JMJ

Chapter Twenty-Three

The Key Tease

It was a sound like the Earth having a stomach ache, or the sound of it being punched in the gut. Either way it was a perfect reflection of the upturning that Matthias and Esther felt in the aftershock. As they tumbled in their little compartment bringing down the nets with them that thankfully had no luggage, Matthias' scientific mind knew that it was not ordinary to be pushed towards the sound of the blast.

Just as he felt the sting of that terror of being dragged in through a black hole however, the train stopped. It was no longer tumbling anymore than it was running. Steam hissed somewhere, but it was only an after-effect. Matthias lifted his head. Both he and Esther were lying on the door into the corridor. The open window was now a porthole out the top of a sunken ship, but they were not sinking into the fuzzy glass shards as far as he knew.

The Haddlers stared at each other in the stillness. Only their breaths served as communication between them for some moments. Naturally anything they could ask neither one could rightly answer, especially if they remained where they were. It was obvious neither of them were much hurt even if tousled and bruised, but just before Matthias got to his feet, both stopped dead still again and held their breaths from an eerie sound on the wind.

"Meeoo…"

Esther and Matthias blinked.

"Meeeoooo…"

They looked up and then laughed under their released breaths.

It was only a kitten— a very beautiful little kitten as white as snow and as gentle as a lamb. It looked cold, confused and curious about coming into the warm compartment for comfort and maybe even food, but it dared not jump down from the great square window just yet.

"Kitty-kitty," said Esther.

Slowly and carefully, Matthias and Esther stood up, taking no chances that the door they were standing on would hold them indefinitely. They moved their feet to the wall on each side, and then slowly climbed up the furniture out to the open window into the grayish world beyond.

The kitten's pristine fur made their grim surroundings look even grimmer and the kitten now looked like a fallen star made of shimmering down or glazed glass that looked like down, and she was not alone. She had a brother, it appeared, and he was as black as the space between stars. Just as sweet as the first kitten. The siblings instantly came to claim the humans with their rubbing embraces and expected the consoling that humans readily gave. The therapy it gave humans was relief enough to have both smiling and petting like little children with new kittens in a barn in days of ancient lives beyond either of their own memories and even their parents'.

The purring was loud and symphonic, but the kittens soon began to show signs of playfulness too. The white one batted Esther's chain necklace with the silver book hanging on the end. The black one rolled onto his back to show off a puff of a silvery white star on his lower chest and to pounce harmlessly on Matthias' hand. He tickled his little body; though he was suddenly tickling nothing.

Matthias blinked sluggishly, unsure what had happened, but as he looked again the kitten was there. Yet, though he was there and so was the white kitten, it was just then that he heard another mewl. And yet another further off.

He lifted his head with a wince as against a glare of light.

Esther already gasped and almost lost her balance on the side of the window.

The entire train was littered with kittens. Some playing, some mewling, some exploring, and most importantly to note was that some were shimmering away in the dim light like twilight and some were reappearing in the same way. Esther looked down at the white one begging to play with the necklace again.

Esther seemed as though pondering whether or not she should address the kitten, and kitten spread out its little pink mouth and grinned from ear to ear in the most genuine childish way.

"Ah! You freed the kindle clodder," said a very familiar voice coming from back down in the compartment.

Not even the kittens were surprised to see the Cheshire Cat grinning in a similar fashion to the white one kitten, except a bit more impish and far madder.

"What did we do?" demanded Matthias.

The Cat grinned impossibly wider as he settled on the seat arm as though it was meant to be nothing other than a cat perch. He seemed as though he had no intention of answering. As the sun was neither bright nor was it fazed out into darkness, the cat neither looked visible nor invisible, but seemed like shadow with added color and likeness like a drab reflection except that there was nothing drab about the personhood of the cat.

The kittens meanwhile— the two on their coach as the other kittens were not sure they wanted to jump to theirs just yet— began purring loudly again and renewed their rubbing into the humans. The White one was perfectly happy to nestle in Esther's lap.

Matthias raised a brow and cocked his head as he allowed the Black Kitten into his own lap with just a little pout at the Cheshire Cat.

"Stopped the train?" offered Esther petting the kitty in her lap almost absently now as she stared out where the meteor had apparently hit.

"Well, the clodder does kindle certain cloudiness in some, but I know you're far too kind to be a clodhopper as much as a coddler. I'll give you this advice, though: sometimes saying things just to say things is worse than saying nothing at all."

"Straight-forward of you," Matthias muttered.

"Thank you," said the Cat with a shrug.

"But these are your kittens?" asked Esther. "All of them?"

"They're yours," said the Cat simply. "They rekindled your spirits enough."

