Carroll and Disney get credit for starting all this.
Brianna and Rain crafted the characters we know and love.
Tell Me Lies I tell the story's secrets to, and she hides them in her drawings and makes them real.
If you'd like a translation of the singing, it's the Barcarolle from Les Contes D'Hoffmann. Also some reference to Walt Whitman later on.
In case you're wondering, yes, this chapter is longer—it's 12 pages instead of the usual 8. This isn't an overall trend, however—this is me working through spring break to make things happen, because I can virtually guarantee there won't be another chapter until late May.
I hope you liked it, and thanks for reading!
Real loss only occurs when you lose something that you love more than yourself.
Anonymous
Do not judge men by mere appearances; for the light laughter that bubbles on the lip often mantles over the depths of sadness, and the serious look may be the sober veil that covers a divine peace and joy.
Edward Chapin
Alice was hesitating in the hours afterward, for she did not want to go walk along sandy beaches and try to find the pair of creatures both the Duchess and now the Hatter had recommended to her. Generous suggestions, yes, but she was more inclined to hover over the teapots and arrange them by color. It wasn't working; they became very insulted by the implications and at first snottily rearranged themselves, then began to play games with her and elude her grasp. The cow-creamer began to moo at her in outrage when she picked it up, but Alice shushed it and it became content to simply dollop cream into her cup. She was setting it aside and considering sneaking back into the Hare's library when out came the gregarious host himself bearing a large silver domed platter about three times his own size, wobbling and weaving about like a drunk porter.
"Ah, you're still here! You can help us with this!"
"What is that." The Hatter was looking up from his crossword puzzle in a perfectly serious fashion.
"You never do that, why are you doing that?" The Hare stopped, shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and moved the platter around, trying to put the Hatter into his eye's view.
"What do you mean? What are you suggesting?"
"I'm suggesting that you never do that. Why are you doing that now?"
"Because I felt like it, that's why."
"Well, it didn't work the last time."
"That's your opinion!" cried the Hare, lifting the large thing onto the table dangerously. Alice suddenly did not quite feel like sticking this one out, as it were.
"You know, I really shouldn't stay," said Alice, twisting her hands together lightly and wondering if they could actually hear her over their ructions, "I rather had it in mind to go and, um, see the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon after all. I don't know if perhaps you remember, but there seems to be a rash of creatures disappearing, I do owe the Duchess a service of duty--" she pointed out with some irony.
"No, you must come and stay," said the Hare, who was glaring at the Hatter, "There's supper."
"Supper," said Alice, now with disbelief.
"Sup-per," said the Hatter through his bubbling pipe, who was back at the crossword puzzles and apparently felt this would be cemented with his input.
"What sort of supper," Alice's voice came out in something like unimpressed monotone. The Hare lifted the silver dome from the platter, and when the steam cleared she could see a large cut of meat. It was a dark dusty rose color with a pleasant lemon flavor in the essence.
"Salmon?" she asked, desperately hoping not, for it would have been dreadfully overcooked if it were.
"Red herring," said the Hare, standing on the table and slicing into it with a tong fork. "You see, we are not completely given over to lushy imbibement of ceylon--" There was a very rude and loud slurping noise, and both the girl and the rabbit who were now leaning over the long fish slowly looked down the table at the man with a pipe at one side of his mouth and holding a seashell shaped tea cup at the other. He paused in the midst of this to look back and forth between them both before speaking defensively.
"Wha'?!" he managed to say with everything between his lips.
"Anyway," said the Hare in vicious italics, "There is food other than what's on the tea service, and you're welcome to it if you like."
As Alice let the boxgate close behind her, she hoped that she had uttered enough polite niceties to the Hare, promising to have supper another time. She did not like to stand between two sides of an argument, and she had a mind to avoid confrontations with her only benefactors in this whole particular world. She began to listen to the stepping sound her boots made, and wondered where along the seashore she could find the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon.
But where are you going, dear reader? Do not follow Alice down that bricked path. Let her skirts turn the corner and all the knowledge and thoughts and questions she houses, suspended invisibly over her head, trail behind and then catch up like a cluster of errant balloons. Let us ask that question we have not asked before: what do Hatters and Hares do while Alices are gone off exploring and investigating?
The Hare was still standing on the table, stretched up, watching to see if she had gone.
"Finally got her off her tail," he said. "Dear girl, she needed a push. It's a hard lot, being sent all over and back like that."
"It was a good ploy," said the Hatter reassuringly in a distracted voice, taking a sip of darjeeling.
"We do what we must because we can," said the Hare sagely, and raised a cup before they nodded a toast. "What shall we do with that?" he asked, poking at the red herring and looking faintly disgusted.
"Who knows; perhaps it'll grow legs and walk away if we leave it here long enough."
"Why did she need to go see the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon, exactly?" said the Hare after a pause.
