JMJ

Chapter Seventeen

Of Alices and Queens

The Cat's grin resumed and with the full force of a lion's roar as he looked at Esther with wide silvery green eyes as intense as jewels in the sockets of an ancient statue. Sashaying across his long branch, he would go from being quite as visible as a normal cat to being surreal in his near invisibility, save for his grin always as stark as madness. The setting sun against his diamond-faceted fur reflected strange colors in his dark tabby stripes like a firefly squid but in liquid gold and deep oranges more than purples and blues.

"Oh, leave her alone," said Matthias with a roll of his eyes. "We both know she's not Alice."

"She's more Alice than you're Hatter even in your most vaporous moments."

"Vaporization, you mean?"

"The pressure in your tea is tighter than clockwork at times," muttered the Cat.

"Pom said that you knew about Lise," said Matthias, suddenly feeling rather more Hatter-like, hat or no. "How to pop her open and shut again."

"Like a telescope?" offered the Cat with a cock of his head. "Yes, we spoke about that, didn't we, Alice?"

"I'm not Alice," said Esther.

"Well, I know you are the hacker," said the Cat.

"Made by Rex Red, apparently. What does he have to do with this?" Matthias demanded.

"There is no Rex Red," said the Cat. "He is the dreamer of someone else's dream."

"You said that some people see what people say instead of say what they see," said Matthias.

"And you're hoping I say what I see?" asked the Cat. "But then you'll see what I say. Don't you want to see for yourself?"

"Just tell us plainly what you know," said Matthias sternly.

"That Alice is here to save Wonderland."

"I'm especially not a heroine in a YA novel," said Esther very quietly.

Matthias huffed in frustration for her.

"Call it what you will," said the Cat. "But that is why you came as far as I know. You followed a White Rabbit down a rabbit hole to Wonderland— I'll beat it— a bubble of turmoil with the collisions of planets from out of their proper orbits, and you still have that mission in mind. I know Alices and their stubbornness. You do exactly as Alices and queens alike."

"Are you… a hacker?" asked Esther after a pause.

"There are no illusions here," said the Cat, "but the ones your subconscious brings with you."

"Right," Esther huffed quite annoyed.

"What?" Matthias demanded.

"If he was a person he would…" She stopped short.

"You can't tell me you're the real Cheshire Cat," Matthias scoffed.

The Cat did not answer, but his eyes grew wider and quite pleased with himself.

Matthias turned away and laughed.

"I told you he was a little mad," said the Cat kindly to Esther and he disappeared behind the tree in a whisking sort of way that did not make much sense.

It made even less sense when he suddenly appeared in a tree near where Matthias had turned so that he stopped shorter than Esther and stepped back with a pout.

"He's part sane too, you know," said the Cat looking him straight in the eyes. "And that's the most dangerous part. He's almost as dangerous as you are. He has the potential too, to be the most dangerous of us all."

A shiver went through Matthias despite. He frowned at the Cat defiantly back, and would not fall prey to his dark repartee.

"No more games," he said. "What do you want?"

"I believe," shrugged the Cat leaping from the tree now and onto the ground. He stretched for extra measure. "I was promised a massage."

"You want the petting?" asked Esther as she looked down at his intent approach hesitantly.

Matthias had an urge to grab the animal by the scruff for, but he knew that that would be the stupidest thing of all to attempt with something as elusion as the Cheshire Cat.

"A message," said the Cat.

"You said 'massage'," said Matthias.

Just before reaching Esther's ankles, he paused in midstep and cocked his head. Raising a brow with his grin temporarily pursed by inquisitive lips, he still looked more amused than ever.

"Can't it be both.?"

Then he grinned back to normal.

Matthias grinned back. Warningly.

The Cat simply flicked his tail and then proceeded to rub against Esther's ankles caressingly and began to purr, the most perfect sort of feline purr.

I knew that was all he was good for, thought Matthias.

Though, she tried desperately to resist at first, Esther at last could not control herself. Stooping into a squat, she stroked the cat and he lovingly rubbed against her arms and knees.

"Oh, I knew you were a cat-person," he purred with the greatest affection.

"Doesn't the Duchess pet you like this?"

"Sometimes," the Cat admitted. "Though I know that that potato in Heartland would rather play

tête-à-chat. Cat hater, through and through. You can't imagine the stress of being forced to pretend to embrace such a thing."

"But you're a cat. You don't have to, do you?" asked Esther.

"I was speaking of the patient."

"Pom?" bristled Matthias despite himself.

"Oh, you are good at this," the Cat was saying on to Esther. "You must have cats lined up at the door."

"I have two at the moment," said Esther.

"Lucky creatures," said the Cat. "Oh, you don't know how long it's been since someone's scratched under my chin. Ah… that get's the mind-juices flowing."

As the Cheshire Cat resumed his rubbing, Matthias ran his fingers through his hair. As the Cat lied down upon Esther's sandals, Matthias threw up his hands. But as the cat began to lick his fur for a bath while his was being rubbed down, it was the last straw.

"What the stink!" he demanded throwing his arms. "What is this?"