"Where was the train headed?" asked Matthias.

"Somewhere where Billy was huffing or puffing after throwing a troll off a bridge, I believe," said the Cat.

"Where was it going?" urged Esther.

"I can't say," said the Cat, "but I can say where it came from in a round about sort of way."

"Where?" asked Esther and Matthias together.

"Where they were in their kindle guard-in where they're not so much watered as kept back, especially from their clowders. As everyone knows there in the recesses of space, Clowders are unexciting and Glarings are watchful until the catter-walling-up after the cat-fights."

"Wait!" snapped Matthias.

The Cat swished his tail a little, and his grin became a little colder.

"They're the children from that space station," said Matthias very sternly. "Aren't they…?"

"What space station?" demanded Esther. "They had children in the place where you were almost dissected? Real ones?"

"Well, if these are the children…" murmured Matthias with care.

"At least they're far more handsome than pigs, you know," said the Cat, "though they might have been worms had they stayed much longer. Growing up in artificial gravity does make one a lightweight."

"How do we get them back to their families?" asked Esther.

"Well," said Matthias making a face. "They're still in the… Rhetorical Gravity. At least I think so." He looked down at the Cat again severely as he gently comforted the black kitten leaning hard against his knee. "Have you been there?"

"I go where I will," shrugged the Cat.

"How do you get there?" demanded Matthias.

"I willed and found a way," the Cat explained, "but it's harder for humans than cats to do such things. I would start by getting back to the little clock ball that just fell down like Humpty Dumpty. It was such a great fall, and although the king's horses may have trouble getting it back up no matter how they plow, you might stop it from falling straight through the earth. Might be a good idea. The suction, I've overheard, would only follow the fall out the other side. At least if I know anything about physics. Let's see. Everything attached to the string will fall with the string at the end of it no matter the countertop or supporting top."

Pause.

"I was inside the ball?" Matthias asked raising an exaggerated brow.

"When?" asked the Cat cocking his head. "I knew you quite there once."

"The space station is the ball," Matthias pressed.

"Does that mean I was there too when I was wondering. I found a reflection that looked like Matthias' face when he was in the Heartland part of the ball," said Esther looking away briefly.

Matthias watched her searching eyes with care as they looked out at the glass fuzz with a sheen more glassy than what was left of the shards below.

"…" Esther made silence sound like something. Then she spoke again far less pronounced, "I was almost fooled, but after you were abducted I…"

Esther stopped herself.

"Yes?" asked the Cat.

"Well, I found myself also in a nightmarish place under the ocean rather than in space; though, I can't say there was much of a difference otherwise. At least in the fears of it. I don't know. Until I managed to get out. I don't even remember exactly how, except that I felt a breath of freshness like a holy light guide me to the island…" She paused thoughtful and then frowned. "But the island can't be—"

"Oh, the island you took refuge on is quite a castle in the sky compared to the ball," assured the Cat, "but the ball was the place of rhetorical gravitation just as much as it was the place of grave rhetoric that chased you as an Alice away from your queen-ship."

So contorted was the face that Esther made that it was like another face on top of her usual gentle, childlike appearance into a sort of scrunched up cartoon kitten, especially with how she wrinkled her nose. "What are you talking about?"

"Through the Looking-Glass?" Matthias offered with a smile he could not help.

"I don't want to be a queen," said Esther darkly.

"Not even of the kindling?" asked the Cat.

"That cats won't catch on fire, will they?" demanded Matthias.

"Well, don't you think they'd more likely start a fire?" said the Cat. "They are after my own heart so much I'd eat my heart out, after the saying, of course."

"But they're not your children," sniffed Matthias.

"They reflected the desire with all their hearts to be, tried and true to prisms— or was it 'prisons'?" said the Cat. "It was the only thing they whisked for."

"Whisked? How?" asked Esther.

"By the whisker," said the Cat.

Ah, now they were getting somewhere, but again, Matthias had to question whether or not this whole thing about only being able to tell a person what a person already knew was a little exaggerated or at least stretched and quite thinly now. Unless he and Esther were in more denial than the Rabbit had given them credit? Or was it not so much what they as individuals did not know, but things that they only knew as one? Matthias did not have time to ponder; though he felt he had already pounded such thought to the ground at one time. It had to be either a fudge or a misconception, but maybe it was a Sunday blessing. There was always a spiritual side of things that could not always be perceived, after all.

"Who's that?" demanded Matthias looking back at the Cat that seemed to be able to see right into his mind as through a window; his book was on the door. Maybe he had read it?

Though, Matthias had a pretty good idea who the whisker was if it was not a piece of the Cat's face.

