In the Rough, chapter 9/40
Title: In the Rough (9/40)
Author: alittleoddish
Rating: Teen
Characters: Alice/Hatter, Jack/Duchess, Charlie
Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Syfy's Alice.
Summary: "But this is starting to sound like a quest! Quests are such a pain, Alice, they really are. All horseback and food rations and traveling in groups and no truly hot tea, with significantly less sex against trees.”
Author's Notes: I know, I'm posting early this week. I'm trying something new. ^_^;; Don't worry, I will still post a new chapter this Friday!
Thanks so much for all of you who have given me such lovely feedback! ^_^ Again, thanks so much to my GORGEOUS betas, zombres and randombattlecry! They are simply fantastic, they always keep me on my toes to provide the highest quality of writing I can. Also, thanks to my amazing Official Fandom Soundboard abscondinabox, with whom I have spent many-a-Skype session discussing the ins and outs of characters and plot, and without whom this story would undoubtedly be a disaster.
Chapter One,
Chapter Two,
Chapter Three,
Chapter Four,
Chapter Five,
Chapter Six,
Chapter Seven,
Chapter Eight
**
Charlie clanked along the dark passageways, not bothered by the fact that the two-foot radius of his torch was the only source of light. “Galadoon…” he muttered, turning left toward an opening he hadn’t seen, but already knew would be there. “T’poosh!”
The books seemed to be whispering to him through the veil, some of them talking animatedly and some of them just staring shyly. Walking down the passageways, Charlie felt occasionally like he was swimming through the force of their attention, they were so excited to have newcomers - but Charlie couldn’t socialize right now. He was on a mission.
“Sorry!” Charlie sang at them as he hurried down another staircase and then back up the underside of that same staircase. “I’m rather in a hurry, you know!”
Hall after hall after hall, across chasms, tiptoeing around narrow ledges, up staircases, down staircases… Charlie even slid three flights down a fireman’s pole at one point. After awhile he stopped paying attention, stopped even keeping his eyes open, simply following where his feet led him until they stopped; and even then it took him awhile to figure out what had happened. What clued him into it was that his head became silent for the first time in hours… maybe even days. There was no way to tell how long he had been searching.
Charlie took a deep breath and opened his eyes, shifting the fading torch in his hand. He blew on it lightly to encourage the embers, using the meager light to scan the gilt-lettered spines surrounding him. Huge, dusty tomes, all of them a different size and color, stretching on to infinity…
Charlie suddenly realized how tired he was. He closed his eyes again and sighed gently.
“Where are you?” he asked softly. His voice sounded loud in his ears, even though he knew he couldn’t have spoken louder than a breath.
I’m right here, a small voice said, clear as a bell in his head. Charlie turned his head to the right and knelt down to the floor, to the very bottom shelf. The book spines at this level were so caked in dust that they were indistinguishable from each other, their labels long covered by age and neglect. Charlie took off his gloves and brushed a light finger across them, drawing a thick, trembling line through the dust. Unbidden, his finger came to a halt on a small book he hadn’t even realized was there, surrounded by such large company. It matched the approximate thickness of his thumb, and was only as tall as his right hand - the dimensions suggested a journal rather than the hefty leatherbound tome Charlie had pictured.
And, Charlie realized, it felt warm.
He drew out the small book, glancing admiringly at its emerald green cover, the leather straps binding it loosely shut. It tingled under his fingertips, humming happily to an invisible tune.
“Found it!” Charlie hollered suddenly, his loud voice mixing with the clatter of his armor as he jumped up from the ground in celebration. “My comrades, I have-“
Oh, he realized, words dying on his lips. He huffed in displeasure, turning in a futile little circle. His only company, however, was nowhere to be seen. Charlie huffed in displeasure again, just to prove how affronted he was in case anyone he didn’t know about was watching. (Because that happens, you know, in libraries.)
Well, he thought, I guess I’ll have to find them now too.
He picked a random direction and started walking.
