Heart and Sole, Chapter 8
I know I've never recommended a theme song at the beginning of a chapter before, but I've had this one on repeat for a while and I just have to share it:
Click to view"Ghost" by One Less Reason from the album Faces and Four Letter Words
NOTE about the video: I'm thinking there might be a couple inaccurate lyrics in here: I'm pretty sure the saying is "Toe the line" and, at the end, I hear: "I just can't find what you see in me." Maybe that's just me, though. (^__~)
*~*~*~*
It isn’t raining when Alice arrives, feet aching and boots dusty, at a very familiar door. She’d walked for days to get here, had slept in barns and brewed tea the Hightopp way in exchange for meals at the very same farm houses she had just visited with the White Queen’s entourage. No one had asked why she and Mally had returned, had been traveling back the way they’d come so recently. It seems that one look at Alice had somehow supplied the answer. She idly wonders if perhaps she wears her heart on her sleeve?
It isn’t raining when Alice once more faces the warped door and battered sign of Cordwain Earwicket’s shop. In fact, the sun is shining warmly and Alice is very sweaty and thirsty. It isn’t pouring; there is no steady pitter patter of raindrops on the road; no drizzle soaks her and chills her down to the bone, but it feels as if there ought to be. For the first time, Alice misses her homeland and its drearily predictable weather patterns.
“Alice…” Mally whispers in question, in warning, in support. “It’s not too late teh turn back, be a champion f’r th’ queen.”
Alice shakes her head. They’ve already had this discussion and her feelings have not changed in the interim. Even before the Hatter had refused her, she had lost all interest in being the queen’s champion. There’s nothing for her at Marmoreal except the life of a courtier or a servant. Neither holds much appeal.
Alice glances down at her boots, smiles despite the burning of her tender eyes which have been scalded by days’ worth of hot tears, and says softly, resolutely, “I make the path.”
And then she knocks upon the door.
At the sound of a kettle being tossed into a metal basin, her grin widens until her lips wobble so tremendously that she has to bite her lower lip to keep them under control and smile-shaped. There are thumps and clatters and bangs and then finally she hears the voice she’d been waiting for.
“State yer b’s’ness!”
Alice briefly closes her eyes, assures herself of her choice, and announces, “Shoemaking!”
“We ain’t acceptin’ apprentices t’day! C’m back tah-marreh!”
Despite the rebuff, Alice doesn’t turn away from the door. She fists her hands and shouts back, “Are you accepting Alices today?”
There’s a pause, which she hopes is thoughtful, and then a series of thumps which could only be irregular March hare footsteps. They grow louder and louder as they move closer and closer to the warped door.
The portal creaks open and Cordwain peeps at her with a one-squinted-eye and a one-bug-eyed stare. She watches and waits as he looks her up and down. Perhaps he senses what the others had at each homestead she’d imposed upon for a place to rest and a meal on her way back to Whotchworks. His ears droop a bit. His whiskers stop twitching. Quietly, he steps back, opening the door for her and Mally to enter.
“Aye,” he says quietly. “We’re acceptin’ Alishins. E’en late-ish ones.”
Too thankful for words, Alice enters the shop. She heads for the kitchen and the teapot, expecting Cordwain to demand tea before anything else, but he surprises her by grabbing her wrist and pulling her in the direction of the workshop where he sits her down on the bench. He stomp-hops into the kitchen and, a moment later reappears with the water pail and ladle. Alice offers some to Mally before soothing her own parched throat as Cordwain organizes his tools. When he seems satisfied with the selection in his paws, he spins around with an air of determination.
No doubt sensing that work is about to be done, Mally skitters off of Alice’s shoulder and watches in silence as the shoemaker bends over and examines Alice’s road-worn boots.
“Ye’ve made a righ’mess, lass,” he grumbles, tapping the dusty toes with a long-handled brush. He looks up, twitches, blinks, and then stares at her. “I’m goin’ teh show ye hauw teh clean i’tup.”
She nods and lifts her feet, one at a time, so that the old hare can pull her boots off of her raw, blistered, and sparingly bandaged feet. Staring blankly ahead, she senses Cordwain moving about the workshop, gathering up this and banging around that until finally, he presses a cloth into her right hand and a boot into the other. He then plops down beside her on the bench and begins slowly buffing away the road stains on the second boot. For a moment, Alice merely watches him in silence, and then she takes a deep breath and mimics the motions of his paws the best she can. Sometimes he pauses and twitches a finger, correcting Alice’s grip on the rag and boot by example. He says nothing. She listens to his speedy, rabbit-y breaths and the gentle but irregular plopping of salty drops upon the leather in her hands.
