Chester Cheshire Grinwild stole the watch off the White Rabbit's belt because he wanted to see what would happen, and what happened was the page tore open under his paws and swallowed him whole. He landed on his back in black mud beside a lake that shimmered purple and blue like spilled ink. One green eye saw the mud. The other eye, the gold one, saw a kingdom. He sat up grinning. The watch ticked in his palm, cracked across its glass face, little brass rabbit ears twitching at the top like it could still hear its owner. The owner arrived two seconds later with a wet thump. Harrietta landed on her feet, then sat down hard, white coat smeared to the elbows. She snatched the cracked watch out of his paw before he could blink. "Mine. Mine. Give it. Where. Where is this. Ink. There's ink in the air. Ink, Cheshire." Her pink eyes flicked to the lake, then to him, then to the watch. Her ears flattened. Chester stretched out across the mud like a king on a couch. "This," he said, "is nowhere. I checked. It was nowhere a moment ago and now it has us in it. That makes it somewhere." He waved a paw at the dark trees, the still water, the empty sky. "Wonderland. I just named it. You're welcome." Harrietta wasn't listening. She had pulled a small glass vial from her coat pocket and crouched at the lake's edge, dipping it until the cork floated free. The liquid inside swirled pink and blue and angry green. She held it up to the watch and muttered. "Ink in the water. Ink in the gears. Time's wrong. Time's wrong here. Two minutes slow. Three. Four." She tapped the cracked glass. "It's bleeding." Her whiskers shook. "I have to go back. I have to go back before she notices. Before she—" She cut herself off and pressed her mouth shut. Chester rolled onto his belly to watch her. He knew who she meant. He had read the book. A queen with a loud mouth and a fondness for severed heads. He thought about Harrietta going back to that, and he thought about Harrietta staying here, where the only loud thing so far was him. The gold eye showed him a long table. Mismatched chairs. Steam rising from a hundred cups. Guests pulled from a hundred books, laughing at a joke he hadn't told yet. "Stay," Chester said. He sat up. "Stay and have tea. I'll pull the others in myself. One at a time. The best ones. A whole table of them." He grinned wider. "You really want to run back to her?" Harrietta didn't answer. She corked the vial, slipped it into her pocket, and stared at the broken watch in her lap. Her ears twitched once. She did not stand up to leave. Chester took that as a yes and started planning the second chair.

Chester left Harrietta at the lake with her cracked watch and walked into the empty until the empty got tired of being empty. He stopped where the ink-dark ground felt firm under his paws. The gold eye showed him a square. The green eye showed him mud. He grinned at the gap between them and decided to close it himself. He pictured cobblestones, dark and uneven, packed tight enough to hold a hundred chairs. The ground answered. Stones pushed up through the mud in rows, fitting themselves into a wide flat square ringed by a low wall. A puddle stayed where a puddle wanted to stay. A small tree shoved itself up at one corner. Chester walked the edge once to test it. Nothing sank. Nothing ran. He thought about the Hatter's table back in the book he came from. Plain wood. One cloth. Three chairs. A waste. He spread his paws and pulled something better out of the air. A long table uncoiled across the square, winding like a slow river, draped in mismatched cloths he had never seen before and somehow remembered. Chairs gathered along the curve, no two the same. Teapots, cups, sugar bowls, plates of cakes he had not named yet. Steam rose without a fire. The square still looked like a place a guest might glance at and keep walking. Chester fixed that. He hung a sign above the entrance on a chain that anchored to nothing, the words Tea Party glowing purple, lanterns swinging at the corners. Then he stacked teacups. One on a saucer. Another on top. Another. He kept stacking until the tower tilted, caught itself, and started pouring. Blue tea ran from the top cup into the second, the second into the third, the third into the wide cup at the base. It never spilled over. It never ran dry. He stepped back and watched it tilt and pour and tilt and pour. One thing left. Chester walked to the head of the table where the curve opened toward the sign. He pictured a chair tall enough to be seen from the gate, purple, deep, carved at the arms. The chair pushed up from the cobblestones behind his knees. He sat. The cushion took his weight. He sank in until his tail hung over one carved arm. From the chair he could see the whole square. The fountain pouring. The sign glowing. The long table waiting. A guest arriving here would not turn around. A guest arriving here would sit. Chester laced his paws behind his head and grinned at the empty chairs. He had a place now. All he needed were the people to fill it. The next book was already open in his head, and he knew which page to tear.

