WonderLand

“Alex, are you alright?” the Cat called, concern etched all over his face.

“I'm fine,” I called back. “Are you hurt?”

“No, no, I got away. Don't worry, we're going to get you out of there!” he promised.

“Actually,” the Dodo grinned, adjusting his lapels with a self satisfied smile, “I think you'll find that that honor goes to whomever pays the highest price. It's anybody's game now.”

I would have spit on him, if he were close enough.

“I'll make you pay, Dodo!” the Cat yelled, making to storm forwards, but the Hatter reached out an arm across his chest to stop him. “I'll pluck out all your feathers, and roast you like the great, sodding bird you are!”

“Enough, Cheshire,” the Hatter ordered. The Cat fell back, his teeth still barred in an angry snarl.

“My my, tempers are running high!” the Dodo chortled, though it seemed he was affecting to cover how shaken he was by the threat. “Well, let's see if we can channel that into the auction, shall we? Bill?” He turned away from the gathered crowd to look behind him. I followed his gaze, and saw Bill the Lizard hurrying from the shack, a carrying a crate in his arms. He waddled up to the crude podium my cage had been placed upon, and set the crate down in front of it. He pulled a gavel out, flipped it over, and stood on top of it, half blocking my vision of the scene. He cleared his throat.

“Gather round, gather round!” he cried, in a surprisingly loud and clear voice. Several uncertain glances were exchanged, but both the Queen's men and the representatives of the Rebellion inched forwards, until they stood in a semi-circle about twenty feet from my cage. “Stop right there!” Bill shouted, and everyone halted. Then he swung the gavel around, and slammed it against the bars of my cage with a ringing crash that left me half deaf. “Let the bidding commence!”

“Five gold coins!” the Hatter shouted, quick as lightning.

“Only five?!” I cried back.

“That's quite a lot, Alex,” the Cat called. Then he elbowed the Hatter in the side, and whispered, “Why are you starting so low?”

“Ten pieces of gold!” the man I assumed was called the Knave of Hearts said, raising a stately hand into the air.

“Fifteen!” Hare yelled, hoping up and down on the spot in excitement, holding on tight to his bowler hat as he capered.

“Twenty-five!” was the reply, and a second later came a cry of “Thirty!” from the other side.

“Oh my, how exciting!” the Dodo chittered, practically drooling at even the suggestion of so much gold.

“Forty, then!” said the Knave, throwing a dirty look at Hatter and Hare.

“Oh ho, think you're clever, do you?” Hare cackled. “I'll raise you fifty!”

“Hare, you idiot!” the Cat snapped.

“That brings the total up to ninety gold coins!” the Dodo cried, jumping excitedly from foot to foot and ringing his hands. “Oh my oh my, where will we go to next?”

The Knave huffed, red in the face, but it wasn't his money he was gambling. “One hundred pieces of gold!”

“We only have one hundred to use!” Gryphon said angrily.

The Knave of Hearts heard this, pulled off one of his white gloves, and threw it onto the ground.

“Ah ha!” he cried, victoriously.

“Oh shut up, you puffed up jibberjabber,” Hatter shouted at him. “And you, think with your head!” he admonished Gryphon. “Pah, what is gold? I bid one hundred gold, and one full crate of the finest ginseng oolong tea in our hold!”

The Knave gasped and spluttered as if he had just been slapped in the face.

“Well... well... then I bid one hundred gold, and two trays of the Queen's personal WonderLandBerry tarts!”

The Dodo almost swooned. “Hear that, Bill? How lovely would those tow be paired together?” he panted. “Any counter offers, Hatter? Hare?”

“One hundred gold, the ginseng oolong, eight spoon fulls of Blue Fairy tea leaves, and I'll do one good deed for an orphan!” said Hare, trying to climb onto the Hatter's shoulders.

“I'll two two good deeds for an orphan!” countered the Knave.

“Then I'll do one good deed for two orphans!” shot back the Hare, gnawing on the edge of the Hatter's top hat.

“One hundred gold, the Queen's tarts, two good deeds for an orphan, and a kiss from the duchess!” screamed the Knave.

“I don't want that!” the Dodo said, disgusted.

“I'll kiss you!” cried the Hatter, raising his hand high into the air and knocking the Hare off onto the ground.

“I don't want that either!”

“Then I'll offer one hundred gold, a crate of ginseng oolong, eight spoonfulls of Blue Fairy, one good deed for two orphans, and I'll swear to never kiss you!” the Hatter offered.

“I'll make you a duke!” the Knave tried.

“How?”

“Well, you'll have to marry the Duchess-”

“No!”

“I'll marry you!” screamed the Hare.

“No!”

“An invitation to play croquet with the Queen herself!”

“A coat made of luxurious mome raths fur!”