***
The staircase the Cheshire cat had indicated was suspended over nothing, Alice noticed with dread - it simply stretched from one ledge to another, with no visible means of support. She probably wouldn’t have made it five steps except for the fact that, as she climbed, books would appear from out of nowhere to stand straight as soldiers lining the sides of the staircase. It was rather like bumpers 10-year-olds use on the lanes at a bowling alley. Alice was caught between feeling a little bit scared that the books had gained the ability to read her mind, a little bit insulted that she was being treated like a child, and a little bit embarrassed that her fear of heights was so persistent. Mostly, she was just grateful.
Once she reached the top of the staircase, she looked down the long, dark hallway in front of her; unfortunately, it didn’t seem any less threatening from up here. She slid her knapsack off her shoulders and felt around inside.
“Wonderlanders can use torches all they like,” she muttered, “but I’ll stick with a good, trusty flashlight, thank you very much.” She pulled out the large, black flashlight she had bought in college with the idea that, if necessary, it was definitely heavy enough to knock out any man attacking her. It had a comforting weight, with a beam strong enough to double as a searchlight. Now satisfied that no mysterious Wonderland book-lurkers could possibly spring out at her from the dark, Alice confidently strode forward to the door at the end of the distant hallway and pulled it open.
Inside was a small chamber, dimly lit by four torches blazing merrily on the walls. Except for the torches, it looked as though nobody had seen this room in well over a hundred years - dust and cobwebs draped over every surface, and the air felt stale on her skin, smelling strongly of mold. The room’s only inhabitant was the pile of books supporting and surrounding a single cushion as though it were a throne, the cushion itself looking as though it had once been soft but was now lumpy and bug-infested. Alice stepped closer and saw, laying peacefully on the cushion -
A skeleton.
A human skeleton.
“I told you it wasn’t your tomb. You Oysters are so distrustful.”
Alice jumped at the Cheshire’s voice behind her and swiveled around to meet its gaze, floating level with her own.
“Who is that!?” she demanded, her right hand reflexively tightening on her flashlight as though ready to swing. “Why did you bring me here?”
“I’m giving you a history lesson, silly girl,” the cat drawled.
“I didn’t ask for a history lesson,” Alice exploded, “I just wanted to find that stupid book!”
Cheshire didn’t say anything in response, just flicked his tail. Alice brought a hand up to cover her eyes and exhaled loudly, trying to calm down. It had been a long day, and Alice was starting to get really fed up with this Library, with its stairs and its upside-downness and the skeletons in the closets.
Cheshire flipped onto its back and rolled its eyes, “That book will be of no use to you unless you understand Wonderland’s history, and you are not a native of this place, so therefore you have a lifetime of catching up to do. I’m simply trying to help.”
“Well, you’re really starting to freak me out, so just help me or leave.”
“Fine.” The tip of its tail began to vanish, and the rest of the cat began to follow. Within seconds, only its mouth was left, saying, “You really should take a closer look, though…” before disappearing.
Alice hesitated, privately screaming a little frustrated scream in her head. She took another deep breath and scrubbed her hands over her face. How long had she been in this Library? How long since she had slept? Or eaten? As though recognizing that it was finally getting some attention, her stomach chose this moment to rumble loudly.
Alice shrugged off her knapsack and rummaged around inside for some of the food she had brought with her. As her hand closed down on a package of nuts and dried fruit, she turned around to find a place to sit on the floor. The tower of books caught her eye - she paused.
Well, if I’m already here, I suppose there’s no harm in looking… she reasoned to herself, allowing her curiosity to take over and inching close, I mean, it’s already dead, so… Now only an arm’s reach away from the base of the throne, she bent into a kneeling position to get a closer look, munching thoughtfully on a handful of dried fruit.
Cobwebs and dust covered everything like a settled fog, itching her nose and making her eyes water. She put the packet of food back in her knapsack and reached her arms forward, clearing a path of sight through the mess of age and abandonment. The cobwebs stuck to her arms and hands, but Alice had never been squeamish about that kind of thing - she brushed it off to the side, feeling a warm glow of satisfaction in her stomach as she cleaned this poor soul’s grave, one that probably hadn’t been visited in decades. “I could use some good karma,” she muttered, brushing her dusty hands off on her jeans and surveying what she had unearthed.
