..
The Great Library, Or Most of It, Anyway, was about a day's ride from the Palace. The morning was mostly uneventful, with the exception of one teahead who tried to attack Alice by springing out of the bushes. He ran up to their horse, brandishing a knife and yelling nonsense - she kicked him in the head and he went down like a bag of potatoes.
"Well," she said. "That was boring." And they rode on.
..
Alice had forgotten how bright Wonderland was.
All the colors seemed to leap out at her as they trotted along the lakeside, saturated greens and browns and yellows in the forest, blues and greens and even glimpses of deep purple swirling and glittering in the lake as it lapped along the shore. Every now and then she could see a flash of red dart by under the water, and around midday she was finally able to catch sight of one of the bright red fish leaping into the air, beak snapping and shaking its claws at her before diving back in.
After a few minutes waiting in vain for another red fish to appear, she grew bored and looked into the forest for more peculiar wildlife. Almost at once, she noticed something tall, gray, and hidden in the trees.
"What's that?" she pointed.
Hatter turned to look, frowning. His eyes darted around for a minute, flitting from tree to tree distractedly until his confused expression finally focused on something… and slowly relaxed into a smile. "Figures," he chuckled softly, rubbing a weathered hand over his face. "Charlie!" he yelled ahead of them. "We've got a quick detour to make, don't get lost," and he turned off the path toward the gray figure. "You're gonna love this," he said over his shoulder as they moved through the thick branches.
It was cooler as they moved deeper into the forest, the tall trees providing shade against the sun. Every now and then a single, stubborn ray of light would break through in a focused beam, scattering the dust in the air and swirling about as the upper leaves blew in the wind. Birds called to each other over their heads in a cacophony of sounds Alice didn't recognize, a whole party on the treetops fading into silence the farther they rode.
They rode in much deeper than Alice had originally estimated, the gray figure in front of them growing larger and larger as they approached. "What is it?" she whispered as they cleared the last branches. It must have been fifteen feet tall, wide enough at its base that Alice's arms would barely reach halfway across.
"It's a monument," Hatter whispered reverently, dismounting and helping Alice down as well. "It was put up in secret about a hundred years ago, once the Queen of Hearts started to rise in strength again. Its location has been kept secret in these woods for decades. I've never seen it for myself." He shook his head and chuckled. "Figures you would find it right off the bat though, doesn't it?"
She looked askance at his wry smile and opened her mouth to retort with a comeback of her own, but the words died on her lips as they finally reached the front of the monument and she found herself staring into the wide, stone eyes of none other than the Alice of Legend herself.
She was humongous, but her delicately arched fingers and dainty feet betrayed her youth, a girl of maybe seven or eight years old. So young, Alice thought, remembering her own first trip through the Looking Glass and wondering that a girl so small could withstand such confusion and uncertainty, all alone in a strange world, and yet still accomplish so much.
"She must have been very brave," she breathed. Hatter didn't say anything, just hugged her closer from behind, letting her absorb more of the girl's features: the artists had been meticulous in every detail. Her long, curled hair, a heart-shaped face with wide eyes and a slightly parted mouth, tiny finger poised as if about to ask a question, the wrinkles in the fabric of her dress, the way her petticoat stuck out an inch or so at the bottom, just a bit too big for such a small girl. The longer she looked at it, the more the statue seemed to become alive; there was a tear at the bottom of her apron, a stain on the cuff of her dress, her hair ruffled ever so slightly in the breeze, the scuffed patent Mary Janes she wore were just a little bit too small, and they were hurting her feet, her lips moved as though she were about to say—
"If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there."
She jumped at the sound of Hatter's voice, sucking in a ragged breath—she hadn't realized she'd stopped breathing. "What?" she coughed.
He pointed towards a plaque at the base of the statue, where the quote was written in bold script. Alice looked back at the face of the small girl, now a statue once again. For an instant, she thought she had seen—but never mind.
"Good advice," she said.
"Indeed," Hatter said. "Legend says this monument moves around Wonderland, and can only be found by those who aren't looking for it. I used to know people who would try to make pilgrimages to this place, back when the Queen was at the peak of her power. Most of them never found it, but they insisted it was the searching that was the most important. After all," he kissed the back of Alice's head. "She was just trying to find her way home, too."
Alice hummed in agreement, still looking for any sign of life, but whatever she had seen was gone. A trick of Wonderland light, she thought.
Just then, Charlie came crashing through the branches. "Aha!" he cried upon seeing them. "You mangy scurmuffins, I—" the end of his sentence trailed off, breath visibly whooshing out of his lungs as he slowly started to take in the large, stone girl in front of them. Alice could see his eyes grow misty as he looked into her eyes and touched the toe of her stone foot. "I haven't seen this in years," he breathed.
"You've been here before, Charlie? Really?"
"Yes," he whispered. "Years ago, I… I was out borogrove hunting, and then all of a sudden, I tripped over a tree branch and… well, there she was." He rested his hand on his armored breast with a clanking noise that seemed jarring in such a reverent atmosphere. "The heavy veil of fate, separating this girl's golden thread of destiny with mine own, did rise upon that glorious occasion to meet both our souls in blissful harmony. Oh, I stood as reverently then as I am now, and stood transfixed far into the night." He paused, as though letting the enormity of that statement sink in before adding, as an afterthought, "Of course, by then I got lost trying to find my way back to camp, but there you go!"
"Did you know her?" Alice asked, turning to Hatter.
"No," he said. "My grandfather did, though. He was the Hatter in the story, you see. Of course, by the time he escaped that tea party, he was absolutely mad, cohesive conversation with him was almost impossible. I never got him to tell me a decent recollection of the incident, but..." his eyes turned inward. "Whenever he spoke of her, and he did often… he always spoke of her very fondly."
"The real White Knight met her," Charlie said into the following silence, his voice still barely more than a whisper. "I used to always ask for that story before bedtime. I remember my mother was especially fond of telling it."
The three of them stood there for a while in silence, all staring at the statue of a small, curious girl who dropped into their lives and changed everything forever. Eventually Alice realized that the sun was beginning to set, the small square of blue sky directly above their heads becoming tinged with pink. "How far away are we from the Library?"
"A little too far to get there by nightfall," Hatter sighed, coming out of his reverie to reach for Pat's reigns behind him. "But my old tea house isn't too far from here. We can camp there for tonight, head to the Library in the morning. It's probably safer that way, too; I've no idea what kind of people are hanging around that old place, and I wouldn't want to sleep there."
"I quite agree," Charlie said, climbing atop Guinevere once more, armor clanking loudly. "Nothing like a good shelter in times such as these. Lead on, comrade!"
As they trotted away, Alice couldn't resist one last look over her shoulder, just to see the statue one last time before endless branches hid it completely away– but by the time she looked, it was already gone.
..