Mad About the Hatter (20 page)

“Why should we believe you?” The second guard refused to be swayed so easily. “Dead fellas might not want to tell the truth about bein’ dead.”

The first guard nodded. “He’s got a point there.”

Hatter decided he’d had enough. “Perhaps, but it doesn’t matter.”

The guards seemed shocked. “What? Of course, it matters!”

“Why?” Hatter asked. “Why does it matter whether he’s dead or not, if he’s standing right here in front of you?” He examined his fingernails, then buffed them against his lapel as he waited for the guards to answer.

“Because… because….” The guards looked at one another, their expressions twisting into twin looks of frustrated confusion.

“Alive or dead, it doesn’t matter. All that does matter is that this is the Red King, and you are sworn to obey him.” Hatter turned to Leonard. “Your Majesty. I believe these guards may be guilty of treason by refusing to take your word on the matter of your being alive or not.”

The second guard was quicker to understand the implications than the first guard was. He bowed low before Leonard. “Oh, Your Majesty, forgive me. I-I was only following his orders.” He pointed to the first guard. “He’s the one who really didn’t believe you. Perhaps his head should roll, but not mine. You can’t put a man to the Axe just for followin’ orders, can you?”

“He’s lying!” The first guard finally caught on that the second guard was trying to throw him under the carriage. “I believed you all along. I was… I was testing him! That’s it. Testing, and he failed!”

“Stop it, the two of you! Speak one more word on the subject, either of you, and I will send you both to the Axe. If you obey me from this moment on without hesitation, all shall be forgiven.” He looked out at the troop of guards and addressed them all. “As your King, I order you all to sheathe your weapons. Your allegiance was to my wife in my absence, but your King has returned. Hatter is my lieutenant, and Henry—Boy Alice—is my honored guest. You will obey Hatter and protect them both as you would me. Is that clear?”

The two guards snapped a salute, and the rest of the guards hesitantly, confusedly followed suit. “Yes, Your Majesty.” They stood at stiff attention, awaiting Leonard’s next order.

Hatter’s grin escaped his control. He threw his arm around Henry’s shoulders and nodded to Leonard. “Excellently done, sire. Shall we march on the Red Castle now?”

Leonard returned his grin. “Oh, yes. Yes, we shall.”

With Leonard in the lead, followed by Hatter, Henry, and the Red Guards, they began the trek toward the Red Castle.

T
HE
EASE
of the march took Henry quite by surprise. He’d been expecting more terrifying swamps, or backward-forwardness, or evil-tempered giants shooting candy cannons to block their way, but instead he found himself walking along a well-traveled path with no obstacles in sight. Lush vegetation lined both sides of the pathway, but nothing seemed threatening in any way. All he could see were trees, shrubs, flowers, and the occasional bee or rabbit of the non-waistcoat-wearing variety. Nothing seemed to have teeth or claws or to be otherwise dangerous.

It was rather unnerving. He kept waiting for something horrific to happen, so much so that when nothing did, he became even more anxious. Finally, he could take no more of the normalcy.

“Hatter?” Henry grabbed Hatter’s elbow and pulled him to a stop. “What’s going on here?”

Hatter blinked at him and looked around. “Where? I don’t see anything.”

“That’s just it. There’s nothing here—no tree sharks, no gingerbread armies, no giant mushrooms and hookah-smoking caterpillars. It’s just too damn quiet. I keep thinking something really bad is about to happen.” Henry kept scanning the vegetation, as if waiting for something to pop out at him.

“Relax, Henry. This is the Neutral Wood. Nothing here is harmful… or beneficial, for that matter. There’s nothing dangerous or gentle, nothing too loud or too soft, too high or too low. Everything is perfectly average, an absolute medium.” He swept his arm in a broad gesture. “Look around! The tree leaves are neither dark green nor light green, but a shade precisely between the two. The berries on that bush over there are neither crimson nor pink, but a nice, midway shade of red. The grass underfoot is just soft enough, the temperature just warm enough, and the sky overhead just blue enough. Nothing here will hurt you. Nothing is capable of it.”

