CHAPTER ONE
The wind and sea foam may not have been visible at this time of night, but she could feel it, and therefore knew it to be there. But there was something else, something that she felt she had forgotten. Like when you forget something very important, and it is there just beneath the skin, waiting for you to simply find the words to paint it into existence. The stars above twinkled mischievously, almost as if they knew, both what the young woman had forgotten and how she could remember, but they remained silent. Although she wasn't sure why, but somehow she almost expected them to speak. Bathed in the light of the iridescently shining moon, the restless blonde leaned over the railing and stared into the blackness below. She knew, that whatever she had forgotten, whatever she had lost, was very important and thus it was keeping her awake at night as of late. Today she had been closer than ever to remembering when they had stopped into port and she had found an intricately adorned looking glass, the metal patterned with delicate butterflies and eccentric toadstools. She had been going about the marketplace, overseeing the restocking of provisions when a curiously blue butterfly had fluttered just before her eyes and a spark of recognition had ignited in her eyes as she had followed the damnably elusive creature. It had led her to the mirror itself and though something was there, just beneath the skin, just beneath her eyelids she simply could not place it and so the spark had died. She had, however purchased said looking glass and had her men haul it to her cabin. As she took in the night air and sighed Alice thought to herself that she must be falling even more deeply into madness. "I suppose I should lie down, whether sleep claims me or not!". Taking one last peer into the never-ending abyss of the sea Alice Kingsleigh retired to her chambers for perhaps the last time.
Alice awoke to the sound of waves and rain and the desolate creaking of well worn planks. Judging by the lack of light filtering into her cabin she postulated that it must still be early morn, and therefore rolled over with the intent to simply slip back into her dreams. However just before her eyelids met she spotted the very same curious blue butterfly from the marketplace setting upon her bedpost. "What kind of butterfly finds itself upon a ship in the middle of the ocean?" she asked herself. "Very curious". She reached out to touch the creature, and even though she half expected it to was still very shocked when it spoke.
"Stupid girl" it said in a low and disapproving tone "you've gone and forgotten all about us haven't you?".
Alice sat up with an indignant huff and as she did the butterfly took flight. Jumping out of her bed she made to follow the rude creature and give it a piece of her mind but was resoundingly astounded when it flitted straight into the rather curious mirror sitting unassumingly beside her writing desk. With cornflower hued eyes opened hysterically wide she ambled to aforementioned looking glass and stopped in front of it. Looking around to ensure that her cyan orbs had not deceived her, and indeed finding no cerulean insect anywhere in the vicinity she began to intently study this mysterious mirror only to discover nothing immediately odd about it. Upon closer inspection however she noticed that the reflection looking back at her was not her own but instead the image of a midnight tea party set in a fog filled clearing. Tendrils of the gloomy mist swirled around a long table laden for tea, and though she couldn't make out much, she could clearly see a derelict windmill behind the right side of the table and a wildly overgrown forest encroaching upon the peaceful tea imbibers.
Only intending to gain a closer inspection Alice leaned in closer, becoming immensely baffled when she found herself standing inside of the previously viewed moor! A quick examination of the area revealed her initial analysis to be correct. Trees and brambles surrounded this dreary area. A windmill that seemed as if it had sat unused forever sat nestled amidst tall weeds and briars to her immediate right. The table itself was also surrounded by wild growth, vines and wild grass intruding upon what she felt must once have been a bright and cheerful place. With fog swirling around her Alice made her way to the table laden for tea only to find the participants in deep slumber. A hare, a doormouse, and a rather eccentric looking man with the strangest orange hair she had ever seen sat slumped at the tea time table, snoring vociferously. The curious young lady approached the head of the table, but didn't make it very far before she was forced to doge an incoming tea cup.