"Duchess," said the Hatter with his pen between his teeth. The spigot on his pipe was clogged again, and he had stuck a hatpin inside of it to clear it out.
"Batty old harridan," said the Hare in a safe low voice, looking around and speaking into his teacup.
"Now, now," said the Hatter. "Best she did something." But the Hare misunderstood who he meant.
"Agreed; sitting around here can't be that exciting, a pair of cavalier bachelors for company. She needs friends!" he cried suddenly, pounding his tiny fist into the table and waking up the sugar bowl. "Take her to a ball or something," he commanded.
"Certainly," said the Hatter, "The answer to every question, and the solution to every equation." The Hare was satisfied, but the Hatter gave him a sidelong look of sardonicism. And they paused, sitting in easy company, for they were old friends indeed. The Hatter retamped his pipe, and a rush of fresh bubbles soon crossed into the trees.
"Nine-letter word for a sudden arresting memory," murmured the Hatter, biting his lip and squinting at the paper.
"Flashback," said the March Hare helpfully. The Hatter formed the f in the square box before he looked out across the lawn in the shaping dusk.
"No, it isn't," said the Hatter.
"Yes, it is," said the Hare.
"No, it isn't."
"Whozwhatsit?" said the Dormouse.
"Oh, shut up!" said the Hare crossly, for he had misheard the Dormouse and thought he was in league with the Hatter on this particular point.
"No, I'm telling you: it's a lyrebird, not a mockingbird, and it has got to go. It's making this awful racket in broad midday, and it's interrupting everything I'm trying to--" He stopped and had a curious and distant look upon his face, and the Hare turned to see what the Hatter was looking at.
"What on earth is that!" cried the March Hare, for he had never seen a creature like this one before and thought it quite a remarkable looking thing.
"It's a girl," said the Hatter, who sounded very astonished.
"A what?!"
"A girl, a young girl." He took the pipe out of his mouth politely and leaned forward to get a better look at her. The Hatter did know an awfully good deal about life, but even he was surprised to see the small female in a blue frock and white apron with long yellow hair standing in the archway looking back at them curiously in her serious oval face. And rightfully so, for girls were rare in these parts.
"Well, what on earth is it doing here? We're talking about birds, there's no room for this sort of thing, doesn't it know that?" said the Hare rather rudely. Regardless of his tone, the girl stepped forward and did not take her eyes off them. But it was a strange look, as though they were sitting in different seats, or were at different distances across the table.
"There's plenty of room!" she said haughtily, and swept into one of the chairs at the far end of the table. The two of them gave each other a very long blank look—for the Dormouse had fallen asleep again—and both came up short for answers.
"This isn't one of your inventions, is it?" said the Hare in a monotone which suggested previous and possibly infamous incidents regarding said inventions.
"Of course not, I couldn't make anything that looked like that."
"Well, I hope it doesn't spend all its time whinging at us about wanting something to eat--"
"There isn't any wine," said the girl suddenly and indignantly.
"I didn't say there was," said the Hare, much offended. "Besides, it's a bit early for that. It better have brought some, sitting down so pert like that." He stood on his chair and gave her a careful study, but finding no bottle of vintner's mark, sat back, feeling disappointed as well as annoyed.
"I didn't know it was your table," said the girl. "It's laid for a great many more than three." She was staying near the far end of the table, sometimes with that distant gaze, and sometimes with the pointblank stare of the savant child. It was a bit unnerving, and neither of them offered her any tea. The Hatter was looking at the girl curiously before deciding on a proper course of action. A non sequitur for a non sequitur.
"Your hair wants cutting," he said to her directly, and she turned and looked straight at him where he was as if for the first time before uttering in a rather snooty voice,
"You should learn not to make personal remarks; it's very rude."
"Opinionated little thing!" said the Hare, nearly choking on his tea. "How old is it?"
"She, not it," said the Hatter. "She can't be more than seven or eight."
"That's ancient!"
"No, she's quite young, not even through school yet."
"Well, that's no surprise; is she an idiot or something?"
"No; I don't think she understands quite what we're saying," said the Hatter, regarding the girl calculatingly, "Or perhaps she's having a different conversation than we are. Sometimes that happens, you know, you don't quite understand what you're talking about but you talk anyway so you don't seem silly."
"Exactly so," she seemed to agree, but her eyes were focused as if elsewhere. He could not be sure if she were talking to him or not.
"Well, how did she get here?" The Hatter was a very clever man, but he did not have that answer. "What is your name? Where are you from? Why on earth are you traipsing about the countryside in such a fashion, interrupting other people's tea parties?" demanded the Hare.
"The fourth," said the girl. The Hare turned and looked at the Hatter, completely deadpan.
"She's madder than you are," he concluded flatly.
