Chapter 4: Out of the Forest
The Queen's shawl had blown over her face and head, and she looked quite surprised when Alice untangled her and said, "There. That's much better."
"Well hello there, my dear." said the Queen pleasantly.
"Hello, your highness," answered Alice, curtseying as she spoke. The Queen looked distracted by the curtsey, and started trying to smooth her disheveled clothes and hair. After fussing for quite some time, she turned back to Alice.
"Do you need a mother figure, child?" she asked, looking hopefully at Alice. "My two nieces, and dear, dear girls they are, I do say, don't seem to want my guidance. Well now there's no understanding girls these days. In my younger years, had I been an orphan (God forbid) I would really have given sky and earth to have an aunt or cousin come to care for me. But my nieces, as I've said, are quite remarkable girls. Half German, if you believe that, but not the bad sort, no, not at all. Their father was rather queer, I must say, but Poor Emily (that was my sister) could have done worse, that's what I always say. Now these girls, and their young brother (he gets the hay fever in spring something awful, you know) have managed on their own, but I never get a night's sleep knowing about those radical women's rights groups they run around with. And they refuse to put their money in with the Rail Bonds, which everybody knows are safest—but I am boring you! Oh, I apologise profusely, and I promise not to ramble again. Now, where was I?"
"Well, I'm not exactly sure…" Alice hesitated, having no desire to hear of the stability of Rail Bonds.
"Oh, well my dear, did you hear about the scandal in the kingdom? My word, everyone is talking about it. Would you believe, if I told you that they let the Messengers out! The White King's messengers (he's my husband, you know!). I forgot, you must not have been here for the trial. They stole the tarts, you know, and were to have been executed by the King but the orders got muddled and now they are out of prison and roaming the streets. I declare, I will never get a day's rest knowing that they are free men. It is a bad deal, I say. Bad, bad, baaaaad, baaaaaaa..."
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Alice looked up in surprise, just in time to see the White Queen melt away and an old Sheep appear in her place. Alice rubbed her eyes to make sure she was seeing things right. Was she in a shop? And was that Sheep sitting on the other side of the counter really knitting? Alice leaned over to see what the Sheep was making, but it seemed only to be a sort of scroll covered with different names.
"What do you do with your knitting?" asked Alice, timidly.
"Many things, shrouds and the like." said the Sheep shortly, and shut her mouth firmly. Alice felt the need to make some sort of conversation, so she gave a faint "Oh," and continued watching.
"Thou art an inquisitive child," said the Sheep, "and curiosity is dangerous in these times." She tied a knot in the yarn, fiercely, as if to strangle the needle.
"What do you sell here?" ventured Alice, not knowing what the word 'inquisitive' meant.
"Bah! Can you not see?" exclaimed the Sheep. "Wine, and some port. And eggs. You may buy an egg, if you like."
Alice, thinking that she would finally get something to eat, found a couple of pence in her apron pocket. She hastily paid the Sheep, eager to leave the shop. "You must get it yourself." said the Sheep curtly, and went back to her knitting.
Alice made her way through the jumble of wine barrels to the other end of the shop. The egg, sitting on a shelf in the back of the room, seemed to move farther and farther away and grow more and more as she approached it. Then, suddenly, the walls and ceiling faded away and Alice found herself outside once again, face to face with another character from a poem she hadn't remembered reading.
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He had grown from his normal egg-size to be even larger than Alice herself, and he sat on a low stone wall. Humpty Dumpty, as he certainly was, wore a fedora on his head and striped trousers around his middle, and with his round glasses made quite a comical sight. His perch seemed precarious to Alice, and she remembered the nursery rhyme that told the tale of his fall.
"Tell me," Humpty Dumpty said, staring at her intently, "what does the color yellow mean to you?"
"I—I don't really know," faltered Alice.
"Then I'll ask another: who are you, where do you come from, and where is your family?"
Alice, considering this the beginning of an introduction, held out her hand for him to shake. "My name is Alice, and I..." she trailed off, partly because she could not think of answers to the rest of his questions, and partly in response to the way he shrank back from her touch.
"You've been in the water today, haven't you?" he asked, darkly.
"Well yes, at least, I think I was," answered Alice. She began to fidget nervously, feeling like a schoolgirl under the stern gaze of her teacher. Humpty Dumpty began to talk again:
"You have been in the water, and your hand is disgustingly nasty and moist. Don't you know all the filth that water contains? Now what on earth are you doing? Stop hopping around like a bird, girl! You ought to choose one foot and stay standing on it, if you ask me. But you haven't answered my questions."
"Well..." began Alice timidly, "I don't really know who I am, exactly. I can't remember my home or my family, although I have a feeling that home is someplace dark and unpleasant, and most of my relatives are either away somewhere or dead. I'm sorry I can't give you any better answer."
"An excellent answer, If I've ever heard one. No family or home to speak of. And I don't suppose you take much in the way of religion, either. Why, you are far along the path to becoming a celebrated author! Tell me, are you any good at making up beautiful spurts of nonsense?"
"I have heard rather a lot of nonsense today," said Alice, "but I'm afraid I can't understand much of it."
"Oh, then perhaps it was something I wrote! Did it sound like the thoughts of an intelligent but muddled child? Were there made-up words and archaic allusions? They're my specialty, you know!"
Alice considered for a moment. "There was one poem with a lot of rubbishy words in it. Do you think you could explain them to me?"
Humpty Dumpty looked pleased and nodded eagerly. "Let's hear the words," he proposed.
"All right, there was brillig, slithy, and frilty," said Alice, as she paused to think.
"Brillig comes from the verb to broil. It means four o'clock in the afternoon, when you start broiling things for dinner."
"Ah. That will do nicely," said Alice. "And slithy?"
