D.- Here we go, a new reviewer, a new chapter! Many thanks to Rue Mo, who liked both the song and the berries. The song itself, I cannot take credit for anything but the last two verses. I looked up some old folk songs, found that one called 'Froggy would a wooing go' and it even had a video of a gentleman playing it on guitar and singing. It was lovely but the end really does see all the characters dead, so I wrote in a different ending. The berries were my idea, and I got the inspiration for them from pheasant berries. If you google them, you'll get a pretty close idea what a haleberry looks like.
Jack left the area when it became clear that he couldn't reach Alice. He went back to the city as fast as the horse would take him to see Caterpillar, albeit without Alice. Caterpillar forced a sleep mushroom into Carpenter, and they took him very carefully, very untraceably through the Hospital of Dreams and into the Great Library, careful to keep him unconscious. They placed him in a time shifted room, to hide him, while they waited for Jack to go find Alice and bring her back.
Jack sets out immediately after to find Alice and beat the hell out of Hatter for following them. He leaves the city shortly before dark and rides through the night back to the mouth of the canyon that Alice's horse had leapt across. He sets up camp there and sleeps as he waits the few remaining hours until dawn, when he can venture into the forest area to find his Alice.
Alice and Hatter are forced to go the long way round, trying to find a route that leads to the path Hatter had seen. Every time they hit a dead end, Hatter would tie Guinevere up and then continue on foot to see if he could reach the ledge to see the path. He makes his way up a small bank and is able to look over, but the path is still far away. Unable to see a way to the path, he returns to Alice, mounts up and they continue. Alice looks morose and Hatter wants to bring a little life into her countenance. Unable to stand her silence anymore, he begins to talk about the
"Alice, I- I'm real sorry about you missin' the meetin' with yo dad. I-" Alice turns her head, stopping Hatter's nervous apology.
"It's not your fault Hatter. In fact, if you hadn't been nearby, I might have been killed and my mom would never know what happened. You're trying to help me meet with my dad, which you were so convinced was nothing but a trap, but you're still trying to help me." She smiled a small smile and leaned into him.
They travel on a while in silence, Alice nearly nodding off, wrapped in Hatter's arms. They step into another clearing and this time he lets Alice down first, then slides off and leads Guinevere to a patch of grass. He turns to go towards the ledge and just barely stops himself from falling over the ledge. He grabs a young tree for a tether and leans over the edge. Alice, nervous at his display, comes closer to the edge, with the hope that if something bad happens, she has the courage to help him. Hatter pulls himself back up quickly, perplexed.
"Now that can't be right. We've been traveling for hours, and it seems we've made no progress at all. Have we been goin' round in circles?" He mumbles to himself, then looks up at Alice. He gives her a crooked smile. He begins picking up small, dry sticks to start a fire as Alice returns the few feet to the camp to visit with the horse.
Alice is rubbing down the horses head and neck and offering it some handfuls of grass. It is her giggle that draws Hatter's eye as he stops collecting twigs and steps into the small clearing. He smiles at her, lifts his one hand, a handful of branches clutched tightly in it.
"Didja wanna travel some more or make camp for the night Alice? It seems to me that we're not making any progress, which is ridiculous but every time we've stopped, I looked over at the path and it's always the same distance away. It's driving me mad!" Alice looks pensive a moment but nods her head as she replies.
"Making camp makes the most sense. We'll need to scout around, see if there's water, make a fire, and maybe find something for dinner..?" She looks at Hatter, who suddenly feels completely unequal to the challenge of roughing it. He puts on a brave face for Alice and walks away from camp, whistling a tune. Alice fiddles around with the saddle bag on the horse and finds a lighter, some dried jerky-like meat and a half-empty canteen. Hatter returns with his arms full of bigger wood, seemingly snapped apart, instead of the nicely cut logs she had imagined. She berates herself for her thoughts. 'It's not like he left with an axe to go cut wood, how else can he get wood for a fire?' And then the thought completes itself for her and she speaks up.
"How did you get that wood? It's not clean cut or chewed off by an animal, but it looks like it's been torn apart." Hatter blushes a little and sets the fire wood down, arranging it so the dry leaves and kindling would catch the logs afire. He doesn't look at her as he answers.
"I punched it. Owl always called my right hand a sledgehammer, and I think she might be right. Hit something with enough force, enough times, it'll come down. The tree itself was already half gone so I just finished taking it down and pulled it apart into more manageable pieces." Alice nods distractedly and Hatter raises an eyebrow at her. She snaps her head to look at him suddenly, blushes at being caught woolgathering and hands him the lighter she got from the saddlebag.
"I also found some dried meat and a canteen in the saddlebags. The canteen is only about half full, but it's something right?" Hatter smiles encouragingly and goes about setting the kindling aflame and Alice carries over the rations she had found. They settle down to a light snack and a small drink before they bunk down. Alice settles near the fire, using the horse saddle blanket for heat. Hatter opts to recline into a tree with the saddle behind him for comfort.
Alice wakes from a nightmare, gasping for breath, to see the fire is still strong. She looks over, but Hatter is still apparently sleeping. Deciding that she needs a little privacy, she leaves camp to empty her bladder. She finds a few roots that make a little half circle only a few trees away from camp. Praying Hatter doesn't wander over; she quickly sheds her tights and goes about her business, keeping her eye in the direction she came from. Business complete, she redresses as fast as she can and wanders carefully in the dark back towards the fire. But she never gets any closer to the fire.
