Chapter Nine: Making Belief (3)
Uilleam supposes he shouldn’t have been so surprised, really. It’s the oldest story in the history of the world. The war veteran receives succor from a lovely, young nurse and falls madly in love with her. And he cannot deny that he is, rather unexpectedly, a war veteran of a sort, nor that he is desperately in love with the lovely dodo hen who had tended to his injuries in the infirmary. Othenia, she had said her name was, and although Uilleam has not found any suitably flattering words that rhyme with it, he is not concerned. He will finish a sonnet to her, in her honor, with or without rhyming. Such is his adoration. Even the cane that he must use is not as hated as he would have expected, for she had been the one to give it to him.
“Fashioned it myself,” she had chirped shyly, endearing herself even more to him. “And I think you’d suit it fine, Mister Uilleam.”
He had been too tongue-tied to thank her and had fumbled, dropping the precious cane, when she had given it to him.
And then she had rewarded his clumsiness with a gentle look and a touch of her beak to his.
How... unexpected.
But welcome!
So much so that he has been unable to sleep all night re-remembering the moment. In fact, he is still sitting on the terrace when dawn breaks the dome of night and shoos away the stars and a strange man with short, orange hair and a singed top hat strides onto the croquet pitch accompanied by the captain of the Mamoreal Guard. He blinks as the man lifts and then wields his sword with a purpose and skill and efficiency that a long-haired Hatter had never managed.
Perhaps this is an unexpected side-effect of receiving a haircut?
What an interesting thought to contemplate!
But not quite as interesting as thinking of lovely, kind, wonderful Othenia...
Uilleam has every intention of spending the remainder of the morning thinking of nothing but her as his hip finishes healing: “This time tomorrow, you’ll be right as a river bend,” Othenia had said. “You’re quite fortunate it was an accidental injury; those heal much faster than the non-accidental sort.”
So, enjoying the fact that his hip is pain-free and mostly healed - if a bit stiff and unresponsive, but truly that can only be blamed on the hours it had taken for the Hatter to carry him to Mamoreal - Uilleam lingers on the padded bench, turns his thoughts away from the rather impressive sparring match on the field, sighs out the name of his true love and...
… then something else unexpected happens. The Dormouse, Mallymkun, rushes out onto the terrace waving something hatpin-sized and hatpin-shaped but considerably sharper!
He wobbles out of her way as she screams her thanks to the Hatter, who grins and nods without breaking his concentration.
“He’s actually doing well with that,” she observes after a moment, and since Uilleam is the only other being present, he feels compelled to answer:
“Yes. Unexpectedly well.”
“What do you suppose caused it? The haircut?”
“I surmised the very same thing,” he admits.
“Strange,” she remarks, sheathing her new sword and hooking it to the belt at her waist. “I ain’t never seen a haircut do that before.”
“Neither have I,” he sighs happily. Good and interesting unexpected things do happen sometimes. Not just hardly ever or rarely. They happen sometimes. It’s a comforting thought for the dodo.
And another unexpected thing: “The Hatter gave you that... sword?”
“He did!” she declares with much pride. “Found it in my room with a note just for me!”
Uilleam blinks. It is unexpected but true, then, that the Hatter believes that this little dormouse can do great things. Uilleam rolls this concept around in his mind before deciding on an appropriate response.
“Congratulations, Mallymkun,” he intones.
“Thanks, Uilleam.”
His happy sigh is silent, but real.
For a long moment, Uilleam finds himself enjoying a moment of silence with his old friend as they watch the Hatter embark on this new enterprise of warcraft. It is frightening, this change, but also exhilarating and wondrous. It’s not until Mally speaks up, gesturing toward the orchard beyond the field that Uilleam realizes quite a bit of time has passed between them.
“Did yah see that?”
“See what?” he replies.
She squints her liquid dark eyes. “I think it was the Gray Lady...”
And without another word, she races off to investigate.
“Oh, not again!” Uilleam moans, thinking of Squimberry patches and Royal Decrees and morning beheadings. He hobbles after her as fast as he is able on his new cane, negotiating the terrace steps carefully and shuffling along the orchard path with much flailing and flapping of his left wing. He glimpses her tail as she disappears through the castle gate and, with a nod to the guards on duty, he follows her.
Uilleam grumbles as he pushes his way through brambles and bushes in pursuit and, as a reward for his efforts, nearly gets skewered through the ankle by the brand new sword that is in the possession of the very object of his rescue mission!
“Shhh!” Mally hisses, pointing to a clearing beyond and the two figures occupying it. Uilleam follows her gesture and startles.
“Sir Bandersnatch,” the Gray Alice greets the beast with surprising warmth. “You were waiting for me after all, weren’t you?”
He huffs in affirmative and shuffles closer.
“And I’m late. My apologies, friend.”
Uilleam gapes as the beast sighs expressively.
The Gray Lady joins the fearsome creature in that gesture and, reluctantly, she says, “Leading the Red Knights on a merry chase is all well and good, but it will not help the White Queen’s Champion, when she arrives.”
“Grrrb?”
“Yes,” she says, answering his trilled inquiry. “Alice - another Alice, the Right one - will come to slay the Jabberwocky. And she will need your help.”
“Grrrt. Grrrrl!”
“What must you do?” The Gray Widow smiles gently. Then she leans forward and, despite the frumious stench, whispers into his small, twitching ear. Uilleam glances at Mally, who glances at him and shrugs helplessly; she can’t hear the old Alice’s words, either.
“Do you think you can do all of that?”
He nods once with a gruff bark of assurance and, amazingly, the Gray Lady scratches him behind his grubby ear.
“Thank you and farifarren, friend of Alice,” the Gray Lady bids the Bandersnatch.
Uilleam hears Mally snort in disbelief and he agrees; imagining the Bandersnatch as the friend of anything that is not on the menu is quite difficult to do!
And then it doesn’t matter if bandersnatches do have or even can have friends; the Gray Lady lifts her face to the sky, closing her eyes. Her lips move but her whisper is too soft for Uilleam to hear.
A moment later, a beam of the purest sunlight descends upon the old woman’s form, sparkling and shining with heavenly brilliance. Uilleam has to raise his feathered hand to block the power of that light, to spare his eyes.
And then, when the glow diminishes and he dares to peek out into the clearing once more, he sees in the place where she had been standing... no one.
The Bandersnatch snuffles at the ground, turns his small, yellowed eyes toward the heavens, whines once, and then - with a great, huffing sigh - ambles off into the wilds.
“Where d’yah suppose she went?” Mally asks, awed.
Uilleam turns his face upward as well, and replies, “I expect she went... to a most unexpected place, my friend.” Unexpected... and very far away.
*~*~*~*
Notes:
1. Here we finally see not only how Uilleam actually gets the cane that he uses in the movie, but that he has met his future wife (whom I mention in Book 3).
2. Also, I remind everyone that Intentions in Underland have consequences. So, when (in Book 2) Tarrant intended to punch Leif on the nose, that caused his broken hand to take longer to heal than Uilleam’s accidentally broken hip. Perhaps Mirana’s interrogation of Tarrant over his broken hand makes a bit more sense now, hm? Intentional injuries have different remedies from accidental ones. (^__^)
3. Finally, despite Mally and Uilleam overhearing a friendly conversation between Alice and the Bandersnatch, they just can’t believe that so hideous a creature could be capable of something like friendship... which is why Mally doesn’t hesitate to stab out his eye in the film. However, later, after the Bandersnatch rescues Alice from Crims, he is welcomed at Mamoreal (possibly with Alice’s endorsement off camera?) after proving his loyalty to the White Queen by rescuing Alice from Crims.