Best Intentions, Chapter Three

[wanderamaranth]

 

Hatter laid Alice down upon the softest bed to be found in Windmill House. He positioned the pillow underneath her head, and drew the blankets up so they covered her just so. He’d considered dressing her in a sleeping gown, but the recollection of her sharp words and bitter struggling put him off any such ideas.

I am not your dearest, she had wailed at him. Nor yet am I your love, nor your sweetest!

“Oh, Alice…” he said, on a broken sob. “You are all those things and more to me.” He huddled into the chair close to the bed, face in his hands. “What have I done? Now you shall hate me.”

Had there not been any other solution he could have tried? Other avenues of healing her that he could have pursued more fully? No, instead of even attempting another solution, what had he done upon learning of her ill health? He went Above and brought her back below, like a mome rath dragging a reluctant mate back to his lair.

“Tarrant?” A shadow appeared in the doorway, then light footsteps were striding towards him, barely audible. “What is wrong? Has Alice not--oh, but here she is!”

Mirana of Marmoreal stood beside the young woman's sleeping form, all gossamer skirts and blankly pleasant smiles. “There is no need for tears, Hatta! Alice is here, in your bed, and all will soon be as it should!”

He looked up at his sovereign, misery acute. “She didna wish to return.”

“What?” Mirana asked. The call of Underland should have been strong enough within her that Alice would have been almost desperate to go; unless she hadn’t been unhappy in her land, even with the illness that leached her strength away. If she was truly pleased with her life Above, if she had not felt something missing…

“Oh, Hatta.” Mirana said, laying a soft white hand on the back of his head. “You had to give her the Kiss, then?”

“She fought me.” he said. “Told me she wasna going anywhere with me. She didn’t want this, your Majesty, and now I…I am the one that has forced it upon her.”

“You knew that was a possibility.” Mirana reasoned, but Tarrant was inconsolable.

“She hates me!” he said forcefully. “Or she will, when she wakes. And why not? Could I have not taken an extra day to think of a more palatable solution? Something other than ripping her away from her life, her home...”

“She is your wife, Tarrant. She will not hate you.”

“Wife in name alone.” he whispered, staring with longing at the still form on the bed. “She was so young when Underland wed us, I never thought that I…would ever come to crave her, in this manner…I thought…”

“Slow down! Oh, Cheshire Cat, I simply can not walk that fast! Chessur!”

Tarrant had heard her before he saw her. Her plaintive voice, frustration clear.

“How much further?” she’d demanded of the Cat, and he couldn’t hide his smirk. So Chessur had finally found a creature that was just as pernicious as himself! Good--he couldn’t think of a beast who deserved it more.

“No further, my dear. For here we are!” Chessur misted into being in front of him on the table, grinning at him in a manner much too smug for comfort. Something was wrong with how pleased he looked (not that Chessur didn’t always look pleased with himself, but this was different) and when he spoke, his smile showed all of his teeth, even the ones hiding behind the back ones. “You can thank me later, Tarrant.” he said, and then evaporated in a puff of teal smoke.

“Cheshire puss, where have you--oh! Hello there.” Large hazel eyes flicked from Hare, to Dormouse, to Hatter, and back again.

“No room! No room!” Mally and Thackery had cried, when Alice made move to sit at the table.

She made some noises about there being plenty of room at the table (or so the Hatter assumed, as he heard not a word that was spoken, intent as he was upon her little-girl frown and her hair). He was transfixed at the sight of her.

Oh, her hair was glorious! Blonde and wild and tumbling every which way, with no regard to how it may make others feel when gazing upon such beautiful locks. Why, a good portion of the ladies in Witzend would scalp her as soon as they saw her, just to weave the hair upon her head into wigs for their trade. She flopped down in an armchair--his usual armchair, he was disturbed to note. The only reason he hadn’t been currently sitting in it was that they’d been playing at rotating about the table, and he’d not gotten back ‘round to that point yet.

It seemed she and Thackery were not getting along very well, if the Hare’s twitching nose and the child’s stubborn set of jaw were any indication. Her hair flowed around her shoulders as she leaned forward to say something else, and the Hatter broke in, concern for her safety being foremost in his mind. A warm feeling and a rustling sigh from the land itself echoed through his head as he said:

“Your hair wants cutting.”

Stiffening in her chair and turning to give him a basilisk stare, Alice had sniffed and replied, “You should learn not to make personal remarks. It’s very rude.”

