“I am thirsty, Alice.” He sniffed. “And this all looks wonderful. Tea?”
He lifted the pot, which was now just a pot. There were no ticker tape words, no driving rain or piercing lightning. Just a meadow scene with a trail of heated steam curling from the spout.
Frowning, I lifted my cup. He poured and began chatting animatedly after that.
“One cube of sugar, am I right?” he asked quickly. And before I could even answer that yes, he was correct, he dropped the cube in, stirred quickly, then proceeded to make his own tea.
He wouldn’t take sugar.
I wasn’t sure how I knew that. But I smiled when he took the first sip of his tea without it.
“Thank you for this,” he said a moment later, reaching for one of the card-shaped tea sandwiches.
“Believe it or not”—I grinned weakly—“I loved doing high tea back in Honolulu. There were teahouses everywhere there, though I tended to prefer the more British style of tea as opposed to the Japanese. I know, that’s heresy considering my ancestry. So let’s keep that a secret.”
He gave a low, rumbling chuckle that made my insides feel funny and tingly. I curled my toes in the soft blades of grass beneath my feet.
The snow had almost entirely melted now. When I’d found him this morning, his skin had been tinged blue, but now the sun was out and butterflies with magnificent wings of orange and black flitted around us.
Flowers and leaves bloomed upon the trees that just yesterday had been nothing more than twigs. The smell of spring was all around, and I was sitting with the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen in my entire life, drinking tea.
This was pretty much as perfect an afterlife as I could imagine.
“I promise to never tell,” he said with a short laugh.
The first bite of the tea sandwich made me moan. I’d always been a good cook, and magic or not, I’d definitely had a hand in the creation of all of this, including the chicken salad sandwiches with just a hint of tarragon and lemon zest. They were delicious. And judging by the appreciative glance in Hatter’s eyes, he’d agree.
“You’re an excellent cook, Alice,” he said after he’d stuffed a third one down his throat.
I beamed, feeling giddy by his compliment. “Well, I didn’t exactly slave away. But I know flavor profiles. I was a baker in life, like I said. Used to make cupcakes. All sorts of crazy creations, the names of which completely escape me right now, but I had customers lining up around my building to get to them. I used to make the most amazing things. Like tequila-lime frosting with a lavender-based white cake and a candied orange rind in the middle. I mean, it sounds like it shouldn’t work. And yet they always did. It was like magic really.” Realizing I was getting weird about food again, I gave a weak grin and nibbled on the last bit of my sandwich.
“I can imagine,” he said, looking at me with a polite smile, and I fidgeted on my seat.
“Is that weird? How much I like food? My mother always thought I was weird. She wanted me to be a—”
“Doctor?” he said, and I frowned.
“How’d you know that?”
Clearing his throat, he took a quick sip of his tea and shook his head. “Most parents do. I just guessed.”
“Hm.” I gave him a dubious look, because yes, he was right. But... “I guess you’re right. And yes, they wanted me to be a doctor. My sister is a renowned cardiologist, most of my family is white-collar, and there was me. Silly little Alice Hu. Head in the clouds and heart—”
He grabbed my hand, bearing down. And the words died on my tongue as his heat and mine converged and became one for just a moment. I liked his hands. Not too soft or rough. As Goldilocks would say, they were “just right.”
“What?” he asked.
And I shook, realizing I’d said that aloud. “What?” I yanked my hand out of his and scratched the back of my neck. “I didn’t say anything.”
The heat of blood blazed through my cheeks, branding me a liar, but he was nice enough to pretend not to notice.
“Alice, I was only going to say that you followed your heart. You should stop being so hard on yourself.”
“Huh?” I hadn’t expected him to say that. “I-I wasn’t.” I lied. Because my bakery business had always been a point of contention between my family and me. Didn’t matter how successful I’d become, there’d always been a bit of shame in my mother’s words whenever she’d be forced to introduce me to one of her friends.
“Yes, well, as someone who fully understands what it feels like to let down someone they love greatly, take it from me—don’t dwell on what you can’t change. The past has a terrible way of poisoning the future if you let it.”
I’d just been reaching for a scone when he said that. Pausing briefly, I studied him. “What did you do, Hatter? What brought you here?”
I doubted he would answer, but suddenly I was desperate to know.
I waited on him, not saying anything after that. I had just finished slicing through my scone and slathering it with lemon curd when he inhaled deeply.
“Is that your question for the day, Alice?”
For a second I’d forgotten about our game. But I was just desperate enough to know the answer, so I figured why the heck not. “Sure, it’s my question.”
I took a bite of the scone. Orange cranberry and very buttery, but the curd was a little on the sugary side. I wrinkled my nose but ate it anyway.
“Her,” he said softly.
So softly that I almost hadn’t heard. But when I did, I froze with that next bite of scone halfway to my mouth and a crumb dangling off the tip of my thumb. Ice suddenly flowed through my veins.
“She’s... she’s here?” I didn’t recognize the breathy, gravelly voice as belonging to me.
He nodded once. “Yes, I think now maybe she might really be.”
