AN: Thanks to the lovely reviewer who reminded me I was supposed to post this morning. Sorry guys, forgot what day of the week it was!
Chapter Eight
Alice and Rory decided to spend the night in the safety of Charlie's camp. It was close enough to darkness that they wouldn't have made it far anyway, and it gave them more time to gather things and prepare. Alice wasn't excited about the wasted time they could've spent travelling, but she understood that it wouldn't be smart to just go wandering off into the woods without a good night's rest. After all, the last time she'd been asleep it had been rudely interrupted by a kidnapper and she was starting to feel the fatigue creeping in.
As if trying to make it up to her, Charlie went all-out with dinner. He barbequed another rib of Borogrove like she'd had the first night she'd spent with him, as well as a salad made of strange forest plants and drenched in a tangy dressing that had apparently come from a flower. Whatever it was, it was delicious. She ate it all eagerly, aware that she hadn't eaten in about half a day, and then settled down against a log to listen to Charlie.
Despite the knight's previous hesitancy toward him, he had quickly warmed to Rory. The Suit sat across the fire from him and eagerly hung onto every story that Charlie told like a little boy at his uncle's knee. Alice watched them both fondly. It would've been a perfect night were it not for the very obvious empty spot beside her.
She drew the coat tighter around her body and her hand encountered something that caught her attention. Curious she reached into the pocket and pulled out the little leather-bound book. She examined it in awe; she'd forgotten that she'd brought it with her. It was aged and the leather was soft in patches, but it was definitely not as old as the other book had been. Her mind drifted to the map that she'd spotted and she wondered if there were any other useful tips hidden in the pages.
The very first page was covered with a drawing of a woman. The dress she wore was plain and well-used and her hair twisted around her face in lank, fly-away curls. Even though she looked tired and there was something to her eyes that made her appear older than her face said, she was still fairly pretty. The small smile on her lips was almost cheeky, and the crinkled eyes were similar enough to hazard a guess: This woman was related to Hatter. His mother, or maybe a sister.
It occurred to her then that she knew nothing about his family. She'd asked him once where they were, but he'd just said that they were gone. He had looked so sad that she didn't want to push it, and the topic never came up again.
She turned the page. There were several sketches of inconsequential things on the next few pages; teacups and trinkets, a very round bird with a curved beak, a broken bicycle. There were quite a few different depictions of a cramped flat done with intricate details, down to the frayed holes in the bedspread and steam coming from the kitchen kettle. She wondered what made this place so significant that it merited several pages. Perhaps this was where he'd grown up.
On the next page was the woman again, only this time she looked even older. She was tucked into the bed – it had to be the same one, she recognised the pattern on the blanket – and she appeared to be asleep. Her face was peaceful and sad. There was something so strikingly powerful about the picture, like she could feel emotions coming from it. It made her heart ache.
"Just-Alice?" Alice startled and immediately realised she had tears in her eyes. She hastily rubbed them away with the heel of her hand. When she looked up both of the men were staring at her in concern. "Are you all right?" Charlie ventured.
"I'm fine," she said and forced on a smile. Charlie nodded but there was something in the sad lines on his aged face that told her he understood. "I think I'm going to get some sleep. It's been a long day."
Both of them bid her good-night, and she paused to give Charlie a quick kiss on the cheek before she crossed to the large bed stowed away beneath the shelter of the protruding tree root. She had argued that Charlie should keep his bed, since he was old and arthritic, but that had apparently offended his honour and she'd withdrawn her objections almost immediately at the hurt in his face. Just like old times, she thought somewhat wistfully as she stretched out on top of the faded quilt. She set the straw hat on the pillow beside hers and lay staring at it until she finally drifted to sleep hours later, the knight's snores filling the air and her hand stretched out into the empty space on the other side of the bed where Hatter should have been.
She was woken early by Charlie's shout and a loud thumping. It didn't take long to figure out what had happened; Rory had tried to wake the knight, who'd panicked and fallen out of his hammock. As Alice climbed off the bed, Rory was trying to help the elderly knight to his feet while the latter grumbled a series of words she thought might have been Wonderland curse words under his breath.
It didn't take them long to gather everything they would need – which was mostly just Charlie's armour and a canteen each, planning to travel lightly for speed – and Charlie called over the horses to load them. Alice frowned when she saw the pair. Instead of the brown and gray set she'd last seen, these two were a palomino and one that was the colour of rust. "What happened to Guinevere and Lancelot?" she asked.
"They have both gone to the great rest," Charlie said, stroking the neck of the darker horse before slinging the saddle blanket over its back. "They had done their service. I set them free to live out their last noble days in the forests, although they never strayed far. Guinevere went first and Lancelot the year after."
"Year?" Alice's mind buzzed and a question that she had ignored suddenly sprang to the front of her mind. "Wait, how long have I been gone?"
"Just a little over seven years now, milady," Rory chimed in, starting to saddle the lighter horse. "Eight when the cold season comes again."
