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“Uhhhhhh…”
Levi, the rabbit decided, was a rather interesting human.
“Can you eat these ‘Fairytales’? Are they yummy?” asked Alice, intrigued.
The former duke let out a laugh.
“I’m afraid not, dear.” He answered, honestly, as he was tucking Alice to bed. He seemed to find entertaining the expression that Alice made the moment she found out that fairytales weren’t a dish. Although the little rabbit was being quite smothered, its tiny, beady eyes could see the servant from the door, watching with sad eyes the whole interaction.
“Then what’s the point of those ‘Fairytales’?” bemoaned Alice, though not with the kind of fight that she would have had done so a couple of hours ago. Perhaps she was what the humans liked to call ‘tired’?
(Henceforth came, a memory. Or more like a remembrance of a sensation—soft, warm arms that had enveloped it, whispered a sweet tune that slowly stopped into evened breathings—, one that it had thought long forgotten.)
“They are stories we tell our young,” said Levi, thinking how to explain what a fairytale was to a girl that seemed to perpetually think that the only things worth caring about were related to food. “They help to sleep better, and sometimes even teach some lessons.”
Alice grumbled, the rabbit asked itself if she perhaps thought there was nothing she could learn from a silly story.
“Would you like me to tell you a bedtime story?” Levi asked, this time not even trying to be subtle.
“Is there good food in it?” asked the girl—not The Girl, it had to remind itself—with hope in her eyes. Levi seemed to ponder whether to tell her that no fairytale focused on food ever, before nodding.
“There is no good story that comes without food, dear,” he promised. This seemed to capture the girl’s attention, because she had rearranged the rabbit—this time it dared to say it felt comfortable—between her arms and snuggled it with gleaming eyes.
Levi cleared his voice before he started reciting. “There was once a man and a woman who had long in vain wished for a child. And while they had quite a beautiful garden, there was a fence that separated their beautiful flowers and other such plants from their neighboring garden, for it was said to belong to a powerful enchantress…”
“Master,” chided, very weakly, the servant by the door. Although the rabbit had very little practical knowledge on human expressions and emotions (it did not help that the servant seemed to perpetually possess the same expression at all given times), it seemed he held some censure in his tone, his whole face screamed outrage.
The master, however, didn’t think to listen to the servant, and pratted on through the whole evening, as he told the fairytale to the child that had awakened the rabbit from its uninterrupted slumber. It spoke of a magical child that both parents had long waited for, of how they had lost themselves to their own vices and given their firstborn up to the enchantress, of how she had grown up cloistered in a tower, with no contact to the outside world except for a prince she had secretly wedded.
Levi had only gotten to the part where Rapunzel had birthed the children when he realized his audience of one (nobody ever thinks of telling the rabbit the end of the story, thank you very much) had already fallen asleep. He stared at the girl for a full minute before tucking the girl better with the blanket—hindering entirely the rabbit’s eyesight—and rising from the bedside.
“That was needlessly cruel, Master,” said the servant, and while this time the rabbit couldn’t see the expressions on their faces, it knew Levi had a content smile on his face.
“Hmm, you think so?”
“If she truly…” the servant started, but did not finish that sentence. Levi let out a noncommital sound, as though he already knew that that would be it for the servant’s questioning. “She is not a child of Ill Omen, Master. There is no need to keep her in—”
“Weren’t you the one that said here she would be safer?” A pause. “She is much too close to the Core, perhaps more than any of us, any more than Lacie ever did.”
(Lacie. The Girl. They’re talking about The Girl!)
“She can’t ever leave this place,” realized the servant, despondent.
“That might be the case,” Levi didn’t sound like he believed it, but neither did he seem willing to let Alice go.
And the rabbit, with its silly, plushy head, couldn’t quite understand what was so important about Alice—and what was so cruel about The Girl.
“Will you tell me a story, Glen?”
It was one of those days, the rabbit—Oz—knew.
Glen looked at Alice, who was already dressed in her sleeping robes and held a blanket in one hand, Oz’s plush paw on the other. He seemed to ponder whether he should tell Alice no, he seemed to have had what the humans called ‘a busy day’.
“Did you two have a fight?”
Alice grimaced.
“Alice said she doesn’t want to talk to me because I told Maddison that she was an ugly painted doll,” she recounted. “But it’s not my fault! Alice wanted to be with Jack so I said ok, and she was in the middle of a tea party with her silly dolls when we changed bodies—”
“Alice, need I remind you you’re holding a plush—”
“—and I couldn’t see Oz anywhere in there and they also made fun of me because I can’t make the things move in our Space and neither I can’t create or destroy them at will and so they started mocking me and saying I was a failure.”
Glen let out a sigh. “You know you’re not a failure.”
Alice, who was puckering her lips in that way that Oz knew it meant she wanted to cry but didn’t want Glen to see her cry—“he will never stop scolding me for cussing if I don’t prove to him I can be mature”, she oftentimes said to the rabbit—let out a breath and hugged Oz, this time with both hands.
“What kind of story do you want?” Glen finally asked, walking towards Alice’s bedroom, a silent gesture for her to follow. Alice spun in glee, following behind him with an almost-sprint.