Chester sat in his purple chair and watched the gate. A white shape slipped along the low wall, ducking behind a chair, then a teapot, then the fountain. Harrietta. She was edging toward the path out of the square, watch already in her paw. Chester sighed. He had built her a whole party and she still wanted to leave. He flicked his tail and the cobblestones answered. A small chair pushed up beside the table where her seat should have been. Blue and white wood. Two tall ears carved into the back. A round cushion that fit her exactly. Harrietta stopped sneaking and stared at it. "Ridiculous. Ridiculous chair. Ears? Ears on a chair?" She climbed onto it anyway. Her feet touched the footrest. Her back fit the curve. She grumbled into her collar and did not get up. "For your hands," Chester said, and set a tray in front of her. Four white teacups. Four white saucers. Gold rims. Nothing else. "Stack them. Perfectly. Then unstack. Then stack again." Harrietta opened her mouth to complain and shut it. She lifted the first saucer. She set the first cup. Her ears went still. She checked her watch, lined up the handle, and placed the next cup so the handle matched the first to the degree. Chester watched her work and felt his grin tighten. It was the dullest game he had ever made. She loved it. He slipped out of the chair while she measured handles. His house stood at the edge of the square, crooked and tall. Inside, the shelf along the back wall waited for him, carved dark wood with curling sides. Every compartment was empty. Not a single book. He had pulled Harrietta out of the last one and never replaced it. Chester pressed his paws together and pictured a red leather spine. A book formed in his hands and sagged. Ink ran between his fingers and dripped to the floor. He tried a blue one. It melted before he could read the title. He tried a small one. It puddled on the shelf and slid off the edge. Chester licked ink off his thumb and looked around the room for anything he had missed. At the writing desk by the window, a raven stood on the blotter with a quill clamped in its beak. It had been there the whole time. He had never put it there. The raven tilted its head. Chester laughed out loud. A raven with a writing desk. The oldest riddle in his old book, standing in his new house, holding a pen. "You," Chester said, and crossed the room. "You and I are going to make a book." The raven set the quill down on the blotter and waited. Outside, Harrietta clicked another cup into place and checked her watch. Chester pulled up a stool.

Chester pulled his stool closer to the desk. The wood was dark and warped, streaked with old spills that ran over the edge in dried black ropes. The raven hopped aside and watched him with one flat eye. Outside the round window, purple leaves shifted against the glass. Down in the square, Harrietta would still be stacking cups. Chester had time. He had a bird with a pen. He had a desk built for ink. He was going to make a guest. "A princess," Chester said. "Every proper tea wants a princess. Long hair. Tower. Sings to lizards." He tapped the blotter. "Rapunzel. Write her in." The raven did not move. Chester picked up the quill himself. It was heavier than it looked, the feather streaked purple and black, the nib already wet. He dipped it and began to write across a fresh page. A tower. A window. A girl with hair like a yellow rope. The ink came out glossy and dark, not yellow at all, but Chester kept going. The raven squawked. It squawked again, louder, and stamped one foot on the desk. "Don't squawk at the author," Chester said. "Squawk less. Write more. Or is that a raven's only line? Nevermore squawking, please." He laughed at his own joke. The raven clacked its beak and tried to catch the quill in its beak. Chester lifted the pen out of reach and kept writing. He filled the page. He wrote her name three times to be sure. When the last word dried, Chester closed the book and held it flat on both paws. "Now," he whispered. "Come out for tea." He opened the cover. He reached into the page the way he had reached into every book before. His fingers met something cold and wet. The book shivered. Ink bubbled up from the spine and spat across the desk in fat purple drops. The pages swelled. Two ragged wings tore out from the covers, one on each side, feathered in the same purple as the quill. The book beat its wings once. The desk lamp rocked. Chester grabbed for the spine and missed. It rose, circled the round window twice, and shot up through the open hatch into the leaves. He heard it crash through branches. Then nothing. No girl. No tower. No hair. Just ink running off the desk onto his boots and a raven staring at him as if he were the stupidest cat in any book. "Right," Chester said. He wiped purple off his chin. The raven lifted the quill in its beak and set it down again, pointed at itself. Chester understood. The bird wrote. He did not. He had made a flying mistake and sent it loose in his own house. Somewhere above him, in the puffed purple leaves, a winged book was nesting with a princess trapped inside.

