JMJ
Chapter Twenty-Five
Family Madders
"Here's the real authentic 1832 cups!" said the First Hare holding one up from the tabletop.
It was almost like watching an impossible thing or something at least so taboo that it was shocking, and yet not necessarily something that needed to be considered sacrilegious so much is something that had never been done. Both Esther and Matthias stared helplessly as these bouncing hares zipped to and fro about the table like a pair of calves in a china shop.
"There's only less than a hundred that I can see," mused the Second despite herself.
"And the authentic 1832 chairs!" said the First wobbling one on purpose and ignoring her sister-in-arms— at least in her own crossed arms. "And the authentic 1832 armchair especially!"
"There's only one of those!" the Second whispered as she hopped alongside the First.
"Why '1832'?" asked Esther when words finally came to her. "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1865."
"Well, all these things did not just spawn out of thin air!" said the Second. "Everyone knows that a thing in a scene of life was not necessarily made brand new for such a scene."
"True," said Matthias, "but then why '1832'?"
"It's numerically masterful to go back a hard six," said the Second.
"A guess?" Matthias scoffed.
"We're historical experts!" said the First Hare quite offended.
"Yes!" chirped the Second cheerfully. "We learned everything we need to know from a school of thought where everything is thought upon with great severity."
"And we had a smart cookie each and you are what you eat!" declared the First happily again.
The Second nodded eagerly. "We don't have a clue because we have all the answers already! We hit all the bad books and avoided the no-brainers as much as any sort of horrible brainstorm. We got out of such whethers or hints of lightning strikes upon the mind because a mind is a terrible thing to waste. That's why we never wracked them but were always very gentle with them. And we made sure that we heard everything from in one ear to the other as we listened to the footsteps of the walking encyclopedias for our book-smart reports. Oh, we never drew a blank because we would draw upon our past knowledge."
"We left with honors!" beamed the First. "Passing with all the flying colors we hoisted out high and dry with the embalm displaying the school's principles." Though, it might have been "principals" if they had gone through many of them.
"And best of all, since we all know that those who know their history are not doomed to repeat it, we knew we'd think around it, since we desired our careers to be based upon repeating history to everyone in our tour-de-force," the Second explained. "So we forced ourselves not to know our history topic but that of many other things."
"How Wonderlandian," remarked Matthias.
"Where's the March Hare and the Mad Hatter?" asked Esther impatiently.
"Hold all questions till the end of the tour," said the First Hare cheerfully and she handed Esther a bucket as though she was supposed to put her questions into it.
"They just told us they don't know," whispered Matthias.
Esther huffed.
Matthias snorted with amusement despite himself.
"You'll be sure to know the answer to all the knowledge you desire before you kick it in an easy-to-follow list," the First went on.
"So we're going to spend our lifetime getting through the whole tour then?" asked Matthias.
Suddenly the bucket appeared to be heavier in Esther's hands, but it might have been just Esther's continued anxiousness about the whole procedure.
"Well, we have all Wonderland to go yet," said the Second.
"Come, come! The rest of it is a whirlwind tour!" said the First. "And we should be back within eighty days for less than a quarter of a van as long as there's enough fog to ride on."
"We don't want to miss it, we don't!" agreed the Second. "Or we'll never see the rainbow's end."
Esther frowned. "I don't think so!"
A real whirlwind blowing them round Wonderland was not exactly a fun idea, to be honest. Though to be more honest, Matthias knew that if it brought them to their destination, he would have taken it. What pricked his mind was the notion of the whirlwind snagging them anyway without consent for the far reaches of the Kingdom of Hearts. Then it would take forever to get back here. Possibly impossible as Wonderland often worked like a dreamland and getting back to anyplace one had been before was unlikely. So he put his foot down, and right in front of the hares.
"No, I think you fulfilled your need to give us a sample," he grinned. "We decided we don't need a tour with the curiosity you've given us. We wouldn't want it spoiled by actual facts to drag us all down."
