Thanks for your lovely reviews, I'm always glad to hear people's thoughts and comments. I'm also flattered to hear that my writing sounds like Jane Austen, but I promise I'm not nearly as good as she was. :)

I updated some photographs of famous paintings that resemble a scene in this chapter, the link to them is in my author profile. Check back there for each chapter—I'll keep adding new ones that are relevant to future things and people.

I know at this point it seems like we've taken such a massive detour from Brianna and Rain's story, but they've done a wonderful job and deserve lots of credit. Things will swing back around toward what they're doing later on.

The end of the last chapter went into a flashback, and we're actually further back.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
Rene Descartes

When we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.
Confucius

"Oh, go on, then," the Hare had said in what he meant to be an indulgent voice—for she could not tell through the large piece of pound cake he had stuffed into his surprisingly roomy cheeks—and waved her off to town to find her way between shops and stall hawkers. Alice had to ask him to repeat himself several times—his words were beginning to sound nonsensical and came out in worrying phrases that sounded something like Ph'nglui mglw'nafh cthulhu r'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn, which apparently translated to "If you get lost, don't panic. Ask the walls for directions, I'm sure they'd rearrange themselves for such a charming lady." She had not inquired as to the whereabouts of the Hatter, as the Hare had pre-empted any line of questioning with a kindly but full-mouthed, "He's out" when she first arrived that morning. Even when she understood him, the Hare did not give entirely reassuring advice, but Alice had smoothed her hair, taken a wicker basket from friend rabbit's kitchen, and walked along the yellow and blue bricks outside his boxwood gate trusting only her instincts and a vague memory of where town could actually be.

It had only been a few days since she had taken the keys to the refurbished cottage, and the delivery of a very large set of furniture had been preventing her from making thorough rounds of the nearby capital city. Just as well that she might do it alone, thought the girl as she ambled down the path, for the Hatter had been dragging on her in recent days. There was little he did not know, it seemed, and even less that was helpful to her handed-down fiat for investigation into the whereabouts of certain missing citizens. He could recite the genus of birds overhead by what flight pattern they took in the winter, but had not the slightest idea whether she might counsel with Father Time. When pressed, the Hatter took on a shifty look and began to mumble something about hoping the old bugger had wasted away. It was becoming clearer as time did go past that she would have to shoulder much of the burden in her orders and discreetly set aside the Duchess's recommendation that the Hatter act as her guide. For now, though, Alice was currently trying to avoid being crushed against a brick wall with a long hedge along the top by the crowd of people who were making their way to cross the street. It was not an easy affair, given the general penchant for oversized and dramatic fashion statements. Alice's own bustle seemed like a birdcage for a hummingbird compared to the one that nearly engulfed her from nearby; the garment had a small stool inside the wire compartment that its owner was currently resting on, but the original inventor of such a clever device had apparently not calculated for the sheer amount of fabric that would have to go over the frame itself, and so the lady's worsted wool was currently occupying a good fifth of the general area.

Our heroine did not think she had ever seen so many people in her life, and all of them with the same strange noses and eyebrows that the aristocrats at the palace had had a few nights before, though this rabble was decidedly more middle-class in a way that just sort of surrounded them and came out in invisible clouds whenever they breathed or blinked or turned their heads to watch the street signal boxes flip their colored panels. Now they were squeezing past her quickly, giving her no chance to move except forward in their wake, and she could get a better look at them close up as she was jostled along. No, they did not have quite the same posture or breeding as the courtiers. Or maybe it was all the packages everyone seemed to be carrying—this was the one thing that made Alice stand out from everyone else, and she felt a strong urge to correct and straighten her glaring difference with a few purchases to see what she could make of her newfound access to the Wonderland. Having no money, of course, was the main obstacle, but Alice was determined to fit in, even with an empty basket.

