A Tale That Could Not Be

Selvina groaned in annoyance for the umpteenth time in just a few minutes as she drove her palm into her forehead and clenched her teeth tightly. She stood in a vibrant garden with a large table in its middle. On its surface were dozens of teacups—most of them broken, plates, bowls, teapots, cutlery, and various kinds of food. Rapunzel stood behind her and the Cheshire cat hovered overhead, grinning as usual. “I know I’m missing a shoe; that isn’t important right now.”

“Oh, but it is important!” said one of the two most annoying and impossible people Selvina had ever met in her entire life. He was a man dressed in a tattered green suit, brown pants with dozens of multi-colored patches, remarkably clean black shoes, a huge polka dot bow tie, and on his head was a large green top hat with the price tag hanging off its side. Tufts of red hair stuck out from under the hat and from his breast pocket hung a broken pocket watch. He held a cracked teacup in his white-gloved hand and was making elaborate gestures, splashing tea every which way. He pointed at Selvina’s shoeless foot with his other hand and widened his multi-coloured eyes in alarm.

The second character was a large, brown hare as tall as man dressed in a red coat with trimmed fur, a stern gaze, and a black military cap on his head. He continuously paced around the table, carrying a massive spoon like a rifle, and would often bow and salute no one in particular. He spotted Selvina’s shoeless foot and pointed his gigantic metal spoon at it, much like the other man was doing with his finger. “Ma’am, you have no shoe.”

“I KNOW THAT!” Selvina shouted, her face red with frustration. “I lost it in the mud on the way here! I already told you this!”

“She lost it,” the man in the hat said, leaning toward the hare as if not wanting anyone else to overhear.

“Aye, she did,” the hare replied in a deep voice. “It is my duty to find it!”

“I’ll help!”

The two then hurriedly began searching the area for Selvina’s missing shoe, flipping chairs, looking under the table, peeking inside teapots, checking beneath plates, and inspecting the inside of their own shoes. The hare wore no shoes but that didn’t stop him from looking between his toes. Their odd spectacle lasted for many minutes and Selvina looked up at the floating cat, who appeared to be enjoying every moment of it.

“You knew it would be like this, didn’t you?” Selvina asked the cat.

Cheshire cat shrugged. “Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn’t. You never know what you’ll get when you meet the mad.”

“Who are these people?” Rapunzel asked with a confused expression on her face. At the moment the man in the hat was searching inside the hare’s large ears and the hare was shoving his face inside the man’s hat.

“The Mad Hatter and the March Hare,” Selvina replied dryly. “I should have known asking them for help would have given me nothing.” She frowned at the Cheshire cat. “It’s that stupid cat’s fault. It knew this would happen.”

“I’m pretty sure the cat’s a he,” Rapunzel corrected. When Selvina fixed her a fearsome glare she raised her hands in deference. “I was just saying…”

“Saying what?” the Mad Hatter asked, darting up to Rapunzel and pressing his face against hers. “What were you saying? I’d like to know. I want to know. I need to know!”

Rapunzel backed away and kept the hatter at arm’s length. “I was just saying that the Cheshire cat was a male.”

“Chesh has mail?” The Hatter then rushed to hovering cat and leapt up, attempting to grab him. “Give me mail! I want mail! I never get mail!”

“Mail?” asked the March Hare, his ears perking straight up with interest. “Perhaps it is time for war! The general must be calling for me.”

The Hatter shook his head wildly and fluttered his hand at the hare, as if shooing him away. “The general generally doesn’t care for you or your hair, hare. He told a private to keep it private but the major said it was major and told me instead!”

“Oh, well in that case I shall keep waiting. He will call for me one day.” The March Hare then continued his patrol around the table, humming a marching tune as he did so.

“We need to keep moving, Chesh,” Selvina said, utterly fed up with trying to get any help from the two insane individuals. “I’d like to reach the castle before I lose my mind.”

“Lost her mind!” The Mad Hatter exclaimed with an exaggerated gasp. “She’s lost her shoe and her mind!”

The March Hare shook his head and tut-tutted, eyeing Selvina directly. “You’ll lose your head losing such things. I lost a race against a tortoise once and it lost me everything until I found it all. Never again, I said, and now I have it all! Maybe you should race a tortoise.”

The Hatter ran up to Selvina, grabbed the front of her blouse, and gave the March Hare a nod. “Don’t listen to him. There are no tortoises around here. There’s the Mock Turtle but he doesn’t race, just mocks. I don’t think he even has socks. Can you believe it? He mocks without socks. How ridiculous!”

“You’re ridiculous!” Selvina snapped, shoving him away angrily. “I came here for help and you two are just too far gone to be worth it. I’m leaving.”

