JMJ

Chapter Twenty-Five

The Sea of Glass

Matthias looked up wearily, but he smiled as he saw Nick stop at the edge like a cat afraid of water. His eyes grew grotesquely huge for only a second and then he glared at Matthias. Matthias' smile vanished, but he was not afraid so much as in Wonder in that way that Wonder can be holy.

There was more liquid than fuzz now and the liquid was as clear as glass. It reflected all with perfect clarity, and the one who desired to be the only reflection that humanity knew stared at his own reflection. It was certainly not a reflection of any Hatter that Matthias had ever seen. The moment was so full of pure wonder that curiosity might have indeed killed the cat, but Matthias never looked at the reflection in full. All he knew was that it was a sight that truly did belong where Wonder died and was consumed by blinded loathing and loathsomeness where heaven's light never shone.

Nick was horrified by it. He had to look. It was his reflection.

It was far more that reflection that Nick had feared than the liquid itself; though perhaps it was true that he could not touch the sea of glass anymore than Matthias could touch the fuzzed shards. The fuzz lump Nick stood on now was melting fast, and the last thing Matthias saw before closing his eyes and bowing his head as for an explosion was Nick's shiny black and blue shoes that were a lot like Victorian pumps slipping on the shavings sinking into the liquid all around him turning quickly from slushy to drink.

Now all that could be heard was a horribly exaggerated shriek that was almost comical, except how it strummed the chords in that bad screechy note in such a perfect echo of a child's long forgotten nightmare villain.

Esther shuddered, but she had to pause to look at Matthias and Matthias back at her.

It was enough to know without looking fully at the culmination of every childhood's greatest monsters meeting that horrific end. The flashing around them was the light staggering like it was meant to induce a seizure. The villain was in the middle of one himself. Perhaps it was only a last miserable attempt of pure hatred in making others feel what it felt. Nick was jolted through as with fireworks made of lightning. A strangely shaped skeleton flashed through silhouettes of flailing limbs and a rearing neck and spine. The melting took hold like a bad horror movie, but neither Esther nor Matthias were looking anymore even at the lights.

They faced ahead where a real light was shining as through the crack under a door in a veiled room when dawn had already broken up the night, but the room was still left in shadow.

"We're not going back to the ball, are we," whispered Esther.

"There's nothing we could personally do to stop it," Matthias said in a hushed voice back to her as the wailing at last diminished.

Matthias dared a glance back, but there was no sign that a villain or a pile of shaved glass had ever been there. The entire sea was made of liquid glass now so perfect that it would put any ice rink to shame.

Weren't they once considering looking for an ice rink to find the Hatter?

Maybe, but he doubted this was connected.

The sky was growing lighter and purer. The kittens were beginning to purr.

"Are you sure we're not hurting you?" asked Esther.

They only purred the louder.

"They're role model was the Cheshire Cat, after all," shrugged Matthias.

"I know but…"

"It doesn't matter," Matthias insisted nodding towards their destination, which looked less and less like a hole in the glassy sea and more and more like a glowing doorway.

"Was there ever a black hole?" Esther wondered aloud.

"Probably," admitted Matthias.

"Or a white hole?" pressed Esther.

More and more she just sounded like her mind was wandering. Matthias' was too to be honest. It was the last wonderings when one knew that consciousness was coming.

"Maybe they turned into the kittens," teased Matthias.

"Oh… I doubt that."

"Well, maybe they only became the holes because they lost the firmness of their wholeness."

"Maybe, but Matthias?"

"Hmm?"

Matthias looked gently at Esther. Then his eyes were caught fast. In the light of the glow she looked as beautiful to him now as she had when she looked like the golden avatar in Heartland. No, more beautiful! Less fanciful. More spiritual. The way Esther looked back, he could just barely fancy that he looked to her quite similarly beautiful. She was an angelic creature glowing with light more than gold or silver. It was something beyond comprehension. She still looked like Esther. Just her usually silly, playful, endearing little self, and yet she was like purity incarnate.

