Secrets of the Looking Glass Read online

  Cover illustration: Kevin Keele

  Book design: © Shadow Mountain

  Author photo by Erica Thurman

  Art direction: Richard Erickson

  Design: Sheryl Dickert Smith

  Book epigraph from Alice’s Adventures Under Ground (1886), Introduction, p. v.

  © 2022 J. Scott Savage

  Illustrations by Kevin Keele

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, ­Shadow ­Mountain Publishing®, at ­[email protected]. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of ­Shadow ­Mountain Publishing.

  Visit us at shadowmountain.com

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Savage, J. Scott (Jeffrey Scott), 1963– author.

  Title: Secrets of the looking glass / J. Scott Savage.

  Description: [Salt Lake City] : Shadow Mountain, [2022] | Series: The lost Wonderland diaries ; book 2 | Audience: Grades 4–6. | Summary: “Celia and Tyrus must travel through another secret diary of Charles Dodgson (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll) into the Looking-Glass World to save their reflections, which have been stolen by the Bandersnatch, and reunite the warring Red and White Kingdoms”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2022003676 | ISBN 9781639930449 (hardback) | eISBN 9781649331168 (eBook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Characters in literature—Fiction. | Imaginary places—Fiction. | Doppelgängers—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | War—Fiction. | Diaries—Fiction | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Fantasy & Magic | LCGFT: Novels.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.S25897 Se 2022 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022003676

  Printed in the United States of America

  LSC Communications, Crawfordsville, IN

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Other Books by J. Scott Savage

  The Lost Wonderland Diaries

  Farworld series

  Water Keep

  Land Keep

  Air Keep

  Fire Keep

  Mysteries of Cove series

  Fires of Invention

  Gears of Revolution

  Embers of Destruction

  Case File 13 series

  Zombie Kid

  Making the Team

  Evil Twins

  Curse of the Mummy’s Uncle

  To Robert Louis Mauritz “Uncle Bobby”

  Thanks for making the lives of so many kids magical.

  You will be missed.

  Those for whom a child’s mind is a sealed book, and who see no divinity in a child’s smile, would read such words in vain: while for any one that has ever loved one true child, no words are needed.

  —Lewis Carroll

  Contents

  Never

  A Most Enlightening Position

  Powerful Combisaries

  The Strangest Dream

  Gone

  Reflections

  The Looking-Glass World

  Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee

  The White Castle

  Failebration

  Hatter

  The Library

  A Diary Page

  The Train

  To Battle!

  Rooks

  The Red Queen

  Lia and Ty

  Charles Dodgson’s Message

  The Vorpal Sword

  The Poets

  Poetry

  Black Sheep

  Confidence

  Hope

  The Nix

  Root Beer

  Stowaways

  Spider’s Den

  Escape

  The Isles of Illusion

  Tumtum Trees

  Awakening

  The Jabberwock

  Jubjubs

  The Choice

  The Looking-Glass War

  Mirror Image

  Final Battle

  The Bandersnatch

  Traitor

  Fear

  The Pink Kingdom

  Book Club

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  Discussion Questions

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Never

  Tyrus stumbled into our first-period English class weighed down by his bulging backpack. Not exactly unusual. For the three months I’d known him, he never went anywhere without enough reading material to keep half the eighth grade occupied for a month.

  This morning, however, he was also carrying a pile of books so tall he had to hold it in place with his chin. As he stepped through the door, the stack wobbled. Behind his thick glasses, his dark eyes went wide as he furiously shifted his arms to keep from dousing the kids in the front row with a wave of escaping fiction.

  Entertaining as that might have been, I jumped from my seat and grabbed the books before they could fall.

  “Planning on some light reading before class?” I teased, setting the books on the desk beside mine. I pulled out the pocket watch Hatter had given us during our adventures in Wonderland. “You have almost three minutes.”

  “Hilarious,” Tyrus said, arranging the pile in two neat stacks of identical books in front of him as he sat. “These are for book club.”

  In the past, drawing this much attention to ourselves in a class full of kids would have ended with him rubbing his glasses furiously, while I sank as low in my seat as I could, biting the inside of my cheek.

  When we first met—in the public library where my mom worked—we’d voted ourselves most likely to be the biggest outcasts in the school. With me trying to hide my dyslexia and Tyrus escaping into stories to avoid getting picked on, it seemed like a safe bet.

  Turns out, rescuing one of the most well-known fantasy worlds in all of literature from a crafty villain while also discovering that our differences made us stronger, brought out a confidence we didn’t know we had.

  Tyrus slapped one of the book club novels on my desk. “We’re reading Inkheart.”

  I glanced at the cover, my eyes dancing away from the unfamiliar word, and snorted. “You know, some pretty great books were written after we were born.”