"Well, the catfisher, who else?" asked the Cat.

"So!" said Esther. "The people in the space station are in the ball that just fell into this pile of fizzy glass and we can't see it because it's likely in a crater, and we have to go there to free the kittens' parents from rhetorical gravity and grave rhetoric?"

"Only rhetorically graven," said the Cat, "but these are yours not theirs."

"The black one and the white one? Or all of them?" asked Matthias; the idea of living in a house with about eight hundred cats was as amusing as it was horribly disturbing.

The Cat only grinned as though he could see quite clearly the image in Matthias' mind of the clutter and how clotting and clumsy the whole fluffy place would be. His playful amusement was not exactly mocking even if it was irritating.

"A nick in time staves in nine," said the Cat. "Two nicks will stave inane. Three nicks, insane. So on and so forth until time is paired in docks."

"What does Nick Sardine want with these little things?" demanded Esther.

"The kitties?" asked the Cat. "Or the key tease?"

"You're the tease," muttered Matthias.

"Cats don't have much for humor," admitted the Cat. "At least not in that asinine way that humans have taken up, but sardines now…that's something a cat does think about once he's had a taste, and it tastes like… he doesn't want you stitching on him."

"A stitch in time saves nine," said Esther. "And a cat has nine lives?"

"Everyone who understands a catwalk above danger can have just as many, if they please," the Cat said with a yawn and a kitty-stretch.

"What should we do then?" asked Esther.

"I don't think he's going to give a very good answer more than what he already gave," said Matthias.

"That's because you don't have your mercury anymore," said the Cat.

"So you are saying nonsense?" demanded Esther.

"Not entirely, but a sane man has no longer any need to take advice from a Cat," shrugged the Cat not in the least bit offended. "But a queen can take advice freely from very few others when the kingdom is surrounded by enemies."

The Cat stood up now and stretched just a little more. Then he leapt from his perch seemingly into nothing at all. If Matthias did not know better he would have said that he leapt right into the book, but since he did know a little more than he might have, he knew quite well that the cat did no sort of leap, but used the book like a pet door with quiet dignity. He was wise enough to say nothing about the thought either way.

"But we can't take all these cats over to that hole over there!" snapped Esther at the empty space.

"We'd have an army," mused Matthias.

"But they're children just like when we were rats, aren't they?" Esther said as she surveyed the little kittens all about the ruined train.

She picked up the one in her lap who had almost fallen into a nap, and she held her to her chest lovingly and gently. The kitten just as lovingly batted her hair and purred after it was not so confused about being woken up.

"Maybe it's the only thing that would wake the people in the Rhetorical Gravity," Matthias said as he put a hand on her shoulder. "What I'm a little more concerned about is whether we can walk through this stuff below us to get to that hole without hurting ourselves."

"Are these two really ours?" asked Esther.

Matthias looked at the black one and the black one cocked his head curiously.

"If they are…" he mused far graver than anything rhetorical. "Time is really in a loop."

"Unless they're just orphans," said Esther.

Somehow Matthias doubted this.

"You stay with the kittens," he said.

"I don't think we should separate," said Esther.

"Just long enough to test the— er, ground," Matthias said. "If… if it even is ground."

"Are we in the sky?" asked Esther.

"Or sea?"

"You mean back at the beginning?" asked Esther.

"I don't know."

"But then this would have to be the sea of tea and this isn't glass at all but tea in a solid form of some sort," Esther said.

"But backward or through a looking glass it would be tea-sea. Teasy."

"Or tizzy…"

Matthias smiled. "Just a minute."

"Just be careful," Esther said.

With a salute, Matthias made his climb towards the stuff. There was enough decoration jutting out of the train that it was easy enough, but the closer he drew to the anti-shards, or whatever they should be called, the more he felt a chill radiating from them that made him less and less inclined to want to touch, but maybe his shoe would be safe enough.

He put his foot gently onto the top, and it was much like putting it onto sand on a beach. Pressing more firmly, he could see that the stuff was a bit slippery. It would take a long time to tread the terrain carefully enough not to risk falling into this dry ice. He clicked the roof of his mouth, but just as he was about to put the second foot out, he saw something moving in the sea. Blinking through the rather grimy haze that lifted from the stuff, it almost looked like the outline of the Loch Ness Monster.

"What's that?" he heard Esther calling from the top.

Matthias shrugged and shook his head still watching it and wondering if it was carnivorous. As it drew a little closer, despite its long neck, it appeared to have the head of a dog. The neck was horse-like but longer; though not so much like a giraffe, but a picture of Alice with her serpentine neck going through the branches. It had very dark fur, and as it "swam" close enough to feel its shadow and the heat of its body, Matthias saw there was a malty quality about it.

