by Liz Braswell
“Oh, that’s rather mad,” she said, cocking her head and listening.
“Oh!” she said again, realizing what the music reminded her of. “It is Mad! Mad as a Hatter!”
Cautiously Alice picked her way to the sounds. It was far harder than it should have been: the Wonderlandians’ now very recognizable voices grew louder for no good reason and then suddenly shut off like a door had closed. She had to stop, wait, then turn around and try different directions. She suspected that it was the trees. They scattered sounds they didn’t like or didn’t want to hear, or perhaps translated it into something closer to tree.
She rounded a particularly large oak and the source finally revealed itself. It nearly broke poor Alice’s heart.
The escaped prisoners had found the perfect camouflaged hiding spot: a small clearing between trees so large that their branches knotted around each other overhead.
(Literally—Alice found herself suspecting that some of the tangled branches didn’t actually come from the trees at all and had just grown ex nihilo in place.)
On the ground were several large, flat boulders suitable for sitting. Between them, tuffets of tall grass had been quickly and inexpertly plaited together to make a kind of a flat surface. This swaying, delicate top was set with a number of unlikely objects: a couple of broken teacups; a shell; a flat, concave stone; a snuffbox. All were filled with water and rested on broad leaves.
Two of the old friends slumped tiredly on the big rocks. But the Mad Hatter kept his back straight, shoulders back, elbows close, and pinkie out as he picked up the snuffbox with one hand and used the other to hold a leaf beneath to catch any spills.
Besides his familiar green top hat with the label sticking out, the Hatter now sported a much tinier one over his left eye. Alice gasped when she realized that the doll-sized velvet hat was there to cover up what was probably an empty socket; there were terrible scratches around his lid and cheek. The bags under his right eye had bags. He was gritting his teeth.
He also seemed to be taller than last time, almost normal height, and his head of a more conventional size. Normal and conventional being the operative, and therefore terrifying, words.
“No, properly now, let’s, and…” he was saying with a forced smile.
The Dodo, missing his wig and a number of feathers, picked up his own “teacup,” the concave rock, with a resigned look on his face.
“This is where he would start to sing,” the Hatter prompted sotto voce. “The March Hare. He would sing: Ohhhh, a very merry…”
“’Fraid I don’t know the words—but I could learn ’em if you want. Or can we run a race instead?” the Dodo suggested. “That might cheer us up! A good old-fashioned caucus race!”
The Dormouse lifted his head up out of the snuffbox the Hatter was just about to sip from. He, too, looked exhausted, but his eyes were wide and unblinking and he shivered a little.
“TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE BAT,” he screamed. “IF I WERE A BAT I COULD FLY LIKE THAT ALL AWAY FROM EVERYTHING!”
“Sssht!” the Hatter said, snapping the snuffbox shut desperately. As water squirted out its sides, he suddenly realized the danger to his friend and snapped it open again. The Dormouse popped back up like a jack-in-the box—wet, but with the same wild look in his eye.
“Oh dear oh dear oh dear!” Alice cried, stepping forward, unable to watch any longer.
She probably should have restrained herself a little. The Hatter leapt up, pulling the snuffbox close to his chest and holding his other hand out to—what? Fend off an attack? With nothing? It was a crushingly valiant gesture. The Dodo stumblingly turned around and tried to hiss like a lizard or something far more dangerous. And while he wasn’t at all a dangerous creature, he did have the mad look of someone, no matter how awkward he seemed, who had definitely had enough.
“Alice!” the Hatter cried. And again that change of expression on his face: the softening, the relief, the desperation, shot right into Alice’s heart. It was the least Mad she had ever seen him.
“Alice? What’s an Alice?” the Dodo asked, patting himself down for a pair of glasses or something he obviously no longer had. “Oh, I know you—did you ever wind up getting yourself dry, my dear?”
“Yes, thank you, I have,” she answered. “I’m so glad you managed to escape!”
“Yes, we did,” the Hatter said, his face falling again. “Yes, we did,” he repeated softly.
