A Lease on Wonderland II: Through Fragmented Glass

Wading through some Weighty Things

"—Hatter?!" Esther gasped.

The reason for the Mad Hatter's halting was actually more ordinary than reasoning about someone as mad as a hatter might be. Then again, reflexes could be counted on from time to time even in the maddest, and as mad as the Mad Hatter could be, he was really more asinine than mentally ill. It resembled an overtired child playing games long after dark and finally reached a limit in his playtime to crash into the carpet. It was something so ordinary that he not only stopped in the middle of a song about dark things in seeming jest to yelp out about the prop of a very daytime activity, he seemed to have simply passed out in the collision of it.

Though, more likely it was less philosophical than all that. Such a hard blow to the head was not unknown to cause it to go silent for at least a moment or two from depression or at least a concussion.

Matthias picked up the weapon used to cause this assault and examined it while Esther examined the wound or rather the tangled nest of red hair hiding it. The lump could have been the size of a baseball for how messy the hair was under his boater hat. After all, that was what had hit him.

"A baseball," muttered Matthias with a raised brow.

They had been expecting a ball to fall but not quite this sort. He turned it round and looked up, but the veil of tumtum boughs was at least as thick as the Hatter's hair, and if the Ball of Heartland still took its place in the otherwise beautiful sky it could not be seen. Matthias frowned, scratched his head with his free hand and then stood up in the boat.

"How's... uh, the Mad Hatter?" asked Matthias, not sure he believed that the Mad Hatter could actually be hurt in the long-run so much as the butt end of some sort of joke even if it was in poor taste— the taste of old leather, anyway.

"Unconscious," said Esther who had now located the bump, and though she tried to help the Hatter sit up, he was as limp as a doll. "Do you think we're close to a town? I mean, we were supposedly going to a bank."

"But was the bank along the river or across the pond?" Matthias mused.

He could not help but turn the ball again before handing it to Esther.

"I'll take the great baby here," said Matthias.

"I guess you're the father now and he's the son," sighed Esther despite herself, but her sympathy shone through all the better for it.

Matthias laughed despite himself and took up the limp creature into his arms, though not as tenderly as one might hold a child in the same predicament.

As Esther took up the Hatter's boater hat and dropped the baseball into it, she looked around too as though worried another such baseball might fall on their heads. Or maybe the great metal hamster ball had clouded her thoughts too.

"...unless we already crossed the pond," Matthias mused just to get her out from under it again.

"What do you mean? Is there a pond in baseball?" said Esther.

Again Matthias laughed and together they climbed up onto shore. "Not unless it's a foul ball, but the ball seems fresh enough to me."

"Well," Esther went on gently as they walked upon the dusty path, "'pond' can be a Latin root for 'weight'."

"He said 'across the pond'," Matthias answered. "From England to America over the Atlantic."

"I know, but I feel like I'm still in England. I'm holding back a British accent as it is," said Esther.

"You are?" teased Matthias. "Well, I must've helped with that as I've been stuck with a falsie since Heartland, and it's only waning now."

"Sorry," said Esther.