Chester Cheshire grinwild's Arc

Chapter 14 of 15

Chester left the hyenas to their stage and climbed a tower of his own making. The stairs spiraled up from the cobbles in tight loops of pale stone, leading to a flat landing wrapped in soft purple cloud. He liked the height. From the top he could see the long table, the skull den at the edge, and the empty dark past everything. Empty was a problem. He had filled the ground. He had not filled the sky. He leaned on the rail and let his mismatched eyes drift. One eye counted what was there. The other counted what could be. A cloud nosed up beside the landing, fat and purple, and he reached out and tapped it. Tea dripped from its underside. A teacup pushed itself out of the vapor, then another, then a small pot, all balanced on the cloud like it was a shelf. The cloud drifted off, dripping as it went. He grinned and pictured more. Doors next. A tall checkered door bloomed out of the air at the edge of the landing, purple and pink squares behind a gold frame, perched on a puff of cloud with nothing under it. He opened it. Behind it: nothing. Just dark. He laughed and shut it. "If every door went somewhere," he said, "you would never be lost on purpose." He pushed the door off the landing. It floated away and hung in the sky like a picture someone forgot to hang. More clouds nosed up. More doors. Some swung open as they drifted and showed snatches of other places, a green field, a snowed-in road, a kitchen with the lights left on. Most showed nothing at all. The tea clouds spread out over the cobbles and began to rain. Below, a drop hit Harrietta square on the ear. She flinched, lifted her cracked teacup, and her pocket watch on its chain tipped up and drank a long swallow from the falling drops. She tapped the watch hard. The watch ticked twice and went quiet. She wrote something down without looking up. Across the square, a small figure ran for the blue cottage with a black flamingo held high over her head like an umbrella that did not work. Alice ducked inside and shut the door. Blue dripped from her doorframe where the rain hit it. A hyena on the teacup stage caught a drop on its tongue and fell off the cup laughing. Rapunzel pulled her sleeves over her hands and looked up at the sky with her mouth open. Chester had what he wanted. A ceiling for his party. A way out of every room and into none of them. He stepped off the landing and let his body scatter into stripes, gone before he hit the stones. He reformed in his purple chair at the head of the table, cup already raised, and caught three drops clean.