The Third Cat Story Megapack. Damien Broderick
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the Queen, who was passing at the moment, “My dear! I wish you would have this cat removed!”
The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. “Off with his head!” she said, without even looking round.
“I’ll fetch the executioner myself,” said the King eagerly, and he hurried off.
Alice thought she might as well go back, and see how the game was going on, as she heard the Queen’s voice in the distance, screaming with passion. She had already heard her sentence three of the players to be executed for having missed their turns, and she did not like the look of things at all, as the game was in such confusion that she never knew whether it was her turn or not. So she went in search of her hedgehog.
The hedgehog was engaged in a fight with another hedgehog, which seemed to Alice an excellent opportunity for croqueting one of them with the other: the only difficulty was, that her flamingo was gone across to the other side of the garden, where Alice could see it trying in a helpless sort of way to fly up into a tree.
By the time she had caught the flamingo and brought it back, the fight was over, and both the hedgehogs were out of sight: “but it doesn’t matter much,” thought Alice, “as all the arches are gone from this side of the ground.” So she tucked it away under her arm, that it might not escape again, and went back for a little more conversation with her friend.
When she got back to the Cheshire-Cat, she was surprised to find quite a large crowd collected round it: there was a dispute going on between the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who were all talking at once, while all the rest were quite silent, and looked very uncomfortable.
The moment Alice appeared, she was appealed to by all three to settle the question, and they repeated their arguments to her, though, as they all spoke at once, she found it very hard indeed to make out exactly what they said.
The executioner’s argument was, that you couldn’t cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from: that he had never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn’t going to begin at this time of life.
The King’s argument was, that anything that had a head could be beheaded, and that you weren’t to talk nonsense.
The Queen’s argument was, that if something wasn’t done about it, in less than no time she’d have everybody executed, all round. (It was this last remark that had made the whole party look so grave and anxious.)
Alice could think of nothing else to say but, “It belongs to the Duchess: you’d better ask her about it.”
“She’s in prison,” the Queen said to the executioner: “fetch her here.” And the executioner went off like an arrow.
The Cat’s head began fading away the moment he was gone, and, by the time he had come back with the Duchess, it had entirely disappeared; so the King and the executioner ran wildly up and down looking for it, while the rest of the party went back to the game.
ALL IN THE GOLDEN AFTERNOON, by Marilyn “Mattie” Brahen
He had only fallen asleep in the warm sun at the Oxford railroad station for a scant few minutes, but in that time, the manuscript, carefully packaged in brown paper and tightly bound with good string, had been stolen, along with a small brown hamper containing his lunch.
The food and wine were small loss compared to his printer’s copy of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. He had labored on the book for over a year, since he originally recited it as a series of sketches to the Liddell children as he rowed them along the Thames on an expedition upriver. He had promised Alice, ten years old and dear to his heart, that he would write the tales of the fictional Alice and, now having completed that promise, he was traveling to arrange its publication.
But the manuscript was gone, and he felt a frantic sinking in his heart and took several long breaths, trying to calm himself. Go about this logically, he told himself. You are, after all, a lecturer in mathematics. The bench he had earlier seated himself on, before nodding off, was partially secluded by a tree and some bushes, a short distance from the station house. He studied the platform. The same two young ladies and their parents still milled about, keeping a close watch on their ample luggage and on a boy around Alice’s age, who alternately stared at them sulkily or peered impatiently up the railroad tracks, trying to spot the train. It obliged him, appearing in the distance.
Beyond the waiting family, Charles noticed two new gentlemen, who hadn’t been there prior to his own arrival. Once carried a large portmanteau, which seemed filled to its seams with whatever it held. Still, Charles had no cause to confront them. He wondered what purpose he had now to even board the coming train without the manuscript and watched despondently as it pulled into the station.
A porter emerged first, then the carriage guard collecting the passengers’ tickets. He escorted the family of five into the first carriage, nearly filling it, then waived the two strange gentlemen over to the second. The porter began loading the family’s luggage into the baggage compartment.
Charles approached the station master, struggling to help the porter lift an oversized trunk. “Excuse me, gentlemen.” They looked up, poised to hoist the obviously heavy piece. “I seem to have misplaced a brown-paper parcel and a lunch hamper while dozing. The parcel is extremely important.” He hesitated. How could he accuse the late-arriving gentlemen of theft? Asking to search their belongings would be tantamount to that, wouldn’t it? It was quite possible that someone else, unnoticed by the others, had come to the platform, taken his parcel and hamper, then left.
Yet he had to recover the manuscript or hope, at least, that the thief considered it worthless and discarded it. It might be found by someone kind enough to return it, Charles’s name and address clearly printed on the wrapper, in case of such loss.
The station master answered him reluctantly. “Did you search thoroughly for them, sir?” The porter ignored him, saying “Now!” Both men heaved upward, swinging the trunk into the baggage area. The porter jumped up, pushed it further in, jumped down, pulled the sliding door closed and secured it.
“They were on the bench right beside me. The parcel contains a manuscript I’ve written. I was carrying it to my publisher, Macmillan, in London.”
“Well, I don’t like to say it, sir,” the station master began, only to be interrupted by a loud feminine scream, followed a high-pitched stream of hysterical complaints. “What now?” He rose stiffly.
One of the gentlemen emerged from the train, opening the compartment door and calling to the guard. “There’s a animal running loose in our carriage, sir. A large striped tomcat, from the looks of it.”
“Now, what the devil…,” the train man groused, and boarded the carriage. A commotion sounded within, and the cat, orange with large black stripes, bounded from it and onto the platform, its teeth firmly clamped on the string of a wrapped parcel. It dragged it along as it skittered away toward the bench, tree and bushes and disappeared beneath the shrubbery.
“My manuscript!” Charles raced after it, parting the leafy branches to forage in the undergrowth and triumphantly reclaim Alice’s Adventures Under Ground.
The station master caught up with him, winded with exertion. “Would that be the missing parcel, sir?”
“It is, and I’m delighted to have it back!”
“Can’t say I understand how it got aboard the train, much less the cat.”
“The important thing is that it’s been returned.”
“Do you think the cat dragged it off the bench, sir, and then snuck on board with it?”
“I…I couldn’t really say, now could I? But if you find a small brown hamper under some foliage,” (he drew apart more shrubbery, which revealed only leaves and dirt), “it might support that theory. I doubt that the cat could have dragged both the parcel and hamper onto the train without being seen.”
“Unlikely,” the station master agreed. “In that case, sir, do you think a thief