Through the Looking-Glass

[Illustration]

THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS

And What Alice Found There

By Lewis Carroll

The Millennium Fulcrum Edition 1.7

CAST OF CHARACTERS
(As arranged before the game begins.)

WHITE PIECES	WHITE PAWNS	RED PAWNS	RED PIECES
Tweedledee	Daisy	Daisy	Humpty Dumpty
Unicorn	Haigha	Messenger	Carpenter
Sheep	Oyster	Oyster	Walrus
W. Queen	"Lily"	Tiger-lily	R. Queen
W. King	Fawn	Rose	R. King
Aged man	Oyster	Oyster	Crow
W. Knight	Hatta	Frog	R. Knight
Tweedledum	Daisy	Daisy	Lion

RED.

[Illustration: chessboard]

WHITE.

White Pawn (Alice) to move, and to win in eleven moves.

1. Alice meets the Red Queen.
2. Red Queen moves to King's Rook's 4th square
3. Alice crosses Queen's 3rd square (by railway) to the 4th (Tweedledum and Tweedledee)
4. White Queen moves to Queen's Bishop's 4th square (chasing her shawl)
5. Alice meets the White Queen (carrying her shawl)
6. White Queen moves to Queen's Bishop's 5th square (turns into a sheep)
7. Alice moves to Queen's 5th square (shop, river, shop)
8. White Queen moves to King's Bishop's 8th square (leaves an egg on the shelf)
9. Alice moves to Queen's 6th square (Humpty Dumpty)
10. White Queen moves to Queen's Bishop's 8th square (fleeing the Red Knight)
11. Alice moves to Queen's 7th square (forest)
12. Red Knight moves to King's 2nd square (check)
13. White Knight captures Red Knight
14. White Knight moves to King's Bishop's 5th square
15. Alice moves to Queen's 8th square (coronation)
16. Red Queen moves to King's square (the examination)
17. Alice becomes a Queen
18. The Queens castle
19. Alice castles (feast)
20. White Queen moves to Queen's Rook's 6th square (soup)
21. Alice captures the Red Queen and wins

Child of the pure unclouded brow
And dreaming eyes of wonder!
Though time be fleet, and I and thou
Are half a life asunder,
Thy loving smile will surely hail
The love-gift of a fairy-tale.

I have not seen thy sunny face,
Nor heard thy silver laughter;
No thought of me shall find a place
In thy young life's hereafter—
Enough that now thou wilt not fail
To listen to my fairy-tale.

A tale begun in other days,
When summer suns were glowing—
A simple chime, that served to time
The rhythm of our rowing—
Whose echoes live in memory yet,
Though envious years would say 'forget.'

Come, hearken then, ere voice of dread,
With bitter tidings laden,
Shall summon to unwelcome bed
A melancholy maiden!
We are but older children, dear,
Who fret to find our bedtime near.

Without, the frost, the blinding snow,
The storm-wind's moody madness—
Within, the firelight's ruddy glow,
And childhood's nest of gladness.
The magic words shall hold thee fast:
Thou shalt not heed the raving blast.

And though the shadow of a sigh
May tremble through the story,
For 'happy summer days' gone by,
And vanish'd summer glory—
It shall not touch with breath of bale
The pleasance of our fairy-tale.

Contents

CHAPTER I. Looking-Glass House
CHAPTER II. The Garden of Live Flowers
CHAPTER III. Looking-Glass Insects
CHAPTER IV. Tweedledum and Tweedledee
CHAPTER V. Wool and Water
CHAPTER VI. Humpty Dumpty
CHAPTER VII. The Lion and the Unicorn
CHAPTER VIII. "It's My Own Invention"
CHAPTER IX. Queen Alice
CHAPTER X. Shaking
CHAPTER XI. Waking
CHAPTER XII. Which Dreamed It?

CHAPTER I. Looking-Glass House

One thing was certain: the white kitten had had nothing to do with it. The mischief was entirely the black kitten's fault. The white kitten had spent the last quarter of an hour having its face washed by the old cat, Dinah, and had put up with it fairly well, all things considered—so clearly it couldn't have had any part in the trouble.

Here's how Dinah washed her kittens' faces: she pinned the poor creature down by one ear with one paw, then scrubbed its face with the other paw, rubbing the wrong way, starting at the nose. Just now, as I said, she was hard at work on the white kitten, which lay still and tried to purr, apparently sensing that this was all for its own good.

But the black kitten had already been washed earlier that afternoon. So while Alice curled up in the corner of the big armchair, half talking to herself and half asleep, the black kitten had been having a wonderful time playing with the ball of yarn Alice had been winding. It had rolled the ball back and forth until the whole thing came undone again—now it lay scattered across the hearth rug, a tangle of knots, with the kitten chasing its own tail in the middle of the mess.