Let us rejoin Alice, for she had not had that peaceful afternoon we all hope for in our days and years; she was pacing erratically across the floorboards of her entirely darkened cottage later that evening, flexing her fingers in agitation. It was a fine thing she had managed to spend at least some time there—for the nexus of her social world turned upon the ramblings and boilings of the tea party, and she was lucky to ever get home some nights—for if she had been paying attention, she might have noticed that she was deftly and automatically stepping around furniture she could not see.
Her mind was working a bit too rapidly, and she was mouthing words and gesticulating in the darkness. She looked a bit feverish, perhaps, though not hysterical. Her updo had begun to sprout loose ends in the salt air by the sea, and the ice blue walking coat she had donned was still about her, for Alice did not have in her mind the desire or even hint of perhaps sitting down for a moment. Finally she stood looking at the square glass pane in the front door. And Alice reached for the knob and was out the path and walking to the nearest thick tree to scrabble her hands over its surface, searching for the outline. The hinged door popped and creaked ajar, and she looked into a deeper darkness than even the forest beyond and stepped into it.
The air took on a distinctly different quality from where she had been before when she emerged; this was a much different part of the forest, there was some new thing here that had not been where her cottage lay. The darkness was close against her eyes; she could hear a solid echoing mass of crickets come from all around her in a great ring, filling up the space and closing it in on her reassuringly, and Alice slowed her pace, cooled her breath and collected her heartbeat. She looked about at the dim outlines of trees and without even searching, heard distant voices and the sluicy sound of water so calm rolling over and through.
It was humid here. There was a river nearby, and she could see fireflies intermittent like flickering candlelights reflecting across its moving ways. The voices came closer, and she could see a slight of a river boat alit with very dim paper lamps slowly flowing its way toward her, a pleasure party on a cruise, the gentle, moving forms of gentlemen and ladies turning to face two silhouettes in the night. The two ladies at the stern lifted their hands out like ancient priestesses invoking old spirits and emotions and began to sing, their voices dipping into a lullabye before intertwining in a duet, circling each other like curious swallows along a grapevine, going up and up until they reached the open space of the skies at last. Alice placed her pretty white hands against the trees on her either side and stretched herself out and listened for a moment, still and peaced at last.
Zéphyrs embrasés,
Versez-nous vos caresses,
Zéphyrs embrasés,
Donnez-nous vos baisers!
vos baisers! vos baisers! Ah!
She wished this night would never end, in a way, and Alice stood gazing languidly out over the waters until the boat's call lights had long faded into the dark sylvan grays. But she did turn, and though her hands were still turgid with anxiety and the depth of the hour, Alice felt bolstered enough to begin picking her steps away from the river and further into the trees.
And then there it was.
"My God," she whispered to the darkness.
Walling straight up from the darkness and splitting the moonless starry night above was a large looming house, its dreaming spires sudden and jutting. It was balanced but heavy, like an ancient frigate at full sail. It was the estate of a mind's eye, its round towers and darkened oriel windows hinting, suggesting. The stuff of dreams, the triumph of a dynasty forged, heaved, ripped out of a resisting land long far away, hidden among these trees and viewable only from extremes. She could stand at its base and look straight up under the eaves, or she imagined she could stand on a cliff far away and see its spindling mass from a distance. The trees stretched their arms out, reached up to it, but could never cover the tower's needle.
But Alice was brave, and she tapped the elephant head's trunk on the door, wondering if she could possibly be heard from all the rooms in such a house. She bit her lip and turned to face where the river had been. The door clicked and jammered and creaked open, no preamble in the form of stomping feet in the foyer or flick of the nearby curtains to see who it was, and suddenly she could see the faint outline of his white hair stark against the blackened house.
"Did I wake you?" she whispered, hesitant despite coming all this way, ready with an apology she would never need.
"No," he said quietly. "Come in." And she did.
The inside of the house had a feeling of being both thickly carpeted with rugs and lain with dark exotic woods alternatively, and of being filled with a great many curious pieces of furniture everywhere they could be fitted. But Alice could not know for certain this night, as there was no light anywhere but the faintness of his hair. She turned, and he put his hand gently between her shoulder blades and moved her forward through the foyer and into another room until she sunk, not far, and certainly softly, into a divan, where she smoothed her palms against her coat and tried to think of what to say.
She heard his footsteps alternate between the rug and the wood, and there was a metallic swish that went high up the ceiling, and she saw that he had opened the curtains to a very tall set of windows, so high that when he pulled, the motion did not reach the rings at the top until the deep, wholly opaque draping had rippled and the night appeared in a vase shape, and then a slat, with the starlight between the trees. He opened the double hung sash and looked out for a moment, entirely blackened by the light. The crickets had returned, and he stood against the pale gradations of gray, leaning into the windowframe with the pose of a conductor reviewing the score for one last time before lifting his stick to call attention.
