“Only three,” said the funny looking kid who’d been locked in the coal bin.
He’d somehow crawled into the cellar during the night. Aggie heard him scratching at the door and rattling the latch. “Let me out,” he’d moaned.
When she set him free, they stared at each other face-to-face. Aggie had never seen anyone quite like him. He was as small as a toddler, with long coal-smudged white ears and a soot-covered waistcoat. When she reached out to touch his droopy ear, he bit her hand and ran away clutching two fistfuls of coal to his chest.
“Dirty, rotten thing,” cried Aggie, holding her thumb.
“Only three,” he called back.
Aggie and Mommy were driving back from the swimming pool. Rain beat against their windshield and hammered like pellets on the car roof. The windshield wipers pounded a rhythm until Aggie felt her heart match its beat. The old-car smell mingled with stale cigarette smoke, making her feel sick.
“Daddy and I are divorcing,” Mommy said.
When they got home, Mommy let them eat in front of the television. Daddy would never have let them do that.
Two nights before, like other nights, Daddy had come home from work and everybody had to be quiet. Aggie hated quiet. After dinner they could sit without noise or fidgeting while Daddy sat on the couch and sipped his beer. He always fell asleep watching hockey and one of them, usually Tricia, would turn on cartoons. Then Davy would switch the channel to an action show. Aggie didn’t much care what was on TV. She just wanted them not to argue. They always argued. Daddy would wake up and send them all to bed.
The next night, Aggie had played with her father’s tools. He accused Davy. Davy was too afraid to defend himself. Aggie was too scared to confess. Davy got a spanking.
That’s when Aggie wished her father would go away, so she wouldn’t have to worry about being quiet or good anymore.
Aggie only had one so-called friend on the block, and she didn’t like her much. Her cousin Jane lived next door and was two years older and bossed Aggie around. She was tall, skinny and blonde, and Aggie thought they looked stupid together because she was short, dark and plump.
“Come to my house after school.”
Jane never asked, she told. Aggie had to wait outside the school for her for an extra half hour. The wind bit into Aggie’s ankles and scraped her lips raw. She yanked her skirt as close to her knee socks as she could.
Jane cried all the way home, saying her hands were cold. Aggie didn’t think a seventh grader who blubbered had any right to boss her.
The next day, when Jane wanted her to stay outside in the biting cold and wait for her, Aggie shook her head and went straight home. But as Aggie walked down the steps of the school, she saw Jane plastered against the window making a fist at her. Jane had her ways. Aggie was afraid to go to school the next morning.
She wished her cousin’s family would go away.
That night, nestled with Tricia in their tiny bedroom, Aggie kept waking up with the same bad dream that hot smoke scorched her nose and throat raw. When she got up to get a drink of water, she heard her mother crying behind her bedroom door just like she heard her every night since Daddy left. She wished she didn’t have to hear Mommy cry. After her trip to the bathroom, Aggie heard the whoop-whoop of the sirens race down her street. From her window, she saw fire trucks parked by Jane’s house, and their red lights bathed her room in blood. Smoke billowed from next door.
Aggie and her sister and brother ran downstairs with their mother and out the door to watch their cousin’s house burn down. Mommy sobbed harder and in front of everybody on the whole block. Aunt Sheila didn’t look that sad that her house was on fire. Jane managed a nasty smirk as she huddled under a blanket.
Shivering in her pyjamas, the heat that rushed to her face burned as bright as the flames that leaped from Jane’s house to her own rooftop. Now Aggie’s house was in flames.
After the fire, Aggie and Jane’s families went away all right, but the kids were farmed out among other aunts and uncles. Mommy needed a rest and was staying with Aunt Diane in another city. Aggie didn’t hear Mommy cry anymore. Only…
It was a bad time to run out of wishes.
“Why can’t Trisha or Davy stay here with us?” Aggie helped Jane unfold the hideaway in their Granny Perkin’s battered, wine-coloured couch.
“I couldn’t put up with anyone that needs a lot of watching,” Granny said, her cigarette dangling from her mouth as she managed to simultaneously smoke, talk and drink her coffee. “And I didn’t want to take in anyone old enough to be mouthy.” Saying this, Granny glared at Jane. “But I only had two choices now, didn’t I?”