"Oh! Then tell us each of your individual sizes and we'll give you your T-shirts," said the First Hare neither disappointed nor relieved.
"No, we don't need those, thank you, though," Esther insisted.
"Oh, but we must, we must! You're neither dressed to a T!" said the Second.
And immediately the two hares in unison reached into small packs behind their backs and pulled out a beautiful lacy tea green blouse and a handsome tea-brown dress shirt. They handed the visitors their shirts as to royalty with curtsies and bows as much as they could muster in their bouncy unendingly energetic way. Hardly did Matthias and Esther but touch the hems of these clothes when the young hares sped off as though the catch up with a tortoise into the woodland and out of sight.
Here the two humans paused watching the still settling shrubbery.
"Do you… think they're related to the March Hare?" asked Esther standing up admiring the blouse a moment, which she had just barely caught from fluttering to the ground; it was a very delicate thing. "We should have asked them that."
"I don't think it matters," said Matthias folding his gifted shirt over the side the fence near at hand. "They're on duty and they don't seem the type to bring any personal matter to work with them as to answer our questions about his whereabouts."
"You mean the type that would make the boss' grandmother show her ID?"
"Exactly," shrugged Matthias, but now as if bidden both turned to the empty table thoughtfully.
Birds were chirping sweetly. A wind-chime tinkled merrily from the direction of the house in a very gentle breeze which blew the pleasant twinkling komorebi over the tabletop. But the chairs were empty and the teapot cold.
Esther sighed. "Now what?"
Matthias cocked his head and muttered, "Well, chottomatte!"
"I don't see any tea," sniffed Esther, "much less maté."
Matthias chuckled and went for the table.
There was something there if not a hatter, dormouse, or hare. He squinted at the armchair at something catching the light like on the rearview mirror of a car, but as he drew close enough to see into the seat of it and to touch the back and arms, he saw a shades of green which where there should have been maroon. Thick, aviary shades to be exact, and they were quite up to the table. Had they been on a person's face the figure would have been short, but here they were on nobody it was far too high to be normal. They did not move of their own accord, but rather sat there in the air statically.
Gently Matthias leaned closer, but if it was an invisible person the person did not notice him or was doing a very good job at ignoring him. Perhaps it was an invisible robot not turned no? He waved his hand in front of the shades. Nothing.
"Hmm."
After carelessly dropping her bucket, very timidly, Esther went to Matthias' side, and she too looked very hard around his shoulder at the sunglasses hanging in the air.
"If it was moving I would think it was a ghost, but as it's just sitting there like on a stand, the chill more comes from the fact of not knowing what it is than knowing for sure it's a ghost," said Esther.
"Are there ghosts in Wonderland?" teased Matthias.
Esther withdrew thoughtfully a moment. "I… well, maybe not of human souls or demonic procession or anything like that, but I almost feel like this whole table is a ghost of a past that no longer exists in Wonderland. That was a long time ago."
"If time means anything." Matthias picked up a cup to inspect it and then set it down again.
"The Cheshire Cat wasn't a ghost," Esther pointed out.
"Who says that the Mad Hatter isn't around somewhere? He's just not at the party that's obviously over, except some leftover gag we're not understanding," said Matthias with a wink. "Just because he's not where we expect him to be doesn't mean that there's anything spectral about it anymore than shades not being used properly."
He returned to the glasses in question.
"And just because," he muttered, "this isn't moving in a spectral way, doesn't mean it's not a pair of spectacles."
"You mean my qualms are non-applicable except as another Wonderlandian joke?" asked Esther.
"I mean…" said Matthias reaching out a hand to touch the sunglasses. "Whether it's moving or not doesn't mean it's not a phantom of something that doesn't belong."
"Well, Alice would sit here in the illustration," said Esther. Then she paused. "Oh, Matthias, don't touch them!"
He tapped the lenses. Nothing happened. He tried to move them, but as solid and touchable as they were, they remained fixed into their position.
