I need to think of a better summary. I don't like it anymore.
But! I'm rather proud. It's looking like I will actually finish this story in a reasonable amount of time! Hurray for sticking to timely updates! However, I also feel like I'm starting to get very repetitive with my word choice. I'm sorry. There are only so many words I can use to make it seem smart-er (and not like some elitist essay where I don't know what the hell I'm talking about).
And as another FYI, the rating will soon be changing. I spent a long while yesterday toying with things and rewriting some future bits and they honestly just seem to get darker and darker each time I go back and edit.
Enjoy the journey back into Wonderland! It is dark and Alice is running out of time to find herself…
Darkness.
A dankness.
Something was broken.
Shattered pieces of a dream gone wrong lie around her body.
Wonderland.
But was it so wonderful anymore?
The girl struggled to her knees. It took several moments for her to properly orient herself with her limbs. The sun was beating down on her back by the time she managed to her feet.
What was this place?
She couldn't feel her hands, her feet, her head as she turned in a complete circle without so much as moving an inch. The sky, orange and murky, looked as if it was ready to fall from over her head. The sun was dark and looked menacing as it peered between sparse clouds. And the sky was probably the friendliest thing she could see.
The trees were gnarled and starved, their limbs jabbing out in random directions in an attempt to reach said putrid sun. Mist soaked the ground and forced a shudder all the way to her soul. Strange sounds could be heard all around, and yet she stood entirely alone.
Alone.
Her heart raced. She felt as though this fact was very wrong. She should not have been alone.
Where was everyone? Who was the everyone she was looking for?
A bird cried overhead. The girl shrieked and dropped to her knees again. The sensation was jarring. It then occurred to her that she hadn't even taken a step in this cruel world and she felt entirely defeated. She shook on the ground, hugging herself around the middle in an attempt to stave off the fear. Soon she was calling out for help, but this too proved a failed attempt as she was too frightened to raise her voice above a whisper, for fear that someone actually would find her.
X X X
Something else was broken, and not but a league away from where the girl lay.
Here was a man sprawled about the ground with a broken heart; it wasted away from trying too many times and wishing too hard for something to save them all.
Ticking clocks woke him.
The sound was soon followed by a low rumbling. The Hatter, he too struggled to his feet, feeling as though his arms and legs didn't really belong to him. He was truly shocked to see the bloodstains smeared against his fingers and beyond that—the tatty coat and it's tassels… The Hatter shook in his old brown shoes.
This was very wrong.
What made it worse, however, was when the Hatter looked up and found three gargantuan rose stalks staring him in the face, each captivated by hunger and housing a dark look in their eyes.
They were very large roses. With very large teeth.
The Hatter swallowed. It was not the teeth or even the faces the roses possessed that frightened him. It was their towering size and their sudden lunging at his being that made him yelp and stagger away. He clumsily maneuvered himself into the woods as panic and fear worked their ways on his mind.
His hands were shaking and wrought with tremors when he glanced down at them. The ticking had since vanished but now it was his heart pounding feverishly in his head. Taking a glimpse over his shoulder, the man found himself alone in a stretch of woods that looked just as happy to consume him as the roses had been, except here the trees did not have faces nor fangs with which to do so.
He could not get his hands to stop.
As he pleaded beneath his breath for something to stop the shaking, a name came to mind—clear as day and bright as the sun.
"Alice," the Hatter whispered. His insides flopped upside down. Why did hurt so? A mere mentioning of her name brought on such an inexplicable grief that he wished he had never met said Alice in the first place. Doubled over with a gnawing, nay, roaring pain, the Hatter—for an instant—wished for death.
Then his bright green eyes swept open in shock. He suddenly could see nothing, but that was the least of his concerns.
"Alice," he whispered once more, though it sounded like a desperate plea.
She must be dead, he concluded, if thinking of the girl's name brought out such a horrid pain in him. But who could have done such a thing? Who could have killed a little girl?
How little had she been?—he wondered. The Hatter simply could not recall. He'd known that he had met her twice, but could not put a number to her face.
Who killed her?
Surely no one else, no one other than the Knave.
The Hatter wondered how he knew their names.
He sank to the ground, still hugging himself around the middle and wishing for something to make the pain stop. It raged so ferociously within him that he began to wish for death.
Alice. She must be dead, he thought. It shocked him all over again.
It went on like that, running in circles, for a long while. The woods whispered softly as a breeze blew by, and soon mist began creeping in around his feet. It wasn't quite nightfall when, though the Hatter did not, could not hear it, a great commotion grumbled in the flowers' bed.
A dozen Chessmen came thundering down the path into the woods, having found a set of tracks they did not recognize. Each stood six foot tall, several holding great spears and some with worn out swords. On top of their heads was a helmet no ordinary man could see through—they were fitted just for the Chessmen, these knights and bishops that crowded the unfortunate Hatter.
He did not recognize them. In fact, he found their appearance quite odd and frightening, much like living statues. He began to stand, opened his mouth to ask for assistance, when one chess piece lunged forward and struck the Hatter sideways. A red line split on his face from where the staff had hit him, and the Hatter was then perfectly content to stay curled on the ground.
This place was not friendly in the least, he soon realized, as another staff beat him against the ribs.
"Wait!" a high voice screeched.
The Chessmen parted, though they still glared viciously at the Hatter.
