Chapter 3 Curiouser and Curiouser
CHAPTER THREE
CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER
Hatter went on and on trying different style hats on me after setting me down at the table with sandwiches, teas, and cakes spread before me. He never once sat and ate with me, like his work sustained him.
“Hatter,” I say, my head bobbing from the newest hat he’s ripped off and tossed aside.
“Hm?”
“What did Lewis mean about the woods loving flesh? Do they eat people?”
“Not in the way you’re thinking.”
Well, that’s helpful.
“Well, if they love flesh, the only way to get it is… oh…”
Hatter rounds in front of me with another swathe of fabric, wrapping it around my head tightly before stepping back and looking at me, his head cocked in determination, and I can nearly see the cogs turning behind his eyes.
His long sigh says this is also not the fabric.
“There was a man in the forest. Did you know he lurks right beyond your home?”
“He’s no man. That’s a cat.”
My head snaps back as Hatter gets my hair caught on a hat’s bobbles. I screech, grabbing the hat to keep him from snatching me baldheaded. “Be careful! If you rip off my head, you can’t hat it!”
God, now I sound like him.
“I apologize. Sometimes, I get hasty when it comes to work.” His dark chuckle has my own lips curling as I eye him from my new position. My head leaned back, while he untangles me from the buttons of the hat.
Once I’m free, he helps me lift my head again, only to go right back to work.
“You know, a lot of those hats were perfectly fine. We don’t need to keep trying to find one that’s…”
“Perfectly fine?” He scoffs, clearly offended. “With a head like that, you want to wear a perfectly fine hat? Why, Eleanor, I am offended.”
I swallow. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I just don’t think I need a perfect hat.”
Turning my chair towards him, he steps between my legs. Looking down his nose at me, he catches me in his dominating stare.
I’m so transfixed that I don’t realize his hand is on my chin until he tips it back.
Heat bubbles into my skin and feels like madness curling through my body, like spiders set loose inside my bones.
“You deserve perfection. It’s what you’ll have. Nothing less.”
My earlier wish to be treated like a princess, before I drank the glowing, fizzy liquid in the strange room, flutters through my head.
Is he my wish made flesh?
“Alright,” is all I can manage, and Hatter sets back to work.
I leave him to it for a long while, the movements from his tugging on my head and hair this way and that lull me into a space where I’m weary but also rested.
When I can tell he’s getting flustered with his lack of progress on my hatting situation, I clear my throat to give distraction. “So, your name is Hatter?”
He stops, looking down at me with curious, knitted brows. “No. Of course, my name isn’t Hatter. Don’t be daft.”
The absurdity of his thinking me daft is laughable, but I keep my composure. I’ve already upset him twice, and if I’m ever going to get home, it’s not by constantly pissing him off.
“Well, you know my name. What is yours?”
“You know it.”
This again?!
I bite my lip. I need to tread lightly. “I have to admit something to you. I’ve forgotten it. I know, it makes me a purely awful person, but I need to be reminded sometimes.”
He sighs. “I know. I forget that you’re forgetful sometimes, Elli-roo.”
I swallow my gasp.
How does he know that name?
That’s what my dad used to call me. Back when he was a nice, cheerful person. Back when things were simpler.
“My name is Finlo. Finlo Pennington.”
“Finlo.”
As if my saying his name is the crack in the dam of his madness, his eyes clear, and he stares at me. “I’ve always loved it when you say my name. I’ve been waiting so long for you to come back.”
“Back?” I ask him, but it’s of no use. He’s already back to work on my hat, my head bobbing around as he wraps it in this fabric and that, this color and that one.
Long into the night, I try to stay awake to appease his obsessive side, but it’s not until Finlo’s carrying me to bed that I realize I’d fallen asleep.
“Shh, it’s only me, Elli-roo.”
“Did you finish my hat?” I yawn, snuggling into him as he ascends the stairs to his room.
“No. But it’s one I’ve been working on for a very long time. Perfection has no timetable, only progress does.”
That riddles my brain as he lies me down on the bed, sliding in behind me.
“When did you last see me?” I ask him, feeling just sleepy enough to be on his level of madness.
“When your hair was to your shoulders, and you loved your black and white saddle shoes.” His voice is full of sleep as he answers, but his answer has my heart beating wildly.
My eyes fly open. “It wasn’t a dream?”
I don’t realize I’ve said it aloud until Hatter leans over me, pressing his lips to my ear. “No, Tiger Lily, it wasn’t a dream.”
Lewis throws the teapot, nearly hitting Bonnie in the forehead with it.
She ruffles her feathers. “That’s the third time today!”
“No, it’s merely noon, not the third time!” Lewis shouts back, shaking his watch in the air.
I giggle, swinging my feet back and forth, my saddle shoes colliding now and again as I eat a raspberry tart, the crumbs covering my dress.
