JMJ
Chapter Seven
The Party and the Welcome Wagon
"You'll miss the jet if you're not careful," said Nick with the sincerest sardonic sneer.
Pluto looked up hazily from looking over the edge of the strange craft that was a bit more something he would call solar punk rather than steam punk. The sun was drifting it along on long solar powered wings beneath the actual seats that were bare of any real comfort. When he had got this thing going with Neptune and Saturn's help there had been no time for comfort. Even the seat belts were a bit too tight in some spots and a bit too loose in other as though they could be suffocated at the same time as risking falling out anyway.
As they neared the crevice after the pair of leaping love birds who just had taken flight, Pluto's mind already grasped the meaning behind it without Betelgeuse's hint.
He looked at Saturn. He looked with a sneer of his own, though far less sincere than Nick Sardine's and far fainter, too as he looked at the frightened, writhing Uranus and the grim glowering bulldog face of Neptune.
"You promised more straight-forwardness and less riddles, not more," whined Uranus with his high pitched voice. "Why must we all come?"
"Trust me," said Pluto. "Where we're going is less dangerous than the final singularity of the two hemispheres. At least mentally if not exactly physically in the end."
"How do you know?" demanded Saturn with a tilt of his head as though the hot air blowing hotter and hotter around them did not affect his cool attitude cold enough to freeze everything into an ice show.
Pluto knew for himself that he had no need to look one way or another to know that nothing could ever warm the chill that was ever present in himself to the point of pure apathy. Saturn had a very hot core contrariwise. All the others did. Even Neptune, despite his exterior resembling a warden of a debtor's prison had a boiling heart to toughness beyond digestibility.
"We're at the event," said Pluto. "The one Jupiter has prepared us all for."
"A crack in a desert?" gaped Uranus forgetting suddenly to be scare of it.
"The Event Horizon?" asked Saturn with care and he answered himself just as carefully as though to ensure that he would give himself an A+ with extra credit. "There we will be tested for our work with the man from Horizon itself."
Neptune glowered. "The jets…"
Betelgeuse adjusted the sun-sails and the seemingly meaningless sun dials. Then he sneered with continued sardonic stench the smelled so much like rotting fish that the hot wind was now only welcomed because it was sucking the air enough to keep the passengers from passing out.
"We have to pass through a… black hole to get to the hacker?" asked Uranus. "But it's so white."
"It's blue, isn't it?" Pluto said with a numbness that flustered Uranus more, and Pluto did feel a bit as though his tongue was turning blue from a mental form of frost bite. "And maybe a bit yellow in spots or rather murky like shadows of beams."
"We're accelerating," said the sneering jeering Sardine like a jester ghoul. "Too bad we don't have the smooth transition of those who are not bound by time and space."
"I thought that they would," said Pluto nodding. "The LISE has the lease, after all."
"But how do you know what you're even talking about!?" snapped Uranus in a high pitched squelching squeal, and he let out an even more squelched half scream when he almost fell off on his own seat by the sweat pouring out through his clothes just as everyone else's on board even if they were more motionless than he was and were not going to slip out like a wriggling eel.
As Uranus resituated himself, Pluto muttered, "Hold on… but not too hard."
"What?" hissed Uranus.
But his breath was taken clean from him and no one heard the voice even if Pluto had seen his lips. Pluto's suggestion had been sucked off at the tail end of it as it was, so that the "r" and the "d" of "hard" were rumbling and crackling like radio static in an elongated spiral of sound like after Uranus' response. The vision of all around them also began to spiral with infrared illusions of past fears, present qualms, and future uncertainties that made the first two items seem like nostalgia's hope. There was hissing of the hot gasses and dust frothing like plumes like haphazard smog choking all with electro swing and old fashioned swings on set with magnetic pulses pulling their ears this way and that as though they were the sails of their heads after the fashion of the capsule vehicle to the sun. The speed of the puke-inducing whirl accelerated to the point that electric charges danced like live wires on fast motion screens, and then Pluto as cold inside to this as he was outside to it with no fears or qualms or care about unknowns saw the blast of what was likely a sonic boom.
Although out of place for a black hole, it did in fact mean a jet was passing them by.
