The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of the fool is in the house of mirth.

Ecclesiastes 7:4

Alice stayed in the hayloft, and days passed in methodical succession, as they are wont to do. However, there were three in particular, right up at the end, that counted more than the others. On the first of these, the cows had been well pleased to see so much of her, and amused, even flattered, at her putting up among them.

"Do you know anything about the Idle Place?" Alice was sitting on a hay ottoman, pulling chunks of cheese off a wheel the size of her hand. The cow closest to her talked over her cud, a bit of chaff poking out from her lip. This one was her favorite, the eldest of the herd and least silly in the head, given though she was to trills of exasperation at the antics of her younger cohorts.

"Idle Place?"

"That tower out past the valleys, in the scrublands."

"Oof, it's been ages since I've left the Outers, I can't even remember where I used to graze as a heifer."

"I wouldn't ask anybody else about it," said Alice quietly, and squished more cheese down onto the buttered slab of bread she'd brought in her kerchief. The Bessie sighed and chewed a few more rounds before answering.

"You've got them mixed up; the Tower is the stack of stones, but the Idle Place is where people go when they're inside." Alice thought on it in brief, and decided that she liked very much the fact that a cow knew things like this.

"The room at the top?"

"What, you've been in there? No, it's the place you go to, a… what-d'you-call-it, state of mind. That Tower has effects on people," and she nodded seriously.

"It makes them depressed, you mean?"

"Mmm…" the cow thought a bit. "It has something to do with the Tower's placement, the way or where it's set, perhaps." Alice clasped her hands together for warmth and leaned over into her own knees.

"And what does it do?"

"Keeps you in a miserable way, for sure." The cow stopped chewing for a moment. "I think… it's like it stops time, but just on you. You sit there, and it all passes around you, and you know it's there, but it never hits you, never catches you along. No need to sleep or eat—no one's ever starved to death in that thing, that's not the point."

"That's an unusual punishment."

"Ta, only thing to do is think about what you've done." She paused, only to begin somewhat experimentally. "Is that where your friend was?"

"Mmm," was her distant reply.

"Well, I suppose the upshot is that he won't need a shave after all that," and then when Alice turned to look at her, "Sorry."

"No," said Alice, circling back her shoulders and sitting upright. "I'm only trying to figure it all out."

"You going to help him?" Alice was silent at this. "Every little helps; he could probably use it, even if he is a tupping mess." There was a fleeting sheer of a smile on the girl for just a moment, and she brushed friend cow's snuffy nose with a whippy bit of straw.

"How do you know all this, anyway?"

The cow did not turn to face Alice, but rolled her eye to match their gaze, somewhat sardonically.

"I am very perceptive," was her amused, haughty reply. "I pay attention to all the right things, you see."

"You're an eavesdropper, is what you are." Alice scooped all the crumbs into her palm, then held it out for the old girl's thick grey tongue to slather. This was a mildly disgusting but mostly fascinating affair, shiny and purplish like a great whomp of taffy curling round her hand. The cow smacked her lips together and licked the end of her nose in affirmation.

"Be a love and scratch my left ear, would you?"

With the second day appeared the small glass bottle pressed into her hand by the farmer's wife. This did not on its face seem to be a portent, namely because she was used to such bootless knick-knackery. In addition to the loop of yarn, she had managed to collect a pair of sheep shears, a small lady's monocle with a crack at the diameter, a postage stamp of a wooden spoon, and a small tin with a smidgen of wax in the corner. These were in addition to the slab of rye and three hams from before. But the bottle—that was where general trouble could be sourced, even if Alice would never trace it back. Truly, she did not even notice that it had been a mistake until well after she was mired in certain circumstances and couldn't be helped, but then, it was mud on mud anymore anyway.

She had been rubbing circles into the kitchen windows with a cloth when the woman had come up from behind and put her hand upon the girl's shoulder.

