It was a currency, I could see that. With it, I might buy leniency from the Hatter’s temper. Still I was very unhappy to hand it over,
Pushing the cup closer to my guest, eyes downcast and voice timid, I said, “You may have it.”
“I will be much better to you than any fairy...”
No, he wouldn’t. I let out a sigh and watched his fingers dart out to pocket my offering. He was grinning again, tapping his toes as he crooked a finger at the broken teapot across the room. It flew to his hand like a darting bird flies to a tree.
Mouth agape, I almost fell out of my chair.
It lacked a handle and he had to hold it with his great long fingers curled around the teapot like a spider. Even so he poured.
Steaming tea came out the spout.
“I have made you cold. You need a warm drink.”
What was this magic? First, the tea pot came at his call, and now there was real tea in my cup.
“Take your cup now. Be a good girl.”
I did as I was told, mesmerized and delighted. The tea was at my lips, I sipped daintily, pinky up just like he had taught me.
I knew the flavor, he’d created my favorite variety, and indeed, it did warm me. The fluid mingled with the grit in my mouth, with the blood, and washed both away.
Chapter 4
“You look a mess, Alice.” My mother buttered her toast, angry to see the dark circles under my eyes, made all the worse against my sallow pallor. “It’s positively shameful.”
Dutiful, I smoothed my pinafore and kept my eyes downcast. For years I had heard the same castigation that I had grown less beautiful than before. “I am sorry, Mama.”
She was fresh in peach silk, her golden hair arranged to showcase her glowing health and beauty. “Do you not think you are too old for nightmares and the abuses you heap on your nanny? Most girls your age have outgrown their governess, they speak Latin and French... yet you still wet the bed.”
The shame I felt at her words, if I could have sunk into the fine dining chair and burst into a puff of dust, I would have welcomed it. “I told you, Mama. It wasn’t me who wet the bed. It was the boys. They did it right in front of me.”
My father slammed down his fork, the china on the table clattering. “That is enough of your outlandish tales!”
“Are you going to tell us these imaginary boys scratched you too?” Eyes the same shade of cornflower as mine, looked down to where my sleeve showed a hint of my wrist. The edges of a scabbed line of scratches peeked out for my mother to frown at. “That you did not do that to yourself?”
No one ever believed me. “I didn’t.”
“These imaginary friends of yours, at your age, it is an embarrassment to our family!”
I had heard them talking, my parents, the servants, about my oddness. I had heard them call me strange and wicked, and I had cried to the Hatter on the nights he came to see me, and I had tried to be the most obedient student even with my awful harp teacher.
“Please listen to me, Mama.” For a moment, I thought to beg my mother to hear me, and then the sad weight of inevitability sank deep into my belly. They were tired of my stories and excuses. I vexed them, my nanny had grown to hate me, and there was no point in any of it. So I lied, hoping it might make them happy. “There are no boys. I wet the bed.” The lie tasted worse than the dirty fingers the Hatter liked to put in my mouth during our games. “It was I who cracked the mirror on my bureau, and I who put the frog in Nanny’s chamber pot. I confess.”
My bid for mercy had been for nothing. My mother’s head, her hair piled up and shining, was turned away from me. “Go to your room, girl. I cannot even look upon you anymore.”
Standing, I followed decorum even as I asked a question to which I already knew the answer. “Am I to be excluded from the Christmas party tonight?”
It was the first time I’d been considered old enough to stand and be seen by the guests. I had been coached for months. My mama had even had a dress special made for me. I wanted to eat ice cream and watch the musicians, and be anywhere other than the nursery.
Papa scoffed. “Acting out as you do, how could you possi
bly imagine we would allow you to attend?”
The injustice broke my heart.
***