All became a single motion like a thrust upward from beneath terrible waves of ocean depth and although the pain in Pluto's popping ears was a novel experience he would rather not have again if it was all the same to anyone else, he felt himself pulsed into one direction instead of every direction. Then the heaviness of a whale, but was like some sort of invisible jet sonic boomed away.
When he opened his eyes he was simply in the clouds in the same sun-run machine. He was not surprised to find that the only other one seated on the skeletal seating arrangement was Nick Sardine with one leg thrown carelessly over the other and smiling sardonically to himself up at a beautiful pink puffy cloud shaped like a baby dragon rearing its head to try to burn something with baby sparks.
Pluto did not bother to ask what had happened to the others as he had quite a clear idea of the answer and did not care to hear it no matter how Sardine would have liked to have told it. Cold to the marrow or not, the static of Pluto did have his limits on what he could tolerate on funny fishy smells.
"I don't think you care much for Stilbon these days," remarked Sardine sardonically candidly.
"Not as much as I used to; though I have little else to live for," admitted Pluto just as candid and just as sardonic as the master himself.
"Thus why you don't care whether you live or die in such a catch twenty-twenty," muttered Sardine as though an uncaring spectator idly having witnessed someone spill out the bait accidently at a fishing competition at the edge of a shallow dock. "Even polar dimensional opposites wouldn't change you predicament much as then you'd be Stilbon and Mercury would be the stillborn. It's all quite clearly the same vision of perfection."
"The perfect despair, I suppose, where the others have failed," remarked Pluto. "A competition one would never fight for purposely but fight for accidently every single day."
"Oh, you're over complicating it. I think it's just simply that a black hole cannot suck up a black hole," shrugged Nick Sardine. "You should give yourself more credit, you know."
"And does that make the lease and the lease's partner white holes to be pushed away from the event horizon without fear?" asked Pluto innocently as he slowly rolled his head with lolling eyes down at the endless clouds; though he knew that no matter how many were between him and the ground, the Haddlers were down there too at the bottom of it all.
#
Splash!
It was rather more anticlimactic than he had supposed it would be— somehow more than even coming from an ocean to a teacup.
Matthias had to gather up his mind as though it had overthrown its reach in the anticipation of a drop into the Atlantic Ocean only to end up here. The ripples were settling now and he could not tell just yet if he had actually made it to the Real World. He was sitting knee-high in water under a very normal metal bridge with a simple deck, two small towers, and suspended in only the most ordinary of fashions. There was some trash stuck between the rocks beneath it— an old green bottle a few cigarette butts and something that looked like it might have been a cardboard mail package among the candy wrappers of familiar companies.
When Esther who brought his hat, and he had to do a double take at her to make sure that her giddiness was actual joy rather than simply being overcome with madness. She had been laughing, though faintly just as he was coming to his senses, and she had not been in the best frame of mind before they had left the desert wasteland. He took up his hat and brushed it off a little. It wasn't much wet, though a bit muddy.
What a phenomenon it would be if he had brought the infamous Mad Hatter's Not-his-hat hat into the realm of down-to-earth mortals, but he was already doubting that was the case at hand.
"Are you okay, Matthias?" Esther begged.
Matthias did not answer right away as he positioned the hat on its proper perch. It was nothing against Esther, but he really was no surer that he was okay than whether or not Esther was. He was with her in the sense that he was getting so sick of nonsense. It was becoming just tedious now. What he would not give for a simple straight road map and a road that matched without the way being riddled with riddles and plot holes like pot holes on a bad side street.
"What's so terribly funny?" he asked mildly.
"Oh!" exclaimed Esther embarrassed as she helped Matthias to his feet.
He was not hurt. Somehow even being invincible in this world was becoming somewhat tiresome.
"I just think," said Esther still a little bashfully. "That we found our pond."
Like sparks Matthias' eyes lit up. Surveying the space over which the bridge was built, he saw that it was a great big crater of a pothole or a round bowl with muddy yellow water and steep muddy yellow brim all round the sides. The only place to get up was around one end of the bridge's anchorage points where a dead shrub had tamed the ground around it to be a bit reasonable along with roots protruding for extra reach.
"They do do this on purpose, don't they," Matthias said quietly.
"Don't let you know what's a joke and what's straight forward?" Esther asked.
"There's nothing more straight forward than a flat deck across a bridge," shrugged Matthias.
"Unless it lifts," shrugged Esther back.
