Alice In Chains (29 page)

‘Of course …’ Alice snapped her fingers. Snowdrop’s inert body twitched and then he lifted his head. Gathering his legs Snowdrop got to his feet and clopped over to his master, who stroked and patted him lovingly.

Alice looked at Juliet and waved a hand. Juliet gave a little gasp and then ran her hands over her now clean and fresh body. Cautiously she felt her pubes and sighed with relief. ‘I thought I’d be sore for weeks. Thanks.’

‘I’ve just taken away the pain and physical marks but not the memory,’ Alice said. ‘Never forget you survived an experience that would have had most people freaking out. It’s something to be proud of because it proved how strong you are.’

Suzanne had been looking at Alice in growing wonder. ‘Is that all you have to do to work miracles, just wave a hand?’

Alice looked down at herself and waved a hand as though brushing something away. The filth smeared over her disappeared, the pain in her groin vanished as her distended passages tightened again. The golden feathers on her head and pubic mound melted back into hair that she fluffed up gratefully. ‘Yep, looks like it.’

‘That’s a pretty good trick, you know.’

Martes was frowning uncertainly. ‘It seems we have won, but what do we do about them now?’ He pointed to the fallen queens. ‘Are they still a danger to Boardland, and should they be punished for their past crimes?’

‘I know what I’d like to do with them,’ Leonus growled.

The queens shrank away from him. The White Queen turned desperately to Sir Blanche. ‘Would you abandon me to their mercy?’ she pleaded.

‘If you had listened to my council you would not be in this sorry state, Majesty,’ Sir Blanche said sternly. He
looked
at Leonus and Martes. ‘I realise my opinion may count for little and I would not blame you for wishing to take revenge on them, and myself, for deeds both past and present. But I ask you to show more compassion than they would for you, were circumstances reversed. Show you are not as arrogant as my kind has been all these years.’

‘We could take them back to Brillig for trial,’ Martes said.

‘And when the people heard who they were there would be but one verdict,’ Leonus added. The queens looked horrified. Leonus frowned at Sir Blanche. ‘Though we have fought side by side, I may have to leave your fate to the judgement of others.’

Sir Blanche nodded gravely.

‘I think they should all have their wishes granted,’ Alice said suddenly. Suzanne and Juliet gaped at her in amazement while the men frowned, still unsure how to treat a girling with her power. ‘But in accord with Underland tradition,’ Alice added. She looked at Sir Blanche. ‘Can you prove to us that you’ve changed, that you’re no longer playing the chessgame?’

‘Willingly, but how?’

Alice nodded at the queens. ‘I’ve seen how hard it is for those two to take off their crowns. It’s as though they’re part of them. Perhaps that’s how you’re all made, I don’t know. But can you throw away your armour and give up being a knight?’

‘You would not deny your heritage!’ the White Queen said, aghast.

Sir Blanche took a deep breath. ‘I believe I must, if things are to change for the better.’

He began unbuckling his silver breastplate. His fingers trembled slightly. Juliet quickly stepped up to him and began to help. He smiled down at her. Piece by piece the pile beside him grew until he was wearing only a simple cotton shift and leggings. Sir Blanche stretched
with
obvious pleasure. ‘Remarkable. I feel a great weight has lifted from me, more than mere metal could account for.’ He looked at Alice. ‘Must I surrender my sword as well?’

‘Keep that. You may need it to fight for a better cause one day.’

‘I swear I will only use it in good faith and honour.’

Alice snapped her fingers. The pile of armour grew hotter and burst into flames, driving the others back. In a few moments it had been reduced to ash and a few blobs of bright metal. When they looked at Sir Blanche again he was clad in boots, tunic and belt, his sword sheathed by his side.

Martes and Leonus exchanged a thoughtful glance then appeared to reach a mutual decision. ‘It seems the last knight of the chessmen no longer exists,’ Martes said. ‘Therefore he cannot be brought before the people for judgement.’

Sir Blanche bowed solemnly to them and to Alice. At his side Juliet beamed with delight.

Alice turned to the two queens. ‘Well, can you do the same? Think carefully. It might be your last chance.’

‘You know I can take my crown off,’ the White Queen said quickly, removing her filigree circlet. ‘There, you see.’

‘Coward!’ the Red Queen said contemptuously.

‘I don’t mean keep it in a hatbox by your side, but throw it away for good, see it totally destroyed,’ Alice persisted.