Late hours bring strange conversations. Feeling the segments of the day gone past stack up against us, we sometimes find topics to pierce which in the daylight of better judgment we would not circuit, out of nicety. There is nothing in the darkness that is not in the light at any other time, but there are manners about people which reveal themselves in those hours we are meant to never see in waking.
"What do you--" she started and stopped again, but he did not speak, only waited for her to finish. "What would you do if part of you were severed, or bisected; I mean your..." she hesitated to say reason, but finished with "Part of your mind or your soul, I mean." That made no sense, but Alice hedged her bets that he would somehow find the answer within her meaning.
"A soul split or splintered away searches to be made whole again, don't you think? It would search for its other half like a magnet. You can't very well have half a soul. The mind, on the other hand, is easy to break into pieces that still think and move and act, albeit abnormally, and with great confusion." Her arms twinged despite her coat, and Alice crossed her arms and sank back into the velvet upholstery. She watched his form lower its head to stare at the hands on the sill.
"But if the part of you that told you where to go, what to do, who to meet, were torn from you, what would you do?" said Alice.
"Your conscience, you mean?"
"I suppose I mean reason, but that does not mean much."
"If you suppose you mean the kind of reason you mean, then you're looking at someone who hasn't had it in a while, you know." Alice was not looking at him, only a silhouette of him, but she did not remark upon it.
"Yes, but you're mad." As soon as she said it, Alice realized it was odd to say the words aloud. Of course he was mad, he was the Mad Hatter, but to speak upon one's condition in such a fashion... it was like telling him he was a haberdasher, or that she was blonde, or that they were awake in the middle of the night, in his house, having this conversation.
"How does that make me any different?"
"I don't think you miss your reason," said Alice, trying carefully not to disparage him, "I think you take joy in knowing that you are free from it."
"Free from reason? If I were free from reason I should wonder at being glad for it. You don't think mad people, perhaps, are still prisoners of the loss of their reason? Or do you suggest that you are your own prisoner of reason?"
"That isn't what I meant," said Alice, "I daresay you don't even know that it's gone. Your reason is replaced by... whatever tells you to move forward, even if it is different or strange from what used to be normal to you." He laughed, and Alice thought it was a laugh out of him she had never quite heard before.
"You give me no credit! I can't possibly know that I'm missing my reason, yet we not only sit here discussing it like a spot of philosophy, but you talk of missing it as if it is a great friend or companion." Alice did not say anything, and he took her silence correctly to mean something significant. "Something alarming must be circling at the back of your head to have drawn you from your bed at this hour and come all the way here to listen to this." The form at the window turned and she guessed he was looking at her, but she could not tell. "Does your task wake you in the middle of the night?"
"No," said Alice, "I haven't been to bed yet. I wanted to talk to you."
"In the middle of the night!"
"Yes, but there was a--" and there was that word again, "A reason."
She was drawing curlicue patterns in the wet sand with a stick, sitting on a boulder with her skirts tucked up under her. Given the Mock Turtle's detailed litany of education the last time they had spoken, Alice had wondered whether he would be of some use, whether he was onto something, and unfortunately, he was. Talking with him was awkward enough, but even more embarrassing when he kept talking in circles, like he was missing a flipper.
"I saw it with my own eyes," he said for the third time. "Like a dust storm, coming across the sand, and I closed my eyes and when I opened them..." She sat and looked at the symbol she was digging in the growing dusk.
"Can you describe it more clearly to me?"
"Course I can." Alice did not wait this time.
"Alright, then, go ahead." He heaved a plaintive sigh, twitched one of his calves ears and went on—he wasn't used to this sort of independent work, being that the Gryphon had always told him what to do and where to go, but he was trying, Alice had to give him that.
"Like I said, it was a dust storm, but then... like a cyclone in the middle, a great cracklin' thing that pushed the waters out of the way."
"Did it come across the lake, or did it come from the forest?"
"It came across the dust and the sand." He was silent for a moment. "I don't think that's what it really looks like, you know."
"What do you mean by that?" The Mock Turtle shook his head.
"It shimmered, like a—like a--"
"Like a mirage?"
"On the sand, yes. Almost like it wasn't there at all, or like looking through a bit of warped plate glass. I remember, I remember I looked up at it and I said, 'What is that?' and the Gryphon said, 'It's nothing, don't you look at it,' because he was explaining metaphysics then and he was drawing in the sand, just like you are."
"And--" she hesitated.
"And then he was just gone."
"I see." She felt very sorry for him, but wasn't sure how to explain it without making him feel worse. He was a salt without a pepper, a lone pen without ink, terribly lost and unable to think really straight. The worst part was that he wasn't even crying in the usual way; just sitting there, staring out to sea, completely run out of grief.
"Oh," said the Hatter when she was finished.
