It was night. Such a dark night. Cold rain, thunder... lightning. Ordinarily such things did not bother him; and if they did, he could easily laugh his fear away because he always knew the night would end soon. But tonight this awful feeling overcame any semblance of normalcy that there might have been, even there. Something was wrong. Seriously wrong. Nighttime had stars, a moon... a sense of comfort. Tonight they were all gone and a feeling of foreboding hung over the land, enveloping the inhabitants in darkness.
The Cheshire Cat gazed at what he could see of Wonderland that night, almost as though he were trying to discern the source of this feeling of entrapment. Of wrongness.
Several minutes went by, but he did not move. As far as he could see, there was nothing in any direction. Except...
One ear cocked, hearing noises. Doom, Doom, Doom. Thousands of marching feet. Doom, Doom, Doom. Drums of war drumming. Doom, Doom, Doom. It was headed toward the New Village. DoomdoomdoomdoomDOOMDOOMDOOM. The noise grew more rapid; louder, almost deafening. He bounded through a copse of trees, beyond a cluster of giant mushrooms, past the pool of tears, until he found a small glen, where he could see the source. There he watched the vast army in silence. Four lines of soldiers, steadily marching, never stopping never tiring. In the middle of the army trotted two huge black horses. Upon them sat the King and Queen.
He gasped in terror, and immediately rushed away. Cutting through a short network of caves, he ran to the village, arriving only a few minutes before the army. He hurtled down the main street, yelling at the top of his lungs, "Attack!! Everyone! Get up!! Get your arses out of bed, we are under ATTACK!!!"
He turned a corner, skidded and ducked, narrowly missing a beheading by one of the Queen's guards wielding a wicked-looking, heart-shaped spear. The soldiers began closing in around him, but he leapt high, high over their heads, dodging soldiers, and frantically wondering how they had arrived so soon.
The soldiers swarmed thick around him and the villagers, looking almost like hungry insects, wearing their lust for bloodshed and carnage plainly on their faces. They swung at him, and tried to catch him, but with no luck. He knew what awaited him at their hands, and he would not let them catch him!
He had almost made it to freedom when the Queen reached out and grabbed him by the tail. He hissed and shouted at her and scratched her face. This time it was her turn to scream and she hurled him into the heart of an ugly battle. It was only after many dodges, bruises, and scrapes that he made it to safety.
He perched up on a wall, out of sight of the guards and the Queen. He watched them set fire to people's homes, homes that burned down... so quickly. The Red Queen was giving orders, shouting and waving her staff. The Red King was charging hard, knocking over villagers and burning more homes. Cat watched the fires blazing, blazing out of control, no matter what the villagers did. The red and yellow flames rose higher and higher, their smoke creating heavy dark clouds that hung low over their charred ruins. The army was mercilessly killing the innocents and the fighters alike.
They had been so unprepared, so unready. The attacks weren't supposed to have come yet. He laughed caustically to himself. But then, the Queen had never been terribly fond of giving warning before a massacre, had she? But why now? How did the Queen find out of their plans? Was there anything that any of them could have done to prevent this? And, even if they could have done something to stop it, wouldn't it have just come again later on, undoubtedly with even more force than this?
He stared at the village, or at least what was left of it. The entire right half was destroyed, and the card guards were headed underground, swarming around the entrance to the mines like insects. Bodies were strewn around, like dolls in a child's room before cleaning time.
The villagers had put up a brave fight, but it was not enough to withstand the brutal onslaught of the Red Queen and her King. That was what had been wrong, he realised with a sinking feeling in his heart. Everything had felt wrong because history was repeating itself, because IT was happening. No... it had happened. Within hours, Wonderland had fallen again.
It had been storming incessantly that year, and in order to raise spirits, their parents decided to throw a dinner party. They were famous for their dinner parties, and nobody who was anybody in London society wanted to miss them. On this occasion, they invited only their closest friends, for a smaller, more intimate setting and all of those friends came. Faith Maras and her family were respected throughout London society, and they lived in one of the largest manors in all of London. They were incredibly tight-knit and it was evident to all of their guests that the whole family loved one another very much.
Somewhat less respectable was the family history. It had all been good until Alice Liddell turned seven years old. She had then gone quite mad, going on and on about some place called 'Wonderland' and all types of strange... unnatural inhabitants. She appeared to have cooled off slightly five months later, but at the end of six months, she suddenly started talking about a journey she had taken through a looking-glass. When she was ten, her family was killed in a fire and she was in a mental asylum for seven years. Then her doctor, a wonderfully smart man named Doctor Elliott, had put her through extensive hypnosis of some sort and pronounced her cured. She had re-emerged, and married, but for some reason, she was no longer truly Alice. It was said in whispers around the neighbourhood by those who knew her that she died an empty, unfulfilled shell of a human being.
Since then, every youngest girl in the family, at seven years of age, started rambling about Wonderland, but always, at seventeen, they stopped somehow, each saying in a strange voice that it was just "gone." None of them were quite the same after they lost Wonderland. The whole family had watched Faith worriedly, as she was the only girl in the family, but she had turned out a well-rounded, sane, and healthy young girl, if not a little introverted.
Jeremy thought otherwise. When she told him stories, she described a land so fantastic, where dodos and lobsters ran in a ring around a rock and the Cheshire Cat grinned and spoke in form of riddles, he was positive that she had been there, only she was too smart to show it.