The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this, but all he said was, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”¹

General topics of pleasant conversation followed (well, pleasant for Tarrant; to Alice, everyone seemed to be quite rude) until Mally consented, under duress, to tell them all a story. The particular story she struck upon made Tarrant nervous--why would she tell of the three girls in the well? Unless she was suggesting…

But that was preposterous! This Alice child was a slip of a girl! Underland wouldn’t…hadn’t…

“Here then.” Thackery stood upon the table and waved a piece of cake at him from over Alice's head. Desperate for the distraction from the direction his thoughts had taken, he'd snatched at the cake. Thackery held it fast in his grip, though, causing the treat to crumble over Alice's head, and sniggered at her shrieks of dismay when the crumbs rained down upon her.² It wasn't even March!³ Why in Underland would Thack do such a thing?!

Yet as he looked about him, everything was beginning to make a horrible sort of sense. As much sense as such a thing could make! They were out-of-doors...she was wearing blue...her hair was loose upon her shoulders, and here they were, at a table, eating a feast worthy of...⁴

He was so overcome with nervousness at the very notion of what his friend was implying--what Underland may have already forced upon them, with the first meeting of their eyes across the tea-table--that he was rather harsher towards young Alice and her questions than perhaps he should have been.

“But I don’t understand.” she had asked Mally cautiously, “Where did they draw the treacle from?”

“You can draw water out of a water-well,” Tarrant retorted, sharply answering her in place of the Mouse; “so I think you could draw treacle out of a treacle well--eh, stupid?”

“But they were in the well,” Alice said to the Dormouse after an apprehensive glance at the Hatter, apparently thinking it better to address concerns to her rather than the tautly giggling man beside her.

“Of course they were,” Mally told her, not unkindly. She narrowed her eyes at the Hatter as she said, “well in.”

Alice was not the only one lost in confusion as Mally continued with the tale, barbing her friend with particular emphasis on the phrase, “and they drew all manner of things--everything that begins with the letter ‘M’--”

Mally’s eyes slipped closed in satisfaction at this remark, so Tarrant leaned forward and pinched her, hard. She gave a little shriek, glared at him, and then continued on with the story, describing any number of things that began with an ‘M’, and the Hatter was very afraid she was going to say that one particular ‘M’ word that he believed they may already have been by Underland--damn Chessur, for bringing this lost child to him! He knew what Underland would do--what it had always done, when unmated males and females of the opposing realms met, despite their ages! Damn him, and damn this girl for--

“Really, now you ask me,” said Alice, very much confused, “I don’t think--”

“Then you shouldn’t talk!” the Hatter had nearly roared, teacup shattering in his over-tight grip.

Alice’s small lips had pursed together, and she stood with quite a clatter of dishes. “I’ve had enough of this!” she shouted, stomping one of her feet. “This is the stupidest tea party I’ve ever been to!” She spoke with the type of passion and indignation that only the very young can produce. Then she was gone, in a flounce of skirts and shining golden hair.

Hatter half-rose to go after her, and Mally stuck him with a pin. He yelped, then put the injured finger in his mouth, glaring.

“D’ye really want a bride tha’s aged younger than either Tweedle?” she growled, and Tarrant sat back down.

“I think it might rather be too late, Mally,” he said around his finger. Underland was consistent about such things; if he’d been the first compatible male she’d seen, the first one to feel a sense of protective concern, then aye, it would…

“Well, that’s easy enough to see. Check your finger!” she ordered.

He did, and the tell-tale dark line stood boldly out against his skin, thin and slightly wobbly, but still there.

“Bugger and blast!” he’d howled, standing up suddenly. “Mally, I don’t--”

The Dormouse seemed extraordinarily sad at seeing the dark circle on his left hand ring finger.⁵ “I’d hoped we’d gotten rid of her soon enough,” she fussed.

“It wouldn’t have mattered how soon she was gone; I felt something with the first words I spoke to her,” Tarrant admitted, face scrunched into a grimace.

“She’s getting further away,” Thackery reminded him, and Tarrant’s eyes grew wide once again..

“Let her go!” he’d said, badly shaken. “Maybe once she’s gone, the mark too will go away?”

Mally had snorted in doubt as to that, (she knew at this point Tarrant saying such a thing would accomplish nothing but filling Queen Mirana’s stores of Wishful Thinking) but agreed aloud to Tarrant’s suggestion. Thackery had eyed him severely, then nodded once and said, “If tha’ be what ye’re wishing to do, then. But ye know…”

“I know, Thackery,” Tarrant said, burying his face in his hands. “Never another. I know, damn it.” Then, quieter, “My life as I knew it is over now, isn’t it?”

“No more futterwacken,”⁶ Thackery had smirked, making his hapless friend groan.

Tarrant lifted his head just enough to stare at that line, and then his gaze flicked to the pincushion ring on his right hand. He moved the ring to his left hand ring finger, where it covered the dark circle--barely.

“So make her wife in more than name.”

