Queen of Hearts

“Oh, my future queen, you’re late!” Harris hopped from one foot to the other, his plump face soaked with a cold sweat. He pulled off his thick-rimmed glasses and wiped them on his white checkered ascot. “Dinah! Walk faster, Your Highness! We are late, late, late!” He looked down at his pocket watch with an exaggerated sigh.

Dinah, Princess of Wonderland and future Queen of Hearts, rolled her eyes.

“Harris, I’m walking as swiftly as I can.”

“With all due respect, my dear, we have a very important summons from the King of Hearts. Your father wishes to see you. You know he is not a patient man.”

Dinah continued to shuffle down the Hallway of the Golden Birds feeling quite like one of the ridiculous bronze fowl perched on the golden pedestals that surrounded her.

A little bird ran across her path, and Dinah stomped near its feet, sending it shrieking into the air.

“My child!” thundered Harris. “Control your emotions! I beg of you—do not let your father see that behavior or you will be sleeping in the Black Towers.”

“I doubt it,” snipped Dinah glumly. “I wish that would happen, because then I would get to see inside them.”

Harris gave Dinah a disappointed look. “Never wish yourself inside the Black Towers,” he said gravely. “You have no idea the evil that lurks there.”

Dinah considered slowing her pace just to annoy him but took pity on her guardian and tutor, the man who had raised her from childhood. Harris had once been a dashing Card, or so Dinah had heard, but now he was somewhat walrus-like, a portly man with white hair and a dozen varieties of checkered outfits. Without a doubt, he loved Dinah deeply—something she lacked in other areas of her life. Dinah raised her voice, its sharp tone bouncing off the ornate halls of Wonderland Palace.

“Why should I have to go to the Great Hall? I never get to say anything, and Father won’t even talk to me.” Or look at me, she thought.

Harris patted her roughly on the head. “You shouldn’t say such things about the King of Hearts.”

Annoyed, the Princess of Wonderland turned her head as she walked past a bright, open balcony, breathing in the fresh air that filtered in between red panes of glass.

Her black eyes could make out the various landmarks of Wonderland spread out like the threading of a distorted quilt—the horizon that would soon be hers to govern and rule. Dinah allowed herself a deep breath of pleasure as her eyes hungrily ate up everything in sight. To the north stretched endless fields of wildflowers, and eventually, the Ninth Sea, though she had never seen it. Beyond that, she knew from her studies, were the dreaded Caves of Mourning and the Todren, home to mermaids and sea monsters, of children’s tales and nightmares. To the east, beyond the plains, she could vaguely make out the topless Yurkei Mountains that lay past the Twisted Wood, where adventurers went to die at the hands of the brutal Yurkei Mountain tribes. To the south lay the Darklands, a place of untold horrors.

Closer to her was Wonderland proper: small towns, roads, windmills, and rivers that sat just beyond the iron palace gates. This was