A.N.: As an apology for taking so long to write, here is an extra-long chapter for you! Please review? Please?


"I've been considering things that begin with the letter 'M,'" Hatter casually mentioned as he poured himself another cup of tea.

Mallymkun giggled. "I do, Hatter," she said, jumping from the arm of a chair to the table.

"'I' doesn't begin with 'M,' silly!" Hatter corrected playfully.

"Of course it doesn't," the dormouse agreed.

"Ah, but you said it did," the man pointed out. "And it can't begin with 'M,' because then it wouldn't begin with 'I,' and if it didn't begin with 'I' then we could hardly say 'I' because it's the only letter in the word and so we'd have to say 'M' but then it wouldn't be 'I' anymore, so it—!"

"Hatt-er," Mallymkun cut him off. "That's not what I meant!"

"But it's what you said. You really ought to say what you mean."

"Saucer!" Thackery chimed in.

"'Saucer' doesn't begin with 'M' either!"

"But 'Mallymkun' does!" said the dormouse.

"Why, so it does!" said the Hatter. "Why didn't you say so in the first place?"

"I did," Mallymkun insisted, grinning.

"Now, Thackery," said Tarrant, turning to the hare. "It's your turn. What else begins with 'M'?"

Thackery thought, but nothing seemed to come to mind.

"Gae!" he shouted, tossing his teacup across the table. It hit Mallymkun, nearly knocking her off the table.

Tarrant and Thackery burst out laughing. Mallymkun got back to her feet, and although an expression of annoyance flickered across her face, it quickly vanished as she joined in the laughter, the transgression already forgotten.

Eventually, the laughter faded, and the topic changed.

"Th' bloodhound ought'ter be arrivin' soon," said the hare in a rare moment of lucidity. "Spoon," he added as an afterthought.

"Is that today?" Hatter asked. "I can never remember."

"It could be today," said Mallymkun. "How 'bout I go look for him?"

"A fine idea," the Hatter replied. "But don't be too late, all right?"

"Yeh better not be late!" Thackery added.

Mallymkun laughed, scampering down one of the table legs and waving behind her as she disappeared into the trees.

She wandered around for a while, not heading in any particular direction. After all, she could easily find her way back, and she had her hatpin at her waist as always. But she wasn't expecting any trouble. It was just too good of a day for something bad to happen!

"Mallymkun?"

The dormouse turned around. "Bayard!" she squealed happily at the sight of the bloodhound.

"You're looking well," Bayard said. "Where did you get the jacket?"

"What, this?" Mallymkun pointed at the long, red jacket she was wearing over her usual outfit. "Hatter made it for me! He gave me a new hatpin, too, since I lost the old one."

Bayard nodded. "You're in a good mood."

Mallymkun laughed. The bloodhound gave her a strange look.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Should I not be?"

"No, it's just that…well, I've never heard you laugh before," said Bayard.

"Really?" Mallymkun cocked her head slightly. "Huh. I guess I just never felt like it."

"I have good news," Bayard said. "We found Absolem, and he said—"

The dormouse started giggling again.

"What's so funny?" Bayard asked. There was no response, just more laughter. "Mallymkun!" he shouted.

"What?" She stopped laughing abruptly, surprised at his outburst.

"Something's different," Bayard said. "You're different. You're not at all like the spunky girl I met in Witzend, nor the stubborn warrior I found later. You're…you're mad, is what you are."

"No, I'm not," Mallymkun protested. "We just pretend to be mad, you know that. It's an act."

"Then why are you 'acting' now?"

Mallymkun frowned slightly. "I'm not…" she muttered. "…am I?" she added uncertainly.

"…Maybe you should take some time off," Bayard cautiously suggested. "It's not that I don't think you're capable—far from it. But the stress of being constantly in the middle of the action…I had to dodge at least four Red Knight patrols on my way here. The Woods just aren't safe anymore, and, truthfully, you're not much more than a pup. You could stay with us. Bielle and I would be glad to have you."

The bloodhound expected the dormouse to glare at him and make a scathing remark about his apparent lack of faith in her abilities, but instead she just looked up at him calmly.

"But I'm happy here," she said. "I haven't been this happy since…for a long time. Thackery's funny, and I like Tarrant. And the Red Knights don't bother us much. They just march around and try to look scary, but they usually end up looking silly. The Red Queen hasn't done anything to us, either."