There were the usual sorts of shops along the wide cobblestone roads with exactly the sort of twist she expected from a place like the Wonderland, and she passed the time by taking a closer look at the shopfronts she and the Hatter had dashed past on their way before. In the dressmaker's, the girls with tape measures round their necks were holding up sails of cloth pulled out from the bolt, letting a pair of silver shears with robin's wings snip delicately but expertly through crepe de Chine with a bold pink stripe. Alice stood shyly before the large plate glass window etched with gold letters without going inside and watched in quiet fascination. It was all as she would have found outre as a child, but here, from an older perspective, it wasn't so troubling that there should be living, sentient scissors dipping sweet and easy back and forth from bolts of fabric to a dovecote along the wall behind the counter when they were no longer needed.

She moved on and passed what she thought might be several government buildings with flattened domes for roofs; they were made of an aging brown stone and their decorative copper fleur-de-lis were turning a jaded green in the sunlight. None of them were marked, and they seemed to be more of a maze than the sort of buildings one would expect of a monarchical district. There was no efficiency in the architecture, just a series of dark alleys she could see from the street, and a looming building with ionic columns somewhere in the middle that poked its triangular front above the rest. Alice had no interest in becoming lost or otherwise exited into peril, especially without her distracted guide, wherever he may be today.

It was entertaining, though, the independence that being in a crowd afforded her. Just stopping to take a good long look was exquisitely compounded by how many alien but familiar goings-on surrounded her, and Alice wandered up and down the high street until the sun was nearly overhead. The market stands were not quite the exotic, carpet-lined and incensed affair she had half-hoped for and imagined, but rather more like the coster-monger stalls at home, only with fewer things she could recognize. The fat middle-aged men with expertly curled and waxed mustaches and straw boater hats wrapped with bright red crown ribbons stood proudly in their white aprons, selling apples the size of pumpkins right alongside books with metal covers, jeweled pendants hanging in clusters from tent posts, and glass double-boiler percolators with brass valves that knew when to stop pouring coffee. Steam-operated whisks with brass wheels in their center whirred and pumped their way around a tiny track set along the rim of a mixing bowl, whipping air into egg whites as a demonstration. There was a lady who sold pocket watches all ticking and clicking in unison so loudly that she had to shout to haggle with her customers, and then there was the flower shop, with so many wares that it had begun to spill out into the street, in front of which Alice came to pause.

There, sitting in a very prominent display was a bouquet of white lilies-of-the-valley, looking for all the world as though her sister had placed them there. Alice waited, then stepped a bit closer when a man approached the vendor to talk, and put her face very close to the papery blooms to inhale the scent she hated so well. She concentrated on the cloying, sickening essence that was so far from the sweetness of roses that it was a wonder the two could both be considered flowers.

"You are so curious sometimes," said her sister, arranging the brand new white-topped stalks among the decorative green shoots in a copy of the Portland Vase as she did every seven days. Her betrothed was punctual with his weekly offering. Alice was standing in the hallway just beyond the young woman's elbow, a small book in hand. She was looking at the embroidered border on the older girl's sleeve and trying not to concentrate on what she was saying.

"But you are so unselfish and good for offering to sit with Mama, I am sure she will be happy to have you at her side. It is a shame no one will see you at all back there in the pew, but I am sure I shall ask Honoria to take your place—she did want to be in the bridal party so keenly, after all. Are you absolutely certain you shan't stand up with me?" The question was ever so light, but Alice was well-trained and could hear the delicate sound of a young lady who is getting precisely what she wants but is behaving out of a sense of rectitude.

"I am sure Mama wants me to sit with her. You want to be with your friends. I shall miss you terribly," she began stiltingly.

"Ah! yes, I shall not see you until the reception, shall I? What have you there?" Alice did not answer for a moment.

"It's nothing, I was just going to put it back in the library," said Alice, running her fingers over the gilt words along the spine. The Age of Innocence, it read.

"What on earth is that thing doing?" Alice opened her eyes and stared into the flowers where the voice was coming from. She was mildly surprised to note that it was not the white lilies, but rather a common set of pansies pressed up against the stark blossoms that had been speaking to her.

"Do you always go about sticking your face into other creatures' businesses like that?" said a flower she could not see.

"Well?" demanded a purple and yellow flower aggressively.

"I'm only looking," she replied curtly, giving the blossoms a hard stare without feeling guilty; it was with more a sense of guarded sharpness that she allowed them the dignity of a response.

