Madder than a Hatter (Descendants)

The Harlequin's Last Laugh (Edited)

Uma helped me walk backward so I didn't trip over anything. She helped me get him safely to Auradon, and then to a hospital where they could care for him. He wasn't mentally stable enough for a trip back to Wonderland.

She let me cry for a while, getting out my emotions all in one go. Eventually, we made our way to the school campus and wandered the grounds, letting me work all the energy out and calming me down.

"I'm guessing this isn't how you wanted that to go," she said, after several minutes of silence. "I'm sorry about your dad."

"He's always like this," I said dismissively, wiping at my face. "But thanks. There isn't much sympathy for this kind of thing. Having a villain for a parent, yeah, sure, but not for having a parent that literally can't remember you."

"I would take my mom over that any day," Uma said.

"I would take your mom, too. I think I would even take my mom. And she sucked."

"She's dead, though, right? I can't really think of any dead villains."

"It was sort of brushed over. She's also Wonderlandian. I guess that could also be a career path for me if I ever get tired of hats," I mused.

Uma snorted. "As if. Girl, all you could talk about were hats back on the Isle. That, and if salted dragon tasted any good."

"Well, I still want to know. Unfortunately, dragons are a protected species in this country."

"This country?" she repeated.

"Well, yeah. Remember the Jabberwocky?"

"I don't know what that is."

"It's like this dragon thing. Technically, its species is Jabberwocky, but if you look at drawings of it, it totally looks like a dragon. And one of our greatest, like, folk heroes just straight-up decapitated it, so that just goes to show how we think of dragons. My mom was so angry when that happened. At least, according to my dad."

"Did it belong to your mom or something?"

"Or something. He never really explained why she got so upset over it. All he did was tell me the rhyme about it. He rhymed a lot. It was kind of his thing. Hey, look, rose bushes."

"Pretty. How did the rhyme go?"

"Oh, uh, ''Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe. "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!" He took his vorpal sword in hand; Long time the manxome foe he sought—So rested he by the Tumtum tree and stood awhile in thought."

"You memorized that?" Uma interrupted incredulously

"I memorized a lot of things. Now hush, I'm almost done. 'And, as in uffish thought he stood, the Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, came whiffling through the tulgey wood, and burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through, the vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head, he went galumphing back. "And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" He chortled in his joy. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe."

"I understood almost none of that."

"Brillig is four o'clock in the afternoon. A tove is a Wonderlandian creature that looks like a mix between a badger and a lizard with a corkscrew nose. They make their nests beneath sundials. Gyre and gimble are verbs meaning to dig into the earth like a giant screw. Like turning out soil until a deep tunnel is formed. A wabe is the grass plot under a sundial."