Alice in Zombieland (8 page)

     
Alice had been looking over his shoulder with some curiosity. ‘What a funny watch!’ she remarked. ‘It tells the day of the month, and doesn’t tell what o’clock it is!’

     
‘Why should it?’ muttered the Hatter. ‘Does
your
watch tell you what year it is?’

     
‘Of course not,’ Alice replied very readily: ‘but that’s because it stays the same year for such a long time together.’

     
‘Which is just the case with
mine
,’ said the Hatter.

     
Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter’s remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. ‘I don’t quite understand you,’ she said, as politely as she could.

     
‘The Dormouse is asleep again,’ said the Hatter, and he poured a little cold tea upon its nose.

     
The Dormouse shook its head impatiently, rattling its tiny bones, and said, without opening its eyes, ‘Of course, of course; just what I was going to remark myself.’

     
‘Have you guessed the riddle yet?’ the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.

     
‘No, I give it up,’ Alice replied: ‘what’s the answer?’

     
‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ said the Hatter.

     
‘Nor I,’ said the Dead Hare.

     
Alice sighed wearily. ‘I think you might do something better with the time,’ she said, ‘than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.’

     
‘If you knew Time as well as I do,’ said the Hatter, ‘you wouldn’t talk about wasting
it
. It’s
him
.’

     
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Alice.

     
‘Of course you don’t!’ the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptuously. ‘I dare say you never even spoke to Time!’

     
‘Perhaps not,’ Alice cautiously replied: ‘but I know I have to beat time when I learn music.’

     
‘Ah! that accounts for it,’ said the Hatter, leering at her again, his blue tongue licking at his dry, bloody lips. ‘He won’t stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he’d do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o’clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you’d only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!’

     
(‘I only wish it was,’ the Dead Hare said to itself in a whisper.)

     
‘That would be grand, certainly,’ said Alice thoughtfully: ‘but then—I shouldn’t be hungry for it, you know.’

     
‘Not at first, perhaps,’ said the Hatter: ‘but you could keep it to half-past one as long as you liked.’

     
‘Is that the way
you
manage?’ Alice asked.

     
The Hatter shook his head mournfully. ‘Not I!’ he replied. ‘We quarreled last March—just before
he
went mad, you know—’ (pointing with his tea spoon at the Dead Hare,) ‘—it was at the great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing

-

 
“Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!

 
How I wonder what you’re at!”

-

     
You know the song, perhaps?’

     
‘I’ve heard something like it,’ said Alice.

     
‘It goes on, you know,’ the Hatter continued, ‘in this way:

-

 
“Up above the world you fly,

 
Like a tea-tray in the sky.

 
Twinkle, twinkle—”’

-

     
Here the Dormouse shook itself, and began singing in its sleep ‘Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle—’ and went on so long that they had to pinch it to make it stop. In doing so, a bit of the little thing fell to the table-his foot, and Alice looked at it hungrily, her hand moving slowly across the dirty table toward it. The Dormouse saw it and snatched it back again, tucking it close to its bony chest, sniffing indignantly at Alice.

     
‘Well, I’d hardly finished the first verse,’ said the Hatter, ‘when the Queen jumped up and bawled out, “He’s murdering the time! Off with his head!”’

     
‘How dreadfully savage!’ exclaimed Alice.

     
‘And ever since that,’ the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, ‘he won’t do a thing I ask! It’s always six o’clock now.’

     
A bright idea came into Alice’s head. ‘Is that the reason so many tea-things are put out here?’ she asked.

     
‘Yes, that’s it,’ said the Hatter with a sigh: ‘it’s always tea-time, and we’ve no time to wash the things between whiles.’

     
‘Then you keep moving round, I suppose?’ said Alice.

     
‘Exactly so,’ said the Hatter: ‘as the things get used up.’

     
‘But what happens when you come to the beginning again?’ Alice ventured to ask.

     
‘Suppose we change the subject,’ the Dead Hare interrupted, yawning. ‘I’m getting tired of this. I vote the young lady tells us a story.’

     
‘I’m afraid I don’t know one,’ said Alice, rather alarmed at the proposal.

     
‘Then the Dormouse shall!’ they both cried. ‘Wake up, Dormouse!’ And they pinched it on both sides at once, popping off two small dead chunks of its ribcage, which the Dormouse grabbed hurriedly, all the while watching Alice as it pulled them back to its body.

     
The Dormouse slowly looked around at them. ‘I wasn’t asleep,’ he said in a hoarse, feeble voice: ‘I heard every word you fellows were saying.’

     
‘Tell us a story!’ said the Dead Hare.

     
‘Yes, please do!’ pleaded Alice.

     
‘And be quick about it,’ added the Hatter, ‘or you’ll be asleep again before it’s done.’

     
‘Once upon a time there was a young queen who decided that all dead things should obey her every whim,’ the Dormouse started slowly, eyes already falling back down in preparation for slumber.

     
‘Wake up!’ shouted the Dead Hare. ‘Keep going! This is my favorite story.’

