She pushed Charles back as rows upon rows of knights in red clattered into the clearing. She'd never seen such klutzes in her life! There were first two, then ten, then twenty, then fifty or more, all tripping over their feet, each other, or roots on the ground. Brett grabbed Charles and fled behind a tree to keep from being trampled.
She winced as the Red King stormed past their hiding spot. Fortunately, he didn't even look at them. His only interest was in the knight with grubby armor who just tripped over a root. “Sir Klugman,” he snapped, “what's going on here? I thought you had control of this! Several thousand knights...”
Jack pulled up his visor and glared at his boss. “Four thousand, seven hundred, and ninety-five men,” he grumbled, “and they all got away from me! Just glad you didn't send all of the horses. Dealing with those idiots was bad enough.”
“No, some of them were needed in the game.” He leaned on his cane as Jack rolled creakily to his feet. “Have you seen Queen Betty's messengers? We still have the March Hare, but the Mad Hatter may somehow found a way to flee Limbo.”
“He did.” Jack dusted himself off, sending a shower of dirt in all directions. “Three of my guys reported seein' that lady and the Mad Hatter talkin' to Humpty-Dumpty right before he fell off. Bet they pushed him.”
The Red King made a face. “Not likely. Dumpty should not have been sitting on that wall. I've told him he was setting himself up for a great fall, but he just spouted a lot of gobblety-gook about words and their meanings.”
“Look, boss, if I'm gonna find the other messenger, I have to get moving.” Jack managed to get on his fat black horse with the dirt-smeared red blanket. “Queen Betty always employs two messengers, one for comin', one for goin'. We got the one comin'. The Hare's code name is Haighta. Somethin' 'bout Anglo-Saxon stuff, whatever that means. The other one's Hatta. If he gets back to the Queen n' King of Hearts with what's goin' on here...”
“He won't.” The Red King chuckled. “You'll know him by his strange attitude, always skipping and happy. Like the old line, 'I love my love with an H.'”
Charles smirked at Brett. “They're expecting me, Susan. Watch and learn.” Before she could stop him, he replaced the blank blue card in his hat with one saying “Message for the king,” smeared grass over his face to make it look green, and skipped right out and in front of the duo.
“Message!” He waved his card right in the Red King’s face. “Message for his Majesty King Mark the Red, from the Great Hoo Dooda!”
“Over here, Messenger!” Charles ran over so quickly, he was too out of breath to speak. All he could manage was waving his arms around and giving the Red King the strangest looks with those wide, round pale blue eyes of his. “Messenger,” the Red King said sharply, “I don’t speak hand-waving. I can’t understand a word you’re not saying.” The more Charles went on, that green face turning more pea-like by the moment, the more the Red King started to look crimson all over. “I’m starting to feel faint,” he groaned. “Would someone give me a bologna sandwich?”
Charles managed to regain his breath long enough to pull a sandwich out of his hat. “I always come prepared, Your Majesty.”
Even after devouring it in two seconds, Mark was still the color of his zig-zag crown. “Hay!” he gasped. “I need hay!”
Brett raised an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t water be better if you feel faint?”
“Not here, Susan,” Charles whispered to her in her hiding place. “Remember where we are. These people take the opposite of what you’d normally need. Your Majesty,” he said quickly, “I just happen to have hay on the bottom of my bag.”
“Thank you, my good man.” He stuffed it in his mouth and swallowed hastily. “Ahh,” he murmured as his legs stopped shaking, “that’s much better. Now, my good man, tell me what made that crash.”
Charles leaned over his ear. “I’ll whisper it to you, Your Majesty.” He leaned over his ear and cupped it as if he was going to speak softly…but he ended up screaming at the top of his lungs “THEY’RE AT IT AGAIN!”
The Red King wiggled a finger in his ear. “Was that really necessary? If you try that again, I’ll have you buttered! It went through my head like an earthquake.”
“It would have to be a very small earthquake,” Brett muttered from behind the tree.
Jack wrinkled that huge nose of his. “The Lion and the unicorn? Those idiots? They’re still fightin’ for the crown? I thought the crowd drummed them out of town!”