“Please, tell me what is happening,” she begged. “I received your message, your cry for help. I am here now. What can I do?”
“It’s monstrous. She’s monstrous,” the Dormouse sighed in his quavering voice, swaying in the snuffbox like a cobra entranced by a flute.
“A pox on the Queen of Hearts and her caucus bans!” the Dodo said, trying to pound his fist—wing—onto the tabletop, which resulted in nothing but the grass bending and being crushed under his force. The shell of water slid precipitously toward the ground. “I’ll drink to her removal!” He grabbed up his own concave rock, toasted everyone, and took a sip. “Fine vintage,” he observed.
“But what exactly is the Queen hoping to accomplish? What is the scope of her operations? What is it her intention to do?”
“Do? Intention?” the Mad Hatter said, suddenly fixing Alice with bright aqua eyes that were clear for just a moment. “What a question! Does it matter? She is sweeping her armies across the entire land and burning everything as she goes. She is throwing everyone into prison. She is seizing everyone’s property. She is executing anyone who dares ask why or stands up to her. Executes them!
“Why? I have no idea why. Ask the eye I no longer have. Ask the friends who are no longer here. She…just…wants it. All. All the cake. Whatever.”
“Ooh, a nice bit of cake would go well with this port,” the Dodo observed.
“It’s tea,” the Dormouse corrected gently, as if the Dodo were mad and to be handled with care. “But do try the chestnut pudding. It’s delightful.”
And with that he hurled a prickly cocklebur at the bird’s head: it wasn’t even a horse chestnut, much less pudding. The Dodo caught it in his rock cup and gulped it down, which of course resulted in a fit of choking and coughing as the little hooks grabbed the inside of his throat.
Alice closed her eyes and counted to ten. They were all Mad here. She had to remember that.
“But mightn’t it help if we knew what her eventual goal was? Croquet and cards—it’s always all about winning a game. What is she looking to win? The rule of all Wonderland? Alone?”
“Rule?” the Hatter scoffed. “Rule is for rulers. And protractors. And perhaps slides.”
“Well, one might just as well ask what the use of War is,” the Dodo said philosophically. “There is no purpose. You just pull out your cards over and over again, and whoever has the most at the end wins.”
“There is no purpose,” the Hatter repeated darkly. “You just put your soldiers out over and over again, and whoever has the most bodies at the end wins.”
Of course it did make a strange sort of Wonderland sense: in the end the Queen of Hearts was nothing more than a card grown too big for her britches. Alice used to play War—or Battle—all the time when she was little. Mostly against Dinah or her dolls, since grown-ups and Mathilda found the game random, tiresome, pointless, and silly. It made Alice blush to remember how sometimes she used to secretly stack her half of the deck with all the royal suits to give herself a leg up against the opponent kitten.
Still, it seemed a little strange that the Queen was so energetic and directed in her undefined violence. Something didn’t quite fit.
“So for all we know, she is just rampaging until she destroys all of Wonderland?”
“Or until the Great Clock ticks its last,” the Hatter said with a weary sigh. He scratched distractedly at the tiny velvet top hat over his left eye.
“Yes, what you have seen in Heartland is just the beginning,” the Dodo said with a sigh. “A view of what’s to come.”
“All right, we have a mad Napoleon on our hands,” Alice said briskly. “I’m not sure what I can do to help—she has an awful lot of soldiers on her side, and as you saw, I can no longer shrink and grow as I used to.”
“You cannot grow because you have decided you have stopped growing,” the Hatter said diffidently. “You haven’t grown in ages and you’ve lost the knack.”
“Well, I beg your pardon! In my world you don’t get to decide whether or not to stop growing. My mother is rather short, my father is not overly tall, and I believe I am about average for an English lady.”
“You ‘believe,’” the Hatter mused. “’Twas a time you used to believe six impossible things before breakfast, if I’m not mistaken.”
Alice started to retort but then sat back on her heels and considered: she was the odd man out here, so to speak. These locals knew the realities and rules of their own land. Perhaps she had decided to stop growing. It seemed possible, since she had such a ready and pat answer about her parents.
