Chapter Nine: Making Belief (2)
“I’ve been expecting you.”
“And I’m late. Alices tend to be, I’m afraid.”
“You could have slipped away from that fitting over an hour ago.”
The Gray Lady sighs. “Well, I’m here now, Chessur.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“And now you want the rest of it.”
“Naturally.”
Tarrant continues hesitating just around the corner of the night-darkened hallway. He had been waiting for the Gray Lady to finish her business with Mirana of Mamoreal. He had been hoping he would be able to ask her more about who she is, why she had come to help him, how she had known where to find him once she had known the date, why she had needed to be told the date in the first place... But none if it is as important or as driving as his need to simply see her once more. He has felt, increasingly as the day had worn away into darkness, a sense of impending separation... as if she, too, will leave him. It scares him; the thought of being alone... again. So, when he had heard her purposeful gait echoing down the corridors, he had raced down hall after hall and followed her, found her... but now he finds he must wait. Apparently, she has an appointment with the Cheshire Cat.
“Tell me why I should help you now, Chessur? You lived in that house with her. The Oraculum was there for you to see, to know. The Oraculum foretold the attack on Iplam. You could have prevented it all.”
“The Jabberwocky, you mean? Yes, I suppose I could have.”
Tarrant blinks, chokes on something strong and sudden and surging in his gut. His ears fill with the rush of his own anger and confusion and betrayal and...!
“Yes, I could have saved Tarrant’s people,” the Cat continues, his drawling tone sounding as if it has traveled a very long distance before reaching his ears. “In fact, I made up my mind to do precisely that... do you want to know what the Oraculum showed me once I had?”
“Go on.”
“A battle. A march on Crims. Every Outlander in Underland would have drawn swords against the Red Queen, heedless and willfully ignorant of the Jabberwocky’s terrible power... and all would have perished. Is that what you would have preferred, Gray Widow? An Underland without a single Outlander, their young ones enslaved by the Red Queen?”
A long pause follows this. “... No. Of course not.”
“I’m not completely unfeeling, you know,” the Cat continues. “How would the eradication of so many benefit me? It wouldn’t, of course. What a waste it would have been. Not to mention the fact that my intervention would have been recorded in the Oraculum. I would have been found out eventually... and promptly hunted! Perhaps mere queens and knaves cannot trap a Cat with Evaporating Skills, but there are plenty of others who would have been happy to utilize their own unique gifts in tracking to locate me and take revenge upon the one they believe had led the Outlanders to their destruction. That would have been quite unpleasant for me.”
“... yes. I imagine it would have.”
“And so I did nothing.”
“And so you did nothing.”
Tarrant lifts his head and blinks at the wall opposite him. He takes great care in memorizing everything he can about it. At the moment, it seems to be the most important thing in the world.
“So, does that answer your question, Widow Woman?”
“It does, Cheshire Cat. And now I will tell you what you want to know.”
“My tasks?”
“Yes. First, when Alice arrives in Underland on Griblig, watch for her in the forest, near the Room of Doors, and lead her - once more - to the Hare and the Hatter.”
“The Hatter... are you... sure?”
“Very.”
“All right then. What else?”
“On the eve of Frabjous Day, the Red Queen will schedule two executions. At sunset on the day before they are carried out, offer your assistance.”
“Help them escape, you mean.”
“Yes. Crouch it in an offer. Barter, if you like, but save his life.”
“Ah, a he is it?” When the Gray Lady does not reply, the Cat continues, “And I will do this at the cost of my own life?”
“No. You will not be harmed. In fact, you will have a splendid time doing it.”
“Spoken like someone who will be there personally,” he observes wryly.
“I won’t be.”
“Hm... If I do these things - show this Alice-”
“The Alice,” the Gray Lady corrects him.
“Yes, yes, the Alice. If I show her the way to wherever Tarrant and Thackery are and I help this fellow escape from prison on the eve of Frabjous Day...”
“If you do those things, Chessur, you will have what you want most in all the world.”
“And how can I trust you to speak the truth?”
There is a very long pause before she replies. “I suppose you can’t,” she finally says. “But tell me, Chessur, what do you have to lose if I am lying? You have seen the dangers of these tasks. I am sure you will prepare well for them.”
“Hm. Point taken, Widow Woman. I will do as you ask in exchange for this thing.” The Cat pauses and then presses, “It will make me happy, will it not?”
“Yes.”
It is only one word, but it rings.
It rings in Tarrant’s ears and it galls him that this... this... shukm-lickering... egg-brimni... booly-greizin’-grommer will receive any sort of guarantee of happiness after he...! After he had seen the warning in this Oraculum that the Gray Alice had stolen and yet he had done nothing! NOTHING!
“Hm... I’d best be going... And you’d best be attending to Tarrant. I think he’s about to erupt.”