“A tail of fairies, like the ones that Levi used to tell me!”
“Fairytale,” Glen corrected. Solemn, he picked out one of the books from the bookshelf, one of those that had pretty illustrations that Alice liked to draw over (more often than not, she tried to eat the crayons that Glen provided for her). “Any story that you would like me to recite?”
“Hmmmm is there one with good food?” asked Alice, though Oz doubted Glen would answer her question. “Oh! The one about the mom that ate her neighbor’s plants! That was fun!”
Glen looked at her, and for a moment, it seemed like he would give in—he was rather weak when it came to things that Alice asked for, Oz knew this. Not the other Alice, who was majestic and pristine and could draw a circle without any help, but rather this Alice who fiddled with her dresses and oftentimes didn’t like taking baths if the water was not lukewarm and ate only if there was promise of Glen’s special steak, his Alice. Perhaps that was another reason Oz and him ‘shared’ a name?—but the longer he pondered on it, the longer he seemed to tell himself why that was a bad idea.
“How about I read you another story? I admit I haven’t heard of these stories since Lacie was a child,” he mused, with a half-smile as he perused the book for any given story that had no relation whatsoever with a captive girl in a tower. He ended up picking one that Oz was sure not even The Girl had read before, because he didn’t remember any of the words even from his interactions with the girl and the Core. “Far out in the ocean the water is as blue as the petals of the loveliest cornflower, and as clear as the purest glass…”
The more the story progressed, the more Glen seemed to realize what a bad idea picking this story was. Not only was it a fairytale with a rather graphic setting, but it got progressively worse the longer they continued the reading.
It had started simple enough, with mermaid sisters who longed for their fifteenth birthday, since they could reach the shore that day and see what the human world was about. The protagonist, the littlest of the mermaids, had to wait for five years of second-hand retellings of her sisters to see for herself and even after that, she was hardly satisfied, going to the surface almost on a daily basis. She ended up saving a prince from a shipwreck, letting him rest ashore and pretending some other girl had been the one responsible for his rescue.
The mermaid had heard from her grandmother, the queen dowager, of how the humans, although lived a much shorter life than they, were granted an immortal soul. After hearing this prospect, the mermaid had wanted for nothing but to be granted said immortal soul, and maybe share her destiny with the prince that she had rescued.
After that, it was a rather heartbreaking part that Glen had skirmished—not even letting Alice do her usual interpretation of the voices from the other characters—of her deal with the seawitch, the steps on human props that hurt like knives, and of the heartbreak of realizing the prince would not love her quite like he loved the one that (he thought) had rescued him.
The ending was, although incredibly bitter, also hopeful. As Oz heard Glen tell them of the daughters of the air, of how they had promised the mermaid something that she longed for more than the longevous life she was promised, the immortal soul that she could earn, he couldn't help the warmth that grew uncontrolled within him.
“This is the way that we shall rise to the sky, after three hundred years have passed.”
Before Glen could start reading the next paragraph, Alice chirped in, no longer able to contain her enthusiasm for a new story. She held Oz at eye level and smiled with mirth.
“An immortal soul, Oz! Can you imagine?” she asked, pondering. Alice seemed to think hard about it, as though the existence of souls were a topic to be thought of in bed. “I think you would look very, very handsome with an immortal soul. Imagine how delicious you would taste!”
Oz couldn’t help the little shiver that he felt in his plushy self.
Glen seemed to read the discontentment upon the rabbit-eating comment—he always seemed to be able to pick on his moods, which rather surprised the rabbit, who had thought that no human was able to notice he was anything more than a plush rabbit—for he forwarded. “Souls are not a thing that inanimate objects can have, Alice. Beings are either born with them or not.”
Alice pouted. “But Oz has a soul! He was born in the same place Alice and I were!” she paused, rather realizing something. “Are you saying I don’t have a soul? Do I taste bad because of it?”
The elder seemed to think this was a conversation he’d rather have at any other given time of the day that wasn’t bedtime. “I didn’t say that. Merely that… it’s just a fairytale.”
Said answer didn’t seem to satisfy the girl, because she started to talk about the story. “Then how about we go see the sea witch! I’m preeetty sure the Core would be willing to grant Oz a soul. He has been a rather dashing rabbit, isn’t it right, my manservant?”
Oz, although he couldn’t move his plushy body, tried to give an aura of pride, his beady eyes shining with honor.
Glen didn’t seem to enjoy the joke as much as Alice, because his lips curled downwards in what Oz now recognized as distaste. “You shouldn’t get near the Core, it’s dangerous.”
“Oz will definitely have blonde hair. I’m not sure how the body of a capable manservant should be, so I don’t care what he looks like beside the hair. Oh! And he will use one of those cute outfits that I’ve sewn for him!”
It seemed to dawn on Glen that he wasn’t going to land any reason inside Alice’s brain, now that she was hyped over the silly idea of granting the rabbit plushie a silly thing like an immortal soul.
“And we will have wonderful dances! But… maybe ask the Core to not give him feet that he can’t walk on? I don’t want a manservant who cries because he can’t even walk steadily, who knows what other problems that would bring?”