     
The Dormouse jumped in its seat, startled by the Dead Hare’s loud voice. ‘Yes, yes, quite a story it is.’ And it began to doze again.

     
‘Oh this will never do,’ said the Hatter. He reached across the table and pinched the little mouse until its whiskers flew up in pain and surprise.

‘What did you do that for?’ the Dormouse whined.

     
‘The story,’ they all three said at once.

     
‘Oh, yes . . . where was I?’

     
Alice offered helpfully, ‘The Queen?’

     
The Dormouse suddenly leaped from its seat and looked around in terror. ‘Where is she? Don’t let her find me!’

     
The Hatter was able to get the Dormouse settled once again. ‘She isn’t here. She is, in fact, nowhere to be seen. Now get back to the story.’

     
But the Dormouse was too disturbed to sit still for a moment. It found a half-full tea cup and drained it with shaking paws. When it finished, it smacked its lips and sat back, seemingly calm now. ‘Once upon a time there was a queen . . .’

     
‘Yes, you’ve already said that,’ Alice said.

     
The Dormouse gave her a chilly stare and sniffed, turning away. ‘You really should learn some manners.’

     
‘The story!’ demanded the Dead Hare, shaking the little Dormouse until his whiskers began to fall off.

     
‘All right, yes, okay,’ the Dormouse shoved the Dead Hare away. ‘The Queen built a box to control them all. The end.’

     
Alice looked around at the Hatter and the Dead Hare to see if they were satisfied with such an abrupt telling, but neither of them seemed to be listening to the little Dormouse any longer; they were busy gathering up its fallen whiskers, tossing them into their tea cups.

     
‘That’s it?’ Alice said.

     
The Dormouse smiled happily and finally allowed itself to look at her. ‘You liked it? Maybe another one?’

     
‘Yes, yes,’ said the Hatter and the Dead Hare at the same time before Alice could ask the Dormouse to finish the first one to her satisfaction.

     
‘Once upon a time there were three little sisters,’ the Dormouse began in a great hurry; ‘and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well—’

     
‘What did they live on?’ said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.

     
‘They lived on treacle,’ said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two.

     
‘They couldn’t have done that, you know,’ Alice gently remarked; ‘they’d have been ill.’

     
‘So they were,’ said the Dormouse; ‘
very
ill.’

     
Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary ways of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: ‘But why did they live at the bottom of a well?’

     
‘Take some more tea,’ the Dead Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

     
‘I’ve had nothing yet,’ Alice replied in an offended tone, ‘so I can’t take more.’

     
‘You mean you can’t take
less
,’ said the Hatter: ‘it’s very easy to take
more
than nothing.’

     
‘Nobody asked
your
opinion,’ said Alice.

     
‘Who’s making personal remarks now?’ the Hatter asked triumphantly. His eyes rolled around in their dark sockets, like wet pebbles, and he gave a half growl, half snicker.

     
Alice did not quite know what to say to this: so she helped herself to some tea and one of the gnawed-upon bones (the cup was rather smeared with blood and other fluids, but she could no longer control her hunger), and then turned to the Dormouse, and repeated her question. ‘Why did they live at the bottom of a well?’

     
The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, ‘It was a treacle-well.’

     
‘There’s no such thing!’ Alice was beginning very angrily, but the Hatter and the Dead Hare went ‘Sh! sh!’ and the Dormouse sulkily remarked, ‘If you can’t be civil, you’d better finish the story for yourself.’

     
‘No, please go on!’ Alice said very humbly; ‘I won’t interrupt again. I dare say there may be
one
.’

     
‘One, indeed!’ said the Dormouse indignantly. However, he consented to go on. ‘And so these three little sisters—they were learning to draw, you know—’

     
‘What did they draw?’ said Alice, quite forgetting her promise.

     
‘Treacle,’ said the Dormouse, without considering at all this time.

     
‘I want a clean cup,’ interrupted the Hatter: ‘let’s all move one place on.’ He tossed a chipped and bloodied cup to the ground.

     
He moved on as he spoke, and the Dormouse followed him: the Dead Hare moved into the Dormouse’s place, and Alice rather unwillingly took the place of the Dead Hare. The Hatter was the only one who got any advantage from the change: and Alice was a good deal worse off than before, as the Dead Hare had just upset the milk-jug into his plate. But it did not hold milk; instead thick dark blood, with chunks of torn flesh swimming in it, clopped to the dirty plate and table. She pushed the plate away with a disgusted grimace.

     
Alice did not wish to offend the Dormouse again, so she began very cautiously: ‘But I don’t understand. Where did they draw the treacle from?’

     
‘You can draw water out of a water-well,’ said the Hatter; ‘so I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-well—eh, stupid?’

     
‘But they were
in
the well,’ Alice said to the Dormouse, not choosing to notice this last remark.

     
‘Of course they were’, said the Dormouse; ‘—well in.’

     
This answer so confused poor Alice, that she let the Dormouse go on for some time without interrupting it.

     
As it spoke, its fur was falling in little dry clumps at its feet even as it tried in vain to retrieve the stray pieces and put them back.