The two Maras twins were inseparable, and they always had been. It was rather funny that they never looked nor acted anything alike. Jeremy was tanned with sandy blond hair to his shoulders and light blue eyes. They had a mischievous look about them... but never failed to look innocent enough to get him out of trouble. Everyone in the family said that he would be very tall when he grew up, as his long feet were rather out of proportion with the rest of his body. He had an outgoing and laid-back personality and laughed about everything. Especially his pranks.
Faith, on the other hand, was light-skinned and small, with long black-brown hair that she wore down to her waist, and large dark blue eyes that were almost black. She was serious and introverted, though she often had more than a small part in Jeremy's pranks.
Dinner was over, and the adults were taking a tour of the newly remodelled manor and talking either about politics or how a certain room had been changed - nothing that interested the two whatsoever. So they remained in the family room, their favourite, and the one room in the house that was completely unchanged.
It was a huge room, painted in beiges, and the trim was done in some type of naturally red wood. The carpeting was also deeply red, only darker than the trimmings. Pigeon's Blood Ruby, her parents had called it. There were two sets of double doors, one on the wall opposite the fireplace (in which a cheerful fire was presently roaring), which led to the hall, and one on the wall to the left, which led to the dining room. They were large, ornate, heavy, and made of ebony.
"What d'you want to do?" Jeremy asked.
"I dunno. Tell stories?" She suggested.
"A dangerous venture, to be sure," he laughed. Both were great storytellers. They told a few stories apiece, and eventually she suggested a game of jacks. Jeremy frowned, but his eyes were smiling. "You always beat me," he protested lamely, even as he walked over to the cupboard where the jacks were located.
"I get more practice, and you're still learning," she grinned. He returned, jacks in one hand, ball in the other and they started. Neither noticed a raccoon creeping in, having smelled the leftover food and dessert. After the two had finished threes, Faith got up and told Jeremy that she was getting food.
"Hungry again?" he teased. "We just finished dinner an hour ago."
"You know me," she laughed. She entered the kitchen.
Upon doing so, she startled the raccoon, which fell from its narrow cupboard to the stove, with the furriest part of its tail landing on an open burner. She had forgotten to turn it off after helping Mum with the cooking. It screeched in pain and bolted into the hall, tail aflame. It tried clawing its way up the drapes, but couldn't. The fire from its tail caught the drapes and they began burning. It fell off, the fur on its back caught. It landed on the carpet and didn't move again.
The carpet caught fire, and it spread rapidly up the painted walls, the drapes and furniture. Faith was terrified; she couldn't think, she didn't know what to do, and she was paralysed. When she felt the fire coming too close, she burst into the family room. She grabbed Jeremy, who stood glued to his spot, staring at the fire that crept quickly into the room, and ran with him to the fireplace. Hidden behind it was a huge stone chamber, that only she knew about - she had only just finished exploring it. A beam crashed down from the ceiling, separating the two. Faith felt herself lurching out of the way somehow, but Jeremy was thrown back several feet, and Faith ran back for him, grabbing his hand. Together they ran into the room.
Forgetting that he had never been in there, she shouted at him to get outside and gestured on the wall to the left. There were three doors. She pulled open another door, shouting that she was going to find the others and for him to go outside. He shouted something at her, but she couldn't hear him.
She ran up the twisted passage. Left, right, right, left. She ran up the maze of corridors with ease, navigating through the complicated twists and turns, hurrying, listening... she couldn't hear anything above the crackling flames. She forced the passageway door open and saw her parents and friends, burning and screaming in pain, yelling for the children to get out. "The children! The children!!!" her mother screamed, and collapsed. Faith froze for a moment, horrified, but came to her senses and ran away, slamming the door closed.
The door-chamber was filled with thick black smoke. She ran through, holding her breath. Stumbled over something and fell. Gasping... she thought her lungs would burst. Another beam crashed down and she fell out of the way just as it fell. She got up, found a violet engraved on a door. That wasn't what she was looking for. She had to breathe... she couldn't even draw breath when she found the doorway with a rose. She grabbed the doorknob and a strange carving in the hot metal burned her hand. The pain was intense and she screamed through her tears.
Faith couldn't do anything but push the door open with all her might. In the passageway, it was noticeably cooler. She gasped for breath and started running towards the exit. She prayed that Jeremy had escaped.
After a moment, a movement caught his eye. It looked as though one of the few places in the whole manor that was not burning... was moving. He ordered his men back, fearing a collapse. But it wasn't. Something staggered out, coughing. Daniel hurried over and found it to be a young girl of about nine or ten, wearing a purple dress with a big blue sweater over it, and quickly wrapped his coat around her.
She looked up at him, and said in a hoarse voice, "Jeremy. Please. Where's Jeremy?" Daniel then realised that she was one of the Maras twins, and Jeremy was the brother. He looked down at her, and she saw it in his eyes: Jeremy had not escaped. "We didn't finish the game," she whispered, past dazed. She started to cry softly and collapsed.
Most of the residents had resigned themselves to their fates. Most of them didn't believe that it was possible for them to be saved. Alice was long dead, and the children were beyond hope. Very few believed that they had any chances of destroying the Queen. Or of surviving, for that matter.
Gryphon had been looking for several months for help and information that would get them an ace in their hand. He sent word to Caterpillar through various sources, and not all of the news was good. In one of his later reports he was clearly extremely alarmed, though the actual reason was never mentioned. He instructed Caterpillar to call a council as soon as he returned, for he would be back soon.
Caterpillar knew most all that went on in Wonderland, and he was one of those who hoped for someone to come and save them. The White Rabbit believed that someone would come. But the one who believed most, believed more than anyone, was the Cheshire Cat. He knew Alice and her progeny, and he knew that, if he could convince the White Rabbit to get her, the girl would come. Wouldn't she?