Mad Hatters and March Hares

by Ellen Datlow

  “What are the bagpipes?”

  “That’s a no, then. Good luck,” says the bear, and is gone.

  V. Queen of Wigs

  The little tamale girl is back in the hallway again, and the leading lady and her entourage have vanished. So has everyone else. She is wandering up and down, feeling a bit lost and lonely, wishing she had a nice cup of tea, when she smells a glorious smell, a sort of mixed-up aroma of cherry tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast. Her tummy rumbles like thunder. Sniffing and sniffing, she follows the scent to the door marked WIGS. Inside is a small room lined with shelves, and these shelves lined with heads—

  The little tamale girl shrieks before she realizes the heads are actually wig-stands, hundreds and hundreds of wig-stands, each displaying, of course, a glorious wig. Wigs shaped like shark-fins, wigs shaped like snapperdoodles, wigs frothy as frappes, and shiny as silver foil. Wigs with ships riding their crests, and zeppelins hovering among their curly clouds. But the disappointed little tamale girl doesn’t see any cherry tart, or custard, or turkey dinner, or even one small piece of hot buttered toast.

  “There you are!” The wigger pops out from behind a wig shaped like a sleeping tuxedo cat. There’s a wig on his head, and another on top of that, and another on top of that, and another on top of that, so he looks exactly like an ice cream cone that is piled too high and in danger of dumping its load.

  The little tamale girl laughs, for he looks so silly.

  The wigger scowls at her: “You need not laugh; your hair wants brushing.”

  “At least I have hair of my own!” the little tamale girl says indignantly.

  “We shall soon fix you up—hurry, hurry—your entrance is in five minutes—”

  The little tamale girl is whirled through the crush of ribbands, hair swatches, switches, braids, and fringes, into a chair, and draped with a sheet.

  “Now, now, let’s see, what shall we do with her hair?” the wigger cries. He waves about a pair of clippers; he must be a barber, as well. His cuffs are brown and crusty, so a surgeon, too.

  “Give her a buzz!” cries the glover, who has come in from the back room. She’s wearing gloves on her hands, and gloves on her head, and her dress is made of gloves sewn together, and she herself may be a large glove, with a face drawn on the top of the extended index finger, and the other fingers curled under.

  “A high-top fade!” the cobbler shouts, clomping in, tongue wagging.

  “The Farrah!” shouts the glover.

  “The Pompadour!” suggests the wardrobe mistress, popping out from behind the glover. “A poof, a pouf, a puff, a plover!”

  “I don’t want my hair cut,” cries the little tamale girl, and she twists and turns in the chair, trying to escape the snippy blades of the barber’s scissors. “I will wear a wig instead!’

  “A lovely idea, lovely idea!” the wigger cries. The cobbler claps his heels together, and does a little clog dance. The glover slow claps and the wardrobe mistress wobbles back and forth, grinning a glittery gray grin.

  “The hedgehog!” the wigger cries, slapping the wig on the little tamale girl’s head. This wig is all over prickles and curls up into a little ball when the little tamale girl tries to scratch her head.

  “Ooow!” she cries.

  “The dormouse!”

  “It’s snoring!” the little tamale girl complains, looking at her reflection in the mirror.

  “The wasp?”

  “It’s buzzing, and I fear the tail will sting me. And yellow and black don’t suit me.”

  The hatter whisks the wasp off and throws it in the jumbled pile of discards.

  “The Cheshire cat?”

  “It’s nothing but a smile.”

  “Pepper pig?”

  The little tamale girl sneezes.

  “The hare?”

  “I already have hair!”

  “I know just the thing!” the wigger says. “Perfect for the part. Ta-da!”

  The little tamale girl groans in horror. The wig he dangles before her is long and blonde with a silly fringe held back by a black velvet band. “That’s way too silly! Who would wear their hair done up so? There—I shall have that one!”

  The little tamale girl points at the glorious gable hood sitting in pride of place on the wigger’s dresser. It is peaked at the top like a chalet roof, and has long velvet lappets which will swing enticingly around her shoulders. “That one!”