"Do you know what I think?" Alice jumped slightly, but turned politely. "I daresay you're one of those girls who suffers in winter," the woman remarked with a sigh and a strange glance to the ceiling, as though that could mask the prying, needling look that had shimmered into her eyes by firelight.

"I tolerate it as everyone else does, and do my best," replied the girl diplomatically.

"Hmm," she said with melody, and tilted her head to the side to assess young Alice, who hesitated, unsure whether to go back to work. "You've got such a strange expression when you're thinking. And you're a bit red in the eyelid, as though you cry yourself a solace every evening." She was not unkind, but apparently feeling expansive and poetic for some reason. Alice did not comment, and she went on. "A girl as pretty as you ought to be the sort who always has a smile about her, a simply natural upturn of the mouth, pleasing to her beaux." Her cheeks sunk into an overindulgent smile, a bit too cushy and relaxed. "It won't last forever, do make hay of it. Perhaps you've been kept out of society for too long and need the attentions of admirers—tucked away out of sight here in the countryside." She gave a mournful cluck and shook her head.

"I assure you—" Before Alice could finish the thought, the woman gasped melodramatically, and leaned in toward the poor girl, looking positively giddy for standing on the precipice of meddlesome potstirring.

"You aren't heartsick, are you? Run away from some devastatingly romantical problem? You appeared so mysteriously, like a foundling, and surely you have an epic array of secrets ripe for the ferreting." And she waggled her finger in Alice's face, giggling.

"No, indeed," said Alice, a bit awkwardly, "If I am making faces it is only because I've had a toothache of late." And she moved her lips in something of a pained smile.

"Oh," said the farmer's wife with a tsk of her tongue, thoroughly vexed. "Well, well, at the very least I have something for it." And she had returned with a small dark bottle that had OFFICINAL DRINK-ME lettered on it in colorful illuminated script. "Now, don't rush this, it's quite potent, in fact—" she had held it out to pass it into Alice's hand, but suddenly drew it in close and scrutinized the blonde before her. "In fact, a smaller bottle will be much better," she said, and disappeared for a decent half hour before parting with a small phial of dark tincture.

Alice had few doubts that the farmer's wife was slightly dotty, and her sweet demeanor was the only thing that saved her from being right-out batty.

"Ah!" said she upon returning for the fourth time to the cheery hot sitting room where Alice now sat. "What a calm afternoon; I think we'll be having an early spring soon enough, don't you?"

Alice kept her gaze out the window to the yard. On this the third day she had been recruited—or rather, granted a reprieve from butter churning, which the wife had finally bored of—to dust the furniture a bit. She had oiled the topside of the writing desk with a rag, but now it was quiet, and the warm glow and melted ash in the air were soporific.

"Perhaps," she replied, not bothering with turning the feather duster over in her hands as some pretense. The woman ambled up to the hearth, aimed her forehead into the mantel with a languid, wavy motion, and began to poke and tap at the bright red logs which hummed and breathed in a strange hissing roar, the flames going up so high that the tips disappeared. And then, just as she had entered, the farmer's wife disappeared down the hall, weaving in an easy girlish way, and Alice rose after half a minute to approach the window.

The sky met the yard in a seamless graft today, one long drift of nothing that hovered over her, but was miles and years off in the distance at the very same time. It sat in the tree by the house, dense and near, and it slid low in pockets, setting the horizon artificially close, obscuring her gauge of distance. It moved in ways she could not see, its vanguard a fog that was not fog but an optical illusion, this presence of something, perhaps watching her, waiting.

Alice did not think there would be an early spring.

She raised the sash and leaned out to the vacuum, the mass of still cold against her cheeks and neck. It had stopped snowing sometime earlier, and the world was here so quiet that Alice only remembered now how silent it was in filled herself all the way up with the shock before releasing a thick cloudburst that rolled and dropped off invisibly to join the white. She could feel her heartbeat lob itself against her goosefleshed arms; the sensation was fresh and dangerous, and when she couldn't feel the end of her nose she stood upright and shuttered the window, sucking in now the hot dry thickness of the fire. Alice did not draw the drapes but instead went back to sit at the writing desk, still looking out.

