Chapter Eight: Last Resort (3)

[manniness]

Congratulations to me... this chapter is a BEAST!

 

*~*~*~*

 

When Tarrant opens his eyes, he is – understandably – confused. He searches his surroundings with his gaze even as he searches his memory for any recollection of how he’d come to be here (he even looks in the dark, dusty corners of his mind for clues) but is met with a rather frightening blankness.

Fortunately, the strange bed he’s occupying is not as empty as his box of Recent Recollections. Alice lies beside him, her face pale but her hair clean. She’s wearing a shrift he’s never seen before and – now that he thinks of it – he doesn’t recognize the one he’s wearing, either. He shifts, attempting to sit up, and winces as his left shoulder pulls and burns something fierce.

“Hm... shh... fine... e’erythin’s fine...” Alice mumbles, rolling over and pressing her nose against his right arm.

“Alice? Where are we?” He knows he should let her sleep – she obviously needs the rest – but this is Important.

“Safe... sleep...”

With a sigh, he lies back down and turns his face toward her mostly-dry hair. He frowns at that. When had she finally crawled into bed? But he thinks he can guess: after she’d gotten him inside this place, wherever they are (and he has the vague recollection of dread during the journey here but he can’t recall precisely why at the moment); after she had cleaned and dressed his wound; after she had bathed him and – yes, he realizes with a wobble of his head against the musty pillow – washed his hair; yes, sometime after all of that, Alice had probably bathed and permitted herself to sleep.

“My Champion,” he summarizes. She has never been and never will be anything else, no matter how many foodstuff exchanges she organizes or stews she cooks or books she reads or Upland visits she makes. Alice belongs here, with a sword at hand, her hair cropped short, and her skirts packed away in a trunk she’s long since lost the key to.

That is who Alice is and he wishes he had never tried to change her.

He curls toward her, slides an arm around her waist and lets sleep escort him away from this foreign room again.

The next time he opens his eyes, Alice is cursing at him.

“Brangergain i’tall, Tarrant! I told you to lie on your back!”

“Humph?” he inquires as she pushes him rather forcefully flat on the bed.

He opens his mouth to apologize – he is not in any sort of shape whatsoever to indulge her in loveplay at the moment – but pauses when he sees how Worry tightens her mouth, crushes her brows together. “Alice...?” he asks.

“Hush. I’ve got to get the bleeding stopped.” He watches as she unlaces the front of his nightshirt and presses down on the bandages covering his shoulder. Oddly enough, the pressure doesn’t hurt but Alice seems quite Concerned.

“Th’ bleedin’?”

She looks up. “Yes. You probably can’t feel it because of the Pain Paste. Not the queen’s recipe, unfortunately. Numbs fantastically but doesn’t heal worth a snoutful of tove snot.” She smiles at him. “But don’t worry. We’ll get back to Mamoreal soon and then you’ll truly be on the mend.”

“Mamoreal?” he murmurs, thinking as fast as his fogged mind allows. “Where... is here, then?”

“We’re safe,” she temporizes.

“Safe where?”

“Sleep,” she says, her fingers dipping into a nearby pot and then massaging his forehead. Only a moment later – as darkness begins to envelop him too quickly for it to be of a natural variety – does he realize that she must have used Sleep Saver on him. He determines it’s worth getting angry over – and he will be Very Angry indeed! – and that is the last thought he manages before the ointment does its work.

The third time he opens his eyes, he does so on a shiver. The room – windowless, he realizes – is nearly completely dark. The fire in the hearth has died down to glowing embers. He takes a deep breath and blinks through the muzziness of his head, trying to remember the correct way to work his brain, trying to make heads or tails of this nebulous thinking business.

“Now, don’t strain yourself, Tarrant. You know your logic isn’t up for all the deducing you’re forcing it through.”

Tarrant startles as a warm, male hand presses against his brow. He blinks up at the man who had most definitely not been standing at his beside a moment ago.

“Chess?” he croaks, taking in the image of more-than-two-decades past Mad Hatter. A Hatter before the heart line, before fatherhood, before lairdship...

Despite wearing Tarrant’s form, Chessur’s smile is uniquely sharp, steeply curved, and utterly his own Cat Grin. His eyes glow their usual blue-green. “Good morning!”

