Playing Hearts

P
layin
g

Hea
r
ts

W.R.
Gingell

With
many thanks to Lewis Carroll, whose
Alice
inspired—and continues to
inspire—me.

It started the way it usually starts: with
a card. It was on my pillow that morning when I woke, its red pips showing up
clearly against the whiteness of the pillow-slip. The Jack of Hearts. I knew
exactly who’d left it, and what would be on the back of it; but I turned it
over anyway. It had been such a long time since I’d seen one. It said:
You’re
invited. It’s a very important date. Don’t be late.

Only if I’m honest,
that’s probably not really where it started. Underland: that’s where it
started. Underland. Once you know, it’s like leaping worlds every time you step
over a puddle. In a way, it
is
leaping worlds. It’s not just puddles,
either: Alice got in through a looking-glass, and I’ve heard of a boy who gets
in through windows. I’ve always liked puddles, though. Splashy and bright and
exciting– and at first that’s how Underland seems. It feels like anything is
possible. Mind you, Underland is only my name for it. Other people know it by
other names: Mirror World; Wonderland; Looking Glass World. It’s all the same
in the end. The same Underland. A whole, upside down world under the puddles.

I don’t remember much about my first
journey to Underland. I was three at the time, and until I was seven I was
convinced it was all a dream. I was by myself in the hedge, hiding from the
other children because it was there and I could, and because it was fun to
watch people passing the foster home in which I lived. They never saw me.

But this time, someone
did. I was curled up on one of the branches, my bare feet scratched and brown,
and the first I knew was an eye looking at me through a gap in the hedge.

“You’re invited,” said
the eye. It blinked, then disappeared. In its place a hand appeared, a card
between its forefinger and middle finger. I took it without understanding what
it was or what the voice meant by what it said. “It’s a very important date.
Don’t be late.”

I put the card in my
already bulging pockets and forgot about it during the afternoon. And later I was
too busy with milk and biscuits and getting out of brushing my teeth in the
rush before bed to remember the card crumpled in my pocket.

That night,
she
sent the card sharks after me. I didn’t know that’s what they were– well, I
didn’t even know who
she
was. Not then. Midnight woke me, all silver and
cool and snowy, and they were already by my bed, one on either side. Thin—no,
flat
—figures,
inky black against the off-white walls, their flat, heavy feet shuffling
against the carpet. They didn’t speak; they simply made a soft
click-click
of
noise. I found out later that this was their sharp teeth snapping open and
shut.

“You’re not allowed in
here,” I said, my voice very quiet against the clicking of pointed teeth. Mrs.
Mack, my foster mother, was clear about men and bedrooms. If there was a man in
the bedroom, I was supposed to scream. I wasn’t sure why, but I knew it was
Very Important. If it came to that, I wasn’t exactly certain these
were
men, but I wanted them to know that I Wasn’t Afraid. I was stubbornly Not
Afraid when they clicked their teeth at me without speaking and threw a velvet
sack over my head. I yelled and fought, but the velvet muffled my cries, and
when at last the sack was thrown down on something hard and cold, they left me
to fight my own way out of it. I emerged, ruffled and panting, in an icily cold
room that seemed to stretch vastly around and above me. My green socks showed
up vibrantly against the white marble tile I stood on, and as I clutched the
velvet sack about my shoulders for warmth I saw a confusion of angles in red
and white all around me. There were too many corners and too many people. The
confusion of angles bewildered my young mind, and I didn’t realise I was in a
vast hall of mirrors until I saw that all of the people were
me
.

No; not quite all of
them. One set of them was taller than the set of reflections that was me. There
was a boy standing next to me, watching with a kind of narrow-eyed curiosity as
I gazed around me and finally grasped his presence. He was dressed in red
velvet and gold lace, a thin, pale boy with a sharp, aristocratic nose and a pale
gold fringe of hair swept to one side. He looked me up and down, lingering
curiously on my bright green socks, and arched one light gold brow.

He said: “You’re a funny
looking little thing.”

