Part Two
Carter was waiting when she emerged eventually back onto the deck; he greeted her with a smile, and she noted the slight crookedness of his teeth, which struck her as curiously endearing.
"I'm to point you back in the direction of your quarters, should you need a helping hand."
"Thank you," she said, "but I know my way now."
He bowed, and she nodded and went on her way; but as she went, could not help but cast a glance over her shoulder to where he cut a fine figure, back to her, looking out on the tossing surface of the sea.
It was not till the third day at sea that Alice got round to unpacking her things. She had not much of a nesting instinct, feeling quite content to retrieve her clothes from the trunk when they were needed; but Captain MacManus made endless inquiries as to how she was getting on, and she felt that if she put him off once more he would come down to settle her in himself. Or, which was perhaps worse, send Carter to do the job for her.
It was Carter she was thinking of, in a curious sort of indifferent attitude--- his hands among the folds of her dresses, brown from the sun and neat and trim, nevertheless shaking the dresses out sloppily and placing them haphazardly about the cabin, for he was of the sort who never knew the proper place of anything, she was sure--- when she came upon the hat. It was a very familiar hat, and it was most definitely not hers. Far too large, for one thing; and the charred and crisped edges were certainly not in the current mode of fashion. Not that Alice cared for such things; she stared at the article of haberdashery for a moment before a wondering sort of smile broke over her face like waves on a shore, and she reached for it with careful fingers. It was halfway to her head before she realized it, and settled neatly over her blonde curls before the voice interrupted.
"Oh, there it is! I've been looking for it absolutely everywhere."
This time, he did not disappear when she looked for him. Merely stood there as though he'd been born in her cabin, one hand at his belt, the other dangling loose, waiting to reach for her. He looked mildly pleased when she turned the smile on him.
"Hatter."
"Alice," he chided, "it really doesn't suit you, you know."
She hadn't smiled this hard and bright in ages.
"Then take it back," she said, lifting her chin and presenting her head to him well within his reach. "It was you I heard, then. I thought I was---"
"Going mad?" He lifted the hat from her head, and dusted it off with his sleeve, directing the same affectionate smile towards it that he so often had given to Alice herself. "I shouldn't be in a hurry to discount that possibility, Alice."
She laughed. "But you are here. You're real, and you're here. In my cabin."
"I'm here, and I'm not real, in, as you say, your cabin." It was her turn to be the recipient of the fond smile, and it made her straighten up and square her shoulders with the happiness of it.
"What do you mean?"
"Here," said the Hatter, ticking the points off on his bandaged fingers, "not real, and in your cabin."
"But you are real. I can see you, I can hear you, I can---"
"Not real," he said cheerfully as her hand passed through him without the slightest bit of resistance. "I'm sorry to say that I really am a figment of your imagination this time, Alice. Really. But not to worry! I've come to terms with it.
"But---" Her face fell, and he stepped forward, eyes softening and eyebrows drawing downwards.
"Alice, dearest Alice," he murmured, and with one hand traced a line down her cheek. She fancied she could feel the slightest brush of something; of what, precisely, she could not say. "Did you think I would leave you to your own devices, when I knew you would only forget again if I didn't do something?"
"I told you, I wouldn't. I couldn't. Hatter, why---"
"---is a raven like a writing desk?" he finished for her, and she smiled again.
"That's not quite what I was going to say. But I suppose it will do. I am so pleased to see you again, you know."
With both hands he settled the hat back in its rightful place, tipping it slightly to a rakish angle; then spread both arms wide, as though to embrace her.
"Exactly the right size, too," he murmured. "Perhaps after all you're a figment of my imagination, Alice--- did you ever think of that? Perhaps I made you up myself." He nodded sharply. "And a fine job, too, if I do say so myself. Extremely lifelike."
"Hatter---" she began again, but there came a knock at the door; she turned to it, quickly, and just as quickly turned back again. But he was nowhere to be seen; had disappeared into the air as swiftly and completely as a dream. And though she searched, and called quietly, he did not reappear.
It was not Carter, nor Captain MacManus, but another sailor who was at her door, and bid her to come to dinner. Alice went, though in a mood which was hardly gruntled; her fixed glare at the soup course led Captain MacManus to inquire after her health.
She pled the excuse of a headache, which facilitated her escape from the table soon after the pudding was served. In a whirl she made her way back towards her cabin, only to be arrested on the very threshold by a voice from farther down the dimly lit corridor.
"Are you quite alright?"
It startled her, and she turned to the speaker with confusion clear on her face. It was only Carter, of course; had he spoken with that faint Scottish burr, before? Surely she would have noticed. In the darkness of the corridor his clearly-limned features swam palely towards her, his brows drawn downwards and a worried crease showing above his eyes.
