JMJ
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ingress of Doubt
Matthias suddenly felt very stifled like a child growing tired of playing in a musty primeval attic and realizing that with nothing else of interest there wasn't much good air in the claustrophobic space. Once the dusty idea of it came into his head, it was something he could not shake like a dust bunny out of his hair.
"Did you say there was an exit?" he asked with a shrug that did not convince Esther of anything but insecurity.
"No," Esther answered. "I thought you had to go."
"I do. I have to go outside."
"Oh," she said as though hoping he meant not into the woods with a leaf for toilet paper; though with the way he had been teasing her since they first ran into each other he could not rightly blame her. "Well, I'm pretty sure we can go out the way we came."
"I doubt it," grumbled Matthias.
He did not really like the idea of passing through the whole library again to the front. As he turned out of the restroom area, he caught sight of a backdoor. It looked like it might be for staff only, but this was Wonderland, after all. If this was his Wonder then he basically was staff anyway.
"Are you sure we should—" Esther began, but he pushed the door without heed.
It was not locked, and woodland erupted like a springing up of a bouquet on the other side down a steep slope, up another and round an invited curve of thin pines full of twists and turns of interesting character and thick bushy oaks like green Viking beards.
"Just over the river and through the woods. The library was over the river and now we're on our way," said Matthias. "Though to say that the March Hare is a replacement for a grandmother we'll have carrot basted yam as the main dish."
"Never was much of a turkey person," admitted Esther.
She said it wearily enough that he kept it to himself that if a wolf disguised as a grandmother might eat Little Red Riding Hood, would a hare in place of the wolf devour ravenously enough of a carrot-themed meal to have a Little Orange Carotenosis Hide? He snorted. The joke was stupid, but the only one to groan about it was himself.
"Come on, Esther," he chirped. "If you don't like turkey I know you won't like it cold."
Esther hesitated with a look in her eyes that told him that dealing with him was never a turkey shoot. Though, it was just as strongly told in her psychic stare that she would rather go with him anyway. Then she nodded to confirm it. Well, neither of them spoke turkey very often. The most straight-forward things they ever conveyed to each other were in gestures rather than words that were half-jests and riddles more often than not.
They stepped out into the stark change from the clandestine hall of human tomes to candid woodland and looked out to the path ahead in cheery sunshine dancing in time to the bows of boughs across the thick metal threshold as from the hatch of a spacecraft onto a new planet. Just like on some foreign planet Matthias did not step onto an ordinary grainy path however ordinary the ground may have looked ahead. Although he had thought himself prepared for the unusual, he could not say whether he was stepping on a million needles that stuck right through his shoes or if the sudden adrenaline from the atypical ground was spearing through the blood. Before he could cry out or even look down from the shock more than the pain, his eyes grew wide and he knew what it was he had stepped into.
Ordinary air.
Time seemed to slow as he mulled over this, but not enough for him to stop what was happening as his breakfast did a poodle back-flip in a futile attempt to get his limbs into action to grasp safety onto solid ground at least by stumbling backward. There was empty space between the doorway and the path into the wood, evidently, that had been hidden by the angle in which they descended. Now because he had not looked before stepping out onto the road, there was no telling where he would be swept off to next, except downwards.
Esther's shriek came with him for the ride, but they did not fall very far. Though, since he would not have been surprised had they fallen straight through the earth and out of the other side, even falling down to the bottom of a Looney Toons' cliff would not have seemed very far at all, but instead of breaking every bone in his very un-cartoonish body, they landed in a springing substance that snapped into his face and whipped his arms. A net! The sort that caught tightrope trainees before they could be trusted in the ring on Saturday night to perform a family fun show rather than a self-execution.
Esther rolling into his side was a little less painful than the snapping twine, but it was here that he let out a moan to cover all. Then they were both moaning. At least Esther did not say anything about telling him-so about trusting a staff's back door like trusting a stereotype fifties husband with a shortcut. What? Should he have asked for directions across a threshold? He might have said if she had even hinted at such a notion, but she only rested her head on his shoulder with relief and a sigh. He smirked.
