A/N: Realised I had to speed up if I wanted to finish uploading the story before I go on holiday. Acted accordingly.

Disclaimer:

If anyone does stop to read,

My silly little rhymes,

You're probably tired of hearing this:

The concept isn't mine.

CHAPTER FIVE – A SEVERE LOSS OF TEMPER

Edith had screamed, shouted, and shrieked, but it hadn't made any difference.

'She isn't here, and she isn't there, and I'm afraid there's nothing to be done about it!'

'She's somewhere here, I know she is!'

'Oh, you know,' he said scathingly, even as his voice shook with barely contained grief, 'how convenient that must be for you.'

'I believe!'

'Believing won't help at all!'

Edith pulled at her hair in anger, floating in mid air again five feet off the ground.

'The Overland can be just as dangerous as Underland,' he said, his voice softening, 'and just as fatal. When someone wanders off in the dark at night, in the rain, that's bad enough, but when they're too upset to look where they're going –'

'I saw her fall, I saw it!'

'And were you exactly calm at the time?'

'I didn't imagine it if that's what you mean,' she said hotly.

'Oh, I haven't the time for this,' he cried, still shaking and blinking rather more than normal, obviously upset, 'I have to see the White Queen and inform her ... there will be a lot of people who will be ... our Alice, and we thought all this time ...'

'What, that she'd just – just grown out of you?' exclaimed Edith, gesturing wildly, 'She would never ...' she choked, biting down on her lip hard. Shaking her head as if to rid it of a nightmare, she started to swim towards the little door behind the curtain, the key to it still tied to her sash, 'I'm going to find her.'

'And just how do you propose to do that?' cried the Rabbit in alarm, hopping after her.

Edith paused as she reached the door, grabbing the curtain to stop herself from drifting away.

'I ... I can find the Hatter,' she decided, 'he'll help me.' She set about pulling the curtain back to reveal the door, taller than her and the same dark colour as the rest in the room.

'The Hatter?' said McTwisp, his eyes wide with sudden horror. 'Oh, no. No, no, no, you mustn't go anywhere near – wait, child!'

He jumped forwards as Edith opened the door but it was too late. The girl had already propelled herself through, shooting into Wonderland.

Edith couldn't help but gasp as she saw it. It was everything that had been described to her as a child, and yet nothing like she had imagined. She was presently in a garden, filled with tall, beautiful flowers and curling plants and ferns. There was a lush darkness to everything, like the sky after a heavy storm, and everything she saw seemed somehow to be alive. Bread-and-butterflies and snap-dragonflies flitted past her; the Flowers bent their pretty heads together and whispered conspiratorially as she drifted by, slowly losing momentum after pushing off the door frame. McTwisp was hopping after her madly, calling for her to come back, and she quickly grabbed a stem and pulled herself behind it.

'Ah!' shrieked the Snowdrop as it was wrung by the neck.

'Oh! Sorry,' hissed Edith.

'She's over here!'

'Oh, you stupid thing!' Edith pushed off from it and went catapulting into a bed of Petunias, all of whom screamed girlishly and pushed her away.

'She's trampling my petals!'

'My leaves!'

'Go away!'

Edith swam frantically through air, spying the forest up ahead, full of crooked branches and dark hiding places.

'Child! Come back! I have to – oh! Excuse me! Let me through, please! I have to take you back to the Otherland!'

Edith laughed shakily, thinking of the many weeks of aching travel and starvation and the hair-raising journey down through the water, 'I don't think so, McTwisp,' she muttered to herself, pulling herself along through the dirt, keeping as low to the ground as she could. Finally a shadow fell over her and she reached the cover of the forest. Rolling into a crouch, she pushed off the ground as hard as she could, shooting up into the trees, untying the key from her sash as she went to go faster. She reached the upper branches before she slowed, grabbing onto them and climbing up higher.

'At least I needn't fear falling,' she breathed, smiling wryly.

Down below she heard hopping feet and fell silent, freezing in place as McTwisp passed right beneath her.

'Silly, troublesome girl ...' he was mumbling agitatedly to himself, 'oh, whatever will the Queen say?'

