The Champion’s Hatter: Part Two
Yet again, when Mirana awakens and, yawning, waves her hands toward her bedroom curtains (which obligingly open), her gaze is drawn toward the training field... where Alice is training. Alone. The White Queen frowns as her champion swings her weapon of choice - a claymore - right and left and lunges and parries... with no one.
For nearly a weeks’ worth of dawns, the queen has been met with this sight upon rising. It’s becoming... odd. Which means it’s time to investigate.
She dresses and makes her graceful way down to the field below. Alice seems to become aware of her presence even before the queen announces herself.
“Alice! You’ve gotten another early start!”
Her champion turns and grins. “I’ve good motivation.” Her gaze flickers briefly off to the side.
Mirana catalogs this and continues, “I’m glad to hear it. I must admit I admire your... passion and dedication to your training! Although,” she teases gently, “I do fear you might be taking the old adage - that we are ourselves our own most formidable foes - to a new level.”
“I don’t understand.”
The queen frowns. “Yes, I can see from your expression you don’t.” She considers a myriad of other possibilities. “Am I under a misapprehension with regards to your early morning activities on the field?”
“I don’t believe so. I mean, I’m training, Your Majesty. We’re sparring.”
“Ah.” Despite having her assumptions confirmed, Mirana is only more puzzled. “And... with whom are you sparring?”
“The Hatter.”
“The Ha-!” The queen blinks. Her hands twitch in the air. She gathers herself. Gently, she explains, “Alice, that cannot be. There is no one else here but the two of us.”
Alice frowns and glances to the left where her eyes focus on something and evaluate it very thoroughly. What that something is, however, Mirana cannot say. When Alice returns her attention to the queen, her expression tightens into one of supreme unhappiness. “It’s very rude of you to ignore someone.”
And before Mirana can gasp at her champion’s forthright reprimand, Alice turns her attention sharply to that something she sees and - apparently - hears to the left.
“Well, perhaps I shouldn’t have, but it’s true!” she insists after a beat of silence. “After all you’ve done... the Resistance and... and all of it, she shouldn’t act as if you’re not here at all! None of them should!”
“Alice,” the White Queen gently interrupts. “Alice, I do not see or hear anyone other than you and myself.”
“This is ridiculous!” she proclaims and then she glances once more to the left, glares. “Yes, fine. I’ll see you there later.”
Mirana watches Alice, who appears as if she is watching someone walk away. After several long moments, she turns back to the White Queen and scowls. Fiercely. Mirana fights the urge to back up a step. “He was just trying to help. With my training. He’s very good with a sword.”
“Is he? I’m afraid I wouldn’t know, Alice.” Mirana swallows against her sudden uneasiness.
“Well, the Hatter is an excellent swordsman. Take my word for it.”
Mirana summons a smile. “I shall have to, Alice.”
And as she gives ground to the approaching captain of the White Guard - the White Knave, a fellow named Reginald - and Alice’s instructor, Mirana ponders the deeply unsettling possibility that Alice, the Queen’s Champion, has gone Mad.
Yes, it’s true that they’re all mad here, in Underland, but this...
This Madness is beyond Mirana’s ken.
And it continues to confound her. Mirana makes a point of keeping an eye on her champion. Most times, Alice seems absolutely fine. She speaks to people Mirana can also see, passes the salt to her very visible dining companions, avoids brushing elbows with non-imaginary courtiers and servants in the halls. And yet...
Every morning, Alice can be found on the training field, claymore clutched in both hands, battling some unseen opponent. And every evening, Alice excuses herself from dinner as soon as politeness allows and hurries to a certain balcony overlooking the valley... where she stands and, apparently, speaks... to no one at all. A “no one” with whom she whispers softly, too softly for the queen (or the servants or any number of Alice’s friends whom she sends to keep an eye on her) to make out the words. A “no one” whom she refers to as “the Hatter.”
It all leads to one, inescapable conclusion.
*~*~*~*
“She does not know.”
Thackery contemplates the wooden mixing bowl in his paws. The castle kitchens shake and shudder around him but the bowl is steady. Steady. Yes, like tea. Tea is steady in his paws as well. He likes that. It makes him nervous when the room, the trees, the sky, the world shivers and trembles around him, but not afternoon cups of tea, not mixing bowls, not spoons! Those are safe. They keep him safe. They stop him from rattling to pieces like the rest of Underland is always on the verge of doing!