Now that she could see it properly, Alice realized how small the skeleton was - perhaps a child, Alice reasoned, swallowing a lump in her throat. The dry bones were nearly hidden, dressed in humongous, heavy, and ancient-looking armor that had probably been much too large even when the child was alive. Her eyes followed the line of one skeletal arm that had slipped out of its metal casing, the tiny, fragile hand falling to disappear over the edge of the cushion. Without even thinking about it, she reached to take the arm and place it over the child’s chest, but as her fingers tugged the dry, brittle bone, it refused to budge.
Alice frowned and shifted her position, ignoring knees protesting at being kept in a kneeling position for so long. She peered over the edge of the cushion to see what was weighing down the child’s hand.
It was a sword.
***
Hatter felt like he’d been running for days through the Library’s dark hallways before he found his way back out. Luckily, although some of the torches he’d lit seemed to have vanished somehow, for the most part he’d been able to use the little light that remained to guess his way through the twists and the turns and find more open areas. Eventually he found himself out of the hallways and into the more plaza-like area they had been running around in before. Taking only a minute to celebrate this minor victory, he continued to search.
At one point Hatter finally admitted to himself that he had to take a minute’s rest, his exhaustion catching up him as he realized his legs were wobbling with every step. Panting heavily, he leaned with his back against a wall and slid down to a sitting position as he tried to catch his breath, legs splayed out in front of him in the golden light. He cast his eyes around the area - he’d picked a good place to crash. From here, the open area showed bridges, stairs, endless doors and archways - if Alice passed this way, he’d be able to see her.
I told her not to get lost! he thought angrily. When I find her, I’m gonna kill her. Although, he poked experimentally at his increasingly numbing legs, at this rate, she’s probably going to kill me first…
His heart rate had calmed down by now, but he didn’t get up from his sitting position, taking time to lazily observe his surroundings. Books stretched out as far as he could see, bathed in a weird golden light the source of which he couldn’t determine. Cities literally built on the foundations of knowledge, he thought idly.
He heard a sound from off to his left: a loud, long creaking noise.
Hatter’s head turned so quickly he almost got whiplash. “Alice?” he called, getting to his feet. He heard another creak, this one louder and closer, sounding like it was coming from the opposite side of a nearby archway. Hatter jogged off in that direction, through the archway and hanging a left. “Alice, is that you?”
He rounded the corner just in time to see a JubJub bird turn at the sound of his approach, opening its huge jaws to let out a loud, high-pitched screech like the sound of a million steel nails against glass. Hatter’s heart stopped in his chest and his eyes grew wide as he tried to frantically backpedal away, but it was too late - the JubJub had seen him.
JubJub birds were the things Hatter heard about ‘round campfires as a child, stories his elders told him in an effort to keep him out of trouble: easily 10 feet tall, a JubJub bird was a giant yellow canary with the body of a six-legged horse and a wingspan of three times its height. Its beak took up the full bottom half of its face, sharp enough to cut through steel and wide enough to house nearly forty razor-sharp teeth. The worst part though, his older cousins would tell him eagerly, were its dark eyes: deep, soulless, sunken in pits, like two black holes stuck in a yellow, fuzzy face… the same kind of eyes that were now fixed on Hatter.
“Oh, shit,” he muttered, turning around to run as fast as he could in the opposite direction.
***
Alice stared at the sword clenched in the child’s skeletal hand. It wasn’t a particularly lethal looking sword, the blade itself wider than a normal sword’s would be and maybe only a foot and a half long, dusty and caked with rust. She reached for the hilt to lift it onto the cushion with the child, but her palm had only just brushed the smooth metal when it vanished from under her fingertips and her fist closed on only air. Alice looked down at her clenched fist, confused.