"I don't think it'll be hard to climb back out of here."
"Oh, just a moment, please," said Esther waving her hand above her closed eyes. "I'm catching a breath."
"Take five if you need to."
"Pfft!" said Esther with disgust, but she was grinning warmly.
Why was it that despite everything that was happening and the madness of Wonder and mad-science of evil and everything in between, he almost wished then even in that net that this could somehow last forever like a tender moment on a quiet lakefront in a Minnesotan postcard? Well, at least there were no mosquitoes here to ruin it. It was almost like being in a giant hammock in a way now that they had relaxed and they swayed like a baby in a cradle for a moment or five.
Wonder may have heard his wish, for it was not easy to scramble out again once he decided to. If one used it more like a ladder with carefully placed feet and clasping hands, it was easier, however. One hold at a time, he made his way. Then just as Matthias was lifting his head out to the path on the other side, he hit something. It hardly hurt as much as it startled him. It was another piece of rope such as what was in the net going straight across like a clothes line from the threshold of the door and the path on the other side.
Could the net be growing like a vine weaving its slow way along or being spun by a giant spider now and again? Thankfully there was no sign of a creature of that sort at the moment.
Looking back, it did not surprise him that the door they had passed through had no visible walls surrounding it and only a river around the other side, but to cross a gentle brook with a glorified bridge seemed sillier than usual with a pit into a twenty foot drop to angry shreds of stone and passionate foaming rapids growling and barking like dingos with only a net in the way.
"So were we expected to tightrope across?" asked Esther climbing out past him and scrambling up onto solid grassy ground beyond.
"Or simply hang out our things to dry," Matthias suggested.
"I'm quite dry," said Esther feeling the hood of her hoodie and brushing off her jean skirt a little; she even reached down to adjust a sandal.
"Maybe some of the staff get in over their heads at the library," teased Matthias.
"Go off the deep end?" offered Esther as she held out her hand for Matthias to take.
Reluctance passed through him, but allowed her to help him up with a grin. "What I'm more curious about is what they throw down to the rapid wolves down there."
"Rapid wolves?" asked Esther.
He pointed to the sign along the edge of the drop. On the rustic board, it was written in bright and clear blue letters embossed with a contrasting fresh sheen: "Rapid Wolves."
With care Esther looked down. Sure enough the rapids did have more of a rhyme and reason than simple whitewater on any normal rapids. They took shape as Matthias had already seen and was now looking down to double check. Jaws lunged and fell with leaping legs among, around, and over the tops of sheer granite rocks. To see these hydro-canines, whether wolves or something far more dire, rampaging fierce and unending upon the static canine teeth and low canyon cheeks of the gray and blue stones was more dizzying than watching a whirlpool. They gnashed and growled and tore and leapt like insane sprites, but there was also an almost hypnotic sort of grace to it, and an energy that was addicting. Whether good or bad, Matthias could not say, but he knew that he and Esther might have stood like any campers on a precipice in a safe national park for some time lost in the manic whirl of it all in white noise and whitewater until they had entranced themselves into sitting down and forgetting a further hike.
"Perhaps," he said very slowly at first, and it broke the trance in an instant so that he looked at Esther and she exchanged glances, "the line is for washing if whatever hangs there doesn't get washed away. If the river was any higher we'd get some good spray even from here, and they may have a way of lowering the net."
"Or it's for boiling over the water instead drying over a fire," said Esther.
"We could sit here and wait to see if something happens, but I don't think we have forever."
"Does anyone?" asked Esther as she began to follow Matthias up along the path.
"Only if you're on the best terms with Time," said Matthias.
"You know, when I was little and had more time I thought it would be great fun to ask Time such favors, but in the back of my mind even then I knew it was a freaky thing in the end. It's better not to be good friends with Time, I think."
"You mean because of how he punished the Hatter."