“You can’t leave!”

“And why not?”

“Well, for one thing you’re missing a shoe!”

“And your mind!” the March Hare added from his position on the other side of the table.

“Yes! Your mind!” the Hatter added. “You can’t go unless you find them! We will help you! You came for help and that is what we’ll give you! We have lots of that here!”

“I came for help finding a way to the castle! I don’t need a new shoe or to get back my mind, which I still have, at least for now…”

“The castle?” the Hatter asked, taking a step back and clenching both hands before him, as if he was almost afraid. The March Hare stopped marching and listened intently, his ears erect and positioned toward Selvina.

Selvina exchanged a glance with Rapunzel, both of them surprised at the sudden change or attitude in both characters. She then cleared her throat and said, “Yes, I wish to go to the castle. I have some friends going there and I need to join up with them again. Cheshire cat said you could get you me there.”

The Hatter and the Hare exchanged multiple glances, ranging from fear, to excitement, to fear again, and then back to excitement, but back to fear, and eventually confusion.

“Why the castle?” asked the Hatter before he began munching on his bowtie.

“I told you,” Selvina started, hoping this wasn’t going to result into another bout of insanity, “I need to get back to my friends. A bad man named Peter Pan is taking them there and I have to rescue them.”

“PAN!” the Hatter and the Hare exclaimed simultaneously, both jumping up in the air a few feet as they did so. The Hatter then ran behind the Hare, who gripped his giant spoon like a sword and glanced about, his eyes narrowed and his mouth etched in a snarl.

“You know Pan?” Selvina asked the Hatter and the Hare.

“Everyone knows Pan,” the Cheshire cat replied for them. “Wherever he goes he ensures that people remember him, though perhaps not for the best reasons. Usually they are not very pleasant reasons at all.”

“Did he do anything to you?” Rapunzel asked the two figures with questionable intelligence.

The Hatter extended his arm, in which he held the broken teacup in his hand. “He chipped my cup!”

“I saw you chip that when I first showed up here!” Selvina said with a frown, wondering if they were just toying with her. With the exception of the Cheshire cat, who seemed sane enough, they had probably never met Pan.

“He is evil,” the March Hare said, finally saying something that made sense. “I refuse to invite him to our parties.”

“Ruins them, he does!” the Hatter added. “He breaks teacups, scratches plates, and drinks all of our tea!”

“All of our tea!” the Hare parroted.

“I need to stop him,” Selvina said, growing infuriated and having lost all patience long ago. “If I rescue my friends I’ll be hurting him. Will you help me with that?”

“Help hurt Pan?” the Hatter asked, peeking out from behind the Hare.

“Yes.”

“Pan help hurt?”

“No…”

“Help Pan hurt?”

“NO! You will hurt Pan!”

“I will hurt Pan? How?”

Selvina screamed and pulled on her golden locks painfully. She had had enough. It was pointless talking to these two. She’d have better luck taking her chances with the forest thus she decided to stomp over to the edge of the garden where the forest began again. The Cheshire cat and Rapunzel followed close behind.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Rapunzel asked as Selvina stepped into the forest. “We don’t know the way.”

“Do you have any better ideas?” Selvina growled. “If you want to waste time talking to those two go right ahead. I’m going to find my own way through this thing.”

Rapunzel sighed and stayed at the edge of the forest as Selvina walked deeper and deeper into it. “Wait! Let me try! I…I don’t know if I can do better than you but I can still try…”

“Whatever,” Selvina said with a wave of her hand. She returned to the edge of the forest and leaned against a tree as Rapunzel walked toward the Mad Hatter and the March Hare.

The Cheshire cat sat on a branch over her head and looked down at her with that grotesquely wide grin of his. “Do not give up so easily and do not be so quick in going to the castle. You’ll lose your head if you do—and I mean that it will be chopped off.”

“Yeah, well, chopping it off sounds rather enticing compared to dealing with those two idiots.”

“They are only trying to help.”

“No, they’re trying to make me as mad as they are.”

“Now you’re the one that’s mad.”

Selvina sighed and said no more. She was quite done with Wonderland. She didn’t even mind if she never returned home, just as long as she got out of this dreadful place. A part of her wished the caterpillar had never separated her and Rapunzel from Pan, Wendy, and Goldilocks. At least Pan knew his way around this world and was saner than her present company, which was saying a lot.

Rapunzel approached the Hatter, who was sipping tea and dancing to an unheard tune. When he noticed her he tossed the teacup aside, where it hit a tree a smashed into thousands of shards, and then smiled. Rapunzel took a deep breath and, holding her pile of hair in her arms, opened her mouth to speak.

