Beautiful Madness, Book One: Follow the White Rabbit

Chapter 4: In the Business of Problems

Gwen and Marc considered themselves to be problem solvers of the highest regard. It was usually just their own regard, but so long as people continued to pay them money from time to time, the rest didn’t matter. Not that Marc, and by extension Gwen, needed the money but paying clients proved that they had something of value to offer Wonderland.

That was all Gwen had ever really wanted. To have worth, to be someone of value. At thirteen she had been living in a small forest village—even smaller than Tildoor, where she lived with Marc—and working as a maid. It was tedious and a little bit like torture, but she hadn’t had any other options. She couldn’t be satisfied with a life of mundane chores and repetitive thoughts, but there was no way out… until she was forced out. Hours of late-night reading and a tendency toward distraction eventually cost Gwen her job, however dull, and the security that came with it.

Her mother was incapable of helping herself, let alone her only child. Gwen retreated to the only place she’d ever truly felt safe—a library in the northern part of Neverwood forest. As a child, she would walk for hours to get there and spend her time tucked safely between the shelves, convincing herself there was nothing else beyond the warm lighting and the smell of ink on old paper. It would have been the ideal spot to get her bearings, but her sanctuary lost that special something when she had to hide the fact that she was sleeping in the building.

It was only three days before she was found, and by the son of the very man who owned the entire town, no less. Marc. But instead of turning her in, he’d fed her and helped to hide her tracks. He too saw the library as his personal sanctuary, but Marc was never one to horde things for himself.

He’d helped her hide for almost two years, and somewhere along the way they had hatched big plans for the future that would set each of them apart from the paths they had each been born to take.

When Marc had turned eighteen, he bought the house in Tildoor and took Gwen on as his business partner, though what their business was seemed to change from month to month. Marc had the ideas; Gwen found ways to make them happen.

He’d helped others along the way too—friends he met both before and after he could list himself among Wonderland’s wealthy—but in the end it was always just the two of them. Marc and Gwen. The others simply disappeared once they got what they came for. Gwen suspected this was because she was the only one who saw value not in Marc’s money, but in what he chose to do with it. She admired how he was always pushing to create something new, but she would never voice those thoughts aloud. Marc valued his friends above all else, even if they didn’t always extend him the same courtesy.

Gwen was determined to always be the type of friend he deserved.

Of course, with the White Queen standing in their foyer, Gwen had to consider that maybe there was more to Marc’s mysterious friendships than she knew. The woman in front of her would have no use for Marc’s wealth.

“What can I get for you, your majesty?” Gwen asked, wringing her hands in front of her stomach as the White Queen surveyed their lounge.

“You can call her Rose,” Marc offered unhelpfully.

Gwen’s face contorted into a look crossed between outrage and utter embarrassment, but Marc missed it entirely as he made his way to the overstuffed sofa. “No. I cannot.”

“No, really… it’s fine.” The Queen waved her hand dismissively as she glided gracefully across the room and took a seat on one of the plain, wooden dining chairs. Marc shrugged and picked up the book that had been left open beside him.

Gwen sputtered, unsure of how to respond. Rose Lennon didn’t rule in Neverwood Forest, but she also wasn’t just another client. And she wasn’t someone she could risk insulting by accident.