She was thinking very hard of an idea that approached her, careful to make its conclusion known but also to remain shadowed from close scrutiny. And so to draw it out, Alice began to rifle through the desk drawers. There was a ball of twine, creamy vellum stationery, a clogged fountain pen, and at the very back, stuffed at where the tray met the joists, a stack of fading postcards bound up in a plain bit of ribbon.

With the mildest of glances to the hall door, Alice held the one at the top of the stack to the light, just at the edge of the desk. MIRACULOUS HOT SPRINGS, it read, Reclaim health youth and beauty under that, and pictured was a young woman in a flowing white gown dipping her pitcher into a steaming pool of pure blue water. She flipped it to glance at the back, and found a penciled missive.

Dear P, it began. You must come up and visit me sometime. Society really is dull without an abettor about. I tried the water; they say it has restorative properties, which made me think of you. I wonder if they mean it. I rather like the stuff—may have to bring some back! Everything's going smoothly. The handwriting was charming, giving her a small glow of old happiness to see its uniform loops, but the signature appeared to be a jumbled-up pair of characters she couldn't quite untangle.

P— said the next one, I can't imagine how anybody gets any work done around here; everything and everyone is so… attractive. It amuses me how overjoyed all these people are to sit about and do nothing. Can you see the ringstain over my words? It's from the iced wine they serve in the salons. Do come up, I insist. And sitting at the bottom the set of twisted symbols there, again incoherent. This had pictures of marble white buildings in close quarters, beautiful cobblestone streets beneath a cloudless blue sky. She restacked the deck and went on.

The next had a painted vista of a far-flung square, and in its remotest corner a set of pure white steps towered aloft to a stone palace. Are you jealous yet, P? I went to the Opera last night and the audience gave a quarter hour's standing ovation to the lead soprano's maid, of all people. Priorities! I don't know how you can live with yourself when I'm having so much fun—do you? I'm getting vastly impatient with this self-pitying act, what more do you want? An afternoon at the Courts? Be assured I can arrange for it. This time the signature was hasty, scribbled.

And then the last, which was the most faded of all—she thought perhaps the illustration was of a badminton match. Oh, P, you're an unmitigated ass, do you know that? Your last telegram was completely uncalled for, you loused ingrate—maybe I don't want you here if you don't stop sulking like this! Anyway, sending you a ticket by express post and there's a room in your name at the Grand Palais, you absolutely must dine with me when you get in.

"Did you find something in there?"

For the first time, the farmer's wife was standing in the doorway looking at her with an expression denoting clarity, her head cocked to the side, quietly assessing with pursed lips Alice, who sat still.

"Some old postcards."

"Oh?" She lifted herself off the jamb and drew near. "What of?" Alice handed them over, and the wife only glanced at the tops before returning them. "Must've belonged to another tenant before us." On Alice's blank look, she said, "People come and go in and out of this place so frequently, half the time they leave their clothes in the cupboards," and smiled loosely, but in a genuine way. "Something on your mind?"

"I think I better had go and check on the cottage," Alice said slowly, the idea coming to fruition. The farmer's wife looked out the window, where the sky was darkening before sunset.

"Well," she said. "Everybody needs a project. Do be careful out there. Only I wish you would take along a few things, for my comfort."

"And… the cows?" The wife waved her hand airily.

"Everything always works out in the end. And take these cards with you; they're so picturesque."

It began to snow again just as she came in view of the halfway point, a clouded hill; thankfully the stuff only thickened in earnest when she reached out to lean against the northern corner of the little wood frame. There was the heavier door, and the bit of roof jutting out—it didn't cover the ground with these winds, but it was there. She meant to stand under it for a moment, only to find a decent quantity of firewood underneath a bleached tarpaulin, blanked by the striating drifts. It was still there, there was still enough. Alice stood there under this revelation, undulating slightly in the wind and snow up to her shins, then hitched up the haversack and tried the latch.

