Heart and Sole, Chapter 11
“I would really prefer to walk!” Alice chokes out, gagging on the stench of the creature which carries her slung over its mangy shoulder. Yes, she is genuinely willing to cooperate with her captors in exchange for an unimpeded supply of fresh air.
Initially, the potato sack they’d installed over her head had provided a modest - if earthy - buffer. Now, however, it merely gathers the stink in increasingly concentrated quantities. The potato sack had been forced upon her “fer s’curity” according to the wolf in charge… although security is rather a moot point now that Hamish has gotten away with all the pertinent information concerning both her destination and the enemy; it’s only a matter of time before he stumbles back into Underland, finds the Hatter, and a counter-assault is launched upon the “Black King.”
“Surely we are far enough from Whotchworks that I won’t know the way!” she pleads.
“Ar, she’s gots a point, Barker.”
There’s a beat of uncertain, waffling silence. Eagerly seeking to press her advantage, Alice takes a breath and nearly heaves right into the sack. “Set me down or I shall be violently ill, sirs!”
“Set ‘er dauwn, Dungo. Th’ king don’ wan’ no harm t’ come t’ th’ Alice.”
Alice grits her teeth against the wave of dizziness which accompanies the sudden reversal of her position. Head now right side up rather than bumping along against some creature’s fetid rear end, she shakes her head slowly from side to side, generating a bit of a breeze within the sack. If her hands hadn’t been bound behind her back, she might have dared to lift the thing a bit to receive a fresh supply of air.
“Don’ keep doin’ tha’,” someone orders gruffly, “’r ye’ll get a crick in yer neck.”
“Then kindly remove the sack,” she gasps, her eyes still watering and stomach rolling.
“Er, well, ‘is Majesty says-”
“Lift it, Gorben.”
Alice freezes at the sound of that voice. She swallows an oath and wonders when they’d passed out of the mountain terrain and into the tower they’d spoken of. Had Dungo’s stench truly been so discombobulating? It must have been, because as soon as the sack is snatched off her head and Alice shakes back her tangled hair well enough to get a good look at her surroundings, she discovers that she is indeed indoors. More specifically, she’s standing on a long, black carpet in an ominously shadowed throne room.
She has no notion of the size of the room. Even the throne upon its dais has been cast in shadow. She can only just make out the outline of the chair and the head of the man seated in it: the Black King, Ilosovich bloody Stayne.
“So, you decided to stay in Underland after all, Alice,” he drawls in that sickeningly oily tone of his.
Alice feels her nose wrinkle in answer to the assertion. Remembering how very much the man enjoys listening to the sound of his own voice, she doesn’t bother to show off the witty reply which springs to mind.
“You don’t know how pleased that makes me,” he continues, leaning back in his chair of self-importance.
Alice merely arches a brow.
He chuckles knowingly, as if her droll expression is charming rather than insulting. Perhaps, according to him, it is. She’d always suspected that the man is terribly unbalanced and highly irregular. Slithering for so long at the maniacal Red Queen’s behest could not have been beneficial for his sanity in the long term.
A motion in the darkness from the man upon the throne makes her tense. A moment later, she realizes there is no cause for alarm… yet. He’d merely spread his arms wide in a gesture meant to direct her attention to the supposed grandeur surrounding them. “What do you think, Alice? It’s a promising start to a new reign, isn’t it?”
“I couldn’t say,” she hears herself reply in a bored tone. “I can’t see much of it.”
“Of course!” he laughs, his voice thick with mockery. “How remiss of me to forget the lights!”
Stayne snaps his fingers and two of Alice’s half dozen captors leap to obey.
The first thing Alice notices in the flare of the torchlight is that the Black King’s tower is rather… small. The second thing she notices is that Ilosovich Stayne, who had once towered as the tallest of men in Underland, now seems to have been, er, cut down to size.
He stands and strolls down the steps from the throne, bypassing a smaller seat set a step below his, and swaggers over to Alice as if he is indeed still eight feet tall and not nose-to-nose with the White Queen’s former champion.
The former knave’s unexpected shrinkage is a temptation too inviting to resist.
“You appear to have lost some… standing since we last met,” Alice points out with a little too much relish.
Stayne, busy posing for his henchmen, rounds on her. His black-gloved hand tangles in her hair and pulls relentlessly downward. She schools her face to impassivity (or as near an approximation as she can manage). She will not allow him to see her wince or cringe. Not unless it is to her advantage to do so!
“Truly? You’re looking rather small at the moment,” he growls, looming nearly as large as he had once been. But it is only an illusion, she knows.
“This is how you think to belittle me?” Alice retorts with disgust. “Pishalver would be more effective.”
“Indeed it would,” he replies with soft menace and a sharp smile. “But no, it is not I who will have that honor.”
