Disclaimer:

When I wake up,

The fic isn't done,

I sit here writing though I know it's not my own.

I swear that it's true,

What more can I do?

I am still writing fanfics for you.

CHAPTER SIX – RAVINGS AND RAVENS

Mally grabbed the girl's hand, which was easy enough as the two were nearly equal in height, and tried to tug her away, watching the foot.

'Edith,' she said unsteadily, 'we have to go.'

'We can't. Not until he comes back.'

'No, Edith, we have to go now,' she hissed, pulling on her arm.

'Why?'

'Oh, don't ask questions; just move!'

'But why?' said Edith stubbornly, raising her voice.

Mally cringed, eyes fixed on the stirring foot under the purple tablecloth. She saw Edith follow her gaze to it, then, to her horror, start forward.

'No! What are you doing?' she hissed urgently as the girl crept over to the table. 'Get back here, you stupid pillock!'

'Hatter?' Edith whispered as she neared the foot – which was almost as long as she was tall.

Something shifted underneath the table, the foot pointing and stretching, exposing five inches of darkly striped sock. A familiar low mutter rumbled like a far off storm, restless and barely discernable.

'Hatter?' said Edith more loudly.

'No!' Mally jumped forward, trying to shut her up. She doubted that Alice had told her niece how very angry the Hatter could get; and even if she had she wouldn't have known just how dangerous he could be these days.

The girl ignored her tugging on her dress, and Mally swore softly as the mutter under the table became more distinct; she could clearly hear that it still hadn't changed from the Scottish brogue.

'... Once upon a midnight dreary ...'

Mally groaned. He had been at the poetry books again.

'Edith! Will you shut up and listen to me?'

'Hatter, I need your help!'

'It's not safe!' Mally pulled back on Edith's skirt but only succeeded in slipping and falling, bringing the girl down with her. Edith tumbled into a chair with a deafening clatter, and fell against the tablecloth, knocking the stretching foot; which twitched, alert.

'"Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door,"' came the low brogue, tingling Mally's spine in the way it always did, '"only this and nothing more."'

Edith jumped back from the table, then, again ignoring Mally's frantic waves and gestures, experimentally poked the cloth.

'And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain ...'

'Edith,' Mally whispered frantically, 'get away from him.'

Edith merely made a gruesome face at her, and poked the tablecloth again.

'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door – some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; this it is and nothing more.'

'Hatter?' Edith called through the cloth.

'Sir,' he said, 'or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; but the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping; and so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door; that I scarce was sure I heard you,' and the table cloth was drawn back, and out peered two yellow eyes, shadowed and red-rimmed; a pale face framed by a bush of wild, orange hair.

Edith recoiled immediately, letting out a shocked little scream and falling back onto her elbows. She crawled backwards, scrabbling to get away.

Mally raised an eyebrow at her, half amused and half irritated. Serves her right, she thought. Still, she was jumping with anxiety. She had to get the girl away from him before she blabbed everything.

'Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter; in there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore ...' murmured the Hatter, staring at Edith with unblinking yellow eyes.

'I'm not a raven,' said Edith obtusely, leaning as far away from him as she possibly could.

'It's poetry,' said Mally, in a tone that translated as; 'it's vomit-inducing sentimentality'. 'And now, we should go.'

'Why?'

Mally grit her teeth; 'I'm trying to stop you from getting hurt, so shut up.'

Edith looked at her for a minute, as if weighing up her options, then turned to the Hatter; leaving Mally to bite back a cry of impatience, throwing her hands in the air.

'Hatter, I need your help.'

He jumped back, knocking his head against the table, as if only just noticing her, and seeming just as surprised and unsettled as she was; goggling at her with wide eyes as though shocked at her very existence.

'Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,' he muttered to himself as Edith's prim little mouth dropped open in offense, 'though its answer little meaning – little relevancy bore ...'

'Hatter?' Mally started forward, one hand out. He didn't look at her.

'Wretch!' he cried suddenly, startling Edith once more, 'thy God hath lent thee – by these angels he has sent thee; respite – respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore!'

'Lenore?' Edith's brow wrinkled in puzzlement.

'It doesn't mean anything; come away now,' said Mally, trying a different approach; to coax the girl away, 'it's dramatics.'

Edith was scared of him, that much Mally could see. His appearance would probably be frightening to an Otherlander at the best of times; Mally couldn't be sure as she was no expert. She had only ever made one venture into the Otherland, and had found it dull and almost ugly; devoid of colour and variety as if something had sucked it dry. Not to mention how disgusting all of the animals were up there.