"It's cruel, somehow, to search for good in the unknown, but at least the Tweedles went together," said Alice. "If I went mad, I should at least take some comfort in... in not missing that part of myself, in going on and adjusting to it. But to be perfectly aware of a gaping hole in your side is a loss I do not think I could bear."
"You shouldn't fear the unknown—you can't be sure what's there."
Outside a nightingale began to click and purr.
"Is that how you feel, like there's a hole in you?" she said. "Do you feel mad? Do you know when it happens?"
"It's not a loss," he said. "You gain what you get, which is more, or at least different, than what you had before. And anyway, madness isn't a binary condition, it's a gradient. There are all kinds of madness." Alice had long since relaxed into the back of the divan, tracing and swirling her palm and fingers in its velvet—it would have made the pile turn different tones had there been more light to see it. His low quiet voice had a thaumaturgic quality to slow her rushing through, and filled the still air like the low tide unto the surf of a beaching shelf, coming then going almost rhythmically. "Is that why you're upset? Are you afraid of going mad?"
"I think one must be just a bit mad to get here." And when Alice closed her eyes before the long pause in the conversation, she could hear the distant voices from the yaching party on the river through the window floating up their music, singing wordless calls of love to each other.
She awoke blearily with pointed lines of sunshine except for a large shadow in front of her face. Rubbing her eyes, Alice discovered that the Hatter was standing before her very oddly, situated so that his entire upper body was at a near right angle from his legs, an expression working its way through his eyebrows that couldn't decide whether to be severely hungover or deeply concerned. At the moment it seemed to be hovering near comic indigestion.
"What on earth are you doing in my bedroom?" her voice kept octaves of sleep, sounding her soft and low.
"Ah: our thoughts run parallel this morning; I have a similar query. Why are you asleep on my divan?" She continued rubbing her eyes, enjoying the respite it brought from the crisp light bouncing around the room.
"What?" He let out a breath of air signaling something like concerned confusion but with a hint of patience. She could smell breakfast and hear a kettle roiling somewhere and kept rubbing at her eyes. Her hands smelled vaguely metallic, and the breakfast smelled like it was probably a shortcake with a darker tea than she would have liked. Did the Hatter have a smell as people do, that uniquely identifying thing that one can sense from coming into a room after they did, or the remnant on a coat worn the season before? The thing that did not smell of anything in particular but of a person, a very difficult smell to pinpoint or name. Or did he only smell of tea? She was very tired. The Hatter leaned closer and spoke very clearly, already with the disparate aroma of new breakfast tea coming reassuringly off him in waves.
"You were asleep. In my drawing room. Why is that." Now she could see clearly that she was in a room she had never seen before, on a couch she did not recognize. The Hatter had his hands in the pockets of a dark purple dressing gown embroidered with thick gold swirls, and Alice realized she was still wearing her light coat and the dress from the day before. Now he did look genuinely concerned as she gazed at the dark woods on unfamiliar tables.
"You let me in," she said with some surprise, but he continued in the same vein.
"Do you enjoy sneaking into people's houses? I would have thought you'd forgotten the incident prior to our first interview, but I sincerely believe you are far above climbing through windows."
"I did not climb in through the window, I don't do that, I know you let me in--"
"That is interesting, but surely you will agree with my concern when I tell you that I don't remember that."
"You let me into the house," said Alice definitively. "You sat me down, and then you stood in the window and we started talking."
"I think you were dreaming all this, but I don't think your story is fantastical," he said placatingly as she started up on the couch, retort in tongue. "Perhaps you were sleepwalking? Are you a somnambulist?"
"No..." His low voice from the dark hours before came back to her and she remembered what she had been meaning to think about when she awoke. "Are you?" She was met with his eyebrows, disarrayed and bunched together, before they relaxed, thoughtful.
"I don't suppose one could really know without the whole neighborhood coming after you for having stolen eggs out of the icebox or whatever else sleepwalkers do." Then he was looking out the window and scratching the back of his head, sleepiness in every aspect of those half-lidded eyes. She turned too, and could clearly see the swaying waters of the river through the red trees.
"You had the strangest way of talking last night," she said. The kettle screamed for attention very suddenly, and the Hatter's bare feet alternately slapped and thumped against wood and rug, and she heard him singing something about how he feared no foe in shining armor, "though his lance be swift and keen," or something like that. Alice leaned back into the cushion, listening to the water distantly hissing on metal as he removed it from the fire, thinking hard thoughts. He returned in the middle of pouring tea into a cup balanced on his forearm--the sleeves from his dressing gown were far too long and slipped down over his hands--and wrestling his feet into a pair of dark red slippers, hopping as he came through the passage.
"I don't remember seeing you, but do go on." He set both mismatched cups plus their saucers on a low table nearby the sofa and sat straight on it, wrapping his arms criss-crossed round his middle and letting the tea steam. The Hatter was patient, his hair all kinked up over his head with a large patch sticking straight up in the back. There was a calmness there, as if he hadn't quite woken up yet either, and his mechanical way of checking the tea was effortless.