"We're a far nicer choice than those hideous white things," said someone pink in the back.

"They are rather awful," she agreed.

"But still nicer than you, I suppose. There's an air of something amiss with you, whatever you are." There was a passing around of smirks at this. Alice briefly considered buying the tussie-mussie just for the satisfaction of crushing it repeatedly beneath her heel, but instead leaned in closer.

"I wonder at your not withering away in the natural air without your precious glass roof in the hot house." The flowers opened their mouths in shocked unison, then closed them indignantly as she straightened up.

"Alright, then, miss?" asked the florist from behind his cashbox a few feet away. He was happily trimming stems from several bright purple and blue striped tea roses. "They do get a migh' cheeky sometimes, but they don't mean real 'arm... oh!" and his surprised exclamation came only after Alice turned her head to look at him politely. He tipped his hat. "Didn't recognize you, Lady, very fine day indeed. Say the word if you need something; at your service."

For a moment Alice did not put the words together, but then remembered what the Duchess had said. Serve her the greatest hospitality. Was it of national importance, this strange new person and this strange new name? Did everyone know, had they all been warned in advance and instructed to call her by title? Was there some secret means of getting the word out that someone in these parts stuck out like a smashed-up thumb? Alice briefly considered taking a better look at some of the handbills posted to the walls nearby to see if her face and the words "KNOW WELL THE LADY" were written there. It was disconcerting, she thought: her identity had been wrapped up in her own name for so long that it would be difficult to go about and respond to such a vague and what she felt to be randomly-assigned term.

Clouds had passed over the sun, and though the rest of the sky was a cheerful blue, the darkened buildings became more of a snapping call to what passed for reality to Alice, instead of the cooled harbor of a road where the market's other visitors were taking shelter from the heat. She half-closed her eyes, put a smooth and neutral expression on her face, and leaned back against the corner of an alley. From there she watched the clockmaker hold up a bright brassy pocket watch to a customer, who became so engrossed in the sway of its pendant that he quickly became dizzy and fell over, causing a sharp and outraged ruction from the flock of geese he had become acquainted with in a supine sort of way.

She wondered briefly how to get back to her newly finished cottage from whatever part of the capital she was in, but then realized that the egress was likely to be different now that she had turned off the market street and into some unrecognizable quarter with a slightly more exotic-looking clientele. She was alone and relatively lost and knew the walls would not answer her if she began speaking to them in the distress the Hare had been able to predict so easily. She was not lost. She could ask anyone at all where she was, they did seem like nice people well enough. There was nothing to be so worried about. Alice forced the moment of disquieted chaos within her to pass, and pressed her palms against the bricking behind her to cool her hands and mind.

After a moment of repose, she pushed out with the rest of the crowds, heading for a cross street lined with quainter shops and no hordes of women bargaining for zucchini. This street looked slightly more familiar, Alice realized, but she still did not quite recognize what she was looking for, or see anything that resembled the main road that led to the docks, any fountains or public coach boxes or hedge banks to signal a crossing over into the forest. She had got all switched up, and kept turning in circles, growing hotter as the crowds shifted and swayed around her, no one staying in the same place for more than a moment. It was under a sign which read ELEVENTY-FIRST BULWARK, however, that Alice came to a sudden halt.

Standing in the middle of the street full of people was a man wearing the shiniest red satin cape her eyes could stand to look at in this amount of sunlight. He had one eyebrow cocked and a cheeky half-smile on his face, and was talking to several women who were in clear admiration of his toreador's costume. The shortest of these three brunettes held several thick books in her arms with golden titles along the spine; the second was holding a small wooden painter's box and a large piece of cold press with a raw edge, and the last had turned her head to watch a fishwife throw bright red snapper on a mound of ice in the storefront nearby. Smirking and wallowing in self-delight, the bullfighter leaned down to speak to the second girl, who let out a pleasant laugh and elbowed her fish-watching companion in the arm, who smiled and smoothed out her apron.