“Is it?”

“Is it what, good?” Chessur replies with a wry twitch of wild, orange brows. “You’ll have to be the judge of that. Is it morning? Somewhere it is, I’m sure. It’s inevitable enough, at any rate to be forgiven the anticipation of it.”

Tarrant blinks and shivers.

“Ah, yes. Feverish. You’re quite wintery, at the moment.”

Tarrant frowns as Chessur meanders over to the hearth and begins flinging sticks onto the grate, one at a time, with delicate flicks of his wrist. For a moment, Tarrant thinks of the White Queen.

“How did you find us?” he rasps, wishing for a cup of water. And then, in conjunction with that thought, he hears himself say the word “us” and immediately makes a thorough effort to locate Alice. He sighs out a breath of relief when he does: she is inexplicably seated in a very inhospitable-looking chair on the other side of the bed, slumped forward on the mattress with her pale face pillowed on her arms.

“Mally sent me, of course, as she’s the only one who had an inkling of where the two of you had disappeared to... and the means to tell me circumspectly. Odd that she didn’t mention your injury... perhaps she doesn’t know?”

Tarrant slowly considers all of that. Tries... and fails. “Circumspectly?” he presses with a resigned sigh, latching onto the one word that is giving him the most trouble. Perhaps Chess is right: his logic isn’t up for any astounding feats of acrobatics at the moment.

“Yes, it appears our dear dormouse has managed to remain undiscovered by those bothersome, acne-infested rebels.” He rolls his eyes. “Rebels, indeed. They’ve taken a perfectly good word and reduced it to swaggering arrogance.”

“Well, I suppose you would know a thing or two about that,” Tarrant muses.

“Of course I would!”

He smirks weakly at Chessur’s obvious pride in the fact. “Did you say Mally sent you?” he confirms after a moment.

Chessur finishes chucking bits of burnables into the fire and dusts off his hands then inspects his nails... thoroughly. “Yes. Why? You don’t honestly think I would have sniffed you out like one of those dogs, do you?”

“Scratch of a Bandersnatch, Chess,” he mutters, shaking his head, “Fates help us all if you ever got it into your furry, evaporating head to take the initiative for once and be heroic without effusive prompting.”

“Heroic?” the Cheshire Cat sneers, still wearing Tarrant’s pale face and battered (from the Knave’s enthusiastic “hospitality”) body. “Just what have I done recently to deserve having profanity spewed at me, Tarrant?”

“I’m sure I can think of something...”

“While you’re doing that, shall I put Alice to bed? Or would you like to register an objection?”

“No objections whatsoever. Please proceed.”

Chessur does. Tarrant watches as the Other Hatter kneels down beside Alice’s chair and gently maneuvers her head and shoulders back against his chest. With one arm wrapped around her, he reaches out and twitches the bedclothes aside. Then, with a graceful motion that is part mist and part Hatter-ness, he gathers Alice into his arms and settles her on the mattress.

“You’ve some skill with putting someone to bed,” Tarrant observes softly, mindful of waking Alice when she so obviously needs to rest.

“There are four juvenile jabberwockies, you know.”

“Ah. Yes.”

“Now,” Chess continues, standing and sniffing the air delicately. “You’re developing a fever and I can already smell that the festering has started. It’s time we cleaned those wounds of yours.”

“’Twas a knife, no’ a Bandersnatch tha’ got me.”

Chessur gives him a knowing look. “Correct me if I’m under a misapprehension, but did you – more or less – swim through the gum of the slough on your way here? The gum which, may I remind you, was once teeming with decomposing beheaded bodies? If you think the Bandersnatch’s claws are unhygienic...”

“All righ’, all righ’,” he concedes.

“I find it rather interesting that you bipeds tend to insist on everything being ’all right’ especially when you are in the wrong...” Chessur muses in a clinical tone as he beings to loosen the bandages over Tarrant’s upper chest and shoulder.

“By the way,” Tarrant remarks, knowing that what he’s about to say is not by the way at all, but rather a saganistute detour around an impending cat-sarcasm-induced spat. “Where is Here?”

Chessur’s brows arc. “I’m surprised you haven’t figured that out for yourself yet, given the fact that you’re aware of your general location in Underland and the fact that you once spent an incomparable amount of energy trying to get inside this very structure... Although, considering the circumstances at the time, I can understand why Alice would not have been in any rush to educate you on precisely whose hospitality you are both taking advantage of at the moment.”