"Oh, you wicked little thing!" Alice cried, scooping up the kitten and giving it a small kiss to let it know it was in trouble. "Really, Dinah ought to have taught you better manners! You ought to have, Dinah, you know you should have!" She shot the old cat a reproachful look and tried to sound as stern as possible—then climbed back into the armchair with the kitten and the yarn, and began winding the ball again. She didn't make much progress, though, since she kept talking the whole time, partly to the kitten and partly to herself. Kitty sat primly on her lap, pretending to watch the winding with great interest, occasionally reaching out a paw to touch the ball, as if eager to help if only she were allowed.

"Do you know what tomorrow is, Kitty?" Alice began. "You'd have guessed if you'd been at the window with me—but Dinah was busy cleaning you up, so you missed it. I was watching the boys gather sticks for the bonfire—and it needs an awful lot of sticks, Kitty! But it got so cold and snowy that they had to stop. Never mind—we'll go see the bonfire tomorrow." Here Alice wound a couple of loops of yarn around the kitten's neck just to see how it would look. This led to a scuffle, and the ball tumbled to the floor, unwinding several more yards.

"You know, I was really angry with you, Kitty," Alice continued once they'd settled back down, "when I saw all the trouble you'd caused. I nearly opened the window and put you right out into the snow! And you'd have deserved it, you little troublemaker! What do you have to say for yourself? Don't interrupt me!" she added, holding up a finger. "I'm going to list all your offenses. First: you squeaked twice while Dinah was washing your face this morning. Don't try to deny it—I heard you!" She paused, as if the kitten had spoken. "Her paw poked your eye? Well, that's your fault for keeping your eyes open—if you'd shut them tight, it wouldn't have happened. No more excuses—listen! Second: you dragged Snowdrop away by the tail right when I'd set down her saucer of milk! Oh, you were thirsty, were you? How do you know she wasn't thirsty too? And third: you unraveled the entire ball of yarn while I wasn't watching!

"That's three offenses, Kitty, and you haven't been punished for any of them yet. I'm saving up all your punishments for a week from Wednesday—imagine if someone saved up all my punishments that way!" she added, talking more to herself now. "What would happen at the end of a year? I suppose I'd be sent to prison when the day finally came. Or, let's see—suppose each punishment meant skipping a dinner: then on that terrible day, I'd have to skip fifty dinners all at once! Well, I wouldn't mind that too much—I'd rather skip them than eat them!

"Do you hear the snow tapping against the windowpanes, Kitty? Doesn't it sound soft and gentle? Almost like someone kissing the window from outside. I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, kissing them so gently? And then it tucks them in snugly under a white blanket, and maybe it whispers, 'Sleep now, darlings, until summer returns.' And when they wake up in summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green and dance about whenever the wind blows—oh, that's such a lovely thought!" Alice dropped the ball of yarn and clapped her hands. "I really do wish it were true! The woods always look sleepy in autumn, once the leaves start turning brown.

"Kitty, can you play chess? Now don't smile, dear—I'm asking seriously. Because when we were playing earlier, you watched as though you understood everything, and when I said 'Check!' you purred! It really was a clever check, Kitty—I might have won, if that pesky Knight hadn't come wiggling in among my pieces. Kitty, dear, let's pretend—"

I wish I could share even half of what Alice used to say once she launched into her favorite phrase, "Let's pretend." Just the day before, she'd had quite an argument with her sister about it—it started when Alice said, "Let's pretend we're kings and queens," and her sister, who liked things to be logical, pointed out that they couldn't, since there were only two of them. Alice finally gave up and said, "Fine, you can be one of them, and I'll be all the rest." And once she'd genuinely startled her old nurse by suddenly shouting in her ear, "Nurse! Let's pretend I'm a starving hyena, and you're a bone!"

But that's drifting away from Alice's conversation with the kitten. "Let's pretend you're the Red Queen, Kitty! You know, I think if you sat up straight and folded your arms, you'd look just like her. Go on, try it, there's a dear!" Alice fetched the Red Queen chess piece from the table and set it in front of the kitten as an example to copy. It didn't work, though—mainly, Alice decided, because the kitten simply wouldn't fold its arms correctly. As punishment, she held the kitten up to the mirror so it could see just how sulky it looked. "And if you're not good this instant," she warned, "I'll put you straight through into Looking-glass House. How would you like that?"

"Now, Kitty, if you'll just pay attention and stop chattering, I'll explain all my theories about Looking-glass House. First, there's the room you can see through the mirror—it's just like our drawing room, except everything is backwards. I can see the whole thing when I stand on a chair—except for the part hidden behind the fireplace. Oh, I do wish I could see that part! I'm dying to know whether they have a fire burning there in winter. You can never tell, you know, unless our fire starts smoking—then smoke appears in that room too. But that could just be a trick, to make it look like they have a fire. Anyway, the books over there are a bit like ours, except the words run backwards. I know this because I've held one of our books up to the mirror, and they hold up a matching one on their side.

"How would you like living in Looking-glass House, Kitty? Do you think they'd give you milk there? Maybe Looking-glass milk isn't fit to drink—