“You haven’t done much growing up at all actually,” the Dodo said, a trifle rudely. “Except for your height, I mean. You’ve stayed the same, in the same house, trying to do the same things you’ve always done.”
“Excuse me!” Alice said, frowning. “I have a passion for photography now and am finished with my schooling. If you had contacted me earlier, perhaps I could have come sooner and prevented some of this mess.”
“Mess?” the Hatter said wryly. “I wonder if that’s what the March Hare would call this, rest his poor long-eared soul.”
“Oh…” Alice crumpled.
Everyone was silent. The Dormouse swayed sadly.
“I am so very, very sorry,” she said softly. “I did not mean any disrespect to the poor thing.” She took a deep breath. “But if we are to prevent such horrid occurrences from happening to anyone else, we must strategize. Work together. Plan. Isn’t that why you wanted me here? To help you stop this?”
“Mary Ann wanted you here,” the Hatter said moodily. “She was trying to stop it all. She had the odd notion you could help.”
Mary Ann thought she could help? Alice tried not to let this thought distract her. But how could this other girl know anything about her?
“Mary Ann!” the Dodo squawked. But not like one would imagine a dodo squawking, or any bird at all; he squawked like an overdramatic man. “Now she’s the tardigrade’s petard!”
“The—I’m sorry, I haven’t any idea what that means,” Alice said, not trusting herself to repeat the confusing phrase correctly.
“Tardigrade’s petard. The echidna’s phalarope. You know.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know. I suppose it’s a good thing?”
“A good thing? A rare thing indeed!” the Hatter snorted. “Have you ever seen so tiny a petard that would suit a tardigrade? The Dodo’s a bit dim at times, but he has it on the knuckles there: Mary Ann could fix everything up.”
“All right,” Alice said uncertainly. It was strange and a trifle naughty, but she couldn’t help feeling a bit put out at the constant lauding of Mary Ann, this other version of her. The first time she had been in Wonderland, with all the growing and shrinking, she had wondered if she was still Alice at all afterward. She even considered the possibility that she had become another girl entirely. Including specific girls she knew who had terribly boring lives full of lessons and empty of toys. How dreadful that would have been!
But here Mary Ann was the savior of the fantasy land, Alice the Anglish girl who had led a comparatively boring, normal life until called for help. Well, that was a turnaround! And a bit painful for the ego.
“Really, dear girl,” she reproved herself. “Even if this Mary Ann turns out to be more vexing in person than she is in stories, she is the one who seems the most able to save everyone. Set your childish thoughts aside and do what is right!”
Aloud, she said:
“How did she do it? Contact me, I mean?”
The Hatter shrugged. “She had to wait for your Unbirthday. The proper one, I mean: the eleventh anniversary of your first visit. I suppose there was nothing else to do in prison but wait and hope and wish.”
“That explains why she appeared the way she did in the photograph,” Alice said, remembering the blindfold and the wounds and shuddering a little. “She certainly looked like she was in prison.”
“She traveled to you by photograph?” the Dodo asked curiously.
“She appeared in a photograph. Of me. Actually, quite a few of you appeared in place of the pictures of people I knew. I suppose each of you is reflected in a real-world—excuse me, Anglish-world—version of yourself.”
“Really? Whatever do you mean?”
“Well, Hatter, in my world you are—well, a hatter.”
“Really?” he asked, looking delighted for the first time since she had arrived. “I’m a hatter in this other land? How exciting! And what kind of hats do I make?”
“All sorts. Especially large fancy ones for ladies.”
“Think of it! Ladies’ hats!” He took a dreamy sip from the snuffbox, forgetting about the Dormouse. The mouse seemed more curious than upset.
“But Mary Ann is no longer in prison, now,” the Dodo said. “She’s free! I rather thought because of what you said that maybe she escaped by photograph.”
“Really! How wonderful!” Alice said, clapping her hands. “I think the best thing to do, then, is for us to find and join her.”
The Dormouse swayed dreamily. “It’s said she is hiding out in the Back of Beyond….”