"That means 'lithe and slimy,' and frilty means 'filthy, silt-covered, and frothing.' They are all portmanteau words—they have more than one meaning packed into them. I myself am quite partial to such words. If I do say so myself, I am quite the expert in the field of the new language. On waxen wings, I have soared higher than any author before!"
"Don't you think you're a bit proud?" ventured Alice. "I think someone in your position should hardly take the risk..." But Humpty Dumpty was barely listening. In fact, he seemed to be reciting one of his own portmanteau words, a long and confusing one that sounded rather like a thunderclap:
"Bronglebrunglegurglfistratatatoomoogoojoobloomballyellowyolktuckrowcledarumduummumbledrumherongirllecherpureifly!" The egg man flailed his arms wildly as he said this, and almost before Alice could jump aside, he had tipped from his perch on the wall and fallen at her feet.
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In a panic, Alice ran back into the forest to find help. Before she had gone far, however, a low rumbling sound came to her ears. She hid behind a tree and peeked out to see a horde of men on horseback riding toward her. As they rode past, she heard several of the knights arguing:
"In the name of the King, I lay claim to the seat at the head of the table when we return!"
"Not you, by Merlin's beard! I have right to that seat, for I am a knight more valiant than you!"
"No, neither of you shall have it. I am the King's rightful heir, and therefore the most worthy of the honor. I shall sit at the table's head."
It seemed to Alice that a fight would surely break out, when the leader of the group turned around on his horse and cried out impatiently: "Enough! I have heard far too much of this petty arguing! Today I shall order the royal carpenter to create a table in the form of a circle, that you may end your feud."
The other knights began to whine about the loss of the coveted spot at the head of the table, but their leader stood firm and beckoned them to follow him once more.
When the knights had gone, Alice came out from behind the tree and into an open place, where she found the White King seated on the ground. He had what looked like several puppets, and was moving them into and out of several miniature barrels. He looked up when Alice approached, and exclaimed:
"Oh! But I thought you were one of my messengers! Just look along the road, and tell me if you can see either of them."
"I see nobody on the road," said Alice.
"Ah! Quite the skill, to be able to see Nobody, and at this distance, too! I couldn't do that if I tried with both hands. But to make up for it, I can write about nothing, which is a skill in itself."
"Oh, do you write then?" Alice asked politely.
"Didn't I just say I did?" countered the King.
"Well—yes, but I thought, to make conversation..." Alice began to falter.
"Aha! Statement! Fifteen-love. Match point!"
"You can't have a match point when the score is only fifteen to nothing!" protested Alice, "and besides, we're not playing tennis at all!"
"Ah, but aren't we?" said the White King.
"No, we aren't!"
"And how can you be sure?"
"I can't, it's just...oh, you've confused me so, I hardly know how we got started," said Alice miserably. "But there is your messenger, coming down the hill. Oh! Now he's running quite fast!" she exclaimed.
The Messenger was indeed running at top speed, and he stopped short in front of Alice and the King just as a small object rolled in between their legs, spun for a moment in the dust, and fell flat.
"Got you!" said the Messenger triumphantly. "Got what?" asked Alice. "My coin, of course." the Messenger replied. He then looked rather chagrined, and added, "But we lost him. We're terribly sorry, but he seems far too clever for us."
"Lost who?" said Alice, who by now was getting rather tired of having to always ask what was going on. "The other messenger?"
"Of course not. There he is." said the King, jerking his head to where another strange-looking man stood behind the First Messenger. The new man was rummaging in the first's purse, taking out coins one by one and pocketing them.
"Well what have you got for me?" asked the King. He sounded quite patient considering the circumstances, as neither of his messengers was paying any attention to him. They seemed to have found a point to argue, and were throwing short, mostly meaningless phrases back and forth.
The King cleared his throat loudly, and both men jumped. The Second Messenger held forward a bag. "We have these for you, your highness," he said. From the bag he pulled an angry-looking bird and a rusty saw. The King looked skeptical.
"This here is a handsaw," said the First Messenger: "You cut things with it, I believe."
"Well obviously," retorted the King. "So you brought me a saw and a crow. How completely absurd!"
"A crow?" asked the Second Messenger. He looked at his companion, then back at the King. "Well, your majesty, we rather thought that this was, er..."
"...The hawk you asked for, Sire." finished the First Messenger. At that moment the Crow wrenched himself out of the Second Messenger's grip, and flew into the air a few feet above their heads.
"Scandalous!" he cried. "Your treatment of me! That was discrimination, plain and clear! You wouldn't have been so rough with a seagull. I should report you..."
"Ignore him," said the Second Messenger, "he's been talking like that since I caught him. But look, your majesty: we have the documents you wanted! All rolled up and still in their original seals." He looked quite proud of himself. The King took the bundle of papers from his Messenger, and began to read the first sentence of each of them out loud:
"'Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton?'...'Early one evening, during an exceptional heat wave in the beginning of July?'...'Once upon a time and a very good time it was?'...'Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive were perfectly normal, thank you very much?'...'Call me—'why, this is the worst job you two have ever done! I only used you because I thought it would give everyone a bit of a laugh, but really, this is going too far. By Jove, you've managed to get not only the wrong documents, but in addition, they're not even from this century! You two are the greatest screw-ups in all Creation! Someone could really get rich, writing a farce to end all farces about you fellows."
The two Messengers hung their heads. Alice felt rather sorry for them, and patted one awkwardly on the shoulder. "Surely you have some information that might help the King," she suggested.
Suddenly the First Messenger jumped up. "We do!" he cried: "Sire, the Lion and the Unicorn are at it again! We saw them as we came through town."
The King sighed. "Not that again. Well, I supposed I had better go set things right. Could you remember to bring the plum-cake?"
The Messengers nodded eagerly, and all four of them set off up the hill toward the city.
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