A/N1: Hello Dear Readers! It's been a long time since this story has gotten any love, but I had some ideas hit me out of the blue (like so often happens, doesn't it?) and I've been working for several days to update what I already posted.

1. This story is now M-rated. I was trying to ride the line between a lil' naughty and no-no and realized that I couldn't do that. This story, while silly, is a mature one, and I'm not gonna keep pretending it's not. Nothing major has changed, except a few M-rated lines and bits of dialog, but I promise sexy times are coming (heehee). There will be F/F scenes, F/M, and M/M (because there are so many main characters!). I will cross-post the explicit scenes to AO3 and Wattpad so I don't break any FF dot net rules and put a call-out on those chapters when they do happen, so y'all can decide which version works for you.

2. A teeny-tiny scene was added in Stage Three, part three (last chapter). I decided to finish this storyline involving Keon-hee, Asher, Miss Rabbit, and Rosemary before returning to what Jace has been up to.

3. THIS IS NOT A NEW CHAPTER. If you've already left a review here, you do not have to do so again. If you want to send me your thoughts via PM or a guest review, though, I won't turn you down!

4. And most important: TRIGGER WARNING! There is attempted rape in this chapter. It is not graphic but it is not innocent. Rosemary is, in case it isn't clear, not just young, she is ace.

"Is something troubling you, my lady?"

Rosemary whipped around, of half a mind to flee the way she had come – but the riding crop was waiting for her back in the study, and this was just an older gentleman in a charcoal-gray suit, crimson necktie, and black silk top hat that shaded the upper half of his face. Handsome, but older, and smiling at her. Nothing scary about that.

Rosemary narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth, ready to scold him for taking the liberty of wandering around her house without her permission, but what came out was a strangled cry of mingled grief and joy.

"Elspeth!"

Without thinking, without considering the propriety of the situation, the impossibility presented, Rosemary darted up to the older gentleman and snatched the curly-haired doll right out of his white-gloved hands. Then she fell to her knees, hugging the doll tightly to her bosom, her eyes squeezed shut.

"Elspeth!" she sobbed, over and over, rubbing her cheek into the doll's wig, squeezing the plush body beneath the plain schoolgirl dress. "Elspeth, it's you!"

Then she realized what she was saying. Rosemary got to her feet and held the doll at arm's length, her greedy eyes tracing every well-known and beloved feature. The blue eyes, fringed in black. The platinum hair, curled and waist-length. The delicate hands, the slender legs, the patent leather shoes.

For the first time since Mistress Taylor had come into the mansion, tears welled up and spilled over Rosemary's cheeks, her lips and chin, and she felt that she could die from happiness. Never mind that Mistress Taylor had thrown Elspeth in the fire. It was undone. It had never happened. It had been a dream – a nightmare – a wicked trick. Elspeth was here, and whole, and Rosemary's heart couldn't be any fuller.

"It is you. Elspeth." Rosemary hugged her best friend close.

"So, you like the doll I brought you?" the gentleman asked. "I am relieved."

Recalling herself, Rosemary turned wide, wet eyes on him, unsure of what to say. She couldn't see his eyes. Only his smile, full of block-like teeth.

He didn't seem to expect her to say anything at all. The gentleman knelt, patted Elspeth's head, and then touched the brim of his hat to Rosemary. His crescent-shaped, silver and moonstone cufflinks glinted when he straightened to his full, considerable height.

"I must take my leave now," he said. He smiled, but it was as cold as a broken clockwork engine. "A pleasure, good lady."

Then, in a swirl of his ashy greatcoat, he was gone.

Strange as this gentleman caller had been, he stayed not one second in Rosemary's recollection past the door closing behind him. What did he matter? Elspeth filled her every thought. Almost delirious with happiness, Rosemary hurried to her room with Elspeth clasped in her arms. She flew down hallways and corridors, climbing high within the mansion to the little White Attic. A last small stair within a closet in the back corner of the many-years-unused nursery brought her, in complete and wondrous isolation, to her tiny bedchamber above. Mistress Taylor had ordered her moved here when her private studies began, explaining to Rosemary's father that she would better concentrate where she could not be disturbed by the usual noise of the house.

