Mad About the Hatter (7 page)

T
HE
STEEP
path the ant traversed leveled out again after a while. Henry tried to keep track of the twists and turns the ant made so he possibly might find his way out again should an opportunity to escape present itself, but there were so many, he soon became confused. Deeper and deeper into the ground they went, all light fading, until the darkness became thick and suffocating. He could hear the ants all around him, clicking and clacking.

There finally came a small bump as the ant placed the shell on the ground. He froze, panic digging ice-cold talons into his gut as he waited for the ant to discover him inside his hollow hiding place, but after a few moments, he realized the ant had gone away.

Now was the time, perhaps his only chance for escape! But how? It was so dark, he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

“Psst.”

Henry cocked his head. What was that sound? It didn’t sound like the ants. It sounded like a hoarse whisper.

“Psst. Boy Alice.”

Now that definitely wasn’t the ants. The ants might click and clack and chitter on occasion, but they never used words, in particular not his sister’s name. “Who are you? Where are you?”

“I’m Hatter. Take two steps to your right, then another four steps forward.”

“Do I know you?”

There was no mistaking the sarcasm in the whispery voice’s tone. “Oh, I do apologize. Perhaps we should have a formal introduction while the ants eat us! Would that satisfy your need for social convention?”

Henry swallowed a sharp retort at the sarcastic reply, and took two steps to the right and four forward. He barely stifled a yelp when a hand clamped down on his shoulder.

Amazingly, a soft yellow glow illuminated the owner of the hand. The man who called himself “Hatter” was an inch or so taller than Henry, and had longish black hair hanging in silky tangles to his shoulders. His face was handsome in a craggy sort of way, his strong jaw shadowed by a day’s growth of whiskers, his eyes as dark as his hair. Impossibly, he wore a top hat, a waistcoat, and fingerless gloves. In one cupped hand, a ball of light seemed to hover, the source of the pale light.

Henry reached out to touch a finger to the glowing orb. “How are you doing that?”

“Really? We’re surrounded by giant man-eating Red Ants, and you want to waste time with a science lesson? It’s a basic, everyday emergency lightning bug lantern. Every schoolchild can operate one. Caterpillar was right. You really are as dull-witted as your sister.”

Henry felt his last nerve stretch and snap. He gave Hatter a push. “I’m nothing like my sister!”

“Shh! Do you want to get us eaten? Look, I’m getting out of here. Are you coming, or do you want to stay behind and discover whether Ants prefer dark meat or light?”

Henry sputtered, so angry he almost forgot how frightened he was. Almost, but not quite. “No, let’s go.” He put his hand on Hatter’s shoulder. “But when we get out, you’re going to tell me how you can do that with lightning bugs, and how you know my sister.”

“Sure, sure. Come on, before they realize their lunch is running away.”

Hatter led Henry down a long tunnel. They hugged the earthen side, staying low, ducking into one of the many alcoves whenever an ant came too close to them. Gradually, the darkness lightened until the glowing orb Hatter held was no longer necessary. He released it, and it fluttered away.

It seemed to take forever, but the path finally took a steep turn upward, leading to the surface. “Now what?” Henry peered up toward where the sun—and freedom—beckoned. “Do we try to climb out?”

“Not necessary.” Hatter removed his top hat and thrust his hand into it. Amazingly, it went in up to Hatter’s elbow, and then to his shoulder. He rooted around for a while, but eventually pulled his arm out. In his hand, he held an umbrella.

Henry rolled his eyes. “In case you didn’t notice, the sun is shining.”

Hatter shot him a black look. “Would you care to get us out of here? No? Then let me work.” He held the umbrella up and opened it. The umbrella sprung open, shading them both. Hatter grabbed Henry’s hand just as the umbrella began spinning madly, whirling like a top. Unbelievably, it began to rise up the tunnel, carrying both Hatter and Henry with it. They floated up and out of the anthill, and over a field thick with wildflowers.

Henry’s eyes bulged as he scanned the ground far below them. “Holy crap! What kind of umbrella is this?”

It seemed to be Hatter’s turn to roll his eyes. “Um-brella? No, no, don’t be silly. This is an up-brella. You really are quite stupid, aren’t you?”

“I’m not stupid!”

