Chapter Text
Chapter One.
The Vicar was a smart match for Alice, and she knew it. She rather liked the man, and often enjoyed his companionship and intellect. She knew she was getting older and quite agreed with her mother that it had been about time that a marital arrangement be negotiated. Her sister Edith was tidily wed away to a big city banker, and just last month the eldest sister, Lorina had announced that she and her doctor husband were expecting a baby. Now that the patriarch of the family had passed away, Alice’s mother seemed quite set on finally marrying off her youngest daughter and moving out of the old, drafty family home and in with Edith in her stylish London townhouse. Alice had known this day would come eventually, but found her mother’s tactics a bit insensitive; especially when she had seen fit to invite the young holy man home for dinner immediately after he performed her late husband’s funeral service.
Alice had a feeling that they all knew she would eventually fall for a professor of the arts, or an author, or a man of the cloth—some lofty, intellectual of a man with tidy clothes who was in need of a good woman to manage his social affairs. When Alice and the Vicar began to form a friendship, the most enthusiastic parties seemed to be those not directly involved in the arrangement, but notably Alice’s mother, aunts, and sisters, which made everything relatively less convenient for the young couple. The courtship had been conducted in what Alice perceived as an unnaturally public way, and after one too many family members walking in on a private conversation of her’s, she began to yearn for the day she and the Vicar wed so they could begin a quiet, private marriage full of mutual fondness, albeit a healthy dose of disconnection, and many, many books.
It was surprising to the girl that she felt this pull, for she had never been the sort to preoccupy herself with dreams of matrimony or love, instead remaining practical, aloof, and perceptive as she had been since her youth. Indeed, she suspected the partiality she felt towards the Vicar was as close as she would ever get to loving someone, and felt she must capitalize upon such emotions with no delay. The idea of being the wife of clergy did not bother her in the least, excepting of course, the prospect of sitting duly through sermon after sermon.
It wasn’t so much the religious aspect of it all that tortured her, but rather the listening. Alice felt that any good religious discourse was much like political, philosophical, or literary ones; best when shared among academic peers. This was a pursuit she did enjoy with the Vicar on occasion—debates on transubstantiation over tea, and afternoons in the garden of his parsonage spent discussing natural theology. However, when he ascended the pulpit to deliver his lectures to the small parish he presided over, Alice had to concentrate very hard on keeping herself alert, for he inexplicably adopted a very dry, droll tone whenever he began to speak the sermon.
Usually it wasn’t entirely unbearable, since her mother had taken to coming along to mass with her, but this week Alice’s mother was away visiting Lorina, leaving Alice alone in her childhood home and in her Sunday morning activity. The girl had very nearly stayed in bed that morning, but then she remembered how the Vicar could very soon be her husband and how she had better be getting used to this all, and wouldn’t the people in the parish say such awful things if someone noticed her absence? So in the end she had reprimanded herself awake and out the door.
It was the middle of August, and the weather of the season had been particularly unforgiving. It seemed as though a storm were on the horizon at all times, though rarely did the clouds break and actually let forth rain. The mugginess had been a constant companion to Alice, as was the nostalgia and longing for childhood that the girl kept feeling. The summer was the first season she had spent without her father, and whenever her mind would go blank and wander, she seemed to return to memories of spending time in his office with him, taking walks in the back garden, and, in the very end, reading to him at his bedside. This made her realize how complicated life had a habit of getting, and how everything was much simpler in childhood, when parents were there to guide you, get you out of trouble, and wipe away any worry. Now, with betrothals and deaths and babies, Alice thought she had quite enough to be getting on with.
It was, consequently, this topic that she suspected the Vicar was lecturing on, though she was having some difficulty following his points without her mother’s bony elbow to keep her from drifting off into a world of her own. The humidity seemed even more acute inside the small chapel, and Alice was having more trouble than usual keeping her eyes open. She gritted her teeth and stared very purposefully at the Vicar’s soft, round face with his thin lips and brown hair that was beginning to recede despite him being firmly set in the middle of his twenties. He was her friend, her future husband, and she knew that she owed it to him to pay attention, be receptive, and above all, not drift to sleep. Her eyelids and limbs were so, so heavy, and she resolved that a good nap was definitely in order when she returned home. Unless, of course, the Vicar invited her around to his house for lunch, in which case she’d have to postpone until far later in the afternoon. Her eyes involuntarily drifted shut, and Alice wrenched them open again.
The Vicar’s droll tone reminded Alice very much of the cicada chirr that drifted through the chapel’s slightly ajar windows. If she didn’t focus on the words so much as the sound, it actually became a very soothing and comforting noise. Perhaps one day, Alice thought, her eyelids dropping once more, she would ask the Vicar to practice his sermons as their children drifted to sleep.
“This is a right bit of tosh, isn’t it?” a voice muttered very close to Alice’s ear, startling her. Her eyes flew open as she jumped violently, jerking her head over to discover the source of the whisper.
