Why Are You Here?

The corridor wound its way further and further down. The hookah hoses were pulled tight to the ceiling, and looked like massive serpents in the growing dim. The only thing lighting the path were phosphorescent bugs clinging to the hoses, puffing little bits here and there through holes they'd pierced. Their blank eyes followed Hatter as he raced farther down, cradling Alice tightly against his chest.

Finally the corridor stopped, and they were facing a massive mirror. Or, at least part of a mirror. The whole thing seemed buried. In fact, it seemed that the part that they could see was rimmed by the lids of a stylized wooden eye...

"Oh, Jester. You kept it. I never knew." Hatter whispered, awed and unable to go through the impasse. Alice wriggled from his arms, terrified of both the mirror and the oncoming army ants. "Hatter, we've got to get out of here! I don't know how many of them I can fight!" As she said this, she unwound the ribbons from her right boot. She armed her right hand with throwing knives, and her left with a long, wicked-looking hooked dagger. She stayed crouched, so that she might easily grab more weapons as she needed them.

"Seriously, Alice, where did you get all those?!" Hatter said, his eyes bugging as he watched the display.

"Later!" Alice yelled. They could hear the tiny spiked feet of the army ants swarming closer, and the heavier crunch of the General clambering among them. They peered hard into the soft gloom. The only true light came from a mass of the phosphorescent bugs that were huddled around the spot where the hoses ran into the earthen wall. Hatter kept peering over his shoulder at the mirror. Slowly, the mirror began to glow, then to shimmer.

"Avenge the Queen, troops! Don't let him get---" The General stopped as he caught sight of the 'Queen,' armed and kneeling, facing off against him. The troops stopped with their General, confused. "My Q-Queen, you live! But what--" he stared at the mirror, a growing look of horror dawning on his face.

Hatter saw recognition in the creature's eyes, and screamed, "Get out, General! You can't stay here! Run!" The large ant stumbled, tossing his head from side to side. But he couldn't stop staring at the mirror.

Alice was completely confused, but decided to just trust Hatter for now, and follow his lead. "General, I command you to leave here at once! Draw your troops back, NOW!"

The General snapped his head to her, and seemed able to breathe again. With a stern salute, he did an about-face (which was impressive, with such a long body, and so many legs), and marched away. His troops had a harder time looking away from the mirror, but they, too, turned and left, stumbling up the tunnel.

"Well, Queen Alice. How does it feel to have given your first command?" Hatter whispered, looking at her askance.

Alice glared at him, but said nothing. Instead, she began winding the ribbons and knives back around her boot. Feeling his eyes on her as she did so, she whispered, "I'll tell you about the knives, if you explain what's happening to the creatures here."

"Of course," was all he replied.

"Whinton Beck is a boy who lives down past our acreage. He used to try to play with my little brother and I. But he's a blacksmith's boy, so he had to sneak through the copse of trees and whistle for us. Mother—er—Clarice never would have stood for a us playing with a boy so below our station. He's younger than Will would have been." She stopped a moment, but didn't look up. Then she continued winding the ribbons, replacing each blade carefully.

"Times are tough for blacksmiths. Too much work has gone to the steel mills. So Mr. Beck had a beautiful and varied collection just sitting in his shop, and I had money and food for them both. And I had a problem with suitors. Mr. Beck was sympathetic. We had an arrangement that suited us both. I'm just surprised, if you've been seeing into my room through my mirror for so long, that you never knew about it." Alice finished tying up the ribbons, and searched Hatter's face for a reaction.

"You lace your boots up on the other side of your bed," the man said, matter-of-factly. "I always wondered why it took you so long."

"You...you've been watching me dress," Alice stuttered, reaching to a wall to steady herself. Instead her hand found the mirror. She didn't notice it shimmering.

"Ab. So. Lute. Ly." Hatter intoned each syllable, satisfaction making his voice drop low. "Incidentally, I've also been watching you un-dress. Can't say which was better."

Alice wanted to be angry, wanted to be disgraced. But he wasn't pushing her at all. He stood a few feet away, and seemed comfortable enough just chatting. He was making no advance, and no lurid sickness strangled his voice. She could see him, in her mind's eye, watching her through the mirror. Interested. Aroused, maybe. Like seeing the neighbor girl through her window each night. And, really, there was no hurt or ill intended towards her. Compared to every single other male that'd ever been interested in her, Hatter was almost innocent. Almost. The heat rose in her face.

But what a candid confession! "You're mad, you know?"

"We're all mad, here, Alice. But then, you knew that, didn't you?"

Alice shook her head.

"No, I suppose you don't really know at all. Though I've no idea why you don't."

"I don't understand why the mirror would kill the General..." Alice started.

"The mirror wouldn't harm the General at all. But the truth would surely kill him." Hatter looked up at the shimmering surface. Alice looked too, and drew her hand back. "What's happening to it?" she asked.

"Oh, I've no idea. I'm sure we'll find out soon enough, though!" He grinned warmly at her. "Alice, every creature in 'Wonderland' knows what these things are. Because we all came through one of them to get here. We all came from Kazan. Just like you."

Alice started to quake. "From—you—from ...you all came from there? But, how? No! No, no, no I never went through a mirror at Kazan! I only went through the looking-glass over the mantle!" She was panicked, and wasn't even stopping for breath. "No, no, no, NO! You were all too wonderful to come from there! And happy! NO!" she yelled. She was pacing now.

"Alice!" Hatter cut in, "Slow down! What do you mean you've never been through a mirror at Kazan? That's why that place exists!" The madman was growing a bit upset himself. He wondered for a moment if the truth was going to kill Alice, too.