"Oh, I'm sure that was all just the Hatter's fancy," snorted Esther. "I mean, that if you had that much control over what time it was and how long it lasted when you felt like, it would be like never walking again would do to your legs only it would be your mind."
"Ah!" agreed Matthias holding up a finger sagely. "It would render a person eventually quite mentally feeble. Maybe that's what happened to the Mad Hatter, after all."
"No, I don't think Time did anything to him. He did it all himself. He's later at the trial and later still Through the Looking Glass. If you think about it, he and the March Hare are more in tune to time and place than any of the others despite the games they play."
"You mean, the games the Hatter plays. Marchy is just humoring him. He's the host of the tea party in the end."
"True," shrugged Esther.
As they climbed on further, the path got steeper and steeper. Matthias wondered if it meant they were close to the steeping of tea or whether a Wonderlandian could eventually just walk along the path completely vertically— maybe even swing upside down like a videogame character once one picked up enough steam. He attempted the feat himself gingerly but gave up more from Esther's wide-eyed stares than from fear of hurting himself. They soon were rock climbing along the side of the path rather than walking, and thankfully it did not go up much higher. There was a tiny ledge for a little rest with a view of the waterfall from which the little gentle brook fell to the rapids.
A rainbow faded in and out of a wavering mist hovering above it. It moved in such a way that it seemed like a great pillow billowing so that the water would have a softer landing before plunging on alongside the wolves and their snapping jaws. Perhaps so that the water might have the continued strength to move past that onslaught to tamer places along this zigzagging waterway. Matthias was sure that river continued on like a marble-run in the fashion in which it looked.
As they reached their hands out for the last outcropping to the flat plateau beyond, he suddenly had a sense of a shadow. Esther already paused and looked, recoiling like a mouse under the gaze of an owl.
The steam-punk Ball like a great eyeball gazed down upon all with vengeance and misery. It was half-hidden in the foliage so that it looked at times like it truly was blinking right down at them, a predator waiting for the chance to strike upon the ground-bound rodents.
Esther scooted closer to Matthias, and he felt the heat radiating from her as she looked out from his side with tight muscles and withheld breath. He lowered his eyes from her to the ground blinking as from a bright light after looking into the radiating darkness of that black hole of a sphere.
"I think something fell from it again," whispered Esther.
Matthias did not say anything.
The floating blight did not just drop pieces. Somehow it seemed to be swelling larger and larger. Of course it could also be that it was coming closer and was bigger than he had first thought upon seeing it earlier from the ocean of tea. It was like a big black boil preparing to burst some horrible black ooze, but all it meant in the long run, however visually gross upon this fairyland wood, was that they did not have forever just as he had been saying.
He was up on the plateau then and helped Esther up as usual. He pretended not to see the ball now. It did not help to look at it and be immobilized by its potency in pure hideousness. It was not a marble about to go for a ride on the river run and crash like a bowling ball through the rabid rapids just yet.
"Ah! I knew something was steeping!" Matthias exclaimed.
In the middle of their tabletop-like pinnacle was a geyser cone. It was situated so that the path went right over the cone and right across the crater. Perhaps it was where a marble might be shot from in a self-mechanical way. Though there was something moving that certainly was not water bubbling in the crater, however, it could not be called a marble.
In case the geyser was thinking of erupting, Matthias approached with caution, but the closer he came the more it was like a small hot tub rather than something explosive. Sitting in the middle of this hot-spring pool was what could be a man in a bathing suit except that upon his head was a straw mask that covered the whole of where a head ought to be. It was shaped like the face of an exaggeratingly unhappy expression on an old troll or perhaps an old-fashioned caricature of an old geezer, complete with white yarns coming out of the straw cranium sloping down in what might be taken for braids along his straw face. There were two holes for what might be eyes to look out with, but Matthias saw no glint of life past them. Then again, it was a very deep mask. To top it off was a knitted hat frumping to one side with an old feather curling downwards like a drizzle of cherry on a chocolate cone quite contrasting with the rest of the drab appearance.