“Congratulations,” the Cheshire cat’s voice rang unexpectedly in her head, making her jump. She looked frantically from side to side, but the cat itself was nowhere to be found. “That blade has now been lost to Time. Good luck getting it back again!” The Cheshire’s voice giggled madly before disappearing again into silence.
“Stop doing that!” Alice yelled, moving into a defensive standing position as though she expected him to pop out of a wall and attack her… which, at this moment, wouldn’t have surprised her all that much. “What the hell are you talking about!?”
No answer. Now sincerely freaked out, Alice picked up her knapsack and slung it over her shoulder, giving the child’s skeleton a wary glance. The sword had not reappeared, but before Alice could even wonder about it, she heard a loud and strangled voice yelling frantically in the distance - a voice she knew very well.
Her head whipped around in the direction of the voice. “Hatter!” she yelled, high-tailing it out of the room without even a backward glance.
The torchlight in the room spluttered, lowered to embers, glowed for just an instant… and died.
***
All Hatter could think about was running faster. The ground under his feet shook with the pounding force of six giant horse legs in hot pursuit, he could hear the JubJub’s screeches tearing the air apart, its wings flapping madly, frustrated by containment. Hatter knew the only reason he was still alive was because there wasn’t enough open airspace in the library for the JubJub to fly -- normally they hunted from the air, swooping down to catch their prey, flying high above and then dropping the food from a great height to kill it, spilling its juicy insides on the ground for easy eating.
Somehow, Hatter kept finding the energy to run faster. He didn’t dare look back behind him to see how far away the monster was, he just ran -- over bridges, jumping over gaps, almost tumbling down one particularly steep staircase. On an impulse, he took a sudden left to run through a narrow-looking archway, hoping to slow down the creature.
“Whoa!” he yelled, throwing his weight back as the ground dropped out a few feet ahead of him. He skidded to a halt, arms pinwheeling madly. From where he stood, Hatter could see the endless chasm that dropped off below - he backpedaled, cursing, and turned around to run back the way he came, only to find himself looking straight into the black, empty pits of the JubJub’s eyes.
**
Next Chapter
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Author: alittleoddish
Rating: Teen
Characters: Alice/Hatter, Jack/Duchess, Charlie
Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Syfy's Alice.
Summary: "But this is starting to sound like a quest! Quests are such a pain, Alice, they really are. All horseback and food rations and traveling in groups and no truly hot tea, with significantly less sex against trees.”
Author's Notes: I know, I'm posting early this week. I'm trying something new. ^_^;; Don't worry, I will still post a new chapter this Friday!
Thanks so much for all of you who have given me such lovely feedback! ^_^ Again, thanks so much to my GORGEOUS betas, zombres and randombattlecry! They are simply fantastic, they always keep me on my toes to provide the highest quality of writing I can. Also, thanks to my amazing Official Fandom Soundboard abscondinabox, with whom I have spent many-a-Skype session discussing the ins and outs of characters and plot, and without whom this story would undoubtedly be a disaster.
Chapter One,
Chapter Two,
Chapter Three,
Chapter Four,
Chapter Five,
Chapter Six,
Chapter Seven,
Chapter Eight
**
Charlie clanked along the dark passageways, not bothered by the fact that the two-foot radius of his torch was the only source of light. “Galadoon…” he muttered, turning left toward an opening he hadn’t seen, but already knew would be there. “T’poosh!”
The books seemed to be whispering to him through the veil, some of them talking animatedly and some of them just staring shyly. Walking down the passageways, Charlie felt occasionally like he was swimming through the force of their attention, they were so excited to have newcomers - but Charlie couldn’t socialize right now. He was on a mission.
“Sorry!” Charlie sang at them as he hurried down another staircase and then back up the underside of that same staircase. “I’m rather in a hurry, you know!”
Hall after hall after hall, across chasms, tiptoeing around narrow ledges, up staircases, down staircases… Charlie even slid three flights down a fireman’s pole at one point. After awhile he stopped paying attention, stopped even keeping his eyes open, simply following where his feet led him until they stopped; and even then it took him awhile to figure out what had happened. What clued him into it was that his head became silent for the first time in hours… maybe even days. There was no way to tell how long he had been searching.