Bayard shrugged, mystified by her complete reversal in attitude and in, it seemed, personality.

"Well, if you're sure," he said. "All right then, the good news. McTwisp found Absolem. They consulted the Oraculum, which has predicted that several years from now we will have a Champion who will slay the Jabberwocky."

"Several years?" Mallymkun said. "Why not now?"

"Apparently, McTwisp has to go to Overland and bring her here for a short while, so that she will remember us when she returns home and then come back when the time is right."

"Overland." The word sounded vaguely familiar. Mallymkun thought for a moment, and then she remembered the staircase and door that lead nowhere. Chessur had said that it was "one of the ways to Overland."

"What is Overland, Bayard?" she asked.

"Have you ever wondered why we call our home Underland?" Bayard replied. "Overland is the other world, somewhere above us."

"There are people who live in the sky?" Mallymkun glanced upward. It was hard to believe.

"Not in the sky," said the bloodhound. "At least, I don't think so. I've never been there. Supposedly, it's a lot like Underland, but different. Some say that it's completely populated by humans, and that the only animals up there are uncivilized, speechless beasts."

"And we want a Champion from there why?" Mallymkun asked. "That is, of course, if such a place really exists."

"Oh, it exists, all right," Bayard said, reassured by her skepticism—it was more like her.

"So, when does she—"

The dormouse was cut off by loud, quick footsteps, and suddenly they were surrounded by cardsmen.

"Arrest that hound for suspicious behavior!" ordered an Ace, pointing at Bayard.

Mallymkun scampered, easily ducking between their legs. As a few of the cardsmen were distracted by her flight, Bayard took a chance and rushed them, breaking out of the circle and dashing away into the trees. The cardsmen were quickly in pursuit of the bloodhound.

The dormouse ran for a long time, only stopping when she ran out of breath. She stood there, breathing hard and worried about Bayard. Had he escaped? Or was he already on his way to Salazen Grum?

He called me mad, she thought. He said I was different. I'm not different, I'm still me!

Then again…

She'd just run away from the Red Knights. Why had she run? Now that she thought about it, she couldn't remember when her last fight was. Her hatpin had stayed, unused, at her side since…since the Jubjub Bird attack? What had she done all this time?

Had tea, that's what. And laughed, she'd done quite a lot of laughing lately.

Now that she looked back on her recent behavior, it seemed like she was looking at someone else, someone silly and ridiculous.

But…

All she wanted right now was to return to the tea table, to laugh with Thackery and answer Tarrant's ever-repeating nonsense questions. She was happy there. She felt happy with them, and she also felt something else when she thought of the Hatter and Hare.

She felt secure.

Their lives weren't under any threat. She was never lonely or deprived of her needs. No one expected her to do anything or be anyone. No one told her what to do.

Was that madness? And if so, was that a bad thing?

Mallymkun didn't know. Made uncomfortable by her thoughts, she decided to head back to the tea table. She could only hope that events would be easier to handle there, even if they still didn't make sense.


It took much longer than usual for the dormouse to return to her friends. It seemed that every few moments, she had to change course or hide to avoid Red Knights.

There weren't this many patrols before, Mallymkun thought as she crouched behind a tree root, waiting for the cardsmen to pass by. And they weren't so intimidating, either…or maybe they were, and I was too mad to notice?

That idea only served to make her feel even more troubled.

She was out the rest of the day and all night, moving cautiously and continuously preoccupied with the question of her sanity and her priorities.

Not all that long ago, I would have hated the way I've been living, was a recurring argument in her mind. Now I just want to stop thinking and get back to it. What do I desire, truly?

The sun had long since risen by the time she reached the tea table. Miserable and exhausted, she was without even the energy or motivation to climb up onto her chair. She just curled up next to one of its legs, eyes shut tight, incredibly relieved to be back.

Then a hand picked her up and set her on the table, and she heard the Hatter talking from somewhere far away.

"You're terribly late, you know, naughty…By the way, Chessur came by to tell us that we might have a new guest later, a girl by the name of Alice…"

Mallymkun didn't hear anything else, as she had fallen asleep.


She didn't wake up all at once. First, she heard the voices.

"You should learn not to make personal remarks," a girl was saying. "It's very rude."

Now, who could that be? Mallymkun thought. For a moment she wasn't sure if she was dreaming or not.

