Mad About the Hatter (2 page)

“Heavens, yes. That cane holds a curse most foul. Look what’s happened to me since I’ve had it! Trapped in an unending Tea Party, then locked away in the Queen’s dungeon for so long, forgotten and forlorn, enduring stompings at regular intervals, only to be dragged into her presence for what I can only assume to be a beheading, and with little hope at all that it might not be my own neck meeting the Axe.” He tugged at his collar for good measure.

The guard’s eyes widened. “Oh, yeah. It’s to be a beheading all right. Saw the Axe at the whetstone this morning. I’ll wager you’re right about it being your neck on the block as well.” He tossed the cane to another guard. “I don’t want it. You take it.”

That guard immediately threw it to another. “Not me! I don’t want to be cursed!”

“I have enough trouble! I’ll not borrow more.” The third guard flung it at a fourth, who quickly chucked it back to the first.

Hatter watched this odd little game of hot potato for a while, but soon grew bored as there seemed to be no hope of a clear winner until three of the four Red Guards dropped dead of old age. Since he really didn’t want to wait that long, he reached out and plucked the cane from midair between tosses. “Fine. Being the kindhearted soul that I am, I’ll take one for the team, as it were.”

“Thank you!” The Red Guards’ faces held identical expressions of relief and gratitude. “You’re a gentleman, you are, Hatter.”

“Indeed. All I ask for this great sacrifice is the return of my hat. I fear my hair will catch cold without it.”

“Oh, of course! Please, take it.” The first guard produced Hatter’s top hat, slightly dented and a bit scuffed but otherwise unharmed. He rubbed a spot on the crown with the hem of his tunic before offering it over to Hatter. “Just keep that cane away from us.”

He took the hat, tamping it down on top of his head with a fond little pat. “Ah, darling. How I’ve missed you!”

“Pardon me, Mr. Hatter, but—”

“Just ‘Hatter,’ if you please.”

“As you wish. Hatter. Apologies, especially since you was kind enough to save us from that cursed cane, but we gots to take you in now. She’ll have
our
heads if we don’t. You understand, don’t you?”

Hatter rolled his eyes and let out a long-suffering sigh. “That attached to your heads, are you? Can’t make do without them? Very well, then. Lead on.” He waved the four guards onward.

They jostled one another, forming a straight line, then began to march west, across the patio toward the open doors beyond it.

Hatter stamped his feet in time with theirs, marching in place until the guards reached the doors. Then he took three long strides to the side to where a pair of bushes grew, and ducked down amid the greenery.

“Wait! Where’d he… Hatter!” the Red Guard called. “Olly, olly oxen free!”

Right. As if a little bit of children’s fun like hide-and-seek could trick him into revealing himself. Did they think him such a fool? He rolled his eyes although there was no one to appreciate the gesture aside from the aphids marching along the plant stalks.

In the end, the thing he loved most was what gave him away. “There he is, in the hydrangea bushes! I can see his hat peeking through the leaves!”

Again, large, beefy hands grabbed him in an unbreakable grip, dragging him out of the bushes onto the patio. He fought them as much as his wounded ribs would allow, but to no avail.

Oh, why,
he asked himself for the eleventy-thousandth time,
did I ever decide to become a hatter? If I’d listened to father and become a fishmonger instead, this never would’ve happened. A fish would never have given my position away. A cold fish might’ve made my attackers feel uncomfortable, and a slippery fish might’ve facilitated my escape. Indeed, a herring, particularly of the red variety, might’ve led my pursuers in a false direction, but no fish I can think of would’ve exposed me to the guards.

Damn me for having a flair for fashion and a deep and abiding love for all things chapeau!

He gave another halfhearted attempt to escape, but his wriggling only caused the Red Guards to tighten their grip on him. They dragged him across the patio and through the double doors on the far side, which led to a long interior hallway of the castle. To his dismay, more so perhaps than his capture, was the knowledge that his cane remained behind, lying in the dirt behind the bushes, and the guards, convinced of its curse, refused to return for it.

That would teach him to summon up curses willy-nilly, whether they actually existed or not….