"It's a pond," grinned Matthias.
"Nyeah," Esther agreed pixie-like.
"Pfft," Matthias teased.
He pulled himself free of the muck and tried to free his clothes from what still clung to him, but it was an activity like trying to bathe in a pig trough.
"Well, I suppose it could lift for a face," said Matthias idly.
"It lifted ours," Esther agreed.
"A little…" sighed Matthias.
Slowly they climbed up onto the dry dusty path. They were hardly in an English garden, but to call it a wasteland would be a severe crime. Cacti were lush with red flowers all around the Haddlers like a forest without a canopy. Sagebrush was in bloom with little yellow sprinkles. As Matthias' wet leg brushed up against a bough of one, a half-formed whisper tinkled from within rather than without.
A brush of wisdom is more dangerous than a seasoned sage…
"What?" gasped Esther.
Matthias grinned and shook his head.
Valentine bushes were giving each other heart shaped blossoms bashfully giggling. Below their saguaro elders and above kingcup servants offering the masters bowls of dew and nectar, bunny ear cacti bounced cheerfully flopping their prickly ears. Angel wing cacti fluttered gently about not to get into anyone's way when they were not making sand angels in the ground. Amorpha were stealing bird feathers and turtle shell scutes (somehow without hurting either creature) to make them seem like true indigo bushes rather than falsies. With tiny bangs as from tin soldiers' shotguns, firecracker flowers spurted out bursts of petals for a gathering of crickets on Chinese New Year's.
Esther paused in delight as she stooped down to get a better look at the last display. The singing crickets cheered at each of the more impressive burst.
Putting his hands into his pockets, Matthias looked up at the crisp blue sky meanwhile. A few clouds on the horizon were enough to make it look more of a believable place despite the partying flowers. But Matthias could see no sign of the ball, glass or metal, to cast a shadow over their merrymaking. He looked down into the water, but the water was too dirty to see anything clearly out of a monochrome haze. There were faint shapes moving where the bridge cast its shadow, but he could not tell if these were of a flying craft reflected from another dimensional plane of Wonderland or just the reflection of flying petals.
"Excuse me," said a high pitched voice suddenly.
Something was tugging at the bottom edge of his coat.
"Excuse us, Sir!"
Matthias looked down with a frown.
"Excuse me," he said back. "May I help you?"
He did not mean to sound so harsh, but he was hardly used to addressing a dozen tiny heads of an agastache firebird with stalks all chirping at once and waving their little wings. "Would you buy anise cookies if they were as hot as chilli peppers?
"I don't have money to spare," replied Matthias, "and I'm not known to give into petalling, anyway."
"But I suppose you have stashes of cookies, hmm?" teased Esther of the flowers.
"Better than Anna set them," they assured her haughtily.
They seemed more interested in Matthias than Esther, but Matthias simply walked passed not bothering to know whether they thought he looked hungrier or were just envious of Esther's colors and attracted to the green he bore himself. Though they complained in tiny voices behind him, he with Esther went straight for the bridge now and saw that it was the one they were likely meant to cross as the sign upon it read in clear letters: Crossing the Pond.
"He wanted to make it easy for us," said Esther.
Matthias shook his head. "I truly doubt that of the Mad Hatter."
"Do you think that flying thing will come after us still?" asked Esther as they began their crossing.
Up ahead there was what looked like the beginnings of a town down into a valley just as blossoming as the place they were leaving behind.
"If it is from the ball, it will," said Matthias.
"But where is the ball?" asked Esther.
"Maybe that's why my ol' man wanted us to meet him here."
"It blocks out their vision?" asked Esther. She wrinkled her nose. "But why? What's so different about this place than where we were before?"
"Across the pond is closer to home," sneered Matthias.
"There are no English people involved?"
"I think it was pretty locally based."
"But we don't live in the Southwest," said Esther.
"Maybe there is no Wonderland of the Midwest," said Matthias.
"Why not? People read Alice there just as much as anywhere else."
"But no one outside the Midwest wonders about it," retorted Matthias playfully. "It gets lost in the middle of the country.
"What about Paul Bunyan?" asked Esther lifting a finger.
"Ah, yes, every child fantasizes about meeting Paul Bunyan at a logging camp in the woods," chuckled Matthias.