He looked up and right at her, as though he had been expecting her to come this way and had somehow cleverly outwitted her in his choice of street on which to be standing in decorous fashion. With one hand on his side to hold the cape back and show off the rest of his outfit to the best of advantages, he did seem rather a dramatic spectacle. Alice shifted the basket on her arm to the crook of her elbow, stepping closer with a more relaxed and sardonic look, and the two of them sized each other up for a moment.

"So it's you," said Alice airily. The three women gave the man knowing smiles, which he returned before the women moved away. "Who were they?" she asked casually when they were gone.

"You know, I don't actually know their names, but they are a fresh breath of life," he said lightly with fists akimbo, watching them as the trio stopped to speak with a redhead who had joined them halfway down the street. Alice turned back to the man in the satin cape and got to the point of her approaching him to begin with.

"Why are you dressed like a bullfighter, where is your normal coat?" The Hatter suddenly looked comically deflated, bending over in half and frowning petulantly at her while dangling his arms nearly to the ground. He heaved a melodramatic sigh to complete the look.

"I'm absolutely pipped waiting for a bull to come along to complete my mise-en-scene, and this is deuced hard work, and that sort of thing, with you swinging along to lay free judgement on a bloke like this," he replied half-mournfully. "The coat, however, is in for a good cleaning. Must keep that velveteen in sporting condition."

"Sporting indeed, that is quite the flashy couture you have. Was this the only choice you had out of the wardrobe?" Alice eyed the outlandish ensemble carefully.

"I do agree, it is spectacular; it is also several hours early to be dressed for a costume ball being held so late in the evening, but when one has only a toreador's outfit in one's wardrobe, it isn't as though I can argue with that sort of obvious directive from a higher power."

"Ball?"

"Yes, the Duchess is throwing a costumed ball, and everything sort of fell into place, what with that horrendous tomato soup accident..." He frowned and murmured something about getting back at that rabbit. "Though I don't think the montera does me any justice, do you? Not the same as my bespoke hat, the poor thing had to stay home put safely away in its citadel of sequestration, and I think this makes me look like I have mouse ears." He firmly set the black felt piece over Alice's updo and stepped back to assess her.

"And now you look like you have mouse ears."

"Does the Duchess throw these balls often?" asked Alice, feeling a bit like she had just swallowed an east wind.

"Oh, rather not, it's a soiree for those who are in a unique angle to the assistance of the crown." He plucked the hat from her head and tilted his chin to the side to look at her carefully again. Alice did not speak, but watched the fishmonger and his wife in their storefront window argue over whether to pile the fish at random, or to arrange them in a careful and artful display.

"Well, shall we go find some shade and something to fill that whacking big basket of yours with? You're a lady, you can't have a home with no conversational pieces. We could find you a nice stuffed fish with just the right look of balefulness in its googly eye to hang over the mantel and scare off all the rummy sorts who constantly drop in around here—are you all settled in, by the way? I was meaning to ask you in case something needs reporting, mice in the kitchen singing and carrying on and making your supper, or owls having card parties in the thatch. Quite common infestations around here, unfortunately..."

"No, it is very nice, thank you," she said mildly, for she was thinking very hard.

"Of course, of course," said the Hatter with a bit of surprise, and the two began to meander up the street to where a large crowd of people had gathered.

It wasn't until the sea of people began to organize and part, and heads began bobbing in a southward direction, toward the docks, that Alice followed the Hatter's lead and slyly began moving forward. Now she could squeeze gently between two spectators and see a small procession coming up the street, one which would have surprised her had she not the presence of mind to see that the members of this parade going by foot was all the better for the advantage of the crowd's gawking.

The Duchess and her five princesses-in-waiting were gliding soft and wholly uninhibited, though no heralds or guards had proceeded them to shout out orders for the hoi-polloi to clear a respectful path. Like a flock of taffeta-clad swans heading for fashionable climes, they had arranged themselves into a vee formation, the Duchess in watery grey silk heading the attack and carrying a painted umbrella to throw her face into shade. Alice looked at each of them as they passed, heads held high, eyelids gently hooded, and gazes set upon the brush-stroked Japanese scenes their prima held, all these symptoms evincing such an alternately powerful and delicate sense of exclusivity and belonging.