"Well, that's all. We sat and talked." His puzzlement at this superseded his repeated glances at the cups nearby.
"What about?"
"Well—about everything, I suppose."
"Life, the universe, etc.? Or was it tea, tea really is the kingpin of the universe, I mean I do go on about it but let me tell you, I can go on about it and it certainly would seem to be 'everything' as you say--"
"No, it was more about what happened to the Mock Turtle, really. I mean, sort of," she said, trying her best to remember. "It was all very philosophical." He sort of shrugged with his face in a charming way.
"Doesn't sound like me," said the Hatter.
It was later in the afternoon, and Alice was coming up the dockside edge of the high street, once again listening to the light clattering of bestringed paper-wrapped packages as they bounced between her fingers. She had been to the clothier and bought something that she was thinking of now, but let us save a detailed list of Alice's purchases for another time—as they did not carry the weight now that they would soon enough.
The Hatter had begun making glances toward the torsion clock on a side table soon after their conversation—not significant glances, but polite ones, followed by his usual sunny blithe smile—so that Alice had not stayed for breakfast, and now she was quite hungry indeed. She had been halfway down the walk and almost to the tree with the door in it that she remembered she hadn't really observed the inside of the house, and managed to turn and see that it was just as large as she had remembered in the night sky, but this time describable. It was sort of a raspberry color, with lemon trim and gray roof tiles. Alice couldn't tell whether she liked it or not, but she was certainly in awe of its sheer size.
Continuing up the street, she came to a stop by an inn that made her skirts swish forward around her under a large sign which called it the Wynn and Beaumont, for there was a person standing on the inside up against the multipaned plate glass waving furiously and then gesturing at her, grinning. Wearing a large navy hat and a cream coat. She sighed, half fair in amusement, and went in.
"I already ordered for you, I hope you like mutton," he said when she slid into the opposite side of the booth. In the room the people came and went, for it was like a series of large halls with intimate little meeting places and dark wood to go along with the little candlelight.
"Were you standing in the window like that for long?"
"Long enough."
"That's halfway over there, you can hardly see the window from here." He waved a gray glove at her dismissively, and they tucked in.
"I didn't know there were pubs in town," said Alice after poking the new potatoes to let them steam. She gave him a look. "I could have been eating food instead of tea service. As much as I enjoy cream, it is nice to have something different."
"We offered you fish, and you would have none of it," he replied haughtily, but faking it. He suddenly slid further back into the booth, but tilted his head slightly to see someone he obviously did not want to see him in return. Alice had the good sense not to look over her shoulder and start asking shrill questions.
"Who's over there?" she said quietly, cutting into the lamb demurely.
"A person who I very much did not want to see and am rather surprised to see, frankly," he replied in a low undertone. "Do you like stories?"
"I love stories," said Alice, pretending in the same vein that they were not having this conversation.
"Good, because this is a real one. I used to be rather close friends with a peer who goes by his title, as we all do: the Count. He's the one standing across the room, as you take it."
"I must interrupt you this once: what if there were more than one Count in this country? Do you all simply assume that there can be only one, or do you distinguish them somehow?" He blinked at her.
"This one has a distinct head of tomato red hair—don't turn around to look at him."
"I wasn't, but do go on."
"He and I were great friends, for I made by hand his collection of riding hats, as he is a great rider, but he does not hunt, and I shall tell you why another time. I seem to have greatly insulted him once, however, for an elaborate scheme came about as the result of a botched creation. The crown band did not match his redingote, but he was silent upon its delivery. I thought nothing of it, and we later went to one of these hundred or so costume parties that one gets invitations to. I was disguised, mind you, in a--" he paused to think of the word, "An opera cloak, and a mask, for it was a masked ball, and one that was planned to lure me there for the resulting retribution, I think. And all I can remember is that he must have paid off the servants to throw mickey finns in every highball I touched out of revenge, for I woke the next morning in a public fountain, dressed like a bat and drunk as a lord, and--" He raised a finger and pressed on despite Alice's giggling into her napkin, "And I had lost my pocketwatch. I found it, of course, three weeks later in a blueberry pie sitting on an open windowsill, but it never ran properly again after that."
"And you fell out after that?" said Alice stiltingly when she could breathe again.
"I don't think you'd be speaking to me so much if you woke up drenched like that," he said, raising a glass to his mouth before he slid further back into the booth once more. "There!" he said in a vigorous whisper, "There. Turn very slowly as if you would look at the publican at the bar and observe him, you can't miss him."