“A bottle full of the tears of a sad little girl!”

“Eighty pounds of buttered bread!”

“A brand new hat!”

“I can give you a better one!” shouted the Hatter.

“No he can't, he's a terrible hatter!” the Hare cut in.

“I'll give you everything I have in my pockets right now!”

“I'll give you this stick I found!”

“A cat without a grin!”

“A grin without a cat!”

“Hey!” the Cat interjected.

“This is getting ridiculous,” the Jabberwocky said, in the sweetest of voices that sent a chilling hush over the shouts and insults being thrown from one side to the other.

“He's right,” agreed the Cat, taking a step forward, his mouth a thin, grim slash. “I'll give you myself. As a willing prisoner.”

“What?” gaped the Hatter.

“Don't be a fool, Cat,” Hare scolded him with a sneer.

“No, you can't!” I cried, grabbing the bars of my little cage and pleading with him.

“I don't want you as my prisoner,” the Dodo said, looking repulsed and a little afraid at the idea.

“I wasn't talking to you,” the Cat said in a voice like ice. He was staring at the Jabberwocky, his eyes so full of hate that it was hard to look at them. “I'll give myself up, of my own free will, to the Queen, if you walk away from here without Alice. I'll swear it on my Hat.”

“Going once!” Bill shouted.

“Shut up, Bill,” snapped the Dodo.

The Jabberwocky leered at the Cat, greyish droplets of saliva pooling at the edges of his ravaged mouth. He ran this fat tongue across the few, pointed teeth he had, and he laughed, like a songbird.

“You aren't worth that much to anyone, Cheshire,” he said. “Not dead. Not alive.”

The Cat bared his teeth in rising anger. “You bastard,” he snarled, and he would have rushed at the Jabberwocky had the Doormouse not caught him by the back of his collar and dragged him back.

The Hatter turned to face the Dodo personally, his expression grim.

“I will give you my piece on the Chessboard,” he said, his tone final. The reaction was a passionate one.

“Hatter, you can't!” insisted the Hare, grabbing his partner by the elbow.

“I seriously advise against that,” the Doormouse said, without releasing the Cat. The Knave gasped, and all the blood drained from his face—he either couldn't, or wouldn't, make a bigger offer than that. Even the Jabberwocky looked surprised, I think at least. Making expressions didn't seem to be his strongest point.

“Give me your position as a Knight?” the Dodo said, as if he couldn't believe it.

“That is my final offer.” The Hatter's face was grim, determined. This was his ace in the hole.

“Going once?” Bill asked tentatively.

“Going once,” the Dodo confirmed.

“Going once!” Bill shouted. The Knave scrambled, trying to think of something, anything, that might top the Hatter's offer. “Going twice!”

“Think of something, you fools!” the Knave yelled at the soldiers behind him. The only looked uncertainly at each other and shrugged.

“Going three times...”

“No, no, no!” the Knave was screaming, hopping up and down in place and tearing out great wads of his hair.

“And sold!” Bill slammed the gavel against my cage again, sending the reverberations coursing through my body.

The Cat forced his way past the Doormouse and sprinted up to my cage, covering my hands with his own around the golden bars.

“I told you, I told you we'd get you,” he said in a rush. He was obviously shaken, his knuckles were white with how tightly they gripped my hands.

“I know, I believed you,” I assured him. He looked as though he could use the comfort of the lie. He released his grasp and began checking the cage, trying to find how it opened.

“Bandersnatch blood,” he cursed, “is this a trap cube? Where in WonderLand did that bird-brain get one of these?”

The rest of the Rebellion were cheering, clapping each other on the backs and reveling in their success. The Hare produced a bottle of champagne from god knows where and popped it open with a loud crack, and immediately dumped most of it over his own head. Gyphon and the White Knight rushed towards me as well, taking the Cat's spot when he moved to see if he could pry the golden cage open somehow.

“Lady Alice, we are so relieved to see you are alright!” the White Knight said, “If anything should have happened to you, it would have been entirely our fault!”

“No, no, you guys did the best you could,” I told them. “And I'm glad you're okay, Gryphon. That was a pretty bad knock you got back there,” I said, turning to the golden eyed man. He cast a hateful look through the bars at the Cat, who was now on the opposite side of the cage.

“I'd rather not talk about that right now,” he growled, and I took it that not everyone was comfortable with the Cat's most recent abrupt change of sides.

“Do something, do something!” the Knave of Hearts was still screaming, gesturing wildly at his soldiers, who seemed unsure of what exactly the command was supposed to mean.

“Gladly,” the Jabberwocky answered, taking a step forward and his hand reaching for the hilt of his sword.

That put a sudden end to the festivities.

“Stay back!” cried the Hatter in a voice of stone. “We won the auction fair and square! Alice is ours!”