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?" came a reply.

That's Tarrant, thought the dormouse.

"I believe I can guess that," said the girl.

Oh yes, he said we'd have a guest.

"Do yeh be meanin' that yeh think yeh can find oot the answer toowit?" Thackery said.

What was her name? Alice, wasn't it?

"Exactly so," said Alice.

"Then yeh should say whut yeh mean," the hare went on.

Very true.

"I do," Alice hastily replied. "At least—At least I mean what I say—that's the same thing, you know."

"Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. "Why you might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see'!"

That's also very true.

"Yeh might as well say," Thackery added. "That 'I like whut I git' is the same theng as 'I git whut I like'!"

"You might just as well say," Mallymkun added, still not quite awake but able to form sentences. "That 'I breathe when I sleep' is the same thing as 'I sleep when I breathe'!"

"It is the same thing with you," Tarrant said.

There was a long pause, in which Mallymkun drowsily thought of nothing in particular until she was almost fast asleep again—and then Thackery dripped hot tea on her.

"Of course, of course; just what I was going to remark myself," the dormouse muttered, just in case she'd missed something important.

While she still didn't feel like getting up yet, she tried to listen a bit more carefully to avoid getting dripped on again. Alice and the Hatter were arguing now, about everything from riddles without answers to how time felt about being wasted. Then Tarrant started to sing his song about the bat, and Mallymkun may or may not have joined in. She was too much asleep to tell the difference.

And then, all of a sudden, they were poking her.

"Wake up, dormouse!"

"I wasn't asleep," Mallymkun protested, opening her eyes. "I heard every word you fellows were saying."

"Tell us a story!" said Thackery.

"Yes, please do!" pleaded Alice.

"And be quick about it, or you'll be asleep again before it's done," Tarrant teased.

Mallymkun sat up. Why do they want me to tell them a story? ...Why not?

"Once upon a time there were three little sisters," she said, using the first things that popped into her head. "And their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well—"

"What did they live on?" Alice interrupted.

Mallymkun hadn't thought of that. Then again, she had been put on the spot.

"They lived on…treacle," she said after thinking for a few moments.

"They couldn't have done that, you know," Alice remarked. "They'd have been ill."

"So they were," said the dormouse. "Very ill."

Or they would have been, if this was a true story, she thought. Or maybe that wouldn't have been. Oh well, it doesn't really matter.

"But why did they live at the bottom of a well?"

I don't know. Will that girl ever stop asking questions and interrupting?

"Take sum'more tea," said the hare.

"I've had nothing yet," Alice replied. "So I can't take more."

"You mean, you can't take less," the Hatter corrected. "It's very easy to take more than nothing."

Very true.

"Nobody asked your opinion," said Alice, quite rudely in Mallymkun's opinion.

"Who's making personal remarks now?"

"Why did they live at the bottom of a well?" Alice said again, ignoring the Hatter.

"It was a treacle well," the dormouse replied, for lack of a better answer.

"There's no such thing!"

"If you can't be civil, you'd better finish the story for yourself," Mallymkun said sulkily.

"No, please go on!" All of a sudden, Alice seemed humble. "I won't interrupt you again. I dare say there may be one."

"One, indeed!" said the dormouse indignantly. But there was a part of her that liked this girl's attitude. She wanted to know things, and she didn't care about others' opinions. She was rude, but definitely muchy.

"And so these three little sisters—they were learning to draw, you know—"

"What did they draw?" Alice had apparently forgotten her promise.

"Treacle." Mallymkun didn't even think about it this time.

"But I don't understand," Alice said. "Where did they draw the treacle from?"

"You can draw water out of a water well," said Tarrant. "So I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle well—eh, stupid?"

"But they were in the well, Alice said.

"Of course they were," said the dormouse. "Well in."

She yawned widely, rubbed her eyes, and continued.

"They were learning to draw, and they drew all manner of things—everything that begins with an 'M'." She grinned up at Tarrant.

"Why with an M?" said Alice.

"Why not?" said Thackery.

"That begins with an 'M'," Mallymkun said again. "Such as mouse traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness—" (Tarrant nodded approval at this list.) "—you know you say things are 'much of a muchness'—did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?"

"Really, now you ask me," said Alice. "I don't think—"

"Then you shouldn't talk," the Hatter pointed out.

Very true.

Alice then got up and left in a huff, soon disappearing into the trees.

