After Alice (20 page)
Authors: Gregory Maguire
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D
arwin had nodded off at the rocking of the train. When he woke up, he guessed they were nearing Paddington. London was purple in the midsummer gloaming, so its lamplights, just being lit, made a fever rash of amber sparks. He glanced at Josiah Winter, the only other traveler in the cabin. The American was distraught, picking at his nails. Darwin knew about fretfulness as well as he knew about anything else. To distract the poor fellow from whatever he was suffering, Darwin made a remark. The noise of the train wheels muffled it.
“I beg your pardon? Did you refer to a catastrophe?” asked Mr. Winter. “Or epiphany?âÂI misheard.”
“I was musing on the notion of a cataphany.”
“I don't understand.”
“Cataphany. My own word, from the Greek
cata,
meaning down, and
phantazein,
to make visible. Also the root of
fantasy,
don't you know. Cataphany: an insight, a revelation of underness. The findings of Odysseus in Hades, interviewing the shade of Achilles. Or Gilgamesh, hunting Enkidu. Or even, meaning no disrespect, the Christ arising after three days in Hell. What sort of revelation can occur in perfect dark? What would Eurydice tell us if Orpheus had been able to bring her back?”
Winter gave a shrug, looked away. A sequence of lights and darks played across his shuttered face. He shuffled a few ha'pence in one hand. A sound like small jangling keys, or the links of a slack chain falling upon one another.
The elderly man continued, out of mercy and out of curiosity, for that was what he was like. “Let me put it more scientifically. If separate species develop skills that help them survive, and if those attributes are favored which best benefit the individual and its native population, to what possible end might we suppose has arisen, Mr. Winter, that particular capacity of the human being known as the imagination?”
âÂfinisâÂ
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GREGORY MAGUIRE is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister;
Lost; Mirror Mirror;
and the Wicked Years, a series that includes
Wicked, Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men,
and
Out of Oz
. Now a beloved classic,
Wicked
is the basis for a blockbuster Tony Awardâwinning Broadway musical. Maguire has lectured on art, literature, and culture both at home and abroad. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.
www.gregorymaguire.com
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Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
Making Mischief: A Maurice Sendak Appreciation
Books in the Wicked Years
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Cover design by Adam Johnson
Cover illustrations: cup, c. 1899, courtesy of the Winterthur Museum Library; map, c. 1824, courtesy of the British Library; rabbit, 1865,
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
; woman, c. 1877, courtesy of Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine
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AFTER ALICE.
Copyright © 2015 by Gregory Maguire. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-Â0-Â06-Â054895-Â7
EPub Edition OCTOBER 2015 ISBN 9780062410825
15 16 17 18 19
OV/RRD
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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