I wish I were as brilliant as the people who all conspired to come up with such good characters.
The excerpt is from the second best opera ever. I guess the Hatter has had some musical training? This aria requires some mad skill. So I gave him some. Whatever—the man is ace of aces, he can handle it.
I like this place, and willingly could waste time in it.
Shakespeare
There was very little to give Alice reason for counting the days—days spent crossed between sunny repose and quiet revelation on the sheer volume of life's subtleties she had not had the capacity to pick apart as a child in the Wonderland. One could spend the whole day watching dragonflies skim along the reeds in a garden before realizing that they were holding court. The rewards of paying attention to the smallest details only came to her when she didn't realize that she was being observant, and this kept our heroine quite occupied. Thankfully it was an easy affair, keeping house where she did, for everything was sent by delivery and she had want of nothing besides diverting company and excellent conversation. These, of course, came in half-shares and confusing roundabouts, but she was pleased nonetheless to have gone for some time without conflict in the eyes of her two solitary companions.
For while it was true that she had been to many an impromptu party (sometimes manifesting out of the blue in her own front yard without her knowledge) and met many interesting and terribly fashionable people, Alice remained in the strictest confidences of Hatter and Hare, esquires. She had managed to secure the Hatter's promise that indeed he would help her where he could beyond the orders of the Duchess, but he seemed so strangely disquieted by making binding promises that she had decided not to mention the subject except in future situations of calamity, which had thankfully not yet arisen.
She was putting the finishing touches on a straw bonnet that she felt made her look like an admiral's wife in preparation for the afternoon tea she took precisely at the same time every day on the Hare's lawn. It was a quiet and easy walk she did not mind at all, though the Hatter had instructed her more than once on how the strange tree portals worked—she ought to use them, he felt, if they were there, how else were they to remember their explicit purpose as portals? But Alice remained unmoved by his inexplicable protestations and enjoyed the way the trees lifted their branches away from her, as if they too enjoyed her artistic presence more than their own scientific purpose.
It was not until she had gotten more than a few hundred yards from the tiny picket gate that Alice heard singing and laughter, a sure sign that the tea party was going to be the afternoon's entertainment for more than one group of aristocrats. They came in waves, these beautiful people with their pointed features and thin brows, and whenever Alice turned around, she never found herself facing the same person she had been speaking to only a moment before.
As it were, the Hatter and Hare were quite the dazzling hosts, that is, according to their guests. Where Alice had vaguely suspected that the two were outsiders or social pariahs somehow, her theory had been proven wrong when it was revealed to her on a Thursday afternoon that the Hatter possessed the desirable and apparently rare talent of designing hairstyles in addition to his skills of the hat, and doing so well enough that it was nearly impossible to enter the kitchen for the amount of people standing about waiting for the white-haired man with a large pair of steel shears. So it was again today, Alice found, smiling benevolently as she pushed her way with some force past a group of women wearing unseasonably large bonnets, and managed to find the Hatter in the midst of what could easily have been open bell on the trading floor at the London Exchange. In the din of gossip, several young gentlemen were apparently trying to catch the interim barber's attention by gesturing with strange handsigns in the same way that stockmen at an auction would. The Hatter, however, did not appear to be paying attention to them.
He was in the midst of an richly toned aria, his sleeves rolled up, and standing on a ladder above someone with long dark hair, which he had pulled straight up several feet, inspecting carefully as he trimmed microscopic amounts off the ends.
"Tutti mi chiedono, tutti mi vogliono, donne, ragazzi, vecchi, fanciulle: Qua la parrucca! Presto la barba! Qua la sanguigna! Presto il biglietto--" he orated with a hand uplifted to the ceiling, when by and by a young man by the sink suddenly began shouting out some reproach Alice didn't quite catch. The effect, however, was immediate. The Hatter flung the scissors at the man's head, missing him by a healthy six feet and instead lodging the shears with a loud TWANG into a cupboard door nearby. The Hatter draped an arm over his brow dramatically before bellowing over the entire chattering contents of the kitchen.
"I shall not cut hair for a hundred years—nay, a thousand millenia forthwith! An artist can only be commissioned so many times before he collapses from exhaustion! You're going to give me ulceritis of the palms, you slave drivers all, I've half a mind to nearly cut off my good scissoring hand—I am not in jest this time, Countess, mark my words!" this thundered to a woman with large watery eyes and a charming pout who exclaimed that he was out to ruin the entire court if he did not bestow such a beloved gift upon those in need. There was a general uproar at his words, but it carried the air of those who have heard the protestations before and consider themselves so well-versed in the joke that they are inclined toward over-expressed outrage that is ultimately amusing and meaningless.
