JMJ
Chapter Fifteen
Fragments in the Ratacombs
"So we go back up in through the door?" demanded Matthias.
As he spoke he slipped off the spokes of the catapult now for a real conversation. He straightened himself then and put his hands into his pockets as he looked the White Rabbit straight in his violently docile face. No wonder a child would chase such a creature. Or might one say, it was all Wonder?
"Which door?" asked Adhikari before the Rabbit could answer.
"The door up in the catapult-thing," Matthias pointed out.
Adhikari looked up with a wince and calmly crossed his arms before looking expectantly at White. Matthias pursed his lips. White did not even look up as he shook his head and his soft ears bounced a little.
"No, you wouldn't find her that way," said White.
"She's not captured?" asked Matthias.
White shook a paw gently but impatiently like a little schoolmaster of an old fashioned sort who had patience enough for children themselves but not patience with time as he ushered the pair of them through the hall. The overgrown boys followed in reverent silence.
At first everything was dark, but as they turned a corner the sound of crisp droplets began to echo. Just as Matthias had begun the necessity of groping along the wall, they emerged into the warm orange-yellow glow of a very medieval-inspired iron lantern. It was quite large as though meant for giants or that Matthias and Adhikari were now the size of a hare to compensate for the relative size of the Rabbit.
The smell of smoke was like church incense. It seemed to incense evil at any rate; for most of all irritation Matthias had felt from his experiences and about Adhikari vanished now. In its place calmness curled up like a child in the safe zone of the parental bedroom after a nightmare.
Jamb columns ran up several steps to a beautiful roman arched doorway. Classical figures of humans and animals graced the columns, and the tympanum was mainly floral save the diamond star in the center. The whole thing was a little sad looking, though not at all dilapidated. Everything was so classical and so heavy with ornamentation that it pressed together what might have been called a grand French monastery door into a very narrow strip. Had Matthias and even the very thin Adhikari been the size proportionate to the lamp, they would not have fit through the long narrow door.
"An anti-gluttony door?" asked Matthias with a shrug.
Adhikari gave him a raised brow; though the Rabbit without so much of a flicker of an ear in response to his question, asked his own: "You have your key, don't you?"
Matthias did not bother asking how White knew about the key. He took it quickly from his pocket and put it into the lock by reaching up high above his head. The lock was in the very center of the door. Even as he opened the door, a spray of ethereal light burst out of the seams with an almost tangibility.
If it was an anti-gluttony door, it perhaps was to keep in the gluttonous nature of this energy-filled light rather than to keep fat people out. Though in all honesty, Matthias felt no real ill will from this living lightshow as he took the key out and looked inside with his companions.
The source of the light was easy to spot, though it came from the smallest sharpest line from a hole in the ceiling like the light behind an old fashioned projection screen; though presumably it was the light of the sun outside. It did not simply strike a screen, either. It bounced off shards of crystal glass in all directions in such a way that the entire chamber was aglow. Some of the shards were colored crimson, violet, or aquamarine, and the way the water dripped shimmered the light reflecting in the crisp pools all about in stone basins cut so sharply that just thinking of swimming in one felt a little painful. The sheer icy glass stepping stones were even more deadly-looking as though acting as booby traps against invaders rather than something to help one along.
The sound was almost bell-like like an instrument of little chimes. Unlike the otherworldly laughter of the alien demon children, this musical sound was very much filled with life and character. Interest and curiosity bounced about them as the trio stepped inside as though the sounds were curious about the newcomers. There was suspicion there too that only made it more real, and even a little sense of danger despite the fact that Wonder pervaded it. Sympathy reverberated but seemed to cause more caution than less.
How Matthias sensed this he was not exactly sure. It was not so much a sixth sense as it was a combined force of all the senses that one was familiar with coordinating in a way he was unused to as much as a muscle being flexed for an unaccustomed action. He was not so distracted that he did not notice how quickly the White Rabbit closed the door even if he did not look behind him when it happened.
"Why are we here?" asked Adhikari in a quiet voice.
With caution of his own, Matthias looked into one of the pools and saw his reflection staring back at him. That was not so unusual in itself, except that the reflection was not what it should be. His skin was pale green, his hair lank and black, and his eyes punch-colored pink, though not swollen. He did not quite look like a goblin, though his face was much narrower than usual. He stepped back and blinked the sight. He checked his hands a little and looked again. His reflection became something more familiar.
"What is this place?" Matthias demanded; though he felt Adhikari's question to be just as legitimate.
"Memories, thoughts, bells ringing and blasts passing," replied the Rabbit candidly. "I know we are in a hurry, but to hurry here would only get you back round to the beginning without your goal achieved. You must go forward and look into the mirrors."