Inside, the air was… oddly squidgy, if air could be so, and she actually reached up to wave her hand before her face for the distinct fog filling the room. It wasn't terribly thick, or even approaching total obscurity, for she could see clear to the window above the table. It certainly wasn't smoke, for although she was out of the wind the chill remained, and the air didn't quite choke. She was not in certainty of a distress until Alice shut the door and set down the pack, and then she could hear it. A small voice; vague and dry murmuring punctuated only by its trailing off into a near-whisper every now and again.

"The postulate or common understanding involved in speech is certainly co-extensive, in the obligation it carries, with the social organism of which language is the instrument and the ends of which it is an effort to subserve." She went toward it, snow melting and pathering off her skirts to the floor. Another wave of her hand, and she could just make out the Hatter sitting in a chair in the shades under the hearth. He did not appear to see her through the haze, and of course continued, untiring.

"Of the two antithetic terms in the Greek philosophy one only was real and self-subsisting, that one was Ideal Thought as opposed to that which it has to penetrate and mould."

One foot down, and she placed the heel of the other just against the damp toe of her boot, edging, easing her way across the room until she was at his knee. Now she could get a better look at him, simply… sitting on a chair. Talking, not really to himself, but as though he were merely broadcasting the words, a mouthpiece or a conduit. He did look tired, not at all possessed of himself, but vacant, disconnected, teetering on a blank stupor.

"The other, corresponding to our Nature, was in itself phenomenal, unreal, without any permanent footing, having no predicates that held true for two moments together; in short, redeemed from negation only by including indwelling realities appearing through…"

She drew a deep breath and let it out, alive with possibility.

Alice stood with her toes pointed forward and slowly, deliberately, bent until she was aligned with his entire field of vision, inescapable. She half-imagined there to be a thin invisible wire between her own pupils and his; she pulled it taut, perfectly balanced, and gazed at him steadily, just above the dark circles. The Hatter trailed off, suddenly distracted and stunned into silence by the miraculous appearance she had effected, as though she'd descended onto the floorboards. She blinked, and the light gesture hooked his presence of mind, his wide eyes watching her, and held. Alice finally spoke low and gentle.

"Your hair wants cutting."

This took the Hatter aback somewhat, for his mouth was slightly open in what she thought might be surprise, and when he did not resume his monologue, Alice slid out of her apron pocket the handle on the sheep-shears, just enough to show him what they were.

"Shall we have a look?" and strode with a perfectly casual air until she was in the light from the window. It was with the automation of a sleepwalker that he joined her, the chair grating in a rumble over the wood in his wake, and then the Hatter edged himself onto the chair, his back to her.

She hadn't lied, but she hadn't contradicted what the cow had told her, either, as it was more for care than growth. In the failing sunlight his hair seemed dingy and grey, the curls wilted and spent—assuredly not the dashing white locks of before, thick fluming waves tamed backward. There was spitting bind of rasped frustication right at the back of his head, dry and bunched from having turned his head back and forth over the same spot on the pillow for hours on end.

Alice ran her thumb over the the mass before she looked up at the white that was across the outside sill and down to where the firewood was stacked.

"You've got a knot," she said kindly, taking out the shears again, "Why don't I cut it out, and then we'll do something about all this fog. I think a nice bath would help sort things." And he did not respond, but she began, with the shy hand of a novice, to squeeze the blades together and work them gingerly about the twists and kinks to avoid the unnecessary drama of an accidental lop, pausing to reassess her angles often.

And in this way Alice worked smoothly, apart from when she found the little curl looped in on itself tucked away—she barely gave a thought to snipping it right out. Holding it in her hand, she did feel regret at having severed such a piece of symbolism. But then she slipped it into her pocket with the other things and the little blue jar and went back to the knot.