  “That’s a hat, not a wig!” the wigger protests. “It’s the last hat my cousin the hatter made before he went mad.”

  “I want that one!” the little tamale girl shouts. “None other! Or I shall—”

  The rabbit appears behind the wigger, shouting: “TWO MINUTES!”

  The wigger whisks the gabled wig off its stand and onto the little tamale girl’s head. The edges of the hood completely cover her short spiky hair, and the point at the top perfectly complements the square of her chin.

  “You look lovely, loquacious, lavish, linguistic!” screams the wardrobe mistress.

  The little tamale girl has to agree.

  “ONE MINUTE!” shouts the rabbit, looking at its watch.

  The wardrobe mistress tips the little tamale girl out of her chair and flings a parti-colored gown over her. The cobbler fits her feet into black character shoes, and the makeup artist dabs her cheeks with red, and her lips even redder.

  Just in time.

  “YOU’RE ON!” shouts the director, and darkness descends.

  For a moment there is nothing but the little tamale girl’s fluttering heart. “Oh, what if I can’t remember lines, what if I shall freeze, and they shall all laugh at me, oh dear, sleeping in the woodpile is seeming awfully charming now. But no, this is my last moment as an unknown. I’m just a little girl with a big dream, and greasepaint in my blood. Now is my big break; tomorrow my picture shall be on the cover of every newspaper in Califa. I’ve struggled and suffered, but I’ve gotten back up again. Never shall I have to worry about stealie boys or the woodpile again—tonight, tonight, tonight, a star is born!”

  A spotlight comes on, and here is the little tamale girl center stage. Behind her stand the dodo and the lory, both dressed like playing cards. The Man in Pink Bloomers’ grin hovers to her right and the rabbit stands to her left, fishing its watch out of a red velvet weskit.

  In front of her, the leading lady, wearing a white pinafore over a blue dress and the silly blonde wig, is saying: “Stuff and nonsense! The idea of having the sentence first!”

  “Hold your tongue!” the little tamale girl shouts.

  “I won’t!” the leading lady shouts back.

  “Off with her head!” the little tamale girl orders, and the lory and the dodo, the Man in Pink Bloomers glimmering between them, step forward to obey.

  A COMFORT, ONE WAY

  Genevieve Valentine

  Author’s Note: In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the White Rabbit mistakes Alice for his maid Mary Ann. Mary Ann, who apparently resembles Alice, never appears in the story. As if to confuse things even more, Alice briefly assumes the “Mary Ann” role herself by trying to bring him his fan and a pair of gloves. From a character so righteously angry, in a story so concerned with how hard it is to hold on to identity in the face of the hostile and ridiculous, this feels like a telling concession. After all, Mary Anns come from somewhere, too …

  The kitchen is boiling hot, clouds of pepper everywhere, and her invitation to play croquet has just arrived; her chin pains her, and an Alice will be here any second.

  Be what you would seem to be, that’s the trick. She pushes at the bundle in her arms until it screams, and she waits for a girl who’s done as she’s told and brought some gloves and a fan to a rabbit who left her to die, a rabbit whose house she staved in because she couldn’t curb her appetites.

  The Duchess’s mouth tastes like salt, and her neck aches from the executioner.

  * * *

  She doesn’t blame any of the g
irls who visit Wonderland for what happens. You’re either a Queen or a Duchess, eventually, and it’s not like anyone else can be the Queen.

  She can always tell when Alices are coming because their voices boom so loud it scares the bread-and-butterflies right off the branches. Alices have appetites. Mary Anns show up at the door a little sooner; they don’t eat cakes and cordials that are just lying around. Mary Anns skip the sea of tears and never wash ashore anywhere near the Dodo. They show up prompt and get to work. They never get out.

  Alices sob an ocean and stomp out the doors and throw the baby into the woods and shout at the Queen until they break free. Mary Anns stay right where they are and fetch and carry for the Rabbit. They don’t think anything is particularly wrong; the Duchess watches them frown at the Rabbit a bit at first, but it fades. He’s flighty; what employer isn’t?

