A/N: Chapter the fourth, folks, hope you enjoy. By-the-by, the start ryhme isn't mine - it's part of a poem in a picture book I loved as a little kid. Oh, and thanks to ML for reviewing. This chapter's for you.

Chapter 4 - Here is the candle to light me to bed...

Hist! Hark!

The night is very dark

And we've to go a mile or so

Across the wild park

There was a moment where everything seemed to freeze.

Then Mouse came to herself, and ran over to where the Cheshire Cat was lying motionless on the darkening grass, his fur dulled back to black and grey and matted with an opaque liquid she couldn't and didn't really want to identify. She knelt down to assess the amount of damage the card people had done to him.

Hare came with her, and after a moment of poking and prodding, he said "There's not much physically wrong with him- a few cuts and scratches, but mostly I think he's just drained from using that amount of power without a focus."

Without the spades, you mean Mouse added silently. She scooped up the Cat without saying a word, noting how odd he felt in her arms – like…well she couldn't really describe it. He felt more like a cat-sized lizard, all muscle and bone without a ounce of fat of any kind, for as she well knew, all earthly mammals, particularly cats, had at least some bodily slack. The creature in she was holding had nothing of the sort, and it unnerved her slightly.

She covered this by saying "I don't know whether cold and hot and that apply to you people, but I think it's getting kinda chilly out here."

Hatter nodded, and said slowly, "You can come to our place. It's a bit of a mess without the magic to clean it up, but at least it's warm and dry."

With that, she turned and led the way.

696

The cottage wasn't just a mess. It was a complete PIGSTY. Mouse was forcibly reminded of her own bedroom at home, when she hadn't tidied it in at least a couple of days. But she kept a straight face, and asked the hatter if there was a place she could put CC down on.

Hare led the way upstairs, to a bedroom with a single bed. There was duvet folded in the corner, and after laying the still comatose Cat on the mattress, Mouse reached out to put it over the creature, when her wrist was grabbed by a sharp-clawed, furred hand.

"Don't." Said Hare, releasing her. "Just…Don't."

He glanced at the duvet, then looked away quickly, shuddering.

She saw, now, why he didn't want her to touch it.

Before, she had thought it chequered grey and white. But she now saw that the supposed grey was more than that. It was more like a total lack of colour and light, more like the anti-colour a void, and Mouse discovered that she couldn't look at the edge between the void and the normal material. It made her nauseous, and she realised that these grey areas on the eiderdown were the holes left from the cards. She shook her head, suddenly dizzy.

"What do we do now?" she asked the hare, indicating Cat lying on the bed.

An odd expression flashed over his face, gone too quickly for her to read.

"We wait."

After about five or six hours, Mouse couldn't be sure, as her watch had decided it was a compass and only moved when she turned around, there was no signs of improvement. She and Hare had had an argument over who waited outside the door, and Hare had won on the fact that if the Cheshire Cat woke up with amnesia, he would be more likely to attack a human than someone from his own world, so Mouse was forced to wait downstairs with the others.

Unicorn was trying to teach her the basics of a wonderland and chess-borders board game called Rathmoles, which consisted of a flat board with small indents for the pieces, which looked like flat marbles, and the rules seemed to be a cross between draughts and tic-tac-toe, then trying to show her how to use a sword (Not really necessary – mouse had done archery and stunt-sword practice before…never mind) but she wasn't really listening. She was desperately sifting through all her knowledge of magical beings and Fae, along with any details about the looking glass and wonderland that she could dreg up from her memory, for anything that could possibly help the Cheshire Cat. Suddenly, a line from a favourite TV show popped into her head.

"Blood is life, lackbrain. Why do you think we eat it? It's what keeps you going. Makes you warm. Makes you hard. Makes you other than dead."

She stood up suddenly, knocking the Rathmoles board to the floor.

She knew what she had to do.

A/N: Look at the poor purple button down there,

Give him a click, to show that you care

Please review, tell what you think,

Was it worth the time and ink?