Alice braces herself as best she can considering the relentless pressure in her hair and her still-bound hands behind her back.
“Darling…?” Stayne calls in a nauseatingly sweet tone.
A moment later, a second figure steps out from the black curtains framing the dais and passes a small, pale hand over the smaller and lower throne as she approaches. Out of the corner of her eye, Alice recognizes a much smaller-headed Iracebeth of Crims clothed in a horribly stiff, black gown. “Yes, my king?” she replies with such devotion that Alice has to swallow back a mouthful of bile.
Stayne grins. “May I present to you the Alice you requested.” With a flick of his wrist, he forces Alice’s face toward the former Red Queen.
Alice’s gaze meets the woman’s eyes which are unfocused with pure, mad, manic glee. For the first time, Alice fears she may truly need the help she’d sent Hamish to fetch in order to get out of this.
Iracebeth coos, “She’s lovely, dearest. You are too generous.”
“Enjoy your new pet, my love.”
Alice’s gasp of denial is cut off by a blow to the back of her legs which causes her to crash to her knees. She glares back at Stayne, the rotter, and swears she’ll have his other eye for daring to strike her.
“But this is hardly fair, my muffin,” the queen argues with a childish pout. “Where is yours?”
Stayne smiles. “Don’t you worry, darling. He’ll come.”
Alice doesn’t have to guess who Stayne’s pet is meant to be. And she is very much afraid that Stayne is correct. The Hatter will come. Alice is not sure where her relationship with the Hatter stands now, but she is sure that he is, at the very least, her friend. And a friend with a sword, at that. Very useful in most disadvantageous situations. Except, perhaps, for this one.
“In the meantime, however…” Stayne continues and holds out a thick collar and a leash to a gleeful Iracebeth. “Have fun, my sweet one.”
Alice grits her teeth in answer to this rather unwelcome turn of events. Oh, she’ll find a way to get through this, but so help her, if Hamish dawdles on his quest or if he allows the Hatter to launch a rescue all on his own…!
Well, Alice is sure - after a day spent with the now-deflated but utterly unhinged Bluddy Behg Hid - she’ll have a very expansive repertoire of tortures to unleash upon him if he fails.
*~*~*~*
Hamish is reasonably certain that he is doomed.
True, he’s had all day to get used to the idea, but now it seems somehow more… imminent. Perhaps his unease is building due to their increasingly close proximity to their goal.
In the Royal Hat Workshop, the Hatter’s reaction to learning of Alice’s capture had been disturbing. Waiting outside - in the workshop corridor - for the man’s bloody claymore to be fetched from the armory had been equally nerve-wracking. (Not to mention the sight which had greeted Hamish when the Hatter had burst into the hallway clad in an archaic Highland kilt of all things! It’s a pity the sword had been delivered at that precise moment or Hamish might have somehow persuaded the man to don a proper pair of trousers!)
The dash to the train platform and subsequent two hours spent confined to their seats had been rather torturous. Hamish had endured several fiery orange glares before admitting that Alice had evicted him from Underland so that he might fetch assistance. The man had been only slightly mollified when Hamish had confessed that Alice had asked for the Hatter specifically.
The race against time had resumed the moment the train had hissed to a stop at Whotchworks Station. The Hatter had glared wordlessly until Hamish had taken the lead and set off on the path upon which he’d last seen Alice. From there, the Mad, Kilted Hatter had picked up her trail.
Painful hours filled with bruised shins, blistered toes, and aching muscles later, it occurs to Hamish that Alice had known that Tarrant Hightopp would hasten to her rescue despite having refused her affections. What Hamish does not understand is how she had known this, given the disintegration of their past camaraderie.
“Why are you doing this?” he puffs out, scrambling over yet another large boulder and wishing they’d used the mountain trail rather than trekking “direct-wise.”
“’Tis easier than movin’ th’ rocks,” the Hatter replies. He vaults over yet another obstacle between him and the summit of the mountain, inadvertently giving Hamish yet another unwanted view of his bare knees.
“No, no,” Hamish mutters irritably and refuses to let himself wonder if the man had remembered to wear his smalls beneath that damned skirt. “No, why are you so keen to save Alice yourself when you hardly-”
“Mae Alice,” the Hatter corrects him, snarling.
Ignoring the proprietary tone, Hamish blusters, “I fail to see how she can be your Alice when you cast aside her affection so easily, as if both she and her regard for you were of no worth at all!”
The Hatter pauses momentarily before climbing over another jagged rock. “Alice and her affections have always been of considerable worth.”
“So why did you refuse her?”
“It would not have been right to accept. Not when my own heart is not whole.”
Having read the Hatter’s letter to Alice, this statement is not as nonsensical as it could have been. Still, a wounded heart is hardly a hopeless conundrum. “Many men have had their hearts broken, sir.”