He disappeared deeper into the woods, and Edith was left wondering what on earth to do next. It was already dark, and she was exhausted and hungry. Her desire for sleep was stronger than her desire for food though, so she decided to rest for the night and search for the Tea Party Clearing the next day.

Now came the problem of exactly how she was going to rest. Normally one would find some place to lie down but since she still hadn't stopped floating slowly upwards ... Edith remembered the sash on the dress she wore, and, feeling extremely strange, tied herself down to a strong-looking young branch. She leant forward tentatively, testing the knot, but it held fast, so she curled up in midair and closed her eyes.

It took the girl some time to fall into an uneasy sleep, filled with vague half-dreams of shaking hands and bulging eyes, but by the time the knot on her sash began to loosen itself she was long snoring.

Edith started awake when the rays of the sun hit her eyelids, and she was immediately filled with an overwhelming feeling that something definitely wasn't right.

A chilly wind was whipping at her dress and hair, and upon recoiling from it, she didn't make contact with twig or branch as she had expected. Instead there was only ... nothing. She flailed about in the air, twisting about to look around herself, and realised that during the night her knot had come undone and she had floated far, far into the cloudy grey sky – too far to reach the branches and pull herself down.

Just glancing down now she found her guts suddenly awash with vertigo; she had to be almost thirty feet above the canopy, which was high enough in itself. She swam down desperately but the wind blew her back like a tiny leaf and she found all she could do was be tossed about like flotsam and jetsam.

'HELP! MCTWISP! HATTER! HELP, SOMEBODY!'

Edith cupped her hands around her mouth and bellowed with all her might, but it was no use. Above the wind and so high up it was impossible for anyone to hear her, let alone attempt rescue. She was a tiny dot in the sky, easily mistaken for a circling bird of prey.

With that thought she looked around uneasily; it suddenly occurred to her that she might be easy pickings for an eagle or hawk, but luckily there seemed to be no immediate danger. At least for now.

Edith was just about to start screaming again when, to her utter shock, a wide grin appeared in midair before her. She screamed anyway, although now for an entirely different purpose, and in a panic tried to swim away from it backwards in a ridiculous flurry.

'Oh, calm down,' said the grin smoothly as it was joined by a pair of turquoise blue eyes and slowly materialising grey fur, until the head of a grinning cat hovered in front of the dumbstruck girl.

'You're – you're ...'

'The Cheshire Cat,' he said, grinning impossibly wider.

'Oh, well, that's different,' said Edith, heaving a sigh of relief, 'you're not going to eat me. Are you?'

He just grinned unblinkingly at her, and then suddenly disappeared into vapour.

Edith spun in the air, looking for him, when he reappeared in his original spot, now behind her.

'I heard there was a little Alice in the air,' he said, surveying her with mild interest, 'but you really don't look at all like her.' He swam around her lazily, the rest of his body appearing behind him – grey and blue striped and finishing with a flicking, curving tail. 'You never can trust Petunias these days,' he continued as he circled her.

'I'm her niece,' said Edith, not at all sure that she trusted this queer apparition, 'I'm looking for her; do you know where she is?'

'No,' he replied, his grin faltering before he disappeared with a soft voosh and reappeared a foot away, grin back in place, 'no one does.'

'Not even the Mad Hatter?'

The Cat grinned rather evilly, 'Oh, you won't want to be asking him for help. Lately he's been rather ... shall we say: unsociable? Can't even handle little jokes anymore.'

Edith attempted to swim against the wind towards him and almost succeeded, but the moment she reached him he vanished.

'When you turned up we thought we'd gotten a new Alice, at least,' said the Cat's disembodied voice, 'but I'm afraid you're not at all what we expected. Not quite the right material for an Alice by the looks of you. Made of the wrong stuff entirely,' he concluded, leering into existence suddenly, right above Edith's head, so that she was forced into lying back to look him in the eye. Because gravity seemed to be having no effect on her it didn't even feel like lying down, instead the world felt rather sickeningly at the wrong angle.

'I'm not an Alice, I'm an Edith,' she said, more than annoyed by this stage.

'An Edith,' he gasped in mock awe, still grinning mischievously.

'Yes, and you've got to help me.'

'No, I don't,' he said, highly amused, and disappeared again. There was a three second interval before he materialised, again above where her head lay, and upside down. Edith swam into place, determined to match him.

