Hatter woke up from a strange dream with blinking lights and dancing pigeons on the rooftops of the city. They cooed and spun in slow graceful circles, thousands of them. He thought he smelled flowers, and for a moment he was sure he smelled Alice right before he woke up – her scent a little lighter and a little different.

His eyes opened and he stared at the ceiling.

The lights had not been a dream. Bright pink and yellow neon flashed on the wall from the hallway. Spinning wheels of hearts, spades, diamonds and clubs, interspersed with dollar signs and horrible smiling faces.

He had apparently spent the night curled up on a thin mattress pushed against the cold concrete of the wall. The walls of his cell were painted bright red and green. The space was bare except for the small mattress he had been asleep on, and a metal toilet in the corner.

Through the bars (painted in candy stripes), he saw that he was not alone. In the cell across the hallway, a man clad in white was dancing in the corner of his cell, staring dreamily up at the ceiling. His long beard trailed to his chest, and his neatly curled mustache reached for his ears across ruddy cheeks.

What was he dancing to exactly?

Hatter winced. He would not call it music, exactly, but there was certainly rhythmic noise with grating vocals coming from the speakers in the hallway.

He realized with a groan that it was the stuff they were playing up on the Casino floors. Who was the incompetent wretch in charge of the music up there? Even the skeeviest parties out in the city had better tripe than this.

The dancing man had spotted him and sashayed his way over to the door of his cell. He grasped the bars with shaking arms, his body still swaying to the music. "Ah, you're awake at last sirrah!"

Hatter shifted, feeling several joints pop painfully as he stretched. "S'pose I am at that." He yawned. "How long was I asleep?"

"There's no way to say for certain, but my inner wisdom tells me a night and erm…three hours."

Hatter groaned as he got to his feet. "Your inner wisdom, eh? Does your inner wisdom know when they feed us?"

The other man smiled with beatific bemusement. "That I cannot tell you. I am not certain that they know. The food simply…arrives…when the time is right."

"What – do they time it with the phases of the moon or something?" Hatter's stomach grumbled angrily at the thought.

The man shrugged, as if this were a completely unknowable mystery that Hatter was a fool to even be asking about.

Hazy memories flashed of the room with Mad March. He winced and shoved them aside. At some point he had blacked out and woken up here. His entire body was screaming at him – sharp flashes of pain and numbness vying for his attention. He carefully tested each limb for range of motion and waggled his jaw. At least nothing was broken, though his left ankle had a light sprain and a very nasty bruise. No teeth were missing either. Overall, he was in better shape than he had expected to be in after spending all that quality time with his former colleague. It was a little suspicious, actually, but he temporarily shoved those concerns aside too. He would be ready to revisit them after he had eaten something.

He looked over at the other man and nodded. "I'm Hatter. Who're you?"

The man stepped back and gave an elaborate bow. "I am Sir Charles Eustace Faberingay L'Malfoy III, Grand Marshall of the Tulip order of the White Knights in Wonderland." He paused for effect. "But you may call me Charlie."

Hatter blinked. "Wow. Did you just make all that up to impress me on the spot, or have you been practicing?"

"Do you challenge me because you feel inferior, or because you have merely forgotten your manners?" The old man shot back.

Hatter grinned. "Both, mate."

This appeared to satisfy Charlie. He sat down on the floor of his cell with a surprising amount of grace and continued to stare at the ceiling.

It was clear to Hatter that he had been dismissed. He turned his attention to finding a way out of his predicament. He stared out into the hallway, noting the security cameras and reinforced concrete. There were no windows. Were they in the basement of the Palace?

These cells looked different than they had years ago, when he'd last been down here – not as a prisoner then but as a jailer. Back then, they'd been gray concrete and iron, with white fluorescent lights, a dank smell and mildew in the corners. And rats. All of that remained was more or less the same, except for the gray. The garish colors and lights really made the experience maddening. He wondered whether this had been Mad March's idea or the Queen's.

The place didn't just look different, it was also a hell of a lot more secure than it had been back then. The old iron bars had been replaced with a reinforced steel of some kind. His keen eye noticed tiny blinking lights in the hallway along the floor, walls, and ceiling. No doubt they were sensors, activated by motion and warning the jailers if anything moved in the hall. He guessed that there were also cameras somewhere. No doubt every conversation was recorded.