“I know, Yahr Majesty.”
“Mallymkun... we should... tell her...”
Thackery sniffs a vibrating eggbeater. Is it still good or has it gone off? Won’t do to use it if the latter’s the case!!
“No... no...”
“Please, Mally. Alice is not... well. She talks to... him. She even believes she spars with him!”
“I know.”
“You know? Why haven’t you said anything to me about this before now?”
No, no eggbeater for this batch of potatoes. It’s definitely past its whisk-by date. What is the date? he suddenly wonders. Does he have any dates? Quite good with potatoes, dates are! They add color to an otherwise pale dish.
“Dates!” he asserts suddenly and, out of the corner of his eye, on the quaking side of the room, he sees two pale heads turn toward him. Their voices stop. The silence is suddenly Too Much.
The twitch this results in makes the walls nearly tumble to the ground around him and he clutches the bowl to his chest. Waits. Watches first one wall and then another. They quaver, waver, dance. But will they fall? A moment passes. Maybe more. And no. No, they do not fall. They’re still up-standing walls.
“Och, nauw tha’s a relief,” he tells the bowl.
In its perfect silence, it agrees.
Across the kitchen, the voices resume their banter.
“I didn’ tell yah because maybe I don’ wan’ Alice teh know. Even though I can’t see ‘im, th’... th’... th’Atter’s... there. She makes ‘im... there. An’ I’d rather see ‘im not there than know he’s no’ anywhere.”
“Mally... I know you wish things had happened differently. But the past is past. Even I cannot change it.”
Ah, change! Yes, yes, the eggbeater is disqualified - he tosses it across the room - but here’s a large serving fork!
“A fork in th’ road!” he crows. It shivers until he picks it up in his paw and then it is silent, still, cooperative. He turns the utensil this way and that, examining how its shadow divides the waves of sunlight that spill across the floor. “Yes, yes, ye’ll do nicely!” Thackery informs it. He places it carefully in the bowl.
“Don’ tell ‘er. Don’...”
Thackery sets down his supplies, pivots on his large, hairy heel three times, gains the proper perspective, picks up the pepper mill and grinds a bit on himself. Yes, cooking’s a dangerous business. It’s best to take precautions! He sneezes twice and the world almost explodes around him. Almost. If not for the black pepper, it very well might have!
He stands from the defensive crouch he’d assumed when the Worst had very nearly happened, picks up the bowl and serving fork again - they’d been trembling in fear while out of his company; it’s nice to know he’s missed, needed, a comfort to some, even if they are kitchenware - and croons to them. “A nice toe and tomato salad,” he tells them. “Yes, yes, tha’ woul’ b’ gehd!”
The kitchen door opens. His ear twitches.
“Your Majesty,” Alice greets someone at the queen’s potion table. “Mallymkun.”
The voice-makers say nothing and Thackery warbles, “Tha’s a guilty silence, there! Guilty as a borogove, ye chatter mongers!”
He glares up at the high windows. Borogove holes, those. Big enough to be, certainly. Must keep an eye out for those smelly floor mops! His only recipe for borogoves is a pie that always ends with burnt feathers and a soapy aftertaste. Very bad with tea.
“Thackery?”
He spins again on his heel. Twice this time. “Aye, wha’tis i’ye wee bessom?”
“Has the Hatter been by for lunch?”
Thackery blinks. First the left eye and then the right. The kitchen is suddenly still. Very still. Even those voice-makers off at the queen’s potions table are quiet. He doesn’t like this quiet. Too quiet.
“No’ t’day. Nae lunch t’day,” Thackery coughs.
“Oh. Well, he should eat.”
“Oh, aye, aye. He should!” That’s very true. Eating is Necessary. All things eat. Thackery eats many things in Underland and Underland eats its citizens. Thackery has half a mind to take that up with Underland except he’d rather not lose the second half of his mind in the attempt; he strongly suspects Underland had stolen and made a snack of the first half! Not that he can blame it. All things eat! And they eat all manner of things! Even halves of march hare minds! He’s quite lucky Underland hadn’t felt the inclination to devour his head!
