So she’d stopped talking. She’d stopped telling others about it, and as the years wore on, she’d come to the realization it was easier to say they were right. It hadn’t been real. She’d never seen him. It’d been a dream, a result of a disease-ravaged mind. Nothing more, nothing less.
Her parents slept easier, she’d made new friends who knew nothing about her temporary “episode,” and the love that’d burned brighter than the hottest flame had cooled to an ember. She’d moved on. She’d still loved the Hatter and all his maddening ways, but as a favorite story. Nothing more, nothing less.
“He doesn’t want me.” The words spilled from Alice’s lips before she could censure her thoughts.
Danika bit her lip. “And that is partly my doing, love.” She looked suddenly anxious, flitting around Alice’s head in a dizzying circle.
“I wish you’d be still,” Alice grumped, “you’re making my eyes cross. What exactly did you do?”
The crazy fairy toyed with her fingernail. “You are not his first Alice. In fact, you’re not even his tenth.”
The words brought Alice up short. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve tried for decades, maybe centuries now-” Danika pinched her nose, exhaustion heavily lacing her words, “to find his perfect match. The Alice to offset the madness leaking into him.” She threw her hands wide. “With no success. Some feared him, others tolerated him, and still others coveted the power of the land itself. But none ever loved him.”
Alice heard Danika like a buzz of white noise in the background. Other Alices? She wasn’t his first.
“Did he sleep with them?” she snapped and then clamped her teeth shut, wishing she hadn’t blurted that out, but desperate to know. Who was Hatter? Did he have a sick kinky fetish to get it on with as many Alices as he could? Well he was S.O.L.. Alice wouldn’t be another notch in his belt. Hot or not.
Danika’s jaw dropped as if shocked. “No!” Her voice rose in pitch like a howl. “Dear me.” She grabbed her chest. “The man is not a pervert, dear.”
The furious pounding in Alice’s chest eased somewhat. “Then why bring so many Alices?”
“Because that’s the way of it here. Hatter and Alice, Big Bad Wolf and Red… the stories are written with a grain of truth to them. It must be an Alice.” She shrugged and Alice licked her canine, refusing to analyze why she suddenly felt like a huge burden had lifted.
She didn’t want to share Hatter with anybody else.
Shaking her head, Danika said, “But that is not all.”
Alice narrowed her eyes wishing the fairy would stop dragging this out. “Yes?”
Danika blew out a breath. “You see, I may have dipped into a certain bloodline. Brought back a ghost, if you will.”
“What?” Alice was totally confused.
Danika sighed and dropped her hands to her sides. “Many years ago I brought an Alice to the Hatter. She was a lovely thing. Doe-eyed and of gentle disposition.” She snorted. “At first anyway. I think he fell for her beauty more than anything.” She shook her head. “She was an awful woman. Wanted the power she could glean from the land. She did not want him at all.”
“I don’t understand what that has to do with me?”
Danika’s tiny hand traced Alice’s jaw, giving her goose bumps. “You two could be twins. He sees her when he looks at you.”
Alice sucked in a breath, finally understanding the bloodline reference and the cruelty of the woman. “My great-grandmother,” she whispered.
Danika nodded gravely.
And though she had no right to jealously, a flinty spark of passionate hatred flared to life in Alice’s heart. No wonder Hatter hated her. Alice loved her great-grandmother, now… because she was blood and it was the honorable thing to do.
But loving her didn’t mean Alice could forget being locked out of the house during the heat of the day because her comings and goings let in too many flies. Or being told not to eat the second piece of birthday cake because she’d get fat and ugly and no one would want her then.
The bitterness her grandmother had always thrown at her great-grandfather, calling him stupid and a hairy Okinawan who was no good for her and she’d almost had better. Should have had better…
In hindsight, the crazy mutterings made more sense. But anger solved nothing. Jealousy was useless. Obviously it hadn’t worked out between them, but that past was coming back to bite Alice in the ass now because she wasn’t her grandmother. She was nothing like the old shrew and yet Hatter judged her based off that.