"So you're Galadriel now?" asked Matthias. "Will we see the future?"
"If you do, it won't make any sense," replied the Rabbit, "but if you're careful you will see Alice."
"You mean Esther," said Matthias.
"Maybe she's locked in the refrigerator," said Adhikari.
Matthias wrinkled his nose and blinked. He turned to Adhikari a moment and tried to decide whether his words were sarcasm or dead seriousness. It was still impossible to tell by his stern face.
"Do you distrust refrigerators?" asked Matthias putting his hands into his pockets casually.
"Not as much as I assume you prefer them."
"A dragon doesn't care about refrigerators when it prefers live young damsels with warm blood," retorted Matthias.
"Well, I only brought it up at all because of the refrigerator over there," said Adhikari nodding his now rather stoic head in the direction of what looked very much like a refrigerator.
Though, as Matthias approached it, he saw that it was only two-dimensional. A reflection? Yes, on an especially large shard of glass. As Matthias turned like a detective towards the source of the reflection all he saw was a painting that had nothing to do with refrigerators no matter how ghoulish an old rotting goulash in the back corners might be haunting.
It had a queen upon a throne looking dark and arrogant despite how tall the chair and how small the woman. She was almost frail in body, and her eyelids looked tired and stiff. The sorrow that pervaded them made her look more unnerving than had she simply been a bratty fop or even a fairytale stepmother. The sound-fairies, or whatever they were, seemed to avoid her contemptuous look and the silence surrounding her was surely a tangible and even visible thing. Her flashing almost neon-green eyes seemed to follow Matthias disapprovingly with like a pair of penetrating searchlights.
Stepping back a pace or two, he flipped the painting over to be rid of the phantom glare, and as he turned this time, he saw that the refrigerator became far more three-dimensional. With a shrug, Matthias went up to investigate again and saw that he could reach through what had only looked like a shard. He could actually open the refrigerator. All that was inside was soda on every shelf. Cream soda. As he lifted a can he saw that it was the cheapest no-name brand type, and not feeling especially thirsty at the moment, he offered one to Adhikari.
As Adhikari looked it over briefly, he merely tossed it over his shoulder impatiently. It exploded as soda does when well-shaken somewhere hidden amongst shards.
Matthias was pretty content to move on without looking back. He looked into another empty mirror. His face filled it up, but it was not his face again. It was the face of a monkey.
"Interesting," he said, watching the primate lips move with human words before moving on again.
"Is the hacker-girl really in here?" asked Adhikari of the rabbit behind Matthias.
Matthias did not look back as he looked at reflections of book titles, urban fantasy landscapes, and dark tunnels. One held a scene as though from an apartment window looking out at vintage flying cars, but he was distracted by another reflection exactly at eye level with his so that he almost thought he had been stalked.
It was only his own eyes, but they were younger in this image of him. His whole body was smaller and thinner and ganglier. His creaseless face was filled with zits, and his clothes too big for him however edgy for the time. He winced at himself a little disapproving despite it all. The zits, especially, were so real that he had to feel along the back of his neck to make sure that it was all in the reflection, which it was.
"Somewhere beyond," replied the Rabbit with sympathy meanwhile to Adhikari.
Shaking his head, Matthias took note in the fact that the drips nearby this particular reflection were very thick as they fell into the pools. It seemed to him that despite the lighting of this place that the liquid seemed to be a shade of its own in a faded tint.
"Must you be so vague?" Adhikari demanded.
"You don't know where she is and neither does he," said the Rabbit simply.
Matthias put his finger to one of the drips and put it to his nose for a smell. He could not tell for certain above the smell of incense, but there was sweetness to it. He licked his finger.
It was honey. Well, honey-water? He licked again.
"Honey and tea," he muttered. "Chamomile, I believe."
"Not your high-caff, I hope," said Adhikari then.
"Nope," replied Matthias straightening himself. "Esther's chamomile. She knows where she is, after all."
"Does she?" asked Adhikari. "Are you sure she does?"
Matthias was not listening as he heard a voice whispering. He turned before it could disappear in the misty vapors of tea and honey. Just barely he caught the sight enough of something moving in the reflection of the vapors that looked like a small human shape like a sort of fairy. The voice grew a little more distinct when he chased a few steps upon some crinkling glass stepping stones from which he almost slipped.
As he steadied himself and scraped his ankle he heard what the little voice was saying— the voice of a human child.
Alice?
There once was a dog named Kib
Who did nothing all day but fib.
He fibbed about mice,
He fibbed about lice,
And he fibbed about breaking his rib…
"What are you doing?" asked Adhikari.
