Chapter Text
They draped green fronds from some now-naked tree in deep, fluffy piles over the boat, and Alice hoped the scant protection would be enough to buy time as she headed after Hatter into the Forest of Wabe, as he’d named it. It looked fairly obvious that the newly broken branches were concealing something, but as the droning of the Scarab grew ever louder, she was forced to admit they didn’t have the time to do much more.
The sound of the ship grew fainter as she stomped deeper and deeper into the forest. Odd clicks and eerie wails rose and fell at odd intervals around them, like an uneasy chorus aware that they invited danger.
Something shrieked behind her, and Alice jumped, crashing into Hatter’s side in agitation.
“What was that?” she hissed, heart pounding. “Did you hear that?”
Hatter gulped, face as open-- and afraid-- as she’d ever seen it.
“Jabberwock. That,” he said shakily, “Is a sign that you should find a tree to climb. Right now.”
He shoved her away, looking wildly around, and to her credit, Alice did look around for a safe place to get off the ground.
Briefly. For a second.
She turned back, hands on her hips. “What? Why climb a tree? What are you going to do?”
The shrieking, razor-edged howl grew closer, ululating through the mis-cast shadows and stirring the branches on the trees.
“I’m going to sic it on the posse,” he said tightly.
Alice scoffed. “That’s your plan?”
“Yes,” he shouted, throwing his hands in the air. “After it gets a good look at me! Now will you just. Please! GO!”
He shoved her again. She kicked him in the shin, and crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly and immediately done with his bullshit.
“That’s a terrible plan,” she snapped.
Hatter wheeled around and leaned right in her face, face flushed with spirit. “Look, if you could just!--”
A branch snapped, if by branch Alice meant an entire damn tree, and a dark, scaly shape finned out into the dappled sunlight.
Hatter grabbed her hand. All the blood drained from his face, and she hadn’t even seen him this scared with a gun in his face.
“Alice! Run!”
If he had kept holding her hand, she would think much, much later, they might not have run off in different directions, and things might have turned out very differently indeed.
Alice pelted into the shadows, dodging around oddly-shaped trees and crashing through underbrush in shades of green, blue, and purple. Strange mushrooms oozed and popped underfoot, and if she cared at all about her clothes while running for her life, she would have certainly worried her about staining the leather of her boots.
But in that moment there was nothing but fear and blurring landscape and the hot, rank breath of the Jabberwock.
She knew she lost speed every time she glanced around, but Hatter had dashed off towards the cove where they had hidden the boat, and she couldn’t see him. She hadn’t realized in time that his plan required leading the monster in that direction, but by the time she had, it was too late. The Jabberwock had followed her, not Hatter, and she couldn’t stop now, it was too close.
She didn’t have the breath to shout, as she leaped over a fallen log and nearly tripped. She caught glances of a saurian body the size of a house, wet, gleaming eyes, and a neck that was entirely too damn long to belong on a predator.
Its teeth were the size of tombstones, and it was really, really fast.
Alice darted and weaved through a stand of smaller trees, hoping to slow it down since nothing that size could bank worth a damn, but realized too late that she’d outsmarted herself: thick, twisting roots like anacondas boiled out of the ground, frozen into knotted mounds of wood which tripped her as easily as anything. She hit the ground in a sunken hollow hard enough to sting her palms and bloody her knees, and twisted viciously around just in time to see the head of the Jabberwock emerge from the tree canopy overhead.
Frothing and hissing with rage, the Buick-sized mouth clamped shut on open air, scant inches from her battered, bruised feet. Alice looked the scariest thing in Wonderland dead in its goggling, chameleon eyes, and was abruptly so beyond done that she barely registered scrabbling around for a stone, fingers closing around a broken shard of marble, and she drove it into the closest liquid orb with an oddly innocuous pop.
Vitreous fluid-- which glowed faintly green, she noticed, like a glowstick-- coated her hand and makeshift dagger, oozing down her wrist and sleeve like a glove, all the way down to her elbow.
The world shattered in an impossible, supersonic shriek of pain and rage, and stand of trees be damned, the monster shoved through in a splintering crash--
To fall into a pit of sharpened stakes, dozens of feet deep. It was impaled in a dozen places, and dead within minutes, but Alice hardly noticed as she fell-slid in a shower of dirt down the hole as well.