Just like that the Cat slipped away. Esther gasped and looked around trying to figure out when he had gotten up and which way he had gone. He had not simply vanished out of thin air like some interpretations of him. He slipped from the senses in a manner so near natural that if made one question one's faculties. It was such that even enchantment could not be blamed.

Matthias blinked too, even though he should have been used to such things, but here he felt much more alert than he ever had in the sluggish world of Heartland. Here he could not wait on time to tell him his schedule. He had to keep his wits and time himself.

"Look, look, I'm sorry, alright!" he called. "I know you must be more on edge than you want us to think."

"Oh, I just wanted to prove that you were as on edge now as you were there," said the Cat's voice. "You're just forced to face the edge now rather than slug your way around it."

Esther and Matthias threw their heads back so that their crowns nearly rammed together like two mountain sheep in reverse, but they hardly noticed. The Cat was suddenly just overhead in a high and precarious branch, but the cat despite his berth was quite secure upon it.

"Well?" pressed Matthias eagerly.

"You need a new hat, Hatter," said the Cat. "It would fall off your head much more easily. You may buy one if you wish down the way."

He pointed his paw in one direction.

"Though…" and here the Cat paused playfully before nodding in the other direction. "You may be better off finding him in that direction. You may try both if you like."

"You're… inviting us to the Mad Tea Party?" offered Matthias after exchanging a quick glance with Esther.

He clicked the roof of his mouth with a wince.

The Cat only grinned.

"What about Heartland?" asked Esther gently. "Isn't that the message for the massage?"

"Well, it isn't much of a message as you both know the details as much as I do."

"What is your purpose in all this?" asked Matthias.

"That is not the message," shrugged the Cat and he huddled into himself to look more like his infamously smug illustration. "But if you must know, I traded places with a patient."

"Patient?" asked Esther, who certainly was perturbed for his use of the word a second time.

"He is no longer around to play patiently or otherwise," said the Cat, "but no one's removing my head with no body to cut it from."

"Really?" mocked Matthias.

"It's you from the Real World that should worry about your necks," said the Cat.

"So you're worried about us now?" mocked Matthias further.

"We are, for lack of a better word, symbiotic," said the Cat.

"Literally?" asked Esther.

"Literarily," Matthias corrected.

"I can tell you one piece of advice," said the Cat.

Matthias crossed his arms even as Esther sighed.

"A little mercury poisoning goes a long way," said the Cheshire Cat quite as though it explained everything in a bad girlfriend's paradise.

"Did you learn that from the Duchess and her morals?" chirped Matthias cheekily.

"She would tell you that to chip like a sparrow you're going to have to make the breast of it," said the Cat. He cocked his head thoughtfully. "Or perhaps she would say that to think one has a lot to crow about might have you eating crow later on. But as for my little saying I learned it from a bad hat." Again he cocked his head the other way. "Or… well, actually a good hat, if you think about it. If it's not stiff it is no good as a proper hat, but others probably won't know the difference, especially over that beguiling fishy smell you were making a stink about just now." He sniffed delicately. "Yes, I can smell it already like a rapeseed salmon fry. The waste of it."

And just like that he wasted away himself. No smoke, no mirrors, and no dissolving were necessary for the trick, because there was no trick. It was beyond natural; though not quite supernatural. First they were looking at the faint grin and twinkly eyes of the creature, and then the tree itself seemed to breathe the form away into some indecipherable direction. The branches were bare.

The last of the sunlight had gone too, and night was taking its hold on the wood. It felt like a completely different world yet again as though they had passed through a looking glass from where they had been before they had spoken with the cat. It was not entirely impossible to imagine that he had brought them here from somewhere else either, but Matthias did not think it had anything to do with the Cat himself. It was the nature of this world to be at the dictation of those thinking in its midst, but he was too weary to ponder much about it now.

He nearly forgot Esther yet again as she slowly came up to his side like a cat sneaking up in her own way. He was startled a little, but she was a comfort more than if she had been his own cat after a long day at some miserable office in some forgotten Real World realm that felt more faraway than any dragon or castle. He did not know why it made him a little sad, but he smiled with good spirits to Esther.

"Well. What do you think of all that?" he asked.

Esther was not fooled, but she smiled back anyway. "I think… I think, I hope there's a place to spend the night first."

"Me too," said Matthias.

"Which way shall we go then?" asked Esther.

"The only lead we have right now," said Matthias. "We can't get up to the great hamster ball in the sky even if we died as hamsters, so we'll just have to keep our feet about us on our own and let our wonder lead the way for now."

Esther laughed, though it was more out of ill ease than not. "You're going to get a new hat?"

"We're going to set off towards the bad hat without forgetting that curiosity killed the cat."

"I don't think I'm in the mood for mad people anymore tonight."

Matthias shrugged. "At least not madder than you or me."

"Maybe he won't be madder," said Esther; though it was only the wishful thinking of someone reaching the end of conscious reason.

She was looking very tired as they began in the direction agreed upon. Matthias stifled a teary-eyed yawn himself, but he smiled wryly at her as though she was the sleepy child and he had all night ahead of him with ease. She wrinkled her nose, but she liked his look nonetheless.

If only he had a hat. He would have tipped it most gentlemanly as a "you're welcome" for his service.