Why is Adhikari here, again? Was all Matthias thought at all about him.
Although the girl's hair was blond, she had the face and eyes of Esther. Many little children started out with blond hair only to have it turn brunette or even somewhat auburn. Her misty form in baggy child-jeans and a ribbed white shirt with thin stripes along the middle in marker-bright rainbow colors leapt away. Was she chasing a White Rabbit? If she was Matthias could not see him, and besides, there was on an half rabbits behind him.
No, she was chasing a rat, and she was reciting merrily and pretending to have a deep masculine voice as she did:
Oh, what can I say?
It's dog eat dog, Mr. Ratté!
—"Except I'm no dog!" (Here she spoke with a sillier lighter tone) "I haven't one kink!"
Oh-ho! My young friend, that's what you think!
And she turned to look at Matthias with a ball in her hands. It was not at all like the orb in the sky that was falling perhaps even now like a slowly deflating balloon with the violence of a coming bomb. This ball was clear with something glowing somewhat magically from within it. It was clearer than she was as though her form was emitting from it like a hologram. Was it because Matthias knew this ball better than Esther's childhood shape?
He was beginning to wonder about whether using the same key to open his mind had opened Esther's, but how could they rescue her if they were inside her mind? And the words of the poem? Had he heard them before…? He could not be sure of that, but it sounded familiar like a nostalgic whisper.
He was not a fan of nostalgia. If he had not decided that before, he was quick to decide that now, but he had to find out what it meant as reflections of other beings blinked like strange half-forgotten lives of a cat with far more than nine of them winking from shards all about him. Some were attractive, some were ugly, and some were bold. Others were shrinking away cowardly.
There was one of a bohemian-styled, broad-chested man with a pear-shaped face particularly clear who was fantastic in his own right. Even if at least a decade older than Matthias he was more lively than most— the sort of man someone might desire to be one's fun and crazy uncle but not the sort one might want as a father as he was the type to come and go as he pleased unless something foul at last tamed his restless though jolly spirit. As if he was not striking enough, as Matthias was lifting his hand to that chest and deciding whether or not it was fat or muscle, the reflection's flesh on his hand was melting away to the bone and holding a ball just like the one that Alice held. There was nothing in Matthias' healthy hand that he could see.
The sound-fairies were whispering and laughing distantly tinkling, and almost unperceivable until one seemed to kiss his ear with a musical tiny chime. The girl meanwhile was looking at Matthias and expecting something of him. At the same time she was just a little afraid of him.
As he stared back in full now he was almost forgetting that the White Rabbit and Mr. Adhikari were somewhere in this chamber too behind all the pillars, steam, and glass. He saw something move between the flowing shapes of her hair blowing as though from a slow-motion wind in some ridiculously emotional animated movie. Beyond her was the rat she had been chasing. He was busily opening a door that had not been there before. Cocking his head rodent-like in his own way, Matthias watched as the little creature step inside but not shut the door.
Returning to his original sight, Matthias blinked and saw that the girl was no more to be looked at. The ball alone remained now floating in midair but upon a thin pedestal. With care, he approached it. Something was moving now within it. He squinted through the mist and pulled it aside when he saw that the mist was only a curtain.
Well, it had been thick enough to be a curtain of mist, he thought.
He reached down, and then saw to his surprise, even if it simultaneously did not surprise him in the end, a human heart beating within it. It seemed to beat in time with his. He swallowed hard, mesmerized by its sound more than its sight, and its rhythm more than its sound. The sound-fairies felt it also and moved or whispered in time with it too.
Matthias closed his eyes and shook his head. He did not pick it up but only graced the smooth cool surface with a finger. He suddenly felt a little strange and had to sit down, but he found that he could not sit down properly. Not because there was nothing to sit upon, though that did not help. His legs suddenly were far too short to do what he wanted them to do easily. He found himself falling front-wards onto hands that were clapping almost daintily onto the mirrored floor. He saw now quite to his surprise for real now that his reflection was the same as his body.
The reflection was like nothing he had seen that represented himself. His face was furry and he had always been one to shave as clean as he could since the prickly stage of twenty-five. His whiskers were almost as wild as a pirate's, but he had no pie, so to speak. He was only in the middle, and that meant a rat.
He squeaked in protest and scurried back a pace or two with a wild tail flapping. He would have taken the fat guy or even the monkey to this! He had a moment of terror as having been transformed by a witch with a casting spell, but he shook his tiny little head in its spazzy little way and got a hold of himself enough to realize that he could now scurry in through the door.
Did that matter?
He was certain that it did!