“I won’t be here long,” said Jane. “We had house insurance. We’re getting a new house built. I’ll get my own room, a real one.”
“Not soon enough for me,” muttered Granny, and she shuffled to the kitchen in her quilted slippers and stained housedress to pour more coffee.
“You’ll be here forever,” Jane whispered to Aggie behind their granny’s back. “’Cause your dad ran off and your mom’s gone nuts because you had no insurance on the house. Your family’s lost everything. Now, I’m your boss.”
Jane smirked. She made a fist and waved it in front of Aggie’s face. “I’ll take the bed. You sleep on the couch cushions.”
That night as Aggie tried to distribute her weight on the two cushions, her bottom sagged between the break until she abandoned the cushions and curled up on the threadbare carpet. The carpet smelled faintly of cat pee, which was still better than the cushions that radiated mildew and cigarette smoke. She wished she was in her own bedroom listening to Trisha’s soft breaths. That’s when it occurred to Aggie.
She had to find that funny-looking rabbit kid, whom she realized wasn’t really a person at all, but something closer to an it. Not the it that lurks in closets at night, and not the kind of it that delivers Easter eggs either. She needed more wishes.
It was Granny Perkins who gave her the idea. When Jane was taking a bath and Aggie was blissfully free of her, she found an old record player and records in Granny’s closet. Granny had finished her first whiskey of the night and was more agreeable. She showed Aggie how to play records.
When Aggie put the third record on Granny’s portable, it played a Bing Crosby song over and over as he crooned about high hopes and ants moving plants. She spun until she was dizzy and stumbled backwards around the living room, until she knocked over a pewter ashtray stand and it smashed down with a wallop. The glass ashtray shattered.
“That’s enough nonsense,” snapped Granny, who’d finished her third whiskey by this time. She raked the playing arm over the record. Aggie’s teeth ached from the needle’s scratching sound.
“See what happens when you run around widdershins,” said Granny Perkins. “The faeries can see you, and they cause accidents.” She handed Aggie a dented metal dustpan and a whisk broom.
“What’s widdershins?” asked Aggie.
“Ass backwards,” Granny mumbled, rolling her cigarette over her tongue. “Contrary, like asking questions when you should be cleaning up this mess.”
As Aggie swept the ashes and glass shards into the pan, she plotted.
On Saturday morning, when Granny was sleeping it off upstairs, Aggie washed up the breakfast dishes. Jane sat in the living room munching on her third piece of cinnamon toast as she watched cartoons. Jane didn’t notice her slip out the kitchen door.
On the back stoop, Aggie climbed backward down the porch. She counted the backward steps to the cellar. Pears and plums that hadn’t been raked during the fall, squished under her navy sneakers, releasing rotten fruit fumes while she slid across the thick frost. Aggie reached down the furnace chute and pulled out several stray chunks of coal. She held them one by one in front of her face. “Come and get it, whatever you are,” she said before stuffing the coal in the deep pockets of her pink jacket.
Cold air nipped at her ears and nose, and Aggie shivered as she kept her backward motion out of the yard, past the blackberry canes, out into the gravel lane. Backward, she walked down the alley marvelling at how different the neighbourhood looked in this widdershins motion. Even the dilapidated garage with its crumbling tarpaper blurred almost unrecognizable against the steel November sky.
Aggie finally reached the huge field at the end of Granny’s block with its leafless chestnut trees and tall frozen grass. Behind the trees and camouflaged by the tall grass was the underground fort she and Jane had been digging since they moved in with Granny. I’ve been digging, Aggie thought, rubbing the blisters on her palms. Jane was her foreman.
The fort looked like a giant rabbit hole to Aggie. She circled the hole counter-clockwise three times before she dropped the chunks of coal inside. She propped up the hatch with a tree branch, and marched around the hole in a clockwise motion, hoping the funny-looking kid wouldn’t notice how she tied her skipping rope around the branch. Huddled behind the tree trunk, Aggie pulled her knees close to her chest for warmth and tucked her hands inside the dirty sleeves of her hooded jacket. It didn’t take long.