'At least take me to the Hare and the Hatter.'

At this the Cheshire Cat laughed.

'The Hatter doesn't appreciate my company as much as he used to.'

'Then help me get down!'

'Why?' he said, turning a somersault above her and vanishing, only to reappear beside her, making her neck snap round, 'I rather find floating relaxing.'

'NOT WHEN I'M FLOATING INTO THE SKY!' shouted Edith, turning as red as a beetroot.

The Cat grinned widely and vaporised.

'Oh, would you stop doing that so suddenly! You're making me dizzy!' she said angrily.

'That's what she said.' He expanded slowly into existence, like a picture being painted against the clouds, 'Better?'

She watched him with narrowed dark eyes, and he watched her with wide, luminescent ones.

'You're rather a disappointment,' he remarked finally, like someone noting uninterestedly that the tea had gone cold. 'You've got no gravity to yourself. Not an ounce of it.'

'In my world,' she snapped, losing patience, 'gravity holds you down.'

'In this world,' he interrupted, 'gravity doesn't do the dirty work for you. One has to find their own way of grounding themselves. You really are in the wrong frame of mind ...'

'Perhaps I'm a ghost,' mused Edith, only half listening, 'if I really did drown. Perhaps I'm dead.'

'Dead or dreaming?' grinned the Cat, and with that he was gone.

After he didn't reappear Edith realised that he had left for good, and she was stranded alone fifty feet in the air.

'CHESHIRE! COME BACK! CAT?'

But there was no answer, and she yelled in frustration to the empty sky.

'FINE THEN!' she huffed, 'I don't need you!'

And she began the long, agonizing struggle of paddling down through the sky, with the wind rising every minute to blow her back up. She muttered and cursed every curse she'd ever heard, most of which she didn't know the meaning of; her own stubborn determination to prove herself the only thing keeping her tired, weary muscles going. Edith wasn't even sure just who she was trying to prove herself to, as there was no one around to watch her, but she'd come too far to stop now.

With the clouds covering the skies it was impossible to see exactly where the sun was, and Edith had only her own, (and by now slightly mangled), sense of time, which seemed to pass in spasms in this part of the forest. One moment she would be struggling to get through the air without result, and the next she would be five feet down from where she had been before. Add to that the fact that although she was hanging upside down the blood still didn't rush to her head, and the ordeal was extremely disorientating.

Suddenly, finally Edith found herself just a couple of feet above the tree canopy, and as soon as her body realised this hidden strength burst into action, spurred by the hope that this would all soon be over. She stretched her tiny arm out as she neared the dark, gnarly branches, trying with all her might to lengthen her bones, from her shoulder all the way down to her fingertips; reaching and straining until the very tip of one nail grazed a twig.

The very second it made contact her little body regained every ounce of its gravity, and she fell.

Plummeting without control twenty feet to the forest floor is enough to alarm most people, and Edith started screaming enough to alert the entire wood. She grasped at the branches as she fell rapidly past them; the little ones snapped off in her hands and the big ones knocked the breath out of her, tossing her back and forth between them until she felt like a child's ball. Eventually she hit one wide branch, breaking her fall, but was too dazed to hold on and toppled off, rolling and tumbling from branch to trunk until she sprawled onto the ground, the world spinning insanely around her. As she curled into herself in the dirt, groaning and feeling very sick indeed, she heard a familiar chuckle.

'Well, that was very amusing. I was getting rather bored there at the start but you finished with a nice flourish.' Two eyes and a grinning mouth appeared above her, snickering.

Edith fought to sit up, still more than slightly giddy, blinking at the Cheshire Cat. She heard something slosh, and upon looking down saw that she was soaked right through; her hair was no longer floating around her head, but now hanging, dripping and limp – her dress was stuck to her skin – she was completely drenched. Edith found this terribly confusing.

'Why am I wet?' she said dizzily, lifting up a dripping arm and goggling at it.

'Floating, swimming, it all evens out in the end,' said the Cat dismissively, twisting into smoke and sitting up beside her, tail curved like a question mark. 'I suspect you came through the wrong door entirely.'

She shook her head, spraying him with water. Like any cat he flinched; disappearing and reappearing in a branch above her head, watching her reproachfully.