Originally, Rosemary had resented this banishment from the spacious, comfortable Blue Room two floors below, but today, she considered it a blessing.

Rosemary placed Elspeth on her small white bed. Elspeth's head tipped to the side, giving her the look of a curious little girl. Humming to herself, Rosemary dug around in a small trunk until she found a black ribbon – one she had worn for her mother's funeral three years before. Still humming, she tied the ribbon in Elspeth's hair, pulling the top and sides back just the way Mistress Taylor insisted Rosemary wear hers. The black ribbon set off Elspeth's platinum curls perfectly, and matched her plain schoolgirl dress.

Rosemary sank to her knees on the worsted rug. She propped her elbows on the bed, beaming at her best friend. Elspeth, her blue eyes thick-lashed and shiny, smiled back with a tiny mouth as pink as quartz. Elspeth was always smiling. It was one of the reasons Rosemary loved her so much.

"Do you like it?" Rosemary asked. Elspeth smiled and smiled. Rosemary's heart swelled like a hot air balloon. "It's pretty, huh, Elspeth?"

Elspeth smiled.

Rosemary tucked the stubborn curl that perpetually stuck out of Elspeth's fringe back where it was supposed to lie. She ran her fingertip over the bow in Elspeth's string necktie.

Then she picked her up and held her high, dancing around her tiny room with her. "Thank goodness you're back. We shall never be apart again!" she promised.

A book hit the floor, followed by a stack of them. It sounded like a flock of birds striking the window.

Rosemary whipped guiltily around.

Mistress Taylor stood in the doorway, her arms empty, her face as white as porcelain beneath the rouge and lipstick. Her spectacles sat crookedly on her nose. For just a moment, she looked as fragile as Elspeth.

Though her lips trembled violently, she managed to gasp, "That . . . that doll . . . how?!"

A tongue of biting fire licked the chambers of Rosemary's heart. She snatched Elspeth to the spot of pain with both arms, ducked her head, and barged past her tutor. She leaped toward the stairs.

The older woman's hand shot out. Her long fingers closed around Rosemary's arm.

Rosemary flew backward, her mouth open. She couldn't find her voice, not even when Mistress Taylor sank her long nails in Elspeth's curls and pulled as hard as she could.

Riiiiiip!

Elspeth's head separated from her soft body in a shower of porcelain shards and balls of stuffing. The head struck the floorboards, tangling the orderly curls. A new crack disfigured Elspeth's sweet smile. One of her blue eyes stuck in a half-shut position. The other glittered toward a corner of the room, where gable met wall.

"You . . . you brat!" Mistress Taylor raged. Spit flew from her shiny lips to strike Rosemary's cheek. She flushed an alarming scarlet, so that even the whites of her eyes looked bloodshot. "You show that toy more love than you've ever shown me! Perhaps I should make you love my teaching, then!"

Rosemary couldn't close her eyes or her mouth. Her scream – Elspeth! – bounced around inside her skull with no way out. Mistress Taylor slammed her bedchamber door shut, and she turned the brass key in the lock.

They were alone in the White Attic, in a wing of the mansion where no servant was permitted to go.

Over the next few minutes, Rosemary thought she must have shrunken – like Alice – to the size of a doll. Mistress Taylor, in a whirlwind of strength and speed, tore Rosemary out of her clothes the way she had torn Elspeth's head from her body. Rosemary's attempts to fend her off seemed feeble and uncoordinated by comparison, which frightened her. Then Mistress Taylor forced Rosemary into something entirely new, a gauzy sort of underwear, sheer and lace-trimmed, and a see-through nightgown that barely covered her bottom or her breasts.

