But tonight, I don’t have the heart to put a damper on his plans. I can do this. We’ll still be in the human realm, after all.

There was a time I craved stepping through the glass and going down the rabbit hole, just to see the landscapes and creatures again. But after being trapped there a few months ago, spending every day and every night in Ivory’s castle, helping Grenadine plug her memory leaks, I’m done. I’m ready to stay here for the rest of my days, with Thomas and Alyssa. I get my fix for netherling companionship at Humphrey’s Inn twice a month when we visit Thomas’s family. That’s enough.

“Okay. Just let me finish dressing.” I bend down to gather the strappy sandals, but Thomas beats me to it, falling to his knees at my feet.

“Wait, now,” he scolds, low and gentle. “That’s a knight’s job, princess.” He lifts my bare foot, pressing his lips to my ankle before slipping the shoe into place. He does the same with my other foot, then finishes with a kiss at my knee before placing the sole of my shoe gently on the floor.

“My sweet Tommy-toes.” I lean forward so our foreheads touch, so I can get lost in his warm, kind eyes.

Grinning that Elvis smirk that I adore, Thomas stands and helps me up. He grabs a sport jacket and my lacy shawl, then leads me across the hall and into Alyssa’s room. Muffled laughter and conversation burst from the kitchen. The scent of melting cheese, spicy pepperoni, and marinara sauce makes my mouth water. The kids must’ve decided on homemade pizza.

“So, we’re going to Humphrey’s Inn?” I ask, suddenly craving a plate of spaghetti Bolognese with a side of artichoke-feta garlic bread, my favorite of Hubert’s specialties.

“That’s on the agenda,” Thomas answers. “We’ll be spending the night there. But first, we’re going to Ironbridge Gorge.” He flashes the mushrooms in his jacket pocket—our “tickets” to the memory train—before shrugging into the sleeves.

I frown and help him straighten his lapels, studying our shared reflection in Alyssa’s cheval mirror—a French silver-framed antique she found at a thrift store. It was the first thing she bought upon our return from Wonderland, so she could check in with her subjects throughout the day when necessary. “I don’t understand. Why would we go to the Iron Bridge? Haven’t we seen all there is to see?”

“You haven’t,” Thomas answers, his face glazed with pinkish sunset. “I know you’re still wrestling with regrets. I see the pain on your face every day.” He traces my frown with his thumb. “It’s time to forgive yourself. Time for you to realize the positive impact that letting Morpheus and Wonderland into your life has had on the rest of us, because you’ve dwelt so long on the negative, you’ve lost sight of it. I asked Alyssa about lost memories yesterday. She told me that once they’re stored as cargo, they become part of the train, even after they’re viewed by the one who made them. So, we’re going to take one last look at my missing years, but this time, we’re doing it together. You need to see what would’ve become of us all, had you not intervened.”

Our trip to the Ironbridge Gorge is simpler than it was the times Alyssa and I came here in the past, each seeking different things. With Jeb’s help, she recently installed a tall looking glass in the bridge’s tunnel. Transportation here is now as simple as stepping from one mirror to the next. There’s no traversing the countryside. It’s a straight shoot from her bedroom to the tunnel.

As we step through, moving chandeliers—made of clusters of lightning bugs strung together with harnesses—roll like miniature Ferris wheels across the ceiling. They flash along dingy tiled walls, faded advertising posters dated circa 1956 to 1959, and the pile of old, discarded toys in the tunnel.

In spite of a rash of nerves, I manage enough bites of mushroom to shrink alongside Thomas so we can board the rusted toy train that holds all of Wonderland’s forgotten and lost memories.

The fuzzy carpet beetle conductor is expecting us. He opens a door marked Thomas Gardner and leads us into a small, windowless room with a tapestry rug under a cream-colored chaise lounge. An ornate floor lamp casts a soft glow on the walls. On the other side, a small stage with velvety curtains waits to showcase Thomas’s memories.

“Please, do have a seat and take some refreshments,” the beetle offers, more cordial than I remember. Word has spread about Alyssa’s bloody rampage in the looking-glass world. She’s earned the reputation of a severe yet wise Red Queen, and this warrants us, as her parents, the respect of all the netherlings.

Thomas and I sit side by side on the chaise. There’s an end table to the left and a lace doily beneath a plate full of moonbeam cookies. I take one and hold it out for Thomas to sample. He bites off half, brushing away the glimmering moonbeams that fall with the crumbs onto his pant legs, and gestures for me to eat the rest.

Waves of nausea roll over me. I try to attribute the sensation to hunger and nibble on the flaky cookie and delicate almond icing, tensing as the conductor punches a button on the wall with a spindly arm. The stage curtains open, revealing a movie screen.

“Picture your husband’s face in your mind whilst staring at the empty screen, and you will experience his past as if it were today.” The bug turns a dial that snuffs out the lamp and then closes the door.

I clasp Thomas’s hand in mine. The one time I visited this train, I was spying on his past without his knowledge, and the things I saw horrified me so much I wanted to hide them from him forever. Now he’s here, encouraging me to look deeper. Even with the comfort of his presence, my trepidation is almost smothering.

I push past it, remembering him as the child I saw that day I came alone—when his name was David Skeffington and he was eight years old. But this time, I imagine him a few months earlier, while he’s still living with his mother, father, two sisters, and brother in Oxford.

An image appears on the screen in living color and reaches out for me. It pulls me apart at the seams—every piece of me fraying—until I come together again, on-scene, looking out of little David’s eyes and sharing his youthful thoughts, emotions, and senses.

He has a happy childhood, rich with sentimental moments . . . following his father on daily chores at their goat farm, playing with his sisters and brother upon the hills surrounding his home, family excursions and picnics, bedtime stories recited by a mother’s gentle and melodic voice. But one night, he’s visited by an imperial group of knights dressed in red and white tunics—the same ones who came for his brother two years earlier.

His mother weeps at their arrival, shouting that they’ve never visited a family more than once, but his father comforts her, assuring her he’s had the suspicion all along and called them himself. Then he leads David into a darkened room to be interviewed.

One of the knights, a white-bearded man in a red tunic and chain mail, opens a multi-mirror contraption in the darkness. He flips a switch, igniting the white lights along the frames. Each mirror is set at a precise angle to reflect the other, causing the illusion of infinity.

“Take a walk in the mirror maze, lad,” says the knight. “Tell me what you see.”

David wanders within and around, at first seeing nothing but a thousand images of himself. Then he catches movement in one of the distant reflections—a silhouette of something inhuman. He turns on his heel to find such distortions in each plane of silver-backed glass. With just the blink of an eye, the shadows resolve to clarity and a strange, terrifying world opens up. Large, ugly birds with two sets of wings, lumbering along an ashy terrain in lieu of flying. Crimson bats twice the size of condors swooping overhead, capturing anything brave enough to share the flaming sky with their long, fanged tongues. He starts to back away, but terror evolves into fascination, and lures him closer as some smaller creatures—puppylike beings, colored and shaped liked snowflakes—drift across the lands. They turn themselves inside out, their innards a ball of snapping teeth that devours anything in its path. Blood splashes everywhere as they feast on the four-winged birds. David winces, half expecting to get splattered by the warm and coppery spray, but the massacre is contained within the reflections. Fear and revulsion clench his throat, but he watches one instant longer, as the smallest creature of all, shaped like a butterfly with a scorpion’s tail, flutters down—an elegant angel of death—and turns all the bloody, snarling balls of teeth to statues of stone.