Edith looked down over herself again, and was disappointed to see she was still only six inches tall. She looked up at the Cat, frowning as his first sentence finally registered with her.

'You were watching me the whole time!' she said accusingly, pointing a finger at him.

He grinned widely again, drifting down to her.

'I was bored,' he said simply.

Edith scowled at him and got to her feet, still a little dazed but determined not to show it, putting on a show of haughtily brushing off the dirt caked on her wet dress.

'Now are you going to take me to the Hatter?' she sniffed.

'I'll have to think about it,' said the Cat, turning to wispy smoke and wafting out of existence.

Edith crossed her arms and waited impatiently until he reappeared so suddenly he made her jump, right over her shoulder.

'Well?'

'I've thought about it.'

'And?'

He grinned.

'No.'

Edith lunged for him and he disappeared smoothly, aggravating her even more.

'You really are infuriating, you know that?' she shouted, seemingly to thin air. 'An infuriating ball of fluff – or – or vapour or whatever you are! Now; I WANT TO SEE THE HATTER!'

'Wants,' he grinned, flashing momentarily here, 'needs,' he grinned, appearing there for a second, 'entirely different things,' he finished at her feet as she whirled around and around, trying pointlessly to keep track of him.

Made even dizzier by his vanishing tricks, Edith reached the end of her tether, yelling in anger nonsensically and kicking at the dirt, tripping herself and falling quite painfully onto her bottom as her eye caught something dart away from her into the shadows.

'What was that?' she cried, recoiling, 'I saw fire!'

'That was your temper,' said the Cheshire Cat, appearing behind her, 'you'd best go get it.'

'My temper?'

'You'll lose it completely unless you're careful. I know a queen who lost hers once,' he grinned, 'dreadful business.'

Edith scrambled to her feet, chasing the tiny, fiery figure as it darted amongst the bushes, shouting at it and panting, soon out of breath. The Cheshire Cat merely hung upside down in midair, extremely entertained by the whole caper.

'Ooh, quick, get it!'

'No, not that way, you'll never catch it that way!'

'You're really very terrible at this!' He was practically delighted.

Edith pounced on it as it crouched in a berry bush, but jumped away from it immediately, gasping and blowing on her smarting fingers.

'It burns!'

'Hot one you've got there, and almost as short as you,' remarked the Cat, his grin widening in amusement.

'Why – don't you – try catching it,' gasped Edith, leaning on her knees and trying to regain her breath, her mouth turned down sulkily.

The Cat disappeared, returning a moment later with Edith's temper trapped inside a jar; a short, stumpy figure beating angrily on the glass.

'Finally,' she panted, reaching for the jar, only to have it whipped away from her as the Cheshire Cat disappeared with it, materialising a few feet down the forest path, waving it at her with his tail.

'You must be joking,' Edith sighed, and started to run after him.

'Alice, but not Alice,' Mallymkun muttered to herself as she trudged through the wood, 'silly, frilly Flowers ...'

She had been on her way home when she passed by the Garden, skirting around the edge of it to avoid dealing with the snooty Plants that lived there, and had overheard an all too familiar name stage-whispered across a patch of Begonias.

'Alice?' said Mally, her ears pricking up automatically, turning back to the Begonias, all of whom looked at her as though she was a weed.

'Hmm? Did you say something Dormouse?' said one of them, peering down at her rather pretentiously.

'Were you lot talking about Alice?'

'Perhaps,' tittered a Daisy two beds away.

'What about her?' said Mally, fingering the pin-sword at her belt.

'One of the Snowdrops says she saw Alice,' said the Daisy.

'But it wasn't Alice,' said a Begonia.

'No, she said it was Alice.'

'But that it also wasn't Alice,' argued the Begonia.

'How can a person be Alice and not be Alice?' cut in a Snapdragon.

'She either was or she wasn't.'

'Or she was and she wasn't.'

'I say she was!'

'No, it was the Snowdrop who said she was!'

'And said she wasn't!'

By this time Mally had lost patience and continued on, puzzling over the Flowers' gossip. Now she was just about to put it down to a silly rumour when she heard a girl shouting. And rather angrily at that. Curious, she scurried through the bushes after the kafuffle, following the furious voice until she managed to catch up with it on one of the main forest paths.