As if he had never spoken, the Hatter produced another pair of scissors and bent to consult with the strapping lady in a crisp white muslin gown sitting on the low stool in front of him, who had decided she wanted her black hair to be curls in a Rococo style. Somehow he seemed to have managed it without the clay rollers and lemon juice that she herself had always found necessary, Alice saw, and began to move in a backdoor-therly direction with the promise of victuals, passing only two young gentlemen who were in the process of synchronizing their pocket watches but arguing where the second hand officially lay. Outside, she breathed in once more, glad to be far from the maddening crowd.
Here there was relative peace, with only a bewigged squire snoring in a half-eaten treacle while two old ladies sat too close together in a mistaken attempt to see with the other's lorgnette, politely not mentioning how confused they both were. Alice reached for the pots of jam and clotted cream before they sprouted legs and took off down the table. She had seen one too many ruined tablecloths to know which ones were quicker on the uptake and which were drowsy in the afternoon sunlight. Laying the cream thickly over a scone, she supped deeply on tea and sat watching the sun come through the trees along the hedge until a loud POP WHOOSH came from the house. The two ladies dropped the spectacles, and as they rooted around underfoot hoping to find the proper pair, the squire bolted up with a loud snort.
"Eh?!" he exclaimed through the treacle on his face. "Er, cajun spice sweats and blushers your mind," he said to no one, and fell with a splorch back into the pudding. Alice rose and ambled to the kitchen door to see what dramatic antics had lately befallen the guests, who, she thought, were sure to see anything exciting and loud as an open invitation to return every day for the rest of the week. Boring parties only led to more boring parties, so the only real reason for parties was bragging rights in case something became topping good, someone had told her at another of these gatherings.
Peering through a window edged with angelica and parsley, she could see what looked like a cloud of magnified individual dust strands slowly rolling outward from the general direction of the Hatter, and the mass of gentry now attempting to leave as one found themselves hung up at the door on various obstacles, not the least of which were both the doorjamb and some unwisely chosen panniers on a lady whose parrot was flying in circles around her head, squawking out derisive insults she had no doubt trained it to speak. The frame heaved, squeaked, and expanded impossibly, and suddenly thirty gasping and coughing aristocrats were indignantly making their way across the lawn, exclaiming to one another in genuine outrage that this was, quite frankly, not where the party was to remain for the week.
"Simply unacceptable, and definitely not the dernier crie of excellence," was the general opinion.
"See you in a fortnight!" cried the Hare cheerfully from the window sash he had opened to let the strange, slowly floating pieces of black soot depart. "My dear!" he said on spying Alice, "Do come in, this will all settle soon enough!"
"What on earth happened?" asked Alice, waving a hand before her to clear away several bug-shaped blotches of ash.
"Hatter thought perhaps some curlers were in order after all, but he stuck a set of sealing wax sticks in the fire instead. Now it's nothing but a melty lump of wax, not to mention the party's off for now. Rotten luck, but more food for us in the end, eh?"
It was a good hour and a half before the entire debacle had settled like the soot itself to the creaky wooden floorboards of the Hare's cottage, for the aristocrats stood about in various poses on the lawn attempting to loudly justify to one another their reasons for attending such a passe affair. He did not seem to pay much mind, and was actually more interested in pulling the large pair of scissors out of the cupboard door than he was with the loss of three boxes of brand new sealing wax. The Hatter wrinkled his nose and watched the haunched rabbit press his oversized feet into the cabinet door to pull on the handles. It was only when he flew backward into a wall, giving rise to another wall of soot, and declared himself "kite quonqussed" that the Hatter was disturbingly content to leave his friend behind.
"Well, I must say, all in all a terribly productive afternoon I've passed," he said amiably as he fiddled with his rolled-up shirtsleeves and grabbed a passing scone on their way to the gate.
"You scared off half the county's gentry, exploded your best friend's kitchen fireplace, and watched him practically smash his head open," said Alice mock-helpfully, holding up her fingers to count.
"Well," drawled the Hatter through an indulgent bite of cream, "I do enjoy splitting hares, you know," elbowing her in the ribs and haw haw hawing.
"Oh, stop, that's awful," she groaned.