The White Queen’s hands trembled. She made a vague gesture as though of tossing the crown aside, then jammed it back in place and bowed her head. ‘No,’ she said wretchedly.

‘And you?’ Alice asked the Red Queen.

‘Never! Don’t humiliate us any further. Do what you will!’

‘As you like.’ Alice smiled at her. ‘Here, once you’ve said a thing that fixes it and you must take the
consequences
, right? That’s what you told me when you used the figurine to make me your pawn. Well, now you’re going to live by the same rule. Stand up, Lilian and Magenta, your wishes are going to be granted.’

Uncertainly, the pair stood.

‘Keep your crown if you have to, Magenta. You wanted to be the only queen in the land, and as long as “land” means this square, your wish is granted, because this is where you’ll stay until you learn better. But you won’t be needing fine clothes any more.’

A blast of wind whipped up from nowhere and tore at the Red Queen’s dishevelled silk dress, shredding it into fragments that blew away like confetti, leaving her naked for all to see. She moved to cover her lovely slim body, then bit her lip and stood straight and still defiant.

‘And you wished to be as beautiful as Magenta, didn’t you, Lilian?’ Alice said to the White Queen, who nodded in mute trepidation.

The sourceless wind again sprang up and blasted the White Queen’s dress into shreds. But when the shower of fabric snowflakes had settled, the body revealed beneath was not the plump form that had been there moments before. Lilian had shamefully wrapped her arms about herself as she had been stripped, but now she drew them away again with an ‘Ohh …’ of wonder.

She was still Lilian but the one beneath the pudgy features and shapeless body she had worn. Now platinum blonde hair tumbled over slim shoulders and pneumatic breasts capped by pert pink nipples. A slender waist flared out into curving hips and shapely legs, at the apex of which was a deep soft-lipped cleft thatched by a few silver curls of hair. Her astonished face still held pale keen eyes, but they were now complemented by high cheekbones, a neat nose, a small mouth and a single chin.

‘There, as pretty as a princess,’ Alice observed. ‘Which is what you look like and why your crown’s now
a
little smaller than Magenta’s. Mustn’t spoil her wish to be the only queen around here.’

After favouring Lilian with a scornful, if slightly envious glance, Magenta turned back to Alice. ‘Is that it, then? We are to be marooned in this square together?’

Alice smiled. ‘Oh no, nothing as easy as that. You’re going to be taught a hard lesson about life. Now, where’s your teacher?’

The small scrawny little creature that the Jabberwock had become had been scratching about in the dirt unnoticed. Now as Alice snapped her fingers it began to grow once again with a hoot of surprise.

‘I’m not heartless,’ she said to the horrified queens, ‘so I won’t make him quite so big as before and I’ll remove his more bloodthirsty habits –’ its pink waistcoat was pristine now ‘– but I will make him brighter and more inventive.’

The rest of the group stepped back as the nightmarish creature’s head rose above them once more. But it made no move towards them and there was a new sense of purpose in its stance that kept its clawed hands neatly folded before it.

‘Hallo, Jabberwock,’ Alice said. ‘You know what you’ve got to do?’

‘Yes, Alice Brown,’ it replied, trumpeting its words in sonorous but unexpectedly well-modulated tones. ‘And thank you for giving me a new life.’

‘You’re welcome. Enjoy yourself.’

The Jabberwock turned its glowing eyes on Magenta and Lilian. ‘Now,’ it asked sternly. ‘Will you be naughty or nice?’

Magenta and Lilian backed away fearfully. ‘You can’t leave us at the mercy of that thing!’ Lilian shrieked at Alice.

‘Why not?’ Alice said. ‘You did. And he’s not a “thing”, he’s a “he”. Can’t you see?’

They could all see as the Jabberwock’s great forked penis was swelling by the second. Although it reached
something
less than its former dimensions, it was still an awesome sight.

Suzanne sniggered. ‘I think he likes you!’

‘Have a taste of your own medicine!’ Juliet added with feeling.

‘This is not a life sentence,’ Alice told the two ex-queens. ‘You can leave when you learn to think like girlings. Your arrogance made these barriers. It’ll take humility to get through them. It’s up to you … and the Jabberwock.’

The two women turned and ran. The Jabberwock swooped after them on his batwings and scooped them up before they reached the trees. Clutching their struggling naked bodies tight in his huge claws, he upended them and drove his sinuous tongue into one and then the other of the two tight anuses at his disposal. Their shrieks filled the clearing as their intestines were subject to his intimate probing.

