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They say — and don't they say an awful lot — that each leaf caught in a storm is one happy day.
In the storm that precedes the Centaur's riding, Alice catches seven, and I myself another three. The child and I know our magic numbers, and that this particular number is not to be sneezed at.
She laughs more here. A consequence of being able to see home across the horizon, but never being able to get there. Once one has grown over five feet these things are much more troublesome. I find less to grin at, I must say, for I have been slow in learning the ways of this newest kingdom — or queendom, I should say. Her mind is changed, and so should mine be, but such answers beg questions that even I have not yet asked, for I am not sure how to do so.
The Vale is rather changed, of course, though brighter and less … wrecked than last we saw it. In the distance, one can mistake the smoke of the chimneys and the groans of the workhouse poor for the flight of butterflies and the crack of ruined steps and pillars and the drip of grimness; is it, in fact, so very different? Alice complains of the smell and yet if we were to set off to find its source, I suspect we would be as far away from the mountains after a day as we are sitting here, watching the daylight disappear. One cannot get rid of the world because one wishes it, even in such minds as hers. This lesson was well learned.
There are 'ordinary' people around these days, walking on the grass they do not see, walking into the mushrooms and apologising politely. Alice regards them with what I would call, were it any other child, an indulgent eye. She curtsies to policemen and railway conductors, and to small children she sometimes offers her hand. The children are, naturally, the only ones who see anything at all. And she glimmers to them. But even the dullest urchin knows that she is not a saviour, for most saviours can muster the wherewithal to stay present throughout an entire conversation. Poor Alice. She gets bored quickly, and good deeds never offered much in the way of prizes.
Here in Londerland things are changed. Here in Londerland, we must all be brave. No one knows the rules, you see.
*
The storm did not come on the Vale without warning, but sent a breath through the trees before its true devastation arrived. The mushrooms swayed, slightly, and the shrinking violets squeaked a protest — poor things, they are not built for adventures, even those concerning only the weather — and Alice looked up at the sky and said, to no one in particular, I can smell the snow coming on.
She laughs because snow is both beautiful and cruel: she would find it ill-bred to rejoice openly in these things, but with me such pretences are useless, not to say rude.
She still jumps like a frog. Butterflies explode in her wake and the leaves are so many that her fingers are overcome by their abundance.
But on the tail of the storm, something else is coming.
*
The Blade never left us. The other residents of the armoury disappeared one by one, night by night, and were not missed, but the Vorpal Blade is keen, its steel knowing: it will not leave its mistress now.
She sits with it in her lap, and though she never asks the question, I provide the answer anyway.
— It is because you have a taste for it, now, for the blood, for the snap of a neck, the catch of the blade. Don’t try to deny it, Alice, for it will do no good. Besides, I know you don’t want to.
She narrows her eyes at me. I bow my head, and grin. Of course.
— Why should I deny it, Cat? Please make me understand why I should feel guilt of any order over the … ending of that person.
— I don't believe I said one word about guilt.
— It was heavily implied.
— It was nothing of the kind. We are beyond such things in this place, Alice. To go forwards is backward and all our clocks have stopped. You may make up the rest yourself.
— I do wish you would stop this kind of talk.
I say, My apologies, with a grin I judge to be charming. She, tiresome girl, tosses her head and walks off.
In the distance, some children play. They are the children of the lost and grubby, of the poor and the miserable, and they stand on the narrow cusp of the true knowledge of their kind. One more step and it will be all they will ever have known. But today, in the storm, they leap like leverets and their small, runny noses twitch after the leaves that their fingers cannot catch. They are not beautiful, but they are yet true. Alice passes them by, but not without a look. Without numbers around their necks, she murmurs, they are much more acceptable.
*
Though the Vale is much changed, some familiarities remain to us. Some are welcome; some less so. On a day that is not destined to be one of our happiest, a thing long forgotten appears again. Between the arms of the statue of the child, with tears falling onto its lacquered surface and slipping down, some to disappear in the grass and some to stain the cobbles and run off the soot which has made their black patina these many years, appears a large, glistening snail shell.