“We’ll have tha’ tea tah-marreh,” Cordwain says after the boots have been cleaned and Mally is snoring on a soft-looking and recently-laundered rag. “An’ then we’ll mend these grinnin’ seams.”
Alice nods and allows him to push and shove her up the wooden ladder to the unfinished second floor of the house-and-shop. He directs her behind a series of sheet curtains he’d strung up down the middle of the attic room with twine and Alice stares blankly at a very, very large trunk. Its lid is open and, peering into it, she sees several neatly folded tunics and trousers and even some underthings. There’s a hair brush and a hand mirror, a journal, ink pot and pen. There’s also a teacup, wooden bowl, and spoon.
She watches in silence as Cordwain bends down and grasping the large, iron handle at the bottom of the massive trunk, pulls out a drawer which contains a trundle bed of more than sufficient size to accommodate her.
“Won’t pay ye a wage, mind,” the hare tells her. “Don’t see much coin ‘ere sae far from th’ castles.”
“I want to make shoes, not money,” Alice replies.
“Then tha’s whot ye’ll do.”
Cordwain stomps off to his side of the attic room. Alice, her gaze still blearily trained on the welcoming pallet and its warm quilt, whispers a quiet “Thank you” that the shoemaker doesn’t acknowledge with more than a twitch of his ears.
She pulls off her dirty clothes, pulls on a clean shrift, and crawls into bed. Later, there will be questions, she is sure, although of what variety she cannot say and she is far too exhausted to even imagine them. She closes her eyes and plummets into sleep.
And then, only a short time later, opens them in response to a loud bark of “Alishin!”
“What?!” she demands, sitting up in bed and clutching the quilt. Heart racing, she glances around but the room is completely dark. The only source of light appears to be a single candle which the shoemaker holds on the other side of the sheet-wall.
“’Tis tah-marreh!” Cordwain announces.
She blinks.
“Why d’ye wan’tae make shoes?” he questions rudely.
She replies just as bluntly, “Because I make the path and I need shoes to walk it. Everyone does. Need shoes to walk their own path, I mean.”
Her mind is still far too muzzy despite the abrupt awakening so she can only guess that she’s making sense. Mostly. Probably. Maybe.
After a long moment, Cordwain sniffs. “Ar, then le’s ge’tae work, apprentice.”
Glancing around and assuring herself that, yes, it’s pitch dark in the attic, Alice protests, “But it’s the middle of the night.”
“An’ th’ custom’s a-sleepin’!” he retorts.
“Right,” she exhales on a wry grin. That makes perfect sense.
“Workshop! Nauw!” And then he sets the candle down on the floor and thump-hop-bumps his way downstairs.
With a resigned sigh, Alice throws back the quilt and fumbles blindly with the clothing in the trunk. She moves so quickly that she has dressed, collected the candle, and descended the stairs before her tears have had a chance to catch up with her. She leaves them there, beside the trundle bed trunk, for later and gets to work.
*~*~*~*
Thunder rolls over London moments before the torrent is unleashed. Hamish glares at the street beyond the window of the coach, frowning mightily. Of course, now that they’ve nearly reached the wharf at which the Wonder has been docked and is awaiting his pre-voyage inspection, the heavens have opened.
“Marvelous timing, London old girl,” Hamish mutters, thoroughly disgusted. Well, there’s nothing to be done for it. The traffic in town has nearly made him late and Hamish abhors tardiness. With an oft-put-upon sigh, he turns up his collar, pulls on his gloves and dons his recently cleaned hat. Thusly attired, he then reaches for the carriage door.
He descends the steps onto the muddy street, taking care to pick his way through the mire to avoid the complete and utter ruin of his shoes. With his eyes downcast and squinting in the gloomy twilight of the autumn evening, Hamish takes quite a few steps before he becomes impatient. Surely, he should have reached the walkway by now!
Glancing up, Hamish’s shoulders droop and yet another sigh escapes him.
It is raining, yes. In fact, it’s absolutely pouring. He is not, however where he ought to be.
“This has gone well and truly beyond ridiculous,” Hamish remarks to the empty and very muddy village square before him.
His surroundings do not deign to answer.
“Lovely. Simply smashing,” he mutters, huddling into his collar a bit more and glancing about for any signs of life or activity. Nearly every window is dark despite the lateness of the hour. Clearly, his arrival this time is well past nightfall. There is only one invitingly warm light glowing in the immediate vicinity and it appears to be coming from the most unreliable-looking structure in the entire settlement.