Could that be so?

Or was it only his love for her in the twilight of dream-set. In the dawning of consciousness breaking out from a cracking eggshell somewhere far, far away it made all one loved more than could be physically sensed.

He could hear something in that same distance that made their world feel smaller and smaller meanwhile. Wind blew meanderingly. Droplets fell inelegantly hard on pavement that he could almost smell. It was full of asphalt and oil.

Still he only gazed at Esther's hazel eyes. He could not help but touch her smooth face that almost looked like porcelain but something far more alive than that. Something more alive than mere skin. It was soft and nutty. Her thin lips were like a pair of fragile petals like buttercups or ice plants rather than tulips or daffodils, and certainly not tiger lilies. Her eyes were like a pair of stars in unison, and he could see, or at least he thought he could see, that object that the child Esther had held in her hands before she disappeared in that abbey of memories and thoughts.

Was this what the White Rabbit had meant by the idea that they would return to it? Or was it something in the real world that it had been mirroring that was only reflected in Esther like the sun reflected in the moon?

He held out his hands as though to take the strange glass orb, but it was still her face in his hands, her hair…

She closed her eyes, and Matthias almost felt shut out of something. All was black but her face that looked like Snow White in sleeping death awaiting her prince. Then even this was gone as he felt a faintness overcome him, but only in fainting from dreams could one awaken to daylight…

#

A chill ran down Matthias' spine as he slowly came to his senses. Screaming and wailing echoed hauntingly, dizzyingly, except it was not a human scream. It was the sound of police sirens.

What was a car?

The idea of such contraptions seemed like monsters far more fantastic than a unicorn with a plate of cake as if they were made up in the stupidest far-fetched tales. Yet there they were rumbling like growling dogs, honking like robot goose. He felt their weight around him and their heat.

He also felt the rain.

It was coming straight down and pelting his head, his back, and everywhere else through his clothes, into his shoes, soaking his hair.

Headlights flashed in his eyes.

He finally opened them.

The sky was not black but gray in a brownish earthen sort of way, which contrasted greatly with the sleek buildings looking sleeker in the rain and reflecting the dazzling colors of signs and a police car or two. An ambulance was just arriving.

What had happened?

He sat up.

There was someone else near at hand who was more wounded than he was, and Esther?

"Look out!" shrieked Esther's voice.

She pulled him down with all her might just as he was about to get to his knees.

Crash!

It had been a brilliant glaring and spritely object for the split second that Matthias had seen it before its demise— a simple yet pristine ball of glass like something that would hang on a Christmas Tree. It had looked too clear to be a crystal ball and too delicate to be a terrarium. The next second later it was shattered into a million pieces sparkling like fireworks in the wet city lights.

Matthias felt like he had just been saved from a mine blast.

It could have easily shattered right onto his head; though it was difficult to say how fatal it would have been or if it just would have hurt with some extra bleeding. He felt he was already bleeding somewhere. On his knees? The side of his face?

Had he fallen before going unconscious? How had he got here?

He recalled sneaking into Reality Check and running into someone he used to know. Mr. Dilparch, the man who ran it. The man who tricked him. The man he had wished to expose. And then? Steam? Gas more likely. Nightmarish images along with painful bumps and bruises in and out of hazy dreams before Esther caught him as he was lying on a table. She had said something about hacking into the system to find where they were keeping him. Or had he only dreamt her saying that?

He had been almost conscious. The memory came in a flash.

He could barely hold himself up as he had staggered after her through a seemingly swaying corridor. Though the doors. A bang. A gun. He knew there was a gun.

Nick Dilparch?

He had missed. The police siren frightened him.

But consciousness?

Who had called the police? Esther's accomplices realizing that this was far too serious for Esther to sneak in alone. That had to be it. When had she told him about them? Family mostly, weren't they? The usual conspirators, he was sure, but when had she said so? While he had been lying there? While he was in Wonderland?

"Wuh?" he breathed.

