This chapter's a bit heavy on dialogue, but look--a new POV…ooooh. Exciting. Also: I know next to nothing about the White Queen. I hope I portray her in an okay manner.
Do review and let me know what you think. They tend to make me smile :)
Yay for the midnight movie tomorrow! And my on birthday!
The shrieks went on for a while. I cringed at them. It hurt my ears. Like she hurt. She who lie on the bed looking terribly small and trapped with white bandages lining her side.
White like the walls. Four walls illuminated by a windowless light from above. They resembled a prison cell. What doctors kept their patients in cells?
I was suddenly pressed against the wall when she erupted in sobs. Fear left my eyes wide open.
"Alice," I tried again. She would not hear me.
Alice. It was a pretty name for a pretty girl. A pretty girl.
She had said she loved me. I don't know how to feel about that.
Her face turned back to me, eyes still shut and tears slipping through the lids. She looked as though she may be sleeping. I knew she wasn't. Then, as she opened her eyes, I was suddenly stunned. What was that look on her face? I could see my jacket shuffling through the rounds—green, red, blue—until it settled on a murky shade of violet. She was blinking furiously from the bed, the sheets twisting in her hands as she looked to me.
"Alice…I…I don't know how to say this easily…" Words were tumbling from my lips before I realized they were being uttered.
She looked positively ill. I shrank away from her and flushed. It seemed the longer she looked in my direction the worse she appeared.
"Alice, please," I choked. Finally she looked away.
I swallowed dryly and wished for some tea.
The damn Cheshire appeared instead. He was bony and frail, simply skin and bones now. Looking at him made me even more parched.
"Have you not the courage to tell her?" the Cat snarled. He'd gotten mean since the battle. Just as he'd gotten thin and bony.
"I don't know," I mumbled. I did not know why Alice cried. She had bandages and that was all. I did not know why she would cry at bandages.
The Cat stared me in the eye. His gaze had waned from a bright green to a dim yellow and he seemed to grow thinner by the minute. His face was inquisitive. Judging. As if he was reading a long text with curious interest.
"The Queen struck her with a poison blade, Hatter. She is crying because she is dying."
Alice screamed and the sound turned into more sobs.
"But I—"
"Your help arrived much more quickly," the Cat barked. Ironic, given he is a feline.
"The Queen says it will take more than a wish to make her better."
"The Queen! The White Queen could help her," I chimed.
The Cat sighed. "The Queen has already seen to her."
"Oh."
The Cat glanced over his shoulder to watch my suit dye a deep blue. His tail flicked aside as if to compare his paling fur to it. Once upon a time, he would have matched the cloth.
"And I apologize," he grumbled, twisting his head this way and that, "For a coward, you are quite brave."
Bravery seemed perfectly inadequate for the situation at hand. If a girl's cries could destroy every shred of thought in my mind, what purpose did supposed bravery serve? I felt entirely helpless. I felt a fool. A coward. At least the cat was capable of putting on a stony face. My lips quivered in an attempt to not utter sounds of pity.
"What will become of her, then?" I inquired out of mere curiosity.
The Cheshire twitched slightly. Perhaps he had been poisoned too?
"Well," he sighed softly. He lifted a paw sympathetically and mumbled, "She can't stay here."
I felt suddenly strangled. As if someone was squeezing the life from me, and yet, taking a quick look around, there was no one there save for the Cat and little teary Alice. "Why, Cat? Wonderland is safer with her here. She ought to be Queen. Everyone in the land was so anxious to see her return and now here she is—"
"Hatter," the Cat said, "she will not recover if she is left here."
"Why that's absurd. She's under watchful care….her friends are close…"
"This world may be hers, but she does not belong." The Cat padded off the seat and slinked about the bed. For an instant it looked as if he was going to disappear, as thin as he was, when he turned his fur glimmered and made him invisible. I blinked several times to find him still there, grimacing. "She is from a different place, a different world entirely. Where cats do not speak and only the sick are mad."
If this were true, then why would she come here? Why would she continue to live there? And why on earth would she confide in a Mad Hatter…
Her ginger moan caught both of our attentions. The Cat was balancing on the footboard as if he was lighter than air, his neck craned over the girl.
"Alice, you must wake up," he muttered.
But when her eyes opened once more, she looked to me as if it was I who spoke. "The Cat," I stuttered. She nodded into her pillow and began to fade away again. I sprang from the seat and crouched at her side so quickly my hat nearly toppled over, but when I reached her she was holding her hand out for mine. I placed it so, feeling my brow furrow at the sight of reddened fingertips against her flesh. The Cat was right. This girl, so innocent and so…normal did not belong here.
No. She had come to save us. Certainly she belonged.
"Alice," the Cat continued condescendingly.
"Please, Alice," I joined.