Charlie took a deep breath and opened his eyes, shifting the fading torch in his hand. He blew on it lightly to encourage the embers, using the meager light to scan the gilt-lettered spines surrounding him. Huge, dusty tomes, all of them a different size and color, stretching on to infinity…
Charlie suddenly realized how tired he was. He closed his eyes again and sighed gently.
“Where are you?” he asked softly. His voice sounded loud in his ears, even though he knew he couldn’t have spoken louder than a breath.
I’m right here, a small voice said, clear as a bell in his head. Charlie turned his head to the right and knelt down to the floor, to the very bottom shelf. The book spines at this level were so caked in dust that they were indistinguishable from each other, their labels long covered by age and neglect. Charlie took off his gloves and brushed a light finger across them, drawing a thick, trembling line through the dust. Unbidden, his finger came to a halt on a small book he hadn’t even realized was there, surrounded by such large company. It matched the approximate thickness of his thumb, and was only as tall as his right hand - the dimensions suggested a journal rather than the hefty leatherbound tome Charlie had pictured.
And, Charlie realized, it felt warm.
He drew out the small book, glancing admiringly at its emerald green cover, the leather straps binding it loosely shut. It tingled under his fingertips, humming happily to an invisible tune.
“Found it!” Charlie hollered suddenly, his loud voice mixing with the clatter of his armor as he jumped up from the ground in celebration. “My comrades, I have-“
Oh, he realized, words dying on his lips. He huffed in displeasure, turning in a futile little circle. His only company, however, was nowhere to be seen. Charlie huffed in displeasure again, just to prove how affronted he was in case anyone he didn’t know about was watching. (Because that happens, you know, in libraries.)
Well, he thought, I guess I’ll have to find them now too.
He picked a random direction and started walking.
***
The staircase the Cheshire cat had indicated was suspended over nothing, Alice noticed with dread - it simply stretched from one ledge to another, with no visible means of support. She probably wouldn’t have made it five steps except for the fact that, as she climbed, books would appear from out of nowhere to stand straight as soldiers lining the sides of the staircase. It was rather like bumpers 10-year-olds use on the lanes at a bowling alley. Alice was caught between feeling a little bit scared that the books had gained the ability to read her mind, a little bit insulted that she was being treated like a child, and a little bit embarrassed that her fear of heights was so persistent. Mostly, she was just grateful.
Once she reached the top of the staircase, she looked down the long, dark hallway in front of her; unfortunately, it didn’t seem any less threatening from up here. She slid her knapsack off her shoulders and felt around inside.
“Wonderlanders can use torches all they like,” she muttered, “but I’ll stick with a good, trusty flashlight, thank you very much.” She pulled out the large, black flashlight she had bought in college with the idea that, if necessary, it was definitely heavy enough to knock out any man attacking her. It had a comforting weight, with a beam strong enough to double as a searchlight. Now satisfied that no mysterious Wonderland book-lurkers could possibly spring out at her from the dark, Alice confidently strode forward to the door at the end of the distant hallway and pulled it open.
Inside was a small chamber, dimly lit by four torches blazing merrily on the walls. Except for the torches, it looked as though nobody had seen this room in well over a hundred years - dust and cobwebs draped over every surface, and the air felt stale on her skin, smelling strongly of mold. The room’s only inhabitant was the pile of books supporting and surrounding a single cushion as though it were a throne, the cushion itself looking as though it had once been soft but was now lumpy and bug-infested. Alice stepped closer and saw, laying peacefully on the cushion -
A skeleton.
A human skeleton.
“I told you it wasn’t your tomb. You Oysters are so distrustful.”
Alice jumped at the Cheshire’s voice behind her and swiveled around to meet its gaze, floating level with her own.
“Who is that!?” she demanded, her right hand reflexively tightening on her flashlight as though ready to swing. “Why did you bring me here?”