"You don't like my puns? They're delicious—much like this piece of bakery. I think this is pineapple, actually." He broke off a piece for Alice to taste. It was, and she smiled and nodded in reply. They walked along the paths in silence for a long time before turning their steps into a familiar incline deep and upward into a place where the branches sloped and the pale greenish sunlight was foggy through their star-shaped leaves.
On a clear day, Alice could see forever; forever in her case being past the edge of the forest's border, beyond which lay the rest of the kingdom, which was visible by how the treeline suddenly fell into tan desert and low scrubland. From the top of her favorite outcropping above a small private clearing, she watched flocks of birds rise up out of the trees and fall in beautiful layered clouds back into their shaded bowers. The Hatter sat on a gray boulder nearby and leaned back on his elbows, rolling his head around and around on his shoulders. She didn't even have to look at him; she could tell by the satisfying cracking noises his neck made that this afternoon walk was just as typical as every other afternoon walk.
Alice turned and stepped up onto the boulder just behind the Hatter's fingers, shading the afternoon sun in her hands.
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to get a better look round," she said. "I say, what's that?"
"What's what?" he said, looking up at her backwards so that his mouth looked like one giant waggling eyebrow.
"That," she pointed in her clean lilac glove. He gave a dramatic heave and climbed up next to her. "There," said Alice, "that black spot in the trees on the edge of the border. I've never seen that before." The Hatter too shaded his eyes and was quiet for a moment. It wasn't so much a clearing as it was a large chunk removed, or simply gone, Alice thought. Perhaps nothing existed there. The rest of the treeline before the tan earth was better kept; crisp, even. The Hatter made a soft hmm and twisted up one side of his mouth to think.
"You wouldn't want to go there," he said quietly. She waited without asking the obvious question. "It's um," he paused and looked off in the distance to find the words. "It's not a nice place. I would recommend against it," he said at last.
It was not often that the Hatter said truly strange things, but when he did, Alice made a special note of it in her head. This had begun as an experiment to try to make sense of him; failing in that, Alice tried her best to make no effort of discovery, hoping to have some revelation of his character that would not have been visible in a public eye by sheer passivity. This was very nearly impossible. The Hatter was not an open book; rather, he was much like a staircase carved into a moebius strip—she went around and around alternately trying to analyze and pretend to ignore him and still could not work out where the ends properly met and everything fell into place. What she did find usually came out of the forest and hit her smack in the forehead.
It was moments like these that made Alice wonder if the Hatter were not a little sane. It only made sense to be for the most part mad and just the teensiest bit normal, just as she suspected herself to be sane in the majority but just a smidge crazy as well. How else could she possibly insist so strictly on sticking things through in such a mixed-up world?
"We are all mad here," the Cheshire Cat had told her once, and before he had disappeared again he had given her some advice.
"I've been looking for hours, where could he possibly be?" Alice was shading her eyes from the noon sunlight and looking up into the trees, hoping to find a pair of ghastly yellow eyes blinking back at her.
"I don't suppose either—but then, I'm more straightforward than you are," said the Hatter. He had gotten the orange dustcoat back from the launder, who had accidentally and vigorously starched it. The Hatter apparently took some enjoyment in lurching about like a mad scientist's reanimated monster, his arms held before him at funny angles and his legs locked at the knees despite the fact that his trousers remained unstarched. This farce extended to his organic features.
"Errrrrr," said the Hatter, grimacing as though his face were frozen.
"What?" said a disinterested Alice, who had been suffering through this game for two days already and was busy shuffling through tree branches.
"Errrrrr!"
"I can't understand you, open your mouth."
"Errrrrllll."
"What?
"Errrrrlllll."
"Earl? What Earl?"
"Euugghhhllll." There was an irritated pause before Alice whipped around, her skirts twisting after her.
"Oil?!" Is that what you're saying? You don't need to be oiled you are not made of tin!" His fun dissolved, the Hatter gave one last mournful Errrr, sighed, and dropped his arms to his sides, where they sat stiffly about six inches out from where they would naturally hang.
"I'm so bored, this is frightful tedious."
"Why don't you drink some tea? You always manage to have some on hand. Still don't know how you pull that one off," she murmured to herself.
"What do you think I've been doing for the past quarter-hour? Guess, guess, guess," he was growing petulant, and Alice was not in the mood to play more games.
"You looked for three-leaf clover for about thirty seconds before you decided to annoy me; why don't you actually lend a hand and help me find the Cheshire Cat?"