"You're LATE fooooooorrr..." The hare intoned in his sleep "TEA!". The slumbering rabbit mumbled a few other mostly incoherent things before resuming snoring, as if he had never opened his mouth to begin with. Slightly wary Alice studied the scene before her carefully. Should she wake them? She was unsure where she was, or how to get back. Though perhaps, she thought, she should really be in shock. After all things like this simply do not happen. One does not find themselves somehow magically transported elsewhere, wherever else may be. But wouldn't it be terribly rude to interrupt their sleep? Still, she reasoned, she absolutely must get back to her ship and her crew. She approached the man with the wild and flaming hair, having felt that he seemed familiar to her somehow. She studied the man closely. He was quite alarmingly beautiful she decided. Skin as pale as the alabaster she had traded for in Egypt, and hair as orange as the carrots she so detested. It was a different kind of orange though, she surmised, maybe perhaps a bit more pleasant than carrots. His eyelids were painted, she noticed, in blue and green, and as she dropped her gaze she noticed that his lips were the most appealing crimson she had ever seen in her life. Somehow though she felt as if she had seen this odd man before, in a dream, or a nightmare. She couldn't be sure which it was.
If you asked Alice if it was her intention she would swear to you that she never meant to kiss the strange and beautiful man. There was simply something so familiar, so comforting about the man. So she did. As she studied his lips she unconsciously crept closer, the thought of what those lips might feel like only crossing her mind right before they met. Imagine her surprise when the colorful man's eyes flew wide open to reveal the most beautiful set of orbs in lime green!
Alice jumped back in surprise, as if a woman burned! And indeed she had felt a, scorching sensation! She examined her hands, searching for evidence of the fire that had possessed her only a few mere seconds ago, but could find nothing. Lifting her head to peer at the curious man she'd awoken she found that he also seemed to be struggling with what to say or do. It isn't everyday, after all, that such a bonnie lass awakens you with a kiss! She noted, now that he had awakened, that there were dark circles under his eyes, as if he were perpetually tired. Belatedly, she had to admit to herself that she felt a twinge of guilt at waking him from his obviously much needed slumber.
"Alice! My Alice! You've returned!" The ginger exclaimed. The man ecstatically waved his arms about for a few moments before promptly standing so eagerly that he knocked his chair over and practically rushed Alice, enveloping her in a bone crushing hug.
Despite the suddenness of the embrace and the lack of knowledge as to this mans identity Alice felt as if she had somehow come home. It was a disconcerting thought and Alice tried her very best to push it from her mind, but it was strangely difficult to focus, or even breathe, with his arms around her so. Enveloped in his arms and the smell of tea and licorice Alice almost forgot where she was, or where she should be going more specifically. She slowly, and without even realizing it wrapped her own limbs around him, returning the embrace. She buried her face in his chest, such a wide chest really, surely it was highly inappropriate to embrace so fondly a man she didn't even know, but it just felt right.
Suddenly the curiosity who's arms were wrapped about her stilled and Alice feared he had gone back into his deep slumber, until he pushed her away hurriedly and looked into her eyes. Once bright green eyes were instead blazing coals of red fire, and the cheerful face that had seemed so familiar became dark and bereft. Alice was already quite frightened when the man opened his mouth to speak. "Ye havnae forgotten about us have ye?" The man groaned at her extended silence even as he covered his face with his hands. "Ye promised ye'd come back soon, and nauw Underland is in ruin! You doona even ken who I am!".
The man turned around, and back facing Alice, went into a mad rage throwing anything and everything within his reach and shouting incoherent obscenities in a thick Scottish brogue. Nothing was immune from his rage. Teapots, utensils, plates and cups themselves all became victims of his fury one after the other. He upturned a table and even a few chairs until he began pulling at his own hair while he sobbed hysterically.
It wasn't until Alice placed her feminine hand upon his shoulder and whispered, mostly to herself really, "Hatter?" that he stopped and became as still as a statue. She paused, licking her lips and trying to taste the words as if it would make everything clear. "I... is that what this place is? Underland? I must confess that while I am not entirely sure where I am or who you are... You seem so familiar to me. Like a dream turned nightmare you see, and I recall a hatter... and a... futterwacken...? No but that word makes no sense. Futter... flitterwagon... fiddler-whacker..." Alice mumbled on to herself lost deep in thought and trying to fit the pieces together.
Meanwhile the eccentrically prismatic man's colors began to return in muted form as he looked upon his Alice doing her very model best to remember. "Aye, I am indeed the Mad Hatter" he spoke as he turned around. He grabbed her chin and lifted her eyes up to view his. What Alice saw damn near broke her heart. The hatters eyes where gray and lifeless with sorrow. As a single tear dropped from the white lash of his left eye. "Alice I-WE waited so long for you to return. Why didn't you come back?"