There was a man sitting to her right, though Alice could have sworn the pew was empty next to her. His face showed that he was a young man, although his mop of pure white curls suggested otherwise. It was a pleasant face though, Alice thought, with wide, child-like eyes and a somewhat bulbous nose that was covered in a thick smattering of freckles. He couldn’t be over thirty. The man wore a violently orange coat, which was in current fashion, despite the odd shade. On his lap sat a laughably oversized hat. But then, Alice supposed that was not necessarily the case. It was the crown that was huge. The brim, though it flared out outrageously, must have been crafted to fit on the head of the gentleman next to her, which happened to be of relatively normal shape and size. Something about the man’s attire and manner seemed oddly familiar to Alice, as if she had glimpsed him briefly on a train or at a dinner party at some point.
Despite this, Alice did not reply to this man’s observation, but stared at him in a manner that she hoped communicated how put off she was by his strange attire, and that she did not want to associate with him, not one bit. She turned her attention back to face the Vicar, who she noted with chagrin was stepping down from the pulpit to deliver the final recitations of the service. She hadn’t been aware that she had dozed through so much of the sermon, and rather hoped that neither the Vicar nor any parish members had noticed.
“You didn’t snore much, you’ll be happy to know.” The man next to her muttered again. Alice ignored him with a very deliberate air. This did not seem to deter the man. “Or perhaps you won’t be happy to know that. Perhaps you’ll be quite disappointed—I would be, though I do find it prudent that one prides oneself on the volume and veracity of one’s snoring. The trick is to really draw from the back of your throat, utilizing any phlegm that may be on hand, as it were.”
He spoke this all very precisely, with no hint of a verbal tick or unsightly lisp. This made Alice more irritated, for surely such an ailment could be a sign of some sort of mental impairment, which she felt sure the man had—why else would a self-respecting person talk so loudly about such impudent things in church!? She felt that perhaps she could have forgiven him easily if it became clear that he was wanting in mental capacities, perhaps even setting a good example to the rest of the congregation of her infinite kindness and patience that was sure to serve her well as a vicar’s wife. But this man seemed to just be rude, which Alice knew many did not regard as mental instability, though she herself questioned this frequently.
She decided it best to deal with the problem quickly.
“Sir, would you be so kind as to keep your voice down? You are distracting me from the service.” She said this quietly, head lowered demurely so as to not irritate the patrons in the pews around her and her unfortunate conversational partner.
The man raised his rather sizeable and strangely dark eyebrows at her. “My dear Alice, that would not be a problem, excepting for the fact that the service is, as I perceive, over with.”
Alice looked around suddenly. The Vicar was no longer in the front of the chapel, no doubt gone to wash his hands off and have a quick cup of water before meeting with the parish in the courtyard, as he did after every service. The congregation was beginning to stand up and gather their affects, chatting amiably with each other. She whirled haughtily back to the strangely dressed man, intending to give him a thorough telling off for his behaviour. When she looked, however, he was no longer sitting next to her in the pew.
Alice cast her gaze around for the lurid orange coat, and found it and its owner trotting up the center aisle of the church. She recalled his final statement, wondering if he had made a proper farewell or if he had simply up and left. What had he said?
“…my dear Alice?” muttered Alice, noting the man’s inclusion of her name. She was quite certain that she hadn’t introduced herself in the brief time that they had engaged. Then how did he know her name? Alice squared her gaze on his retreating form, and quickly rose from the pew, striding purposefully after the man. She was going to get some answers.
The strange man took long, loping steps through the chapel foyer, and Alice did her best to keep up while dodging around parish members. She lost sight of him as two elderly men sidled in front of her. One was short with a mane of wiry white hair that framed his head, while the other was tall, streamlined, with an almost equine quality about him.
“Why hello, Alice dear, it’s so nice to see you!” the slim man crackled, reaching out to grasp Alice’s hand between his own. “It’s been such a long time.”
The shorter man spoke up. “It hasn’t really been that long, not by her standards at least.”
Alice did not recognize either man, but she did not want to appear rude, so she merely smiled serenely and tugged her hand out of the grip that held it. “It is wonderful to see you too, sirs, but I fear I must be off straightaway. I have an…” Alice peered around the two men at the orange coat she could barely see through the front doors. “…an obligation.”
“Is that what they call it nowadays?” the short man asked, cracking a smile. “My, Alice, you have grown.”
His companion rapped him smartly on the head. “Don’t be vulgar, you bumbling coot,” the tall man reprimanded. “Can’t you see she’s not that sort?”
“Well of course she’s not that sort,” the short man retorted, turning to his partner with a look of great annoyance, “Look at what she’s wearing, you think she’d get any customers in that? And at mass, too. Do you really think so little of my intelligence that—“
Alice, sensing that she wasn’t going to get any sort of civilized farewell from the pair, hastened through the parishioners and toward the church’s front doors, in pursuit of that dastardly man in the orange coat. Just as she breached the wide wooden lintel, she heard the Vicar’s familiar tones greeting the church body. A twinge of guilt soured in her stomach, but Alice pushed the thoughts of wifely duty and putting on a good face out of her mind, and strode out into the overcast August morning. There was time enough for her to make excuses and explanations to the congregation, and only moments to get to the bottom of the more pressing mystery.
The path from the church door wove through a small copse of trees before splitting at the main road. Alice paused at the fork, peering one way and the other, praying for a glimpse of the coated man.