"I might, if you help me put my arms down, it's quite unfortunate but I really can't seem to move them. And I was having such fun..." Thus proceeded about two minutes' worth of Alice attempting various methods of pinning the Hatter's arms to his side, with no results. His arms sprang back bouncily each time she pressed down hard on them—the Hatter for his part was consumed with a watchful amusement at her failure in trying to suppress his antics. Alice soon gave up the cause and returned to peering into trees.
"Could I call him?" she wondered aloud. "Saying 'Here puss-puss" seems so undignified and not at all what he would answer to, and he's so contrary I imagine he's already here and probably laughing at me..."
"Why do you want to find him? I distinctly recall your saying that he gave tremendously misguided directions—according to your untrained eyes—and then you said something about philology, or philosophy or something."
"From what I know of him, he seems like a very observant creature. Perhaps he saw something. I'm sure he's here, he's being stubborn, I would imagine."
"Watched cats won't boil."
"That doesn't--" Alice broke off with an aggravated sigh before the fateful phrase make any sense caused her more problems.
"The Cheshire Cat really isn't the sort of creature you go looking for," said the Hatter sagely. "He rather turns up when one least expects it. Or, he appears over your shoulder when you aren't looking."
"Why can't I just find things when I need them, or pull them out of a great bag at simply the right moment?"
"You'd need an awfully large bag for that," said a detached and possibly helium-addicted voice from just behind Alice's left ear. She started in response and spun full circle. "But you'd never lose anything again," it said, and giggled in that patented way before whistling through a tooth. The Hatter adjusted his hat and pointed into the tree before crossing his arms.
"Is that the Cheshire Cat? Are you here?" She looked deep between a splay of leaves to find the burgeoning outline of pink and purple stripes floating strangely above the bark.
"Is who here?" was its echoed reply.
"You," said Alice pointedly with her hands akimbo, recalling with perfect clarity the last time she had run circles in a similar line of questioning with the mysterious creature.
"Me, who?"
"You, who."
"Yoo hoo!" he cried in an echo.
"Oh, stop, I can see that you're here."
"Oh! am I? I wasn't sure; so often I split my time between there and everywhere as well that I hardly know where I'm going or where I've been." The cat's smile came brightly into view, an untamed crescent pulling a grand toothy smirk up to the fur-crowned plum colored ears. Alice waited, and soon the cat's eyes bubbled up from beneath the grin like two yellow balloons held underwater until a critical moment. They bobbed and rolled and blinked, and suddenly there was a rather tubby feline sitting on the branch above her, smiling that knowing smile and resting on its elbow.
"Hello," said the cat warmly as though it were greeting a favored niece.
"How do you do," said Alice automatically.
"How do I do--"
"No! that's not what I meant," she said quickly. The cat's grin grew a little wider.
"You're looking awfully hard for something you can't seem to find," he said.
"I finally found you, though."
"Is that what you were looking for? Well, you've found it, so..." His tail came around in a swipe and began to erase the curvy form before Alice waved her hands.
"No, I wanted to ask you something." He lifted his fat tail just above his eye level, as if to cock an eyebrow askance in silent question.
"Do you know what happened to the White Rabbit?" The Cheshire stared at her with his wide golden eyes for a moment, and Alice felt the small suspicion that he would answer Who? slide through her middle and leave again with the feline's hesitation.
"That... depends... on what... happened to the White Rabbit," he replied in easy dulcet tones, standing on his elbows and gesturing with his back paws.
"Well, he disappeared."
"Like this?" The stripes fell out of sight, leaving Alice attempting to follow any possible sign of his movement along the cross branches.
"I—I suppose so," she said squintingly.
"You suppose so? Then what--" and here he came back in pieces one by one--"Is really concerning about that?"
"It's not really of his nature, you know, he does have a rather strict schedule, engagements in court and such--"
"Since when do you care so much about the White Rabbit?" he asked, hanging upside down from his tail.
"But I've been charged by the Duchess to find what's plaguing the citizens, it's not that I care so much about him—I mean, I do, of course—but I'm only following my directive."
"Your directive," he repeated.
"Yes, what she told me to do. Have you seen the White Rabbit, though? Or anyone else who has gone missing? Surely you've noticed, it is rather difficult to live here without realizing it."
"Ohh, yes," said the Cheshire Cat. "I saw the White Rabbit."
"You did?!" cried Alice. "Where did he go?"
"At a court croquet game three months ago last week, he was there with his horn in a new stiff collar." The blonde girl sighed.
"I'm sorry, that isn't very helpful to me. I'm only trying to figure out this whole mess, it would be most helpful if you--"
"What you are thinking, it is correct," replied the Cheshire Cat, curling his squishy looking tail into a large spring coil and sitting on it with one leg crossed over the other.