Alice noticed that the man had a slight and endearing lisp when he spoke.
"I am terribly sorry, I don't remember such a promise of course, but you certainly seem like an honest fellow... Wait... You act as if I have been here before..?" Although she was not sure that it was quite the right way to ask a question it was one nevertheless.
"But you have Alice! Are you not THE Alice anymore? What has happened to your muchness? We must find it! All over again it seems. Our Champion..." The milliner shook his head in sorrow before continuing "but Underland is in even worse shape than before Alice. And everyone is sleeping. There won't be any Absalom, nor Queen to assist you this time.".
"I am truly sorry dear Hatter but I simply wish to get back home. I apologize profusely for the trouble but could you perchance tell me how I may return home?"
"Aye! O' course ye only want tae abandon us again!" Hatter yelled in his outlandish brogue. His eyes were struggling to keep up with his emotions and were flickering between that oh-so morose gray and the flaming rouge that Alice had been so frightened by earlier.
"Oh I am so dreadfully sorry Alice, I just can't seem to-"
"Ne'er comin when ye mean tae, always leavin when yer needed most! Slurvish, slackish-"
"I'm fine" the now once more chromatic milliner wheezed. He ambled to his chair, picked it up, and aimlessly slumped into it before bringing his fingers to his forehead, rubbing as if to ease a headache. He paused to take a breath and think of how to word his next sentence. "I am afraid, my dear Alice that the White Queen is the only one who can help you get back, and she is currently slumbering just as I was.".
"So we simply go wake her up!" Alice chirped as she made to take a step towards the woods. She was so delighted to discover that there was indeed a way for her to return that she forgot that she did not know where said Queen might be.
Hatter watched her stride towards the trees and struggled for a minute with himself before grinding out "Doona think it'll be simple as tha' lass. No' a soul kent where tha Queen vanished tae chuss a'fore this dark an' gloom encroached."
Alice stopped mid step and collapsed into herself then. That was it, she was never getting home. Alice wept at the idea. Whatever would she do? She sat upon the ground and folded herself within, trying to determine what to do next.
Meanwhile Hatter studied Alice. She had grown. He surmised that she was a full grown woman now. Truthfully she had been a woman last time she was here, and ever did the Hatter know that. Still. She had filled out, it would appear. Hips no longer girlish but wide and ripe, breasts plump and full. Her legs had grown impossibly long, he decided, and her face too had matured. The softness of childhood was fully gone from her now, replaced instead with the sophistication of womanhood. Her hair it seemed was the only thing that never changed. Still as wild and free as ever. Oh how he would love to thread his fingers through that hair as he yanked her closer to his lips. An image then, of him and her, as one, and yet, as entirely separate beings coming together again and again painted itself behind his eyelids. In his minds eye he would devour her lips even as he devoured her very being. He would claim her heart with hands, and teeth, and tongue. He would run his hands down the length of her back, stopping at her firm buttocks. Then he would lift her legs and she would wrap them around him as he ground mercilessly against her core, seeking both the poison that was this passion and the antidote to rid themselves of it. She would mewl as his hands mapped every inch of her body, and she would cry for him in ecstasy as he pushed one, two, maybe even three fingers inside of her. And only when she was ready to burst apart at the seams would he take her. And take her he would-
"Of course I will help you Alice!" The hatter himself looked startled as he realized that he just interrupted his very own thoughts. "Probably for the best" he thought to himself dryly. "Perhaps I even know where to start!"
Alice shot up with a smile upon her face. Instantly relieved she rushed her new guide and embraced him firmly. The Hatter could only believe that she would not be so quick to embrace him if she was aware of what it did to him. The White be praised, but he was a man, and although she did not know him he knew her very well. He should have begged her not to go, back when she was absolutely Alice. This not Alice was not HIS Alice. Not the Alice that he loved and cherished, but they shared a face and his body was oh so eager. He was sure too, that as soon as she could she would be off again. What chance did a mad hatter have for the love of a champion? And yet it was not in his nature to refuse her.
And so she followed him into the woods and down a path filled with danger and adventure, the mercurial milliner and his not quite Alice, off to save Underland once more.
