Malice in Wonderland Prequel (8 page)

Alice scowled. She rattled her chains feebly.

The card meanwhile, shook his spear. “Pardon me. Excuse me. Hate to interrupt…”

The Knight looked at him. “Yes, my good man?”

“May I inquire as to whether you come here with good will or bad?”

“Ah, my apologies my good card! But I am here on the Queen’s business. I have secured the young Alice’s services for the accompaniment of me upon an important quest! She is to be my squire.”

“Squire!?” said the card. He lowered his spear.

“That is correct. A most noble position indeed, in this most perilous, and heroic undertaking. Forsooth.”

“What’s a squire?” said Alice. “What is forsooth?”

“I’ll tell you what a squire is. A squire is the knight’s most valuable servant. The carrier of his weapons, the carer for his heart, who keeps his stomach full and his mind pure. Only the most specifically chosen can aspire to the greatness of the station. And…” The Knight took about a dozen clanking steps toward Alice. Unfortunately he tripped and fell, but managed to get up quickly enough. He lifted his sword in the air. “And…I choose you!” He brought the sword down with a vicious strike as Alice winced, but the sword struck on the chain links resting on the ground, severing them with a loud clank.

“Behold!” he proclaimed. “You have now been temporarily freed to be my servant!”

“Blimey,” Alice muttered to herself as she lifted her arm that was still cuffed, with about four feet of dangling chains still connected.

The Knight pointed his sword at the dangling bits of chain, nearly gashing Alice’s cheek in the process. “Oh that will not do.” He whirled around ferociously upon his heel and barked at the card, “Do you have the key? My squire must be unlocked this instant!”

The guard card had suddenly grown meek. “Of course my liege.” He set about putting his spear down so that he could pick up the keys.

Alice crinkled her eyes at him. “What makes you think I
want
to be your squire? Hmm?”

She held her wrist out as the card unlocked her.

“What? Praytell why
wouldn’t
you want to? Honor! Heroism! Adventure! It’s all there! Did I not mention we are going on a
quest?”

Alice was rubbing her newly-unchained wrist. “A quest for
what,
then?”

The Knight sniffed. “A dragon. I wish to slay a dragon.”

Both Alice and the guard card exclaimed simultaneously, “A dragon?!”

The Knight nodded solemnly. “A rival most vulgar and vicious. A dragon like no other. This dragon I daresay is a menace. The
ultimate
menace.”

Alice pouted. “But I’m just a little girl. I fail to see why I should be called upon to battle menaces, ultimate or otherwise.”

“Well, er.” He fidgeted. “Maybe the dragon menace isn’t
quite
as ultimate as all of that, then. The point of it is that you are exactly sufficiently capable of assisting me in my heroic aim.”

Alice placed her fist upon her hip. “Again, I ask you,
why
exactly I would want to put myself in harm’s way?”

“Well, because you’re a good girl, correct?”

“Yes, I even have the two shoes to prove it.” And here she showed him her shoes. He espied them with overmuch delight, she felt.

He said, “And dragons are ferocious and bad, and must be put a stop to, so of course you’d want to help, being the good little girl that you are.”

Alice fidgeted and twerked her mouth from side to side, still not convinced.

“Besides, according to the script, you shall get to play the damsel in distress! Think of all the sympathy that will elicit!”

“Wait, what script?”

“Well, er, I mean to say, these quests tend to follow a particular sort of order. We wouldn’t want to disrupt the natural progression?”

Alice huffed and stomped her foot. “So just because I’m a little girl,
I
have to be the damsel in distress?”

“Well,” said the Knight, “you don’t expect I should be her, do you?”

“Why can’t you take someone else?”

“Because I need both a damsel and a squire, so who better than you? So have you decided to come?”

“I’m still thinking…” She tapped her chin. “What if
I
wanted to slay the dragon.?”

