long I spent in Underland at a time. A day here, a weekend
there. I didn’t always visit Hatter and Hare, nor did I always wait for a card
on my pillow that meant I’d been invited. I simply packed my backpack—it was
pretty battered by now, but it still held all my stuff—and splashed through the
nearest