"He's dreaming now," said Tweedledee: "and what do you think he's dreaming about?"

Alice said, "Nobody can guess that."

"Why, about you!" Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands dramatically. "And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?"

"Where I am now, of course," said Alice.

"Not you!" Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. "You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!"

"If that there King was to wake," added Tweedledum, "you'd go out -- bang! -- just like a candle!"



SLEEPLESS KNIGHT

"How's he doing?" the White Knight asked Hatha in an undertone.

"Sleeping quietly. He turned on his side a minute ago, and Haigha replaced his blanket for him."

"Good. He has a light touch, I dare say. I shouldn't touch him for all the tea in China. I'd be sure to make a muddle of it." The White Knight spoke quietly to the Hatter, though the object of their conversation was snoring peacefully -- quietly -- under a tree a hundred feet away. "Where are the Tweedles?"

The Hatter shuffled nervously. "I sent them away. You can't trust those two. One minute they're talking to you in a civil manner, the next, they've taken up cudgels and begun to belabor each other again. If they put their armor on, they sound like a railway collision."

The Knight nodded absently. "Ah, good. Yes, quite. Nothing else for it, I'm afraid." He ran out of words. "Well," he said, then sat in silence.

The two of them stood in uffish thought for a minute, looking at the distant tree and the two figures near it. One, a humble enough looking little King, lay asleep on the ground in the shade of the sheltering leaves, with a child's blanket incongruously but comfortably arrayed over his shoulders. The other, a Hare, hovered over him -- figuratively, that is -- watching solicitously for his comfort. As they watched, a large Wasp approached, trying to interest them in some magazines he was selling. The Knight immediately clapped the Hatter on the back. "Go over there and help him if he needs help," he said. "Quietly, for heaven's sake!"

As the Hatter dashed over, he could hear a whining hum, which turned out to be the Wasp talking. "But I'm sure he'd be interested! Every issue is packed with articles of lasting interest -- there's one for every day of the month, you see? Rib-tickling jokes, anecdotes about regular folks... why not just let me talk to him?"

The Hare was trying to dissuade the pushy insect, but his efforts seemed only to hold the Wasp at bay. The Hatter arrived.

"Shove off, you. He ain't buyin' what you're sellin'. Now take the air before I find a rolled-up newspaper to swat you with." He snarled these threats quietly, taking his hat off and swinging it as a weapon. The Wasp took a step back.

"Well, now, sir, you look like the sort who'd be interested in what I have to sell. In your eyes, I see a man who cares deeply about his fellow beings. Am I right? What would it take to set you up with a subscription to this fascinating periodical? I don't care who I sell to, but once I've made my quota, I'm away."

The Hatter wordlessly jammed the hat back on his head, covering his eyes, and tilted his chin up to the heavens, shaking his fists in silent rage for a moment or two. Then he sagged and turned back to the waiting Wasp. "Where do I sign?" he asked in an undertone.

"Right here, sir, and you won't be disappointed! I'll deliver it to you right here every month, and if you have any..."

The Hatter almost shouted, then seized the insect by the collar of its coat and frog-marched it a few steps away from the tree. "Absolutely not! I want you to consider this a non-delivery subscription. Just take your money and leave here. In silence! Go!"

The Wasp looked like he had more to say, but shrugged at the prospect of a sale he didn't have to deliver on, and turned to go, humming tunelessly to himself. The Hatter longed to kick viciously at his departing posterior, but thought better of it.

"Th-thanks," the hare gasped. "I just couldn't get rid of the pushy beggar!" He looked at the still-dozing King and reached down to adjust his pillow imperceptibly.

"Think nothing of it," said the Hatter, wiping his brow with one arm, then replacing his hat. "Just keep doing what you're good at, and we'll be watching." He walked back to the Knight, looking back two times to be sure nothing else was happening. He sat down on a log next to where the Knight stood watching. "A pushy magazine agent," said the Hatter. "We got rid of him."

"Yes, well done," said the Knight. "He passed here on his way. I seem to have taken a subscription to something called Scragford's Farthing. Anyway, I'm waiting for another dispatch to see how things are going in general in the two kingdoms."

The two kingdoms, one ruled by the Red King and one ruled by the White King, occupied 64 acres of land arranged in a grid 8 by 8 of squares in alternating colors. The White King and his observers were in a dark square in the middle of one end of the land. A couple of minutes after the Knight spoke, he and the Hatter were joined by a Bishop, who had arrived from a neighboring dark square of land. He handed the Knight a scroll of paper and departed the way he had come.

"This is it," the Knight told the Hatter, commencing to read from the document. "'From where I sit, upon this height, the world's gone wrong, within my sight.' Hmmm. Doggerel, you see. 'The Queen's gone mad. It's in her face. She runs and runs...' Yes, yes... will he get to the point? Trains going off the tracks and across fields... Dum and Dee at one another again... increasing restlessness of the fish... a strange girl disturbing the flowers... 'The signs are plain, as you can see. Your Correspondent, Humpty D.'"

The Knight and Hatter shrugged at one another. "Dumpty's mad himself, you know," said the latter, "Perches himself on the tallest wall he can find -- nobody knows how he got up there -- and he bores anybody who passes by with what he calls his elevated views." The Knight looked gloomy and waved the paper at nothing in particular.

"It's just as I feared. It's as if his dreams are getting stranger." He sighed and waved to the Hare, who looked at him with his large, sad eyes. The Knight pointed at the king and then at his eyes, finishing with a gesture that looked decidedly queer. "A query," he explained to the Hatter. "About the King's eyes."

The Hare, apparently understanding, put two furry hands before his own eyes and twitched them from side to side. The Knight interpreted to the Hatter. "His eyes are moving rapidly. This is a dangerous time. He could wake up at any moment, and if, as we fear, he is dreaming of us, we would be gone like yesterday's fashions."

The Hatter nodded. He had heard this explanation before, but had lost the desire to keep telling the Knight of the fact. He was tired, as was the Knight. Tweedledum and Tweedledee were almost certainly mad, but they had made a persuasive case when they one day decided that everyone was a figment of the King's dreams. Even the occasional appearance of the King had been explained away. "We've all dreamt of ourselves at some time or another, so why shouldn't he? That's just good sense."

The Knight wasn't entirely convinced, but he was a good and loyal servant of his country, and couldn't take any chances. He'd been watching the King sleep for a couple of days now, and his mind was starting to wander. What if he followed it and deserted his post? What if the sleeping King under the tree was just another part of the dream? Did any of this matter? What if all of them were part of someone else's dream?

What was life, anyway, but a dream...?
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inkstained technopeasant day