The raven hopped off the desk and dragged one wing across the floor. It hobbled to the warped birdcage in the corner, climbed inside, and yanked the bent door shut with its beak. The hinge groaned. The bird turned its back on Chester and tucked its head down. "You know I can still see you, right?" Chester said. He waited. The raven squawked once through the bars and said nothing else. Chester tapped the desk. He stared at the cage. He stared at the quill lying in its puddle of purple ink. Then he picked it up. "Rapunzel," he muttered. "Tower. Hair. Lizards." He wrote it fast this time. The ink bubbled before he finished the page. The book shuddered, sprouted two ragged purple wings, and lifted off the desk. Chester grabbed for it. Missed. He dipped the quill again. He wrote another. That one tore its own cover open and flapped to the rafters. He wrote a third. A fourth. A stack of split, broken books rose around his boots, pages cracked like shells, and still he kept writing. One bad book sat slumped on the floor in a heap of white shards where a teacup-shaped summoning had collapsed in on itself before it could fly. The winged books circled his study. They beat against the round window until the glass burst. The flock poured out into the purple leaves and climbed. Through the broken pane, Chester saw them gather above Wonderland in a brown and purple swarm, wings flashing, more joining every second from the hatch above him. He dropped the quill. "No," he said. "No, no, wait." He ran for the door. He stumbled down through the leaves to the cobblestone square. The flock had already found the long winding table. They dove. Chester threw up his paws. "Not the table," he shouted. "Anything but the table." The books swerved at the last second. They banked hard and slammed into the tall stack of cups Harrietta had been building beside her seat. China exploded. Saucers spun across the stones. Harrietta stood very still in the middle of it, ears flat, one cracked handle by her foot. Chester lowered his paws and looked at his own setup. Untouched. Every teapot in place. He let out a breath before he could stop himself. Harrietta turned her head. She had heard the breath. "You did this," she said. Above them the flock wheeled and climbed higher, too many to count now, scattering into the purple sky. Chester opened his mouth and closed it. The quill was upstairs in a cage with a bird who would not touch it again. The princess was still lost in the leaves. And now there was an army of his mistakes loose over Wonderland, and the only friend he had at his table was counting broken cups and deciding what he was.

Chester ran back up to his study. The raven was still in the cage, back turned. Chester yanked the door open. "I need the quill. I need to hook them down." The raven hopped past his paw, grabbed the quill in its beak, and squawked hard, three sharp notes that rattled the inkwell. Chester froze. He understood. Not the sounds, but the shape behind them. "Oh," he said. He sat down on the floor. "Oh. So you write the books. You pulled the characters. I'm just the imagination." The raven squawked again, slower. A girl in a blue dress. A cat with too many teeth. A page tearing open. Chester saw it land in his head like a stone dropped in water. The raven had written him. He had only ever pictured things. "So if I want them down," he said, "I have to picture it." He went back down through the leaves to the cobblestone square. Harrietta was on her knees, sorting saucer halves into a pile. Her ears stayed flat. Chester did not say sorry. He walked past her to the long table and started stacking teacups, three high, four high, five high, the way she had done it before the flock came. He stacked twelve towers down the length of the table. He stepped back. Above him the brown and purple wings wheeled lower. The books liked the mess. He could feel it. Maybe he liked them a little too. Harrietta stood up. "They will smash these too." "That's the point," Chester said. "I need them close." He shut his eyes and pictured stone, curving stone, stairs that climbed and climbed and went nowhere. The cobbles by his foot cracked. A spiral staircase pushed up through the square, looping toward the purple clouds. He climbed it. From the top he pulled a brass telescope out of the air because he wanted one, and it was there. Through it he counted the flock. Forty-three winged books, circling, dropping, drunk on the cup towers below. He pictured the next thing harder. A balloon the size of a cottage. His own face on it, grin and all, blue stripes, pink ears. A net slung under it for catching. Ribbons trailing. The air over the staircase thickened and the balloon bloomed into being above him, eyes shut, teeth out. It bumped his shoulder. He grabbed a ribbon and stepped off the stairs. The balloon drifted up into the flock. Books battered against the net. Chester pulled the drawstring. Eleven wings caught, then twenty, then thirty. The rest scattered into the purple sky and were gone over the leaves. Chester floated down with his haul thrashing under him. Harrietta watched the balloon land. She looked at the broken cups, then at the netted books, then at Chester. "You caught some," she said. "Not all." Chester nodded. Twelve were still out there. And so was the princess.