The photograph in the dark library inside the Hare's cottage could have been taken but five minutes before; their expressions were so perfectly matched to the sepia plate on the wall. Her thoughts faded back to the evening when they surrounded her with ribbons and button-hooks and well-bred opinions. The single brunette, dressed now in blue and white instead of the yellow gathered satin of their previous meeting, briefly turned a single eye upon Alice, but did not make a motion with her hand or face, and the lady in the crowd watched the laced edges of a duchess and five princesses swish delicately against the street stones before turning the corner.

Alice had returned to her cottage relatively unscathed—she was unsure whether she could say the same for the Hatter, who had emerged victorious from a heated battle of negotiations with one of the stall owners and a competing haggler, holding one of the jeweled egg-like pendants aloft like a Golden Fleece or so many holy swords, a large red blotch under his eye but the usual crazed grin triumphant on his face. As it turned out, the clusters of the pretty tokens on sparkling chains were meant to hang off the sconce arm of gaslights inside houses where they could reflect the light there onto the walls and floor, dainty little mirror gems that spotted the wallpaper and gave a welcoming glow to a foyer.

"You don't have to do all of this, you know..."

"Do what, get into fights? That old girl was asking for it, I know she would have beat me senseless with that walking stick if I hadn't pushed her into the table, but look—now your floor will be 'thick inlaid with patines of bright gold'."

"... I don't really need seven pounds of boiled leeks, I don't know what I'm going to do with them or how I'll repay you--"

"Why would you want to do that?" Alice had stopped briefly to craft a response she felt would be meaningful.

"I don't want to be a burden," she said after a moment. He considered this.

"Why would you be a burden?"

"I don't have any form of currency for this country," she replied, hoping that perhaps he would fully appreciate the sensitive depth of the situation, but he instead began rifling through his enormous pockets to pull out a large, dark rectangle.

"Well, have some of mine. If you want to choose your own Asparagales instead of me getting into another punch-up with a blue-haired centenarian—as thrilling and entertaining as such altercations have proven to be—then you certainly must take some, for I have corking great sums of it, and you have need. Here," he said, and pushed something vaguely wallet-like between the paper-wrapped silver candlesticks and a small box with a willow pattern. "Might have to borrow that teapot from you sometime, though," he added quietly, looking at the blue square with interest.

She had managed to procure a side of beef—she hoped, rather than confirmed, this to be the case—without the seemingly interminable help of the Hatter after this, and was presently on her way to boil the bone, chopping vegetables under the kitchen window and watching the refracted sun turn red in the evening light. It was the first dish with meat she would have since she had been persuaded to travel, said Alice in her mind, and she was very glad to be getting away from all the bon-bons, cream puffs, and milk-diluted tea. She wondered at how the Hatter and Hare could subsist on only sugary delights at the tea party (though the Hatter had given the paper-wrapped parcel from the butcher's in Alice's basket a thorough, perhaps even longing, glance, as if hoping she would use it some other night when he could share in the dish himself). It was "the tea party" now, for it had all begun to run together ages ago, and there was no point in trying to break any particular part of it down into quantifiable episodes. Every joke and laugh, every roll of Alice's eye and slosh of cream in the Hare's mug ran together and created an infinite loop of ongoing madness in activity.

She and the man with the white hair had parted near the main square's fountain, the Hatter rubbing his strangely-gloved palms together and Alice setting the heavy basket down for a moment. She was admittedly tired from spending the day in the sun, and was eager to begin her supper. He was deftly avoiding any questions she had about his previously mused thoughts on just heading into a field to capture a bull, or possibly kidnapping two able-bodied people and stuffing them into a large suit, and she wanted to express a degree of disapproval of such thoughts with the right dosage. The Hatter was hoping to win some sort of Best Costume prize, she could see, but protested that he could do just as well without a worthy foe.