Looking down the hallway, he saw that there were two more cells on his side and one on Charlie's side. Their cells were positioned at the very end. He wondered if the others were occupied.

"Oi!" He called out. "Anyone else in here?"

Charlie gave a start. "Good sir, I am communing with the life force at the center of creation. Would you please quiet down!" He said indignantly.

Hatter ignored him. "Anyone else in here?" He called again.

"All I ask," Charlie said with a huff, "is for you to keep your voice at a civilized level."

Down the hallway, a pair of hands grabbed the bars of the cell farthest away from Charlie. Hatter couldn't see a face.

"I'm here, so you can stop shouting. Who's there?"

"…though I understand for a knave of your erhm, questionable origins this might be difficult to understand," Charlie went on.

Hatter held up a hand. "Charlie, shut up a minute."

Charlie was affronted. "I beg your pardon! Disgraceful, sir!" He inhaled, preparing himself to launch into a tirade condemning Hatter's poor manners. Hatter glared at him. "Stop talking Charlie, you're interrupting."

Charlie closed his mouth.

"You can call me Hatter," he said to the voice down the hall. "Who are you?"

Silence. Then, "I don't know."

Hatter grinned. "Sounds inconvenient for you. What should I call you?"

"Walrus."

Now that rang a bell. Hadn't he known a Walrus during his time here? "What are you in here for?"

"I made a friend I shouldn't have."

Just then there was a noise down the corridor. A Suit in a crisply-pressed uniform walked in. Two servers trailed behind him holding two silver platters each. One went in front of the Walrus's cell, and a meaty hand immediately reached through the bars to take the food from it.

The second tray went in front of Charlie's cell. Charlie did not immediately touch it, but instead surveyed their captors with disdain.

The third and fourth trays went in front of Hatter's cell.

Hatter kept his face carefully neutral as he scanned the contents of the trays. The first tray held a meal - not a particularly good one by the looks of it. The second held a goblet of wine and a small beautifully frosted cupcake. Next to the wine was a note – drink me – and the cupcake a similar one – eat me.

Hatter looked up into the server's face. The man looked curiously like a walking dumpling, and his face was round and doughy, with soft brown eyes nested beneath a large forehead. Hatter saw no facial hair and suspected he might be bald under the server's cap he wore. Something felt very off about him. Hatter glanced at the other server and realized he was almost an identical copy of the first one. What was going on here?

As if in response to a silent command, the two men and the Suit turned and left. No words had been spoken. Hatter maneuvered the wine and cake through the bars and set them to the side. Food first, then he would see to whatever nonsense was baked into that pastry.

Charlie was busy with his tray. The food was plated on a dish that was too large to fit through the bars. There was also a suspect-looking soup in a bowl that certainly could not fit through without spilling all its contents, and a spoon so tiny it might have been made for a toy doll. Charlie had taken the food off the plate, and turned the plate sideways to bring it through the bars. Now he was bringing the meal through the bars and returning it to the plate. The food was barely recognizable as such. There was a rubbery green vegetable mixture of some kind, a cold lump of what might have been mashed potatoes (no gravy), and a pile of carrots so over-steamed they were shriveled like a fruit left out in the sun for too long.

Once he had finished arranging his food, Charlie picked at it with disgust. "In all my fifty years here, I have never been so mistreated. It is beyond the pale."

Hatter had grabbed up the handful of desiccated carrots on his tray and was forcing himself to chew them. "You've been here fifty years? How the hell have you survived here for fifty years? What do you do?"

"Don't talk with your mouth full," Charlie admonished, apparently oblivious to the fact that he was speaking around his own mouthful. "I did this and that. Sometimes I was a server in the Casino – but never a dealer. I managed the septic systems for some time. I was a guard at the gates. I was a courier for her Majesty's estate in the hills. I went grocery shopping for Mad March before he died and was reconfigured." Charlie shuddered. "And for many years, I was the concierge of her Majesty's hotel. That was my favorite position. Oh yes, and I did a six-month stint as a juggler in her Majesty's pop-up circus."

Hatter blinked. "That is quite a career Charlie. How did you manage it?"

"Oh, it was very simple," said Charlie slyly. "I used my wit and charm. When you have those skills young knave, the world is an oyster, yours for the draining."

That was a common enough metaphor, but Hatter noticed his stomach tighten. How many times had he thoughtlessly used it?