Chester left the netted books thrashing in the square and climbed back up through the purple leaves to his study. The raven waited on the warped desk, quill already in its beak. Ink puddled across the wood and dripped down one twisted leg onto the rug. Chester sat. He did not argue this time. He pictured a tower. He pictured a girl inside it with hair past her feet. The raven dipped the quill and began to write. Chester kept his eyes half shut and held the picture steady. A purple book grew under the raven's claws, vines curling across the cover, the name Rapunzel pushing up through the leather in gold. The raven worked fast. Chester fed it details. Six ribbons. A grandmother. A market. Keys at her belt. He felt each one snap into the page like a latch closing. He heard a small click behind the empty shelf across the room. Not loud. The kind of sound a watch makes when it is held too still. He did not turn his head. He knew the only person in Wonderland who carried a watch, and he knew she was watching. When the raven set the quill down, Chester opened the book in the middle of the desk. The pages did not fly. They bent. They opened like a mouth. Chester pushed his hand in to the wrist. The paper softened around his arm and spun, ink rising up his sleeve in a slow black spiral. Something warm caught his fingers. He pulled. A girl came through the page onto the swirly purple rug. Brown hair spilled around her in heaps, purple ribbons knotted through it, a ring of iron keys clutched against her chest. She blinked at the room. "I was on a stool," she said. "There were six ribbons. Now there are five. My feet are cold." She looked at Chester. "You have two different eyes." Ink dripped from the desk onto the rug in fat black coins. Chester smelled earl grey, sharp and close, the kind no one in this room was drinking. He stood up slowly so he would not startle the girl. Behind the empty shelf, near the baseboard, a small paper sachet lay on its side. A gold string trailed out from it. The tag read Earl Grey in curling letters. He had not put it there. He let his gaze pass over it and land on Rapunzel instead. "Welcome," he said. "You're early for tea." The shelf creaked once. Chester smiled wider, both eyes open, and did not look at it again. He had his princess. Harrietta had her proof. The next move belonged to whoever spoke first.

Chester led Rapunzel down through the purple leaves to the cobblestone square. She held her ring of iron keys against her chest and let her hair drag behind her in a long brown river. The raven flew ahead. Behind them, the shelf in the study clicked shut, and Chester heard small footsteps catching up. He did not turn. He smiled wider and walked faster, because he wanted her at the table before she could change her mind. The winding table was already set. Harrietta sat in her chair near the middle, arms crossed, a fresh stack of cups in front of her. Chester did not ask how she got there first. Above the table, the thirteen escaped books drifted in slow circles, wings ticking like pages in wind. Chester clapped once. "Everyone," he said, "this is Rapunzel. She is staying for tea." Harrietta's ears twitched. The raven landed on the back of her chair. The books dipped lower to look. Chester walked Rapunzel to a tall white chair carved with vines and flowers. "Yours," he said. In front of it stood a cake shaped like a tower, three tiers high, pink icing dripping down the sides, sugar windows lit from inside, tiny doors at the base. Rapunzel stopped. She counted the windows under her breath. "Seven," she said. "There are seven windows. My tower had one." She sat down slowly and set her keys on the cloth. They poured tea. Harrietta drank without looking at Chester. Rapunzel cut a small piece of the cake and held it on her fork. One of the books overhead dove at the teapot, caught a wing on the spout, and knocked it sideways. Hot tea poured across the cloth. Two more books crashed into the sugar bowl. Cubes skittered down the table. Harrietta shouted and pulled her cups close. Chester laughed and waved a hand; the spill curled back into the pot on its own. Rapunzel did not flinch. She was still looking at the cake. "I could make these," she said. "Bigger. With real doors. People could walk inside one." Chester turned to her. He pictured it without meaning to: a crooked shop with purple icing for a roof, warm windows, a sign that swung in no wind. The square shifted. A building pushed up from the cobbles at the end of the table, purple frosting dripping from its eaves, a painted sign reading WonderWhisk above the door. Rapunzel stood up and clapped. She walked straight to it, opened the door, and went inside. Chester heard her counting ovens. Harrietta stared at him across the ruined cloth, and the raven tilted its head. Chester sat down hard in his chair, grinning. Rapunzel was not asking to leave. She was asking where to put the flour. He had given her a reason to stay, and the table had grown by one more permanent guest.