Esther smiled. "I still think you're stretching it a little."
"And things in the original novel don't?" laughed Matthias.
"I don't know because I'm not English," Esther admitted with a gentle shrug.
As they left the bridge behind them, Esther looked one last time back as her voice trailed off. She was second-guessing their decision, of course, but Matthias only wrapped his arm around her shoulder. Esther smirked back at him. They were both trying to keep their spirits up, which seemed to grow heavier and heavier despite the fact that it was early morning here and despite the fact that they no longer felt physically tired just as though they had slept all night long in the whirlwind that had carried them with as much ease as Pecos Bill riding it with a snake-made whip.
As the town came into view, it was an old western town straight from a movie set, except for the access cacti garden surrounding it all as thickly as woodlands around the towns of the St. Croix Valley. This, despite the fact that now that that they had left the pond behind them, there was no sign of water outside a horse trough…
No. Wait. There was a ribbon of liquid on the other side of town. A river zigzagged one way and then out of sight again. The same zigzagging river from their earlier adventures in Wonderland?
As for the town on hand the inhabitants were perfect as had been said with their perfectly long fine mustaches and perfectly rugged vests, coats, and cowboy hats, their perfectly chiseled chins and cowboys boots, their perfectly crimson and navy colored kerchiefs and striking buckles on old leather belts— not to mention their metal studded holsters and bristling spurs. The horses were beautifully kept and perfectly balanced between wild and gentle. Children played pretending to ignore the school marm's bell; though she didn't mind so much as she was trying not to be seduced by the winks of a shy cowboy with wildflowers in his hands that matched her pink posy dress. There was no shootout dual in the middle of town but that was the only thing missing from the scene to have made it flawless.
As Matthias and Esther closed their gaping mouth and returned to their open strides after stopping mid-step, they turned to each other with wide-eyed stares. Their mouths curled up. The eyes twinkled as the corners of their eyelids crinkled. Then they laughed. Despite themselves, despite the fact that they had seen things far more ridiculous up to this point, they laughed long and heartily and had to hold each other up to keep on their stride. Esther was wiping away tears before long, and Matthias had to hold his aching chest, but by and by, they slowed down to just a merry trot and only their sparkling eyes remained of the outburst of mirth.
Suddenly a wagon appeared. It seemed to have simply materialized in front of them, though without either of them quite seeing the magical demonstrate so that they could neither of them attest to the fact that it had not just slipped up in a more normal way despite silently and quickly but not by anything more unnatural than that. It was just as well to materialize anyway as they soon discovered that it was a wagon selling wares. Clothing wares as it turned out and other accessories.
"Mornin' strangers," said the little man in a perfect movie-set accent of the Old West. His face was so covered in dusty-colored whiskers that one could hardly see his mouth moving beneath it.
It might have been the whiskers themselves forming the voice. He tipped his beautiful plain old hat gentlemanly with one hand and kept a slack but unmovable grip on the reigns of his grand old mare.
"Good morning," said Matthias cheerfully tipping his own top hat. "What's on your mind, sir?"
"Well, I couldn't help but notice that your poor lady companion lost her hat. In the whirlwind, I have no doubt, right?" asked the little man kindly.
"Well…" Esther began.
"I can give ya a fine hat for half price, if ya like."
He opened the wagon to display an assortment of ladies' clothing and accessories, and although Esther was about to refuse, Matthias held up his hand and said, "We can get one."
"Oh, Matthias, you don't have—"
"He's right, though. Ya have to have a hat to keep the sun off or ya may faint away."
"And to be married to a hatter, I suppose. Even an ex-hatter…" smiled Esther distantly but she shook her head. "But really, you don't have to."
"I want to," said Matthias.
Esther grinned and shook her head.
There was an assortment. Some looked more cowgirl-style in nature. Some were curved and bonnet-like. Some were covered in feathers, flowers and ribbons to the point that one could not see the hat underneath. She chose shyly a grey, almost cloche-like straw hat that was fairly plain, except for one purple-grey twine wound around the base of the crown. Matthias was pleased to purchase it for a dollar and twenty-five cents.
As Esther put it on, Matthias could tell that she was pleased, and the seller put a mirror up for her to be pleased the more, despite a burning in her cheeks.
"Thank you," she said to Matthias.
"Of course!" said Matthias.