At last, Mistress Taylor flung her onto her back on her bed so hard the springs creaked. When Rosemary could catch her breath, she lifted her eyes to her tutor, who looked as though she belonged in the asylum down by the river. Rosemary had seen the inmates once, bound together by a chain around their ankles, their rough gowns white and stained, their faces blank and tortured, trying to keep their wits together long enough to pick trash out of the gutter in the street below the mansion. Mistress Taylor's hair had escaped its unflattering bun and hung in shining golden strands over her shoulders. Though she was smiling, she was drooling.

Like one of those dogs she deplored so much.

"I believed that I could win your trust," she said, standing over Rosemary's prone form, her pupils blown wide with an emotion Rosemary couldn't name, "but now I say to hell with that! Now I'll teach you my way."

Rosemary, though very aware of her indecency and the chilliness of her chamber, wasn't aware of making a single sound, neither a peep nor a whimper, but Mistress Taylor began giggling uncontrollably.

"That's right, cry," she cackled. "Cry as loud as you want! There's no one here to hear you. Your dear father entrusted you entirely into my care while he travels the world, amassing more fortune than you could spend in a lifetime!"

She took a step forward. Rosemary tried to crawl backward, but she accidentally leaned her elbow on her hair and brought herself up short like a ground-hitched horse.

"No one knows you like I do," Mistress Taylor crooned. She ran a fingernail up the inside of Rosemary's thigh, making Rosemary's tummy tighten – though, not as much as the scissors in Mistress Taylor's other hand, snip-snip-snipping at the air. "No one loves you like I love you, child. I will teach you love. I can teach you so much. Because I know what will please us."

The fingernail trailed higher, lightly between her legs, flick flick flick. Rosemary trembled at how much she felt that, inside and out. The tip of the scissors lifted the hem of the filmy nightdress. Mistress Taylor squeezed, and the lace parted cleanly. Rosemary couldn't breathe.

"You never wanted a boyfriend anyway, did you?" asked Mistress Taylor in a sympathetic voice, shocking Rosemary with their solid truth.

If things had been different, so very different, she might have thought she was living in a dream, just her and Elspeth and Mistress Taylor too – except Mistress Taylor would be kind, and Rosemary would call her Abegail – drinking tea and reading books, coloring and dancing, dressing in beautiful clothes, together, needing no one else, happy, until they grew old and passed away. But not like this. She didn't understand this, and she stared up at the monster wearing Mistress Taylor's pretty, still-youthful face with wide eyes and parted lips.

Mistress Taylor lost some of her frenzy. She nodded as though Rosemary had spoken.

"No more did I," she whispered. "And then I met you. Beautiful Rosemary."

The scissors gleamed. The nightgown admitted a hand. Slender, sharp-nailed fingers smoothed up Rosemary's side, squeezing and massaging, until they cupped her breast. The thumb swept over her nipple, teasing it to a peak, shocking Rosemary, who hadn't known it could do that. Tears welled up in her eyes and she squirmed, which seemed to excite the woman looming over her. She hated that the merciless thumb was sending electric shocks down her tummy, warmth throbbing in that super-secret, never-thought-of spot. She hated it, it made her feel gross and dirty, she wanted it to stop—

"I knew it."

Mistress Taylor stared at Rosemary. Rosemary stared at Mistress Taylor, lightheaded, chest rising and falling under the hard, greedy, demanding hand.

Who had spoken? The voice was familiar to Rosemary, but not.

Was it Mother—?

No, don't be stupid. Mother was dead.

Then who—?

"You're just like the others," Elspeth's head said from the floor. Her unjammed eye glittered like it was alive, and rolled toward Mistress Taylor. "You just want Rosemary's body."

Rosemary sat up so fast the lacy strap of her nightdress fell off her shoulder, sending a wave of hot, sick shame rolling through her. She'd never liked removing her corset, not since the development of her breasts had demanded the wearing of one. She preferred to be laced up so tightly that they all but vanished. Because not wearing one felt like giving permission for anyone to look at them, to touch them.