I gave him a perplexed
look, but found it easier to look at him than the confusion of reflections.
“I’m hungry,” I said.

“Have some tarts,” he
said, offering me a tray. I wasn’t sure where it had come from, but I had seen
magicians on television before, after all.

“I’m not allowed,” I
said. That was another of Mrs. Mack’s rules. No sweet things between meals.
“Why are you awake? You should be in bed.”

“
That’s
no fun!”
he said scornfully. “Why are you so small, little girl? I thought you’d be
bigger.”

“I’m only three,” I said.
I felt slightly resentful. I couldn’t help being so small.

The boy made an
unconvinced noise. “I suppose there must be something to you, if she chose you.
We’re to be engaged. Do you understand that?”

I only blinked at him. I
had no idea what he meant, but I did know that the boy’s lofty tones were
annoying.

“Are you afraid of
needles?”

“I’ve had my measles
shot,” I said, but I felt my lip tremble. I very much disliked needles.

“It’s all right,” he
said, with a sigh. “I’ll hold your hand. You’re not to cry.”

“I don’t cry,” I told
him, but I let him take my hand anyway.

He said coolly: “I’m
Jack. They didn’t tell me your name.”

“I’m Mabel. What– who
were those men? They put me in a sack.”

“They’re not men,” said
Jack. He was just a little paler, and his voice had dropped to a whisper.
“They’re card sharks. Stay away from them. They bite.”

I opened my mouth to say
that men didn’t bite, but the concentric reflections of myself were doing
something interesting behind Jack’s back. They grew: or maybe I grew. I wasn’t
sure. Soon my reflection was tall and quite grown up, with long hair and a wasp-waisted
red gown. Beside it a single drop of red appeared in the mirror and grew
rapidly. Jack looked over his shoulder and went a little paler, which
interested me. I didn’t know it was possible for a boy to be that white. He
turned his eyes back on the drop, which was now about the size of an arm-chair
and had begun to look a little like a woman in a very big dress if I looked at
it the right way.

Jack’s fingers pinched
mine. “Don’t speak to her,” he said in a whisper. “Just nod. And don’t look her
in the eyes. She doesn’t like that. Hold out your hand when she asks for it,
and don’t cry.”

“I don’t cry,” I said
again. Between his warning and the way the red blot was growing, I somehow
wasn’t very surprised to see a woman eventually standing before us, her crimson
skirts embroidered with jet and rubies in the shape of hearts, and a small,
silver mirror hanging from a beautiful silver belt by the side of her bodice’s
point. I didn’t dare to look any higher than that because Jack had become
entirely silent, his back very straight and stiff. Still, I had the impression
that this woman was wearing a sharp, vastly tall golden crown. Since the only
person I knew with a crown was the Queen of England, it seemed obvious that
this must be she. I would have asked her if she was, but I could feel Jack’s
fingers curled around mine, warm and tight, and remembered that I wasn’t
supposed to speak. I fixed my eyes on her belt buckle instead, and gripped
Jack’s velvet sleeve with my free hand.

“Hah!” said a voice as
sharp as the crown. It came from somewhere behind us, and Jack and I spun
together to find her standing there at our backs, trapping us between herself
and her reflection. “Here it is at last! No, turn back around, you stupid
child!”

I was inclined to be
sulky, but Jack turned me back around with him, and I felt fingers grip my
shoulders, red polish flashing in my peripheral. The Queen smelled of cold and
roses. One of her hands left my shoulder to tilt up my chin, and I found myself
gazing at a reflection that held only myself. It was the big version of myself
that I’d seen earlier. I didn’t much like it, because my face was pinched and
narrow, and not very nice.

“Very good!” purred the Queen,
releasing me, and the reflection went back to showing what it should have
shown. Only it wasn’t
quite
right, because the reflection of the mirror
hanging from the Queen’s belt showed something else. There was bigger me again;
only I was in a green dress, with my hair tumbled around me and glass flying.

“Oh!” I said, my eyes
wide.