The Red King sighed. “So did I. They’re supposed to be guarding the entrance to the gates of the Red Castle and the final square, not making enough noise to be heard above-ground. I’d turn them into a toy lion and unicorn,” he added, waving his scepter, “but good guards of the gate are hard to find. Not to mention, it’s my crown they’re fighting over. Messenger,” he added, “would you be so good as to tell those two they need to dial down the noise? That’s not the way the game is played. And please get my spare crown back. I may need it.”
Charles bowed low before him. “Yes, Your Majesty.” Jack kept giving him a weird look, but he managed to dodge the slovenly knight. “I need to deliver them messages from Queen Betty anyway.”
The moment the two left, he waved over to Brett in the tree. “Come on, Susan.”
Brett didn’t know Charles could move so fast. “Wait…up…” she panted. “Victor…would you be…good enough…to slow down for five minutes?”
“I’m good enough,” Charles chuckled, “but five minutes go by so fast! You might as well try to stop a bandersnatch!”
They finally came to a great crowd gathered around what appeared to be a cloud of dust. She thought she saw a gleaming gold horn and a chestnut mane, and a black and silver mane with a wide smile and a black nose.
To her delight, she recognized several faces. “Orson! How did you get loose? Last time I saw you, the Red Knight stuffed you in a cage! Have you seen my sons? Does the Red King still have them?”
“Shh!” The slender rabbit-man waved his paws. “I got the jailer to let me loose when I told him I was a messenger for the King. I don’t think he knows I’m here. He still has the others, except Dutchess Marcia. I have no idea where she or Queen Helen went.”
Charles threw his arms around Orson. “I am so glad to see you again!”
“Cats!” Jimmie the Dodo fluttered next to them. “Glad to see you’re all dy-no-mite! I been flutterin’ around, lookin’ for the rest of you all this time. I thought you were stuck in that Limbo joint.”
“We got out. It’s a long story,” Charles explained as he handed Orson a cup of tea. “We need to ask the Lion and the Unicorn how to get to the next square. It’s the only way we’ll rescue the others.” He sipped his tea. “How are they doing with the fight, anyway?”
Orson shrugged. “It’s going pretty well, as far as I can tell. They’ve each been down eighty-seven times.”
“Are we gonna have the white bread and brown soon?” Jimmie licked his beak. “I ain’t eaten since before the Caucus Race!”
Suddenly, the dust stopped. “Round eighty-eight is over!” Charles declared. “It’s time for refreshments!” They handed around trays of the white and brown bread from a table under a pine tree. Brett took a slice of white bread to try, but it was very dry!
“I think,” the Lion panted, “we won’t be fighting anymore today. Pick it up same place tomorrow, darling?”
“Of course, love,” she said in a familiar Liverpool accent, “we always pick up at the same place. It would be rather silly to pick up somewhere different!”
Brett’s eyes widened. “Dick Martin? Dolly? I know you two have had some problems lately, but really, do you need to argue like this?”
“Of course!” Dolly took a piece of bread in her hooves. “It’s what we do.” It was rather strange to see a horn growing out of Dolly’s otherwise-perfect snowy forehead, and how much longer and thicker Dick’s own mane had gotten. “Oh look,” Dolly said, pointing as a flash of white went by, “there’s the White Queen! I think she must have escaped the siege of the White Castle.”
“We’re sorry we didn’t get there in time,” Dick added, “but we were busy fighting for the Red King’s crown.”
Brett tried to see her over the crowd. “Helen! Helen, where are you?”
“She’s gone now.” Orson shrugged. “There’s some enemy after her, no doubt. We’ll go after her as soon as we finish our tea.”
“No,” Brett snapped, “we’ll go now! She could be in trouble!”
Charles shrugged. “Or she could be chasing her shawl. She always has trouble with that thing. Besides, she runs so fast, I don’t think any of us could keep up with her. You might as well run after a Bandersnatch, Susan!”
Dolly sauntered by first, suggestively waving her tail. “I believe I had the best of you this time, dearest,” she whinnied sweetly, chucking her leonine husband’s square chin.
“A little, dear.” Dick rubbed his chest, which bled rather badly. “Did you have to run me through?”
She smirked. “It got your attention, didn’t it?”