The Hatter leant forward, still staring unnervingly at Edith, as if trying to nut her out. Then he blinked, his orange-red eyebrows shooting up.

'Prophet!' said he, 'thing of evil! – prophet still, if bird or devil ...'

'I'm not a bird!' said Edith hotly, sending a glare slap-bang into his face.

He didn't flinch, eyes burning into her face and continuing, a mad desperation shading the edges of his rolling tone.

'Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aidenn, it shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore –'

'Who's this Lenore he keeps on about?'

'It's in the poem,' said Mally impatiently, still on edge, 'now do you see he's not going to talk to you? You won't get a sensible word out of him.'

'Hatter,' said Edith, snapping her fingers in his face, 'Hatter. It's about Alice-oomph!'

Mally went into a wild dive, muffling the girl's mouth in a headlock.

'Shut – up,' she hissed, shaking her firmly.

But the damage was done.

'Alice?' It was a different voice that spoke now, softer – as soft as a child. Colours flickered in the Hatter's eyes briefly.

Edith shrugged the frozen Mally off, looking around them in confusion.

'Who said that?'

'He did,' said Mally, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. 'Are you thick?'

'He's got two voices!'

'Oh, Auntie Alice didn't tell you that, did she?' said Mally, unable to help the mocking edge to her voice. 'It's all lovely fairy stories for you.'

'Alice ...'

Mally's gaze snapped onto the Hatter. He was staring down at his hands as though he'd never seen them in his life before.

'Alice ... a boat beneath a sunny sky ...' he murmured, head on one side, staring vacantly.

Mally nearly flinched. She knew that poem well.

'Hatter?' she asked.

He finally looked up at her, and she smiled weakly at him.

'Mallymkun.' He frowned. 'I've been feeling a little ... blue,' the Scotsman slipped in uncontrollably, determined to get a word in. He paused for a moment, swallowed carefully, and continued.

'I keep seeing her ... disappearing. Poof,' he said hoarsely, reaching a hand to the thin air in front of him, 'right in front of me.'

Mally glanced at Edith; she was staring, obviously now convinced that the Hatter was positively deranged, edging back further away.

'One second she'll be there ... and then ... that – POOF!' he bellowed without warning, leaping to his feet; nearly knocking the table over and sending a stack of books that had been piled into a seat flying.

Edith squeaked and Mally pulled her out of the way, just in time for them both to avoid being squashed by a heavy encyclopaedia.

'Where is he?' the Hatter was shouting, looking wildly at the air surrounding them. 'Where is he?'

'Hatter!' cried Mally, pushing the girl behind her. 'The Cat's not here; he never comes near here – remember, I told him!'

The Hatter sat down just as abruptly as he had stood, legs sprawling in the dirt. He was silent for a moment, staring at the ground as frowns and grimaces flitted over his face; then he seemed to notice Edith once more.

'And what is this?' He scrambled onto his stomach, leaning on his elbows and studying the small girl, who stepped back hurriedly.

'Not a raven, that is sure,' he observed, 'is it ... a Rhoda?'

Edith blinked and shook her head, stunned.

'No? Perhaps a little Lorina? Not quite like a Lorina. A Violet or a Rachael Rose? Marion? Emily, at all? Lillietta or Serena? No, absolutely, no,' he decided with a wrinkle of the nose. 'Briony or Ebony? Or Enoby, perhaps,' he guessed, 'A Carol or a Coraline? A Wendy? A Dorothy?' He edged a little closer, and whispered, 'An Alice?'

Edith stared at his wide, wide yellow eyes, and said so faintly that Mally barely caught it; 'Don't call me Alice.'

'Alice?' he asked himself, giving no sign as to whether he'd heard her or not. 'No, definitely not Alice,' he answered, 'wrong face. Right bone structure,' the other voice cut in, 'lovely bones, right there,' he poked at the girl's face, nearly jabbing her eye out.

'Hatter!' Mally pulled Edith away again, steering her back towards the forest. 'Come on, you've seen enough –'

'No!' Edith suddenly put up an alarming struggle to get back to the Hatter, pushing at Mally determinedly, 'I have to find her! My mother needs – let go – I have to –'

'Alice but not Alice,' the Hatter muttered as Mally attempted in vain to drag the girl back to the safety of the trees.

'Quasi-Alice ... half-Alice ... mother...' A conclusion emerged in the Hatter's eyes, the ill-looking colour of a bruise, 'part Alice?'

Mally froze.