Lost heads. Dreadfully sad things, those. No tea to be had for them at all!
He hears a sigh. It must be Alice’s. The voice-makers are still guilty in their silence.
“Will you have him eat something the next time you see him? For me?”
To that, it’s easy to agree. “Yes, yes! The ver’nex’happenstance!” When had been the last time he’d seen the Hatter? Had there been a tea table involved? Perhaps a nice, stable cup of tea... Yes, tea...
“Thank you, Thackery.”
“Tha’ sounds loveleh,” he muses aloud, drops the bowl and leaps for the kettle. Yes, a nice, non-shifting cup of perfectly motionless tea!
She turns to go and he warns her, “Ye’ll b’ late fer tea!”
“That’s fine. Start without me. I’m going to have a word with the Hatter.”
Thackery pauses, the kettle of water hovering above the stove.
The door closes behind her just as the kettle bangs into it. Thackery ducks as the racket shakes the ceiling. He clutches the bowl to his chest.
“You see, Mallymkun? She must be told.”
“Th’ reason yah ain’t wantin’ teh tell ‘er yahrself is jus’ as good as my reason for refusin’ do it for yah!”
“Please, Mally. She will ask you... eventually.”
“Let ‘er! I ain’t sayin’ nuthin’!”
“Unfortunately, Mallymkun, you will have to. I have to consider what’s best for Alice. And I must ask you to do the same.”
The voice-makers settle into a testing sort of silence. Oh, yes, there’s a glare over there, on the other side of the room. It makes the air vibrate. In his paws, the bowl quivers. In the bowl’s hollow, the fork trembles.
“There, there, we’re al’righ’nauw...” he soothes them both. And they quiet, still, accept his reassurances. And the bowl and its silverware, safe and shakeless in his grasp, soothe him.
*~*~*~*
Alice lets the kitchen door swing shut behind her. She doesn’t try to stop it from slamming. She’d actually like for it to slam. An exclamation point on the end of the silence with which she’d answered the queen’s wary stare and Mally’s self-incriminating slouch.
When had the queen started looking at Alice as if she were the next Jabberwocky in the making?
When had Mally stopped meeting Alice’s gaze?
“Should have said something,” she chastises herself.
A bit further down the corridor, a well-dressed courtier leans out of concealed balcony to apparently investigate the echoing mumble, sees Alice and...
Before Alice can nod in greeting, the woman startles and, eyes wide, ducks back out of sight.
How... odd.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Alice mutters as she strides past that particular balcony. The gauzy curtains billow in the brillig breeze and she glimpses a trio of courtly figures. Their heated whispers are carried on the wind, but the words themselves are lost. Still, Alice doesn’t think she imagines the flinch they execute as she walks by.
Not for the first time, Alice wonders if she has somehow done something... wrong. Or perhaps something unforgivably Uplandish. Has she failed to pay enough compliments? Do they resent her for her position as queen’s champion? Do they fear her for it?
And what of the queen herself? Are those wary stares the result of regret?
Does she fear me now? Alice wonders anxiously and feels a twinge of regret at her display of door-slamming frustration.
But what of Mallymkun? Hasn’t the dormouse always encouraged Alice to be braver, stronger, the Alice? Hasn’t Mally always challenged her in that way? Pushed her to become what she is? Why would she show shame for that? And why so suddenly?
Has it been sudden?
Alice pulls up short at the top of the stairs. She’d been thinking of resuming her tour of the castle today. (She’d promised herself she would make the acquaintance of the large, luxurious rug in the west turret’s round room of stained glass windows. She’s sure each depicts a moment in Marmoreal’s history. And, like all the rugs in the castle, she’s quite confident that this one knows its room better than anyone. If only she could get that blasted floor covering to speak to her!) However, as Alice considers the recent changes in everyone - changes in the behavior they’ve been showing toward her more and more over the past dozen days or so - she forgets about the stained glass scenes of Marmoreal’s past. She forgets about recalcitrant rugs.
There must be a reason for why everyone is behaving so oddly around her! And there is only one explanation:
There is something very wrong here.
