The Knave perks at the crackling noises. He hears two creatures, walking in a rather perfunctory manner, slovenly crushing every bit of forest debris that has the great misfortune of being even remotely in their trajectory. He lifts his sword from its resting-place near a moss-covered tree, and securely fastens it to his waist. He hears the blundering impending on his position, and bounds for cover behind some ferns. He hears the voices begin to crescendo, and he can tell that both parties are deep in conversation. It seems to be some nonsense about the legalization of drugs.
When the two come but a breath away from the concealed Knave, he leaps from the bushes. Before she can even think about what she is doing, Alice rips the cleaver from her thigh and brings it to the Knave's windpipe in one swooping motion.
"You move, fucker, and I'll kill you," she says with a hoarse whisper in his ear. Cheshire stalks around the restrained soldier, measuring him with conviction.
"I'm not here to hurt you," the Knave says through clenched teeth. "I was sent by the queen to kill you, but I'm not going to do it."
"Oh, yes, I'm quite sure, my little morsel," mocks Cheshire, as he claws the man's face with rabidity. "The queen, as we all know, can see everything in this land. Your pitiful appeals will do no good. She is expecting you to pull some such stunt, and so are we."
"No, you don't understand," pleads the Knave. "She can't see anything. Her looking glass has been destroyed, at her own hands, no less."
"And how do we know you're telling the truth?" asks Alice, her eyes narrowing to slits, her lip curling with disgust.
"I know I can't kill you, Alice. I'm not so talented to attempt suicide for a bitch that I hate with everything inside of me. I want you to kill her. I want to help you."
Alice chuckles, her tone dense with skepticism. "Prove it."
"Ok," the Knave says simply. Alice looks questioningly at Cheshire, and Cheshire simply shrugs his shoulders in bewilderment. "Look in the inside pocket of my jacket. There should be a small leather purse. I stole it from the palace. If the Duchess ever found out I have it, she would have my head for it…or more," the Knave added, remembering the Duchesses brutal promises of mutilation.
Alice fumbles inside of the Knave's vest; the cleaver still cocked to the man's jugular. When her hand clenches said purse, she tosses the Knave to the earth with a firm shove. His fall is hearty, and he looks up at Alice, as if expecting something more.
Alice is in her own world now. Everyone and everything around her has smudged into some blurry pastel, with nothing relevant except her and the contents of the purse. The purse is nearly unsubstantial in weight. She overturns the purse, shaking its contents into her open palm.
A ring tumbles out. Her heart beats faster as she brings the thick band of gold up to the light. She doesn't want to look inside, fearing what she may find. To her horror, though, she finds herself turning the ring upside down. Against her own will, she finds her eyes scanning the inside of the band. Her heart skips a few beats.
The initials: A.L.
The world seems to whisper, and she feels like she's sinking in the dead air. The universe still seems frozen, and its silence is deafening. She doesn't even hear her own labored breathing. She feels as though she will faint, but refuses to allow it to happen. She plants her feet firmly on the ground, attempting to anchor herself and whisk away any thoughts of swooning.
"Where did you get this?" Alice asks, her treacherous voice betraying her with intermittent cracks.
"It…it means a lot to the Duchess. I've often caught her leering over it, her face contorted in fascination. I just…I just thought that, maybe it would mean something to you, of all people. So I stole it…"
What does it mean, my darling," Cheshire asks. He sits beside her, rubbing an arched back along her hand.
"…It means Satan. It means everything that has ever wronged me in my life. All things that have maimed me, hurt me, touched me, hated me is here in this little hoop of gold…It means Alan Liddle, Cat…Alan Liddle. My father."
"I don't understand, my sweet," Cheshire says slowly.
"Neither do I, Cat," she responds, preoccupied with thought. Thoughts trounce through her head in jumbles and spurts.
Nothing fits, she thinks. Nothing makes any sense. Did the Duchess kill my father, too?
The Knave soldier insists on leading Cheshire and Alice to the palace, and the trio begins to head out. As they near the palace the skies blacken and the surroundings morph into a bleak and desolate swamp of mud. Even though Alice should be thinking of her oncoming battle with the Duchess, all she can think about is her father.
//|\\
She remembers him clearly now. She remembers his belching and his never-ending stink. The way he used to beat her mother with a belt when things weren't done to his satisfaction. Her face, swollen and livid with bruises would hover over her cradle, looking at Alice lovingly. She would sing her songs and stroke her face with a shaky hand. And her father would be there behind her mother, standing in the doorway with loathing on his face.
"You're all that has ever mattered to me, my sweet, precious, little angel," she would whisper to her baby's ear. Tears would roll down her bulging face, as she wished so badly that she could give her child everything she never had.
Soon the bruises turned to cuts; the cuts turned to gashes; the gashes to huge, sweeping slices. Her father used a kitchen knife on his wife, deciding after ample time that the belt didn't do enough damage. Her mother was scared for her life and the life of her child, often locking her daughter in her nursery so her husband wouldn't be able to hurt the delicate and breakable little baby.
Her mind began to give out before her body, though. She sat in corner, filling whole notebooks with little drawings of hearts. She cut hearts out of construction paper. She carved hearts in the walls and furniture. She carved hearts in her flesh. She was leaving love for her child for the day her husband killed her, she would say.
And then one day, she disappeared.
Dead, her father said. No, her father said, there would be no funeral. The bitch doesn't deserve it.
And that was the end of it.
//|\\
"There it is…" Alice hears a voice, very far away. "The palace of the Duchess," says the Knave.
"So it is," mumbles Alice, her breath catching in her throat as she catches her first glimpse of the palace. It looms above everything, sitting atop the world in its huge, inky splendor. Its towers are forked and pronged, everything decorated ornately in smooth, cold marble and alabaster. Alice sees the tower she saw in the looking glass, the one with her mother's dead body: The Queen of Hearts.
I'll give her a proper funeral, she thinks. She deserves as much for all the things that she did for me. She walked the brink of madness to save me from some of the worst horrors imaginable. And when she realized she failed to save me from anything, she fell deeper into her madness and left me alone with that man. That man that was my father.
"The Duchess awaits us," Alice says with a look of abomination on her face. Her emerald eyes flicker with the seething heat that hides behind them. Her hand twitches to her thigh. She feels the hilt of her cleaver, her fingers briefly caressing the blade, judging its sharpness and accuracy. "Come on, Cat. I think there's a reckoning to be dealt," she says. She feels the derangement, the lunacy, the absolute madness flowing through her veins. She tastes the blood of the rabbit on her tongue. The blood of her mother. The blood of her own.
It will all be avenged, she thinks. Now.