"Then why did you end up in here?" He pressed.

Charlie's sly look fell. "That is very complicated. But the Suits seem to be under the preposterous impression that I stole the Stone of Wonderland last month, and so I am languishing until Her Majesty decides on the best way to remove my head. No ordinary beheading will do, you see."

Hatter was surprised he'd made it that long. When it came to executing executions, the Queen was not known for her patience. "And did you?" He asked.

"Lose my head?" Charlie shook his head and gave Hatter a fond grin. "Ah, you foolish knave, not yet. As you can see if you look carefully, my head is still attached to my body. In fact, it is because of this that I am able to converse with you right now."

Hatter was sure that if there hadn't been bars between them, the old man would have patted him on the head. He sighed. "No, Charlie, I can see that you still have your head. I meant the Stone. Did you steal the Stone of Wonderland?"

Charlie drew himself up to his full height. "Sir, how dare you insinuate –"

"I'm not insinuating anything," Hatter interrupted. "Just asking."

"And I decline to answer sir." Then he seemed to think better of it and said, "I most certainly did not. The allegation is preposterous and a smear on my good name."

Without moving his head, Charlie flitted his eyes up and down the hallway, then waggled his eyebrows at Hatter and winked.

Hatter was beginning to suspect that the old knight was not as crazy as he seemed. Was this all a show for the cameras?

"All right, all right," He said. "I believe you. Just curious. Let's talk about something else then. What did you do before you came here?"

Charlie harrumphed and cleared his throat noisily. His rheumy eyes turned distant and he appeared to retreat inside himself. "Ah, well. That was very long ago."

"Long enough to forget it, eh?"

"Not that long ago."

Hatter, sensing that he had touched a nerve, waited to see if the old man would share more.

Charlie's rheumy eyes had taken on a distant look. "Young knave, am I correct in surmising that you are the Mad Hatter, who was at one point in the Queen's employ?"

Hatter nodded.

"Ah, I thought as much. Have you ever played chess?"

"I've played a little now and then."

"But not like the games we used to play, I'll warrant. If all this rigamarole were happening three centuries ago, there would be no need for all this. We would put the whole confounded situation on a chess board and play it out there, and save ourselves the trouble of all these be-headings. I would be a Knight of course," his eyes took on a sly glint. "Protecting our dear Queen, with the noble help of our rabbit-headed Bishop. You would be a Pawn, cast about helplessly on the checkered seas of the board."

Hatter frowned indignantly. "Oi. You seem very sure of yourself."

Charlie smiled sagely. "A Knight has to be, for his strength is in his valor. Of course, all the rest are gone now, these past eighty years. But before that I had another one-hundred-and-fifty with my comrades. Ah, those were glorious days."

Hatter quickly did the math. "Wait, you're telling me you're two-hundred-and-thirty years old?" It was not an unheard of age to reach for a Wonderlander, but it was certainly unusual.

Charlie shrugged. "Thereabouts young knave. But the years have all run together, now that there is no magic to fill them. No enchanted mushrooms to make ourselves bigger or smaller or disappear altogether. No Jabberwocks to tame. We were magicians you know, that is why…" he trailed off and waggled his eyebrows at Hatter. "A certain royal lineage could not tolerate our presence. We were off in the forests, harming no one, only occasionally dabbling in and influencing the affairs of the wider world. But for that we were punished."

From his own understanding of Wonderlandian history, Hatter knew that Charlie was wildly understating the matter. He had never knowingly met one of the Old Knights, even during his time at the Palace years earlier, but there had been a time when their organization was a formidable force. The common belief in Wonderland was that they had died off centuries ago. Died off being a polite euphemism for Ruthlessly hunted down and executed by the House of Cards, who put aside their incessant, incestuous infighting for a brief – but brutal – interval to ensure that their major political opponents were disposed of, their wealth seized, and their vast knowledge of the workings of the cosmos destroyed.

But Charlie, and whoever his friends had been, must have survived out in the forests beyond the boundaries of the Realm.

"Why'd they come for you, after all that time?" Hatter asked.

Charlie appeared to be weighing his words carefully. "There, ah, was more than one way to the Other Side at that time. We were keepers of that knowledge, and the Palace felt it best to eliminate those avenues that were not carefully regulated, for everyone's safety."