"I am fine, Mr. Carter. No need to worry." Her hand sought the doorknob, and he came closer.
"You look in an awful hurry, Miss Kingsleigh."
"I'm tired. That's all. Don't concern yourself."
"But," he said, and took one more step forward. He hovered just over her, now, and something in the curve of his lips, the heaviness of his gaze, struck her painfully about the middle. She had the oddest sensation that any moment now he was going to pose her a riddle; why is a raven, he would begin, and go on from there. Her breath caught in her throat, and she twisted at the doorknob, hand slipping briefly, and pushed open the door.
"Good night, Mr. Carter."
"Good night, Miss Kingsleigh," he said, sorrowfully, as she closed the door.
She leaned back against it for a moment, catching her breath, and wrapped an arm around her fluttering stomach. There seemed to be empty spaces there that had not existed a moment ago. She closed her eyes in the darkness of the room, gathering herself before she reached for the candle. It took her a moment to get it to light, and then she replaced it by her bunk and sank onto the smooth surface of her coverlet, sighing.
The moon outside was a brilliant slice of light, curved upwards like an eager, toothy smile; it was only because the light drew her attention that she realized there was something outside the porthole. Something with wings, fluttering and dashing against the glass, asking to be let in. The silver light of the moon leached the color from Absolem's wings, but she knew him all the same. The latch on the porthole was stuck, and she bruised and reddened her fingertips trying to get it undone. It opened in a rush at last, and the butterfly that was Absolem's new form drifted lazily in, as though he had all the time in the world.
The cold air, sea-scented and salted, banished the flush from Alice's cheek, and she leaned her head into the wind for a moment, reveling in the feeling. She could just get her head out of the porthole without becoming stuck, but no further. Instead of a door for which she was too large, it was the porthole; instead of a garden waiting on the other side, there was the surging sea, brilliant beneath the grinning moon.
She withdrew her head with a sigh, and seated herself again on the now-rumpled bedclothes. Absolem had settled himself on her bedside table, well away from the dripping candle. He beat his wings slowly, steadily, as though basking in the warmth of an unseen sun.
"Will you tell me what's going on?" she demanded of him plaintively.
The voice that came from him was lighter than she remembered, almost tinny. But the words were familiar, all the same.
"What do you mean, girl? What do you think is going on?"
"I think," she began, but so slowly that she gave Absolem plenty of time to give a genteel snort and say,
"Not likely."
Alice frowned at him. "I'm confused. At first I thought this was the beginning of a new life for myself. I thought I would move on. And yet, I'm still surrounded by memories of Wonderland."
"Underland," corrected Absolem, with a lazy sort of deliberation that seemed calculated to offend. This did not relieve Alice's frown.
"You, and the Hatter, and now even Mr. Carter seems to be---" She faltered and came to a halt. How to define what it was that Mr. Carter seemed to be doing? Certainly he could not be blamed for reminding her of the Hatter.
Who, then, could she blame?
"Are you doing something to him?" she demanded. "Are you making him this--- this way?"
"What way?" Absolem asked, obviously irritated.
"He reminds me more and more of the Hatter, as though he's meant to be a--- a replacement, or something of the sort." She waved her hands about. "But he's not. He isn't the Hatter, and no amount of similarities will convince me otherwise. What do you think you're doing, playing about with my mind this way?"
"I'm not doing anything, stupid girl," yawned Absolem, and beat his wings a little harder to lift himself into the air. "Would you be so upset if you believed that it really was all in your mind; that Tarrant and I were indeed figments of your imagination?"
"It's because I know that you're real that it upsets me so," she told him. "If I was truly mad, or if I was only imagining things---"
The butterfly disappeared, skated out of existence as cleanly as though she had woken up from a daydream. Only the voice of Absolem remained, drifting behind.
"Who's to say you're not, stupid girl?"
And as he was gone, of course, she could not argue.
She went out of her way to avoid Carter the next few days, keeping largely to herself and holding her own counsel. When she did catch a glimpse of him, here and there, he was always looking in her direction; always rewarded her gaze with a faint smile, as though just by her presence he was reassured as to the rightness of the world. It incensed her beyond reason, and she retreated to her cabin after each occurrence with an increasing sensation of futility. For her cabin would be empty, each time she entered, and though she looked for the hat, waiting in the corner, and listened for the voice, purring in her ear, there was nothing. Her search was in vain.
Having been at sea a week, she was stormily contemplating the placid rise and fall of the ocean before her, hands on the railing and heart ill at ease, when the voice came once more. It sounded not in her ear, but somewhere just behind her, so that as her heart began to race she became settled in the belief that the Hatter would be there, waiting, when she turned around.
"Can I offer you some tea?"
She kept her eyes on the sea, as though it was the only thing that would sustain her when she fell.
"Not just at present," she said. "I do thank you."