And she can’t help but wonder if it is somehow related to the injustices her dear friend suffers: the cold shoulders, the lack of consideration. Why, no one even greets the man at all! Well, not that she has heard or seen!
Why is it she is the only one the Hatter speaks to? Why is she the only one who replies? Who seems to hear or see him at all? And why does he never wear his beloved top hat anymore?
“There’s Alice, innit?” a voice declares and Alice blinks, turns, and summons a smile at the sight of two roundish, identical boys.
“It must be Alice. It’s the right Alice size an’ shape.”
“Right you are,” she assures them. “And you look like a pair of Tweedles. Dum and Dee I presume?”
“Presumin’s a frightful habit,” one says.
The other agrees, “Never know when you’re presumin’ turns to presupposin’...”
“An’ before you know it, your prerequisite’s worn out.”
“And that would be a very poor state of affairs, indeed,” Alice summarizes.
“But bein’ as how you ain’t presupposin’...”
“An’ your prerequisites are safe...”
“What are you doin’ staring at the stairs?”
“Stairs don’ appreciate bein’ stared at,” one warns. His brother nods in agreement.
Alice sighs. “Oh, I was just... thinking. I hadn’t meant to stare at the... stairs.”
Despite their earnest advice, Alice suddenly finds the situation utterly laughable. Stare at the stair, indeed! She’ll have to tell the Hatter that little piece of wisdom and see what he makes of it. A riddle, perhaps. He is just as fond as ever of making riddles.
The sound of a throat being cleared calls Alice back to the conversation. She blinks at the sight of Nivens McTwisp nervously stroking one paw over the other as he shivers with each rabbity pant he takes.
“Champion Alice?”
“Yes? What is it McTwisp?” She glances at the Tweedles who are elbowing each other and jerking their heads in her direction, obviously debating exactly who will be charged with the honor of telling her something that - at this moment - seems as if it will be rather unpleasant.
“Are you...” McTwisp begins and then glances to the left and to the right. “... free to speak. At the moment. In private?”
“Of course,” she answers.
“You are sure I’m not... interrupting... anything?” he checks with more hesitance and delicacy than usual.
Alice frowns then looks toward the Tweedles. “Was there something you wanted to tell me?”
“No, nothing urgent,” one answers.
“Especially as you’re just yourself at the moment,” the other continues.
“Just myself?” she inquires.
“Right, as opposed to there bein’ you and someone else.”
“But it’s just you.”
“Or, we think it is.”
“Innit?”
Alice blinks. “I... Excuse me... What?”
“What the boys mean to ask is...” McTwisp squeaks nervously. “... are you seeing anyone other than the four of us at this moment?”
She frowns. “No. Why, are you?”
The Tweedles frantically shake their round heads.
“No how.”
“No way.”
“But you’ve found a way, haven’t you, Alice?”
“Right. She talks to folk that ain’t there sometimes.”
“Not sometimes just in the mornin’ an’ in the evenin’.”
“That’s sometimes.”
Alice’s frown deepens. She turns to McTwisp. “What are they talking about?”
Again, the white rabbit pets his own paws. “Well, you see, Alice. Actually... That is, well, you see... You see...”
“You see the Hatter,” one of the boys finally announces.
“Well, of course I do. And you shouldn’t ignore him the way you have been,” she scolds them.
The other Tweedle shakes his head. “Wouldn’t ignore him if we could see him.”
“But, you see, we can’t.”
“Right, it’s just you, Alice.”
“Oh, dear,” McTwisp mutters. “Alice, if you would please give me a moment in private?”
Alice looks from the white rabbit to the twin boys. Her suspicions forming, she asks, “Tweedles, did you want to talk to me about anything specific or were you just checking on me?”
“There’s no harm in checking on a friend.”
“Might be harm in not checking if’n the friend in question is a might mad.”
“Like-”
“Me?” she finishes.
“Right.”
“Exactly.”
Through gritted teeth, Alice replies, “In that case, thank you for your thoughtful concern. McTwisp...” She turns toward the rabbit who visibly startles. “Is the topic of the conversation you’d like to have in private at all related to this matter?”
“Er, well, you see, Alice, I... yes.”
She crosses her arms over her chest.