The Hatter cut her off. “Why must you have such long hair?” He reached for the pile in her arms and touched it gingerly as if afraid it would bite him. “It is quite….llllllllllloooooooooong.”

Rapunzel furrowed her brow. “I’m not here to talk about my hair. I need your help.”

“Everyone needs our help!”

The March Hare, patrolling toward their position, nodded and added, “It is what we do. We help!”

“But not during teatime!” the Hatter corrected.

“Not during teatime!” the Hare mimicked.

“This is an important mission,” Rapunzel said, glancing at the Hare. At the mention of the word “mission” his ears perked up and he turned around, forgetting about his patrol and standing to attention.

“Mission?” he exclaimed, his eyes bulging wider and his body as rigid as a board. “From the general?!”

“Yes!” Rapunzel said with an exaggerated nod. She then gestured for the two to crowd closer and Selvina walked nearer to overhear the conversation.

“The general wants you two brave heroes to escort me to the castle,” Rapunzel was saying. “He said that because my head has hair so long and no hat sitting on top of it that only a hare and a hatter could do this. It is an incredibly top secret mission and that’s why he can’t send anyone but me to tell you about it.”

“The general said this?” the Hare asked with deep interest.

“He did,” Rapunzel replied, stern-faced.

“If the general said it then it must be true,” the Hatter reasoned aloud. “Come to think of it, I’ve never even seen the general.”

The Hare stuck his chin up and narrowed his eyes. “The general is a secretive man and only reveals himself to his most trusted soldiers. I saw him only once but I will never forget it.”

“What does he look like?” the Hatter asked excitedly.

“Like a general.”

The Hatter gasped and fanned the air animatedly. “Amazing! You really did see him!”

“Yes, I did.”

Rapunzel stomped her foot, getting their attention once more. “We have to hurry! Are you going to do this or do I have to tell the general that you are disobeying a direct order?”

“Never!” the March Hare shouted with a thump of his large feet. “It is my duty! Onward!” And with that both he and the Hatter marched off into the forest, singing a marching song and hardly paying attention to whether Rapunzel was following them or not.

Selvina waited for Rapunzel to walk past her before trailing at her side, smiling wide with amazement. “That was incredible,” she said to her friend. “How did you know that would get them to listen?”

Rapunzel smiled, blushing lightly. “I didn’t. I just assumed it might.”

“One might call you mad for believing it ever would,” Chesh said from above with his customary grin. “A little madness can take you a long way.”

“You don’t seem as weird and crazy as those two,” Selvina said with a nod at their two guides.

“We’re all mad here,” Chesh replied with a laugh. “Soon you will be too.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I remembered the way to the castle!”

Selvina suddenly stopped walking, her eyes flaring with green fire and her arms shaking. With clenched teeth and a red face, she growled, “What?!”

Rapunzel glanced from her to the hovering cat and took a few cautionary steps back.

“Are you telling me that you could have taken us there the entire time?” Selvina asked, fighting to hold herself back from shouting.

“Why, yes, of course. I go to the castle many times. I simply forgot the way.”

“You forgot?!!! I don’t have time for games, cat! I need to find Pan and rescue my friends! We wasted all this time with those two idiots when this whole time you could have just brought us there instead!”

“I told you that you’d get mad.”

“I’m FURIOUS!”

Rapunzel rushed to Selvina and stood directly in front of her, blocking her view of the Cheshire cat. She locked eyes and begged her to calm down. Selvina, unable to witness the grinning cat, eventually, if slowly, settled down and took a deep breath.

“Fighting with Chesh is only slowing us down,” Rapunzel was telling her. “Let’s go catch up to the Hatter and the Hare before we lose them.”

“It doesn’t matter if we lose them. That stupid cat can show us the way!”

“Selvina! Let’s go! Now!” Rapunzel then did something that both shocked and yet impressed Selvina. The slap she received across her cheek stung painfully and echoed throughout the forest. There was a moment of silence as Rapunzel stared with increasing fear, her breath steadily quickening. Chesh peeked over her shoulder, eyeing Selvina cautiously, and Selvina stared back.

Surprising them both, Selvina smiled and rubbed her stinging cheek. “The last time someone did that they became one of my greatest friends. Thanks, Rapunzel. I suppose I needed that.”

“May I try?” Chesh asked hopefully, raising a clawed paw. “I’d like to be one of your greatest friends.”

Rapunzel grabbed Selvina’s arm and pulled her along before another fight broke out. Chesh groaned in disappointment but followed them anyway. The three raced through the thick forest and listened for their guides’ marching tune as they were now lost from sight. Fortunately, it did not take them long to hear it and they soon caught up to them. The Hatter glanced back as they approached and tipped his hat at them, acting as if he had never noticed their absence.

Which he probably hadn’t, Selvina thought dryly.