Despite the sourness of the mask, the body of this figure was quite relaxed. He seemed content to sit there and pretend that Esther and Matthias were not there if he was not sleeping. By the look of the whole thing, Matthias could not say that he did not appreciate the sentiment, especially as the figure seemed to be preoccupied with staring at the Ball— the first Wonderlandian to do so with such intent to his knowledge.
They tiptoed around the geyser with more care than if it had been Old Faithful, but just as they reached the other side of the path that continued on down into the wood and the sound of the river curving back round again, there was a blast of a very loud, very startling horn.
Matthias felt as though he might have leapt right out of his skin and literally too if Wonderland had full power, but he steadied himself at least to keep from tumbling down the path by swiveling around. Esther saved her skin by sucking it back in with a gasp enough to faint her. They looked just in time to see the spray of water as from a whale's spout of a burst up out of a crude yellow horn before the water settled. Then the figure lowered the horn into the water as one might tuck something into a pocket.
As Matthias and Esther watched holding their breaths, the figure seemed to be speaking. If he was it was a very mumbling sort of speech, but perhaps it was muffled more by the mask.
There was another pause.
"Excuse me?" Matthias asked.
Then the figure threw off his mask quite suddenly and underneath the straw geezer was the head of a monkey, which made both humans more disturbed than Matthias thought they should have been, considering that they had already met with a talking cat and were on their way to meet a tiny man at the mansion of a hare. There was something about this monkey's head on a human body that rather was unsettling. It was even more unsettling because as Matthias did a double take he could not be sure whether this was a second mask on a normal human face or if the hair and human ears behind the monkey face were the false parts of the person and the face was really that of a monkey's.
The figure then spoke again mumbling in a way like pig grunting, and one could not help but think of Pom's mysterious son lurking in the rafters of the Observastory.
Shmaltzing
O'er waltzing?
I'd have left feet to fall.
Where go ye,
Where go me
At the last thrown ball?
Why go for?
Why run more?
Turkey kicks the gall.
Go faster?
I'll master!
It takes place in the mall.
The seller,
And sneller:
A Black Friday call.
A waltzing
A trouncing
Past the general sprawl.
The sell out
Is all out!
I'm beaten to a crawl.
Up at last
I hold fast
To a robotic doll.
The next isle
Past last pile
I run into a wall.
"Good… cautionary poem?" muttered Matthias glancing back at Esther.
Like a robot himself the figure thrust out his hand and opened his palm as for alms.
Esther raised a brow.
"That was hardly a mummer's dance," retorted Matthias. "Where's the rest of your troupe, Guiser?"
"At a fifteen hundred hourly run boxing up the days," mumbled the Guiser even stranger now the way he spoke out of song while sucking in. "I'm only an old geezer of a guiser, I suppose I am so out of it all, so… here I sit."
Matthias nodded. "On a geyser?"
"Oh, there's so little difference between being a geezer and geyser," said the Guiser, though the latter word might have been "guiser".
"The geological feature or the disguised person?" asked Esther making sure.
"Well, guisers and geysers are both old and faithful to their calling, I suppose," mused the Guiser wearily, "and what does that make me but either way an old fuddy-duddy geezer lost in a sort of… bath of warm nostalgia for things that can never come again. Just think of the tradition of trampling the gatekeeper. How lost it is upon the youth who trample everyone no matter who they are. I guess you can at least say they are inclusive, but then in the mummer days gone by we were all equally pleased to ask to be invited in instead of demanding it."
"Why are you speaking like that?" asked Esther.
"I'm only ingressively speaking," said the Guiser. "I have not the heart quite to speak aggressively. But I sigh egressively."
"Could you tell us where the March Hare lives?" asked Matthias.
The Guiser sucked in with a snort through what might have been his teeth but his face did not really move aside from a flapping from monkey lips, which moved in such a way that one still could not quite tell if it was fabricated over a real mouth or if it was his real mouth.
"If you don't know, that's alright," Esther insisted noting his distress.