“Stupid is as stupid does. Might do you well to remember that.”

Henry had enough. He yanked his hand out of Hatter’s, and immediately began falling… again. This time, there were no trampoline-like leaves to break his fall. He fell like a rock, and landed just as hard as one, knocking all the air out of him.

Hatter touched down lightly next to him. “See? Just as I said. Stupid.”

“Stop calling me stupid.”

“Then stop trying to kill yourself. Eating unknown mushrooms, allowing Red Ants to carry you off, not to mention falling into Caterpillar’s Lair from the sky…. Really, you’re making my job exceedingly difficult.”

“Who are you?”

“I told you. I’m Hatter. Now, you can tell me why you’re here, and why you were asking the Caterpillar about me.”

Henry sat up, feeling his arms and legs for the broken bones he was sure he’d find. He felt solid and unbroken, if badly bruised. “Alice told me to find the Mad Hatter. Are you saying you’re him? That’s ridiculous—he doesn’t exist. Where are we, anyway? I asked the Caterpillar, but he wouldn’t tell me. Seriously, I think there’s something wrong with him. You know, in the head.”

“Well of course there’s something wrong with his head. He smokes whackweed continuously. That stuff doesn’t exactly make you a scholar, you know.” Hatter tapped the side of his head. “Kills the gray matter. But don’t tell ‘Pillar I said that.” He folded his up-brella and stored it away inside his hat before replacing his hat on his head, setting it at a jaunty angle. “I would think it obvious that you’re in Wonderland. And of course I exist. I’m here, aren’t I? Now, I’ve answered your questions. It’s only fair for you to answer mine.”

“Wonderland? You mean the place Alice always talks about? That’s ridiculous. There’s no such place!”

“Yet, curiouser and curiouser, here you stand squarely in the center of it. And that was another question, by the way. Really, do I need to explain the rules again?”

Frustration made Henry want to scream. Did everyone talk in riddles around here? “What rules? What are you talking about?”

“Tsk, tsk. Those are two more questions! Really, you’re as thick as mud. I’m beginning to think Alice is the bright one in your family.”

This time a frustrated sound broke free of Henry’s control. It began as a rumble deep in his chest, rolled up through his throat and exploded through his lips in a fierce snarl.

Hatter’s dark eyes widened, although there was no fear in them, only interest. His lips quirked in a half smile. “My, my. Alice certainly never growled. I’ll give you points for originality. Very ferocious.” He crooked a finger at Henry to follow, and began walking. “All right, since you obviously have a sad lack of understanding regarding the rules, let me explain.” His hands, encased in tatty, gray fingerless gloves, had long, elegant fingers, and they traced patterns in the air as he spoke. “Here in Wonderland, there are rules we must follow. These rules keep the universe in motion, the planets aligned, and the cosmos free from chaos. Rules must be followed at all times, without deviation… unless, I suppose, the rule is to break the rules, in which case, following the rules may actually be regarded as breaking them. So sayeth the Queen. Do you understand now?”

Henry shook his head. “No.”

The Hatter grinned. “I should have expected nothing less.” He beckoned Henry to quicken his step. “Come, come. It should be around here somewhere. Oh, wait… there it is! That’s what I’ve been looking for. Thank goodness those mimsy creatures, the Borogroves, didn’t carry it off. We’d have a devil of a time getting it back from those gloomy birds.”

“Mimsy? Borogroves?” Henry shook his head. “You’re making that up. Just like Alice did.”

“Me? I beg your pardon. I never speak anything but the truth. It might be bendy at times, perhaps a bit swirly, but still, in the end, always the truth.” Hatter led Henry to a large bottle, easily the size of a Buick. The bottle was green and lying on its side in the grass. “Mimsy, for your information, means something that is both miserable and flimsy. The Borogroves certainly fit that description, I can tell you. Floppy, glum birds, they are, and prone to snatch away anything they find so that whoever lost it is bound to be as depressed as they are.” Hatter looked at Henry. “Give me a hand with this. We need to roll it over.”

They placed their hands on the bottle’s cool, slick side, and pushed until their teeth ground and their spines popped. Just as Henry was sure the bottle would never budge, it began to roll, inch by inch. They kept pushing until a golden label was revealed. It was grimy from its time spent lying in the dirt, but the words printed on it were perfectly legible.