Tarrant gapes, thoroughly flunderwhapped. “This... this is...!”

“Yes, yes,” Chessur replies, parting the bandages with practiced ease and delicacy. “Jaspien’s castle. Don’t ask me how Alice got the man to agree to take you both in. I’ve only just arrived and this was my first stop so – for once! – I know as little as you about the matter.”

Tarrant shivers as his chest is bared to the still-cool air.

“Hm... Well. This explains a lot,” the cat muses, narrowing his eyes and observing the wound.

Curious as well, Tarrant looks down at the small, but very deep stab wound. He looks and then he gawks. The knife had landed not too far from his heart, actually, and he actually wonders if Masonmark had thrown it hard enough to break through bone and pose a serious threat to his heart had it hit its intended target. But even if it hadn’t been given the necessary momentum, Tarrant can only imagine what sort of havoc would have been caused if the knife had plunged into his Heart Mark.

Still, the damage done is not insignificant: the blade had sliced through one of the twining veins of the heart line. Even now, he can see not only his own dark blue blood seeping out of the gash, but Alice’s dark red blood as well. Thoughts of the wonderful numbing properties of whatever salve Alice had used on him are completely overwhelmed by the evidence that Alice had towed him to the end of the tunnel and through the swamp and then from there to this castle while she had been bleeding through his severed heart line!

“Dear sweet Fates...” he breathes.

“Yes. No wonder she’s utterly spent, hm?” Chessur muses. “Still, I suppose it’s quite fortunate the knife hit you where it did. Another smidgeon to the south here and the heart line would have been broken completely.”

Tarrant examines the afflicted area again and shivers: Chess is correct. If he had twitched just a little to the side... Masonmark might have cut his heart line in twine. Tarrant takes a moment to study his bonding mark, from the tip of his heart-line finger to his heart. The color is as dark and deeply crimson as it ever has been... which means that new blood is somehow replacing the blood that he loses through the wound... and it has cost his Alice dearly. The deficit his injury had created has, in fact, been paid with her own blood!

“Let’s get on with things, please, Chess,” he lisps softly, his gaze drawn to where Alice lies utterly motionless in the bed. “Mend Alice.”

“I was waiting on you,” the cat-that-is-currently-a-hatter replies. “Although, I’m afraid what I’m about to do may neutralize whatever that noxious ointment is that is obviously numbing the wound...”

“’Tis fine.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you...” Chessur sing-songs and then shifts into a smiling cat before getting to work.

And, oh how it burns! Tarrant presses his head back against the stiff, musty pillow, glares at the ceiling, grits his teeth and fists his hands. The strong grip is necessary, he finds, for holding back the whine snaking up his throat.

“There,” Chessur says finally, leaning back and licking his cat chops. “Just like old times. You’re even in a dungeon room. How... literary.”

Tarrant pants and slowly relaxes his fists. The miraculous numbness is gone, yes, but his head feels sharper, wittier, faster than before, for which he is Very Thankful

Chessur once again resumes Tarrant’s shape and begins stitching up the gash in his chest.

During this moment of silence, Tarrant sorts through his most recent memories and accuses, “Alice drugged me.”

“At the time, what with her own weakness to contend with, perhaps it was for the best,” Chessur, interestingly enough, defends her.

“Aye. Perhaps...” Still...!

“Or perhaps she was not thinking clearly.”

Well, aye... Tarrant nods reluctantly.

“Were I you, I would be more concerned with what she might have promised or bargained in order to secure Jaspien’s assistance.”

That gets Tarrant’s attention!

“Do try to keep your priorities well-ordered and ranked, Tarrant,” Chessur says, whooshing back into his usual cat-self and flicking his tail with a satisfied huff. “Now, would you like me to look in on our host and see what he’s up to?”

Tarrant stares at Chessur, marveling that the cat had just dared to care enough to stop Tarrant from allowing his own feelings of betrayal and wounded pride to quite possibly come between himself and Alice. Especially here; especially now when things are so frighteningly uncertain. If only Chess had deigned to intercede years ago when Tarrant had been charged with explaining the origins and severity of Alice’s madness to her...