When it saw Matthias it barked.

All the kittens at ounce mewled and hid as quickly as they could inside the train, including the two kittens that belonged to Matthias and Esther.

"Oh!" moaned Esther.

Matthias grimaced darkly at the creature. "I knew we'd meet one of you again. You're the Maltipook, I'm assuming."

"And you're the stupid humans," sniffed the Maltipook.

Back up onto the coach so that he would not have any risk of the stuff below Matthias cocked his head, sneered, and tipped his hat. "Good to see you too."

"You need to get to the ball, don't you?" demanded the Matlipook.

"What do you mean?" laughed Matthias.

"Well, everyone knows that only the one with the lease can get there and stop the thing from falling through before it's too late."

"Everyone," nodded Matthias mockingly.

Esther's silence was as noticeable as a shout.

"Yes, and I'll take you there right now so we can get this all over with. Don't you know that Wonderland will turn inside out if you don't? Don't you know that it will all be sucked into it like into a black hole and all of Wonderland will be reduced to an inverse of innocence that will leave it all a boring, dark, and dreary misery-land?"

"Well, I'd say we may fear it, but I don't know if we know it," said Matthias.

"I don't think that sounds right…" muttered Esther.

"Me or Mr. Pook?" asked Matthias.

"Pook, I guess," whispered Esther cautiously.

"Well, you have to cross either way, don't you?" sniffed the Maltipook. "There'll be nothing left, and I can't stand that thought. You'll be stuck here too, you know."

"Do we?" asked Matthias.

The Maltipook blinked.

"We can't leave without the kindling," said Matthias. "And I think I'm sure I know why."

"With that kind of surety, you're going to get in trouble," sniffed the Maltipook.

"Already got that taken care of," admitted Matthias.

"Then how are you going to cross?" asked the Maltipook.

"Will you carry the kittens?' asked Esther.

The Maltipook frowned and shook its fur bristling. "Do I have to!?"

"Do you?" asked Matthias. "You seem pretty sure about everything else."

"I just want you to get over there before the ball goes through the earth!" whined the Maltipook.

"I noticed," said Matthias, "but I'm pretty sure I was told somewhere that if anything were to happen to Wonderland as a whole it would only be a mild inconvenience to them."

"Where did you hear that? You're lying," said the Maltipook.

"I'm not sure entirely, but I know I did. Through nexuses I suppose. Like a lot of things. Like that drudgery-land you were talking about. I think it already exists. I felt it once before."

"You did?" asked Esther.

"Yes," shrugged Matthias. "In those woods that turned the tumtums into simpering, whimper minions."

"Oh, yes…" Esther said like a shiver in the wind.

The air was deader than a humid rotting swamp.

Matthias looked up at the Maltipook throwing his head back with childish impatience.

"Come on!" he moaned lolling his eyes around like he was dying.

"A little dramatic, aren't we?" offered Matthias.

"You would be too if your world was so close to its end. I mean look at this place!"

"It's not any worse than the Sea of Tea really, especially since you considered it undrinkable," Matthias pointed out. "It's a wasteland now as much as it was then, if you think about. I mean, I personally liked it better then, but you're opinion of what's good and bad, aren't exactly reliable as far as I know."

"So you're purposely doing the opposite of what I'm saying?" whined the Maltipook.

"Well, I don't think we should go that far," said Esther suddenly. "I mean, the White Rabbit still reminded us of keeping the time."

"Yes, but not because of the end of Wonderland but because of the end of your lease on it, and I think this is more about your lease than about Wonderland itself."

"I'll just wake up no matter what happens once the lease is over?" asked Esther. "What about you, though?"

"I'd imagine I'd wake up with you," said Matthias.

"Unless you're just part of her dream," said the Maltipook.

A shiver went through Matthias despite himself and he looked at the Maltipook straight in the face. There was a look in that pookah's wild little eyes that was a little like that Tulgey Wood that they had passed in that time that felt like years and years ago but might just as well been the time it takes to bat an eyelash. He felt the latter more plausible in the end, but then again, wasn't the life of every human even if one lives to be a over one hundred years only the bat of an eyelash as far as Time itself was concerned?

Oh, yes, there was one more time he felt it. In the goggles hanging in Alice's ancient chair at the tea table.

"Either way," said Matthias defiantly. "I would not waste what's left of my life doing anything more than doing what we can to save those kittens."

Now there was a phrase he had never expected to be said so boldly.

He blinked back to reflect upon it, but he did not have time as the Maltipook reared.

"Kittens!" barked the Maltipook apparently just as astounded as Matthias.