Slogging through the mud, Hamish wonders if he’ll have to suffer that mad hatter’s hospitality. Or perhaps that talking rabbit’s? He imagines all sorts of odd and nonsensical hosts, every remotely possible scenario except for the one he glimpses through the small, unwashed window. Lifting his gloved hands, he scrubs a bit at the dust-smeared and be-cobwebed pane, the leather squeaking against the glass and… Yes!
The young woman he’d just startled out of her work is none other than - but it simply cannot be! - the very person who ought to have no business whatsoever in a cramped and cluttered workshop. Astoundingly, the woman is-
“Alice?!” he gasps when she throws open the backdoor of the workshop and stares at him through the soggy gloom, proving indisputably that his increasingly mad mind has not played a trick upon him with regards to this, at least.
“Hamish!” she whispers fiercely. “Come in out of the rain!”
He gladly allows her to hustle him into the warmth of the workshop. He wrinkles his nose at the overwhelming scents which have (no doubt) been made twice as strong by the fire flickering lazily in the hearth as he removes his hat carefully, shaking the rainwater from the brim.
“Here, put that on the peg by the fire,” Alice says pointing, “and lay your coat out here.”
He places his hat upon the indicated wooden holder and watches as Alice quickly clears off the warped and well-used table closest to the fire. She moves with the efficiency and purpose of a shop clerk, which startles him even more than her uniform of plain tunic, brown linen trousers, and coarse blue apron.
“What are you doing here?” he hears himself exclaim softly.
Alice chuckles as she takes his coat from him and spreads the garment out to dry. “It should be me who asks that question, I think.”
“That may be and my reply would be the same as it was last time: I haven’t the slightest notion as to why, in the process of disembarking from a carriage, I should find myself in the middle of this little, er…”
“Hamlet?” Alice supplies diplomatically.
Hamish snorts with amused concurrence.
“I should think,” Alice continues, “that the storm would have startled you far more than a trip to Underland at this point. This is your second visit, isn’t it?”
She has a point about him knowing better than to be startled by another instance of instantaneous travel even if she is incorrect on the number of times that he’s found himself stepping out of London and into this place. He’s more resigned to them now than anything else. “Unfortunately, our lovely city of London is enduring similar inclement weather,” he replies, seating himself upon the bench that Alice drags closer to the hearth.
She sits down beside him and hums. “Ah yes. Lovely London weather.”
For a moment, Hamish merely studies Alice as she smiles into the fire. Warming his hands, his self-centered disgruntlement at finding himself once more at the mercy of his (or would this be Alice’s?) madness recedes and he recalls the last time he’d heard Alice’s voice. He frowns and, turning his gaze toward the fire, remarks, “I must confess: the biggest shock upon my arrival here is seeing you-” He glances at his surroundings and deduces the specific trade practiced in this room from the collection of tools and wooden foot-shaped molds. “-in a shoemaker’s workshop.”
Alice sighs. “It’s a rather long story.”
“I’m sure. And you needn’t tell me why you’ve parted company with that, er, fellow - I’m afraid I overheard a bit of your conversation with someone by the name of Mally-”
Rudely, Alice demands, “How in the world did you hear… hear…?!”
Seeing the betrayed expression form on her face and the sheen of tears gathering in her eyes, Hamish hastens to explain, “I cannot fathom how. One moment, I was taking tea with your mother who had to momentarily excuse herself and then the next I could hear the sound of your voice coming from within the parlor wardrobe.”
“You heard the sound of my voice?”
“Er… yes. And this Mally person’s as well. I inferred that you had… confessed something of a rather delicate nature to a certain… individual and he did not… receive it well.”
Alice nods, tears glistening on her lashes. “You heard us through the wardrobe?”
Feeling like an utter fool for confessing to such a thing, Hamish mutters, “It would seem so.”
“Hm, I’ve always had a suspicion about that particular armoire.”
Hamish rolls his eyes and shakes his head.
“I would introduce you to Mally, but she’s asleep upstairs. As is the shoemaker.”
“And you are not resting because…?”
Alice sighs heavily. “Would you believe me if I said Mally and Cordwain snore terribly?”
Hamish gives her a speculatively haughty look. “Would either this Mally or shoemaker be a talking rabbit, by chance?”
“I’m afraid not. A dormouse and a March hare, respectively.”
“Marvelous.”
Alice giggles at his droll tone.