"So there was more than one Stone?" Hatter was aware that this conversation could have dangerous consequences for Charlie, and he wondered why the old man was sharing so much when he knew they would be overheard.

"Once. We were guardians of that knowledge, in the distant past. The founder of our Order, the Rook of Tulips, was a little-regarded third son of a branch of the House of Diamonds. This suited him as he had the freedom to learn, unfettered by onerous duties in court. After many years of study, he became an explorer between realms, a journeyer who beheld many wonders and developed a small following of devoted students. One day, quite by accident, he opened the first portal to the Other Side. At first, he thought it might be good thing. The oysters who came through were primitive people, but we learned much from each other during those initial months.

Then someone from among his students discovered that the oysters could be drained. Who exactly it was and how this happened is lost to time, but we call him the Carpenter in our stories to commemorate the terrible things he built. The story I heard from my teacher, all those years ago, is that the Carpenter first learned how to drain Wonderlanders through careful enchantment, and used this as a secret weapon – taking the life force of his enemies in the Palace solely for the purpose of weakening and destroying them.

But then he discovered this life force could be distilled and assimilated, and in secret he built the first drainer and brewed the first teas. He could not continue to prey on Wonderlanders undiscovered, so instead he turned to four young Oysters who had been foolish enough to come here unprotected."

Hatter could hardly believe what he was hearing. "But – that's impossible. Draining Wonderlanders has been tried, it doesn't work."

Charlie shook his head and sighed. "No, now it does not, because our current drainers are built to function only in the presence of oyster DNA. We no longer need enchantments when they do the job so handily."

"Oyster DNA?"

"Their ancestral composition," Charlie said distractedly, peering down the hallway toward the Walrus's cell, where movement and coughing could be heard. "Their bodily humors inherited from their lineage on the Other Side. Surely you've seen the marks from the drainer? They are different from us, not in their essential nature, but in the way their world has shaped them over the many generations." He raised his voice. "Wouldn't you agree, Walrus you old toady?"

There was silence in the other cell. Charlie sniffed disdainfully and said more quietly, "Walrus has spent most of his life perfecting the art of tea-making. Most of the drainers currently on the market are his innovations. If you have enjoyed the resulting products, be sure to thank him."

Hatter was slightly taken aback by the bite in the Knight's tone. Where was the silly, half-senile old man he'd been talking to ten minutes ago?

"As I was saying," Charlie continued. "After many mishaps, the Carpenter's egregious doings were discovered, and the Rook of Tulips gathered the rest of this students to put a stop to it. After that, the most loyal of these students swore binding oaths along with the Rook to prevent, at all costs, the incursion of oysters into Wonderland, for the protection of both sides. And thus the Tulip Order of the White Knights in Wonderland was founded.

"Of course," He added pleasantly, almost as an afterthought. "I cannot recall ever taking any such binding oath, I am merely recounting the history as it was told to me. I am sure I will be delivered from this cell in no time, as soon as the Queen realizes that a loyal follower of hers has been mistakenly imprisoned for a crime he did not commit."

Seeming satisfied with the protective power of this addendum, Charlie sat down on the floor of his cell and once again assumed a meditative posture, closing his eyes.

Hatter stared at him in silence for several minutes, thoughts racing, aches and pains temporarily forgotten. "You're bullshitting me," he said at last. "If all this is true you wouldn't be alive right now. You're telling me you've been here for fifty years without having your head taken off or making your escape? Why are you even here?"

Charlie popped one eye open and fixed his gaze on Hatter. "Young knave, your poor manners are outmatched only by your insidious lack of intelligence. As the only surviving member of my Order, I happen to be the only one in this Palace who knows how to repair the interface between the Stone of Wonderland and the portal to the Other Side. I also – so they tell me – have had my memories of the past before I came to the Palace erased to enhance my experience here. Memory is a surprisingly selective thing, did you know that? So yes, I almost certainly fabricated everything I just told you for my own amusement, and did not have a secret portal of my own allowing me to access hidden knowledge when the right person appears to receive it. Now, if you don't mind, I have other things to attend to. I am wearied by your tedious commentary."

"Okay then." Hatter decided it was time to lie down again and think all this through. He was feeling a sense of vertigo, and not just from the conversation.

"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"

"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.

"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none-
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.

- From "The Walrus and the Carpenter"

(Poem by Lewis Carroll, appears in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There)