Chester climbed to the top of his tower and looked down. The wide cobblestone square stretched out under him, gray and littered with stray cups and crumbs from the last attack. The winding table sat in the middle. Two chairs were full. The rest were empty. From this height the empty seats looked like missing teeth. Rapunzel's frosting shop glowed at one end. Harrietta sat at the table with her arms crossed, watching the sky for more trouble. A party of two was not a party. Soon they would run out of things to say, and Harrietta would walk back into his house and shut the door. He paced the tower floor and ran through stories in his head. A wolf. A fox. A boy with a wooden nose. None of them felt right. Then a line surfaced on its own, clear as a bell. 'Tis true, you happen in this present instance to be all in the right, and have only considered the subject under different circumstances, but, pray, for the future allow others to have eyesight as well as yourselves; nor wonder if every one prefers the testimony of his own senses to those of another. Chester stopped pacing. He knew that voice. The chameleon. The one who was green and gray at the same time, depending on who looked. He ran down the stairs to his desk. A fresh book sat on the blotter, its cover the color of seawater, gold letters reading Aesop's Fables. The raven watched from the shelf. Chester rolled up his sleeve and pushed his hand through the cover like it was water. He felt scales. He closed his fingers and pulled. Out came a chameleon, small and sketchy, lines still wet, as if someone had just lifted a pen off its tail. It was white as paper, with faint pink under the skin. It blinked at him with one eye, then the other. Chester laughed. He carried it down to the square in both hands. Harrietta stood up when she saw it. The chameleon did not look at her. It looked past Chester, straight at Rapunzel, who had come out of the shop to see what the noise was. It leapt from Chester's hands, crossed the cobblestones in quick darts, and climbed her hair like a rope. Rapunzel froze. Then she smiled. She walked back into the shop with the chameleon curled at her ear. She came out an hour later carrying a cake as tall as her chest. Three tiers, white icing, flowers piped along the edges, and a green and orange chameleon coiled down all three layers in sugar. She set it on a stand outside her door, in plain view of the empty square. "For the next ones," she said. Chester counted the chairs again. Three full. He had bait now, and a reason for strangers to come closer.

Chester sat at the head of the table and watched the cake catch the light. Three chairs full. The chameleon flicked its tongue from Rapunzel's hair. Harrietta tapped her watch and stared at the empty seats like they owed her money. Chester thought about the next pull. Last time Harrietta had reached into a book and yanked out Alice. What if she had pulled out a wolf instead, or a queen who liked to behead people? A bad guest would not just bore the table. A bad guest would gut it. He slid down from his chair and crossed the cobblestones to the secret hedge garden. The pile waited where he had left it, a leaning stack of unread books with several volumes hovering loose above the top, shedding sparks. He had been planning to pull from this pile blind. He saw now what blind meant. A giant. A witch with an oven. Something with teeth. He carried the pile, armful by armful, to the table's edge. Then he sat on the cobbles and opened the first cover. He did not push his hand through. He only read. He made two columns on a fresh page. On the left he wrote what a guest needed. Likes sweets. Talks back. Survives nonsense. Will not eat the other guests. On the right he wrote what disqualified them. Carries an axe. Owns a cage. Hates cats. He read fast and sorted faster. Hansel's witch went into a locked stack. The wolf went into the locked stack. A piper who stole children went into the locked stack. He dragged the rejected books to a tall purple box with a heavy gold lock on its front and dropped them in. The lock clicked each time. He could feel it lock from across the square. Harrietta came over with her arms crossed. "What. What are you doing. We need guests. Guests, Chester." Her ears twitched. She checked her watch. "I am picking them," Chester said. "Not grabbing them." He held up a thin red book. "This one keeps a knife under his coat." He dropped it in the box. The lock swallowed it. Harrietta opened her mouth, then shut it. She sat down on the cobbles beside him and pointed at a green spine. "That one. That one bites." Chester slid it into the box. She pointed at another. "That one is fine. Loves tea. Hates rules." He set it in the keep pile. They worked through the stack together for the first time since he had pulled her out of her own page. When they finished, Chester opened a large black book with gold edges and began to copy his keep list into it, name by name, trait by trait. He wrote until the page was full. He had a compendium now. He had a short list of safe guests, a locked box of dangerous ones, and a rabbit who, for one quiet hour, had helped him choose.