It was easy enough to find the Count, for his shock of hair truly was red. Most people who are said to have red hair do not; they have orange hair, or very dark blonde hair. The man posturing at the counter with his Hessian resting upon the golden bar at its base had a dashing coif of tomato red hair, all zinged through with pure color, almost as if it had been dyed. He did look rather legendary, Alice thought, but she could not catch his face. He did have the shoulders and bearing of someone who is too handsome for his own good and dangerously clever to boot, she thought, but turned back to the broccoli soup with the air of a girl who is decidedly unimpressed with an elegant man from across the room.
The Hare was coming and going in what he called preparations for the upcoming trip, but it mostly looked like he was dashing about distractedly, first going to check the shutters on the cottage, then coming back inside to bounce skitterly down the hallway to fling open dresser drawers, searching for a tiny house key in the mess that ensued. Alice sat in one of the upholstered spindly chairs in the library with the door cracked watching him. Eventually he spotted her eye in the sliver between the jamb and came to push the door open and address her politely in his request, but did not cross the threshold.
"I've let the house in the past to visitors, but this time there'll be no one to sit, as it is late in the season, and so I want you to look in every now and then, won't you?" Alice nodded as he bounced away most seriously, and rose in some amusement to follow him, just to see where he went. She followed his flashing foot to the doorstep, but found no trace of him, instead seeing swinging between two trees was a hammock full of supine Hatter.
"Have you seen the Hare?" she called to him. She went closer, letting her shadow fall across his freckles, but he did not so much as twitch or open an eye. "Are you asleep?" she said, and waited.
Alice gathered together her skirts, curled up one leg beneath her and leaned as carefully as she could into the side of the hammock, not quite sitting but instead balancing on the rope's edge, leaving one boot toe firmly in the ground to steady them as her new presence gave the whole orchestration a definite but gentle heave. This did not seem to have any immediate effect on the object of her attention, however, and Alice slowly let out her breath half in relief. She put one hand on the rope across from her, arm over him, and waited. He seemed to be solidly asleep, though she was not the best judge of a potential farce. Our heroine was still waiting for him to open his eyes and burst into laughter at her folly when he wiggled his nose slightly before sighing in deep sleep. The girl considered this a moment before taking immediate and decisive action. She gave a push on his shoulder, tugged lightly on a lock of his white hair, and even gently shook the hammock itself before deciding that in fact, in complete and utter fact, was the man currently involved in a business transaction of sorts with a chap by the name of Hypnos.
She lifted his arm, palm side up, and the wrist gave and bent back languidly on its own weight, his fingers forming their natural curve; that heavy weight that comes from being truly and deeply out was there in every smooth, relaxed line of him. The gloves were short-palmed; she could just make out the lines beneath, but Alice (in an action she would have regretted had she been just a bit more curious about what was under the gloves) put his limb down and looked at him, wondering what he dreamed about. Or if he dreamt at all. What did people here find absurd? The Hare had wrinkled his nose at the premise of the daily business transactions of normal hares in the field; did the Hatter dream of balancing ledgers, or of the rules in the Chancery courts, or coke mines, greasy shop windows, and large women in dingy poke bonnets selling fish heads in the streets? She looked at the cascade of blue sky over her shoulder and every color making up the landscape, comparing it in her mind to what she had seen of blackened and burnt London. What widened within him? Alice half-smiled; Within me is the longest day, the sun wheels in slanting rings, it does not set for months. The man before her took such a deep breath of the air as if it were an indulgence of rarity, and sunk, if it was possible, even further into the netting with a sigh.
This lent itself to an opportunity, not one Alice had been directly considering for some time, but that spontaneously arose within her to form a sort of bubble. The bubble was peculiar, and light, and floated to the forefront of her mind where, no matter how hard her serious side could swat at it, would not sink or pop or go away. It was the sort of thing an inquisitive mind by nature does not let slip away, no matter how ridiculous or unladylike it may be to one's dignity. Pinching back her breath once more, Alice, wincing and squinting in anticipation of discovery, leaned forward until she could feel the sleeping man's even breathing on her cheeks and bit her lip.
Relaxing her eyes again, the young blonde took a good long look at his freckles; a careful and interpretive inspection, if you will. For this was her design in leaning so close. Curious things. They were fascinating in simplicity and perfection of shape—none of these blotchy jagged giraffe-like patches one sometimes sees on particularly freckled people; rather a more evenly distributed set of light beige dots across his nose and youthful cheeks, she found. It almost appeared as though they had not bred by the natural force of life; had some invisible artist's hand taken up a tiny paintbrush and applied each individual circle with care and levity? And then she was reaching forward to just barely brush her fingerprints over the flesh, just to test it, just to see how far it would give, just to see how smooth it could possibly be, covered in those spots, when there was quite suddenly a sound like a goat coughing over his cud on a distant hill.