"Seven years?" Alice gasped. It hadn't even been a full year in her world, but here nearly a decade had passed. She thought about the ruins in the city, the new buildings that had been built, and the lines that had become so pronounced in Jack's face. They weren't just lines of exhaustion and worry; they were the marks of time. He had aged seven years ahead of her.
"Why? How long was it on your side?" Rory asked and his green eyes had lit curiously.
"Ten months," she said, still awe-struck.
Rory chuckled. "That explains why you look exactly how I remember," he said, fastening a buckle and giving the saddle a quick tug to check that it would stay in place. Charlie was puffing as he settled himself onto the saddle of the rusty horse, and Rory jumped onto the other in a way that proved he'd done it plenty of times before. "Ready?" he asked, offering a hand down to her.
"Let's go," Alice agreed, using his hand to pull herself onto the horse behind him. It was as awkward and uncomfortable a spot as she remembered, straddling the horse's haunches directly behind the saddle, and she struggled to find a place to put her hands.
"This way," Charlie said and turned his horse toward the south. Alice thought back to the directions that he'd spouted off the day before. After a minute of humming and rubbing circles into his temples, he had suddenly gone stiff and rambled off their instructions so quickly she'd barely understand a word of it.
"Beyond! Go to the land beyond the land, to the kingdom long dead, and deep into a castle that shouldn't exist. Ask for the Unicorn."
Charlie hadn't been able to explain what any of it had meant after he'd come out of the mini-trance, but he seemed to somehow know where they were supposed to go so she left him to it. What concerned her more at the moment was that this was the second time she'd heard Unicorn crop up in a slightly disturbing way. There had been a unicorn in her dream; a unicorn that had trampled a hat into the ground.
It couldn't be a coincidence, could it? She didn't really believe that there was such thing as coincidences as far as Wonderland was concerned. So if it was real, then Hatter was being held by someone intent on trampling him, and she couldn't imagine that translated to anything good.
"Why's'a raven not tickin'..."
"Shh, just relax."
"Butta... Butta in the crumbs... No, not righ'..."
"I mean it, you. Quiet yourself down or I'll have to put you to sleep." Who was that voice? It was firm and authoritative, but it wasn't the voice that made him afraid. His curiosity got the better of him and he pried his eyes open, only to find himself facing a pair of pale green eyes staring straight back at him.
"There you are," she said. "I thought you must be coming back. You've been rambling nonsense for a while now but that's the first time you'd shown any sign that you even knew what you were saying."
Hatter's scattered mind took a second to place the face of the woman leaning over him, with the one who had tended his injuries before. The girl who'd called herself the Pawn. "You..."
"Shh," she said again. "Really, I'm not doing that just for my own entertainment. You did yourself quite a lot of damage, and I'm not going to be able to fix it until you hold still."
"I am," he said irritably.
The Pawn snorted. "Tell your body that then, would you?"
Hatter was about to snap back when he noticed it; a sudden tremor in his left arm. His entire body felt numb and disjointed, so he hadn't picked up on it before, but now he couldn't help but feel it. Not just in the one arm, either. Both of his hands were twitching – although he noticed his right wrist was being held firmly in place somehow – and the muscles in his legs kept coiling and uncoiling. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realised he'd seen this effect before; seizures, caused by ingesting too much Tea. Only as far as he'd ever known, the Wonderlanders had never been fully aware while it happened to them.
"Breathe, calm down," the Pawn said, pressing down on his chest as his body convulsed weakly.
"Am I dyin'?" he asked bluntly. He wasn't sure how he felt about that just yet, but if it was going to happen then he'd rather know about it up front.
"You'll be fine," she said with just a touch of amusement. "Just an after-effect of the Fear. Your body's fight-or-flight instinct is in overdrive right now. It will go away if you just calm down."
Hatter closed his eyes and tried to focus on only his breathing. The moment his eyes had closed the images started flickering through his mind again; needles, fire, screams, white-clad faces, Alice's crumpled body. He cursed under his breath as his muscles continued to contract.
"The spasms have faded enough now," the Pawn said, talking more to herself than to him. Her hands closed around his right ankle. Hatter's eyes snapped open and he lifted his head to stare down the length of his body at what she was doing, at the same moment that she fastened a thick metal band tightly around his ankle.
"No, please," he croaked, trying to use his other leg to push himself out of her reach but the limb wouldn't respond properly and with both his right ankle and wrist detained, it wasn't like he could've gone anywhere anyway. The Pawn grabbed his other ankle and secured it into place before sliding around to kneel beside his left shoulder.
"This is going to hurt," she said simply. "You were pulling so hard against the restraints before that you dislocated your shoulder. I'm going to have to snap it back into place." She didn't give him a chance to respond; she quickly shoved a narrow wooden cylinder between his teeth and then took his left arm in her hands. With a quick twist and jerk the joint popped back into the proper spot, and as it aggravated the existing injury Hatter let out a short scream that was garbled through the wooden bit. "There we go, much better," she said.
As she made to slide his wrist into the cuff he closed his hand around hers. Spitting the wood out, he looked up at her and said, "Please."
"I'm sorry," she said and she actually sounded sincere when she met his gaze. "You're to be detained, that's the orders. Even out here we've heard the stories about your fighting skills."