After many minutes of steady hiking and incessant marching tunes, which was always the same one simply with mixed lyrics, they settled in for a break in a small grove of large mushrooms. The Hatter and the Hare pulled out teacups from within their jackets, somehow still filled with warm tea, and began sipping away pleasantly. The Cheshire cat found a branch in a nearby tree to lie down on and rest and Rapunzel sat against its trunk where she spread her arms, dropping her pile of hair on her lap. Selvina sat on a large mushroom cap and eyed her strange company with a smile somehow finding its way on her face.

The mad ones drove her insane but the Cheshire cat was right in saying that they only wanted to help. Annoying as they were, their hearts were in the right place and Selvina supposed that with enough exposure to them she’d grow accustomed to their strange antics. She might even grow fond of them, with time. The grinning cat was good company, if irritatingly impossible to understand at times, and though she had wanted to strangle him she considered him a friend. Rapunzel definitely was one, and a good one at that, Selvina thought as she watched the young woman comb through her hair with her fingers. She could still feel the tingle from where her hand had smacked across her face and remembered when Red had hit her in the same spot, what felt like so long ago. She had been proving to her that she wasn’t dreaming and ever since then she had been by her side along with strong and loyal Bigbad the wolf. Selvina’s thoughts then veered to Captain Hook and Sinbad, both leaders in their own right and men of honour and great experience. Cindy appeared next, once a starving alley-dweller and then a brave and fiery young woman, but now nothing more than ashes. A pang of guilt stabbed Selvina’s chest at the memory of Cindy burning at the stake. Selvina still considered herself at fault for letting that happen. A mischievous grin suddenly flashed in her mind, quickly followed by a mop of messy brown hair and glinting brown eyes.

“Jack,” Selvina whispered, her eyes veering down to the ground sadly. How she missed his insufferable jokes, crude humour and devilish charm. He had annoyed her often and yet she had grown incredibly fond of him. Her eyes closed as she remembered the kiss they had shared at Belle’s castle. He had wanted to tell her something and though she had a strong suspicion of what it was she had desperately wanted to hear him say it. Jack had never got the chance to tell her, though, as she was then taken by Artemian the bounty hunter and then shackled to a stake by Frollo the villainous judge of the city of Our Lady. She had been rescued in time before going up in flames only to be taken by Pan. That was the last time she had seen any of them. She missed her friends terribly and though she appreciated the new ones she had now she forever longed for her first companions.

Soon, she thought with a glimmer of hope. Once she reached the castle she would find Wendy and Goldilocks, rescue them, and be gone from here. After that it was just a matter of finding her way off the island and then…

And then what?

“Eat it,” the Hatter said, shattering her thoughts as he pointed to the mushroom she sat on. “It gives you a little surprise at the end!”

Selvina furrowed her brow in confusion but decided to take his word for it. Her thoughts still mostly focused on her former companions, she ripped a small chunk off the mushroom and nibbled on it.

“Don’t you mean it gives you the surprise of little at the end?” the Hare debated with the Hatter.

“Oh my!” the Hatter exclaimed with a chuckle. “I believe you are correct!”

Indeed he was, as Selvina was now sitting on a mushroom hundreds of times the size she had been on before. The world around her had suddenly grown to gargantuan proportions and she felt intensely small. It didn’t take Selvina long to realize that it was she that had changed and not the world around her.

“Look what you did!” she heard the thunderous voice of the Hare shout out as he splashed his tea in the Hatter’s face. “Now you’ve gone and made her little!”

“No matter, my friend! I can carry her in my teacup!”

“There is no time for that!” Cheshire cat said with alarm, waking up from his sleep and glancing off the side. “Bandersnatch!”

Rapunzel was on her feet in an instant and hurrying toward Selvina’s mushroom, her face pale with fear. She watched the titanic teen approach, her heart beating faster with every passing second. As much as she wanted to be returned to her proper size she wanted to be away from whatever the Bandersnatch was before it arrived.

Rapunzel was almost up to her when she looked to her right, screamed in fright, and leapt aside as a beast of white fur striped and spotted with black upon a muscled body charged into the grove, roaring loudly. It had a thick neck, a mouth full of pointed teeth, and large, curved claws on its four muscular legs. The March Hare smacked it in the face with his massive spoon as the Cheshire cat vanished and the Hatter grabbed Rapunzel’s arm and ran off with her. The Hare gave the beast another good whack before turning tail and fleeing in the direction the Hatter and Rapunzel had gone. The Bandersnatch roared in fury and chased after them, leaving the diminutive blonde on her mushroom alone.

Selvina, no bigger than a thumb, collapsed on her knees in a fit of hopelessness and wept. It was all over now…