When Aggie heard snuffling sounds of something rooting inside the fort, she yanked the skipping rope taut. The branch pulled away and the hatch snapped shut.
“No,” screeched the giant rabbit kid.
Aggie rushed to the hatch and jumped on top, securing the only exit.
“Let me out,” it screamed. Aggie’s nostrils flared at his otherworldly scent. Butterflies battered her stomach as his nails scratched underneath, but she held her ground. “Promise me more wishes,” she demanded.
“You only get three,” the rabbit kid said. Aggie didn’t like the way his voice took on a taunting tone, reminding her of Jane. “What’s the matter, didn’t the other wishes work out so well?”
“They were okay,” said Aggie. “Only three wasn’t enough. And you can stay down there till I get more.”
“There are rules, you know.” This time he sounded less smug. “Wishes in the hands of a child can be a nasty business. A child can be ruthless even by Wonderland’s standards.”
“Then get yourself out,” cried Aggie and she stomped on the hatch, hoping chunks of rock and dirt would rain on the creature.
“Stop that,” he bellowed. “You can’t stand there forever.”
“Are you sure?” asked Aggie. “My granny doesn’t care. Jane will miss me when she wants something, but she hates the cold and won’t come looking for me until spring.”
For a while there was silence. Aggie shivered as the sullen grey clouds thickened the sky. She waited.
“What if…”
“What?” asked Aggie, hoping she didn’t sound too curious.
“What if I make a deal with you,” the rabbit said. “I’ll give you a treasure instead of a wish.”
“A treasure?” asked Aggie.
“I can do magic with the coal and turn it into a valuable gem.”
Aggie considered his offer. Her teacher had said that coal buried under great pressure for a very long time turned into diamonds. She’d given that endeavour her best effort, filling a pit with pieces of coal, damping down rocks, dirt and leaves over the coal, hopping on the pile every day for months. But when she dug up the coal, it was still black, sooty chunks of rock.
With some trepidation, she stepped off the hatch and watched as he poked up his long ears and then his white head. He crawled out of the hole, clutching his pieces of coal.
“Why do you need coal?”
“We’ve run out of treasure,” the rabbit complained. “And we have to keep paying more to the Jabberwock.”
“Why?” asked Aggie.
“We’re disorganized, I suppose,” he said in disgust. His nose twitched. “We find it hard to stand up to him.” He pulled out a long-frozen stalk of grass and strung it around a piece of coal. Then he covered it completely with his white paws.
For a moment, as if the sun had peeked from the clouds and lit up the sky, a queer green light seeped from his fists and spilled out. When he unfolded his hands, a glittering gem the size of Aggie’s palm hung from a delicate chain of pale gold. Aggie gasped. The necklace would be worth a fortune, and she could afford to buy Granny Perkin’s house and let Trisha and Davy move in, and somehow get rid of Jane and Granny.
With shaky hands, Aggie took the necklace from the rabbit’s furry paw and hung it over her neck. Close to her chest, the stone flushed as if a sponge had been dipped in blood until it glowed ruby red.
“Will that do?” the rabbit asked and flashed a quizzical smile revealing his protruding white teeth.
Aggie nodded backing away, mindful of those teeth as she remembered her bitten thumb. As she hurried down the alley back to Granny’s house, the heat from the ruby necklace warmed her through her thin jacket. It was time to put Jane in her place. When Aggie opened the kitchen door, the dry heat from Granny’s old-fashioned, wood-burning stove blasted her.
“Where’ve you been?” Jane towered over her, handing her a bucket and a rag mop. “Granny says we have to clean the cellar. I’ve been dodging her for an hour. You’d better get busy.”
Instead of taking the mop, Aggie lifted the necklace, ready to lord it over her cousin. “You’d better be nicer to me and fast, you big jerk.”
Jane stared at the necklace with a slightly puzzled expression, and then she reached over and snapped the chain off Aggie’s neck. Alarm squeezed Aggie’s heart – she’d never considered Jane would steal the ruby from her.
“No,” cried Aggie.