"Then it's a ghost of an Alice, presumably," said Matthias.
"Yeah, but—"
Splash!
They turned to the sound very casually this time. They were almost used to such interruptions of thought by now, but their grim expressions turned quite wide as they saw that the splash had come from a figure jumping out of a little row boat into the river. This same figure ran up onto the bank with the speed to at least to match a hare, but he hardly was of the family of leporidae despite his large front teeth. Although he had no shoes, he had a brilliantly large hat, which was the only part of him not soaked as he held it upon his head while scrambling up onto the grass with a wide toothy over-bite of a grin from ear to ear shielded in the shadow in the middle because of a very large aquiline nose. Even in his scrambling and his awkward lean form with a large head and small hands and feet, he was surprisingly dexterous.
He wore a yellow-checkered waistcoat and trousers and a great red-spotted bowtie. On the way up the bank he grabbed a beautiful green frock coat and threw it on over his shoulders with inspiring fluidity.
And this figure, who could be figured into no other but the Mad Hatter of hatters himself if one could believe there was an original at this point, stopped two yards away and threw out his short spindly arms (he was very short overall) and exclaimed with tears in his eyes, "Son!"
Now, Matthias had not known exactly what he had expected upon following the Cheshire Cat's instructions, except that he had thought of nothing but getting here. He was not in the least bit expecting to be greeting in such a fashion. That might excuse him the fact that he simply stood there with wide stupid eyes and a slimly gaping mouth as the little man leapt like a leprechaun to embrace the young man before him.
After a blink or two from Matthias and a bisou of a kiss on either cheek from the little man, he suddenly rather violently pushed him off of him and stepped back as from a leper. But then the Hatter looked so surprised himself and blank with confusion by the action that Matthias could only sigh. He straightened himself to say as politely as he could, "Look, look, none of that, alright. Besides, what do you mean be saying I'm your son?"
"That's no way to speak to your father," scolded the Hatter.
"Oh, come on. I've never met you before."
"Oh, some may call me the luckiest man in the world, you know," said the Hatter rather somberly as he nodded his head. "But it is a rare thing for a person to have many sons but no wife or daughters, and none of the sons have ever met me. You are the first one."
Esther smiled kindly despite herself.
"It must be very frustrating indeed," she said. "Are we addressing the Mad Hatter, sir?"
"Hatter? Yes," nodded the Hatter. "And I know you are the next sister of Alice. Those somehow have a way with my sons, or rather they have a way with you if they don't just run away with you. Come! We'll go back to the bank for the deposit I saved for you."
"So you were waiting for us?" asked Esther as they began to follow him back the way from which he had come.
"I never wait for anything," said the Hatter, "it is such a tedious activity."
"Why aren't you at your table anymore?" Esther asked.
"I'm not at my table." The Hatter paused and turned round to the table of legend with a careless realization. "Oh! There! Well! It's not my table, and the March Hare isn't there to invite us as he's already invited me boating in between the pickings."
"What pickings?" asked Esther.
"The ones that aren't the nickings," retorted the Hatter impatiently and he reached into his pocket for his pocket watch.
"Oh," said Esther disappointed in the obscurity of the answer.
"Who is at the table?" asked Matthias suddenly.
"Nobody isn't," remarked the Hatter smugly.
"Yes, I noticed. Who is?"
"'Who' is not the question," said the Hatter putting his pocket watch back with a shake of his head. "It's 'when'. When was the table?"
"In 1865?" asked Esther.
"Well," said the Hatter musingly as he stared off into a nearby tree, "there was some nick in time in 1998 when I went to lunch behind a whiting's back, but that one chair was sat in, virtuality-speaking, in 2006."
He started off down to the riverbank again and Matthias and Esther followed.
"I don't understand?" asked Esther.
"Then it's easier to sit down," said the Hatter. "We can do that far easier in a boat where standing's not overly convenient except for a swim."