“He must have chosen a course,” Alice muttered to herself, “though which way, I am quite unsure.” She deliberated for a moment, then set her toes toward the path that lay to her left. This was the way into the downtown that the small village boasted, and the more likely destination for a passing traveler.
Before her first step had fallen to the pavement, a voice from behind her cried, “You chose wrong,” in great amusement. Alice gasped aloud, her hand coming up to her chest in alarm. She spun sharply, her heart pounding. When she saw the man who had been next to her in the pew leaning against a tree at the edge of the small wood, with his outrageous orange coat and large green hat draped over his arm and a very smug expression on his face, her panic turned to determined annoyance in a second.
“This is entirely uncouth,” she told him, “You speaking to me that way during the service, and you sneaking behind me through the wood just now. Did your mother instill in you any understanding of basic social mores when she raised you?”
The man screwed up his face. “To be quite honest with you, miss, I haven’t the foggiest.”
“Well,” Alice said, quite at a loss as to how someone could be unsure of the lessons their own mother taught them, “that seems to explain quite a lot. Now sir, would you please stop playing games with me and enlighten me as to how you know my name?”
“Your name?” the man repeated, leaning toward her.
It took every ounce of Alice’s patience to keep her voice level and polite. “You referred to me as Alice in the pew, and I would like to know how you know my name, and which parish I attend. Are you a friend of the Vicar, or of my mother or one of my sisters?”
The man ignored her question. “Ah yes, Alice. Nice to meet you, Alice.” He stuck out a freckled hand for her to shake.
Alice sighed. “And you, sir.” She shook his hand quickly. It was rough and calloused, and the hardened skin felt foreign to her hand, used to the soft and pliable palms of intellectuals and women. She pulled her hand back, having resolved that the man was troubled, and that this conversation was going nowhere quickly. “Good day.” She said resolutely, turning about and starting down the path that branched away from downtown. Alice had only gone several steps away before the man called out again.
“Alice, you are monstrously horrid at conversations,” he said, and Alice heard another pair of footsteps join her own soft clicking down the walk. “It’s really quite impressive that you’ve managed to secure the fancy of such a learned man as Father Baldy in that mind-numbingly tiresome country parish.”
The reference to her private matters set Alice’s teeth on edge and as her paranoia flared, she spoke stiffly between the two rows of ivories. “What is truly impressive, sir, is your uncanny ability to divine my personal affairs seemingly from thin air.”
The man laughed in response. “What a sharp tongue you have grown into, Alice! Much like the majestic adder, your biting wit has poisoned me to my very core.” His voice had taken on a deeply sarcastic tone. “Do tell me where you have developed this skill, for I must aspire to do the same! Dinner parties are such a bore for me as of late.”
“It’s a wonder you get invited to any dinner parties at all.” Alice muttered, loudly enough for the man trailing her to hear.
“You shouldn’t mumble, it isn’t polite.” The man reprimanded. Alice was suddenly very aware that the strange man was almost directly behind her, taking step for step. She could feel the soft breeze that billowed around his feet as they descended to the pavement just behind her own, and just as she realized that he was about to step on the back of her shoe, she felt her heel come softly popping out of its place in her boot, and heard the man say, “Then again, you don’t seem to have grown into a particularly polite person at all.”
It all was entirely too much for Alice to take, and she spun on her heels to face the man. This quick about, along with his tight stride behind her, placed her right in front of his chest, and she had to peer up to address him. “Look here, sir,” she said firmly, thumping a pointer finger onto his chest. “I don’t know who you are, or how you know me and my affairs, but I’d advise you tell me why you insist on being such an irksome bother and then leave me to my day, else I’ll alert the authorities.”
The man peered down his rounded, freckled nose and directly into Alice’s eyes. He did not blink for several seconds, and neither did she, completely unwilling to admit defeat or appear weak to this madman. “Well,” he finally said, breaking the eye contact by pulling his eyes up to gaze at something beyond the blonde girl, “I suppose that would make our getting back home quite complicated. And Alice, we really must be going.”
Alice took a step backward, pushing hard on her heel as she did so. Her soft stockinged foot slid back into its proper place in her boot, and she threw her hands up in the air in frustration. “Sir, you baffle me. Your manner is entirely presumptuous, you seem to seek admittance to my home, but now you insist on you and me carrying off somewhere together in a sort of grand adventure. I will ask you one last time. Who are you, and what is your purpose in seeking out my company?”
The man did not immediately answer as Alice had hoped he would. He dropped his gaze to the ground, pressing his lips together and then biting softly at them. “I’m the Hatter,” he said, finally pulling his gaze up to her frustrated gaze.
“What?” Alice cried.
The Hatter sighed and ran the hand that was not holding his monstrously large hat through his mass of loose white curls. The locks twisted between his fingers languidly, a wave composed of only pure sea foam. He was looking at the girl in a way that one looks at particularly stubborn children or small dogs who will not stop yapping about one’s feet. “I’m called the Hatter. That’s what my friends call me. And my enemies, and people who look me up in the phone directory.”