'No, Hatter,' she started, but he was already standing, leaning heavily on the table, making the china rattle as his hands shook.

'Part Alice?' he said again, staring at Edith with his bruised eyes, 'you ...? You're ... you're her ...? Child?'

'No, no –'

'So it's true then,' he said quietly, in that soft, sad voice that tore at Mally's insides so badly she wished he was shouting, 'she doesn't need us anymore. She grew up and she ...' the words seemed to stick in his mouth as he gazed down at them; at Edith, who was shaking her head dumbly, eyes transfixed on the Hatter's shaking hands.

'Dormouse ...' she said, with the same faint croak as before, cutting off the blood in Mally's arm, 'make him stop.'

'She's finished with us and now her child comes in her stead ... I suppose,' the Hatter said with a thinly spread half-smile, 'it's better than being forgotten.'

'Tarrant,' said Mally, gathering her resolve, 'don't be a prat.'

She cursed inwardly, her mind skimming through pros and cons, ways of sorting out this bloody messy situation; some way, any way to make him stop talking like that – to stop him looking so terribly sad because of her, always because of her.

'She's just a little girl,' she began, inventing desperately, 'wandering about; I found her in the Outlands, just like –'

She bit the sentence off, remembering how that particular adventure had been spent with none other than the woman she was trying to drive the subject away from.

'Um ... she ...' Mally floundered, her lie growing thinner by the second as the Hatter stared down at her.

'She looks like her, Mally,' said the Hatter.

'No she doesn't,' said Mally, half confused and a bit annoyed.

'Underneath,' he said, glancing at the girl, whose mouth was opening and shutting like a haddock, 'somewhere underneath.'

Mally didn't know what to say to this.

'I'm not an Alice,' said the girl, finally finding her voice, 'I'm an Edith.'

'Oh, you great eejit,' huffed Mally, shoving at her.

'Edith?' echoed the Hatter, 'You're Edith?'

And then he was down on the ground crouching, bent to talk to her.

'You're her niece,' he almost smiled in something akin to relief, then another frown flickered into place at some emerging memory. 'Where's Alice?' he asked in the soft, child-like voice, searching Edith's tiny face for clues.

Mally saw Edith open her mouth to reply, and promptly dragged her away, the Hatter following them with his gaze but not moving from his slumped position by the table. When they were out of earshot Mally released the struggling, wriggling girl.

'Mmph-Dormouse! I have to tell him!' she said, adding haughtily, 'It's only right, you know.'

'Oh, how noble,' she sneered, 'and would that be out of actual concern for him or just for your own interests?'

'I'm hurt,' retorted the girl sarcastically, without bothering to attempt to deny the accusation.

'I'm sure,' snorted Mally. 'Don't you understand; if he finds out that Alice is ...' the words refused to come out, clogging up her throat almost painfully.

'If you think she's dead then you're wrong,' said Edith, not a flicker of doubt shadowing the statement.

'We'd know if Alice came through here,' said Mally, 'McTwisp regulates all the doors in and out of Underland and there hasn't been a whisper of her since Jestenlovell Day, and that was many years ago. She's either run off somewhere in your world –'

'She wouldn't!' said Edith adamantly. 'Apart from Wonderland there's no place she'd ever run away to without telling us. And the police could never find a single lead; she just vanished!'

'Then the answer is obvious!' Mally near-shouted in frustration, 'Just admit it!'

'Don't you want her to be found?'

The question was meant to be rhetorical, Mally knew – there was no real accusation behind it – and yet she couldn't ignore the pang of guilt she felt. She fell silent, causing Edith to look at her rather oddly.

'Don't you?'

'T'was brillig and the slithy toves, did gyre and gimble in the wabe,' the Hatter was murmuring poetry again; this time it was Outlandish poetry.

Edith turned to look at him, suddenly mesmerised. She trailed back over towards him, and Mally followed her, ready to drag her away again.

'All mimsy were the borogroves ...'

'And the mome raths outgrabe ...' the girl finished, surprising both Mallymkun and the Hatter.

'How do you ...?' But Mally already guessed the answer to that one.

'Aunt Alice used to sing me to sleep with it,' said Edith, a rare smile softening her face momentarily, 'well, I mean she would whisper it until I fell asleep. She used to sing lots of other songs though ... "hush-a-by lady in Alice's lap, till the feast's ready we've time for a nap, when the feast's over we'll go to the ball – Red Queen and White Queen and Alice and all..." and one about lobsters and a snail ...' her little face scrunched up, 'I can't remember it,' she said somewhat forlornly.

