Fit the Ninth: the Fire
It was the morning after the storm. The Sun had newly risen, and the hunters on the boat were preparing to send a search party after Alice and the Hatter when the Bandersnatch emerged out of the trees at the shore, clear in the crystal freshness of the post-rain morning. Tarrant and Alice were on its back.
Tweedledum saw them first. "It's them! There they are! They're not dead at all!"
All the others rushed forward to see for themselves. Pepper shouted with glee. "Lower the plank!"
Mag's eyes widened. She turned and ran from the deck.
In the cabin below, she thought quickly. Her plan had failed. She needed to do something more drastic.
Spilling the oil from every lamp she could grab hold of, she lit a chart on fire and put the flame to the oil. As it began to burn, she dug through her bag of meager belongings for the rolled and tied paper at the bottom. She stuck it in a crack in the table, in the way of the fire, and then she took flight.
She sprinted to the deck, climbed up the crow's nest as Tarrant and Alice were being helped onto the boat, gulped a potion, and flew off the crow's nest, a bird.
She looked back to see Alice pointing, and heard Pepper shout "After her!"
Seconds later, their fleet of geese took flight from the deck, honking hauntingly as they gave chase.
Alice and the others watched from the deck. She had just revealed that Mag had tried to have her disappeared. The news was met with gasps, and there might have been some disbelief except for Mag's immediate attempt to escape, which did seem to confirm her guilt.
For her part, Alice watched in amazement as Mag transformed herself into a bird and flew away. She had so many questions she wanted answers to. Topping the list was why Mag wanted her dead.
And then she smelled smoke.
Tearing her eyes away from the aerial chase, she scanned for the source of the worrisome scent. Wisps were seeping through the cracks in the deck boards.
"Fire!" she shouted. She leaped from the deck and ran toward the source. Throwing open the door, she saw the flames eating at the table in the cabin. The others had followed her, and were looking in the same direction. "A bucket," Alice said. "We need a bucket! We need some water!"
Thackery darted away and returned with a mop bucket from the kitchen. In seconds, Alice was shouting out commands to make a line between the fire and the nearest rail, where water was drawn directly from the waves of the ocean. She sent Thackery after more buckets and everyone else passed them back and forth: to the water and from the water, to the fire and from the fire.
Soon, two or three minutes at most, the fire was nothing but steam rising from the soaked and blackened table, chairs, and floor of the cabin.
The geese returned to the boat, one carrying Margaret the Magpie by the wing in her beak.
"She flew faster, but tired faster than we," Ellieita reported when she alighted.
"Let us lock her in the storage room," said Captain Pepper. "We will question her when the potion wears off."
Tarrant and Alice were mopping up the water in the cabin. They had been alone there for a few minutes, ever since Pepper and Ellieita had left to check on the prisoner, and had been silent.
"When we save the Queen," Tarrant asked abruptly and quietly, "will you return to Overland?"
She paused in the mopping and looked at him. She knew why he was asking. She gazed at him, his white skin and impossible eyes. She couldn't ask him to come with her: there was no way he would be welcome in her world. The only place they could be together was here, in Underland. But was she willing to give up her family, friends, and other life to be with him?
"I'm not sure if I could," she said. "Last time it took a sip of blood from the Jabberwock to get me home. There might not be a way this time." She didn't sound overly concerned over it.
"And if there is a way? Would you take it?"
She leaned the mop against the charred table and walked to him. "My dear Tarrant...I don't know much about the customs of propriety of Underland, but my English acquaintances would be scandalized that I spent the night next to you in a cave. Merely spending a night in a cave would be considered undignified. My Chinese acquaintances might be shocked that I spent the night next to you in a cave without taking advantage of it."
"And?" he whispered.
"I don't want to have to choose between my home in Overland and my home here in Underland, but if I have to make that choice," she took his hand that wasn't holding the now-motionless mop and took a step closer to him, "I will stay with you."
He smiled a smile so bright and beautiful she knew what she'd said was true. If she did have to stay in Underland, she would miss her family, but she could not imagine being away from her beloved Mad Hatter and Underland for so long again.
"You can't imagine how happy it makes me to hear you say that, my dear Alice."
"We'll have much more to say to each other once we have a free moment. But first let's get this water cleaned up and find out why Margaret tried to kill me." She kissed him quickly, then released his hand and took up her mop again.
She paused and looked back at the table as something she'd seen registered in her mind. There was a small scroll, scorched black, stuffed into a crack in the table. She took it out and unrolled it carefully.
"What is that?" the Hatter asked.
"A letter..." She read through it. Some words were missing at the edges where the paper had burned, and some of the ink had run with the water, but it was legible.
In fact, the handwriting was familiar. It was the same hand in which the note found under the White Queen's poisoned dish had been written.
"I believe this may explain everything."