Alice’s eyes flicked from the man’s face to the large hat he held in his left hand. She thought back to the pressing familiarity of the man that had presented itself when she first saw him in the pew, and as she pondered his name and the object, it occurred to her that she must have known him when she was very young, when memories were still mixed with dreams and stories. Her mind produced a long-ignored recollection of a small, stout man wearing a hat, drinking tea at a long table. “Is that your hat?” she wondered.
“Oh, this old thing?” he asked rhetorically, spinning the brim between his deft fingers. “Yes, it’s an old family heirloom. Thought it would add a bit of propriety and elegance to this whole affair—everyone in his old costume and all that.” He chuckled and began to stroll down the lane, away from the church, and Alice fell into step beside him without quite realizing it. Their footfalls mingled, the girl taking two for every one of the man’s larger strides.
The girl pursed her lips, feeling a curl of curiosity flick its tail in the back of her mind. “I have seen a man in that hat before, but he did not look like you, and I was a child.”
The Hatter nodded. “I suppose we did know each other in our childhoods in a sense, or at least in your perspective that must have been the case. I think I was rather quite older than I am now when we met, but,” he said thoughtfully, “it was during the time when I had dropped out of Time altogether, which made age-tracking quite difficult. We also hadn’t established a calendar yet,” he mused on, “so no one really knew how old they were. We did have a nastily confusing habit of celebrating birthdays everyday—“
“Sir,” Alice interrupted him, “Excuse my manner, but are you suggesting to me that you are The Hatter from my childhood games? I admit I do quite vividly recall a man who wore that hat at a tea party that never ended, but surely the fictions of my childhood cannot be resultant in,” she gestured up and down at his height, which must have been at least four heads higher than her, “You.”
“Ah,” the Hatter beamed. “Marvelous. So you remember the dashingly handsome man who served the tea? And perhaps the Hare who kept interrupting his best jokes? And even a nasty little mouse who was far too drunk at such an hour, and in front of a child, too.” Here he huffed a bit, his freckled cheeks waxing and waning.
“Yes, yes,” Alice said impatiently. “And the cat who disappeared and the baby who turned into a pig, and that White Rabbit who was so late to his job blowing a horn for a big-headed monarch.”
“My countrymen!” The Hatter grinned. “Compatriots and bosom pals. Well, not the Rabbit as of late,” he said, turning his head away from her and seeming to address the grass that grew on his side of the lane, “he’s rather gotten carried away in his beliefs. You know the type, all Law and no Gospel.” He turned back to her and beamed. “I’ve been sent to summon you back, as everyone agrees that you are long overdue for a visit.” He raised his eyebrows. “Quite rude of you. We’ve all been talking behind your back for decades, you know.”
Alice’s lips turned up at the corners. “How perfectly nasty of you all. What hypocrites! You never even sent a letter in all these years, to alert me to your existing in reality and not just in my childhood imagination.”
The Hatter shook his head, the white curls bouncing. “Don’t get existential, Alice, I haven’t a degree in it and though the Hare has tried to lecture me on it for years, I find I haven’t the stomach for such matters. In any case, this exposition can wait for three or four more scenes. Now, shall we be going?”
He pivoted on his heel. Their strolling had brought them to another split in the path. The cobblestone lead onwards toward the streets that Alice lived on, while a small gravel path wound through the thin wood toward a brook. Alice had taken many a turn down that path with her mother or the Vicar in the past months. Several weeks ago The Vicar had delivered a lecture to her on the various benefits of postponing the consummation of marriage as they walked along the banks of the brook, after which Alice had gone home and tried to untangle a whole mess of thoughts about child-bearing and the various interpretations of a couple’s intimate relations in the Bible. She grimaced at the memory of it all.
The Hatter had his back to this path and his hand outstretched toward her, clearly intent on leading her that way.
“There is nothing down there but the brook and the bridge,” Alice said to him.
The Hatter nodded. “I see. You’re wrong, of course, but I see how you might think that.”
The girl hesitated, thinking about how tired she still was and how she ought to go home in case the Vicar came by. Her mother would be back from London in a few days, and all of this talking to imaginary characters in the muggy August weather was giving her a headache in the worst way.
“Oh, come on,” The Hatter grinned, his hand still outstretched. “Aren’t you at all curious?”
Alice looked at his offered hand, then back at the path that lead toward home. What had she to look forward to there? Offers from a Vicar and her father’s empty office. She turned back toward the Hatter, set her teeth, and grabbed her skirts.
“Of course I am.” she took his hand, and he pulled her toward the brook.
Chapter Text
Though the path down to the brook was familiar to Alice, she allowed the Hatter to tuck her hand into the crook of his elbow and lead her along the weaving slope. She almost had thought that it was too intimate a gesture to allow a relative stranger, but in truth he was no stranger—just an old companion returned, much like an old school chum, or a pen-pal whose pen had fallen silent.
She had to admit to herself that his introduction as the Hatter from her childhood had summoned in her mind something of a struggle. She had carried on all these years without thinking too much of those adventures of her halcyon years. They blended seamlessly into the easy narrative of summers with her sisters and every move the family made to accommodate her father’s professorship. Now, as she strode arm-in-arm with one of the inhabitants of the strange land she wandered through, she thought perhaps she ought to delve into these memories in an attempt to divine truth or madness from them. This man was surely real, though it seemed almost impossible that he would be.