“Chess?” he asks just as the cat begins to dissolve, apparently not requiring a response to his question. Although, in Chessur’s case, mere curiosity is reason enough to commence with Spying Activities.

“Yes?” A grin and pair of glowing eyes point themselves in his direction.

“Why is it we can never be civil to each other unless I’m either dying or...” He swallows thickly. Or Alice’s life is in danger?

Even without eyebrows, Chessur manages to look condescending. “Probably because you look unusually wretched and pitiful when you’re at Death’s Door and even I can’t find any enjoyment in taunting a man when he’s down as far and as flat as he can be flattened.”

Tarrant’s brows twitch in time with his snort of wry acknowledgement.

“Although... we might want to consider avoiding those circumstances which tend to engender us favorably toward each other... if for no one’s sake other than Alice’s. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Tha’ friendship and cooperation is our last resort an’ it ought teh stay tha’ way? Aye. Agreed.”
 

“In which case, I shall look forward to resuming our usual familial animosity. And now,” the cat continues in a catty tone. “If you have no other maudlin observations you feel are vitally important at this precise moment, I shall see what there is to see around here.”

“Be gone.”

And, with a wink, he is.

Tarrant smiles. Bloody bulloghin’ boggletogs, who would have thought Chessur would be a cause for smiling while Tarrant is bed-bound and Alice unconscious in the keep of Causwick Castle?

Ye live laung enough an’ e’en th’ impossible will happen, lad.

Indeed it will, and indeed it has.

 

*~*~*~*

 

“How are we gonna find out if that man was telling the truth?” Tamial Hightopp – undiscovered yet soon-to-be-world-renowned savant! – muses aloud, staring up at the ceiling of his bedroom in his cousin’s house. If he closes his eyes and strains his ears, he knows he’ll be able to hear the traffic. Although, having been dragged through the muck and mire of it twice today, he doesn’t find the sound very soothing anymore. Shukm on the streets! Ew!

“I beg your pardon?” Win says in an interestingly surprised tone.

Tam turns his head and looks at his cousin’s feet where they dangle next to his head over the side of the bed. (A rhyme! his Fa would say.) “Well, maybe I’m not the Queen’s Champion like my Mam, but I’m pretty sure we should, you know, confirm some of that before...”

Before Win does something Stupid.

“Confirm. Right. How’re we going to do that?”

Tam glares at the feet in front of his nose and resists sticking his still-stockinged foot in front of his snooty cousin’s snout. “I don’t know...”

“Well, then keep your unhelpful suggestions to yourself and let me think!”

Tam sits up on his elbows, making the bed bounce, and glares at Win. “Sure. Pardon me for trying to help!”

He rolls himself off the end of the bed and stomps over to the window. It’s raining again. Wonderful. He tries not to look too closely at the streets below and churned-up sludge of Disgusting. Despite that, he almost wishes there was someplace he and Win could go. Even if it’s the library or some other boring, silent room! Just so long as Win stops being such a... a... a fumptwat!

Tam sighs. “I still say we should ask my Fa about it. He must know something. He and Uncle Hamish have been friends for... well, since I was born, right? He’d know. He’d tell us the truth.”

“Do you really believe that?” Win, obviously, is Skeptical.

“Well, you think it would be better to ask your father?”

“My father is dead. Which is rather the problem at hand,” Win snipes back.

“So what are we gonna do about it?” Tam says. “Right,” he continues as Win frowns darkly and opens his mouth to spew more snark. “What can we get Uncle Hamish to confirm without making him realize what we’re doing?”

Contemplative silence settles in the room for the first time since Win had grouched and grumbled his way through his lessons. Yes, last night had been bad – trying to hide their knew Knowledge from Aunt Margaret and Uncle Hamish – but today... today...! Tam has never seen anyone so determined to be as miserable and angry as possible!

He relishes the almost-peace in the room.

“The ship name?” Win suggests slowly.

“Yes!” Tam agrees excitedly. “We could ask him to tell us about the company, about the ships! There’s no reason he won’t tell us if The Waymaker – that was the ship your father sailed on to America, right? – was owned by the company!” Tam turns away from the window and flops back down on the bed, jostling Win. “What else?” he presses.

Win sighs. “No idea.”