  One side of his mouth angled up. “It’s a classic.”

  Like I’d fall for that. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to.”

  “What?” He tried to play innocent, but the grin dimpling his brown cheeks gave him away. “It’s just a story about people who, you know, travel in and out of books.”

  I leaned toward him, dropping my voice. “We are not going to read the diaries.”

  “I’m not saying we have to read them,” Tyrus whispered back. “I’m saying we should dig them up and make sure they’re okay. With all the rain we’ve been having, they could get damaged.”

  The diaries were a set of four journals written by the author of the Alice in Wonderland books, Lewis Carroll—also known by his real name of Charles Dodgson—that had gone missing after his death. He was my great-great-great-granduncle, and Tyrus and I had discovered his books in a box of my mom’s old stuff the week before school started.

  Reading the first diary had physically sucked us into Wonderland, where I’d been mistaken
for “the Alice,” and we both had nearly been killed.

  Just because it had all turned out okay—well, maybe better than okay—didn’t mean I wanted to risk anything like that happening again. That’s why we’d wrapped the diaries in enough plastic to keep them safe—and dry—for at least a hundred years and buried them in my backyard.

  I rested my chin in my palm. “Let’s say we dig them up and find they are perfectly fine—which they are. You’d be okay with burying them again?”

  Tyrus tried to meet my eyes but couldn’t do it. “Maybe we could take a tiny peek inside the second one? Mr. Dodgson would want us to.”

  “Never.” I tried to hand him back Inkheart, but he shook his head with a grin.

  “Keep it. I’m inviting you to book club.”

  “Can’t,” I said, ignoring the queasy feeling that still twisted my stomach whenever I thought about reading a novel filled with words that would trip me up. “I have chess after school. Two teams are coming for a tournament.”

  “Book club isn’t until tomorrow.” His eyes had a crafty gleam when he was trying to be sneaky. “Besides, I know all about your tournament, and how you’re ranked number one on the team. I’m coming to cheer for you.”

  “You’re coming to my chess tournament?”

  Now I knew he was up to something. Tyrus loved books more than anyone I knew. I could see him becoming a librarian or an author—or both—one day. I was dyslexic, which meant my brain saw words and letters in a different way than most people—making it harder for me to read and spell. Math and logic were more my strengths. I could spend hours studying chess moves, while just seeing a board made Tyrus squirm.

  “The last time I tried to get you to watch a match, you called it ‘the only game more boring than croquet.’”

  Before Tyrus could respond, a girl I didn’t recognize walked into class.

  No, not walked. She glided like a supermodel in a fashion show or a queen entering a castle. Conversations stopped, and eyes followed her as she casually let a slip of pink paper float from her fingers to Mr. Sheehy’s desk.

  “New student,” she murmured.

  Flustered for a moment, our English teacher picked up the sheet and studied it. “Deanne . . . Bratsch? Interesting last name. German?”

  “Austrian,” Deanne said. Her accent made the word sound sophisticated. “Although, I think names should tell more about a person than where they come from. They should have shape. Depth. Study a person’s name long enough and you should be able to see inside them.”

  “Of course,” Mr. Sheehy said, beaming. “In England, surnames were first used by feudal nobility who—”

  But the new girl was already scanning the rest of us like a lioness studying a herd of antelope. One look at her ice-blue eyes told me she had more confidence in her upturned nose than I would ever get from saving a dozen Wonderlands.

  Mr. Sheehy slid the attendance sheet into his desk. “Let’s find you a seat—”

  Deanne moved through the aisle as though she hadn’t heard him, stopping at the desk on the other side of Tyrus. Aubrey—one of the most popular girls in school—looked up from her phone. Her lips curled as she prepared to make one of her usual snide comments, then formed an o of surprise as she met the new girl’s stare.

  “You may leave,” Deanne said.

  Amazingly, Aubrey grabbed her things and scurried to the back of the room along with the three students sitting near her.

  “I can move too,” Tyrus said, gathering his books, but Deanne shook her head as she slid into the seat beside him. She looked from Tyrus to me and flashed a brilliantly white smile.

  “The two of you can stay. I believe this spot will be . . .”

  Chapter 2

  A Most Enlightening Position

  That afternoon was the chess tournament.

  I had a special relationship with chess. My father had been away from home a lot when I was little, and then he died when I was six, so I don’t have many memories of him. Except for the summer he introduced me to chess. I was five years old, probably too young for such a complex game, but he knelt by my side and taught me the basic rules and showed me how to record our moves in the pages of a chess scorebook so I could review them later.