“I’m giving you a history lesson, silly girl,” the cat drawled.
“I didn’t ask for a history lesson,” Alice exploded, “I just wanted to find that stupid book!”
Cheshire didn’t say anything in response, just flicked his tail. Alice brought a hand up to cover her eyes and exhaled loudly, trying to calm down. It had been a long day, and Alice was starting to get really fed up with this Library, with its stairs and its upside-downness and the skeletons in the closets.
Cheshire flipped onto its back and rolled its eyes, “That book will be of no use to you unless you understand Wonderland’s history, and you are not a native of this place, so therefore you have a lifetime of catching up to do. I’m simply trying to help.”
“Well, you’re really starting to freak me out, so just help me or leave.”
“Fine.” The tip of its tail began to vanish, and the rest of the cat began to follow. Within seconds, only its mouth was left, saying, “You really should take a closer look, though…” before disappearing.
Alice hesitated, privately screaming a little frustrated scream in her head. She took another deep breath and scrubbed her hands over her face. How long had she been in this Library? How long since she had slept? Or eaten? As though recognizing that it was finally getting some attention, her stomach chose this moment to rumble loudly.
Alice shrugged off her knapsack and rummaged around inside for some of the food she had brought with her. As her hand closed down on a package of nuts and dried fruit, she turned around to find a place to sit on the floor. The tower of books caught her eye - she paused.
Well, if I’m already here, I suppose there’s no harm in looking… she reasoned to herself, allowing her curiosity to take over and inching close, I mean, it’s already dead, so… Now only an arm’s reach away from the base of the throne, she bent into a kneeling position to get a closer look, munching thoughtfully on a handful of dried fruit.
Cobwebs and dust covered everything like a settled fog, itching her nose and making her eyes water. She put the packet of food back in her knapsack and reached her arms forward, clearing a path of sight through the mess of age and abandonment. The cobwebs stuck to her arms and hands, but Alice had never been squeamish about that kind of thing - she brushed it off to the side, feeling a warm glow of satisfaction in her stomach as she cleaned this poor soul’s grave, one that probably hadn’t been visited in decades. “I could use some good karma,” she muttered, brushing her dusty hands off on her jeans and surveying what she had unearthed.
Now that she could see it properly, Alice realized how small the skeleton was - perhaps a child, Alice reasoned, swallowing a lump in her throat. The dry bones were nearly hidden, dressed in humongous, heavy, and ancient-looking armor that had probably been much too large even when the child was alive. Her eyes followed the line of one skeletal arm that had slipped out of its metal casing, the tiny, fragile hand falling to disappear over the edge of the cushion. Without even thinking about it, she reached to take the arm and place it over the child’s chest, but as her fingers tugged the dry, brittle bone, it refused to budge.
Alice frowned and shifted her position, ignoring knees protesting at being kept in a kneeling position for so long. She peered over the edge of the cushion to see what was weighing down the child’s hand.
It was a sword.
***
Hatter felt like he’d been running for days through the Library’s dark hallways before he found his way back out. Luckily, although some of the torches he’d lit seemed to have vanished somehow, for the most part he’d been able to use the little light that remained to guess his way through the twists and the turns and find more open areas. Eventually he found himself out of the hallways and into the more plaza-like area they had been running around in before. Taking only a minute to celebrate this minor victory, he continued to search.
At one point Hatter finally admitted to himself that he had to take a minute’s rest, his exhaustion catching up him as he realized his legs were wobbling with every step. Panting heavily, he leaned with his back against a wall and slid down to a sitting position as he tried to catch his breath, legs splayed out in front of him in the golden light. He cast his eyes around the area - he’d picked a good place to crash. From here, the open area showed bridges, stairs, endless doors and archways - if Alice passed this way, he’d be able to see her.
I told her not to get lost! he thought angrily. When I find her, I’m gonna kill her. Although, he poked experimentally at his increasingly numbing legs, at this rate, she’s probably going to kill me first…
His heart rate had calmed down by now, but he didn’t get up from his sitting position, taking time to lazily observe his surroundings. Books stretched out as far as he could see, bathed in a weird golden light the source of which he couldn’t determine. Cities literally built on the foundations of knowledge, he thought idly.