In the silence that follows, Hamish finds himself staring at a boot in mid-mend on the neighboring table. He dimly realizes that Alice must have been working on it when he’d arrived. Which reminds him of another point he’d like to have clarified: “What in the world would make you turn to shoe repair as a worthwhile endeavor?”
He sees a smile curve her lips in the moment before she glances away to dash aside her tears with shaking hands. “You find my being a shoemaker’s apprentice upsetting, Hamish?”
“Of course! Whatever could possibly prompt you to come here and-” Hamish glances at her stained, callused, and scraped hands and shudders eloquently. “-make shoes like some common tradesman?”
“It’s not common,” Alice retorts softly but firmly. “Not at all. If there’s anything I’ve learned in the last two weeks it’s this: the making of shoes is a fine art. Each pair empowers the wearer to not only set foot upon their path, but to walk it.” She glances down at Hamish’s feet and grins widely. “I believe these could do with a bit of color…”
Hamish balks, “Under no circumstances will I permit you to lay a finger on my shoes, Miss Kingsleigh.”
Her sigh is mockingly melancholy. “In retaliation, I should forbid you from overhearing my conversations in the future, although in this case I’m rather glad you did eavesdrop.”
“Eavesdrop!”
“How is my mother?”
Hamish scowls. “The woman watched her own daughter disappear before her very eyes. How do you think she is, Alice?”
“Confused, living in fear for her sanity, making excuses for my continued absence…” Alice hangs her head. “Thank you for visiting her, for being a friend to her.”
“She isn’t the only one who is confused and living in fear for her sanity. It’s rather like visiting this place when I call on her.” Oddly enough, that is completely true. In a world populated by only he and Helen Kingsleigh, Alice had vanished as if by magic. In the wider world, however, she must be in seclusion - in mourning, according to Helen who secretly hires investigators to look into her daughter’s whereabouts. “You really must come back,” he gently but firmly instructs her.
“Must I? Even though I don’t belong there and never will?”
Hamish allows his silence to speak for him. It seems an easy decision to make what with none of this being real.
But he is not endeavoring to start an argument with her. “I’ll be sailing to China soon,” he informs her. That and no more. Alice is bright enough to realize what that will mean for not only Hamish but for her mother as well.
Alice bites her lip, eyes shimmering once again in the firelight. And then she shakes her hair back over her shoulders, rallying and rising to the challenge he’d laid before her. “It will be a marvelous adventure,” she replies with frustratingly predictable single-mindedness.
But, Hamish has to allow that she’s right. “Yes, I expect it will be.”
“Look at us. Who would have thought that we would be making our own paths like this?” Her voice cracks, breaks and shatters on the final spoken word.
Hamish resists the urge to fidget as he recalls the fact that Alice certainly hadn’t expected to be here, in this strange Other Place, alone. She’d hoped that the Hatter would be with her, would have chosen her as she had chosen him. Or rather, as her heart had. Hamish has never had any interest in knowing Alice’s heart, but he does know it, and as such… as such…
With a sigh, Hamish puts an arm around Alice’s shoulders which are unattractively hunched. He leans her against him and murmurs nonsense into her hair as he had seen his mother do to one of his younger cousins not so long ago following a tumble, a scraped knee, and torn dress. Alice is not unlike that little girl, he knows. She will survive this, withstand it, and overcome it in due time. But for now, well, he may not be her fiancé, but he is her friend. He cannot trounce the Hatter for breaking her heart, but he can do this much.
Therefore, he does.
Alice snuggles into him, her hands fisted on her lap, and he allows the softly flickering fire to lull him into closing his eyes. Not to sleep of course, but just to rest, just for a bit. He listens to the soft crackle-pop-hiss-plop-plink-pitter-patter-
“Pardon me, sir!”
Hamish startles, dropping his walking stick and nearly squashing his hat under his arm. He shouldn’t be surprised to find himself still inside his family carriage with the rain pouring down and creating a cacophony of wet drumbeats on the roof. He shouldn’t be surprised to see the coachman in his rain slicker, holding the door open for him. He shouldn’t be surprised to see the wharf just beyond where several vessels have been securely moored. He shouldn’t be surprised to no longer feel Alice’s weight and warmth cuddled against his side. He shouldn’t be surprised to see two tiny water-darkened spots on his jacket shoulder which look suspiciously like a pair of tear stains.
He shouldn’t be surprised by any of it. And yet, somehow, he is.
*~*~*~*
NOTES:
In shoemaking terms, a “grinning” seam refers to loose stitching. The thread isn’t taut so the leather separates and looks as if it’s grinning.
Dictionary of shoemaking terms