Henry continued to look around him, but he knew Hatter was right. And that, Henry further realized, was exactly the problem. Everything here was neutral to the point of being boring. There was nothing to capture the imagination or spark curiosity. The only thing the forest had in abundance was a great, big, heaping helping of dullness. It was as unnatural as any of the other parts of Wonderland he’d visited.

He found himself forced into being dull. He tried to yell, but all he could manage was a monotone. He tried to run, but was unable to move at more than a leisurely pace. Even his word choice was tedious. He couldn’t swear beyond a heartfelt “dang it,” even though he repeatedly tried. It was unnerving. He didn’t know what kind of magic was controlling him, or how it managed to do so, but it made him very uneasy.

“How big is this forest?” he asked Hatter. “Seems like we’ve been walking… er, a while. This place is, uh… okay.” Wait. That wasn’t what he’d meant to say! He wanted to complain about how long they’d been walking, hadn’t he? About how dreary the forest was, and how boring it was here, but all that he’d been able to manage was “a while,” and “okay.”

Hatter nodded. “It’s medium-sized, as forests go, I suppose. Not too big, not too small.”

As if Henry had expected anything but a middling answer in this average place. He sighed and resigned himself to keeping their unhurried pace.

By noon, he realized the trees were thinning, until finally the path broadened into a wide meadow filled with brilliantly colored flowers. All of Henry’s senses were assaulted at once, as if coming out of the Neutral Wood, the earth had dove headfirst into overly stimulating mode.

The colors were so bright he could barely look at them without his eyes tearing. Ditto for the sun; it shone so brightly he could feel his skin burning through his shirt, and he feared his hair might just burst into flame if he didn’t find something to cover it with very soon. Although overly warm, the wind was brisk enough that he had to lean into it slightly to keep moving forward. The grass underfoot was stiff and scratchy; it clung to his pant legs like miniature cacti. Even the birdsong sounded wrong. It was loud, and jarring, and made Henry want to plug both ears with his fingers.

He planted both hands flat on his head to try to keep the sun from melting what few brains he retained, and turned to Hatter. “Where are we now?” He had to speak up to be heard over the wind.

“Plains of Excess.” Hatter dug into his pocket and pulled out a flat cap, handing it to Henry. “Here, put this on before the sun bakes your brains into a tart.”

Henry took the cap gratefully, and placed it on his head. “Thanks. Let me guess… everything here is too much, right? Too much sun, too much wind, too much crabgrass, too much
everything.
Right?”

“You’re too right,” Hatter replied and chuckled. “Whatever you do, don’t drink liquor here. I once made the mistake of having ale with the Cheshire Cat in a tavern located just over the western border of the Plains of Excess. I fell asleep halfway through, and didn’t wake up for a week.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Henry replied. He bent his head into the wind. “Is it far yet to the Red Castle?”

“No. It’s just on the other side of the Plains of Excess. Some say that’s why the Queen is so awful. They claim her bedroom faces the Plains, and the wind carries Excess Dust into it every night. Makes her excessively ornery.”

“They need to explain her behavior, and it’s as good a reason as any, I suppose,” Leonard said. He’d been so quiet, Henry had nearly forgotten he was with them. “I like to believe our troubles started when she failed to conceive a child, but I know that isn’t the truth. Many couples don’t have offspring for a variety of reasons. Some can’t have children, and some choose not to have them, but in either case, rarely does it result in uncontrolled beheadings. No, my wife was evil before that—I just refused to see it. I wanted her to be the woman of my dreams so badly that I overlooked or explained away warning signs. I made excuses for her behavior until it progressed to a point where even I couldn’t remain blind to her faults anymore. That’s when I left. I shouldn’t have gone and left Wonderland unprotected from my wife’s madness.”

“Don’t blame yourself, Your Majesty. You had it tough all those years. She took a lot of her aggression out on you,” Hatter said.

“Men don’t often like to admit they’ve been abused, do they? What I’ve come to understand is there’s no disgrace in saying it,” Leonard replied. “I’ve realized it doesn’t make me less of a man. It took me a long time to be able to say it, though, and even longer before I believed it, and until just now to put it behind me and move on.”