“You don’t look too bad, Dick” Brett commented.
Dick shrugged his furry shoulders. “She does that to me all the time.”
“Pardon me,” Dolly added, “but are you and the creature in the top hat by any chance humans?”
“We are,” Charles told her between sips of tea.
Orson nodded. “We only found her today. Large as life and twice as natural!”
“So there really are humans!” giggled Dolly in delight. “Oh, I thought they were fabulous monsters! Are you alive?”
Brett rolled her eyes. “Last time I checked, hon.”
“I’m not too sure about that,” Charles added as he calmly sipped his tea.
The lady unicorn walked around her like she was inspecting a car. “And it talks, too!”
“Yes, I talk, too!” Brett snapped. “Where I come from, unicorns are the ones considered to be fabulous monsters! I’ve never seen one alive before!”
“Well,” said Dolly, “now that we’ve seen each other, if you’ll believe in me, then I’ll believe in you. Is that a bargain?”
“Well,” chuckled Brett, “why not? Ok, it’s a bargain.”
Dolly’s wide smile somehow worked quite well in a horse’s muzzle. “In that case, we need to celebrate. Messenger,” she added to Charles, “let’s have some plum cake. None of that dry Looking Glass Bread for us!”
Somehow, Charles managed to pull a plum cake from a bag on his hip and lift the heavy Vorpal Sword to slice it. He insisted that Brett hand it around. She had no idea how it all got there. Her Charles was no magician!
Dick the Lion raised one furry brown eyebrow as Brett gave him cake. “Dear, what is this? Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral? It does look like Hoo Dooa and The White Knight…”
“It’s a fabulous monster, luv!” his ex-wife whinnied. “There’s others besides Hoo Dooa. It only just came today.”
“Then keep handin’ ‘round that plum cake, monster!” Dick ordered sleepily as he lay on the ground and put his chin on his great furry paws. “And don’t keep it all to yourself, dear. Fair play with that cake, you know!”
Poor Charles did look a little uncomfortable sitting between the huge lion and his sharp teeth, and the unicorn and her sharper horn. “Um, Brett,” he squeaked in a very high-pitched voice, “could you speed things up with the cake? I’m kind of hemmed-in here!”
Dick ignored him, looking up from his paws. “Dearest,” he chuckled, nodding at the red zig-zag crown on the ground next to Charles, “want to fight for it again? I’ll win easily this time.”
The little English unicorn let loose with one of her famous merry giggles. “I’m not so sure of that! You know I’ll just beat you again, dear!”
“I’ll beat you all around the town, darling,” Dick added with a growl.
Charles gulped. “Uhh,” he squeaked with a quavering voice, “all around the town? That’s a long way. Brett!” he wailed. “Could we get a move on here? What’s with that cake?”
“The cake hates me, that’s what!” Brett sawed hard as she could, but the slices just jumped back on. “No matter how often I cut the damn thing, they just keep jumping back!”
“You don’t know how to manage Looking Glass cakes,” Dolly the Unicorn snickered. “Bring the cake around, and then cut it.”
That sounded weird to Brett, but she did it anyway. Indeed, the slices fell right off the cake the moment she handed them to the others. “Hey!” Dolly grumbled. “The monster gave Dick twice as much as I have! That’s no way to party!”
Dick frowned. “She kept none for herself. Don’t you like plum-cake, Monster?”
She didn’t have the chance to answer before drums sounded in the distance. They were the noisiest drums she ever heard. It was worse than Gary Burghoff practicing his drum set in the studio hallway. Everyone threw their hands over their ears. She couldn’t tell where the noise came from. It reverberated all around them, gaining strength by the second.
“I think,” Orson managed to shout over the din, “that we ought to get out of here! All this racket isn’t good for a rabbit’s sensitive ears.”
“Yeah man,” Jimmie added, wings over his head where ears probably were, “let’s blow this place an’ find a joint where we can hear ourselves talkin’!”
Brett grabbed Charles’ hand. “Follow me!” They leaped over the little brook Dick was laying by, followed by Orson with a hop and Jimmie fluttering over. “If that noise doesn’t drum those two idiots out of town,” she added over the din, “nothing will!”
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