A mouse and a dog trod though the crowd.
The little white creature slipped off the dog's shoulders and sprinted as fast as its little legs would allow until it reached the Hatter's face.
"Oh, 'Atter… Oh…oh no…"
A long moment passed before he would look up to her.
"Mallymkun?" he whispered. The little mouse nodded.
"Come…come now, gotta get you cleaned up…take y' to the White Queen, she'll fix y' up," she said, skittering to his hands and tugging on his bandaged fingertips. Soon after she rounded on the Chessmen, her little voice full of rage, "How dare you, attack the 'Atter! 'e's one of us, don't ya know?"
"What's happened here, mouse? I remember names, some faces…but not this place, not this nightmare…this horrific nightmare of a place," the Hatter sputtered.
"It's Wonderland, 'Atter," Mallymkun replied simply, scurrying up his arm and to his shoulder as he pushed off the ground once more, "It's jus' a whole lot worse for wear than it used t' be."
"But if it's Wonderland…then why is it such a nightmare?" The mouse on his shoulder pointed in him the direction opposite from where they came, through the forest and eventually up to a great white pathway. Sullen Chessmen fell back around the Hatter and the dog that followed him, though each glared bitterly at the back of the man's head. Who was a stranger to lead their forces?
"White Queen says it's got something t' do with Alice," Mallymkin continued, "since the Red Queen fell, everyone's been 'urting. But you'll remember soon, 'Atter, I'm sure of it."
His fists coiled tightly.
"Alice is dead, Mallymkun."
She looked at him with total shock.
X X X
"It's just a dream."
"It's only a dream."
"It's just a dream gone wrong, that's all."
Taking slow breaths and the path one step at a time, the girl had pulled herself to her feet and began to make her way down a jagged stretch of trail. No one had approached her yet, no man nor beast, and this simple fact had lifted her spirits, if only slightly.
She wouldn't allow herself to consider what would happen should no one find her at all, should she be trapped in his misty, morbid realm for the rest of her existence—
"It's only a dream."
"And in dreams, no one can hurt you. You do not cry in dreams, nor can you die in them."
Several times she had tried to repair the situation on her own; she'd pinched her arm and counted backwards from 100 twice, thinking she would fall asleep and wake in her bed at home, but to no avail. Then she tried squeezing her eyes shut and wishing for a better dream, then closing her eyes and forcefully thinking of another dream, but she simply could not. The only things she could produce equated to nightmares and forced her to open her eyes, for the image hiding behind the closed lids was worse than the land she was currently lost in.
Then came a great rumbling and shaking as if the earth itself were about to split in two. Five horses charged through the thicket and onto the girl's path, then came three dozen soldiers, each dressed suited that resembled a white chess piece splashed with red paint. The horses screeched and bucked before the pieces began to head straight for her. Startled by the scene, the girl turned and dashed away from them, but unfortunately she was nowhere near as swift.
Several Chessmen swarmed in a wide circle around her, trapping her in their formation when a bishop launched himself at her, his gleaming sword held high.
"Stop, stop!" someone cried.
The Knave's blade flew from his hand, slicing the soldier's arm clean off. In the backswing, the edge caught the girl. She cried out in pain and confusion as she stumbled over her feet once again. She looked a miniscule thing before the black knight and his towering horse.
"Alice," he breathed. "Alice, what are you doing here?"
"Is that my name?" she wondered aloud, her voice shaking just as her hands did. She clutched at her arm where the blade had struck but blood still trickled through. Horrified at the crimson stain, the Knave slid off his steed in one great sweep, bowing to his knees before her.
She cried out, this time with overwhelming joy, "Ilosovic!" A familiar face was enough to make her heart soar.
"Alice, oh Lord…" He promptly stood and took her free hand, lifting her onto her feet as if she weighed nothing at all. "What have I done? We need to get you back to the castle, your majesty…" His lips soon pressed to a thin line at the vocational blunder.
Alice hesitated. "What? What castle? What's going on, Ilosovic? Last I recall I was at that Lord's home…something about an engagement…" She bowed her head a moment, trying her best to recall the details. "Red hair and blue eyes…and a ghastly, horse-faced smile…"
Ilosovic had to force himself to not recoil in shock. He too had recalled an engagement party in a world unfamiliar to him—but he believed it to be for himself and Alice. "How did…how did you get here then?" the Knave questioned lowly, holding her shoulders.
At first the girl said nothing. Slowly it came to her: "A…a rabbit, perhaps?"
His eye grew wide.
"A little white rabbit…with a waistcoat…"
Alice did not recall her last venture to Wonderland that occurred not but a month ago. This place was as foreign as a six year old's memory could be. Curiously, she still recognized him though he had not been part of the Red Queen's court when Alice visited thirteen years prior. The Knave was blinking furiously and swallowing a dry knot. Thoughts racing entirely too quickly, he suddenly turned and snarled, "See to it that the infirmary is cleared."
Chessmen crudely splashed with red paint bowed and thundered away. Alice flinched at the noise.
"My dear," he breathed, "I thank God nothing's happened to you."
"Nothing more than a fright," Alice replied, "Don't you see? It's a dream Ilosovic."
He raised a brow at her accusation.
"Why else would you be so tall, or chess pieces act like soldiers?"
"Oh, girl," the Knave grumbled to himself. "Come, let's get you to a doctor, shall we?"