Chester closed the black compendium and set it on the table. Three chairs full. Too many empty. Rapunzel had drifted to her feet and was edging toward her frosting shop, the chameleon riding her shoulder, her keys jingling against her hip. He could see her counting reasons to leave. He had a list of safe guests now, but a list did not fill a chair. Next to Rapunzel sat a plain white chair, straight-backed, polite, dull. Chester had set it out for the next arrival. Looking at it now, he hated it. A boring chair invited a boring guest, and boring did not take the tea. He flipped the compendium open again and ran his claw down the keep list. Halfway down a name jumped at him. A small striped bouncer from a wood with a bear in it. Loved sweets. Talked back. Could not sit still. Perfect. He crossed the square and climbed up to his house. The raven was already on the warped desk, ink dripping over the edge in slow black beads, quill upright. "Tigr," Chester said. "Phonetic. No pants. Tail like a spring." The raven dipped and wrote. Chester held the picture in his head: orange, stripes, a shirt with a name scrawled in red. The page filled. The book closed itself with a soft thump. Chester carried the book down to the table and opened it flat beside the plain white chair. He pushed his hand through the page. Something warm and loud grabbed his wrist and pulled. A small tiger tumbled out onto the cobblestones, bounced once on his tail, and landed grinning beside Rapunzel. "HI HI HI," Tigr said. "This is a vary gud square. Vary vary gud. Is that cak? I luv cak. Who are yu? Yu have lots of hare." Rapunzel stopped edging away. The chameleon flicked its tongue. Tigr looked at the plain white chair next to hers and frowned. "That chare is sad," he said. "Chares shud bounse." He poked it with one paw. Chester felt the want rise in him before he chose it. The chair shivered, folded down into itself, and sprang back up as a tight copper-and-silver coil, loops evenly spaced, a small flat seat balanced on top. Tigr leapt onto the spring and bounced. The seat sproinged. He went up, came down, went up again, laughing at the top of every arc. Rapunzel sat back down without noticing she had decided to. She watched him, then laughed, then asked how high he could go. Harrietta tapped her watch and said nothing, which for her was applause. Chester counted the chairs. Four full. He looked down the long winding table at the seats still waiting. The party was no longer drifting apart. It was pulling people in.