The young woman, though, stopped short. "That...that's why it exists? To take crazy people to Wonderland?"

Hatter laughed. It was a desperate, crooning sound. "When you put it that way, it sounds so sweet!" He laughed some more, tears forming and falling, but right along the path of the black markings on his face, so that Alice didn't see them at first. When she noticed, she put a hand on his shoulder. "I don't understand. Why do they send you here?"

Hatter sniffed a little, then straightened. He towered over her by at least a foot. "You know, you're quite short."

"Hatter!"

"I don't know, Alice. But we're experiments. Unsanctioned, illegal, inhumane, and (apparently) profitable experiments. Every one of us was strapped down in front of a mirror, an Aranmula Kannadi, and plunged into darkness. Then, somehow, our spirits were forced through. And we never saw our home again."

He looked past her, face falling, at the glimmering mirror. "We show up, in a world of madness, still fettered as we were in the Kannadi room, and that's it for us. Until our body dies. Then, it's just a matter of time before our spirit, here in 'Wonderland,'" and he spat the word at her, "gets broken by some twit who can't keep her mouth shut."

His sudden anger frightened Alice. "Hatter! I didn't know! I would never try to murder anyone's s-soul...there were no mirrors in Kazan! Hatter!" She just kept clutching his arms, trying to explain, but her self-control was slipping.

He only glared at her. He didn't believe her, and his anger was making him...well...sane. "Oh, but Alice you just told Jester, your 'Caterpillar,' a different story. 'I'll break you all with my words! I'll break you 'til you're broken like me!'" he sang loudly, snatching her hands and whirling her away from him. "Is that what you'll do, now that I've brought you here? Kill what's left of all of us?"

Alice started to cry as she regained her feet, but tears hadn't stopped flowing down Hatter's face. His shirt was beginning to sop with them. "NO! I came here to...to..." She couldn't say, 'run away.' It sounded awful and cowardly, even to her. She looked at the ground. "I came here because you brought me back. To keep my promise to William. I thought this was where I was supposed to be."

Her stuttering wasn't doing much to placate Hatter, and she could sense it. "I thought you'd never been to Kazan, Alice, and that that was why you didn't know what your mirror was. I thought you'd used the Queen's mirrors somehow, and that you could help us. But you've BEEN there. Hell, Alice, you recited the rhyme they use in the Kannadi room! YOU KNOW DAMNED WELL WHAT YOU'RE DOING!"

Alice's blanched. Even in the soft light, it was easy to see that all color was gone, and only the sallow sockets of her eyes held any contrast to the pallor of her cheek. She spoke softly, as though understanding the words for the first time.

"All will be well, holy and good,

When your ribbons are done up tight

And the Doctor will cure,

And the Priest will bless,

With a mirror, a string and a knife."

"That's what that room was. That's why they kept taking me there." Alice wasn't even speaking to Hatter. "Kannadi room. Heh. All that time, I thought the other children were saying 'candy room'." Alice laughed. "Candy room! Ha-ha-ha-haaa!" The laugh strangled itself out, and Alice looked back at Hatter, her own madness gleaming in her eyes.

"And that's why it hurt. It hurt so much. They tie you up in ribbons, in straitjackets. The mirror, to steal my soul, and make me stop talking about Wonderland. So they could keep their dirty little secrets. The doctor was supposed to 'cure' us. And the priest would bless the whole thing. The whole damned Asylum." She was smiling now, as though finally making some horrible sense of it was the most wonderful thing she could hope for.

"No." Hatter said. "The priest blessed the mirrors. It's what makes them work the way they do. They're just mirrors, otherwise. Highly polished metals, with no glass. There's no distortion, no space between the image of this world and it's reflection," he said. He was watching her again. Alice said nothing to this, she just stared back at him. He continued, "But without the Priest Marione, they're just looking-glasses." His anger was deflating, and now he just wondered. What the hell was going on with this girl?

"They couldn't push me through, Hatter. I never...I never understood it all. I thought they just wanted to hurt me. They just kept putting me in that room, over and over. No matter how much I screamed, no matter how much I vomited, no matter how I begged, they kept putting me back there." Her eyes were dead-looking again. They hardly saw Hatter at all. She walked over to him, and crouched to the ground, hugging her knees to her chest and rocking a little. Hatter, too, knelt down. He wanted to put a hand on her, wanted to apologize for presuming so much. But he was afraid to touch her.

"My soul hurt, Hatter. My chest...my chest was going to explode. My mind was being split apart, but they wouldn't stop. Is that what it's like, when they push you through the mirror?"

"I don't know. Everyone I've met that first comes through says that it doesn't hurt at first. The Priest just holds them up against the Kannadi, bound up tight, and starts to recite the poem. They say he made it up to calm us down," Hatter said, darkly. His grin returned, but the tears hadn't gone. Alice stared at his tears, transfixed.

"I don't understand the rest of the rhyme. What's the string? And what's the...knife?"

Hatter finally reached to Alice, hesitantly. He touched her face, then breathed easier. Her eyes grew wide, but she didn't flinch. She just kept watching his tears fall. "They say that they can feel a pulling when they're coming through the mirror. As though there were a string in their back. And when they start to scream from sudden pain, it's as though someone cut a string. They say that's why the Priest always carries a knife."

Alice nodded. She traced a small scar along her neck. Hatter watched.

"I've seen the Priest's knife," she said, matter-of-factly. "Dr. Aranmula held it to my throat after I murdered his son."

A/N: It's been so long since I've updated! So glad to finally get this chapter out. I'm setting straight to work on the next chapter. This one was too short, and pretty bumpy. Still, I hope this chapter answers a few questions for you!