The hallway was familiar to him. Flocked red velvet wallpaper swathed the walls, and a thick crimson carpet striped the flagstone floor in a straight line, reminding Hatter of a long, red tongue. He wrinkled his nose, thinking—not for the first time—that walking down that particular hallway always made him feel like a waste product working its way through the castle’s digestive tract.
Through the teeth and past the gums….

Portraits of previous queens and kings, each one having a body shorter and rounder supporting a larger and more bulbous head than the previous, all wearing the royal red and identical sneering frowns, hung in gilded frames for the entire length of the wall. Each successive generation’s crown was larger and more ostentatious than the last, until finally, in the only remaining portrait, the crown was nearly the same height as the King’s body. The portraits continued in a long, curving line of pretentiousness for the length of the hallway.

Hatter knew where the hallway terminated. It was the path leading to the throne room. He also knew what was on an outside patio adjacent to the throne room, and that was what took the starch out of his knees.

The Executioner’s Block—home to the Axe.

The bones seemed to flee his flesh, and he sagged in his captors’ arms, head flopping forward as his toes dragged furrows into the red carpeting. He was doomed.

He’d thought it a blessing at first, when he, Dormouse, and the White Rabbit had managed to literally tick off Time, and were cursed to relive the same teatime hour over and over again, particularly when he found a way out of the Tea Party while still retaining the gift of youth. Now, he thought it simply a waste. After all those years spent in prison, he still looked as young as he had when he took his first sip of tea, but what good would it do him? His head, young or not, would still roll. He only hoped the curse of Immortality faded when his head left his shoulders. He would hate to be a disembodied head, perhaps stuck on a pike in the throne room, doomed to entertain party guests and serve as a hat rack.

Two additional Red Guards stood sentry at the throne room doors. Moving in unison, they wrenched the heavy doors open. Hatter’s honor guard dragged him inside and down the long aisle to the Queen’s dais. There they dropped him like an unwashed sock, to lie in a most undignified heap on the floor.

“Off with his head!”

Hatter knew that cringeworthy screech. It always made him want to clean out his ears with white-hot pokers. There was only one creature in Wonderland who could make that sound.

The Red Queen.

Without moving from his place on the floor, he touched his fingers to the brim of his hat, tipping it ever so slightly. “Majesty. You’re looking as fetching as ever. Would it be too much to ask for the royal hounds to bring you back to wherever it was they fetched you out of?”

Her scream of outrage echoed, making it thrice as painful on the ears. “Summon the Axe!”

A new voice intervened—happily for Hatter’s head—before the Axe answered the Queen’s call. “Majesty, a word, if I may?”

The Queen addressed the newcomer with the same consideration she offered everyone else, which, of course, was none. “What is it now, Cat? Speak now, or else be silent! We’re losing the light, and I want his head to roll before supper.”

Hatter knew the second voice too, and liked its owner only a smidgen more than he did the Queen. Admittedly, the voice was definitely easier on the ears than hers—it purred and rumbled in pleasant tones—but it spoke in annoying riddles whenever possible. Damn Cat. What was he doing in the Red Castle, and how had he won the ear of the Queen? Last Hatter heard, she’d hated the feline almost as much as she hated Hatter.

Against his better judgment, Hatter tilted his head up so he could see the dais. The Queen, as round, vertically-challenged, and big-headed as any of her forebears, sat on her throne, the heels of her tiny feet drumming an irritating tattoo against the legs of the chair. Her gown of red silk trimmed with fluffy, red-dyed ermine enveloped her in billows and folds, leaving only her head, hands, and feet exposed. She clutched a golden scepter in her hand, which was, Hatter thought snidely, not nearly as striking as his now-lost cane.

The Queen’s face was not so much beautiful as it was striking, in the same way a venomous snake was attractive—interesting to look at, yes, but much better when seen from a distance. Her face was oval, her eyes a curious shade of yellow that deepened to orange when her temper flared, which was basically all the time. Piled high on her head were intricate coils of hair the color of blood, fastened in place with many carnelian pins. A diadem of ruby-studded gold encircled the base of her towering coif.

On a stool placed within reach of her right hand sat an enormous crown of gold and precious gems slightly surpassing her in height and girth. It was so large that had she actually tried to wear it, the weight would probably snap her neck like a chicken bone. When she did need to don it—for those rare, special occasions like royal familial beheadings and the like—wires suspended it from the ceiling, and positioned it to appear to be sitting on her head. In actuality, she merely sat beneath it.