“But not all have recovered.” The Hatter pauses and turns to Hamish. “How could I ask her to accept mine, shattered and useless as it is while hers is yet whole and capable?”
Hamish considers the man’s somber expression. He still finds it unbelievable that Alice has chosen this man. Is she truly willing to look into this mad, pale face every day for the rest of her life? He cannot understand it. When the Hatter begins to turn back to the path he is making through the wilderness, Hamish daringly confesses, “You spoke of this in your letter.”
“My letter?”
“Yes, the one you sent to Alice. A cat- well, um, a smiling cat saw to it that I intercepted it.”
“Chessur,” the Hatter mutters crossly.
When the man says nothing else, Hamish presses, “Were you sincere when you said your heart is well and truly broken?”
“That is what I wrote.”
“Because of the deaths of your clan?”
“Yes. I am the last Hightopp thanks to the Jabberwock.”
The creature’s name sounds familiar. Hamish squints in thought. “The Jabberwock which Alice killed?”
“Aye. ‘Twas fated that she would. She’s auwr champion.”
From champion to shoemaker: Hamish isn’t sure if the career change is a demotion or a wise decision on Alice’s part. Speaking of which…
“Why do you suffer such anxiety in her presence?”
“’Tis no’ anxiety bu’ th’ twitterpation.”
“And precisely what is that?” Hamish doggedly continues.
“Twitterpation-” The Hatter sighs with thinning patience. “-occurs when a male of Underland meets a female whom he suits perfectly.”
“A perfect match?” he echoes, recalling that this is precisely how the White Queen had phrased it.
“Aye.”
“But how can that be? The two of you were constantly quarrelling before.” Or so it had seemed to Hamish.
“Of course we quarreled; we were at odds!” The Hatter sighs yet again. Heavily, this time. “I invited Alice to stay in Underland and she accepted. As my ward and an honorary member of my family, I wanted only to protect her and preserve her happiness. But Alice didn’t want to be a guest. She wanted responsibilities and duties and… I was not ready for her to finish growing up.”
“Sir, if what I’ve heard is true, then Alice fought a battle and slayed a beast on behalf of the White Queen. How could you presume to label her a child?”
“Children play war games,” the Hatter argues. “’Tis th’ adults who do th’ cleanin’ up.”
“So, in summary, you don’t love Alice-”
“I cannot. Not with a heart that is broken.”
“-yet she is your perfect match and thus your Alice.”
“Precisely.”
“This entire business, sir, is folly. If a broken heart is as insurmountable an obstacle as you claimed in your letter, then why are even bothering to-?”
“She’ll fix it,” he insists softly, surely. “She will. She’s th’ o’ly one who can.”
“Your heart?” Hamish confirms.
“Aye.”
Utterly lost in the man’s mad logic, Hamish grumps, “Oh, botheration. Never bloody mind.”
Suddenly, ahead of him, Tarrant Hightopp pauses. “Hamish,” he begins hesitantly, turning around slowly.
The sound of his proper name (rather than a rude insult) shocks an equally civil response from him: “Yes?”
“I have two favors to ask.”
Hamish nods. “Let’s have them, then.”
“First, if you still have my letter to Alice…?”
Hamish nods again and thinks of the envelope still in his jacket pocket.
“Never let her see it.”
“Agreed. And the second favor?”
The Hatter motions him closer. Hamish navigates the three steps between himself and the man, closing the distance between them. Suddenly, he finds himself standing upon the ridge of a mighty mountain range. Beneath him, a rocky and utterly inhospitable valley unfolds. In the heart of it, perched on the edge of a great precipice, is a frightfully tall tower, the Tower of the Black King, Ilosovich Stayne. It stands like a single piece left upon a chessboard: isolated, victorious, and ominous.
Hamish glances at his companion worriedly. “I hope this second favor has something to do with us managing to get inside that beastly structure successfully.”
“It does!” The Hatter grins widely and then, with a flourish, whips his top hat off of his head. “Head my hat.”
Numbly, Hamish accepts the headwear. He gapes at the Hatter’s happy expression.
“Well, go on. Put it on. We’ve a fortress to storm.”
Well, if this is all the man needs in order to get underway, then who is Hamish to argue? He plops the top hat upon his head.
The Hatter giggles. “Won’t Chessur be jealous!” the man crows and then begins making his way down the rocky slope, the wind whipping at his kilt.
With a sigh and a shake of his head at the man’s nonsensical utterances and even worse sense for suitable outerwear, Hamish follows after him and hopes, for Alice’s sake, that her faith in this madman is not as misplaced as his trousers.
NOTES:
+ Thanks to starlight623 the Hatter is now officially wearing a kilt for the next 4 chapters. Enjoy the Kiltage. (^__~)