His mind was buzzing too wildly for him, so that he did not remember the White Rabbit at all until he passed the doorway. Once inside he looked back but he could not see the Rabbit or Adhikari. He was distracted by the sounds of squeaking ahead and the yellowish glow.
He was standing at the top of a stone staircase in a very busy and practical library, but it was a little like a bee hive. The combs were everywhere ablaze with golden liquid, but there was not the single buzz of a bee so much as the squeaks of… well, rats! The combs were not shaped like hexagons but were shaped more like mail slots connected at least ten at a time, though often more like shafts of comb teeth that were really boxes, or school cubbies or… catacombs?
Or rather ratacombs, he supposed.
There were stone arches that had a similar feel to the Romanesque narrow doorway, and as he had already seen the stained glass and smelled the incense of a cathedral. He had now come to the underground portion of this hallowed place. "Hallowed" was the word, for despite the diligence of the rats, they were quite placid about their work making their honey like monks making beer with a holy zeal of pacing themselves for the good of the outcome so that they neither worked too slowly to be lazy or too quickly to be impatient.
Apprehensively trying to stand upright with his paws along the stone railing, Matthias took the first step down the staircase, but as he came about half way down at very sluggish pace, he found that he was far more comfortable despite himself to pad along on all fours. He could stand up again when he stopped in typical rodent fashion.
The smell of the honey was strong and sweet. Although hardly a bad smell, it was near enough to knock him out with its power. He deliberated with himself and then approached a rat who looked like he was not terribly occupied.
"Excuse me," Matthias squeaked and found that the only thing he could speak was "rat". He paused and choked. Then spoke with a little more clarity: "Excuse me!"
The rat in question looked at Matthias alarmed and then merely curiously once he recovered himself. "Who are you?"
"I'm 'Matthias'," said Matthias.
"Not 'Kester'?" asked the Rat.
Matthias paused. "Yes, I'm pretty sure, not 'Kester'."
"Oh, well, we've been waiting for Kester for many long years," said the Rat putting his paws together apologetically. A-paw-low-jetically, perhaps? He was holding his paws low and had done it with smooth, though jet-like speed?
Oh, Matthias had spent too long a time in Wonderland.
"Back home, and please, sir," said the Rat.
It sounded like something was backwards about the phrase, but it made no sense as "Sir, please, and home back" anymore than it made sense the way he had said it. Rearranged it could be "Please, sir. And back home." That at least made a little more sense, but then it implied the first sentence he said was about something that Matthias already quite understood. He could not help the word "home" standing out in his mind suddenly, though, as much as the sentiment of "I'll be Home for Christmas".
Was he not a soldier or a spy somewhere beyond the borders of his home? He was also a tinker, come to think of it. He had even tailored his own frock coat, which had happened to shrink to a nice rat size with him including the tailoring.
"When shall she marry then?" the Rat asked.
"Yesterday, of course!" retorted Matthias with a tiny rat huff.
"What will her husband be?" asked the Rat.
"Oh, well, Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, and probably thief all in one!"
"What shall she be?" asked the Rat.
"A lady."
"What shall she wear?"
"Cotton, of course. She's allergic to most other things, and it's too warm for wool."
"How shall she get it?"
"Given."
"How shall she get to church?"
"She's already been there. We may be there now for all I know."
"Where shall she live?"
"With me!" declared Matthias boldly. "Where's Esther?"
"Are you a spy?" asked the Rat with a funny little wince.
"Am I?" laughed Matthias humorlessly.
The Rat paused.
"Perhaps you should ask the Crow. A crow is, after all, a rat with wings, you know, and they know the best places to be a rat with such a flight of fancy."
"Fancy dress too I would imagine," said Matthias rather stiffly.
Tranquilly enough to be partly tranquilized with a sedative, the Rat shrugged, but he turned tail then and promptly went away. He looked over his shoulder twice hoping Matthias would follow, but Matthias had no trouble with that and would have followed with or without his consent.
They scurried up a cord that went a long ways. Matthias was not sure as he was not comfortable looking anywhere but the rope and the hind-paws of the leader, but he felt that it was the type of rope that may be attached to a bell.
A sanctuary bell, perhaps? He could almost heard the eerie cry of Quasimodo before his hunch proved to be more than stiffness in his shoulders from trying to not to look down to his own vertigo-style demise.
It was a tiresome and tiring climb with nothing worth note except to say how it wearied him. He eventually saw her coming up like a clear and strengthening horizon. The bell was not just any church bell but it was Big Marie herself. It made perfect sense now that two rats could do nothing to ring it, which was the only thing that had been against his theory until this point. There were the big golden letters along her brim spelling out her name as the name of a queen, and she deserved it.