Tam’s rush of excitement fizzles out. He lets out a long breath and folds his hands under his chin. Clicking and clunking his heels together, he mutters, “There must be something else. Some way to check...”

Win huffs, “Still waiting for you to be brilliant, Hightopp.”

Tam scowls at him. “I am brilliant!”

“So prove it!”

Tam glares at his cousin, who glares back, until Win looks away. Smirking in self-congratulations at winning the stare-off, Tam turns away and looks across the room. He’s not really paying attention to what he’s looking at as he’s trying to produce some Brilliance. (The trouble is that it doesn’t seem to respond well to a command to appear! Well, what good is being brilliant if Tam can’t do brilliant stuff whenever he wants? Maybe another hero-power would be more reliable...)

He’s gazing at the tall, up-right standing mirror in the corner when he hears himself wonder aloud, “Wouldn’t it be great if you could use the mirror to see the truth?”

The idea is so Surprising that Tam actually stops breathing. Beside him, Win seems to pause as well.

“What do you mean? Looking glass travel?”

Tam answers slowly, searching for each word one at a time. “Maybe... Like, maybe we could... spy on people...”

Win sits up. “Can you do that? Take us to that man’s house or something so we could watch him or read his journals or something?”

Frowning thoughtfully at the mirror, Tam says, “No... I think that’s the same problem: how do we know if he’s telling the truth?”

Frustrated, Win demands, “So, what are you saying?”

“I... don’t know.”

“What a surprise.” Win falls back on the bed and continues being a fumptwat.

Tam, his attention fixed on the reflection of himself in the looking glass, crawls off of the bed and approaches it. He stares into his own golden-brown-orangy eyes.

“What are doing?” Win demands on an exasperated sigh.

Tam doesn’t answer. He looks into his own eyes, and then he looks through them. He looks into the mirror. “The past,” he whispers, reaching out to the glass, drawn by some strange force. “Show us th duel between Uncle Hamish and Lowell Manchester...”

“Tam...?”

Tam doesn’t reply. He glimpses shadows moving under the surface of the mirror. Just... just there beneath the silvery shine... If he just leans a little closer...

“Tam!”

A wind that is not a wind blows through his mind which has become the mirror... or has the mirror become him? Does it matter? The shapes and shadows catch his thoughts and tumble them away. There’s something there waiting for him to look and if he can get just a little closer...!

“Show us the duel...” he murmurs. “Show us who killed Lowell Manchester...”

And then a hand grabs his wrist...

… just as the wind-that-is-an-ocean-current within the looking glass jerks his legs out from under him and he’s falling into the silvery depths.

Follow this link for Chapter 9, Part 1.

Comments

ARGH! Cliffhangers!

[marama-tsg.livejournal.com]

You certainly know where to leave them to keep us on edge!
Just recovered from Tarrant's near-death and now we're fretting over Tam!

About Tarra, I think I know where that bit's going, we'll see if my suspicions are correct~ And yey for Chessur being noble again even if he denies it all. Also liked the heart line literally sharing blood! So Alice was more endangered than Tarrant.
Can't wait to see what deal she struck with Jaspien.

I adore this story, and each new chapter makes me fret because is nearing it's end... again! You should be paid for this! They're much to epic to count as mere fanfiction. You just want to see more and more and the sequels only get better instead of boring like some of the Official movies/books out there do!
This should be titled "Wonderland". That's all the explanation it needs! Feels like watching a TV series after the movie~

Re: ARGH! Cliffhangers!

[manniness.livejournal.com]

Hey! It's so nice to see you again! (^__^)/

Oooh, I've got my fingers crossed that your suspicions on where I'm going with Tarra are correct... or, rather, that they match mine! After 3 books, I hope to still surprise you, of course, but not SHOCK you. (^__~)

I'm so, so, so, so HAPPY that you still like OPK. With every idea I get, I pray that I won't be dealing the series a death blow or disappointing readers (or myself). I swore that I would write new and interesting ideas only for continuations so I'm really pleased that this series isn't becoming cookie-cutter formulaic.

My husband teases me about Tim Burton calling me up and being all like, "We wanna make a movie/mini-series/graphic novel with your ideas" LOL. It'll never happen, but hey WE'VE GOT THE INTERNET, BABY! So, it's all good!