She had expected a certain Cat to have something to do with the stranger's anger, and upon entering the scene she found her suspicions confirmed. Chessur was taunting a tiny young girl with what seemed to be a small jar containing a tiny flicker of fire, and he was enjoying it immensely. The girl, however, was not.

'GIVE IT BACK!'

'Such a violent little thing,' grinned Chessur, evaporating and reappearing not far from where Mally stood. 'If you can't control it then you don't deserve to have it.'

The girl was positively livid, and looked as though she had been dragged backwards through a squimberry bush; her tangled, wild hair was stuck through with many twigs and leaves, and, oddly enough, was dripping slightly; her dress too was damp and torn and her muddy feet were bare. The grubby face currently glaring at Chessur was pointed and sharp, and seemed to be made for the sole purpose of scowling; and she must have been less than six inches high – not much taller than the Dormouse herself. She was fighting tooth and nail for the jar, and Mally suddenly realised what was inside it.

'Well, go on, girlie,' she called, freezing the pair of them, 'get it off him.'

Chessur smiled and smoothly appeared right before her, his tail still curled around the jar.

'Mallymkun,' he beamed, nodding to her.

'Cheshire,' she said, raising an eyebrow, 'I'm guessing that's not yours.'

'You know I've always been utterly in control of my temper,' he replied, twitching the jar out of reach as the girl jumped for it.

'Go on then,' Mally urged at the tiny girl.

'Aren't you going to help?' she panted, jumping up and down.

'You want it so badly, get it yourself,' said Mally bluntly, folding her arms and watching her.

'Hmph.' The girl scowled, and then very suddenly dived for the jar, managing to grab it but falling; rolling across the forest floor. When she stopped both jar and temper had disappeared, and she looked down at her empty hands in dismay.

'Where's it gone?' she wailed.

'Inside you, I should think,' Chessur sighed. 'Now, look, Mally; you've spoiled my fun,' he said congenially.

'Someone has to,' glared Mally, 'before you send someone else off the edge.'

'Oh, come now –' he purred.

'Just go, Chess,' she said, waving his smoke away with one hand.

Chessur disappeared with a slightly offended twist into vapour, leaving Mally alone with the girl.

'Now then,' said Mally, 'who are you exactly?'

'Edith Manchester,' said the girl, who was getting to her feet, 'I'm looking for –'

'Edith?' The name rang a bell somewhere deep in Mally's memory. Edith ... Edith Manchester ...

'Not Alice's niece?' she said finally, looking the girl over again, 'She said you were little but I didn't know she meant –'

'Overdosed on pishsalver,' interrupted the girl, 'and you are?'

'Mallymkun,' she replied, frowning at the familiar needlework on the hem of Edith's dress. 'That – uh, that dress you're wearing ...'

She looked down at herself in a slightly guilty fashion.

'It's ... it's dirty, I know. I fell,' she added, pointing up to the sky.

'Right,' said Mally slowly, still looking at the dress. It seemed terribly familiar ...

She jumped forward, startling the girl, and grabbed the hem of the dress. Underneath the freshly coated mud she managed to make out little flowers, pain-stakingly stitched along the hem, and the familiar, special blue.

'Alice,' she said faintly, 'this is one of Alice's dresses.' She backed away warily, 'Where did you get it?'

'It was in that room, with the doors,' said Edith hurriedly, 'I had to take it; my clothes ...'

Mally was barely listening. She knew she really shouldn't be surprised that they still left Underland open for Alice – that her little dress still sat there in the Round Hall ready for her return. Mally had given up on that a long time ago. She glanced at the stitched flowers again, and her heart gave an aching throb.

'The Hatter made that for her,' she said quietly.

Edith looked down at the dress, then at Mally.

'You know the Hatter?'

Mally blinked.

'You know the Hatter?'

'Yes, I ... Aunt Alice used to tell me stories,' said Edith, 'about the Hatter and the March Hare and the Dormouse and –'

'The Dormouse?' said Mally, stepping forward, 'but I'm – that's me!'

The girl stared at her, slight reverence flickering in her eyes.

'You're the Dormouse?' she smiled for the first time, showing an eager mouthful of teeth. 'Is it true that you fought a Bandersnatch? And stole its eye?'

