Free Playing Hearts by W.R. Gingell

calls,” said Hatter. “You’re thinking of a doctor.”
    “Well, if you think a
doctor can sew better...” I let the sentence trail off, and saw Hare bristle.
    “HATTER CAN SEW ANYTHING
FROM REPUTATIONS TO WITS,” he said loudly.
    “No, you’re thinking of
owls,” I said, hoping that they would understand. “They’re the ones that make
to-whits and to-whos.”
    “I can sew a hat for an
owl,” said Hatter, his eyes intent upon me and his pupils dilating. “Is it a
very big owl? White? Black? Red? I’ll need to bring the right thread, you
know.”
    “White,” I said, dizzy
with relief. Hatter had understood. “And very big. He’s staying at a
little waystation outside the Heart Castle.”
    “Good place for an owl,”
Hatter said, and I felt warm with approval even though his tone was aloofly
disinterested. “Lots of straw. Lots of mice.”
    “He’s expecting you,” I
said.
    I wanted to say so much
more. I wanted to tell Hatter that I’d seen them face the Jabberwock—that I’d
seen them escape—that I’d helped them escape. I wanted to tell them that
I missed them. I wanted to pass right through the ripples, and I had the
feeling that maybe I could do it if I went right now. I made a tiny, involuntary
movement forward, my fingers dipping toward the water, and then Jack’s hand was
on my shoulder, fingers sharp and prohibitive. If he had been trying to keep
out of sight, he’d just ruined it: Hatter and Hare must have seen him. They
didn’t blink, but they faded from sight almost immediately.
    “Oh,” I said sadly,
feeling deflated. “They’re gone!”
    “They are,” said Jack,
his hand still gripping my shoulder. “And it’s time that you were going, too,
Mab.”
    He lunged for me so
quickly that I was too surprised to defend myself. In short order I found
myself bundled into an unwieldy ball of backpack, clothes, and limbs, held
firmly in Jack’s shirt-sleeved arms without being able to do so much as
wriggle.
    “Oi!” I said. “Put me
down!”
    “Anything to oblige,”
said Jack, and threw me in.
    If I’d had any idea what
he was really doing, I would never have done it. But I was furious and
determined that if I was going to be sopping wet, so was he– in all his
carefully pressed glory. I seized his arm in one hand, clawing at his cravat in
the other, and pulled him into the water with me. I knew straight away that it
was the wrong thing to have done. Jack cannoned into me, his face for the first
time utterly and completely surprised, and we flew through a substance that
wasn’t water or air until we couldn’t breathe and our heads cleared the surface
of a swiftly running creek. I paddled for the bank, pleasantly surprised at how
easy it was to swim with my backpack. It was only when Jack boosted me up and
out of the water, and the full weight of it bore down on me, that I realised he
had been supporting me the whole time. That annoyed me, so I pointedly turned
to help him out of the water instead of leaving him to scrabble out in all the
mud as I would have preferred to do.
    When we made it to the
grass, each of us as muddy as the other, Jack looked around at the grass, the
trees, and then the sky. “Ye gods, Mab!” he said. “What have you gotten me into now ?”

 
     

     
     
    Jack ended up staying with me for two
weeks. At first we tried to get him back into Underland by having him jump back
into the creek, but as much as that amused me, it did no practical good. At
last, Jack, sopping wet and icily annoyed, refused to try again. As he
explained it, him coming through to my world was very close to being Against
The Rules, and barely possible. When I protested that I had brought him there, he only said: “Yes, but even if it’s not against the rules, she can
still make things difficult for me. She’s obviously trying to teach me a
lesson.”
    Fortunately, my foster
family at that time was a lovely one, and they were happy to invite Jack in
when we told them he was