Especially Mistress Taylor, who did not appreciate Rosemary's sudden movement taking one away from her.

"Enough tricks, you little witch!" her tutor shrieked.

Too late, Rosemary realized that the hand had drawn back for a slap. She cringed, dreading the pain sure to follow, but trained too well to use her arms to defend herself.

Behind Mistress Taylor, behind the swiftly descending hand, Elspeth's mutilated body rose off the floor. From her slender limbs, gleaming silver chains exploded. Rattling and clinking, the chains hurled themselves into loops that ensnared her tutor's arms, arresting the slapping hand, cutting into Mistress Taylor's wrists so that the scissors dropped from nerveless fingers, encircling her throat. She tried to scream, but she could only manage a phlegmy grunt. She could not free herself from the chains no matter how frantically she struggled.

Rosemary pushed her disheveled hair out of her eyes, watching in awe as the chains tightened around Mistress Taylor's long and graceful neck. The glistening trail of drool thickened like a translucent slug down her chin. Her reddened eyes bulged. Rosemary was not bothered by these details.

She saw Elspeth, and nothing else.

The head leisurely levitated, righted itself, and then floated closer, bobbing as though still attached to a body with legs. Elspeth's face, once fixed in a sweet-tempered smile, scowled, as animated as flesh.

"You are a festering human sore, motivated only by evil, oozing only unnatural desires!" Elspeth's head told the quaking, suffocating tutor in the voice that was like Rosemary's dead mother's. The expression was one of exasperation. "Because of you, the awakening has come too soon! He is going to be very upset with me."

The doll rolled her eyes, blinking with a faint clicking sound until her jammed eye returned to normal. "If this is how you show your love, through pain and fear and unconsent, then it is clear that you care only for your own dark desires. So now I will be the teacher and—" the head floated over to the body and reattached with a twist of the platinum curls, and then the smiling mouth giggled— "you the learner!"

The chains retracted, zipping and rattling back into Elspeth's body. The doll smacked the stolen riding crop into her porcelain palm while tears poured down Mistress Taylor's face.

When Elspeth raised the crop, Rosemary hid her head under her pillows. She covered her ears with her hands, squeezed her eyes shut, and held her breath, so that she may not know what sort of lesson Elspeth was teaching her tutor. Frantically, she thought of something else, something entirely different, something safe, like Alice's adventures in Wonderland.

Some time later, when Rosemary had gotten to the point in the story when Alice tricked the Mad Hatter with a riddle about a writing desk, she heard her name, softly called.

"Rose? Rose!"

Timidly, she emerged from under her pillow, her hair in her face and one breast bared. Elspeth was sitting on the bed with her legs folded beneath her, and she was whole again. No crack. No chains. Just her sweet, rosebud smile and Rosemary's black ribbon in her hair.

"Elspeth," Rosemary said slowly. She wasn't afraid, but she was curious. Just like Alice. "Why are you talking?"

"We have spoken many times."

"We have," Rosemary agreed soberly. "You have never answered me before."

The doll's expression saddened. "This life is one of torment. It's all right that you don't remember."

Rosemary said nothing, and chose not to see the heap sprawled on her worsted rug. What Elspeth said was true, but it was the only life she had. It was no use to dream otherwise.

Elspeth crawled closer and put her cold porcelain hand on Rosemary's. "I know a place where we can go, where you can have all the things you crave," she said. "If you want, I can take you there. Do you wish to go, Rose?"

Rosemary had no reason to suspect Elspeth of a falsehood. Elspeth was the only one who had never lied to her. She nodded.

Elspeth clapped her hands. Rosemary's bedchamber door swung open. Instead of the cramped landing, it led to a tiny room walled in sea-blue velvet and caged in gilt. Curiosity burning, her body feeling properly distant and somnolent again, Rosemary stepped inside, her bare feet sticking to the expensive linoleum floor. Elspeth came with her, her leather shoes tapping.