Tarrant doesn’t know how the Gray Lady locates him so swiftly. She is around the corner and bracing his shoulders with her leather-encased hands so fast that a helpful gesture from a slurvish, shukm-slackush toadie must have directed her to him.
Ye don’ want teh b’ thinkin’bout that, nauw, lad.
No, no he doesn’t.
He opens his eyes and tries to fight the mercury rising within him, but he can feel it burning his skin as his rage ekes out from his reddened gaze.
“Gray Lady?” he grits out through the haze.
“Yes. That’s it. Focus on me. Take another breath. That’s good, Hightopp. Now another...”
She coaches him as she had coached him in Iplam. The Gray Lady has always strived to help make him better, to help him be better, and he takes comfort in that. He wants to make her proud. For this old woman - for whom he would make a Hightopp tartan if only the memory of how it is done no longer had the power to eviscerate him - yes, for her, he fights the madness.
“Breathe in again... Good. Very good, Hightopp. Now let it out slowly... There’s a lad...”
“Chessur knew,” he hears himself accuse in a voice he does not recognize as his own; it is too deep, too dark... it is Blackness itself.
“And chose the path that lead to fewer deaths.”
“Chose the path that saved his own skin!! Should have... another WAY!!”
She doesn’t argue with him. The old widow curls an arm around his shoulders and ushers him around the corner and into her apartment. She kicks the door shut and sits him down in an arm chair. He trembles - shivers, shudders, quakes! - against the cushions.
“Be angry,” she permits him. “You’ve that right.”
“I want justice!” he hisses.
“And you know how to get it, don’t you?” she tells him, her dark gaze burning into his and he must admit that she is right. He does know how to get revenge. She has shown him what he must do, what it will require from him. And, for the first time, he is not overwhelmed by it.
She continues, “Do not waste your ire on that cat, Hightopp. Save it and store it and use it against the ones who chose to wrong you and your people.”
“Our people,” he corrects her, not forgetting that she is both an Uplander and an Alice.
Her expression softens at that and he feels himself relax along with her. “Aye,” she breathes. “Our... people.”
She had been about to say something else, he is sure. He’s of a mind to ask her about it, but then her gloved fingers lift and touch the scar on her throat and the question dries up into nothing.
He watches, still breathing heavily as his anger and madness subsides, as the Gray Lady turns away and directs her attention to a tea set, of all things. Moments later, she holds a cup out to him. From the flavor and thickness of the steam, as well as the shade and the subtle swirling of the beverage itself, he knows that it is Throeston Blend and that it has been fixed to his preference perfectly.
“How did you know?” he murmurs, accepting the cup out of awe rather than any genuine thirstiness.
“I know you,” she answers.
“You also know the future,” he says, remembering her promises to... that... Tarrant gives himself a slight shake and watches her expression, waits for her reaction.
“I know the task I was given,” she finally corrects him. “I was sent to deliver the Oraculum to a worthy keeper... and, I believe, to prepare all of you as best as I am able. Do not ask me about the future, Hightopp. You know what is coming. You must be ready.”
“Ready...?” His mind whirls at the implications. “So... you... you cannot stay?”
“No. I’m sorry, Hightopp. This path you must make on your own.”
“On my own,” he echoes, gulping down a rush of... something that explodes up from his heart. He drops his gaze to the cup in his trembling hands.
“It will not always be so,” she whispers, drawing his gaze again. “She... He will come. The one who will slay the Jabberwocky... and save you.”
“Who? This... this Oraculum that... Iplam... it shows...?” he queries, knowing he shouldn’t ask, chastising himself for his weakness, wishing she would answer faster, hoping her words will be a comfort and not another curse to bear.
“’Twas brillig,” the Gray Alice tells him on a husky whisper. “And the slithy toves did gyre and gimble on the wabe. All mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe.”
Tarrant stares, enthralled, as she speaks, as the words seem to fill the room like treacle in a well.
“The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, jaws that bite and claws that catch! Beware the Jabberwock, my son, and the frumious Bandersnatch!”
He shivers, despite himself. There is Power in her words. He can feel the Truth of a Prophecy throb against his skin. No faded sketch on a mere roll of parchment can compare to this: these are words from the Fates themselves, he knows. He feels.
The Gray Alice leans forward. “He took his Vorpal Sword in hand; the Vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head, he went galumphing back!”
“What...” Tarrant manages to stutter long moments after the firelight from the hearth has warmed the chill in his veins. “What is that?”
“It’s about Alice. The Champion of the White Queen. The slayer of the Jabberwocky.”
“Alice.”
“The Alice.”
“The Alice...” he says slowly, “will come?”
“Will return,” she corrects him urgently. And then she smiles and breathes on a chuckle, “The very same one whom you so offended so long ago.”
He frowns into his teacup, unsure of what to think of that, of what he ought to feel... The sensation currently churning in his chest feels very much like... anticipation. “Alice...”