“Ha, you couldn’t harm a fly, even if you tried. We all know how meek and innocent you are. But enough of this piffle. We haven’t the time for this. Why, right at this moment, the horrendous bloodthirsty dragon could be descending upon the village to pillage it and set fire to the fields and ravage the buildings with its vicious talons!” He was making clawy hands and had his eyes bugged out while making a scary face.

Alice drew back. “Oh my, that’s awful!”

“Yes, so you shall accompany me so that I may successfully vanquish this threat in such a heroic manner that the bards shall sing of me? I’ve already composed a poem praising me. Would you like to hear it?”

“Oh no no,” said Alice. “Save it for after you complete the vanquishing. That’s when it’d be most appropriate.”

He nodded. “Quite. Well, let’s not dilly dally. Off we go on our quest. I’m afraid I can’t allow any more time for you to decide. Are you coming?”

Alice rolled her eyes. “Well let’s go then! Quit your dawdling!”

The guard card bowed at her. “I shall cancel your rounds for the day, milady.”

“Thank you guard.”

The Knight said, “My bag of weaponry and inventions is outside, but oh, one more thing, are there any extra chains about?”

“Why yes,” said the guard card. “Why?”

The Knight answered, “They may come in quite handy when Alice plays the role of the Damsel.”

Soon they were on their way. The Knight said they were traveling to a village that would be ravaged by the dragon, after which they would set out to the creature’s lair to slay it.

“That’s the natural order of such quests,” he said.

Alice was huffing as she struggled to carry the clanking sack.

The flimsy sack ripped, spilling its contents onto the ground. She saw that the sack was merely a bedsheet. She looked woefully at the spilled supplies. She saw the extra pair of chains with lock and key, an odd cone-shaped device with a handle, a small pouch, a sword, a bottle of red liquid labeled “tomato catsup”, a compass, a pair of goggles, what looked to be a cookie mold of a clawy creature’s footprint, a box of matchsticks, bottle of rubbing alcohol, and a canteen.”

“Here, I shall help you,” said the Knight as he kneeled and his armor clanked. “Just retie the sheet, leaving out the part with the rip. It’s the sword that seemed to have ripped it. Perhaps I should carry that.”

“You think?! Why didn’t you bring your horse? How far is this village anyway?”

“Well er, my horse and I recently had a spat. I’m sure he’ll get over it. Of course I would have loved to have him with me for the trip to the faraway village, but seeing how I only have you, we shall go to a closer village.”

Alice considered questioning him as to the logic of that, but thought better of it as she realized that a closer village would mean less walking and carrying for her.

They retied the sack and soon they were walking again. The Knight stopped answering Alice’s questions or letting her in on any more information. He said that squires should be seen and not heard. At one point, the Knight realized that he’d left his helmet at the hut, but it was too late to go back. Alice giggled about that.

Soon they approached the “tea party” tree, beneath which was a table, where sat the three characters who sat there drinking tea all day. They were there as usual—the Mad Hatter, the Dormouse, and the March Hare.

“Ah,” said the Knight. “There is the village that is to be attacked.”

“Why that’s no village. That’s just the March Hare’s tea table!”

“You should learn to complain less! I thought you wanted a village that was closer!”

“Yes. I apologize.”

“Remember, seen and not heard.”

The Knight clanked his way forward and Alice dragged the clanking sack/sheet of supplies upon the ground. She feared it would split again at any moment.

The Mad Hatter giggled and pointed. “Why it’s the White Knight and Alice! Where’s your horse, White Knight!?” The March Hare watched on quietly. Meanwhile the Dormouse had lain the side of his head upon the table, apparently taking a nap.

“Hello Mad Hatter, March Hare, Dormouse.” He raised his sword dramatically into the air. “I have come—”

“Fancy a spot of tea?” interrupted the Mad Hatter.

“Perhaps in a bit,” said the Knight. He wobbled the sword. “I hear his sepulchral wings beating upon the heavens. Hark, for here he comes!”

“Alice?” said the Mad Hatter. “Tea?”

“No thank you. I’m on a bit of a quest at the moment. Apologies.”