"Now, that was most certainly an interesting encounter," Tarrant said.

Thackery shrugged. "Cup," he muttered.

Mallymkun sighed. "Can I go back to sleep now?"

"Well, I wouldn't know that," said the Hatter. "Only you know how tired you are, and thus whether or not you can go to sleep."

The dormouse yawned and closed her eyes again, lying back down on the table. Tarrant picked her up again and placed her gently in an empty teapot, shutting the lid behind her.


When Mallymkun woke up again and reemerged from the teapot, late in the afternoon, Chessur was just materializing in the chair at the far end of the table. He was grinning wider than ever and laughing his head off.

"Oh, you should have seen it!" he said.

"And what is it that we should have seen?" Tarrant asked, using the tone of voice that he always used when addressing the cat: civil and polite, but only just so. He had never forgiven Chessur on the topic of Horunvendush Day.

"That Alice," said Chessur. "Somehow, she ended up in the Red Queen's courtyard. And she didn't let her majesty boss her around, no sir! The Queen was absolutely livid. And then Alice stands up in the middle of a crowd of Red Knights, shouts that they're nothing but a pack of playing cards, and jumps back into Overland before Iracebeth of Crims could order her executed. You should have seen the look on the Queen's face when she realized that Alice was gone!"

"Did she really?" Mallymkun said in astonishment.

"Now, that takes muchness, standing up to the Red Queen like that," said Tarrant.

Chessur nodded in agreement. "And Absolem says she's going to be the White Queen's Champion when she returns, and slay the Jabberwocky on the Frabjous Day."

"Thus bringing down the Red Queen for good!" said the Hatter triumphantly.

Mallymkun grinned. It was hard to be troubled now, with victory and vengeance so close.


Then, of course, the trouble started.

The Red Queen took offense at Alice's stunt, and took it to heart. And she vented her anger on the Underlanders.

The reports of casualties started arriving at sunset.

Iplam was torched, and Marmoreal was flattened. The Jubjub Bird and Bandersnatch were set loose in villages. Cardsmen flooded Queast and Snud, destroying buildings and taking hundreds of civilians prisoner. Stayne himself lead an army into the Outlands, hunting down the members of the Resistance.

The executions stretched through the night, every head tossed into the moat. A few people managed to avoid being beheaded by sucking up to the Red Queen, but very few succeeded.

As they heard about the mounting tragedies, Mallymkun watched the Hatter become more and more reclusive as the situation became more and more helpless. Eventually, he just sat at the tea table, gazing blankly into the distance.

But the worst news of all came near midnight. Chessur made an appearance to tell Mallymkun in a hushed voice that Bayard and Bielle had been taken prisoner.

"I don't think they're going to kill them, not yet at least," said the cat. "Stayne wants Bayard to tell him where the rest of the Resistance is, and so he's holding his wife. McTwisp, Uilleam, and the Tweedles are in hiding. On a happier note, Bielle had her pups. Four little bundles of joy, locked away with their mother in a tower."

"You were close enough to know all this, and you didn't try to save them?" Mallymkun exclaimed.

"It was me against dozens of Red Knights!" Chessur responded indignantly. "What was I supposed to do, grab a pup and flee? Even if we escaped, it wouldn't last a week without its mother."

Mallymkun took a few quick steps, fully intending to head north until she reached Salazen Grum and rescue the bloodhounds. But then she stopped, and looked back at the tea table, where Tarrant and Thackery were still sitting—the hare muttering to himself, and the Hatter staring sadly off into space.

Suddenly, she found that she couldn't leave them, not now.

Going to Crims now would be suicide, she told herself. I'm needed here. And besides, Bayard, Bielle, and the pups are still alive. There will be plenty of time. And then there's Frabjous Day, and Alice…

Alice, she added bitterly. Just look at what she's done for us so far. The whole world's going to ruin because of her, and she's safe in Overland.

I don't care if it's foretold; I don't want her to ever come back. Not after what she's caused!


A.N.: I've decided that animals age at the same rate as humans do in Underland, and that everyone ages half as fast as in Overland. Just in case you were wondering why Bielle's only just had her pups, but they're still young when Alice returns thirteen years later.

The Tea Party scene was written using Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland as a reference. Disclaimer, I am not Lewis Carroll, just like I am not Tim Burton, yadda yadda yadda.