"Is that what happened to you?" teased Matthias.
"Cheeky boy," said the Hatter. "If you grin any wider it'll get stuck like that."
He was not sure he believed him or not, but Matthias suddenly let his face fall as instantly as a scolded child, and then made a frown to himself.
"Look, I get the joke about all the Hatters after you being spawns of the original source and all," Matthias grumbled, "but—"
"Tut, tut! You're my favorite, don't worry about that, Mattie," said the Hatter. "You're after my own words if not my own heart, and you did it all yourself instead being made of jumbles of words and character actors."
"I'm sure there're've been others more canon," said Esther.
"But none admirable enough to come back to me in person!" beamed the Hatter. "A parent shouldn't judge a child on how much he is like him but how much he loves him. Besides, some cannons are known to shoot backwards so it's never a guarantee."
"I've never even watched a full movie of Alice in Wonderland before all this," mocked Matthias. "And we only came here because the Cheshire—"
"Treasure's at the bank, dear boy," said the Hatter.
Two boats were there along the bank, and one was left to drifting further back into the water without supervision. The other was paddled by what certainly could be none other than the March Hare. Esther slowed at the sight of him, and Matthias felt her reluctance to step any further.
"Esther?" he asked.
She sighed forlornly fidgeting as she glanced back at the table.
"What?" said Matthias gently.
"1998," she said looking at him with a furrowed brow, but then she passed him by as enigmatically as any Wonderlandian with a riddle and hurried to meet the March Hare.
Matthias frowned again but followed guardedly behind with hands in his pockets.
"He has terrible posture," admitted the March Hare after the Hatter explained his familial excitement; the Hare spoke as though it was something he himself ought to be ashamed of for something he had done but was staunchly fighting the feeling as he hopped out onto the bank.
Matthias rolled his eyes.
"Well, it must be bad companions as you've never seen me stoop I don't suppose," said the Hatter emphatically.
"Never so low," shrugged the Hare.
"Do you have daughters?" asked Esther of the March Hare.
The March Hare looked quite alarmed and blinked stupidly.
"Oh, sush, sh-sh-sh! He's very proud of his garden and grounds, and to suggest he allows such a thing is worse than personal remarks with him!" declared the Hatter. "Look at them now! They're a glorious sight."
They all had to pause now to look. The grounds were cultivated beautifully with ornamental grasses and well-trimmed shrubbery as well as various ivies, clover and heleniums. As a whole it appeared that delightful hare-pleasing salads could very well be fresh for the picking, which maybe more than its beauty might explain the Hare's hair-raised reaction.
"It's not so much that, as it is to suggest there is more than one kind of dodder," shuddered the Hare.
"Well, I just meant—" Esther tried to say.
"An adjustment isn't necessary," said the Hare inspecting a leaf from a lilac bush just now with a shrug. "It all should be well or the gardener would have said something to me."
There was a small pause in conversation then, and Matthias was sure he heard the high-pitched snoring of a Dormouse somewhere nearby under the sound of the bubbling river. There was even a little satisfied moan as though turning over to a new dream.
But he took advantage of the awkward moment to open a new conversation, which had been proposed by the Cheshire Cat. Or Treasure Cat. Oh, what child not knowing the places in England had not at one time thought it was "Treasure" instead of "Cheshire"? He included, admittedly, even though he had not bothered about the story at all.
"Excuse me, Mr. Hatter," he said forwardly.
"You address your father that way?" asked the Hare quite as hurt as though it was him who was offended.
But the Hatter waved a hand aside very graciously. "Oh, yes, what is it, my boy?"
"Could I buy a hat from you?"
The Hatter widened his eyes and grinned strangely as though in an attempt to mimic the most infamous of grinning crazed cats. He half expected him to ask why a raven was like a writing desk, but all he did was doff the hat upon his head, and bow that same appendage as though it was a thing of honor to be asked, and an honor that had never been offered before.