"After-dash-it-all, it rather doesn't matter one way or the other—I have no plans for such things," he said with his nose in the air, tying a loose string he had pulled off his cape into what resembled a slip knot meant for leading dangerous behorned livestock out of pens and meadows. "None whatsoever," this said smiling at the work in his hands. More ominously, of course, she could hear him softly singing the bit of the Marsellaise that dealt with the "braying of enemy soldiers in the field" when he finally turned to head back along the street, leaving the girl shaking her head and making a mental note to check the "horrific maimings and gougings" column in the obituaries the next morning. Alice rolled her eyes at the memory of this and began to sprinkle barley in the water to taste.

She was alone again, for the evening. Alice watched the bubbles roil and burst against the flaming copper pot and felt the expansive smallness of this new house move against her isolation, stretching and silently groaning, hungry for company. The boiling reminded her of the rolling tides at Westgate, and so she took up the wooden spoon to stir her thoughts away. The bubbles in the boil continued, mostly unabated, however. She could not have invited herself, Alice thought, partly to temper the house's plaintive creaking noises and partly to ward of bitter thoughts.

It only made sense to have a select guest list. Service to the crown... she had not come back with anything, had she? She had not done anything to warrant special favor or notice to begin with. And here she was surrounded by all the niceties the Duchess had promised, with no work to show. All on good faith in abilities she had not even demonstrated. No, there was nothing to be cross about. The party was likely to be a dreadful affair anyway, a mimeograph of the dinner party before, though with more feathers and themed outfits this time. The tiny voice in the back of her head came through regardless. Why not her, though?

After Alice was satisfied with the progress of her beef consomme, she was faced with the dilemma of which room she was going to sit in and eat. This was not a matter of propriety, but rather of a series of unusual circumstances. There was the obvious choice of the kitchen, but her larderboard table was beset with packages sent from town and her purchases of the day. The breakfast room was too dark at night, and the dining room Alice found to be a taxing problem. It was nicely set, neatly decorated by her own hand, and directly facing another dark mahogany door the existence of which she found herself unable to comprehend, even with a relatively open mind and a high tolerance for happenings that usually brought a stunned look to her face. To sit with her back to this closed door annoyed her, and to face it she was unable to concentrate on eating. She was not necessarily afraid of it, it simply had a tendency to engage her natural curiosity in the usual way.

Upon settling into the house, Alice had given it a good airing and looked it over. She had gone through each room, created an aerial diagram of the bungalow in her mind, and long decided where the cherry and maple furniture sent from the Duchess was to go when she realized that the room behind the door could not actually exist. She had opened it, admired with no small surprise the contents beyond, and was halfway down the hall again before it struck her that the outside of the house did not line up with the dimensions this seemingly-extra room impressed upon her. Standing in her own garden where she and the Hatter had bolted through the boxwood, she stared at the back wall where the room should have been for a good twenty minutes, memorizing what the view from the window should have looked like. And when she stepped back inside to look through the dark door again, it was neatly impossible for the view to the treeline to be the same. Back outside she went again, and there was only a stuccoed wall with a thin, high jalousie window that looked sealed shut from where she stood.

This did not physically make sense, even when allowing for the strange brand of physics the Wonderland held itself to. Alice had even found the original plan for the house stuffed into a drawer in the bathroom vanity, and where her strange new room stood, there actually had been built a too-small hall closet with shelves unnecessarily installed. Happy thought indeed. She had not returned to the room since, instead choosing to keep the door and her mind to it shut, and quietly ask the March Hare at their next caucus whether his anomalous library had originally been part of the house. His reply was as strange as she could have predicted.

"Come to think of it now, I can't remember if it was originally there or not. I never bothered to look in there until I needed some closet space a couple of years ago and instead found I had a whole new room that didn't match anything inside or out. I never go in, I have no idea why it's there. Gives me the jibblies," he said, and shivered a bit, sloshing his tea about.

Alice was halfway in the hallway between the dining room and the dark door with a steaming bowl of soup in hand and an indecisive look on her youthful features. She breathed in, steadied her tureen, and setting her hand steadily on the brass doorknob, gave a gentle turn and opened the door.