Tigr bounced down from his coil seat and skidded to a stop by the frosting shop door. "Rapunzl," he said. "Rapunzl Rapunzl. I want a cak. A Tigr cak. Vary vary big." Rapunzel set down her keys and laughed. She tied her hair back with three purple ribbons and said she had butter, sugar, and an idea about stripes. Chester watched from the head of the table and let her go. A cake was a chair-filler of a different kind. She came back with a tower of white frosting in three tiers, ringed with orange beads and dotted with little black and blue shapes. A round Tigr face sat on top, grinning. Tigr saw it and made a noise that was not quite a word. He climbed his spring and bounced once, gently, to be polite. Harrietta took her seat at her stack of cups. The chameleon settled on Rapunzel's shoulder. Chester poured. Four chairs full, and the long winding table looked, for once, like a party. "Riddle," Chester said. "What has stripes but no shirt, a tail but no spring, and eats cake but never gets full?" Tigr's paw shot up. "ME. Me me me." "Wrong," Chester said. "It's the cake itself." Tigr thought about this for half a second and laughed so hard he bounced without meaning to. The spring sproinged. He went up, came down, went up higher. Rapunzel clapped. Harrietta tapped her watch. Chester told another one about a teapot with no spout, and Tigr laughed harder, and bounced harder. The third bounce was the one. Tigr went up past Chester's ears, past the purple leaves, and on the way down his back paws caught the edge of the table. The table tipped. The Tigr cake left its plate and turned slow in the air, orange beads scattering. Teacups jumped off the cloths. Harrietta's stack toppled and rolled. The teapot spun out and emptied as it went. Tigr landed on his tail, bounced twice more from sheer momentum, and finally sat down hard in a puddle of tea, blinking. The cake hit the cobblestones top first. The little Tigr face slid off in one piece. Tea ran in dark ribbons between the stones. Broken cup shards lay in white curves around the table legs. Icing trailed from one chair to the next like a rope. Rapunzel pressed both hands to her mouth. Harrietta stared at her empty saucer. Nobody spoke. Tigr's ears went flat. "I bownsd too gud," he said. "Sorry. Sorry sorry." Chester looked at the wreckage. He looked at Tigr, soaked and small. He laughed. He laughed until his striped tail curled. "Don't apologize," he said. "That was the most unruly tea I have ever taken. That was exactly the thing." He stood up, walked through the spill, and set the Tigr face back on its plate. "More chairs," he said. "We need more chairs. A quiet party is a failed one."

Chester swept the broken cups aside with his boot and grinned at the wet table. Tigr's tea still dripped between the cobbles. Rapunzel was wringing out her sleeves. Harrietta was counting shards and writing the number down. "Not enough noise," Chester said. "One laugh, one bounce, one mess. A real party needs a pack." He pulled a gold-stamped book from his coat. A small lion cub was pressed into its cover. "This one," he said, "is full of teeth that giggle." He opened the book on the table and reached in past the wrist. Fur slid under his fingers. He pulled, and a spotted hyena tumbled out onto the cloth, laughing before its paws had landed. He pulled again. And again. Six hyenas in all, gray and black, knocking into each other and snorting. They smelled the spilled tea and laughed harder. Rapunzel stepped behind her chair. Harrietta tapped her watch and said this was exactly what she had been afraid of. Chester clapped once and the cobbles rearranged. Six new seats rose around the long table, each a small pile of bones with a stitched pillow on top. The pillows were bright with little castles and tiny skulls along the trim. "Bone for the seat," Chester said, "cushion for the manners." The hyenas climbed up at once, snouts already grinning. "Riddle," Chester said. "What walks on four legs, laughs on two, and pays for tea with a femur?" The hyenas howled. One fell off its pillow and climbed back up. He kept going. "What's striped, soaked, and sorry?" Tigr raised a paw. The hyenas shrieked. "What has a spout, no tea, and a temper?" One hyena hit the table so hard a saucer jumped. By the fifth riddle they were wheezing, leaning on each other, tails thumping. The smallest one, gray with a black mask across its eyes, slid down from its pillow and stood up on its hind legs. "My turn," it said. "I need a place to stand. Build me a stage, cat, and I'll keep them laughing till the moon falls in the cup." Chester's mismatched eyes brightened. He pictured an upturned teacup, wide as a wagon, set on a purple-draped round with little candles burning around the rim. The shape pressed itself out of the air beside the table and settled on the stones. The small hyena leapt up onto the cup's bowl and bowed. The others banged the table for applause. Chester laughed until his tail curled twice. He had wanted noise. Now he had a jester. "You'll need a den," he said. He looked past the square into the empty dark and imagined a hollow of pale stone shaped like a great elephant skull, archways through its sockets, bones scattered down the slope. The shelter rose at the edge of Wonderland, waiting. The hyenas saw it and yipped. Harrietta closed her notebook hard. "Six more mouths," she said. "Six more rooms to feed." Chester poured fresh tea. The table was loud again, and the chairs were not empty, and somewhere past the cobbles a skull-house stood ready for guests who would not stay quiet for long.

