xxAlicexx

You wiped your mouth with the back of your hand, and glared at him as he smiled at you. “What do you like me or something?”

He stretched his arms above his head lazily, and looked down at the nails on his right hand, “My, you figured that out quickly.”

This cat was getting more and more on you nerves with his mocking and smiling and cocky behavior. “Why?”

He sighed and shook his head and he took you in his arms and began to dance with you, “Why? Why all the questions? Let’s have a dance.”

All the while Blaine was watching, without a clue as to what to do with you seemingly talking to nothing and now dancing like you were with someone, but there was no one there. He knew he should trust you if you said someone was there, but could he really believe you if he couldn’t see it? It was all so confusing, and he rubbed his head as thinking about all of these things was making it hurt. Never in his life had he had to think about one thing so much, and the fact that it was you he was questioning only made things worse.

“I don’t want to dance…” you said through clenched teeth, trying to escape him, but he only laughed and held you tighter.

“I must admit I have been attracted by you since I first came to you, by the Queen’s orders,” he said, running a finger down the side of your face.

“You know the Queen? How does she know we‘re here?” you asked, a plan forming in your head.

He nodded, as his hand went down to your neck, sending shivers down your spine, “Yes, I know her all too well, I’m afraid. And you should cautious of that one… she knows all that happens in her land.”

You were happy to finally be getting some straight answers, so you took a shot at asking, “Can you take us to her? Does she know how to get us back to our world? Can she help us?”

His lighthearted look left his eyes, and he stopped and held you all the more tighter, “You must not go to her, the only help she will give is to herself, and no one else. No one has ever left this place… And now I‘m afraid I‘ve said too much. Goodbye for now, love. By the way, the name‘s Cheshire.”

“Wait-” you reached out for him as his body began to dissolve before your eyes. Your hands went right through him…

“He’s gone…” you whispered, looking in to the emptiness that he had just been.

“Alice…” Blaine touched your shoulder, and you turned to him, confusion in your eyes.

“Am I going crazy Blaine?” you asked, touching your face where his hands has just been. “I see something you don’t. Is he just an illusion of my mind?”

And now Blaine definitely had to make a decision, as to whether he trusted that you really were seeing what you were. He didn’t want you to think you were crazy, so with a cheerful smile, he lied and said, “I believe you, Alice. If you say there’s something there, then there is.”

You could hear in his voice that he wasn’t being truthful, and that hurt more than anything, even when he, as everyone else, thought you were useless. But you knew he was real… “We should get going to that house, don’t you think?”

“Didn’t you hear what the wolf said?” Blaine asked, again thinking you had lost it. “That witch is waiting to kill us.”

You smiled, almost evilly, “Not if we kill her first. I have a feeling that the wolf wants to help us, or more so use us to help him for his own means. In either case I feel like we need to go there, and find out what we can. Any ally that we can get will help us a lot.”

“Sounds like a plan!” Blaine said cheerfully, glad to be doing something, other than walking around without knowing where you were going.

“He sounded sincere when he was talking about Riding Hood like that,” you commented as the two of you walked along the straight path to her house. “And you heard what he had said about what she does… we can’t let that go on.”

“But we’re not exactly heroes,” he replied, as he scratched the back of his head and looked around the forest surrounding the two of you.

“Says you who goes charging into battle every chance he gets,” you teases, shoving Blaine a little to the side. “We don’t have to be heroes. It’s doing what’s right. I wouldn’t be able to go on knowing we left this place with her still killing people. So let’s just see what we can do. The wolf seemed desperate… but if he’s under her control he probably won’t be much use to us. Either way we have to try.”

Blaine, being much simpler than Alice on most occasions, didn’t argue. The thought of the fight ahead excited him, and he took his sword from his back and began to polish it as he imagined it soaked with blood.

The walk wasn’t far, and before long a small cottage did come into view. It looked normal enough, but you stayed back in the trees, and watched for an hour to see what went on. Nothing happened, no screams, no bodies coming out the door, and no blood to be seen.

“So what’s the plan now?” Blaine asked from behind you.

You bit into your lip and shook your head, “I guess we go in. But be careful. No sword swinging especially if I’m in the way!”

“Ok, got it,” Blaine said, blushing as he remembered the times when he had nearly taken your head off doing just that. “Here,” he held out a small dagger for you to take, “Take this, just in case…”

You took it, and slipped it under your shirt, into the belt of your skirt.

Watching every step you took, you made your way to the door and knocked on it lightly, almost hoping no one would answer.

But the door did swing open to reveal an old woman, leaning heavily against a walking stick.

“Oh hello there,” she said in a dry, husk of a voice “Please, come in, come in.”

You didn’t want to seem suspicious or anything so you smiled, and looked at Blaine, telling him to do the same without talking to him. He nodded and the two of you went inside.

There was a low fire burning in a fireplace that was the only light in the one room cottage. You hadn’t realized that there were no windows when you were looking outside. But searching your memory you thought there had been. Some magic was at work…

The old woman went back to her bed, and laid down on it with a heave and cough. She pulled the quilt up to her chin, and smiled at the two of you, while a nearby clock ticked. You glimpsed at it before you sat down and noticed it said something about a Hatter? But that was all you could make out in the dim light.

You sat down in a rocking chair, and pulled your skirt around you, looking down to the floor where there was a basket filled with sewing equipment. The rock of the chair was squeaky, and old as the woman’s voice. It unnerved you, so you put your feet firmly on the floor, to keep from moving it further. Blaine decided not to sit, but stood at your side, looking distant.

You cleared your throat, “We were told that you were being visited by your granddaughter. But I don’t see her here…”

The woman smiled, and something about that smile rang all too familiar with you, “She is in the back, gathering fire wood. As you see the fire is running small…”

“It seems strange to me that such a young girl would be out in the woods by herself, especially with what she told me of the wolf,” you said, making pleasant conversation, and actually forcing yourself to sound worried about her.

“Ah, the wolf,” she chuckled, another rack of coughs over taking her. “He knows better than to mess with Red. The woodcutter had dealt with him before.”

Silence followed, as you went over what she had said. You wondered if maybe looking for other people to help you might have been a good idea, but it was too late for that now. You were on your own. And the mocking tick of that clock was not helping as it seemed to speed up one moment, stop, then go on slowly. There was no pattern to it at all, and you thought maybe this “Hatter” thing was worth finding out about.

The coughing began again, and the woman sat up, like a lung was about to pop out, and you watched as blood formed on the blanket she was clutching.

She sat back in her bed, and looked to you, weakly, “My dear… can you come closer and help me?”

Blaine shook his head to you, but you stood up and went to her anyway, holding out a handkerchief that you had picked up along the way from a table in the middle of the room.

When you leaned down to give it to her, her eyes flashed red, and she reached out a claw like hand and grabbed your arm, scratching into it painfully, “I’ve got you now!”

“Think again you hag!” you yelled, plunging the dagger that you had been hiding under the handkerchief into her chest. She screamed, as blood spurted from the wound, then went still on the bed, and her body changed from that of the old woman, to the little girl, then to what looked to be a thirty year old woman. She looked dead, and you turned to tell Blaine the news, but when you did she raised from the bed onto her feet, and grabbed you around the waist.

“It will take more than a sting to kill me, dear,” she whispered into your ear, then licked the side of your face and disappeared with you, leaving Blaine alone.