"I—I beg your pardon?"
"And you may have it, but first tell me: what is it you're... really looking for?"
"The reason for all these people leavi--"
"Oh, searching for reason won't get you anywhere in a house of madness," and his voice was an even breathier drawl if possible. Alice felt goosepimples prickle along her elbows and frowned at the cat who was now doing cartwheels back and forth over his detached head.
"You are all deception and mystery."
"I only speak the truth; you must interpret it at your... discretion."
"Then I shall ask you, since you claim the truth: what is it I'm really looking for?" The Cheshire Cat made one final gymnastic leap, scooping up his head and rolling it back along his arm and onto his shoulder with a pop before grinning a beaming smile back at her.
"Only you know for certain," he said. Alice shook her head at him and was about to turn and walk away when he spoke again. "Let me ask you something, then: 'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?'"
"It's been a while since I've studied Latin..."
"The answer you're looking for is to a question you haven't asked yet," he said.
"To know to ask something I haven't even considered yet..." she mused to herself, "That doesn't seem fair to my mind or intellect at all. I'd have to be able to see into the future, or to read other people's minds. Or know everything at once."
"Not... necessarily, and knowing everything at once isn't something I would... recommend," said the cat, grinning strangely.
"That's impossible, you'd be driven mad—madder than, begging your pardon but it's true, madder than you lot—you'd go mad by the sheer volume of knowledge. One couldn't begin to store that much information somewhere. "
"It would be enough to drive anyone to the edge of existence and back." The Hatter had apparently grown bored again, decided to entertain himself by walking in that monstrous fashion, and chose this moment to trip over his own feet with a cacophonous outburst of stumbling and poorly-mannered vulgar phrases. Alice stepped over the awkward and stiff pile he was currently occupying to stand very close to the branch where the cat sat, flicking its tail in quiet amusement.
"I don't mean to be rude, but mightn't we turn our conversation back to why I originally came to find you?"
"Look deeper, and next time it won't be a striped feline you find," it said as she drew up face to face, its yellow eyes not seeming to glow now, but rather to be shifting like slowly rolling whirlpools, changing only in tones of the same color, almost an illusion.
"Should I not be talking to you?" she asked. The cat only smiled in answer.
"Is there nothing else you can tell me?" said Alice with a small sense of unfairness at not having her questions answered, just in the usual way. "Did you not see anything, anything at all when those creatures disappeared? If you know the truth, surely you can tell me that much."
"Perhaps."
"Perhaps you did see something, or perhaps you did not see anything?"
"You're barking, my dear, to coin a phrase, up the wrong tree."
"I knew I shouldn't have asked you."
"Shall I give you some advice?"
"If I'm able to translate it, but I suppose you will give me advice whether I want to hear it from you or not," replied the girl, who was feeling thoroughly frustrated and feeling a bit angry with herself over why she had had the brilliant idea of seeking out the Cheshire Cat and his nonsensical answers to begin with.
"The trouble you're seeking... is not what you're chasing after. It's what's hanging over your head." There was an intelligent weight to the way he spoke the last words of his sentence, and Alice repeated the phrase in her mind knowing now that the conversation was at an end.
The two stared at one another for several moments, blue girl's eyes into the strange shifting golden orbs of the cat, until Alice felt nearly overwhelmed by the feline's intense, unblinking gaze and took a step backward. The moment broken, she watched the cat begin to fade from view until only the stripes on his fur remained.
"Are you leaving, then?" asked Alice, who felt no small amount of desperation at being left behind with more questions than she had come with, and no questions answered at all.
"Disappearing, if you must know," came the faint echoing reply.
"Are you coming back?" she cried out, but there was nothing left of him. Turning to her companion, Alice saw that the Hatter had finally managed to break in his coatsleeves enough that they hung limply at his sides, the rest of him stock still and gazing uninterruptedly at the point where the Cheshire Cat had dimmed from view.
"I wonder if that's another one to chalk up in the missing column," she said thoughtfully.
"Indeed."
"Well, let's go find the March Hare again," said Alice. "I think after all this I could use a very quiet lunch followed by an even quieter afternoon in the hammock, asleep." The Hatter turned to follow her in the wake of the Cheshire Cat's mysterious disseminations, his own mind secreted from her in the blessed silence he swept along between the two of them as they returned to the house. For her own part, Alice was glad to be temporarily free of his normal chatter.