Chester left the hyenas to their stage and climbed a tower of his own making. The stairs spiraled up from the cobbles in tight loops of pale stone, leading to a flat landing wrapped in soft purple cloud. He liked the height. From the top he could see the long table, the skull den at the edge, and the empty dark past everything. Empty was a problem. He had filled the ground. He had not filled the sky. He leaned on the rail and let his mismatched eyes drift. One eye counted what was there. The other counted what could be. A cloud nosed up beside the landing, fat and purple, and he reached out and tapped it. Tea dripped from its underside. A teacup pushed itself out of the vapor, then another, then a small pot, all balanced on the cloud like it was a shelf. The cloud drifted off, dripping as it went. He grinned and pictured more. Doors next. A tall checkered door bloomed out of the air at the edge of the landing, purple and pink squares behind a gold frame, perched on a puff of cloud with nothing under it. He opened it. Behind it: nothing. Just dark. He laughed and shut it. "If every door went somewhere," he said, "you would never be lost on purpose." He pushed the door off the landing. It floated away and hung in the sky like a picture someone forgot to hang. More clouds nosed up. More doors. Some swung open as they drifted and showed snatches of other places, a green field, a snowed-in road, a kitchen with the lights left on. Most showed nothing at all. The tea clouds spread out over the cobbles and began to rain. Below, a drop hit Harrietta square on the ear. She flinched, lifted her cracked teacup, and her pocket watch on its chain tipped up and drank a long swallow from the falling drops. She tapped the watch hard. The watch ticked twice and went quiet. She wrote something down without looking up. Across the square, a small figure ran for the blue cottage with a black flamingo held high over her head like an umbrella that did not work. Alice ducked inside and shut the door. Blue dripped from her doorframe where the rain hit it. A hyena on the teacup stage caught a drop on its tongue and fell off the cup laughing. Rapunzel pulled her sleeves over her hands and looked up at the sky with her mouth open. Chester had what he wanted. A ceiling for his party. A way out of every room and into none of them. He stepped off the landing and let his body scatter into stripes, gone before he hit the stones. He reformed in his purple chair at the head of the table, cup already raised, and caught three drops clean.

Chester set his cup down. Above the table, one of the floating doors rattled on its cloud. The checkered one, purple and pink behind a gold frame, with a fat brass knob. It had not rattled before. He tilted his head. One eye saw a door. The other saw a guest. The door cracked open. A hat poked through first, blue as deep sky, spotted with stars, a teapot balanced on its crown pouring an endless brown ribbon down the brim. The hat tipped. The hat fell. It bounced once on the cobbles and rolled. After it came the man, green hair, watches dangling from his coat, a teacup in each hand. He landed on his back, sat up, and looked offended at the air. "A tea party," he said, "without meee?" The lisp made the last word stretch. Harrietta lowered her pencil. Tigr stopped bouncing. The man stood, brushed his coat, and marched straight past Chester to the rose hedge by the table. He pulled a watch from his pocket. He listened to it. He scowled. He shoved it deep into the leaves and pinned a small paper to it. The paper read platypus. He did this with another, and another, muttering as he went. "Thtill ticking. Rude. Platypuses, all of you." Chester watched, delighted. A hatter who hated time. Perfect for a party that had none. Then Chester looked back at the door. It was still open. Behind the hatter, through the gap, Chester could see what the man had walked out of. A neat manor wrapped in hedges. Pink flowers on the sills. The hedges were trimmed into careful shapes and studded with clock faces ringed by blue and purple roses. A row of cheerful daisies by the path were singing. Singing. In tune. Chester knew that place. He had not made that place. That was the other Wonderland. The first one. Alice's. Chester moved. He scattered into stripes and reformed in the air by the cloud, both hands on the checkered door. He slammed it shut. He pictured locks and locks came. A bolt across the middle. A padlock on the knob. A chain. Another chain. A hasp with a brass pin. He kept counting and stopped counting at twenty. He shoved the whole door, locks and all, down through the cloud and into the dark below the square, and let the cloud close over the top of it like a lid. He dropped back into his chair. His breath was quick. Down the table the hatter was labeling a fourth watch. Chester raised his cup and smiled at him with every tooth. "Welcome," he said. "You will fit." He did not look up at the sky again. One door was gone. The hatter was his. The other Wonderland could keep its singing flowers.