"It's not March," he breathed out in a mumble.
"Well, I'm sure most hares are around all the other times of the year too," said Matthias.
"But not March Hares," ingressed the Guiser. "A marcher is not a marcher when he is not marching, but those march hares do need to make a show of it to make up for lost time. They're only marching in March because they're late for Valentine's Day. Just as I am not a Guiser when I'm not in mummer's guise."
"True enough," admitted Matthias, "but if you're name was Guiser then you would be Guiser even in your PJs."
The Guiser gently rocked his head and Matthias took it for a nod.
"So the March Hare is his name," Matthias pressed.
The Guiser was obviously not impressed, but only leaned back more leisurely in his hot pool with hands folded over his broad stocky chest halfway out of the water.
"Do you know where the Mad Tea Party takes place?" asked Esther.
"Is it truly mad or is it only a tea party?" asked the Guiser with eye holes looking out with sage indifference like a drowsy snow monkey in Jigokudani.
"There's only one Mad Tea Party, and that's the one we're looking for," said Esther.
"Which," shrugged Matthias, "you obviously know nothing about, so we'll just be on our way."
The Guiser thrust up his horn and blew it again in a very jolt-quick motion. The spray of water coming forth almost hit the pair.
"Ack!" cried Esther.
"A tea party begins with 'T'," said the Guiser or he might have said "tea". "Doesn't it?"
Matthias rolled his eyes impatiently.
"Yes," he snapped; it was affirmative either way. "Good bye."
"Well, there's some sort of tea or something or other down along the river," mumbled the Guiser.
"But is it the Mad Tea Party? You know, with the Mad Hatter and all?" asked Esther.
"Well, there's a lot of tea in the middle of him," admitted the Guiser.
"Ah! So you do know him. You're just playing mummer's games with us," said Matthias.
It was here that the Guiser threw off his mask a second time, and it was indeed a surprise to see that both the monkey face and the human cranium were both parts of it. A pair of floppy ears shook violently. A narrow snout snorted, and a whimper sounded from the throat. It was the head of a very living puppy.
"No games," huffed the Guiser. "I'm as faithful as the old faithful."
His eyes were sunken and sullen as he blinked up at the miserable ball more like he wished to play fetch with it than that he was afraid of its coming.
Esther squinted and cocked her head as though she could not decide whether to take pity on the poor creature or if it was more disturbing a thing yet. Matthias decided for her that it was deserving of both pity and disgust.
"You know what an E-turn is?" he asked.
"No," said Esther solemnly.
"Well, you know what a U-turn is, I would suppose," said the puppy head doubtfully.
"Of course," nodded Esther.
"Well, everything with an E in front of it is a digitizing word of sorts, so an E-turn is like a U-turn only it goes on without a reliable beginning or end, and if you are looking for tea, I should think that you would find it never-ending in an E-turn."
"Really" Matthias rolled his eyes. "You mean E-turn E-tea?"
"An extraterrestrial tea need not be found on another planet but in a different dimension," said the puppy head full of soulful eyes. "Returning again and again and again… and… again."
"And we gain all the more I suppose," muttered Matthias. "Well, that sounds like the Mad Tea Party sure enough. Let's be on our way, shall we?"
But Esther's pity had reached it summit and she was at the plateau now to reach him more easily.
"Guiser or Puppy or whatever you are," said Esther daring a step closer. "Maybe you shouldn't be up here all alone, you know. You might be better off going to find your, um— family or pack or maybe you just need a hobby."
"There's no point in any of that when it's all a ball-point," said the puppy head. "We'll be blotted out as soon as the whole raison detour of that inevitable thing will descend upon us in its slow but steady craze… oh! Error, you must see that. Just wait for the end. The end. The… Oh!"
He threw on his monkey/human mask. Then he threw on his geezer mask and slumped into the mire of his pool so that the water came up to his neck and all that could be seen was the mask. He rumbled and grumbled then angrily which brewed stronger and stronger as he grumbled more and more unintelligibly.