Hatter noticed the Red King’s throne set off to the side of the room, covered in dust and cobwebs. She’d driven her husband batty, they said. He’d simply stormed out of the castle one day and never returned. They never found his body, so there was a chance he still lived. Of course, there was the distinct possibility the Queen had the King’s royal head secretly lopped off and the body buried deep. Either way, unless proven otherwise, technically the King was alive and remained in power, and the Queen ruled in his stead, unopposed.

Personally, Hatter, who’d always found the Red King a likeable sort, hoped the King remained among the living and was never found. It was rather nice to think he escaped the Queen. Hatter took great pleasure in imagining the King living a life full of danger and excitement, perhaps as a pirate or brigand, even though it was far more likely his remains were moldering under the earth somewhere on the castle’s grounds, his head tucked securely under his arm.

Nearer the throne, on the Queen’s left, completely unsupported by anything other than air, sprawled the Cheshire Cat. Furry, plump, and orange and white, he had the largest green eyes and the whitest, sharpest teeth Hatter could recall seeing on a feline. He spread his limbs in a long, lazy stretch, then rolled on his side and smiled a wide, toothy grin. “Mustn’t be too hasty, Majesty. Without a head, where would Hatter’s hat rest? It wouldn’t do to have a stray hat rolling about the queendom willy-nilly, tripping people up. People might think us untidy.”

She shot him a withering stare. “Can you never speak plainly? Perhaps it’s your head I should order lopped off.”

Cat’s grin grew wider as his body disappeared, leaving only his head behind. It was a most disconcerting sight, which, of course, was why Hatter suspected Cat did it so often. “I fear that’s already been tried, Majesty, and most unsuccessfully as I recall.” The rest of him reappeared, just as fat and furry as ever. “Think for a moment, Your Most High Redness. Without his head, no one would know he’s the Hatter. I believe—and please, correct me if I’m wrong—the personage now in Wonderland seeks the Hatter, not merely the Hat. It simply wouldn’t do to send a headless Hatter to… our guest.”

The Queen’s face grew as red as her castle walls. One hand tightened on the arm of her throne until her knuckle joints crackled. The other hand squeezed the golden scepter she carried so hard she left finger marks embedded in the metal. “Intruder! Interloper! Trespasser! It shan’t be allowed! Off with his head!”

“Now, Your Highness, we agreed that his head must remain attached until we find out how he got here and what he wants, didn’t we?”

Her lower lip jutted out in a magnificent pout, quite worthy of royalty, and she gave an almost imperceptible nod. Her eyes darted back to Hatter, her lips spread in a wicked little grin, and she pointed a pudgy finger. “Then off with his head.”

“Majesty, we’ve just been over this. I’m afraid you can’t behead him, either. Not yet, at any rate.”

Hatter grimaced. Couldn’t Cat just leave it at not beheading him at all? Was it truly necessary to add in the “not yet” part?

The Queen bounced on her throne. “Of course I can! I’m the Queen. I can do anything I wish. Off with his head! Off with her head! Off with all their heads!” Her eyes bulged so much Hatter feared they might pop out of her skull and fly across the room like a pair of peas tossed by misbehaving children at the dinner table.

Cat’s voice remained velvetlike, unruffled, as if her crazed fury was no more than a toddler’s temper tantrum. “Now, now, Majesty, if you put everyone to the Axe, who would you have left to rule?”

The Queen fretted for a moment, hemming and hawing and huffing, clearly wanting all the heads in the queendom to roll, and not wanting to admit Cat had a point. She blew a strand of hair from her eyes and pouted. “Well, someone’s head has to come off.”

“That is why we are sending the Hatter to our guest—to lure him here for questioning.”

“And head-rolling! Don’t forget that!”

Cat’s grin grew a bit too predatory for Hatter’s liking. “Of course, Majesty. They’ll both kneel before the Axe… in good time. For now, we need their heads to remain where they are if we wish our questions answered. Remember?”

She hedged, trying to bargain, and pointed at Hatter. “But this one’s just aching for a good lopping. Perhaps just a little scrape, then? A nick on his neck with the blade? Only a scratch. No one will even notice. No one will care. I’ll settle for a close shave at this point.”