Though Rosemary expected something to happen once she was inside, nothing did.

"Push the button," Elspeth said.

"Button?" Rosemary scouted around until she discovered a brass plate next to the closed door, a row of buttons just waiting to be pushed. Next to that, a brass lever seemed to cry out for her to pull it. She lifted her finger, and then hesitated. "Which one?"

"What does your heart tell you?"

Her heart? What was that supposed to mean? Rosemary squinted at the clear lucite buttons. Instead of floor numbers, each one held a letter inside. Rosemary gave each one due consideration, feeling safe and protected in the blue velvet box. She could take her time.

There. That one. The one that looked like an inverted E. Rosemary pushed the button and it lit up in a gay pink color that delighted her. Of its own accord, the gilt grille closed and a bell somewhere overhead dinged brightly. Then she grasped the lever, released the brake, and sent the elevator sinking into what she assumed was the mansion's upper staircase. It sank, and sank, and lights ran up the walls at regular intervals. Elspeth kept smiling.

Rosemary counted the lights. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

The elevator slowed, its clockwork mechanism clicking and humming, and then it stopped. The cage doors opened. Elspeth looked up at Rosemary and gestured for her to take the first step.

Self-consciousness paralyzed Rosemary; Mistress Taylor's see-through nightgown was hardly appropriate attire for setting out on a journey, but when she moved to cover herself, she discovered that she was dressed in her favorite amethyst-lavender day gown, the one with the puffed sleeves and cream-colored, pleated underskirt. She stepped out of the elevator without fear. Her patent leather strap shoes carried her gracefully over the uneven ground in a way ankle boots, with their high heels, never could have.

She gasped in utter delight. "Wonderland!"

She had stepped from a world of gray ash into one of rainbows. The sky was blue, so big that it hurt her eyes. It touched upon smoky purple mountain peaks far in the distance. Fleecy, pure-white clouds danced upon the wind. The air was clear, so fresh that the sunlight sparkled on green growing things and thousands of flowers. Instead of the chugging of machinery and clockwork, Rosemary could hear the songs of small birds. Behind her, the elevator closed its grille and sank into the ground. She could not find a trace of it afterward.

Nearby, a small, attractively-worked metal table perched in the middle of a grassy field. A silver tea service gleamed upon a cloth, cups and saucers and silverware and napkins and finger bowls set for two. The scent of brewed tea wafted on the bracing air.

Elspeth clambered up one of the delicate metal chairs and sat on a silver damask cushion, her legs sticking out straight in front of her. "Welcome to Ephemeros, Rose," she said.

"Ephemeros? Not Wonderland?" Rosemary asked, a little disappointed.

Elspeth winked at her, downright mischievous, the way Rosemary had often imagined her. "It has many names. Shall we have tea with our friends?"

Out of the shrubbery, creatures emerged. Something fluffy and catlike, its fur coat shining platinum like Elspeth's hair, twined around Rosemary's ankles, purring. A translucent, jelly-like blob the size and shape of a tennis ball, iron filings swimming in its depths, bounced between the sugar bowl and creamer, too excited to sit still. A large metal construct, a bit like a chess pawn but more friendly and otter-faced, puffed its way over the grass. Steam billowed from two exhaust ports on its head, and it draped a tea towel over its forearm. Its paint gleamed, prim and white except for its black painted necktie and gold painted shirtfront buttons. It pulled the other chair out for her expectantly.

Rosemary smiled. Without a second thought for poor Abegail Taylor, oblivious Harrison, or her absent father, she allowed the construct to push her chair in for her and waited for it to serve her and Elspeth some of the fragrant tea.

A/N2:

Reviewer Thanks! St4r Hunter! My rockstar!

Oh, I guess I do just want to ask one thing: Is it 100% clear that Elspeth's condemning the fact that an adult is trying to rape a minor, and not that she is a lesbian?

And on that rather grim thought - I do hope you enjoyed the chapter anyway.

~ Anne