The first part of this anachronous piece of the house was an ante-room, or perhaps sitting room would be a more accurate description. It had wicker furniture that had been artfully arranged for a large volume of company by whoever had owned the room previously—it was an expert's work and Alice suspected that whoever it was had been very good at entertaining. The far wall opposite the door was lined with a series of vertical plate windowpanes that acted as a wall of the room beyond, which as it turned out was an implausibly large conservatory that went on Alice knew not how far. She stood in this foyer on the threshold between these new rooms, peering off into the giant palm leaves that obscured whatever was inside and wondered if her footsteps would mar the perfectly smooth reflection produced by the ebony slab beneath the assortment of orchids and cherry blossoms she could not name.

She stood staring down into the tile, looking back at her own reflection as clear as a new mirror, yet as muddy as through a smoked glass. It was a bit like standing over a gorge with an invisible bridge, with the perfect and unshakeable knowledge that a supporting walkway was there, but with the equally unshakeable desire to test each step before venturing out, just a little way at a time. Just in case. It was not until her tiny boots made soft clipping sounds around the room that Alice realized how impossibly far up the ceiling went, glass panels with white panes between each that repeated almost endlessly. She turned a corner that was made up by a plant with leaves as broad as her skirts, and peered round to see a small fountain and many boxes of steamy red and yellow flowers with dinner plate sized petals next to the windows. It was warm and humid here, and Alice sat on the fountain ledge and watched the steam in her soup slowly dissipate in clouds toward her own nose.

It was a combination of restless boredom and frustrated uselessness that permeated the thick air and weighted Alice down enough that she grasped the sides of the fountain and rubbed the toe of her boot against the other until it shone. She was not feeling herself this evening; she did not even have the curiosity to explore the rest of this strange yet oddly comforting place. It did have the air of the sort of room one would find back home. But she did not know what to do, and this concerned her more presently. There was nothing else to do but eat the beef and try to plan for the future, she thought, but she did not know where to go beyond where she was now. Alice dipped the spoon forward and let the pause call forth new questions.

What did the Duchess really want from her? Discover them and their reason for leaving, she had said. Were the residents simply walking away as the monarch had implied, or was there the something in the forest that moved the earth with its lumbrous gait? What if it tore the thatch off roofs and plucked creatures out of their sitting rooms? Alice brushed the tips of her fingers over a violently purple water lily near her left hand and let these thoughts come together. She wanted to help, if only to have some inscrutable purpose that would satisfy a higher power, but wondered if she was doing the undoable, or could not move forward alone without help.

She tasted those words again in her mouth. Could not move forward without help. As if she could go nowhere sans Hatter, could not function in this world without someone to lead her around by the nose and purse, as if she were missing the second half of a pair of something. What had the Hatter done lately for her in his promise to help her case, besides thrust upon her more money and vegetables than she could use? Behaved boorishly at several day's worth of tea party, one memorable moment of which resulted in the loss of a brand new ribbon (for he had used it to cut a thick wheel of cheesecake into what resulted in very ragged and spoilt edges), and sung more bad snatches of colorful songs than Alice knew of all songs put together. He was not totally without a purpose, of course, but she could not believe that she had needed the services of a man dressed in satin trousers to lead her out of a market high street; it was without a doubt most embarrassing.

And this last thought was what set events into motion for Alice. Not the part about the shiny toreador costume, though that did have its own eventual impact on our story, but indeed, the thought about the day's earlier awkward events. Alice was not a terribly bold sort of girl—she had been raised with the best of feminine intentions—but she had gotten through the strange gardens twice before, and as a child, and even under rather remarkable circumstances involving mushrooms and cakes and serums. This set something within her. It was not with newly-discovered grandiose intentions of sallying forth to alter the course of the universe itself that Alice rose from her seat on the fountain's edge, but rather with the small silent promise that she would sort everything out somehow.

It did not matter that the pocketbook the Hatter had given her was heavy with a brick of paper notes, she thought, there was most assuredly a way for her to see through to satisfactory completion the task the Duchess had called forth upon her without unnecessary indignities. She had done it before, why not settle the crown's conviction for her being there without the hinderance of someone so easily distracted? No, surely she could find her own path toward discourse with someone who had information, and without the quiet discretion she had looked toward earlier in the day.