Feeling like my stomach was now full of sawdust, I gently eased my half-eaten scone back onto the plate and said, “I should go.”
He didn’t say anything for so long that I forced myself up to shaky feet. She was here. The moss woman, his life. She was here. And it was so stupid that it should hurt me, because I knew he’d come for her.
It was why we’d built the connection from the start, because something about me had reminded him of her. And it sucked that I suddenly and deeply wished that for just a second I was the type of girl who could inspire someone’s devotion as deeply as his was for her. But that wasn’t fair to either of them. And so I forced myself to smile through the aching heartache building up inside me.
“I haven’t asked you my question, Alice,” he said just as I was set to turn around.
I paused. “Then ask, Hatter.”
“What do you love most in all the world?” His question was instant, and I frowned.
“You asked me that yesterday.”
“Yes, and it will be the only question I ever ask. Because we can love many things, can’t we?”
I shook my head. Hatter was strange in the most wonderful sense of the word, but being around him right now, it hurt. And I wasn’t even sure why. But I felt so close to tears, and I didn’t want to feel close to tears. It was why I’d sought out Lethe as I had. Because I was tired of hurting.
He would leave me now. He would go and find her and forget all about me. But I owed him an answer, and so I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Dance. I love to dance.”
Suddenly he stood, but I rocked back on my heels, holding up my hands, not sure why or if he planned anything, but knowing I could never let this man touch me again.
There was a part of me that knew if I did, I could never walk away from him again. And so I shook my head. “Don’t. Don’t come any closer.”
He stood still as a statue and nodded only once. “If that’s what you want.”
“It’s what I want.” My voice cracked and I cleared my throat.
His smile was sad, soft. “Good-bye, Alice girl.”
Stupid, stupid tears suddenly did fall from my eye
s. I don’t know why. And I hated myself for them. Angrily, I swiped at them with my wrist and gave a hard nod.
“I never was any good at making lemon curd.”
Don’t know why I said that, but I turned on my heel and ran, ran like the hounds of hell gave chase. I ran for that cliff, knowing that the moment I reached it, I could win, I could outrun the monsters. And when I got there, I didn’t stop, but again I ran over the edge, spreading my arms and legs and closing my eyes as the wind whistled sharply through my ears.
And for just a second, I remembered what it felt like to be alive.
Just before smacking the ground, I shifted, becoming a great big thunderbird with wings of bronze and gold, and as I flew through the sky, sheets of rain and bolts of lightning followed in my wake.
~*~
Hatter
I stood beneath the downpour, watching my beautiful dark bird wing away from me, her voice crying out in despair and melancholy, and I trembled.
She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen or known in all my life.
And for the first time in a very long time, I felt hope.
That tea had come entirely from Alice’s trapped memories. She still knew nothing of our daughter. Or me, sitting out beneath the rain as my mind had fractured bit by bit more for want of her. That’d been one part of our tale I’d deliberately left out.
Alice was remembering. And I didn’t know if it was the magic of the Stones of Veritas or the whether it was a magic all her own, but she’d not lied to me when she’d said she was still in there and would always fight for us.
Rubbing at my aching chest, I was able for just a moment to ignore the pain ripping through my body with each day I was forced to linger here.
“I know you’re in there,” I whispered to the breeze. “I feel you, my Alice. And I will never stop fighting for us so long as there is breath left in my body. Come back to me. Please, come back.”
Chapter 14
Alice
The dead did not dream.
And yet I did.
I wasn’t sure when I’d landed. Or when I’d shifted back to human.
But I was high above the clouds, in a strange nest of twigs, curled in on myself with my cheek resting upon my wrist as I dreamed of a kaleidoscope of colors.
I whimpered.
There was a man.
A beautiful, devilish man. And though I could not make out his features, all I knew, and the only thing that really mattered, was that he adored me.
He was madness and chaos.
And I reveled in it.
I laughed. I twirled and danced upon a sea of floating gems. And he watched. He always watched me, his eyes raking my form with desire and rising lust. I stood nude and proud before him, undulating my hips, beckoning him forward with a crook of my finger. And he grinned. A sexy, side curl of a grin. His big, strong body unfurled from his seat as he made his way slowly over to me.
The night rang out with the song of angels high above.
The sky was blue. And full of dancing yellow lights. We lived in a landscape of fantasy. Glowing mushrooms lit the way from our cottage to the gardens behind. Door after door led to a million worlds of whimsy.
But his home, our home, was the place I loved most.
Then he touched me and I forgot things like words.
I was a creature of desire.
Of want.
Of need.
We kissed, and magic erupted between us. The land sighed happily. The strange and wonderful animals came out to watch us play. I did not mind, for he had his hands on me and I had my hands on him.
And then he was pushing inside me, and he was so strong, so warm. I rocked my hips, arching my back, telling him to give me all of himself.
And he did. He always did.
He never held anything back from me.
We danced upon the clouds, we kissed, we nipped, we moaned and sighed. Moved as one soul, one spirit. He was me, and I was him.
And then we were there, at the very pinnacle of joy. Both of us together, both of us smiling, and I couldn’t see his face, but my soul knew his. And I loved him. With everything that was inside me.