"You know what she's doin' is wrong," Hatter said pointedly. "Whatever she wants this information for, s'not good. So help me."
"I can't," she said, and she jerked her hand away forcefully. She couldn't meet his eyes as she shoved his wrist into place and fastened the cuff.
"Wait!" Hatter called out as she made to stand. "Just – don' go."
"I should get back to work," she said but she'd stopped none-the-less.
"I don't wanna be alone," he admitted. "The Fear, it's still there. Please, just don' leave me 'ere alone. Not 'til s'gone."
The Pawn finally turned to look at him again and there was something wary in her eyes, but she nodded and she sat down beside him on the floor. "You're bleeding," she murmured and then pulled a washrag from her pocket, dabbing the hole in his shoulder.
"Wha's your name?" Hatter asked curiously. "S'not actually Pawn, is it?"
"This is Wonderland," she said with a wry smile. "Do any of us have real names anymore, The Hatter?"
"David," he corrected. "M'real name's David Hatter. Mum was a bit odd, thought I should 'ave a proper name 'sides just the family one. Gave me an Oyster name. Course, way she tells it, she was 'alf Oyster. Dunno how true tha' was though. Like I said, not right in the 'ead."
"David," she repeated slowly, like she was tasting the word. "Funny name. I didn't know you were part Oyster."
"Might be," Hatter said. "Never met 'nough of my family to know. It was just me and mum."
"Elaira."
"Come 'gain?" Hatter asked in confusion.
"That's my name," she said and smiled. "Elaira."
Hatter returned the smile, although it was quickly dashed away as she prodded at the sensitive wound and he groaned. "Pretty name," he said when his jaw relaxed. "So Elaira, where 'xactly am I?"
"The infirmary," she responded. He shot a confused look at her before spotting the teasing grin on her lips. "I thought that was obvious."
"Thanks, tha' narrows it down," he said sarcastically. "But really, the old kingdom was destroyed. Seen it m'self. Where've you Whites been hidin' all these years?"
Elaira seemed to be considering him for a moment, twisting the washrag between her fingers, before she said, "The outer rim. The ones who survived retreated to the furthest edges of Wonderland and then went into hiding."
"So while the Reds fought to defend the city, your people ran away and hid," Hatter concluded darkly.
"They did what they had to do to survive," she said and her voice had gone flat. "The Red line lived on in the King of Hearts and his descendents. The White Queen was just making sure that her family wasn't wiped from our world. It wasn't honourable, but it was necessary."
Hatter recoiled slightly at the retort. "Sorry, I didn' mean it like that," he said. "I know what it's like, doin' wrong things for good reasons. Sometimes it's the on'y way to stay 'live." Elaira's expression softened. "In the end though, still had to choose a side."
"And you chose the Oyster girl," she finished for him. Her eyes were shrewd and calculating, questions buried beneath the dim colour. "Why?"
"'Cause she drives me abs'lutely mental," he said and chuckled. "From the first mo' I saw her, she was so frustratin'. Never met a girl like 'er, and I've met a lot of 'em." He sighed and a pang of loneliness stung in his chest. "Pro'lly what makes me love 'er so much." Elaira was staring at him with rapt fascination now, her eyes wide and attentive. After the long silence drew on, Hatter fidgeted – of his own accord this time – and said, "What?"
"Nothing," she said, too quickly, and averted her eyes. "She's here, you know," she added. "Your Oyster. Not here, but in Wonderland at least."
"She's comin' for me," Hatter said and wasn't sure if that made him happy or terrified. "I really 'ope this place is well hidden, 'cause otherwise we're all in trouble. Either she gets caught and your lovely miss uses her 'gainst me, or Alice'll find a way to bring this 'ole place down. She's good at tha'." His mind filled with images of the Unicorn pointing that silver horn dagger at Alice's throat and knew if that happened he was done for. He'd spill every secret in his body to keep her safe. "Blimey I 'ope she don' find me."
"You don't want to be rescued?" Elaira asked in surprise.
"I want 'er safe," he clarified. "'Tween me and her, I'd pick 'er life every time." He gave a dry laugh and glanced up at the Pawn. "I shouldn't be tellin' you this. You go tell all this to your miss and she'll know 'xactly how to beat me."
Elaira's hand was gentle as she touched his arm. "I won't tell her, I promise."
Hatter opened his mouth to ask her what that meant, when there was suddenly a thunderous noise. He couldn't be sure because of all of the echoes, but it sounded like it was coming from above them. A few seconds later there was something that sounded like a horn, blaring out a long, sonorous note that sounded almost bestial. Elaira bolted to her feet, looking at the ceiling in alarm. "Can't be," she breathed in awe.
"What?" Hatter asked. "What is it?"
"It can't be," she said again, ignoring him. The white band around her wrist beeped and she checked it quickly, her eyes widening further at whatever she saw. "I've got to go."
"Wait, what's goin' on?" Hatter shouted after her, but she had already run out of the door on the far side of the room and vanished. He lay on the cool stones, pinned down by the metal cuffs and completely defenceless, while above him another boom reverberated in the air.
