I'm not quite sure what to make of this chapter as of yet. I was tempted—only for a second of insanity!—to end it at chapter 6. It was an ending of sorts, but I couldn't bring myself to. I mean, there's so much going for Alice here. What'll happen to her next? Where will her life lead her now that she has forsaken her childhood once and for all?
I couldn't just leave it hanging. Besides, I love Bert way to much to just kill him off as a side character! 3
Enjoy!
Chapter 7
Heirlooms
The burial plots were bought. The caskets were chosen, and the flower arrangements received. A sole black carriage with black horses rode through the streets with two mahogany caskets side by side. Madam Gazelle and Alice rode behind them in a smaller carriage, and other mourners followed them. A light haze of drizzle soaked London as it always did on cold March mornings. Sunlight soaked the clouds above, making the gray rain clouds glow bright and green. There was a particular chill to the air that morning that made Alice feel more alone than she actually was.
After all, Madam Gazelle had softened just enough to make Alice dry her tears before the funeral. Or maybe Alice didn't have many tears left to spare, and so she decided to save them. Her eyes felt raw, and her lips wobbled, but she refused the urge with a stubborn dignity. No, I won't cry today, she told herself.
Madam Gazelle reached into her breast pocket and pulled out a kerchief. Wrapped inside was a polished gold locket. "This was around your mother's neck," she said in her clipped, stoic voice. "I believe now it is yours. A heirloom."
Alice didn't even look at it. "It should still be around her neck."
"It wasn't fitting for her attire."
"It was hers."
"Now, it is yours."
Alice shook her head. "I don't want it."
"Alice, you are not a rotten child, so stop behaving as such. Take the locket, and thank me, you thankless dreg." Her voice felt so harsh, Alice couldn't help but to obey. So she took the locket and put it around her neck. "I would have pawned it, but a broken locket is of no use to anyone."
Broken? Alice had seen her mother open it time and again in the drawing room, and so she tried to as well. She put her fingernails between the smooth oval folds of gold, and pressed. It won't open? Puzzled, she tried again.
"I assume that it was damaged in the accident," came the Madam's voice.
The young woman dropped the locket and hid it underneath her black dress. It was the only one she rightfully owned, and it was the only one that fit just so. She felt the cold metal against her chest, and puffed out her chest to feel the indention of it.
Yes, it was there. It was hers now.
"Thank you, Madam Gazelle," she thanked quietly, and looked back out the carriage window.
The Madam replied, "Young women are supposed to take the gifts they receive, and be grateful. Now look sharp and proper, we are approaching the cemetery."
Reginald shoved the tea onto a nightstand and fell back onto his pillows. His head was abuzz like the time he had to clean the chimney of the opium den on River Street, but it was a raw buzz that made his temples throb, and his muscles ache. Like the buzz from too much whiskey on a cold night.
Something was pushing—something was screaming and clawing its way through his mind and memories and gray haze hysterically. It was rising like a bubble—a balloon—up and up like a sore until he could almost remember something—until he almost knew what was wrong.
"I should retire," he muttered to himself darkly. "Get a good family. Join an orphanage. Something productive."
Oh, really? Asked the pinion of light that was rising, crescendo-ing, awakening.
"Yeah, really," he answered himself, massaging the bridge of his nose. Tiredly, he closed his eyes.
And gave a jolt.
Burned inside his eyelids, a sole golden-headed girl swamped in a dress as dark as shadows, stood in a throng of black-suited men in bowler hats and women in high-collared mourning dresses. A translucent black veil hung over her face from the bonnet clasped tight around her head-full of ringlets, but her eyes shone through like saltwater pools, too cold and raw to cry. Against the onset of the small gathered crowd, she glowed almost. She looked so much more important and fragile than the rest of the world who stood on the green, above freshly dug twin set of graves. The headstone, bright and freshly carved, read:
HERE LIES
Richard Pleasance AND HIS WIFE Lynn Pleasance
1824-1856 1832-1856
MAY GOD REJOICE FOR THEIR RETURN
INTO HIS HOLY HANDS
Reginald felt funny. He felt awful—dour and bleak and horrible, like a piece of his chest had been ripped away, to see this beautiful young woman so raw and frozen in the cold. The small little pinions that buzzed in his chest knew her—knew that she was someone to him.
"Who is she?" he whispered, his eyes flying open.
That heavy notion—rising, rising. The pinion was growing brighter—like the sun. It was fleshing and forming and molding. It was lacing through his words and his mind, it was twining into his heart and blossoming through his blood. Awakening, as if from a very long slumber.
Maybe that's your 'something productive,' Mad Hatter.
"Something productive?" asked the bedazzled young man. "Mad…Hatter?"
Once Upon a Golden Afternoon.
Reginald cried out in pain, shoving the palms of his hands into his eyes. They watered, and throbbed. The pain was rushing down his spine now, springing into nerve endings—making him move. Making him productive. He stood without a second thought and ran for the door. He wrenched it open and hurried down the hallway. With each step he stood straighter—with each step he missed down the stairs his eyes grew brighter—brighter until they shown a bright, unearthly blue, and danced with rays of golden afternoons.
At the bottom of the steps, he bumped into Neal and seized him by the shoulders. They connected eyes. A moment of relapse. A pause. And then Neal whispered, "Oh my whiskers—Alice!"
"Alice!" Reginald repeated, shaking his shoulders.
"Alice!" they chanted together, and without another word darted out of the building and down the street, and knew exactly where they had to go. They ran up the stoop to a Victorian-encrusted building with violet siding and a thatched black roof. They banged on the door and asked for Bert.
The butler looked confused, and asked "The chimney sweep?"
"Oh bloody never-mind!" Reginald rolled his eyes and forced himself inside. He skidded down the wooden hallway into the living room, and banged on the sides of the fireplace, calling up to the boy stuck in the chimney. "Bert!"
An echoing voice respond, "What do you want?" A pause. Again, another relapse. "We're late, aren't we?"
"We're more than late! C'mon you stupid rabbit!"
"But—" a yelp echoed all the way down the chimney, accompanied by the chimney sweep whom had lost his footing. Bert tumbled on top of Reginald, and they rolled out of the fireplace in a mass of soot, smoke, and coal. Bert wiped his blackened face on his dirty sleeves, grabbed his broom, and helped Reginald up with it. The two boys locked eyes. A shimmering burst of gold encompassed Bert's irises, and faded to ivy. "Oh dear," he whispered.
"Big problem," Reginald agreed.
The butler of the house rushed into the living room from all the racket, and paled at the sight of the sooty mess. "What in the heavens—you little trouble makers! I better see this cleaned up before the master gets home!"
The two boys ignored him, and b-lined around the distraught butler. The old man grappled for them with gnarled white-gloved fingers, but missed the springy two by miles. Before he could shout out again in warning, the boys were gone, down the damp street and into the mass of London. Towards a string pulling, pulling—towards memories washing and waning, tugging at their limbs to keep them moving. Towards rain, and greenish gloom. Towards something they couldn't quite fathom yet. They were running up the steep cobblestone streets towards the wrought-iron gates that curved and curtsied like flaming vines. They were pushing it open, heading towards the small mass of people hovering over two insignificant graves. Towards a crescendo. Towards a light.
The White Rabbit, Mad Hatter, and March Hare were running—birthing into life through the drizzle and dark rain that had painted them dead so long ago—towards another chance for tea, and the distant smell of golden afternoons.
Towards, inevitably, Alice.
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