When she sees the shell open up like some obscene orifice, she allows her face to fall delicately to pieces.
— What next, Cat? She asks, but does not wait for an answer. What else is left? Is there something more to destroy or see defiled?
I rub up against her legs, rather curiously: one is never quite sure of the reaction this missy might give you. But she tugs on my ear first, with what seems to be a rather anxious twist of the fingers, and then she taps said fingers against my various bones. Pondering, I suppose. Well, I know. Ice again, she turns to me.
— These things are sent to try us, I say.
She raises an eyebrow at me, finely tuned sarcasm. Asylums are such excellent finishing schools.
— You know about as well as I do, don’t you? Don’t wriggle!
— Your mind is, as ever, baffling.
— Oh, come along. Don’t dissemble. It’s so tiresome.
— And you used to enjoy it so much.
— No, you enjoyed it; I tolerated it. Now, tell me!
She commands with true breeding — she would have made a wonderful General, in a rather different kind of life, and I was ever a Cat too cattish to refuse the delights of my laziness. Lying is such hard work. I shrug.
— Walk on and find out. She who walks the path will know the words of the riddle, if not their secrets. Which is better than nothing.
— Whyever do you speak like this? What need is there for it? It is deeply vexing as I hope you realise. Come along, do.
She pulls me through the mouth of the shell by my ear. Rather rude, but … effective.
The snail tunnel is long and dark, its floor covered with fine sand. This sand insinuates itself between the pads of my paws and, as we reach the dim light that glows purple at the end of the tunnel, I stop and try to flush it out with delicate flicks of each paw. As I am absorbed in this it takes a moment for me to realise that she too has stopped. Preoccupied. She bites her lip, just a little, very prettily, and brimming with madness.
— Alice?
— There’s nothing left to say, is there? Once mad, always mad.
— Or something wants you for higher things.
— Yes, says she, how wonderful. Come on.
In the Death Place, standing on this rough wooden cog, which also irritates the paws, Alice and I watch the clocks start to fail. Behind the Hatter’s ridiculous millinery concoction a large pendulum swings, glowing golden in dusky mid-air. Alice rocks on her pretty feet and frowns, but only slightly. The Rabbit and I exchange a glance; the Hatter ignores me, as he ever did. Alice is waiting for a cue.
— There’s no time to waste, Alice. There’s no time, no time at all!
The Rabbit does not look well, poor thing, but then hardly any of us do, these days. Madness is not a balm for the complexion, nor does it contribute to a glistening coat.
— Now look here, you infernal thing — I want some answers this time! I’m sick and tired of these endless chases and —
— Oh, Alice, don’t be tiresome, there’s a dear. We still have a great deal to do.
— I will not be ordered around by dead animals!
— Now, now, Miss Blunderbuss, no need for that kind of talk. Have some tea.
— Hatter, please —
— You changed the workings of the world, missy, and now there are reparations to be made!
— There are unfinished pieces of business, Alice —
— There are clocks a-chiming and the hour is getting late!
— There are, says I, altogether too many riddles for one conversation. Couldn’t you supply some pictures as well? Why not confuse the matter a little more?
— Hush, Cat, says she. (And that’s gratitude for you.)
— What do you mean, both of you? Either of you! Answer me!
The chimes boom over the landscape. The boom billows out the clouds, blows them through with strikes of pure lightning. Is it just the weather again? Or something worse.
— Time is wasting, Alice, and we never had much of it to begin with. We are called to higher things now and Londerland is no place to hide in. Hiding won’t do, you know. Not any longer.
— Well, that’s a matter of opinion!
— Have you seen the Centaurs yet, Alice?
In the distance, another peal of bells, another lightning flash across the pendulum. On its rod are intricate engravings of battles. Humans and those only half human. Massive beasts with cruel hooves and red eyes — hooves that blind the eyes of the hapless humans who rise in a crowd trying to overcome. They will not succeed. The centaurs throw back their heads to laugh, and trample onwards.