Yes, he remembers her. Golden hair in need of cutting and odd Uplandish ideas and huffs of affront and contrary pouts and sunny smiles and...
“Alice?” he seeks to confirm, unable to say more than her name, unable to describe her properly. The Gray Lady, however, seems to understand precisely whom he means.
She nods. “Will you wait? Will you gather those loyal to the White Queen, keep them as safe as you can? Wait for your chance to lead the rebellion against Iracebeth? Will you do whatever you must, whatever you can, to help Alice? Even if that means you must become skilled at lying, at hiding, and at fighting? Even if that means surrendering your life? Even if that means escaping certain death to stand on the battlefield and at the Champion’s side?”
“I will,” he hears himself vow. “I will do all of that. Even wait. I’ll go and actually Kill Time if I must!”
She smiles thinly. “He’ll not thank you for that.”
“No, I don’t suppose he will,” Tarrant replies. “But we haven’t been on very good terms since... Well. It’s been a long time.”
The Gray Lady has no answer to that. She reaches into the pouch tied to her belt and pulls out a small glass bottle with a cork stopper.
“What’s this?” he asks when she holds it out to him, obviously intending for him to take it.
“Pishsalver,” she says as he complies and cradles the bottle in the hand not supporting his teacup and saucer. When he looks up with a frown, she continues, “Smaller things are easier to hide. Save it for when the one whom you protect desperately needs it.”
“This is good-bye, isn’t it?” he asks, curling his fingers around the tiny container.
She doesn’t answer that question, but another that he hadn’t asked. “Your hair wants cutting.”
Tarrant frowns mightily, fighting tears, as he considers both that fact and the distant memory it stirs. “I suppose that is true.”
He hadn’t yet managed to get the tangles and knots out of it completely when he had at last cleaned up. Cutting it all off would be easier than trying to deal with it properly. But more than that, he decides, cutting it will prove to this old woman (who has done so much for him!) that he is earnest about his declaration to be the warrior she wants him to be. (But no, that’s not right. She does not want him to be a warrior. He had noticed that earlier today in her lack of enthusiasm and her sad silence on the road to Mamoreal. She does not want him to fight, but she knows he must!) And fight, he will. He will protect those he can. He will lead the Resistance, launch a rebellion, wait for and then guide the Alice...!
Tarrant places the tiny bottle of Pishsalver in his vest pocket and sets his teacup aside. He doffs his top hat, sets it on the low table between them, and then draws a pair of sewing shears from his jacket pocket. Offering them to her, offering her this proof of his intent to take up the mantle she is telling him he must don, he says, “If you are willing to oblige me, Gray Lady.”
She stares at the small pair of scissors as they gleam golden in the light of the fire. Swallowing thickly, she sets her teacup down and takes a deep breath. Despite that, a long moment passes before she speaks.
“Do not,” she rasps, her dark eyes shimmering with moisture, “be too hard on Chessur for what he did not do.” She looks up, meets his gaze, and he stares as a pair of fat tears spill onto her cheeks and tumble over her wrinkled skin and roll down to her sagging chin. “For I am no better.”
And then she reaches out and takes the scissors from his grasp.
Tarrant thinks about that as she pulls a sheet from the bed and drapes it around his shoulders. He thinks about her task - this thing she is doing for the Fates of Underland - and its importance. He cannot fathom the breadth of her bravery or the depth of her duty, and so he says, simply, “I’m ready.”
“Not yet,” she argues softly. “But I know you will be.”
He listens as she pulls her gloves off. There are no mirrors in the room, so he cannot see her hands as she works, gently parting his long, orange-stained hair and cutting out the snarls. “I’ll leave it a bit longer on the top, shall I? For your hat.”
“Yes,” he lisps, and then great locks of hair begin falling around him, rolling down the sheet over his chest to pool in his lap. The night deepens and the fire crackles-cackles-cracks in the unworded farewells they exchange: He has given her his promise to be the fighter she has tried to help him to become, and she has given him the means to succeed at it.
He presses the palm of his hand against the little bottle in his pocket. “I don’t want this to be good-bye.”
“Neither do I, Hightopp. But it must be.” She pauses, as she has been doing from time to time, and Tarrant is not quite sure why she does that, but he thinks it might have something to do with the shivers he had felt from her today, had often seen at Iplam and had blamed on the wind. But there is no wind here, in the castle, and he knows it is too late to ask her why she shivers.
“All things must end,” she whispers.
Despite it being true, the truth gives him no comfort now.
“Life, death... sleep,” she murmurs.
“Sleep?”
“Yes. Mallymkun has awakened. Have you noticed?”
“Of course!” Of course he had noticed! She had opened her eyes and gathered her wits and strength long before he had!
“I think she’ll need a sword to go with those opened eyes. It would be nice if it came from you.”