It only took a couple of minutes before Alice’s brain seemed to catch up with the fact that it was time to sleep, because she started to slow down, until no more words were pouring out of her mouth. Glen waited up until she was breathing evenly before tucking her better to sleep, this time gently running his hand through her forehead.
“Rest well, Alice.”
And while the topic had been not entirely serious, Oz couldn’t help but feel a certain warmness at the thought of Alice wanting him to have something that she didn’t even think to miss.
The first time Oz reads Ada a bedtime story, he can’t help shake this feeling that he has heard it before.
It would be rather impossible, considering his father thought fairytales too childish and not at all what he should be reading. His mother hadn’t been able to tuck him to bed, not since she had fallen ill—because of him, it had been his fault that she had fallen ill and never recuperated—and then, when Mrs. Kate had been in charge of his bedtime stories, he had already been introduced to the wonderful Holy Knight trilogy, courtesy of his Uncle Oscar, so night after night he asked for the wonderful adventures of Edgar and Edwin.
So, to say that he had been rather deprived of fairy tales, was an understatement.
Still, as he kept on reading (and doing his best to adapt the story so his little Ada didn’t have to listen to the gruesome details), he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it was a familiar tune.
“Do you think they could've had a happy ending, big brother?” asks the girl, already half-asleep, in his arms.
Oz ponders his answer. “I think she rather loved him more than she desired his love, and the promise of an eternal soul was better than hoping for something that she knew would never be given.”
Mrs. Kate would be proud of an answer worded so eloquently. Perhaps he would tell her about it in the morning, when they were discussing one of his assignments.
Oz, though, felt a warmth that he couldn’t quite name, that had taken root inside him.
“Oh, so Alice likes bedtime stories?”
“I didn’t know stupid rabbits could read.”
The punch that was thrown Raven’s way was quickly evaded, though Oz suspected that she hadn’t planned for it to land.
“I don’t care for such ridiculous notions!” she said, laughing quite enthusiastically, and Oz nodded, understanding that she was going to refute that statement with what she was truly—hopefully—feeling. “But we have to search everywhere. Perhaps…” this time, she sounded almost timid. “I thought there might be something hidden in some of the books. Maybe they’ll unlock a memory.”
Oz, knowing of how rare it was for Alice to show weakness, nodded and helped her peruse the fairytales, trying to explain as much as he could remember from his correspondence with Elliot. Gilbert threw an off-handed comment or two, saying he had read those stories to his brothers before.
“Little… mermaid?”
Oz felt his heart skip a beat.
“It’s a… rather famous fairy tale,” he surmised. “I’ve told my sister this particular one several times. She loves the magic used in this!”
Alice didn’t seem to listen to what he was saying, though it neither looked like she was remembering something. Not at least like one of her memories that were ripped to pieces looked like, more like she was almost remembering, but couldn’t quite put her finger on what she was missing.
“Does it have any… dances?” she asked, finally. Oz nodded.
He started reading the story for her. Out of the corner of his sight, he saw a clueless expression on Gilbert’s face.
“Did it help?” Oz asked, after some tears were shed by Alice.
“Who cares!” she answered, rather shaken, as she threw the book as far away as she could. Oz let out a laugh, knowing that he had overestimated Alice’s moment of vulnerability.
They were in the deepest part of the Abyss, where no chain had ever dared to think existed—Oz, Alice and the Intention.
In front of him, the Core was speaking, probably saying its goodbyes to the Intention, knowing this would be the last time it spoke to the children it had all but bore.
“Before we do this,” said Alice, with finality, “can I ask for something of the Core?”
The Intention looked at her, quizzically. Oz was as surprised by Alice’s sudden outburst, but the exhaustion of burning the contract with Jack had left him boneless, unable to react quite like he would normally do.
“Speak.”
Alice fidgeted, now that she had the unwavering attention of the Core. It didn’t seem to particularly want to hurry the process, but it seemed intrigued, what could the daughter who wished for nothing want?
“Oz has been a rather important part of my life,” she started. “I don’t think I would ever be able to enter the cycle without him… so could you… grant him the opportunity to?”
The Core didn’t quite seem to understand what she wanted. Oz, while having regained most of his memories, could not phantom what she was talking about.
(Unbidden, a memory of him, Alice and Glen—Oswald—sharing a bedtime story resurfaced.)
Breathless, he waited for Alice to continue on with her request.
“Could you grant him a human soul, like the one you imparted on me?”
The Core shimmered.
Gilbert was crying. Alice was crying. Oz for the first time noticed that he, too, was crying.
(The little mermaid had only cried once, he remembered, after she had become one of the daughters of the wind, for no mermaid could shed a tear.)
They were disappearing, he knew, and while he so wanted to fulfill their promise to Gilbert, he knew it wasn’t likely to happen. But he would respect Gilbert's hope, and do his best to see him again.
When it was just him and Alice, existing and not existing in a golden glow, hands held as though they would lose each other if they did otherwise, he said:
“After three hundred years have passed?”
She smiled.
“After three hundred years have passed.”
They would see Gilbert again.