Alice looked over at the Hatter. She squinted at the freckles that dotted his round, upturned nose. The girl didn’t quite know what she was looking for, and trying to debate her own sanity with herself was making the headache worse. She looked away and firmly resolved to ignore the issue in perpetuity, or at least until the curiosity that the Hatter presented in her life was resolved.
They were walking along the gravel path, weaving back and forth between the thin, tall trees. Even in the midst of a rainy summer, the forest’s branches were sparse—the leaves that grew were long, skeletal, and angular as the trees. High above, the grey sky was padded with heavy clouds. The path sloped down, and Alice could already hear the brook as it babbled along.
The Hatter had so far walked along in uncharacteristic silence, nodding approvingly at the tightly packed thin trees and the blanket of moss and wild grasses that grew alongside the path. Somewhere behind them, a bird took up a call, and the Hatter looked up suddenly, grinning broadly.
“Ah, England,” he cried. “What noble country. So quaint and natural. I have the feel of burrowing oneself under a well-worn comforter at the end of a long day.”
“You’ve picked quite the awful season to do such burrowing,” Alice remarked, feeling a bead of sweat trickle from the bottom of her hairline to the small of her back. There were too many layers necessary for services in the country parish, and her Sunday best was absolutely not suited for this jaunt about the countryside.
“I daresay you may be right on that one, old bean. What kind of fire has Old Scratch got roaring beneath us today?” The Hatter had slung his ridiculous orange coat over one shoulder and was at present rolling up his shirtsleeves, revealing bare freckled forearms that showed the physical evidence of some kind of manual labor. That is to say, Alice noticed the tight muscles and how she could feel them strain under her fingers as he rolled the opposite sleeve back. She coughed loudly, tearing her eyes away, but not before he looked over to her in alarm.
The Hatter suddenly stopped dead on the path, looking this way and that in a panic she couldn’t quite read. “Have I summoned the devil himself with my lark?” He shook his fist at nothing in particular and belted, “Confound ye and your ilk, Evil One! Leave the young lady alone in the name of…” he faltered, looking at the girl with some confusion. “Well, in the name of Alice, I suppose,” he finished somewhat lamely.
She shook her head, and held up a slim hand. “I am perfectly fine, Mr. Hatter,” she coughed once more, to clear her throat, “No need to conduct yourself into an exorcism at the moment.”
“Thank heavens for that, I’m quite the skeptic,” the Hatter resumed leading her down to the creek. “And just Hatter will do, the Mister is quite unearned.”
“Mr. Hatter,” Alice said.
“Hatter,” Hatter corrected.
“Mr.” she said resolutely. If she could not hold tight to her manners and decorum in the midst of a curious and unexplainable mystery such as this, what had she to hold on to?
By now they had rounded the bend and the brook lay burbling before them. It was Alice’s turn to halt in her tracks now, for to her immense surprise on the opposite shore of the brook, up on the slope, lay a huge, many-turreted manor.
“Behold, the Old Palace,” the Hatter said, gesturing. “The ancestral home of our behooved and beloved monarchs, now grown hollow and dry. The house, I mean, not the monarchs, though I suppose Her Majesties have descended somewhat into a dusty convalescence as well.”
Alice stared up at it, not quite comprehending. “I have never seen this house before,” she said at length.
The Hatter laughed. “Alice, you great liar. What a delightful jest you’ve made.” He continued to chuckle to himself as he strode toward the brook and the manor.
It took Alice several moments before she roused herself and called after the man, “Mr. Hatter, you’re going the wrong way. If crossing the stream is the goal, we’ve got to make our way over at the bridge. You are walking up to the wider mouth of the river, which is entire impassible.”
“Nothing is impassible, and with an attitude like that it’s no small wonder you’ve become quite the spinster in your time,” The Hatter called back, continuing on the path upstream toward the manor. “And anyway, the Old Palace is this way.”
“Yes, I’m quite aware that it’s there--” she threw an arm out in indication toward it, not that the man could see her do so, “but there’s no way to cross the…” Her breath went all out of her in a huff as she saw the Hatter raise a hand and bare forearm up to wave toward her in the manner you’d gesture toward a small child, and such a fury blew up in her that the small woman let out a shriek of frustration. “And I’m engaged, mind you!” She shouted at him as she began to march after the Hatter with palpable determination. Quite soon she was walking directly behind the man, full red on the warpath.
He had paused by the water and was facing toward the opposite bank. His hat was now firmly set upon his head, the orange coat slung about his frame despite the heat.
“We’ve got to walk downstream some ways to arrive at the bridge,” Alice told him sharply as she came up alongside him. “I had suggested we turn that way, but due to your apparent insistence that we make our way upstream we haven’t got any way to cross, and further travel in this direction shall surely lead to nothing but a roaring river with large rocks that will certainly dash us to pieces should we attempt to ford—“ she cut off her sentence in alarm, as the Hatter turned back toward her with his arms outstretched.
Alice could not react. She took half a step backwards but the man was too quick—he had scooped her up around the waist, then with a mighty heave that loosened her carefully set updo, threw her stomach upon his shoulder and proceeded to wade into the brook with her held like that. His arm wound about her lower back, and through her skirts she could feel it’s slight pressure around her backside, which of course was so monstrously inappropriate that she began to squirm against his shoulder, then to slap at his back.
