In the Looking-glass world of the White Queen the inhabitants lived their lives backward, and memory worked both ways. Memories of the future intruded into the present. The Queen--she practiced believing in impossible things--screamed before the brooch pricked her finger; the bleeding came later, with no screams, as the pain had already been experienced. In a similar looking-glass reversal, Alice felt--it was what Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster made her feel--that her past lay before her, and not behind her. All that would happen, all that she would become, was shaped by what had already been, and what had already been could not be changed. She would travel through her life, to find her past moving backward toward her from the future, and she would relive all that had already happened.

--Peter Rushforth, Pinkerton's Sister