Chester Cheshire grinwild's Arc

Chapter 12 of 15

Tigr bounced down from his coil seat and skidded to a stop by the frosting shop door. "Rapunzl," he said. "Rapunzl Rapunzl. I want a cak. A Tigr cak. Vary vary big." Rapunzel set down her keys and laughed. She tied her hair back with three purple ribbons and said she had butter, sugar, and an idea about stripes. Chester watched from the head of the table and let her go. A cake was a chair-filler of a different kind. She came back with a tower of white frosting in three tiers, ringed with orange beads and dotted with little black and blue shapes. A round Tigr face sat on top, grinning. Tigr saw it and made a noise that was not quite a word. He climbed his spring and bounced once, gently, to be polite. Harrietta took her seat at her stack of cups. The chameleon settled on Rapunzel's shoulder. Chester poured. Four chairs full, and the long winding table looked, for once, like a party. "Riddle," Chester said. "What has stripes but no shirt, a tail but no spring, and eats cake but never gets full?" Tigr's paw shot up. "ME. Me me me." "Wrong," Chester said. "It's the cake itself." Tigr thought about this for half a second and laughed so hard he bounced without meaning to. The spring sproinged. He went up, came down, went up higher. Rapunzel clapped. Harrietta tapped her watch. Chester told another one about a teapot with no spout, and Tigr laughed harder, and bounced harder. The third bounce was the one. Tigr went up past Chester's ears, past the purple leaves, and on the way down his back paws caught the edge of the table. The table tipped. The Tigr cake left its plate and turned slow in the air, orange beads scattering. Teacups jumped off the cloths. Harrietta's stack toppled and rolled. The teapot spun out and emptied as it went. Tigr landed on his tail, bounced twice more from sheer momentum, and finally sat down hard in a puddle of tea, blinking. The cake hit the cobblestones top first. The little Tigr face slid off in one piece. Tea ran in dark ribbons between the stones. Broken cup shards lay in white curves around the table legs. Icing trailed from one chair to the next like a rope. Rapunzel pressed both hands to her mouth. Harrietta stared at her empty saucer. Nobody spoke. Tigr's ears went flat. "I bownsd too gud," he said. "Sorry. Sorry sorry." Chester looked at the wreckage. He looked at Tigr, soaked and small. He laughed. He laughed until his striped tail curled. "Don't apologize," he said. "That was the most unruly tea I have ever taken. That was exactly the thing." He stood up, walked through the spill, and set the Tigr face back on its plate. "More chairs," he said. "We need more chairs. A quiet party is a failed one."