“Have you gone crazy?” Jane slapped her face hard. And as she held out the necklace, Aggie saw that it had turned back into a miserable chunk of coal and a shrivelled piece of straw.
Aggie rubbed her burning cheek. She picked up the mop and bucket. That nasty rabbit was going to pay.
The next evening while Jane was hogging the bathroom, and Granny had poured an extra long dreg of Jameson’s into her coffee and was snoozing on the couch, Aggie left the house, taking with her a lamp. Widdershins, she walked out the backyard and down the alley. Again as she walked backward, the sky above lost its familiar look as the moon turned a sickly yellow like the mouldering cheddar at the back of Granny’s fridge, and the stars burst out of the sky flickering red and blue. She didn’t look over her shoulder once, and only the muffled crunch of the frozen grass alerted her she was back in the vacant lot’s field.
Aggie tossed five huge pieces of coal, the largest in Granny’s cellar, into the hole of her underground fort. This time she didn’t close up the hatch. Instead, she set her Aladdin’s lamp reading light beside the coal, using its precious batteries to light up the dark, even though she still had fifty pages of her book to read under her bedcovers when Jane’s loud snores signalled she’d finally get a little peace.
Instead of hiding behind the chestnut tree, Aggie climbed up the gnarled trunk and boosted herself up onto the branch that hung over the fort. She pulled down her black toque until it almost covered her eyes, and tugged up Granny’s enormous black sweater until she was only a smudge of shadow in the tangle of black twigs. She unwound the netting she’d wrapped many times around her waist. She’d found it in the cellar as she’d mopped, along with her departed grandfather’s fishing waders, buoys and poles. Aggie waited.
When the rabbit scrabbled below her, Aggie drew herself in, and didn’t take a breath. When her lungs were about to burst, the creature finally perched over the open hole of the fort, bent over and reached for the chunks of coal.
“Sucker,” shouted Aggie. She dropped the fishnet on him, and then scrambled down the tree trunk.
The rabbit dropped and rolled and only managed to knit himself into a cocoon like a fly in a spider’s web.
“Must we do this again?” he asked tersely. “I’m going to be late. I can’t be late.”
Paying no mind, Aggie stood over him. “You cheated me with that lousy piece of coal.”
“Just so you know, coal is valuable where I come from,” said the rabbit.
Aggie shrugged. “I’ve got all night. All day too. Did you say you were late?”
“Fine. I will give you one, but only one more wish.” Then the rabbit said, “Call it a test.”
Aggie was usually pretty good at tests. She helped untangle his head, arms and shoulders, but kept the net wrapped around his extremely long white feet, staying away from those big teeth.
“So there isn’t any misunderstanding,” said the rabbit adjusting his waistcoat, “wishing that all wishes come true won’t stick. It’s another rule.”
That was fine. Aggie had only wanted one wish anyway, had thought about it all night and chosen just the right one. “It’s a deal,” she said.
What is your wish,” the rabbit asked.
“I want to be the boss,” said Aggie.
“The rabbit gazed thoughtfully at Aggie. “What about your family? Children who are the boss can’t stay with their family.”
“Now my family is Granny and Jane, and they can lose their heads for all I care,” said Aggie.
His watchful grimace broke into a grin. “You’ve definitely got the makings. You’re tougher than the warrior goddess, Badb.” He picked up a piece of coal that he’d dropped when the net fell, and snapped another stalk of frozen grass.
Aggie simmered with anger. “I’m not stupid,” she snapped.
“No, of course not, that’s another point,” he said and hung the ruby over Aggie’s head. “We’ve been without a queen for ages. The last one, Maeb, got herself killed by a piece of cheese. I suspect you’ll do better.”
The trees closed in. The sky shifted, losing its inky blackness as peculiar orange clouds streaked the sky. The rabbit bowed low in front of Aggie.
“Behold, Your Majesty, our crimson ruler, queen of our hearts.” Then he cackled. “Oh, the Jabberwock will be sorry now.”
Aggie drew herself up and, as if she stood next to a giant Halloween sparkler, the snap and bite of a thousand sparks flowed into her.
No. Jane and all blonde-haired girls would be sorry now.