Mally was taken aback, staring right back at the girl.

'Alice ... told you about me?' she said, surprised.

'Of course she did!' said Edith, grinning. 'You're one of her best friends here, aren't you?'

'I ...' Mally grappled for words, still in a mild state of shock and slightly touched despite herself.

'And you know the Hatter – you know how to get to the clearing and the March Hare's house!' Edith was babbling happily, 'You've got to take me there!'

'What? Why?' said Mally, thrown by this sudden demand.

'I need his help.'

Mally shook her head.

'He won't help you.'

'He will when I talk to him,' said the girl confidently, 'I'm sure of it.'

'You don't get it; he's not going to talk to you – he doesn't talk to anyone,' said Mally.

'He'll talk to me.'

There was no reasoning with her, it seemed. Mally shrugged and began to lead the way, thinking that at least seeing the Hatter would get the girl off Mally's back when Edith realised he was never in any mood to talk to anyone.

'I'm the only who goes to see him now,' she said as they passed through the forest, the girl's walk fast and excited and Mally's unsure and hesitant, 'everyone else avoids him. He only talks properly to me,' she added staunchly, 'don't think you'll be the exception.'

As they neared the clearing the trees began to thin out. They had long grown back after the Red Queen's downfall, and were now as thick and as dark as they had been before; the grass no longer dead and dry but a soft dark green carpet underfoot.

They exited the trees and stopped. Mally watched as Edith gazed at the clearing with an odd mixture of nervousness and disappointment; it was obviously not what she had expected, and she looked like someone who was trying desperately not to be frightened.

The three tables were just as mismatched as always, with stained sheets and cloths covering them. It had taken Mally days to clean up the mess the Hatter had made with his last fit; all by herself except for the Hatter's silent and rare help fixing tables back together and heaving them back into place. Still there were small shards of more recently smashed teacups and teapots littering the ground, and the chairs and tables looked rather battered. The windmill house behind the tables had almost fallen into the same disrepair it had been in during the Red Queen's reign, despite Mally's best efforts to persuade the Hatter to maintain it, and it was attracting most of Edith's dismay.

'I thought the March Hare lived there.'

'Not since the Red Queen took over,' answered Mally, 'he moved into Marmoreal and decided to stay on after she was overthrown. The Hatter lives here now – the Red Guards destroyed his village ...'

The pair entered the clearing, treading carefully so as not to stand on broken china, looking around for any sign of life.

'Where is he?' said Edith despairingly, standing on tiptoe and eyeing a teapot on the table as if she expected him to suddenly pop out of it.

'He could be inside,' said Mally, trying not to be anxious and telling herself it was silly to worry this much about him. But the windmill seemed even emptier of life and in no fit state to support it in any case.

'Why do you need his help specifically?' said Mally as the girl started to pace around the tea tables. 'Why him?'

'He was closest to Aunt Alice, I think,' said the girl rather absently as she passed a stool that was nearly twice her height.

Mally swallowed.

'Yeah, he was,' she said. 'But why does that matter?'

'Because I need to find her.'

'Find her? What do you mean, "find her"?'

The girl stopped, looking over at her, saying nothing.

'Why should you come down here to find her?' said Mally, crossing her arms. 'She's up in the Overland, ain't she?'

Edith didn't answer, looking away and continuing to circle the tables.

'I have to find her and bring her back,' she said instead, 'my mother, her sister – she's sick. Aunt Alice can make her better.'

'But ... but Alice isn't here,' said Mally, not wanting to think what she was thinking, 'she must be up there.'

'She isn't,' said Edith, 'and that's why I've come here.'

Mally dropped her arms, stepping back; a strange, hollow weight sinking to the very bottom of her stomach. Alice was missing? All these years without a sign of contact or a single visit ... Her stomach flipped sickeningly as she realised what the Hatter would do if he knew Alice was –

The girl passed something brown poking out from under the tablecloth; something that looked rather like ... a foot. A shoed foot, to be precise, and as Mally stood frozen to the spot with the horrible certainty that the one person in all of Underland who this prattling, bad-tempered girl should definitely not speak a word to was currently asleep under the table right next to her, the foot twitched.