“Quite all right,” said the Hatter with a wave of his hand and a giggle. “Perhaps later.”

The Knight shouted to be heard. “I have come to encounter the dragon that has been terrorizing this village, and then to track it back to its lair and slay it!”

The Hatter and March Hare looked around. Alice looked too.

“Dragon?” said the March Hare.

The Hatter said, “Village?”

“Yes!” said the Knight as he walked heroically up to the table with Alice following. “The horrible dragon that has been terrorizing this village. Do try to keep up shall you?”

Alice giggled at the puzzled expressions upon the Hare and Hatter’s face. The Dormouse snored.

The Hatter said, “I say, my man, I thought I was the only mad one here.”

The Knight proclaimed, “Oh, but I am the only one with the ears keen enough to hear the beating of the dragon’s wings! Harken! He approaches! Soon he shall be here. Hand me my bag, won’t you dear?” After she did so, he rummaged through it.

The March Hare began trembling. “Is a dragon truly coming to our village? To eat us?!”

The Hatter said, “As I said before, we are not a village. And a dragon has never attacked our village before. Why here? Why now?”

The Knight was adjusting the clear goggles upon his head now. He’d taken out the small pouch. “Ah, these goggles let me see into far distances.” He shielded his eyes with his hand. “Ahah! There, off in the distance. I see it. Don’t you?”

They all looked, except the Dormouse, who was still sleeping, but no longer snoring.

After they’d told him they saw nothing, the Knight sighed. “Very well, I see I shall have to point the vile bloodthirsty creature out. Soon he’ll be close enough for all to see. Come, come everyone. Gather round. Come Alice, stand next to the Hare. There’s a girl.”

Alice didn’t understand why they had to all huddle together in such a particular manner, but she went along with it. The Knight stood behind the three huddled voyeurs, then said, “Now look, just a little to the right of the sun.”

They did so, but of course, the sun temporarily blinded them. The fierce brightness of it tinged all of Alice’s vision with yellow. She heard the Hatter and Hare grunt and yelp as they too, apparently were similarly accosted by blinding light.

She heard a sifting sound behind her, like sand shifting through the air, then felt a pinging on her eyes, like irritating particles of dust. Then the bright blinding light in her vision suddenly shifted into pitch black darkness.

Behind them, the Knight shouted, “Oh no! The dragon has belched forth a blinding cloud!”

Alice heard the Hatter shriek and the March Hare called out, “I can’t see!”

She rubbed at her eyes, but her vision remained pure black.

“Oh no!” called out the Knight. “The dragon is here! His claws, extended! He is about to rend you all limb from limb and roast you in his sulphurous dragon’s breath of flame! And perhaps he shall eat you! He is fond of rabbit meat, I can tell!”

She heard the sounds of crashing china breaking upon the ground so she shrieked and instinctively covered her head with her arms and crouched, not knowing what else to do.

The March Hare called out, “Tell him I’m a hare, not a rabbit!”

While the Hatter yelled, “I can’t see a thing! This is not desirable!”

To her left, she heard the Knight’s voice call out, “Oh vile beast, leave this humble village alone, or suffer my wrath!”

Then a second voice from the left boomed forth in a deep voice, “Oh no, noble Knight, for I know you are the greatest knight of this land, and I shall burn you alive with my flaming dragon’s breath, because you are so legendary and majestic, and then I shall burn this village to the ground!”

This caused issuances of lament from the Hatter and Hare. And Alice, in complete shock, could only utter, “No! Oh, no no no.” The tears of her terror and helplessness began to well up within her blind eyes, then trembled over the edge of her eyes’ boundaries and tumbled downward.

The Knight called out, “No, you shan’t burn the little girl with your demonic breath’s flame. She is my damsel in distress, so I shan’t allow it!” And then she felt the tiny lick of flame upon her cheek. Alice shrieked and drew away from the heat. She could have run, but she was still blind, so how effective would such an action be?