The Hatter was staring at her.

'Used to?' he said weakly.

Mally's eyes darted from the Hatter to Edith, who had stiffened as she realised her mistake.

'Where is she?' he asked again, looking from one to the other, his voice pained.

'That's the problem, you see,' said Edith with a nervous titter, 'I don't know.'

'She didn't come back,' he said, his eyes haunted by some long ago memory, 'she hasn't come back. She forgot me, I thought, I was scared – I – I – it's my fault – I shouldn't have – the most foolish – she'll hate me, I thought, she's going to hate me – so foolish...' the words were stuttering out, gathering pace and anxiety as the anguish grew in his expression, 'she'll want to forget me after this – because I shouldn't have – she doesn't – doesn't feel ... and now I'm here missing Alice and it's all my own fault and I'm missing – missing my gravity – gravity – my – Alice!' it ended in a strangled yelp, and he ducked his contorted face into his hands; like a small boy trying to hide the fact that he was crying.

'Hatter?' Mally stepped closer, and after a moment his head rose up again.

'What happened to her?' he asked Edith hoarsely.

'She disappeared years ago,' said the girl, 'and now my mother's terribly sick and Aunt Alice can make her better. I'd always thought she was here, but now when I've come to find her and everyone tells me they haven't seen her at all,' this last sentence was added with a rather sulky sniff.

The Hatter considered this in silence, staring off into the distance.

'She's not coming back,' said Mally gently, and suddenly her own statement, the force of it, hit her. She's not coming back. She's gone. Her stomach flipped over, and all at once she felt very, very guilty; guilty for not knowing whether she was happy or sad about this. She had always been outshone by Alice, had always been turned into the third wheel when she was around; no longer the Hatter's closest friend, the only one who could calm him. She had wished, as much as she'd hated herself for it, that Alice would stop visiting and leave them alone, and everything could go back to how it was before the Red Queen's reign; and yet at the same time she'd been terrified of the day when Alice did stop visiting – she had always known it would come, and she had always known she would be the one left to pick up the pieces like always.

The Hatter was still silent; staring at Mally as if she had just kicked him in the stomach. She couldn't hold his gaze, and looked down at the ground instead.

'She's not dead,' he said finally.

Mally looked up. Dark clouds were brewing in his eyes again; even his clothing was dimming visibly in colour.

'Hatter,' she said carefully, breathing deep, 'just stop and think –'

'She's not dead,' he insisted, leaning forwards and looming over them with dark and wild eyes.

'She's not here and she's not there; where else could she be?' exclaimed Mally, backing away with Edith.

'How shall the ritual then be read – the requiem how be sung? An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young,' he hissed, an angry twist to his voice, 'how now, Mallymkun?'

'I vote "not dead",' said Edith, peeking out from behind Mally as the Hatter's shadow fell over them.

'Shut yeh' gob!' Mally snapped.

'Don't I get a say at all?' she said in her most petulant tone.

'You've already had all your "says" from now until Nickleymus Day –'

'SHE'S-NOT-DEAD-NOT-DEAD-NOT-DEAD!' It came out in jumbled mass of roared words, tripping over each other as they burst out of him, his eyes flaring to nearly red for a half a second.

'Hatter!' said Mally sharply. The shout got through finally; the fire in him went out and he slumped over, suddenly subdued once more, his face sinking into his hands. He was trembling.

Mally ripped her arm out of Edith's grip and ran to him, scurrying up from his knee to his arm to his shoulder to lean against his cheek precariously, trying to peer into his eyes. He brushed her away. Taken by surprise, she toppled off his shoulder and hit the ground behind him with a painful thud.

'I'm fine,' he muttered darkly, his voice breaking.

Mally got to her feet, rubbing at her crushed arm and glaring at him.

'You won't be needing me then,' she said as harshly as she could muster, 'I'll just leave you here to wallow and trash Thackery's house until it falls down around your ears, shall I?'

There was no reply. She grabbed the gaping Edith's arm and tugged her away.

'Come on.' Mally knew she'd be back the next day to clean up whatever mess of himself he'd made, but right now she couldn't stand being near him a moment longer.

'Wait,' came the choked cry.

They both turned to see him heaving himself to his feet again; it took so much obvious effort that Mally wondered with a pang when the last time he'd eaten was.

'Child,' he said, addressing Edith, 'how did you get down here?'

Mally turned to the girl beside her, frowning.

'How did you get down here?' she asked.

Edith gaped for a half-second, then stuck her chin out defiantly.