But the girl merely sighed. Suddenly the white walls were closing in and the Cat had vanished. Alice looked tremendously small, and suddenly she was no longer the queen I had made her up to be.
"This is serious, Hatter," the Cat hissed from my shoulder.
My stomach dropped. The lights seemed to go out, and yet the room was still such a pristine white. "Alice, please wake up." I added sheepishly, "Don't want to be late for tea, now, not again."
The Cat fell from his perch on my hunched shoulders and struggled to retain his balance. My knees slipped underneath me, and a great roar rumbled outside.
"Hatter, wake her, now!" the Cat snapped. He was busy backing himself into a corner, ears flattened against his head.
I jerked her arm and sat her upright and pleaded once more.
The commotion fell silent as soon as her eyes flashed open. She was back. Tears still fell, however, when she threw her arms around my neck.
"Alice—" My eyes clouded. "Alice please," I huffed.
She suddenly drew back, her eyes red as tulips. "Hatter," Alice mumbled, "I…I don't want to leave…" She was back to crying as her hands slipped off my shoulders.
"But you weep because you cannot stay," the Cat concluded.
"This world is safe—" she interjected.
"Safe?" the Cat sputtered. "You ought to be dead!"
"It is filled with friends whom I care for."
I backed away.
"This place was filled with such misery…as my life was before I fell through the rabbit hole…"
The Cat tread near my ankles. "This place will not heal unless you do, Alice."
"But I am!" she contested, "I am, I am sitting up right, aren't I? And I'm sure I could stand if I tried—"
"You are wounded, girl, you need rest. You need a home which you can be nursed to life in."
But she was already climbing over the edge of the bed, trembling feet pressing themselves to the floor as she struggled to pull herself up. She all but collapsed until I reached for her.
"Why can't you take care of me?" she murmured. "The Hatter, the Hare, and you dear Cheshire…." Her voice tumbled off as she really got a look at him, his sunken skin and scowling face.
"You want a house of mad men caring for you?"
"I trust them, Cat!"
"That man beside you is a glorified child," the Cat hissed.
My jaws snapped shut. My suit spelled it out in red.
"What is wrong with you, Cat?" Alice shouted. Her hands clasped my arm tightly. Suddenly I feared falling over. "You claimed the Hatter a brave soldier once upon a time!"
"And now I see the truth of it," he replied lowly, "the bravest among a bunch of cowards is all he is."
"Cat, please, I don't want you to fight—"
"Alice!" he shouted, his hair standing on end. "I haven't a choice anymore. I know what's going on here, dear girl. Your mind is slowly escaping you, and because of that Wonderland is too. A mere battle didn't reduce me to skin and bones. It was you. And soon enough, Wonderland will fall into darkness once again. I would not be surprised if it spelled the end of all our lives. You must recover, Alice."
"But I am—"
"Your mind will not unless you leave this place—"
"Enough!"
I immediately looked down at the booming volume to my voice.
"If she is happy here," I whispered, "should she not stay? Until she no longer cares for it?"
The Cat stared. "And what happens when her mind drives you insane? Do you still desire this life, this world, this girl if you have no reality to root it in?"
Alice slipped. She was faint.
"Call the Queen," I murmured, bowing to my knees as Alice pulled me down.
"The Queen does not wish to see her."
"Cat—" Alice whispered. Her eyes became thin slits as she struggled not to cry.
And it was then, as if on command, that the White Queen appeared. My head turned to her highness automatically and suddenly I found I myself had been holding my breath. White Queen indeed—although her gown was torn and soaked in red. She had joined our plight at the last moment, helping us destroy her wretched sister. I did not have to say anything to have her come swooping in beside me; she not uttering a word and looking like a jaded angel.
Her eyes grew dark as she looked over the girl. The Queen hissed and suddenly grabbed her side as if struck with pain. She too had fought, staved off the Knave with me for a time before card guards had swarmed. No doubt she was injured.
"She needs to leave. Someone must send her home." She didn't spare me a glance as she called over her shoulder, "Guards!"
"No," I protested lightly, clutching the girl tighter. "I will do it."
"Hatter, you cannot get attached to her. Say your goodbyes. She must go or we will all perish. Her pain is ours. Her death will destroy us," the woman reprimanded.
"I will take her home," I repeated.
"You will steal her away and kill us all."
I could not say anything. My lips suddenly would not work. I felt as if I was choking, and all the while the Queen's eyes were on my face. She suddenly inched away, the lines on her face becoming a bit less rigid.
"Then my guards shall follow you," she concluded. "But we haven't much time. She grows weaker by the minute."
I don't remember the trip nor how we got there. All I could recall were golden curls and a soft crying sound. The woods were whispering too—they could sense the darkness creeping in. We had won the battle, but the Queen was about to win back Wonderland.