This suggestion was extremely jarring for Tarrant, lost as he’d been in the slightly unpleasant recollection of his ‘wedding’.

“I’ve told ye she fought and screamed in my arms and you’re honestly suggesting to me that I try to roger⁷ her?” he croaked.

“I saw the way she looked at you, Tarrant. When she was here before…like you were the sky and the moon. I think, with a few carefully spoken words and some planning that she would willingly share herself with you.”

Tarrant shook his head in denial. “You didn’t see her face.” he said. “Not when it mattered. Not when she demanded I let her go.”

*~*~*~*

Alice awoke slowly, her head pounding, feeling as though a baker's dozen of bricks had been dropped on her head—individually, brick by brick. She winced, and sat up carefully, before finally opening her eyes. She slammed them shut again almost instantly, sorry that she'd opened them to begin with. It was so very bright outside!

A vague recollection of an argument between her mother and the Hatter (she must have been dreaming again! In some ways it was a relief to be dreaming new things, since her third trip to Underland, and in others...did her dreams always have to be so queer?) rose to the surface, and she snorted, feeling her way carefully out of the bed. “At least that didn't happen,” she muttered. She stumbled to the floor, the bed being much higher off the ground than what she was used to. Why, at home, she could reach one slender foot out and tap the ground, with no problem at all...but here...

Her eyes snapped open. She picked herself up from her sprawled position on the floor and looked around. It hadn't been a dream after all; she was in Underland...Her mother and Hatter really had fought. Hatter really had bargained for her, and her mother...Alice forced her thoughts away from Helen's desperate eyes and tear-tracked face, away from the words that were insisting on echoing through her mind: Three months....

Mother doesn't know—can't know!--how long three months Above would be to Alice here in Underland. She'd only been absent from the gazebo the day Hamish proposed for a quarter of an hour, and three days⁸ had passed in Underland. So how long would three months of Above's time translate to down here? Alice attempted the figures in her head, but arithmetic had never been her strong suit. Giving up for the time being, she transferred her attention to her surroundings, instead.

The room looked comfortable: there was a lovingly pieced together quilt that was soft and soothing under her fingers upon the bed; a wide bedside table, equipped with a pitcher of water and an empty glass; a thick rug upon the floor, that Alice's toes seemed to curl into of their own accord; a large bed frame with carved bed posts, each of which appeared to tell a different story; a wardrobe, with a scene carved on the front of it as well. A thickly glazed, curtainless window across the room displayed a familiar set of tables and chairs on the lawn below, although they were not currently set for a party.

She wanted to hate it. All of it, for it was here, and not there, where she should be. Yet she couldn't, because it was so...lovely, in its own simple way.

And...despite her blazing headache, the fatigue, muscle aches, and soreness deep in her joints...Alice felt better. Clearer of mind. Not yet stronger, as the Hatter had insinuated she would feel when speaking to her mother, (oh! Would she ever get used to such a memory as her mother and the Hatter actually conversing with one another? The more she recalled of their discussion as sleep fell from her, the odder it seemed to Alice) but she felt as if regaining her strength was more of a possibility than she had just yesterday. She'd been frightfully close to accepting that her lot in life was to be ill, Alice realized.

Stumbling to her feet, she lurched over to the water glass and filled it, drinking greedily. A glint of dull gold on her left hand ring finger caught her attention, and she paused in her drinking without lowering the glass, causing water to dribble out onto the front of her dress. With a curse, she set the glass aside and studied the band, momentarily ignoring the wetness on her front. It was of two hands linked together, similar to the claddaugh ring she'd seen her Aunt MacTavish wear during their one visit up to the 'heathen North'. She tried to tug it off, but it held fast to her skin. She tried twisting it; she tried pulling it. Neither worked.

"How did you end up there?” she asked aloud, slightly surprised when she received no response. Apparently, the ring had no sentience. (Which was a bit disappointing; Alice had gotten rather used to the idea almost everything in Underland being able to converse with her.) She began licking it, remembering something Margaret had once told her about removing stubborn jewelry. Why would she have a ring on that finger, right after she was taken by...No, he wouldn't. The very idea was ridiculous in the extreme. There would be absolutely no reason for...Hatter wouldn't!

Alice had heard of girl of her acquaintance taken to the Green, but Hatter was not the sort of man to...did Underland even...what possible reasoning could he have for doing something such as that? No, she had simply been forced into the silly and gossip driven company of Faith and Fiona Chattaway far too often this past week (as they'd taken to visiting “the invalid” as much as their mother would allow); their newspaper romance stories (a turn of events Alice really should have anticipated; the twins had always been rather muchier than was proper; they becoming authoresses was not so wild as some things they'd already undertaken in the past. As their mother said, “At least they didn't run off in an attempt to join Buffalo Bill's Wild West⁹ when he was in Town”) must have addled her brain.