  He pointed to each of the pieces, treating them like real people as he explained their moves. “The king can only advance one square at a time. He’s a lazy old thing, throwing feasts and polishing his crown. The bishops patrol their same-colored squares diagonally with dignity and self-confidence, while the knights hop forward and sideways like a swarm of bees is after them, and the rooks protect the borders with unflinching ­loyalty.”

  He tapped a piece that reminded me of a woman wearing a crown and a fancy dress. “The queen is the power of the army. She watches the battle until she sees an opening then zips across the board, faster than the quickest horse, and attacks.”

  “What about these?” I’d asked, pointing to one of the eight puny pieces spread across my side of the board. I remember thinking they were little, like I was.

  Dad looked from the pawn to me, possibly guessing my thoughts. “The pawns might appear small and powerless. But they can make a difference in the battle.” He smiled. “And if they manage to make it clear across the board, they can become any piece they want. Even a queen.”

  I’d stared at the tiny piece in my hand, imagining fighting my way across the board and becoming a queen. As I grew older, I forgot about becoming a queen, but I still identified with the pawns.

  Until I met Tyrus, I’d spent every grade hoping to survive to the end of the school year without being attacked by the more powerful pieces that roamed the halls.

  But now, here I was, queen of the chess club, looking to win my final match and take first place in the tournament.

  My opponent, a red-haired girl named Jessica, was good. Like me, she’d won all her previous games that day. Her strategy was bold but effective—seize control of the center of the board and attack relentlessly from a position of power.

  It had worked in all her other matches because the players she faced focused on defending her attacks, afraid to lose too many pieces. I had a different strategy in mind. I allowed her to clear pieces from the board, sacrificing both my rooks, a bishop, and even my queen as long as I could exchange them for hers.

  While she attacked from the center of the board, I slipped around the sides, locking up her half of the board until, after about an hour of playing, I had her king trapped in the back three rows.

  She scowled at me, moving her bishop onto a square where I could easily take it with my own.

  It was a bluff, and we both knew it. Taking the bait would allow her king to escape. Instead, I jumped my knight two squares forward and one to the right, imagining him raising his sword as his horse clip-clopped across the board, completing my trap. In under ten moves, her king would be mine, and the match would be over.

  “Smart,” Jessica said. “You were lucky I didn’t see what you were up to earlier.”

  “You call it luck,” I said, taking my fingers off the knight and ending my turn. “I call it planning. Either way, your king is about to hand over his crown. Check.”

  Trying to burn a hole in the board with her eyes, Jessica moved her king one square to the left.

  Tyrus had sat in the front row since the tournament started. I’d glanced at him out of the corner of my eye as each game stretched on, waiting for him to get bored and leave or at least pull out a book. But he kept his eyes glued to the game the whole time as if he truly cared about what was happening.

  After that kind of support, I was almost convinced to give in and attend his book club the next day. Only a couple of moves from victory, I allowed myself to look up at him and wave.

  As I started to raise my hand, I noticed someone sitting to his right, just far enough back that Tyrus had to turn away from
the game to talk to them. He leaned to one side, and I saw it was the new girl from English—Deanne something.

  Whatever they were talking about obviously held his attention better than my chess game. He shrugged at her, scratched the back of his head, then nodded.

  “Are you going to take your turn?” Jessica asked.

  I looked back at the timer, realizing I only had a few seconds to move. Barely glancing at the board, I advanced my knight again.

  When I looked up, the new girl had slid her chair forward and Tyrus was digging around in his backpack. He pulled out a book I recognized as the same novel he’d given me.

  Was he inviting her to book club? She didn’t seem the type.

  I expected Jessica to move her king again. There were only a few escape routes left. Instead, she advanced a pawn on the other side of the board.

  “Three moves to checkmate,” I said, sliding my bishop forward without looking away from Tyrus and Deanne.

  Whatever she said made him jerk back in his seat with a surprised expression. As Tyrus pulled off his glasses and rubbed them on the front of his shirt, Jessica moved her pawn again.

  Tyrus began to stand, then dropped back into his chair with a thud. What was that girl doing here? Clearly, she hadn’t come to watch the games.

  Trying not to think about it, I set my knight in position to finish the match. “Two moves to checkmate.”

  Jessica slid her pawn again. “One move.”

  “What?” I asked, reaching for my bishop.

  But Jessica hadn’t finished her turn. Instead, she picked up her queen I’d taken earlier. Looking down at the board in growing horror, I realized that while I’d been positioning to checkmate her king, she’d been moving her last pawn forward until it reached the eighth row—my home row—allowing her to promote it to any piece she wanted.

  I could have stopped her if I’d been paying attention, which I wasn’t.

  “Queen,” she said, replacing her pawn. “Which puts you in check and mate.” She tipped my king onto its side with a smirk. “Looks like I was the one planning.”