“You complete arse,” Alice screeched, pounding her fists upon the Hatter’s bright blue vest, “Whatever friendly banter we had until this moment is to be stricken from the record! This is entirely and completely reprehensible, and I’ll see you hanged, if not beheaded!”
“Off with my head, and all that?” the man retorted in an infuriatingly amused voice.
“I will see to it personally!” she cried.
The Hatter laughed. “I know someone who will be delighted by your executionary impulses, Alice. We shall have to mention this bit of dialogue to her when we arrive in court.”
Alice could hear water sloshing and rocks knocking about as the Hatter reached the opposite shore. She scowled against his back, watching the brook grow shallower under her head. “I have agreed to go back to visit your home, sir, though I feel compelled to remind you that you have never mentioned any court appointments that I must meet, nor,” she cried in a voice verging on desperation, “Your intentions at man-handling me and carrying me off toward strange manors which had not previously existed!”
He laughed then, his chest expanding and compressing under Alice’s knees. “Have I not explained myself? Oh, what a bugger I’ve been! What gall I’ve had! Of all the culpable and oafish zounderkites in this world, I am surely the worst! If you shall not have my head, dear Alice, I fear that Hearts will demand it once she discovers this oversight.” The Hatter bent at the knees then and leaned forward, setting Alice neatly on her feet on the dry shore. He straightened up and announced with a dramatic flourish, “You have been summoned by the Court of Queens to return to Wonderland for your long-awaited Third Coming.”
Alice looked down at his pants, sopping wet from the knee down. She couldn’t even consider what state his socks must be in. “You are a fool,” she said.
“I stand so accused and guilty,” Hatter agreed cheerily. “I may as well have a whole Rider-Waite full of Fools. You, dear Alice, are the radiant Sun come to dry my waterlogged lace-ups.” he offered his arm to Alice again. “Not a drop of creek-water gotten on your skirts I trust?”
Alice studied the man with pursed lips. The ghost of his torso and arms lingered against her body, and there was a voice in her head reprimanding her against moving forward, shouting about the whole mess of red flags presenting themselves to her, and above all the weight of the small silver band on the fourth finger on her left hand. This particular vexing and truthful voice had the tone of her mother, which sent Alice into a temporary spiral through the recent afternoons the two had spent together in her father’s half-emptied study. Her mother was trying to coerce Alice into the planning of her and the Vicar’s engagement party, asking opinions on ribbons and which imported wine she preferred, and who of the upper class parishioners may bring the most expensive gifts. Alice had paced the length of the sweltering room, fingertips trailing through the thick dust that had accumulated on the empty bookshelves, giving vague and non-committal answers as a fearsome and twisting anxiety settled in her stomach.
You’ve got an obligation, the internal dialogue of her mother warned Alice. The Vicar is a very nice man, more willing to accept your oddities than any you’ve met so far. You are moving dangerously toward something you cannot see the bottom of.
Alice realized she had been staring at Hatter’s hand for what must have been nearly a full minute, yet still the man was looking at her hopefully, eyebrows slightly raised, a soft, excited smile curving his lips.
“No water whatsoever,” Alice finally replied in a much calmer voice, pushing aside her mother’s voice and the Hatter’s phantom presence alike. “A truly gentlemanly act, one might assume, given the refusal to cross by the bridge.” She took his arm again, and together they peered up the rocky slope to the manor atop. The man may be lacking in decorum and any sense, but he was nothing if not decisive, and anyway, hadn’t she enough poise for the both of them? She may be on the verge of arriving in Court aside a man with half-drenched pants and boots that squeaked, but at least he wasn’t dull.
“A foolish gentleman am I,” he cried. “Now onward to the Old Palace.”
There was a rocky staircase built into the slope, the sort of manmade structure integrated with natural formations that reminded Alice of tales of the Orient she had heard from professors at her father’s universities. The steep steps were slick with moss, and between her large skirts and the Hatter’s wet shoes they had quite a go of the three winding levels. Once the pair had finally crested the top of the slope, Alice found herself with a prime view of the small woods, from the rushing river to the far west to the barest southernly peek of the carriageway, and, to her great amusement, the perfectly functional bridge to the east.
“See,” Alice said, tugging on the Hatter’s arm, and pointing off at it, “I did tell you.”
“Dash the bridge,” he replied as he turned resolutely away from it and toward the manor. “Bit of a swim was in order anyway. I am feeling cooled as a cucumber, which is remarkably cool as they haven’t monitorable body temperatures. Though they also haven’t any means of communication, so their own cucumberly experiences may be intolerably hot, though their taste is fresh and delightful to one who consumes them on a thin, soft bread with a dash of butter and a small slice of sharp white cheddar. Perhaps a nice juicy tomato freshly plucked from the garden. I’m now terribly hungry, on top of it all. This to say,” he summed up, “Dash the bridge.”
“Quite,” Alice agreed, finally ready to put this topic to bed. “Are we to meet this Court of Queens inside the Old Palace? I’m afraid I’m not quite looking the part to meet royalty,” she realized, patting at her head where half her updo was still trying to cling on to a semblance of shape.