He blinked at Esther; both their mouths were ajar. Then slowly they stood up. It was at this moment that they really felt like they were part of the world around them and not spirits passing through it.

Police and doctors were coming at once to see what had happened. Apparently he and Esther had been out of the main fray, whatever else was going on. Soon there were many people being bustled about, many on gurneys not physically hurt that one could see, but definitely not entirely conscious even if some were moaning as they stepped out with aid on their own two feet. Had Esther woken up more than Matthias? Well, maybe it they had been all linked to the same neurological machine manipulator. All that was truly evident was that they were all costumed up just as Matthias and Esther still were in Hatter-suit and medieval scapular. They fit right in with the… patients?

He felt almost as whoozy enough for a gurney too, and he almost fell over before being caught by a doctor.

It was a laboratory they stood in front of and had apparently escaped from. A very small one. It's sign was by the door and right next door was the building where Reality Check used to be. There was no sign for it now. The building looked unoccupied. Lease signs were in the window for each of the three floors.

He could not recall later what he had said to the police or the doctors exactly, but he had learned later the supposed story behind what had happened physically enough to understand that they believed that these many people had been victimized in this circumstance by illegal experimentation with computer technology and drugs. There was some talk about Dilparch working with someone named Dr. Petra Bensil who was at that moment being arrested. Dilparch had apparently committed suicide. The other doctors that Bensil had under her were not at this location, but they were in the process of being hunted down.

What Matthias did remember about the actual moment of the rainy rescue and arrests was that he just barely missed the chance to see Petra in the police car by a hair, so to speak, because the hair on her head was all he could catch a glimpse of. It was gray and curly, and as the head was low she seemed to be short, but that was it. Mostly all the while he wondered most of all whether or not that glass ball had been important.

It all was so down to earth and proper now that they were talking among non-Wonderlandians, that it was almost surreal. He was not sure he recalled the last time things were conducted with such promptness, such sobriety, or such professionalism even outside of Wonderland, but at last Esther and Matthias were on their way to eat somewhere in a bewildered silence. They might have gone to a restaurant, but Matthias did not have any money with him. It had either been stolen by Dilparch or… well, he had supposedly paid for a hat that he no longer had possession of.

There was Matthias' own shop that had at least something to drink and snack on. Honestly could they want anything more than that right now? Privacy and relaxation was all Matthias really desired even if his body wanted some refreshment. Room to breathe and room to think was something he felt he had not had in some very long time.

Matthias expected something to be out of place.

Something Wondrous or at least mysteriously eerie.

Nothing was strange about the old shop, except in the ordinary way of such novelty items, and even they looked more normal than usual and perhaps more normal than they should look, he had no doubt. Where he had been made anything else seem so commonplace.

They were seated at a small table in the corner of his shop that was like something from an old fashioned diner, and in fact had been salvaged from such a diner going out of business; though it had been a retro reproduction. Matthias had a cup of coffee without cream or sugar and Esther had a cup of ceremonial-grade matcha.

It was a very ceremonial moment sipping each from their mugs almost in turn like a silent duet. Ceremonial in its silence, in its solidity, in its reality, time moved at a normal pace. Feet were on the ground or on the rungs of the tall round chairs. The door was locked. No one could surprise them with a voice from behind with nonsense or questions.

Had Dilparch fired his shot at something that had eventually made that glass ball fall off some decorative wire, Matthias had almost asked once or twice of Esther, but he had no desire for words at the moment.

Esther smiled.

They were wearing each a costume from the discount bin instead of their wet things. She was dressed like a Jedi. He was dressed like a wizard. Though all in all they were dressed very much the same.

Matthias looked at her smile a moment and then at her ring finger along the side of the crimson mug with the pond-scum colored tea. He smirked as if someone had said a lazy joke to lighten the mood. He fingered his own ring with pleasure as he crossed one leg over the other and listened a moment to the rain drizzling outside.

The scene of the crime was just out of sight from the window, but there was still commotion with vehicles and people from time to time and lights flashing. There would be more questions later in the investigation, but right now it felt like another world from his and Esther's.