"You do. That's a relief, I must say." And he did sound relieved. "I was beginning to think you were angry with me."
She felt a tremendous release, and even went so far as to smile to the implacable face of the waters. "Nonsense. You're the last person I should be angry with."
"Ah, good. You don't know how pleased I am to hear that, Miss Kingsleigh."
It was this, of course, that made her realize who she was talking to after all. It was not the Hatter, for he had never called her anything but Alice, unless it was "my dearest Alice." The sense of disappointment that crashed down onto her made her feel lost, adrift, as lonely as though she were marooned on a desert island.
She turned slowly, and the sight of Carter's eager face, so familiar and yet so different, so not what she wanted, was almost more than she could bear.
"Excuse me," she said, and though he stepped towards her, she evaded him easily and ran with quick light steps to her cabin.
The disappointment had altered, shifted to something else; something darker and more powerful, tinged with the blue edges of a deep sadness. She slammed her door so hard that it rattled on its hinges, and demanded an account from the air.
"I know you're there," she cried. "You always have been, ever since I set foot back in my own world. I don't know how, and I haven't a clue why, but I know that you are. Stop hiding from me, and tell me why this is happening."
But it wasn't the Hatter who stepped out of hiding, but rather the White Queen, cool and shining, hands lifted in the air as though she were about to perform a magic trick. Take Alice's frustration and anger and turn it inside out, spin it into something more becoming to the once-champion of Wonderland. Underland, a tiny voice in Alice's head corrected her immediately. Wonderland that was, Underland that is. There is a difference. Learn it.
Alice stood with her hands at her sides, still breathing hard, her anger turning slowly to confusion.
"Queen Mirana."
"Alice," said the White Queen, somewhat distantly, and gave a vague if kindly smile that seemed to pat Alice on the head. "Why so upset, my dear child?"
"Because I don't understand what's going on," Alice said, somewhat petulantly. Mirana always did have that effect on her, after all, making her feel as though she were a child again. Taking the years she'd spent actively trying to grow up and making them nothing but a thought in the mind of a dreamer. "I can't seem to move on, and I thought that's what I was meant to do. When I left, I told the Hatter I had things to take care of."
Mirana inclined her head. "As, indeed, you do."
"But I can't go and take care of them if I can't let go of Underland!"
Mirana lifted a hand to her forehead, closing her eyes briefly, as though Alice had tired her. "I understand that, of course, my dear child. Which is why I'm trying to help you. You do see, don't you, that I'm trying to help?"
Alice subsided onto her bed, staring in consternation at the White Queen. "Help me?" she repeated. "How are you helping me?"
The look that showed itself briefly on Mirana's face seemed to indicate that Alice was really hopelessly thick at times. She shoved it aside almost immediately, replacing it with her usual expression of placidness and peace, and sank down gracefully beside Alice on the bunk.
"Dear girl," she said, "you must move on. But it is easier to do so when one finds familiar elements in new surroundings."
Alice could not look in the Queen's face for long; she transferred her gaze instead to her own hands, settled in her lap. How small and brown they looked, next to the Queen's long, pale fingers!
"That's why, then," she said. "I keep thinking I must be imagining it, the similarities between my life now and the way things were in Underland. But I'm not, am I? It's all real."
"It certainly is," said Mirana warmly, and she placed a hand on Alice's. "And so is the young man, my dear. You shall not be wanting for companionship."
Alice looked at her in dawning comprehension, and gradually rising anger. "Not be wanting? Is he truly meant to take the place of the Hatter, then?"
"Well, I couldn't very well spare the real one, could I?" said Mirana gently. "He is quite busy in court. Otherwise I'm certain he would want to come and visit you more often than he does; he told me he was here just the other day, but his trip had to be curtailed, unfortunately. I'm sure he wouldn't want you to be unhappy, however."
Alice stood, and backed a step away. "Mr. Carter is to take his place? He can't be in agreement with that. He doesn't want me to forget him. He doesn't want me to simply move on as though he doesn't exist."
Mirana stood, too, and reached a hand out to her. "Of course he wants you to remember him, Alice dear. We all do. But we want what's best for you, as well. And Tarrant knows, as we all know, that this is your world. You belong here, not in Underland."
"How can you know that, when I haven't even decided myself? I want to come back, I do. And I will, when I get the chance."
"Indeed," said Mirana soothingly. "But in the meantime, dear Alice, you're lonely. We all know it. We all feel it. You cannot go on being content with illusions, my child."
"I'm not content," said Alice, still petulant. "I'm not."
The Queen's hands were in the air again, graceful as lilies, and her placid smile was strangely sweet. "I know, my dearest Alice. I know."
Alice closed her eyes for only a second, just to blink, and when she opened them, she was alone again. She had hardly expected anything else.