It read, “Drink Me.”

Hatter laughed and slapped the bottle with the flat of his hand. “This is the very same bottle your sister drank from, if I’m not mistaken, and it looks like there’s plenty left over. Now, you have repeatedly said you are nothing like your sister. In other words, you are her opposite. If that’s the case, then the potion in this bottle should have the opposite effect on you than it had on her, and make you grow.” He gave Henry a push toward the bottle’s neck. “Go on. In you go.”

The round opening at the tip of the bottle’s neck was wide enough and tall enough for Henry to walk through as easily as if it were the Arc de Triomphe considering his current vertically challenged state. He hurried down the long neck to the bottle’s barrel, which turned out to be a much longer walk for him than he anticipated. By the time he reached the very bottom of the bottle, where there was a small puddle of purple liquid, he was exhausted.

He took a sniff, and nearly gagged. It smelled like a combination of the locker room at school after an especially rough football game, and the dumpster behind the Mickey D’s on a hot summer day. He glanced back toward the mouth of the bottle. Did Hatter really expect him to drink this nasty crap?

Hatter’s voice called to him from the bottle’s mouth, as if Hatter had heard his thoughts. “Go on! Take a sip!”

“What about you?”

Laughter floated down the long bottleneck, the sound growing louder and louder until it rumbled like thunder. Suddenly a pair of huge, dark eyes were looking in at him through the green bottle glass. A mouth stretched into a smirk as wide as a train car. “I’m the Hatter. I don’t need potions. Magic is in my blood. Go on now. Take a sip. We haven’t got all day.”

It felt like Hatter had somehow tricked him, which made him angry all over again, but there was nothing he could do about it while he was still so very small, and Hatter was now so very big. He felt he had no choice but to drink from the small pool of liquid ugliness floating at the bottom of the bottle, but he made himself a promise. As soon as he got big again, he was going to punch Hatter right in the mouth. See how that smirk worked for him with a few teeth gone.

The thought somehow made him feel a bit better.

Holding his nose closed with two fingers, he dipped his hand into the purple liquid, gathering a bit up in his palm. He put it to his lips and drank it down as quickly as he could, trying very hard not to taste it as it slid over his tongue and down his throat.

Tried, but failed.

It tasted every bit as ugly as it looked, viscous and slimy at the same time, but happily, he didn’t have long to explore the horrid flavor because at that moment, things started happening that took his mind off his mouth.

No sooner had he swallowed the muck but he began to grow. His body expanded in all directions—upways, downways, sideways, and slantways—quickly filling the bottle. For a heartbeat he was stuck there, unable to move, unable to breathe, his face smooshed flat against the glass. He could feel the pressure building as his body insisted it continue to expand, and the non-giving glass refused to bend. Then… smash! The bottle splintered into millions of tiny glass bits, exploding away from him in a shower of fragments glinting in the sun.

Freed from the glass, he grew even more quickly, as if someone were using a tornado to blow up a balloon-shaped man. Within seconds, he’d grown to his former height and weight, or as close to it as he could tell, anyway.

And found himself facing a pair of mischievous, sparkling dark eyes.

He barely felt his fingers curling into a fist, or his arm pulling back to throw a punch squarely at Hatter’s handsome, smirking face.

H
ATTER
SCARCELY
had time to blink as Henry’s hard fist caught him just under his jaw, the force of the punch lifting him off his feet, and planting him on his ass in the dirt. He rubbed his jaw, feeling—for the first time in a good, long while, if ever—completely stunned. “You… you struck me!”

Henry, busy dancing around with the hand he used to strike Hatter tucked under his armpit, muttering all manner of foul epithets, shot him a black look, as if the entire incident were Hatter’s fault.

It was more than a little irritating. After all, who was down on the ground on his rear end, with a sore jaw and what felt like a loose tooth, and who was still standing upright? He struggled to his feet, still cupping his jaw. “What are you so angry about? I’m the one who got hit!”

That stopped Henry in his tracks. Without warning, he bellowed out a half-strangulated scream, and launched himself at Hatter. The combination of his weight and gravity flattened Hatter to the ground again.