Nivens hurriedly explains, “People are beginning to ask questions you see and...”
“Yes,” she interjects, noting the apprehensive gaze of not only the white rabbit but the Tweedles as well. “I do see.”
Yes, she had noticed that the speculative stares - the stares aimed at her - have changed. Yet, somehow, she had not noticed that even these two forever-young, forever-round boys have taken up the practice as well. Nor had she noticed that Nivens McTwisp has been far more anxious than usual.
“Thank you for bringing these... curiosities to my attention,” she informs them. “But I’m quite fine and even if I am imagining things from time to time, I think you’ll agree that that’s no one’s business but mine!”
And with that, she turns on her heel and heads for the stairs.
Alice strides through the castle corridors, her steps fueled with impotent frustration. For the first time, she does not marvel at the castle’s size and maze-like qualities. After nearly a fortnight in residence she still hasn’t managed to acquaint herself with all the halls, all the rooms. The castle is vast. And, for the first time, she wishes it were a bit smaller; her destination is still too far away for her liking.
And yet, despite the vastness of it and the quiet of its pale halls, there always seems to be someone watching her, no matter where she happens to be. Tonight she passes a fish butler who shrinks from her gaze, his oddly inexpressive face... fearful.
Yes, she has seen that expression often, hasn’t she? Why, just moments ago, in the kitchens, she had seen it manifested in the queen’s dark eyes and in Mallymkun’s shrinking gaze! They’d been talking about her! she suddenly realizes. Gossiping! She thinks back to her arrival in the kitchen - thinks very carefully - but recalls nothing. She’d arrived just in time to overhear nothing but their guilty silence!
But she can hazard a guess as to what they’d been discussing: Alice, the mad champion who sees a hatter who isn’t really there!
Alice fists her hands as she marches along the hall. She sets her jaw, fights against the evidence that begins stacking in her mind...
An answer - an impossible answer to that riddle - is whispered into her ear. But this impossible thing Alice does not want to believe, to contemplate, to entertain. Yes, she enjoys the impossible, but not this thing. This thing can remain impossible for all she cares! And she does care very much that it continue to do so!
She arrives on the balcony just as the sun has set behind the mountains and the sky is bloody tonight in its wake.
Blood. The color of life.
It paints all in its path: the valley, the castle, the balcony, the curtains rustling in her wake. She pauses and considers the scene before her.
Yes, this is her life now, mad though it may be.
She hesitates long enough to study the man no one else sees except for her: his wild hair, his strong back and shoulders, his solidity and realness and hatter-ness. His stillness. He’s waiting for her again, as he has been every evening thus far. Nearly a fortnight of often-times silent and sometimes whisper-filled twilights on this balcony. Of companionship and contentment and cautious caring and casual caresses...
It’s no longer enough for her.
Alice remembers the shimmer of doubt - of fear - in the queen’s dark eyes. The shying motion of both the fish butler and Mallymkun - not in concert but on two distinct occasions. The pitying, wary, apprehensive stares that follow her around the premises; the very same look that she sees in McTwisp’s wide pink eyes and the Tweedles’ small, black ones...
The Answer tickles her mind again.
She ignores it.
The Hatter turns toward her.
She closes the distance between them.
She kisses him.
There are no greetings, no riddles, no rhymes. There are no hello-how-was-your-day’s. There is no prelude, no warning. She crosses the flagstones, steps into his arms, and presses her lips to his usual and delighted smile of greeting.
There’s an instant of Pause. An instant that slays her, defeats her utterly...
And then his arms are warm around her. Pull her closer. She obliges and is overwhelmed by the feel of him. So close. Closer than any man has ever been to her. Closer than she has ever dared to imagine, to hope, to dream.
So suddenly, all that she wishes for is here in her arms, has enfolded her in his, is burning her with the intensity of his desire.
“D’nae call mae ‘Hatter’,” he whispers urgently between messy, frantic, breath-stealing kisses.
She doesn’t. She gasps when he bends, nuzzling under her chin, then brushes his nose down her throat. Her hands tighten in his hair as his hot breath kisses her skin. She had considered herself a skilled wielder of her own imagination. She had been prideful of the fact that there exists no place her mind has not taken her. And yet with one puff of breath against her skin, he - this lover she has wanted too much to ever risk entertaining the thought of - proves her wrong, reveals her deficiencies.