— They are coming, Alice. They are looking for you.
The Rabbit's eyes flash yellow, and then red: a trick that, until now, only I had mastered. I regard this as an imposition, and send a purr that is much more of a growl through the rippling air.
— None of that from you!
The Hatter, pointing his ridiculous cane at me.
— You're as much to blame for this. Encouraging! Elucidating! Enterprising!
— Will someone answer my question!
She screams, as as she does the clouds tear apart again in a tidal shock of sound. The wave pushes the Rabbit back from the table top; the Hatter hooks his cane into a teapot and only succeeds in spilling its contents across the void.
— Now, now, Miss. There's no need to take on. You're just carrying on your good work, you know.
— All that is over! My memories are remade and my body is free and Wonderland was saved!
The Hatter, his cane laid down across his knees and his finger both reproving and sympathising, wagging across the sky.
— Was it, Alice? Look around you. What do you see?
Alice, all fists and injustice and blood spots in her cheeks. Her eyes are tightly closed. In a quiet voice:
— There is nothing left. Nothing more to do. It's all over.
The Rabbit, only sad now, and not impatient, not the reluctant paterfamilias of this cosy nightmare:
— It really isn't, you know.
— They're coming for you, Alice.
— Even in this world, debts are to be paid and not ignored, Miss.
— And they'll find you. They always will.
— Something always will.
— Once mad ...
— ... Always mad.
She isn't one to cry, usually, unless she's been fixed in stone. But as the void closes around us and we run back through the sandy shell, I fancy I feel a pitter-patter of something which likely isn't rain.
A rush of air pushes us from the mouth of the shell. An organic-sounding crackle lets us know that the mouth is closed now, forever.
— What happened to our happy days, Cat?
— There is still one left, Alice. Have no fear. Storms will bloom once more. Be strong and strange and filled with rage. We will do the rest.
She raises the eyebrow at me again.
— Your heart has no poetry in it, child.
— I was expressing disbelief that anyone other than I would ever do anything of note in this place.
— Well, we may surprise you yet.
— Let’s hope so, she says, Miss Haughty. But her fingers squinch my ear as we turn to go. These are the things we will never speak of.
*
Centaurs, it appears, take many shapes. Curtsying to policeman whose eyes have caught you as a dangerous lunatic will only go so far. A well-bred word to the ticket inspector is likely to be undone by the glint in your eye and, if it comes to that, the knife in your apron pocket.
We run through the city's streets with butterflies at our feet and the sound of hooves in our ears. Ways open up to us still: there are secret corners of both the kingdom and the queendom that have left their oubliettes open to our eyes, lapsarian hideaways and the odd aide de camp in the form of, well, me. I remember things that Alice still does not and am both small enough to fit in any hole, however undignified, and large enough to disappear into the sky. I keep lookout for the child as she plans and plummets and pirouettes her way through this newest level of hell.
— That person had ... associates. Of course. Why didn't I consider it?
— Well, you were quite mad.
— Quite so.
— And now they mean to find me.
— You are running from the thousands, Alice. From the fat policeman and the doctors and the gates of the madhouse. And if they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you.
— Unless I catch them first.
I incline my head.
— Barring that, of course. Oh dear, Alice. You're not thinking of doing anything ... rash, are you?
— Only what needs to be done, Cat. Only what needs to be done.
*
The last centaur's neck yawns open under the knife, the gasp of air white in the cold. His index finger is still held upwards, admonishing her madness that she should even think of so forward an action as cutting off his head. As the remnant falls away into the snow the heat of the blood meets the cool of the air and on the blade of the knife are small droplets of moisture that look, or might to an eye tenderer than mine, like tears. The beast doesn't comprehend, and never can. And the girl no longer cares.
— One more happy day?
— Until the next storm, Alice.