“Do you think I care about some childish bid put on by this wretch of a man?” the Jabberwocky asked, pointing the tip of his long, thin sword at the Dodo without looking at him. The Dodo quailed, no pun intended, and tried to slink behind Bill. The Jabberwocky tilted his head to the side, and spat a wad of blood and spit and pus into the dirt. “This was a farce, a silly game I will no longer indulge in. The Queen sent me to collect the Alice, no matter what. I will take her now.”

“I'll kill you first,” the Cat snarled, drawing his own sword and squaring himself between the Jabberwocky and my cage.

The Jabberwocky only laughed sweetly. “As much as I would love to let you try, I don't have time for your games, sweet Cheshire.” He raised his hand and snapped his fingers. The fifty soldiers behind him suddenly raised their swords and shields as one, midday sunlight glinting off their black and crimson armor. The Cat gave a strangled cry of frustration and fury, and spun back around, trying to pry the bars of the golden cage apart with his bare hands.

“Why won't this open? Dodo, open it, now!” he shouted at the fat man, but the Dodo apparently did not want to be a part of what was about to come, and had turned tail and was sprinting towards the little shack as fast as his girth could manage.

“Hearts, Diamonds,” the Jabberwocky was saying, “force those rebellion scum to retreat. Clubs and Spades, keep the Cheshire Cat at bay, at expense of your lives if need be.”

“Get me out, Cat!” I said, panicked, watching as the Queen's soldiers began to advance.

“I can't!” he cried back, shaking the cage so hard it was nearly knocked off the pedestal. He looked over his shoulder, and saw the Jabberwocky at the head of the small army. The assembled members Rebellion were drawing swords of their own, but their numbers were few, and they weren't heavily armored. The Hatter and Hare came up to my cage, grim faced, the Doormouse at their side.

“We'll do what we can to fend them off. Don't worry, Lady Alice, we won't let them take you,” the Hatter said.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn't believe his words. There was no way they could overpower the Queen's forces.

“Don't!” I cried, as Gryphon and the White Knight and the Tweedle Brothers and the Mock Turtle, and over a dozen more men and a few women that I didn't recognize all readied themselves for the fight. “You'll just get hurt, it isn't worth it!”

“Don't you ever say that again!” the Cat nearly shouted at me. I couldn't help but jerk back in surprise. “You're worth it, you're worth every ounce of blood that might be spilled today! We need you, Alex. The Rebellion needs you, WonderLand needs you. I need you.”

“Cat...” I choked, but then the two sides clashed.

A wave of soldier clad in red, their shields and chestplates embossed with hearts and diamonds and numbers, slammed against the Rebellion's scant forces. A moment later even more men in black swarmed over the Cat. He spun around on them, his sword flashing like strikes of lightning with every swipe and jab, forcing the soldiers back lest they end up on the wrong end of a sword tip through their visors.

“Whatever happens, I'll see you again, Alex!” he grunted as he tried to push them back, but he was completely surrounded and every time he turned one way or the other, the soldiers advanced behind him, drawing ever closer. They were pushing him back, away from the cage, despite is best efforts. He was strong, and fast, but there were too many of them, and he wasn't in the Forest anymore.

“Promise me!” I screamed, barely able to hear myself over the din the of the fighting, the clashing sounds of metal on metal and the occasional shout or cry of pain I was too afraid to search for the origin of. “A Cat never breaks his promise! Promise me!”

“I promise!” he called back, but I could no longer see him through the band of soldiers that surrounded him.

“How precious,” a tinkling voice cooed beside me. I whirled around, and saw the Jabberwocky standing beside my cage. No one else was around, the rest of the rebellion were being overwhelmed two to one and even Bill the Lizard had scarpered, fleeing into the Forest after the Dodo had locked himself in the shack and refused to open the door for him.

“Stay away from me,” I warned, but my voice was shaking.

“You have been summoned to have an audience before her royal majesty, the Queen of Hearts,” was all he replied.

“The last time Royalty tried to tell us what to do, we threw all their tea into the harbor,” I told him, but it was a feeble threat. Perhaps it would have held some weight against Hatter and Hare, but the Jabberwocky didn't even flinch. He reached up to the top of the golden cube, out of the sight, and did something I couldn't see. The top of the cage retracted, the metal bars collapsing inwards and exposing the pale blue sky above me. Before I could try to leap out and make a run for it, the Jabberwocky plucked me out, tossing me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

I screamed and thrashed, but it did no good. If I had thought that the Carpenter had been unaffected by my struggles when he had captured me, it was nothing compared to how little the Jabberwocky seemed to notice me. Leaving the soldiers locked in battle with the Rebellion and the Cat and the Knave of Hearts running around in panicked circles, the Jabberwocky strode off down along the rocky strand, finally bringing me to the Queen of Hearts.