"But you still have to pay for your own hat, you know," said Esther.
"Where do you suppose he is?" shrugged Matthias.
"Who mightcha be lookin' for, Mr. …?" asked the little gentleman; short though he was he was certainly no Mad Hatter; he leaned gently over the side of his seat rail.
"'Haddler' is my name, and we're looking for a Mr. Hatter?" offered Matthias. "Last we saw him, he was wearing a boater."
"Welp, I don't sell boaters though I sell a few sailor dresses, Mr. Haddler. ('Hedge' is my name.) Yet I did see someone dressed pretty city slicker-like a little like you. He was wearin' a completely different hat."
"What sort of hat?" asked Esther.
"A heavy browed one for one thing," said Hedge, "that's for certain. He hardly had the brow to hold it up."
"Short in a green coat?" asked Matthias
"Mmm," nodded Hedge slowly.
"Red hair?" asked Esther.
"Any fierier and I might have roasted a marshmallow over it for a soft and tasty 'smore and some more," nodded Hedge.
"English?" asked Esther.
"Tweedily so," Hedge shook his head regrettably.
"Not fat in tweed ill-deeded, though?" winced Matthias.
"Terribly skinny and knobby like a scrawny little crow but happy as a lark," Hedge bowed his head. "That's why the hat looked so heavy. It had to be twenty gallons worth at least," here he mused rubbing his bristly chin. "Not altogether a healthy critter."
"Sounds like our man," said Esther with a shrug.
"'My ol' man', you mean," laughed Matthias. "But where did you see this guy, Me Hedge?"
"At the Tame Spittoon," Hedge pointed to the saloon near at hand.
Roam, roam from your cocoons,
And flee from the hiss of raccoons;
For ev'ry meal's boon's,
A bright silver spittoon
From moon-set to well fine past noon!
He had a voice like a little old terrier and yet kept well in key enough to unlock forgiveness for its graveling nature.
"Wouldja like to hear more?" asked the little man when he had finished.
"It was lovely," gasped Esther trying not to be rude, "but—"
"But we're really kind of in a hurry," said Matthias.
"Right!" agreed Esther.
"Well, then you'll be disappointed, cuz you'll hear the whole thing once your in the mild, mild, rest of the old Spittoon. Nothin' ever does change there and it's the slowest service in the west. Slow and steady gets the meal the bestly cooked, though and finestly dressed."
He tipped his hat once more for a farewell. Then off he went in an ordinary fashion that made both Esther and Matthias question whether or not they had originally perceived correctly its entrance onto the scene. With a shrug, they simply hurried on to the old Spittoon's bright green batwing doors.
They squeaked as the pair walked in just like the squeaks of a bat, not surprisingly, and there amidst giant square backs seated round wagon wheel tables (that really were just wagon wheels and made it difficult to hold smaller dishes and silver ware despite the flattish nature of the spokes) was the tiniest, scrawniest little figure with a large cowboy hat. He was clapping to the music from the piano on the far side of the room. They saw him long before the smell of smoke and meat or even understood a word of anything amidst the clamor of voices and loud joyous guffaws. Even the piano music was a bit tinking and distant.
They went straight for the hat, but just as Matthias cleared his throat they were saved the trouble of introducing themselves as the hat turned around. Both Esther and Matthias were a little taken aback by the person that was really a small calf whose hands were really hooves in workman gloves.
"Do I know you?" asked the calf, a curious boy.
He was silvery yellow with dark round spots from the shadows of the moon.
"Are you a moon calf?" asked Esther hazily.
"Well, I'm no honey moo!" retorted the calf incensed, and he turned round back to his drink.
Esther and Matthias looked at each other with grimaces and raised brows.
"Come sit by me!" said another voice suddenly and it was so English an accent that they turned hard enough to give themselves whiplashes.
"March Hare!" cried Esther.
He was dressed in a poncho and a broad sombrero that covered his eyes, but he was certainly a hare and certain the same creature they had been introduced to along the river. He patted two empty seats with a bucktoothed smile, though he was facing neither of them directly with his eyes completely under that sombrero. He might have been trying to dress up as Clint Eastwood for the rest of the costume looked so much like the movie posters however anthropomorphically.
"Well, that's one of them," grinned Matthias and proceeded to take a seat.