“From me?” he checks.
“Yes. Believe in her, Hightopp. Consider it practice for believing in Alice.”
“I already believe.”
“Not enough. Believe in yourself, in Mally, in Mirana of Mamoreal, and then believe in Alice. In that order.” Tarrant mulls that over as the scissors continue snipping softly and slowly, as his hair continues to tumble to the sheet-draped floor and a soft, motion-made breeze whispers against the bare nape of his neck.
He sighs. “I don’t like farewells very much.”
She huffs a humored breath. “Then I would strongly recommend avoiding them in the future.”
“Saganistute advice, Gray Lady.”
“Wise beyond my years,” she mumbles wryly.
He supposes she is. He supposes she would have to be. He considers her Widow’s Peak, which conceals her true age, and the inexplicable scar across her neck and this task she has spoken of...
“Perhaps, when you return to the place from whence you’ve come,” he ventures, “things will be different. But better! And you will have no reason to be gray.”
Her hands pause at that. For a very long minute, she makes no sound or motion whatsoever.
“Thank you,” she breathes in the instant before he would have turned to look at her. And then with three more snips from the scissors, she produces a comb. Tarrant closes his eyes as her warm hands move through his now-short hair. Only his mother and aunts and grandmothers had ever touched him like this. And he knows with soul-quaking sorrow that he will miss them. He will miss all of them. And he will miss this lady as well. He will miss her too much.
He bites his tongue rather than ask her not to go. She had already given him her answer and he knows this mysterious woman well enough to know that no amount of begging will sway her. She would stay... if only she were able. He knows. She would lead the Resistance herself and spare him this haircut if only she could. But she can’t and she hasn’t. They both know he must be the one to do these things.
“Will you...?” he begins, stops, wishes this moment would never end.
“Will I...?”
“Stay... for a little while yet?” he finally dares.
“I think I can do that,” she answers, stepping away and pulling on her leather gloves. He wants to ask her why she always wears those things but merely accepts the scissors when she returns them to him, merely watches as she gathers up the corners of the sheet and his mercury-stained hair cradled within it.
“Is there a looking glass?” he asks.
“Through there,” she says, nodding toward the bedroom.
He glances toward the open door, but doesn’t move toward it.
“It’s late,” she says, as she sets the sheet beside the front door. “Sleep, Hightopp.”
And when she places a hand on his arm and guides him into the next room, he goes willingly. She permits him to take the side of the bed that is closest to the mirror, which he promptly - and without a single glance toward its reflective surface - presents his back to as he curls around her smaller, wrinkled and leather-armored frame.
He will not remember her, he decides. The pain of doing so will be far, far too great for him to manage. Nor will he permit himself to remember the ones he has lost. Not yet. No, for now he must remain focused. Memories... will only distract him. So he will shut them away. It will be better that way. He will remember Alice. He will wait for Alice and he will fight and lead and...
“I’ll not forget all you have taught me,” he promises on a strangled breath. “And I will make you proud, Gray Lady.”
Tarrant Hightopp closes his eyes when her gloved hand wraps around his wrist and holds on tightly. No, she does not say the words, but - oddly enough - he has the sense that she already is.
Now all he must do is earn that respect. And that, he Believes, he can do.
*~*~*~*
Notes:
1. In the film, when Chessur encounters Alice after she runs from the Bandersnatch and the Red Knights, he seems so happy to see her. “The Alice?” he says. And now we know why. This is the first of two tasks which he has to complete in order to get the thing he wants most: a companion who will never bore him and will be his most faithful friend. Also, from what Tarrant overhears in the hallway, we see why Tarrant and Chessur have a strained relationship in the film.
2. After a comment from a reader, I went back and checked and discovered that, in the original book (Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 7 - A Mad Tea-Party), there is no reference to the Hatter having actually killed Time. In the book, he relates an occasion when he sang for the queen and she said, “Stop it! You are killing time!” It seems that only in Burtonverse, the Hatter actually does Kill Time. Hence the reference here to it happening not when Alice was a little girl, but much later (i.e., just before Alice’s arrival in Underland in the film). If I’m mistaken, please let me know. A reference to which chapter in Lewis Carroll’s books would be very welcome, as well. After that (in this chapter), why does Alice say she and Chessur are alike? Because they’ve both been manipulated by the Fates, in one way or another, into allowing bad things to happen.
3. The haircut. (Check out Regina Spektor’s “Samson” for my musical inspiration for this scene.) So that’s how Tarrant ends up with short hair in Burtonverse... and possibly why he never gets another haircut throughout OPK. Simply put, he doesn’t need one after Mirana becomes the White Queen again. And maybe also because the memory of his last haircut is so poignant; it is his “goodbye” to his mentor. A promise to make her proud of him, to help the Right Alice, to be a leader, and to be strong in the days ahead.