Panicked, she picks up her pace, almost running in the direction of the light but it never gets closer. Fearful, she calls out to Hatter, her tone afraid and wary. When she receives no reply, she cries out again, more urgently, still without reply. Suddenly completely overset by fear, she begins to try to climb over or skirt around anything in her path while looking directly at the fire. She can almost make out Hatter's sleeping form, she's sure of it. But she isn't actually getting any closer. She growls in frustration before standing on a large rock and jumping towards the fire. She is sailing through the air for only a second before impact. Her eyes blink and she is laying flat on Hatter, who is blinking dazedly at her and clutching his head. Confused and feeling a very sharp pain on her forehead, she rubs at her head and is about to ask Hatter what happened when he beats her to the punch.
"Blimey, that'll leave a mark. I heard ya screaming my name in your sleep. You sounded so afraid and so I tried to wake you, seems to me I might've been mistaken." He tries to laugh it off, but Alice was still laying on top of him, looking a little worse for the wear. He reaches his hands up to pull the curtain of soft brown hair away from her face, tucking it gently behind her ears, and then lets his hands drift down to rest on her lower back gently before asking. "You ok then?" Alice lets her hand drop from her forehead to rest on the ground near his head, mirroring her other arm and supporting her weight.
"I dreamed that I stepped away from camp and couldn't make it back. I could see the campfire, but when I ran towards it, it never got closer until I jumped at it. I think that's when I woke up and I jumped up and hit you. I'm sorry." She lifted one hand to trace his forehead, and then put it back, intent on lifting herself off of him, a blush clear on her cheeks. She managed to get into a sitting position before Hatter sat up as well, maintaining the illusion of intimacy, without actually touching,
"That's how I felt earlier about the path, seems like we're not getting any closer. There's gotta be something going on that we can't see." He looks around the clearing and noting nothing out of the ordinary stands up and suggests Alice get some sleep. He moves back to the saddle and gets comfortable, sitting his hat on his knee and resting his head against the tree. Alice watches him move, and settle in, then reclines back onto the saddle blanket near the fire, but she doesn't manage any sleep. After what seemed like only moments to Alice, Hatter clears his throat.
"You alright over there? You been tossing for 34 minutes now, do you need something?" Alice sits up and whips her head around to look at Hatter, still reclined comfortably, looking at her. She nods weakly.
"I'm fine, sorry to wake you." Hatter chuckles lightly.
"Alice, you're not fine. But that's ok as long as there's nothing I can do to make it better." Alice shoots him a dirty look, mostly covered by her hair.
"Not unless you can make it day and we can get going again. This place is giving me the creeps." Hatter smiles gently.
"Wonderlanders don't get feelings like that; I think it has something to do with us all being just a little mad to begin with. If it'll make you feel better, bring your blanket over here and settle in next to me. At least you know you'll be safe." Alice considers for a few moments, making Hatter rush to sound nonchalant. "It would also lessen the chance that I get shoved into the fire waking you up from future nightmares." He finishes with a smirk and Alice smiles guiltily. She stands and picks up her blanket, settling between Hatter's legs and spreads the blanket over them both. Alice is asleep very quickly and afterwards, Hatter falls asleep to Alice's rhythmic breathing and the smell of her skin.
Neither were plagued by nightmares for the rest of that night and when they woke, Alice steps away to take care of business and Hatter puts out the fire with dirt and then picks up the canteen. There is just enough for one person, but he knows Alice well enough to know she will insist they need to share it. Hatter figures that they will likely find a spring or some fruit along the way, so he should be fine for a while. When Alice returns, he lifts the canteen to his lips, but keeps his lips closed and swallows a few times. He then turns to Alice, using the back of his hand to wipe the stray water from his lips.
"You better finish the rest of this off; we've got a bit of a trek ahead of us." Alice smiles shyly, takes the canteen and finishes it all. Hatter then packs the empty canteen away. He folds up the saddle blanket, again the thickest part of the blanket behind the saddle. He finishes saddling Guinevere and then mounts, pulling Alice up onto the saddle in front of him. He wraps one arm around her waist, as the other one grips the reins.
Smiling just a little as she leans into him, he digs his heels gently into Guinevere's sides to start them off. This time Hatter opts not to stay along the ledge, just heading as far as they can in the direction the path should stem from. Hatter is hoping that their new path, the direct path through the middle of the forest will find them near some stream or spring or even another edible berry bush. Hatter gets a whiff of his lovely oyster's skin every so often as he breathes. It's pure torture for him to be pressed up against her so when his posture begins to shift every few minutes to keep his lower regions from making themselves known, Alice mistakes his squirming for discomfort. She insists that she ride behind him for a stretch, so they stop and switch places. Hatter helps her up behind him and pulls her arms around to cross over his waist.
"You should try to settle as much weight as you can on me; it'll be easier on you and the horse." They travel for an hour before the cover of trees break and they are faced with a small clearing and a cliff face. Hatter turns the horse towards where the path should be, but this leaves Alice with nothing to concentrate on but the ledge and how close they are to plummeting to their deaths. Hatter can feel her shaking slightly, so he opts to stop the horse in the clearing, dismount with Alice and walk with her towards where the path should be. The horse follows behind them for the time being.
Hatter walks with Alice, his entire right arm being held by both of Alice's arms as they slowly walk through the forest, Hatter near enough to the edge to watch for the path, but not so near to make Alice more nervous. Guinevere is pleased to follow them quietly, nibbling on the grass here and there as they walk. Hatter doesn't make idle chatter with Alice, but uses his left arm to stroke her arms gently as they walk in what is supposed to be a comforting manner. Alice is in fact distracted by his ministrations and thinking less about the edge, more about Hatter. It isn't long before Hatter spots a path beginning ahead of them. Hatter makes Alice mount behind him again and they ride the horse the rest of the way. Hatter is still drawing random lines on Alice's arms as they ride to try to calm her. Alice keeps her head tucked into Hatter's back, taking deep breaths of Hatter's spicy leather smell. Hatter could just make out the smell of a fire nearby and heads in that direction once they get to the canyon floor.