She has never enjoyed the illumination of her incompetence so much.
“Tarrant...” she whispers when his lips make contact with her neck.
He lifts his head and very deliberately curls himself around her shorter frame. She meets his green, seemingly-improperly focused gaze for a moment before he lifts a hand, gently cradles the back of her head, and takes her mouth with his yet again. He savors her as if he can taste the sound of his name on her tongue.
“I came back for you,” she hears herself whisper when he eases away. She hears it and hears the Truth in it. Necessary truth. Inescapable truth.
His sigh is soft, pained, heavy with need. “I’m yours. Only yours.”
The very thought owns her. She becomes his. Right then. In that moment. No matter what happens, she will never be anyone else’s but his.
Alice leans forward and presses her lips to his pale throat, beneath his Adam’s apple. His fingers curl into the back of her tunic. Holding on.
She tastes him and hears his gasping growl: “Yours!”
“Then be mine,” she dares him.
And when he nods, she takes his hand - warm and rough - in hers and leads him from the balcony and to her room.
*~*~*~*
Mallymkun watches as Alice disappears down the hall. She turns away before she hears the door close and the lock turn. She makes her way to the abandoned balcony and stares at the spot in which Alice had stood, had embraced... someone. From the shadows of the hall, Mally had not been able to see the happenings on the balcony well, but her ears had caught Alice’s words. Alice’s and only Alice’s.
But, oh what she would not have given to hear another’s! To hear the other’s! To hear his words! She would not care one way or the other about the words themselves, for the meaning would be clear! The meaning... that evidence is all she asks for!
She stands in the place Alice had occupied and stares at the stone floor. The floor stares back. Whispers...
“Tell me, Dormouse, who is the leader of the Resistance?”
“Come a little closer and maybe I will, Knave!”
“And what will you do? Spit in my eye?”
“Yah’d like that, wouldn’ yah?”
“For the last time, Dormouse. Who is the leader of the Resistance? If you don’t tell me I shall simply ask the Hatter again.”
“Damn yah, Knave. Don’ yah dare! I’m th’ leader! It’s my Resistance, see?”
“Yes, despite having only the one eye, I do. Very clearly.”
Mally shivers. She tells herself it’s not a memory. She tells herself that conversation hadn’t happened. She tells herself it... and all the... happenings that had followed after it, are nothing more than a nightmare.
Sometimes, she believes it.
Always, she wants to believe it.
She thinks of Alice, the queen’s mad champion, embracing Tarrant Hightopp out here on this balcony. And Mally is glad that, even if she can’t believe everything’s all right all of the time, Alice can.
Alice does.
Mally envies her that.
She remembers the tea party Thackery had dragged her to last week. The party where Alice had sat to the right of the Hatter’s usual place. The party where Alice had laughed and poured tea and riddled and teased and passed the scones with graceful flicks of her wrist. The party where Alice had spoken to the Hatter’s unoccupied chair.
Mally had tried. She really had. She had tried to see him. She had strained her eyes trying to catch a glimpse and yet with every passing moment of him not being there, she had feared - more and more - that what she had witnessed on Frabjous Day last had merely been a trick of the mind. Of her mind. That possibility had been... unendurable to think. She had so desperately wanted to speak to him at that tea party, but how could she have hoped to answer questions that she couldn’t even hear? To confess her inability to Alice would have clued the girl in to the fact that...
No, Mally hadn’t been able to bear the thought of Alice... knowing.
Because, as long as Alice doesn’t know, Mally will not have to tell her the truth.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Dormouse. You’re free to go.”
“Tha’s a good one, Knave. Tell me another an’ maybe I’ll laugh.”
But he hadn’t. With a wave of his gloved hand, he’d directed a card soldier to escort her out of the castle.
“Give my regards to the White Queen. Along with this.”
Mally clamps her paws over her mouth to keep from crying out at the non-memory. There’s no reason to let an old nightmare affect her so strongly. Those horrid things hadn’t happened. She knows. She knows.
Everything is fine.
According to the Alice, everything is fine.
And that’s more than enough for Mally.