He heard a sound from off to his left: a loud, long creaking noise.
Hatter’s head turned so quickly he almost got whiplash. “Alice?” he called, getting to his feet. He heard another creak, this one louder and closer, sounding like it was coming from the opposite side of a nearby archway. Hatter jogged off in that direction, through the archway and hanging a left. “Alice, is that you?”
He rounded the corner just in time to see a JubJub bird turn at the sound of his approach, opening its huge jaws to let out a loud, high-pitched screech like the sound of a million steel nails against glass. Hatter’s heart stopped in his chest and his eyes grew wide as he tried to frantically backpedal away, but it was too late - the JubJub had seen him.
JubJub birds were the things Hatter heard about ‘round campfires as a child, stories his elders told him in an effort to keep him out of trouble: easily 10 feet tall, a JubJub bird was a giant yellow canary with the body of a six-legged horse and a wingspan of three times its height. Its beak took up the full bottom half of its face, sharp enough to cut through steel and wide enough to house nearly forty razor-sharp teeth. The worst part though, his older cousins would tell him eagerly, were its dark eyes: deep, soulless, sunken in pits, like two black holes stuck in a yellow, fuzzy face… the same kind of eyes that were now fixed on Hatter.
“Oh, shit,” he muttered, turning around to run as fast as he could in the opposite direction.
***
Alice stared at the sword clenched in the child’s skeletal hand. It wasn’t a particularly lethal looking sword, the blade itself wider than a normal sword’s would be and maybe only a foot and a half long, dusty and caked with rust. She reached for the hilt to lift it onto the cushion with the child, but her palm had only just brushed the smooth metal when it vanished from under her fingertips and her fist closed on only air. Alice looked down at her clenched fist, confused.
“Congratulations,” the Cheshire cat’s voice rang unexpectedly in her head, making her jump. She looked frantically from side to side, but the cat itself was nowhere to be found. “That blade has now been lost to Time. Good luck getting it back again!” The Cheshire’s voice giggled madly before disappearing again into silence.
“Stop doing that!” Alice yelled, moving into a defensive standing position as though she expected him to pop out of a wall and attack her… which, at this moment, wouldn’t have surprised her all that much. “What the hell are you talking about!?”
No answer. Now sincerely freaked out, Alice picked up her knapsack and slung it over her shoulder, giving the child’s skeleton a wary glance. The sword had not reappeared, but before Alice could even wonder about it, she heard a loud and strangled voice yelling frantically in the distance - a voice she knew very well.
Her head whipped around in the direction of the voice. “Hatter!” she yelled, high-tailing it out of the room without even a backward glance.
The torchlight in the room spluttered, lowered to embers, glowed for just an instant… and died.
***
All Hatter could think about was running faster. The ground under his feet shook with the pounding force of six giant horse legs in hot pursuit, he could hear the JubJub’s screeches tearing the air apart, its wings flapping madly, frustrated by containment. Hatter knew the only reason he was still alive was because there wasn’t enough open airspace in the library for the JubJub to fly -- normally they hunted from the air, swooping down to catch their prey, flying high above and then dropping the food from a great height to kill it, spilling its juicy insides on the ground for easy eating.
Somehow, Hatter kept finding the energy to run faster. He didn’t dare look back behind him to see how far away the monster was, he just ran -- over bridges, jumping over gaps, almost tumbling down one particularly steep staircase. On an impulse, he took a sudden left to run through a narrow-looking archway, hoping to slow down the creature.
“Whoa!” he yelled, throwing his weight back as the ground dropped out a few feet ahead of him. He skidded to a halt, arms pinwheeling madly. From where he stood, Hatter could see the endless chasm that dropped off below - he backpedaled, cursing, and turned around to run back the way he came, only to find himself looking straight into the black, empty pits of the JubJub’s eyes.
**
Next Chapter
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