One final kiss and we spiraled together.
With a gasp, I woke up, looking around myself in a daze, wondering where the clouds of jewels were and why there were no mushrooms to light my way. I was alone.
He was not with me.
My arms ached.
My soul yearned.
I sniffed, only just realizing I cried.
Touching the tip of my fingers to my cheek, I pulled away and stared at the now-crystalline teardrop resting milky white upon my pinky.
I wasn’t sure what it was that I’d just dreamed, all I knew was every inch of me felt alive and hot. And my throat was tight with pain, with heartache I couldn’t put a name to.
It was Hatter’s story, I was sure. Hearing of his love for his moss woman, that’s what this was. I’d get over it. I always did.
Life had not been easy for me, why should death be?
Needing to do something, I scooted to the very edge of the massive bird nest and dangled my feet over the side of it, wondering for just a second what it would feel like if I fell and crashed into the sharp rocks below.
Would it hurt?
Could I die again?
A sound like that of a strangled animal slipped past my lips, and I squeezed my eyes shut. Shouldn’t death feel better?
That’s what all the stories said.
All I knew was I’d never hurt so much in all my life.
Tomorrow I would see if he was still there. It was selfish of me, I know. He had to find her; I couldn’t deny him that. All I wanted was two more days. He’d promised me days’ worth of questions, and I would hold him to it.
Then another stupid sob tore from my lips, and I curled back in on myself. But this time sleep eluded me completely.
~*~
Hatter
She did not come the next day, and now all I had left was this night. My life was slowly slipping away, and I could no more go to her than I could return to Wonderland.
I waited, sitting in the same spot I’d been in the past two days now. I hadn’t the energy to do much more than that. It seemed no matter how much I slept, it never felt like enough. My bones ached. My soul grew daily more weary. And even the colors around me seemed more dim, muted. The whites looked gray, the greens were washed out, and the blue sky above no longer resembled a deep blue so much as a tinted white.
If there was a silver lining in all this, I was somehow managing to retain my sanity. I had feared that at some point I might slip into the mania that’d affected me in the other time. That I would be unable to focus on anything other than the madness, unable to remain sane long enough to show her just how deeply I loved and needed her.
But if I focused on her, on her smile, her gentle doe eyes, I could retain some form of sanity. And so here I sat. Waiting. Hoping. Pondering what this might mean for my future and hers.
Alice was remembering.
The tea gave me hope, but I knew that remembering our love would only be half the battle. Because mired in all the joy of a possible reunion was the very real reality that in this life I’d not been good to her.
Because I was now so familiar with our story, I knew that in the other time, she’d called to me during a stint with brain cancer as a child. Age thirteen. And, ironically enough, in this life I, too, had gone to her when she was age thirteen. But the situations had been different too.
It’d been that visitation that’d bonded us through time and planes, bringing me back to the reality of who my true Alice had really been. Thing of it was, the other Alice had been gone from my world in the alternate time. I could see clearly now that with Other Alice remaining in this time as she had, it’d caused my focus to tunnel and I’d ignored all else save for my ridiculous need to force her story and mine into some sort of a twisted happily-ever-after. I’d been so damned determined to make the stories o
f Hatter and Alice true that I’d been blinded to the reality that Other Alice had never been right for me.
With a deep sigh, I stared morosely out at the world of the dead. Night was well under way now and my soul yearned to find Alice, but there was very little strength left to me anymore. When the sun rose, my time here would be at an end. I’d always known three days wouldn’t—couldn’t—be enough time, but faced with that reality now, it was a soul-deep ache that stripped me down to the raw inner nucleus of myself and obliterated what tiny shred of hope I’d told myself not to cling to but had anyway.
I’d half expected the world to become a dazzling landscape of pristine snow again after she’d fled, but this part of Elysium was budding now with the possibility of spring.
The feather-soft petals of a large red rose seemed to wave at me as a gentle zephyr stirred through the calm night, redolent with the lush perfume of a garden in bloom.
A wistful smile touched my face as I recalled another time and place when the flowers had meant so much to us. I’d gifted her a birthday present, and worlds upon worlds we’d traveled through to get to the gift itself. One world in particular had been nothing but flowers. Men and woman and children and animals, all flowers. There’d been such wonder in her eyes. My Alice had always loved the blooms. But that memory was a lifetime ago, and there wouldn’t be enough time to show it to her even if I wanted to. I had this night and nothing more.
And as I sat there, studying that rose and wondering why it was no longer winter, I felt a presence stir behind me.
It wasn’t her.
Even here, in a place of death, I was viscerally aware of Alice, of her scent of vanilla and honey. Always she’d smelled of the foods she loved most.
No, behind me wafted brimstone and fire.
I sniffed, flicking at a long-stemmed blade of grass. “Come to check up on me again, have you? My three days aren’t done yet.”
“She is remembering,” he said without preamble.
Sighing deeply, I hugged my arms to my knees and rested my head upon them for just a moment. Even the simple act of trying to remain alert was harder now. All I wanted was sleep, but I was terrified that if I gave in now, I might never wake again.