“You are the picture of passability,” the Hatter said, not looking at her. “And no, they’re now happily installed in the Grand Home in the Capital. We’ve a small journey to get there, but I’m sure the delightful banter that has so filled our time until now will speed the travel along.”
“I’m not sure if you’re being genuine, Mr. Hatter.” the girl observed.
A genuine, gentlemanly fool,” he said.
She was now taking in the manor before her. This must be a back veranda, though plants had grown over the once-magnificent stonework columns and platforms that made up the space. The manor was larger than she had expected from the opposite bank. Four turrets rose several stories, each topped with a stone icon, each icon a different shape. Beyond the veranda was a full wall of glass, with delicate designs etched into the dirty panes. Two doors awaited them. The interior was dark, the dim sunlight of the day not able to brush past the veranda’s tastefully slatted roof. It was all familiar in a way. Alice almost felt as if she had imagined many books set here, as if it were the default location for the lords and ladies of literature to court and coo and while away the afternoon with a G&T in hand. It was, Alice thought, almost the perfect place, if one were to tidy up the vines and mosses and eradicate the small rodents she could hear skittering through the brush.
“How did I never see this place before?” Alice mused.
“Well, were you looking for it?” The Hatter asked.
“Not specifically, I suppose.”
“Well there you have it.”
Alice considered this for a brief moment, and somehow the logic of it came together in her mind--how was she to find someplace if she hadn't been looking for it? “Rather like your Homeland too, I suppose,” she mused. “I've never sought it out since those summers in my childhood, so I hadn't a way to find it.”
“Ah,” the Hatter stuck his index finger up into the air, “so you are catching on, despite it all. Though I'd caution you against raising such an argument within the Court, they'll find it a personal slight that you weren't actively searching us out all these years.”
“You were the stuff of childhood dreams,” Alice argued, affronted at this theoretical squabble, “how am I meant to find something if I'm not sure whether it is real or not?”
“How indeed,” Hatter replied, and for a moment his youthful face grew melancholy. “No matter now, and you must note that the comment was not intended as a criticism, merely a piece on unsolicited advice, which I suppose is just as irksome as a friendly critique. Let us see if we can find the keyhole.”
He led her to the veranda doors, and was now padding around and groping in his pockets for something.
“I imagine the keyhole isn’t simply on the doorknob,” Alice asked, already anticipating the spirited shake of his head that was her answer. “Predictably nonsensical,” she sighed. “What exactly are you looking for? I may be of some help.”
The Hatter at last found the prize in his pocket, and triumphantly drew forth a large brass skeleton key. It was nearly the length of his forearm, and had the most unique bit shapes she had ever seen, with some in vaguely gear-like formations, and some that were capable of independent rotations and teetering. It seemed an entirely impractical key, perhaps better suited for framing in some sort of gentleman’s parlor or library of a great adventurer.
“It’s around here somewhere,” the Hatter expressed in frustration, furrowing his large brows into one long, wiggling cream-colored caterpillar. He took several long steps which planted him firmly among the plants and vines. Alice could barely see the top of the accessory for which he took his name from between the wild cherry sproutlings he was rooting behind.
“Have you come this way before?” Alice asked. “If you’ve opened these doors before, might the keyhole be found in whichever place you left it last?”
“Would that the blasted hole stay in one place, Alice,” Hatter shouted his reply from the brush. “It’s going through a troublesome adolescence, you see--never wanting to cooperate with the grown-ups, hiding away in its room to read dirty books and express loudly its dislike for authority. We are all quite ready for it to mature.”
This made as much sense as anything, and Alice took a few steps back to survey the whole of the veranda. There was some lawn furniture, no doubt long rusted, covered in cloths and leaning together in the corner. “It’s a rather old house, Mr. Hatter,” she observed. “Odd that the keyhole is barely reaching its angst-ridden adolescence.”
“Well, they added it on late in construction,” he provided in a tone that suggested that he much disagreed with this choice. There was a great rustling as the Hatter extricated himself from the wild cherry tree, and moved to join the girl. Alice was dismayed to observe that his damp pants were now muddied and had briars dotting the fabric.
“You’ve got a bit of…” she pointed vaguely to his pants, and the Hatter noticed the briars and mud with a loud and very explicit swear, which Alice politely pretended not to hear. The Hatter started in on plucking the briars from himself, repeating the swear word under his breath, and Alice took several firm steps away from him.
In her adolescence, she was a quiet thing compared to her sisters. Yes, she picked fights with her mother and vocally resented the stolid social mores that tied her to a certain way of living, but her father and his books were an escape, as were the long hours spent at friends’ houses and in the woods and village nearby. Most of the time when she got angry it wasn’t because she was actually upset; more often she didn’t feel understood, by herself as much as by anyone else. It felt as if there was one thing for her to be, and no other identities available. As the years had passed she fell into her own understanding of self, thanks in no small part to reading several books on psychology, and she had long ago accepted there was something a little bit different about her. This had bothered her as she had come up, of course.
If she were a keyhole who was feeling its own version of this troubled emotional state, where might she hide on a house? Someplace private, she thought, but someplace beautiful. She cast a gaze upward.