  They all start out Alice, back in the world at the top of the tunnel, but something happens, and she doesn’t know what. There’s no chance to understand it, either; Alices leave, and Mary Anns get so quiet. It’s awful.

  “You’re thinking about something, dear,” she warns every Alice, “and that makes you forget to talk.” There’s no point in trying too hard to shake a girl loose from the branch—she’s a Mary Ann or an Alice and you’ll know soon enough—but still. Here, if a girl stops talking, the mice will do it instead. Rabbits will. The flowers will. If you ever stop talking, you’ll never get a word in edgewise again. That’s the moral of that.

  This Alice scowls. Her mouth pinches shut, more pointed than a chin. Duchess lets her go. As Alice passes by, the roses lean in with their mouths open; whatever they’re breathing on her, she won’t last the night.

  * * *

  The trick is that the Mad Hatter never wants you at the tea, so if you’re looking for your pig to collect him from the woods and want to catch them unawares, you have to wait until Alice has just left. They’ll all be distracted, then; no one can resist an Alice.

  She can’t always manage to sneak off for long enough—the kitchen requires her attention, and the invitation to croquet is due, and then she has to die—but sometimes she gets so lonely she could scream, and even a Mad Hatter and a March Hare are better than a nose full of pepper and a door that’s always got a little girl behind it.

  When she sits, the Hatter howls, “Great galloping goodness, who asked you?”

  “Nobody at all. Two sugars,” she says, dumping the dormouse out of the spare cup and banging it once on the table.

  “You were much nicer before,” the Mad Hatter says, which is true, if he means who she used to be before she was the Duchess. It’s a lie if he means she was different just before the last time the axe came down. She was the same then. Not much point explaining, though—the Hatter’s not very good about changes unless he’s the one making them.

  The March Hare won’t even look at her anymore. She killed him for the stew once, just to see if it would make anything different for the next Alice through the door. It didn’t (that girl turned out to be a Mary Ann, and that tea party went on for six weeks because she was too polite to run), but for someone who forgets so much, the Rabbit’s got an awful long memory about some things.

  If the Duchess stayed at the table, time couldn’t touch her, either. But someone’s head has to be cut off to make room for the next, like pruning a rosebush ahead of the spring. Sooner or later, she has to grow older and older, until her face sags past her pointed chin, and the little girls that barge through the door freeze in their tracks seeing someone so old with a baby so young.

  The tea party gets along without the Duchess. They pull the wings off the bread-and-butterflies, and knock the vase of murdered flowers sideways so the dormouse can imitate what it’s like to drown. “Move down!” the Hatter shrieks from time to time, but she never does, and the rhythm of the party breaks when everyone edges past her as quick as they can. She’s sure of it, though. If you move every time someone barks that you should, you end up horribly far from where you started. She has a chair that creaks under her and wobbles when she peers around, and that’ll do her just fine from now until the last Alice. Hatter claims the view is finer here, or the chair is softer there, but what she has is well enough suited. No point being curiouser.

  It’s a horrid party, but it’s something, and she stays until eventually the edges of the garden start to smear. Time is getting on without her, too.

  “Best go, old girl,” says the Hatter quietly. “Time and tide are waiting.”

  She doesn’t mind, usually. She’s clung to the table once or twice until the cards had to come and get her, but most of the time she mutters her goodbyes and gets on with it. The tea’s made of saltwater anyway; nasty stuff. The Alices’d hate it, if the Hatter ever let them drink.

  Mary Ann is waiting in the kitchen when the Duchess comes home to change for croquet. Mary Ann eases her into her five skirts, and her fine jacket, and the collar that stretches tight around her sagged face and her violent chin. Though she wouldn’t know why if you asked her, Mary Ann’s fingers tremble as she fastens the collar buttons. Alices storm through so much they never need consider; Mary Anns have the time to fetch gloves, and listen to the stillness of the nighttime here, and see what will become of them all.