'I came looking Aunt Alice, I told you –'

'No, but how did you get down here?' said Mally.

'I – I ...' She considered this for a moment. 'I just ... I was trying to get to Aunt Alice's old house, but ... I fell. Into water,' she squinted, trying to remember, 'I fell because,' she continued slowly, 'I was following the butterfly.'

'A butterfly?'

Mally exchanged a glance with the Hatter.

'It can't be him,' she said.

'What colour was it?' he asked Edith.

'Blue.'

'You're sure? Absolutely, utterly, entirely and completely sure?'

'Yes,' said Edith confidently, 'bright blue.'

Mally looked over at the Hatter warningly. His jacket was beginning to turn back to its original brown; the tattered fabrics that streamed out of one pocket and out of his sleeves lightened visibly – even his large bow tie perked up.

'I know what you're thinking,' she said cautiously, 'but he can't be the only blue butterfly up there, you know.'

'But then how else did she get down here?' said the Hatter, his eyes slowly brightening as he straightened where he sat, staring down at Edith. But Mally knew his mind was somewhere else entirely.

'They still leave the door open for her,' she protested as he stood and grabbed a stale-looking scone from the table, gulping it down as if he'd only just remembered that he had a stomach.

'I know,' he mumbled with a mouthful of scone, the signs of a smile threatening to break out on his face, 'but not just anyone could have got in.'

'Even if it is him,' said Mally, 'and I'm not saying that it is; why would that make any difference to whether Alice is … well ….'

'He was always wiser than the rest of us, Mally. They used to say he was the only Underlander who could bear to read all of the Oraculum.'

'What are you talking about?' wailed Edith in confusion.

'Hatter, you're setting yourself up for disappointment! Again,' she added half to herself despairingly.

'Alice saved our lives once, Mally, if you do care to remember,' he said, diving under the table momentarily and reappearing with his hat in one hand. He brushed the cobwebs off it and jammed it decisively atop his shock of red hair with a grin nearly reminiscent of his former self, 'It's only polite to extend the same courtesy to her, you know.'

'Like courtesy is the only reason you've ever gone gallivanting after her,' Mally muttered under her breath rather mutinously.

If the Hatter had heard her he gave no indication.

'Now,' he said, stuffing a spare scone in his pocket, with a slight wrinkle of his nose, 'to Marmoreal!'

And he set off into Tulgey Wood without so much as a backward glance.

Mally looked at Edith, and Edith looked at back at her, and they both ran helter-skelter after him, as fast as they could on their tiny legs.

'Oi! What do think you're doing?'

'HELP ME FIND AUNT ALICE!' begged Edith.

'If you don't shut up about Aunt Alice I'll stick you!'

'WAIT!'

The Hatter turned back to them irritably.

'No, no, go on, Mally,' he said, shooing her away with both hands, 'take the girl back to the Overland.'

'No chance,' she said firmly, 'I'm going with you to find Alice.'

'So am I!' said Edith, 'She's my aunt and I am not going home until I've got her with me; and you can't make me go home because I'll just come straight back down again, just see if I don't and –' she gasped as the Hatter scooped her up and sat her on his hat brim abruptly, to shut her up if anything. It worked rather well as method of Shutting Edith Up, as she had all the breath quite knocked out of her; Mally made careful note of this.

'And me,' she called up, 'you have to take me!'

'Mally, forgive me,' the Hatter said, avoiding her eyes, 'this is something I'd rather do alone.'

Mally was speechless.

'You take the shrieking niece but you don't take me?' she said, outraged, 'Even though I've been the only one visiting for all this time; even though I'm the only one who really stuck by you; even though I could actually help?'

Tarrant gazed at her in that stomach-flippingly intent way of his, then slowly crouched down; extending a mercury-scarred, blotched hand to her and a half-sad half-smile.

'Come then, Mally,' he said softly, and she scurried onto the hand and was lifted up onto the hat beside Edith, who shifted over to make room for her at the front of the brim.

'Is it he like that often?' Edith whispered as the Hatter set off through the wood.

'Like what?'

'Up and down.'

'Oh, yeah,' she sighed tiredly, 'trust me; you're going to need my help.'

And even though Mallymkun had terrible misgivings about this, and yet also felt strangely about the misgivings themselves, even though her own emotions regarding Alice's apparent disappearance were still conflicting; even though she was already frightened that the Hatter would uncover an awful truth and finally break completely, she couldn't help but feel strangely happy.

For now was the first time in years that the Hatter's eyes had returned to their true, bright green.