Then there came a knock.

He sighed.

He had not expected someone to ask so soon.

Esther pouted despite herself, and she watched with that puckered lip as Matthias stood up with hands firmly protesting the interruption of sweet seclusion as they pushed off the tabletop.

The knock echoed again from the back door into the alley. He was suspicious of the fact that it was not coming from the front door, but he had a self-defense zapper that he took out of a secret drawer before he reached the back door and the third impatient round of knocks. Past the workroom and the restroom, he reached the short narrow aisle to the backdoor amidst boxes of junk that might be turned useful but not enough to keep in the workroom. They made the space even narrower, but Matthias was small and thin and slipped through with the dexterity of any rat in his burrow. He peeked through the tiny peephole and staggered at the sight of Mr. Adhikari.

Matthias leapt back in fright. Then he looked again. It was the man, cold and miserable in the alleyway and trying to keep under the back awning.

Matthias rolled his head and his eyes together as he pondered over whether or not he wanted to speak with the man right now, especially as he might be wanted be the law, but it was almost instinct that had him opening the door to demand what Adhikari wanted.

"Your hat, Mr. Haddler," said Adhikari as soon as the door was swinging.

Matthias wrinkled his nose as he focused in on the hat Adhikari held up to him. It was not the hat from the costume party, nor was it the clockwork hat of Heartland. It was the hat that the Mad Hatter had sold him; though perhaps that was not how he had obtained it. Perhaps it had always been a prop, and yet…

"Thank you," said Matthias curtly as he took it.

It smelled like tea leaves so strongly that it was already filling the narrow entryway.

"No offense, Mr. Adhikari," said Matthias. "But aren't you in trouble?"

"I thought I would be," said Adhikari strangely, "but I think everything illegal that I had done had only been digitally somehow, or…" He stopped.

"In Wonderland?" Matthias offered.

Adhikari looked quite bewildered under his annoyance, and he had looked quite genuinely like this since Matthias had first seen him through the peephole. Actually, he had been quite pensive every time Matthias had ever seen him, and now he looked even worse. He looked hopelessly lost and apologetic.

"Coffee or tea?" Matthias demanded.

"What?" demanded Adhikari in dismay.

"You look like you need to dry off on the outside and saturate a little bit on the inside," said Matthias far more kindly now that he was fully teasing. "If you want to change into a bounty hunter outfit in the discount box, I'll pour you a cup of coffee or tea while we're waiting for you. Mrs. Haddler and myself."

Adhikari paused with a very tight disposition. Then he sighed.

"What…. What kind of tea do you have?" he asked as though giving into a crime.

"Just the usual kinds in packets, even if it is organic. Green, black, and earl grey."

"He could share my matcha if he wants to," came Esther's voice from behind.

Matthias grinned back at her.

"No, that's fine," said Adhikari shuffling uncomfortably.

"Don't you like matcha?" chirped Matthias.

"Well, I don't not like it," said Adhikari in a way that proved that he did like it very much and he knew he was not fooling Matthias and it annoyed him.

"Then we'll get you a cup. Dry off in there and I got that bounty hunter outfit. It's green enough to match."

"Thank you," said Adhikari.

"You're welcome," said Matthias. "Now come on in, and we'll talk this all out."

"Talk what all out?" demanded Adhikari. "I was just dropped off back here by a talking rabbit!"

Matthias winced and looked past Adhikari as though he thought he might catch sight of the creature, but he was more surprised than not to see that a rabbit was actually standing there with his umbrella open above his head and looking quite gentlemanly. Both men stared back at the Rabbit and the Rabbit looked back mildly.

He was looking at Esther peeking from behind Matthias. Then with a tip of his hat, he turned like any old fashioned gentleman out of the alleyway as though it was the most natural thing in the world. He almost looked like he was walking on liquid glass as he padded his little feet along the water-plated blacktop reflecting the streetlamp just outside it.

THE END