“I heard she went all the way to Helenbach,” the Hatter added casually, sipping his water as if they were discussing where a friend was spending the summer.
“I heard she was drumming up a resistance, gathering revolutionaries and mendicants,” the Dodo said confidentially.
“I heard it was flutes,” the Hatter mused.
“FLUTY WOOTY DRUMMY DUMMY DONE-Y,” the Dormouse whistle-sang before slumping to sleep in the water, splashing a little out.
“Regardless of whether it’s drums or flutes,” Alice said quickly, before they went off on another Wonderland tangent, “could she be someplace called the Grunderound?”
Everyone looked at her in shock.
“How do you come by this intel?” the Hatter asked suspiciously. “Nobody knows exactly where she is!”
“The Cheshire Cat told me,” Alice said, not seeing any point in hiding the truth.
“Ah. Well, he is nobody,” the Dodo conceded, nodding. “Most of the time. And nowhere at all the rest of the time.”
“What is the Grunderound, if I may?” Alice asked timidly.
The Hatter tapped his teacup impatiently. “You know—when you’re looking for secrets, or where you’ve hidden that last lump of sugar, or where the thieves go to sell their stolen tarts. You grunder around looking for the right wrong thing.”
“Of course,” Alice said, putting a hand to her head. “Grunderound. That makes loads of sense. Anyway, how do we get there?”
“Generally by walking,” the Hatter said with a shrug.
“I prefer rocking chair myself,” the Dodo mused.
“Haven’t been flocks of those around since the Red Doom,” the Hatter said, shaking his head. “I wonder if she’s killed them all—or thrown them into her mews.”
“Faster by bottle anyway, since the Sea of Tears,” the Dodo said with a significant, accusing look at Alice.
“All right, can we shrink somehow? To fit into a bottle?” Alice asked hastily. She had created the Sea of Tears herself years ago, when as a giant girl she had cried about her situation. It had flooded the place—and made a lot of Wonderland inhabitants grumpy and wet.
“No, but it’s always up to me, isn’t it?” the Hatter said grumpily. “Not allowed to be Mad even a quarter of the day now.” He leapt up and began patting down his jacket, searching his pockets.
“It’s true,” the Dodo whispered to Alice. “The poor chap had the Nonsense kn
ocked right out of him along with his eye. Hasn’t been the same since.”
“Oh my,” Alice whispered back, concerned. That would explain his normal height and head; he was becoming sane.
“He keeps trying. To be Mad, I mean,” the Dodo went on sadly. “It just doesn’t come naturally anymore.”
But the Hatter succeeded this one time, at least: he pulled an enormous umbrella out of his waistcoat. With a flourish he snapped the black and arabesque-y thing open. A shower of raindrops fell out from underneath until he shook it dry.
“I don’t—” Alice began.
“You never do,” sighed the Hatter.
And so saying, he tossed it, handle up, into the stream that Alice had dipped her hand in before (and that must have provided the “tea” for their party). But she was fairly certain it hadn’t been right next to them until just now. Yellow cowslips smiled up from the banks—literally, of course. Their heads nodded and waved cheerfully, as Alice always imagined the wild happy flowers would. With a courteous bow—and another flourish of his hands—the Hatter indicated for Alice to get into the umbrella.
“Thank you, dear sir,” she said with a little bit of a curtsy and, trying not to show any reluctance, stepped in. Whether she finally shrank or the umbrella grew mattered in the end not at all; the getting into it was not carefree and graceful as one might imagine in a fairy tale. It tipped just like it would in the real world, and Alice had a very hard time, swaying and balancing, not upsetting the whole thing. The Dodo half fluttered in next to her, more like a delicate canary than a large (mostly) flightless bird. The Hatter leapt in between them.
And the umbrella began to drift downstream.
If their quest had not been so urgent, Alice would have truly enjoyed travel by umbrella. It was restful, and all three escapees from the Queen looked grey and exhausted and absolutely filthy where there weren’t streaks of blood. They could have slept for a week, it looked like.
The Hatter scratched thoughtlessly under the tiny top hat covering his eye socket.