It’s an even harder landing than before. Had she been awake for it, she’d have broken bones.
Her eyes cracked open an endless moment later to see the shadows had changed. They've done that a lot here, but she was fairly sure some actual time had passed. She turned her head, grimacing at the fiercely jangling pain of pulled muscles, and screamed for the first time since falling into the lake when she saw the sightless, ruined eye of the dead Jabberwock.
A wooden pole pierced through the other, inches from her right hand. She yanked it away and recoiled bodily until she rebounded off the wall of the pit, coughing as more dark earth showers down.
“So much for the Gravity-Assisted Snare, Mark Four,” groaned another weary, elderly, very British voice.
If the Resistance had followed her all this way to kill her, Alice thought as she scrambled to her aching feet, they would damn well have to get in line.
The man peering over the edge of the hole had faded white hair and a thin beard, but that was where the resemblance to the Resistance elevator-slash-bus-driver ended. His beard was thin and white and sculpted into a deliberate S-curve that had to have taken a hot roller. Even from a few dozen feet below, his blue eyes seemed to see far too much, and they pierced all the way down through the increasing gloom of falling night.
He also seemed to be wearing armor. White armor.
Monster and criminal element forgotten, her jaw dropped. “Are you a knight?”
He rolled his eyes. “Heavens, no, are you mad? The Knights were all wiped out years ago.”
“Then who are you?” She propped her hands on her hips, flinched at her bruises, then again when she remembered the Jabberwock slime all over her hand.
“Why, I’m a knight!” He beamed goofily down at her. Ugh, he was as bad as Hatter. “Sir Charles Eustace Fotheringale Malfoy III. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, miss..?”
“Alice,” she replied, looking around for a way to climb out. “Nice to meet you too. Did you dig this pit trap? Would you mind helping me out?”
She heard a gasp like a punctured lung, and looked up to see the knight-- Sir Charles-- in a state of horror and awe.
“Alice… of Legend? Can it be?” His wizened face was grey with shock. “After all these years… have you come back as it was foretold?”
And Hatter had said not to worry.
“That depends on what was foretold,” she said warily.
“Gather the scattered pearls… bring the blinded one out into the light of truth… and destroy the Queen and her House of Cards forever…” He seemed nearly lost in a daze of memory.
“Some of that sounds right,” she replied firmly. Fake it til you make it. “The Queen has wronged many from both worlds, and I won’t let her get away with it.”
Did she have a plan, besides free Jack and as many other Oysters as she could find, and prevent the Queen from ever stealing anyone else away? No.
Would that stop her from finding a way into the Casino? Also no.
“Brave words, my lady. It is my honor and glory to assist you on your path!”
A knotted net flew over the side and trailed all the way to the ground. Alice gripped the weave and slowly, achingly, hauled her battered body out of the hole.
The ancient knight helped her to her feet, chattering about his invention and marveling at how she’d slain the Jabberwock, then led her over to a pair of slump-backed horses who looked well-groomed, if incredibly old. Just like their master.
He knotted the net to a set of parallel bars which were designed to drag behind the horse, along the forest floor. Just as he was helping her mount, she froze in consternation.
“Hatter,” she said dumbly. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten. “Can we try to find… my friend? We entered the woods to get rid of the people chasing us-- Mad March and some Casino Suits. I don’t want to leave him behind!” She glanced around frantically, but even before she’d fallen and hit her head, she had no way of knowing which direction he’d run in.
The knight shook his head. “Terribly sorry, but it’s best we get you someplace safe, Lady Alice. I know not where your vassal has fled, but if you are indeed being followed by such dangerous men, we must retreat swiftly while we have the advantage.”
She scanned the forest, not wanting to admit it. Oh, she knew that getting caught now would ruin everything, and Hatter was pretty clever and cunning-- not to mention a much faster runner, dammit-- but leaving him out there in the Forest of Wabe didn’t feel like a viable plan either
But she couldn’t just wander aimlessly, and she needed Sir Charles’s help, and Jack was still waiting. She nodded wearily, and the knight mounted his own chestnut horse, and led her through the dappled shadows towards the forested mountains that spread out before them.
She hoped Hatter would be okay.