Alice sat up so quickly that she almost met the new company from the grass underfoot. Regaining her posture too fast, she very nearly capsized, her bustle upending like a magnificent ship, and only after extricating her shoe from between the tiny netted diamonds did she manage to right herself and stand perfectly still. Grabbing the sides of the hammock again to stop it from twisting about as if in an ocean squall, she stared very hard at the man with white hair to see if perhaps he really was mocking her somehow. He reached up to rub his nose and dreamt on. There was a slight movement behind her, and turning, Alice found the March Hare with his paws clasped behind his back, a sunny smile on his rabbity features. There was a densely awkward pause before Alice had the slow, surmounting realization that the carmine color her face had suddenly been repainted meant little to an animal with no reference point as to the concept of flushed, utter embarrassment.
"I'm so sorry, I didn't hear you come up from behind," she said by way of a shaky opener.
"Terribly sorry to interrupt—I must say you do have something of Selene herself bending to gaze down upon young Endymion, but that is beside the point, I am sure. There is a telegram just come, and I have put it on the elephant-leg credenza in the foyer." The Hare rose up on his formidable toes to look into the swinging-net-thing. "Did he not have enough tea? Tschk; told him that net thing is dangerous." And with that the Hare bounced serenely over to a distant patch of tall grass to see about this thing pussywillow.
She was just breathing again when she turned to find a Hatter completely awake and sitting up, no trace of the nebulous clouds post-sleep upon his face or in his clear eye.
"Salut au monde," he said in mild cheerfulness upon seeing her there, but then frowned at Alice's stark look, which was rather more like a prairie dog gazing upon its approaching death by coyote than a pretty young woman surrounded by the beauteous bounty of early autumn. "I say, you haven't been eating milkweed, have you? You do look like something's disagreeing with you, and not in a polite point:counterpoint fashion."
"Enjoy your lie-down? It is a nice afternoon," said Alice in a very small voice.
"Was I asleep?" he sounded surprised, and looked about him for evidence. "I really wish I were more aware of these things when they happen; I get to sleep so very rarely, I think. Or maybe I don't remember..."
"I've got a telegram waiting," said Alice as she headed for the house, pressing her cheeks with her cool palms. When she returned to the doorstep, though, she was halfway through opening a blue telegram, and Alice felt a bit blindsided.
"Ah!" cried the Hatter, bounding toward her and grabbing it, "It's finally here!"
"Is it for you?"
"Yes, yes!" he said, and shredded the outer leaf to get to the good part. She watched his eyes go back and forth like a typewriter cage, looking ever more thrilled at its contents.
"What does it say?"
"Hang on, hang on," he said happily, humming out the printed words and increasing the suspense until at last he burst out grinning and struck out his arms to shove the telegram right up into her face like a signboard. She plucked it delicately and stared at the missive before looking up at him chidingly.
"Isn't it fantastic?!" he cried, laughing, and turned to dash off across the lawn.
"I don't know!" she called after him. "I can't read whatever language that is!" The Hare came out of the grass at that moment, headed for Alice just as the Hatter reappeared from what was apparently some sort of victory lap.
"It's here!" he cried to the Hare without stopping.
"Oh good!" said the Hare as the Hatter disappeared.
"What's here?!" cried Alice, who was losing patience.
"You're going to like this, I think," the small rabbit told her.
"I wish I knew what it was," said Alice, a bit annoyed.
"It's a party!" the Hatter shouted very close suddenly over her shoulder. "A champagne ball, these foreign royals give one every year and for some reason they keep giving me invitations!" here he made a sound like a cheerful clarinet, "And there's dancing and lots of people you don't know, and so much champagne you can't even imagine, and everyone stays out all night getting drunk as anything and comes away the best of friends in the morning!" He was clapping his hands together and looked so pleased that Alice could not help but join him in the mood.
"You'll want a dancing partner, you know how those people are," the Hare instructed, and the Hatter gave the woods beyond the garden a sly look.
"We'll need to kidnap someone," he said, and straightened suddenly. "The Duchess!" he cried, and took off around the house.
"I don't have any proper ballgowns," said Alice to the Hare.
"We'll get you one!" said the Hatter as he reappeared from around the house and disappeared again.
"It takes months and months to have a dress made," she continued practically.
"Don't worry about that; surely you realize that every armoire in this place gives you new togs every time you open and close the door," the rabbit told her.
"That is awfully convenient," she replied.
"We do try," said the Hare.
"Well, I suppose it would be nice to go, and see something new," said Alice. She looked at the strange alphabet on the blue slip of paper. "Who are these people, anyway?"
"Foreigners," said the Hatter behind her again, reaching over her shoulder for the telegram and replacing it with a cup of tea. "No Duchess, it is assured."
"Well, alright, then," replied Alice, sipping her tea. "But I shan't stay out too late, you know."
The Hatter and the Hare looked at each other for a moment before the Hare burst out in bizarre laughter at this, and Alice would eventually learn why.