“Don’t gape!” snapped the
Queen, shocking me out of the sight. “Turn around, pinch-face!”

Jack and I turned once
more, our hands still clasped, and this time when I saw the mirror at the Queen’s
belt, it showed nothing but real reflections. She said impatiently: “Give me
your hand, child!”

I did as I was told, my
gaze still on the silver mirror that showed things that weren’t in the room,
and something sharp pierced my finger. I instinctively tried to pull my hand
away but her fingers pinched harder than Jack’s, cruel and strong. I saw a huge
drop of blood well up on the tip of my finger, as richly velvet as the Queen’s
frock. Beside me, Jack offered one narrow, white hand without being told. I
looked up once through my lashes, and saw the exulting, cruel smile on the Queen’s
lips as she pricked his finger too. Jack took it without a sound and reached
for my bloodied hand with his own, but the Queen’s smile made me feel odd and
squishy in a way that the meeting of our bloodied hands didn’t.

“Done!” said the Queen,
in her harsh voice. “Bound by blood, in life as in death. Take your fiancée out
to the garden, Jack: her thin little face irritates me. Send her back home when
you’ve finished playing with her.” There was a heavy swirl of velvet and she
vanished in a glitter of reflective glass.

The tickle of something
wet dripping down my injured hand reminded me of my wrongs, and I let go of
Jack’s hand to study it. Now that the worst of the pain was over it was
interesting to watch the trickles of blood as they made crimson channels down
my hand.

“Come along,” said Jack,
tugging me out of contemplation by my uninjured hand. I was towed toward what
at first seemed to be a pair of mirrors but eventually proved to be
mirror-lined doors, outlined in impossible golden sunshine. Both of the doors
had an elegant red-lacquered doorknob, but Jack didn’t touch them. Instead, he pushed
them open with his injured hand, very deliberately leaving a bloody handprint
on the glass.

“She won’t like it,” he
said, when he saw me looking at it; “But it’s not against the rules, so she
can’t do anything about it.”

I found myself walking
out into a garden that was bathed in bright sunshine, my green socks picking up
late autumn leaves as I trailed after Jack in the grass. “Why is the sun out?
It’s night.”

“Mother made him come
out. He didn’t want to, but she’s Queen after all.”

“Where’s the moon, then?”

“She’s up there too, but
she’s sulking. She doesn’t like it when the sun comes out during the night.
She’s a feminist and she doesn’t believe in being eclipsed by a male. Sit down
here.”

Here
was the brick side of a fountain. I did as I was told and Jack sat down beside
me, scooping water in his gory hand. “Sorry about the blood,” he said. He
washed my hand quickly and competently: I got the impression, young as I was,
that he’d had to wash away blood many times before. “She likes the old rituals.
It’ll heal quickly.”

“Why did she prick me
with a needle?”

“Do you only ever ask
questions?”

I gazed at him silently
until he gave a small sniff of laughter.

“It’s meant to bind us
together. It’s all very old-fashioned and pointless, and it amounts to the fact
that we’re to be married.”

“I’m too young to marry,”
I said. “And I don’t have a nice dress.”

Jack rinsed his own hand
carelessly and flicked bloody drops of water on the grass. I didn’t understand
the look in his eyes, but his voice sounded rather harsh when he said: “We
won’t be married until I’m twenty-five. That’s sixteen years to buy nice
clothes. Or to do an awful lot of running.”

I don’t remember much
else from that day. I remember Jack pointing out a sharp red building that rose
from a sprawl of other buildings on the horizon—the Heart Castle, he called
it—and telling me that we were outside the Queen’s Mirror Hall; but I must have
fallen asleep at some stage, there in the sunlit night. When I woke the next
day I found myself lying on top of all the bedcovers, my finger still sore. The
tiny scar vanished in a day or two, and as young as I was, it wasn’t long
before I came to believe that I had dreamed it all. But every now and then I
was certain that I caught sight of a flash of red in my dressing table mirror,
and once the pair of black-flecked eyes I saw gazing back at me from a window
at preschool were not my own.