Hatter unfortunately chose that moment to step into the room. He paused, an odd expression Alice could not name crossing his face when he caught her mid-lick. “Alice?”

She straightened and walked over to him. “What is this?” she demanded, shoving her jeweled finger in his face. Without waiting for a response, she pushed onward, both with words and her demanding, albeit shaky, physical presence, saying, “Tell me, Hatter, or I'm leaving. Right now.”

Tarrant set his jaw. He'd been prepared for an Argumentative Alice, but the proof of her righteous anger still stung. He would not let her bull-headed nature interfere when his actions were best for her health! Even if...

No, he told himself. He did what he had to do, when he had to do it. Reconsidering now was pointless and would only lead to greater Madness. Looking Forward was the best course.

“That is not possible,” he told her, stiffly. Perhaps if he didn't directly mention the ring, she wouldn't bring it up again, either? With the temper she was in, Tarrant didn't think she was quite ready to hear about that yet. Should he have waited to slip it on her finger after he'd a chance to explain? Yet he'd waited so long to see it grace her hand...

“I believe many impossible things,” she retorted tartly. “This one is nothing at all. I am leaving. You will not stop me.” She shook her head. “I thought you were my friend, Hatter.”

“I am.” One shod foot moved towards her, causing Alice to back up two steps.

“Friends do not force each other to do things they specifically state they do not wish to do! I told you that I didn't want to come with you. What made you think, by my actions or words, that I would be amenable to...”

Her angry diatribe trailed off as she finally noticed how hunched upon himself Hatter was, the way his shoulders were rounded in a nature more despondent than rejection alone would cause. Any further words she may have hurled at him died in her throat at his quiet, “I know.” She stood staring at him, and, avoiding her eyes, he set the tray holding simple soup and plain bread on the nightstand. Hatter muttered, “I am sorry it's not more...but with how ill you've been, I thought...this was for the best,” before he slunk out of the room.

“Hatter...” she called out, but received no response. If he'd heard her, he was ignoring her—something that Alice wasn't certain she didn't deserve. Yes, he'd brought her here unwillingly, but if she'd heard and understood the circumstances correctly, it had been a matter of some urgency to get her back down Below. Slowly she walked back towards the bed, and thus, the tray on the nightstand beside it.

The food looked absolutely delicious. Thick wisps of steam came from the top of the red-gold colored soup, and the crust seemed to be soft and flaky on the two slices of lightly buttered bread resting on a plate beside that. Despite this, Alice refused to eat it. Hadn't the Hatter said, in that argument in London with her mother, something about the food of Underland being what had gotten her into this mess to begin with? No, she wouldn't be eating anything offered to her here!

The smell of the soup on the tray made her traitorous stomach lurch with a surprisingly loud growl of hunger, and she looked down on it with a frown. “Quiet, you. We just resolved to not sup at all here, remember? Besides, the Queen told us that we would never really need to eat while here...you're just being greedy.”

Crawling into bed and facing the wall away from the food, she resolutely closed her eyes and counted sheep. If the sheep turned into succulent legs of mutton the closer she got to slumber, that was something else she refused to think upon, and was simply grateful when sleep finally claimed her for the night.

*~*~*~*

Author's Notes:

1 Direct quote from 'Alice in Wonderland'

2 Breaking a cake or bread over a bride's head at the wedding is meant to symbolized the breaking of her virginal state and her husband's subsequent dominance over her. This could be done by either her husband or her husband's friends. In this case, I chose both.

3 Meaning that Thackery should not be acting so crazy; from the saying 'Mad as a March Hare'

4 Before Queen Victoria's wedding, blue was color favored to be worn by brides. Also, medieval marriages were typically held outdoors; many times the bride would wear her hair loose, symbolizing, once again, her virginity.

5 I placed Tarrant's marriage symbol on his left hand to show that, for him, the marriage will be about love before it is about an oath, unlike Alice.

6 Following a theory first shown in the One Promise Kept series by manniness ; that the futterwacken is actually a courtship dance, intended to impress the lady watching with the dancer's vitality and virility.

7 To have sexual intercourse.

8I've debated a long time on how many days I believe Alice was in Underland during the events of the film; since we only see nightfall 'officially” twice, I've made the decision to go with three days here—although I myself personally hold the belief that she was there closer to a week, and much happened in Offscreenville in the days between the main action of the film.

9Although better known as Buffalo Bill's Wild West show now, this was the original name of the fabled western themed circus. It traveled to London on several occasions; I see it as the sort of thing wild, young, muchy girls would not have been able to resist going to see.


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