‘Ahh,’ the Jabberwock said, licking his lips. ‘Such fine deep rich bottoms.’

‘You left him that disgusting habit?’ Juliet said to Alice as she watched, saucer-eyed.

‘I didn’t want them to miss out.’

‘Good!’

As the muscular inhibitor took hold, the Jabberwock laid Magenta and Lilian’s limp bodies down before his cave and began dismantling his crude frame with remarkable dexterity. In minutes he had constructed two tripod stands that supported a long pole running between them. From this he suspended Magenta and Lilian, first binding their wrists to their ankles so they dangled freely beneath it. Their deep-cleft pubic mounds pouted from between the swell of their taut thighs, one furred in red and the other in silver. Below them the dark puckers of their anuses were exposed now for all to see and, as the pair were about to discover, horribly vulnerable.

The Jabberwock broke off a thornbush branch and swished it through the air in front of his helpless victims. Their eyes widened in disbelief.

‘No, please don’t!’ Lilian cried.

‘You cannot do that!’ Magenta yelled. ‘I command you to … eeek!’ The thorny lash had swished across her buttocks leaving a pattern of red and purple dots on the smooth skin.

The Jabberwock thrashed each inviting set of buttocks in turn until neither woman any longer pleaded or spoke except to moan and whimper. When their stretched bottoms were liberally pricked and bleeding, he lowered the branch.

‘Do you want more pain or do you beg to please me?’ he asked.

‘No … never,’ Magenta moaned faintly.

‘Think on it. What about you, Lilian?’

‘I beg to please you … Master,’ she said.

‘Coward!’ Magenta rasped.

‘It’s over, Magenta,’ she said wearily. ‘Even we change …’

The Jabberwock clasped Lilian’s swaying form, turned her to him and his forked penis sank into the vagina and anus of the once proud queen.

They watched until Lilian and Magenta both hung limp from the pole, their orifices beneath their scarlet buttocks red raw and distended, dripping sperm. For the moment all trace of defiance had been wiped from them. In their tear-wet eyes was only fearful expectation as they looked on their strange master and wondered what use he would find for them next.

‘Everybody satisfied?’ Alice asked the others quietly.

‘I believe a kind of justice has been served,’ Martes said.

‘No less than they deserve,’ Leonus growled.

‘If it seems fair in your eyes, then I will say no more,’ Sir Blanche added. ‘In a way Her Maj–Lilian, has what she always wanted, I suppose.’

‘Then I think we’re done here,’ Alice said. ‘Let’s all go home.’

Thirteen

A SHIMMERING ARCHWAY
opened in the barrier and they stepped over the brook from the Jabberwock’s forest back into the Brillig square. Leonus and Martes’s horses were waiting patiently where they had been tethered.

Juliet was looking at Alice with a mixture of awe and concern. ‘Do you know your eyes glowed when you did that?’

‘And you’re getting taller,’ Suzanne added in alarm.

Queen Alice, ruler of the world, the Crown whispered inside Alice’s mind. You can do anything, be anything you want … Aloud she said, ‘The Crown is going to my head a little, I know.’ She focused her thoughts. ‘Is that better?’

‘Yes, but please be careful,’ Juliet said. ‘It’s a bit frightening.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Alice promised. ‘I won’t be wearing it much longer.’

Leonus looked at her with a frown furrowing his huge brow. Juliet ran over to Sir Blanche who was adjusting Snowdrop’s harness and spoke to him urgently. Alice watched them with a thoughtful smile.

‘Are you going back to your home now?’ Suzanne asked Alice.

‘Yes, I’ve got something to put right. But I won’t forget you.’

They hugged and kissed.

‘You know where I live, if my master will allow it,’ Suzanne said.

Martes said quickly, ‘Of course. You may visit Suzanne anytime, Alice. You will be very welcome.’

‘I’m just a girling, master Martes,’ Alice assured him. ‘I don’t expect special treatment.’

‘A most unusual girling, I would say.’

Juliet skipped over, her faced flushed with excitement.

‘So, are you ready to go back home?’ Alice asked her.

Juliet beamed at them. ‘Well, actually, I don’t think I want to. I’ve offered myself to Sir Blanche and he’s accepted. I’m going to be his slave!’

Alice and Suzanne hugged and kissed her.

‘Are you sure?’ Alice asked.

‘Yes, absolutely,’ Juliet said. ‘Now I know what I am and what I want.’