Henry’s ears perked up at Leonard’s confession. There’d been times when Henry had reason to think the same, times when Henry’s father had been drinking and used his fists to talk. Henry had never told anyone, not even Alice. In fact, he flushed with shame remembering how he’d blamed Alice for their father’s drinking and behavior. He’d had it all wrong. The only person to blame for it all was their father. “And now?”

Leonard offered Henry a weak smile. “And now I know the fault lies mostly with my wife. She was the aggressor. She took her anger out on me, both verbally and physically. Leaving her was the most difficult thing I’d ever done. It was frightening, but I thought it was the right thing to do. I’m not so sure now. Once I was gone, she took her frustration out on all of Wonderland. I do believe with all my heart that coming back now is the right thing, though, the responsible thing for me to do.”

It was as if Leonard confirmed Henry’s thoughts, and it left Henry feeling lighter; a load he hadn’t been aware he’d been carrying was gone. “I think you were right to leave when you did, sire. You can’t blame yourself for what the Red Queen has done to Wonderland.”

“Yes,” Hatter said. “Sire, you were too close to the situation before. You suffered at her hands, but didn’t see how she was affecting your subjects. It took going away to put it all in perspective.”

Leonard seemed to stand straighter, and his smile grew a bit bolder. “You’re right. I can see that now. But I do owe you both a great deal. Thank you, both of you. If you hadn’t come back to Alice’s world, I may have convinced myself never to return to Wonderland.”

“I don’t believe that, Your Majesty.” Hatter waved Leonard’s confession away with a flip of his hand. “You would’ve come to the right decision eventually.” He squinted into the distance, and smiled. “Ah, look! We’re coming to the end of the Plains of Excess.”

Henry was thrilled. He’d had just about enough excessive introspection to last a lifetime. It was bothersome and embarrassing, and left him feeling a bit weepy, something he definitely was not prone to being. He sniffed, and stepped up the pace, eager to leave the Plains of Excess behind him.

T
HEY
CAME
to a split in the pathway. One way headed east, the other, west. Beyond the split stretched a dense, dark forest that didn’t encourage exploration. Nothing about the woods looked inviting—not its dark colors, or spider-webbed branches, not the snufflings and howls of unseen beasts that seemed to come from its depths. Going through it would be dangerous at best and lethal at worst. They would need to take one path or the other.

A signpost held two placards shaped like arrows. The one pointing east read, “Success.” The other, pointing west, read, “Ruin.”

“Well, ordinarily I would think it obvious we should head east, but with this being Wonderland, I question whether that would be the wisest choice,” Henry said.

Hatter grinned at him and patted him on the back. “Now you’re thinking like a true Wonderlander, my boy!” He gestured toward the road that led to Success. It was smooth, and lined with sweet-smelling flowers and graceful shade trees. “Success is never as easy a road to travel as it looks, and rarely as sweet as one expects. In Ruin, however, one can usually find something worthwhile, be it a lesson or something more tangible. Look at the ruins of the White Castle, for example. Everything was destroyed but the one thing we needed—the mirror.”

“I never really thought about it like that before.” Henry looked at the road to Ruin. Rocks studded it, and deep cracks rippled through it that would make walking treacherous. The vegetation bordering it was brown, withered, and rotting. The bent and twisted trees on either side of the path were leafless and blighted. Overall, it looked desolate and unforgiving. He couldn’t see anyone voluntarily taking that fork.

Which, of course, was the whole point. The Red Queen had made certain no one she didn’t want visiting the Red Castle would find it. Only those who figured out the secret of the paths would make it there.

“Clever, huh?” Hatter sighed, almost sounding admiring of the Queen’s shrewdness. “Clever, but mad. Mustn’t forget that.” He grabbed Henry’s hand and started down the path to Ruin.

T
HE
PATHWAY
was every bit as difficult to navigate as its name had promised. Hatter tripped over rocks and stepped in potholes, losing his balance on more than one occasion. It was quite distressing. He found it ridiculously embarrassing to appear so incredibly ungraceful, particularly in front of Henry. It really wasn’t like him at all. Usually he was quite light on his feet. Indeed, he was known to perform the
Gallumphing Gyre
as well as Nobody, which of course was saying quite a bit since Nobody was a better dancer than Hatter.