The slatted roof of the veranda was laced through with vines, courtesy of the overgrowth, as well as a thin rope that had small glass bulbs protruding out of it. It may have been a lightsource at some point, but whatever had powered the bulbs was obviously turned off, and many of the bulbs themselves were blackened as if something had burned out inside of them. Turning her head slightly and pacing around so her back was to the veranda doors, she noticed how the bulbs caught the dull light here and there, even under the shady veranda roof. Now facing outward from the manor entirely, she realized that on a clear day, the sun would come streaming through the slats, sparkling off the bulbs, and likely casting a warm green haze over the whole space. She peered toward the highest crest of where the manor met the roof, the place where the light would be the most striking, and there at the apex of a slight peak was a small round metal plate with a simple keyhole in the center.
“I found it,” Alice smiled up at it.
“Have you?” The Hatter seemed to have now picked all the briars off of himself and had even managed to tidy up the slack legs as much as he could, to Alice’s relief. He moved up next to her and caught sight of the keyhole as Alice pointed it out to him. “Found it you have! Bloody brill, Alice, if you’ll pardon the language.”
“You’ve just been howling about like a man possessed by some foul mouthed demon, sir, and you seek my pardon now?”
“Well,” the Hatter shrugged, “I wasn’t saying all that bit before aloud.”
“You absolutely were, Mr. Hatter, it was quite a scene.”
“Ah,” he waved this comment away. “We never said exactly what word I was yelling, so it’ll get a pass by the censor.”
Alice wasn’t sure what to say to this, so she changed the subject to the matter at hand. “How do we get to it?”
The Hatter turned to face her, a little slower and more ominously than she would have preferred. “Taller,” was all he said.
In the end he had hoisted her up on his shoulders, his arms hooked around her knees, her legs straddling his sides, her chest almost pushed up against the back of his head, as he stood on tiptoe and she strained to fit the key into the hole. She had only a tenuous grasp on it, the cool metal tipping forward until it hung on the lip of the opening, then she ever so slightly prodded it forward, pushing the strange key into its place. Alice tried very hard to not consider the Hatter’s body underneath her’s, an echo of the way he had held her before as they crossed the stream. It wasn’t distracting in the biblical sense, but the vague off-putting feeling of having another person near her, let alone a man, let alone a man who wasn’t her fiancé.
The key was very close to being fully inserted, but she had already leaned so far forward that her center of balance was teetering and the Hatter was buckling slightly beneath her and her skirts. “Get...in!” she sighed in frustration, trying to push herself farther up, scrambling with her fingers when with a sudden popping noise the keyhole swallowed the key whole and closed itself up solid.
“It’s gone!” the girl burst with surprise, and at her words the Hatter unceremoniously deposited her from his back. She landed with some retained grace on the veranda floor, and glared at the man as she dusted herself off and rose again on delicate boots. “Rude of you,” she shot at him, unable to contain the frustration. The Hatter paid no mind to her.
There was a creaking that began to emerge all around the veranda, and then the slats that made up the roof slowly began to break apart and slide. The house was moving.
She took a startled step back, all the impossibilities and improbabilities of the last several hours fading as she saw the clockwork manor come to life. Even Hatter, with his undeniable tangibility, didn’t carry the weight that this sight did. She had made him up once in her mind; she could have made him up again, but this--this was something that went beyond imagination.
As the veranda roof slats creaked outwards, an almighty ticking sound came up, like that of many gears working in the same rhythm. Alice clung to one of the columns as the manor seemed to inhale and exhale, a mechanical breath of sorts, the cream brick walls rigidly rotating with nearly robotic precision, pulling themselves in and then expanding as one, in pace with the gear’s ticking, which grew presently to a clanking. The veranda shifted, nearly throwing Alice from itself, pushing outwards towards the edge of the hill, the plants and vines that twisted about the veranda’s length snapping and being crushed within the mechanics. All at once, the lights illuminated in the manor as the internal clockwork began to work in earnest, the clanking multiplying as many gears worked alongside each other, sometimes flashing brilliantly from their casing. Alice could see bright copper and silver pieces rotating in tandem.
The clockwork manor exposed itself like a bird unfurling its wings and showing brightly colored feathers; a flash of a ballroom here, chandeliers tinkling, a bedroom with lurid pink Rococo furnishings there. Onwards and upwards the rooms tumbled, as if the manor's mechanics had kept them pressed like flowers in a book now disturbed. Alice watched as the rooms boxes around each other, each seeking proper placement and adequate spacing. The walls cranked open in robotic movements to spring lighting fixtures forward, full tapestries unfolded themselves neatly down the walls. For as much sense Alice could make of it, she could only equate it to a paper dollhouse set with the mechanics of a windup toy.
The ticking gradually slowed as the rooms found their seating, the veranda settling into its place once more, and the cream brick slotting back over the front of the manor, until with one final, firm click the glass doors set themselves back in place and swung themselves open wide, dust blowing off of them like a cloud of golden powder.
“Welcome, my bosom pal and budding conspirator,” the Hatter intonated, gesturing her forward through the veranda doors, “to the Old Palace.”