  * * *

  “The ones who make it out are all right, of course,” the Duchess says, at tea with the Queen of Hearts. She often has tea with the Queen before she’s doomed to execution; the Queen has enough sugar to drink it, and it’s nice to have a bit of conversation.

  The Queen looks her over. The Duchess knows the Queen hates questions, which is why she’d been careful not to ask one, but even if you avoid that, the Queen loves to find the eye in every potato. In the silence, Duchess reaches under her hat for another of the biscuits. (The Queen can’t be expected to provide them—who would bake in that house? Those cards go up in cinders—but the Duchess finds that a tea that has no biscuits is like a hat that has no biscuits: all right if you must do without, but vastly improved with.)

  “I dare say they seem to be.” The Queen is staring at some of the flamingos nearby; it will be croquet after this, then. Sometimes she wonders if the Queen has secretly liked croquet all along.

  Then, as if she’s been wanting to tell a secret, the Queen says, “Alices seem to be a lot of things. They never stop seeming. Very few of them manage to be.”

  The Duchess can’t decide if being an Alice like that is better than being a Mary Ann. It must be worse, she decides. Mary Ann grows old, but she has duties that no one expects her to guess, and it’s pepper stew every night.

  “Oh, bother,” sighs the Queen. Duchess follows her gaze. Over the maze of garden hedges, a hundred doors; at every keyhole, an Alice. “Too early. It will be croquet for days, now.”

  They already have an Alice going; she’s a hundred times the size of the White Rabbit right now, splitting his house in two as she considers giving in. The Duchess takes a breath, but waits until Alice’s voice rolls booming up the hill: “That’ll be a comfort, one way—never to be an old woman—but then—always to have lessons to learn! Oh, I shouldn’t like that!”

  The Alices at the gate don’t hear her; they’re all talking to themselves. The Mary Anns hear her, but that’s when the despair sets in, and after that there’s no climbing back out where you came from, and you might as well come inside.

  “You gonna behead some of ’em?”

  The Queen looks over, and the Duchess flinches and curses herself for a fool—a question, a question, a cup of tea with a biscuit drowned in it.

  “The woods will claim a few,” the Queen says finally, with some relief. “One or two will drink so much they disappear. One or two, the Cat will play with. That leaves one for you, if you want her—I shan’t have one today.”

  Of course; Alice tomorrow and Alice yesterday, but never one today. That’s how she’s stayed Queen so long. There have been a thousand Duchesses. Their heads are always coming off—the Queen doesn’t like biscuits,
or questions, or being late, or being foolish, or being old, and she is so tired and so easy to anger—and then the Duchess grows again in the kitchen, chin-first, remembering it all and already looking to the kitchen door for a little girl who will be coming through at any moment.

  (What she never quite remembers: When she becomes the Duchess again, does she swallow those little girls? Is she like the mushroom that grows on the corpse? Do Mary Anns just vanish between one breath and the next into the body of an old woman who has a child she didn’t want and a soup she can’t eat? Do Alices come back to the house to tell the cook that the Duchess won’t be coming home, and sit by the table to cry, and then stay right where they are until age begins to pull at the body that used to be magic, and then all at once they wake from a dream of falling and she’s taken them over?)

  “I’ll not want one today, Your Majesty.”

  “Mm. Are you sure? If you get any older my executioner won’t be able to saw through your neck. A ring thicker every year, you know.”

  “Perhaps tomorrow, Your Majesty.”

  “Perhaps I’ll call my guards right now and let one of these Alices through while I polish the axe,” the Queen says, taking a great long slurp of tea, but the Duchess knows she doesn’t mean it. She has to go back home and meet Alice in the kitchen before she can be beheaded. If an Alice got to the palace grounds this early, she might see the Queen and the Duchess having tea and ask to join them. The Duchess might have to look her in the eye.

  “With Your Majesty’s permission,” the Duchess says, and lumbers upright and off home. She’ll pick up a pig from the woods on her way. For a little girl who’s smart enough to make it to her doorstep, they don’t half like what she holds in her arms; by the time an Alice reaches her, that girl is only thinking of escape.