“I think that’s quite enough,” Hatter says. “How will we drink the tea when the pot is hanging from that tree?”
I laugh again. “That rhymes.”
Hatter only grins, his eyes softening. “So it does, Tiger Lily. Fetch the pot, will you?”
Nodding, I slide off my massive chair to the ground, the tall grass nearly enveloping me as I shake the bush-like tree to get the checkered teapot free.
It finally falls, and I have to leap backwards not to get hit.
When I make it back to the table, Bonnie is waving a pink wing through the air as she and Lewis shout at one another about time and relativity, whatever that is.
“Here, Fin!” I hold the pot up.
Hatter rolls his eyes at the raucous show at the table—it’s not like it’s new. He takes the pot from me and fills it with tea from his cup.
I open my mouth to tell him he’s done it the wrong way, and then remember where I am.
Nothing makes sense here; that’s the fun of it.
I leave it alone as I climb back atop my chair and grab another tart, this one lemon.
“Don’t ruin your dinner, Elli-roo. You know your father will be angry again,” Hatter tells me, and I sigh.
I know he’s right, so I toss down the tart, turning in my chair to watch Lewis as he plucks a feather from Bonnie’s wing and then takes off running with it.
“Look! I’ve caught a pink bird in a trap!” he shouts.
“No, you haven’t, you fool! Come back with my feather.”
“Pure madness,” Hatter says.
I grin, turning towards him. “Just the way we like it.”
I wake with a start, turning onto my back as I wipe tears from my cheeks. I’ve been here before.
It’s like the longer I’m here, the more I can feel the ghost of me.
“Was it just awful?” Hatter asks.
“What?” I ask, not realizing he was awake.
He’s sitting up in bed, his arms crossed over his broad chest. “Us. Before. Were we just awful before? Is it why you never came back?”
“ I-I don’t know. I only just remembered. But I haven’t remembered it all.”
“When you do, you’ll tell me?”
Sniffling, I sit up. “I will.”
“Dawn is breaking. We should get ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“It’s tea party day, dearest Tiger Lily; how could you forget?”
With that, he’s stuffing into pants and putting on his shoes as he grabs a shirt off the back of a chair and heads out the door.
I’m starting to feel like whatever happened to me here before, whatever made me never come back, was purely awful.
I don’t know that I want to feel that heartbreak again, either.
The memory sticks with me all morning. Every piece of china I place on the table, every little cake Hatter helps me plate. The reverie is standing just in the shadows, haunting me.
When Lewis arrives, I open my arms to him, grinning at his confusion.
“Do you remember?” he asks.
“Some.”
“Well, I think I’ll reserve my hug for when you recall everything.”
I slowly drop my arms to my sides, feeling rejected and understanding all at once.
But soon, madness ensues, and all is forgotten.
That’s the way of Wonderland. It’s probably why I spent so much time here.
I was happy here.
Until I wasn’t.
A frog I don’t know gets on the table and dances until he’s pelted with food. Perfectly good tarts. Then, Lewis regales us with some news from the kingdom that I don’t understand.
It has the entire table in an uproar, one that costs us more tarts.
I pocket a few for later, feeling like a child hiding her sweets, but I don’t know how much longer they’ll last or how many more conversations will go left before the entire table is flipped.
“The queen is a rotten old…”
“Bonnie!” Hatter says, cutting her off.
“I wasn’t going to say it. Besides, Eleanor is a grown woman now. She knows a bitch when she sees one, don’t you?”
I grin, fighting a laugh because Hatter looks like he’s going to have a coronary. “I do.”
“See. She agrees with me.”
“This queen, she lives near here?”
“Two cities march from here,” Lewis says, his furry finger pointing toward where I encountered the naked man yesterday.
I swallow. “Does she come here?”
“No.” Hatter’s stern voice quiets all the chaos around the table, and I sit taller in my chair.
“You don’t remember her?” a small voice says, and I turn to catch the eyes of a small goblin-like creature to my left.
“No, I don’t. Not yet. Things have been… coming back to me. I can’t assure you that everything will come back entirely. I remember tea time, though.”
She grins widely.
“How old was I the last time I came?” I ask the table, hoping someone will give me a guide to travel through my mind.
“Years fifteen,” Bonnie answers backwardly, making me smile.
Fifteen years old.
That’s when they kicked me out.
When I was told to leave.
My heart feels heavy for the rest of the party, but I revel in all the mad frivolity for a bit longer before leaving them to it and heading inside to bed.
I don’t hear Hatter come in, but I feel his presence behind me when he snuggles closer.
“Was it frightful here without me?”
“Positively horrible.”
His arm comes around me, and I close my eyes. Sinking into my memories during sleep is the only way I’m going to remember, so instead of avoiding my dreams, I lean into them.