Ticktock Timerift Hatter fell out of a checkered purple door that should not have been there. He landed on his feet, both teacups still full, the teapot on his hat still pouring. He looked at the cobblestone square below the floating door and saw a long table, mismatched chairs, and tea clouds drifting overhead. "A tea party," he said, "without meee." His green hair shook. The galaxy suit caught the lantern light. Watches swung from every button. He needed company. Not the loud, sneezing, stumbling kind. The still kind. He froze people with his watches and posed them around tables, because their open eyes looked at everything at once, and that made them excellent guests. But a frozen guest without a silly hat was only a statue. He had run out of hats two villages ago. He pulled a watch off his lapel to start the work. It refused to tick. He scribbled a note that read platypus, tucked it into the case, and shoved the watch deep into a hedge full of blue and purple roses. Another watch by his pocket had gone silent too. Into the hedge. Another. Into the hedge. The ink here corrupted clockwork, he realized, and every watch he owned was slowing. He kept shoving. Soon the rose hedge bristled with watch faces, all wrong, all stuck, all noted with the word platypus. A grin appeared in the air above him before the rest of a cat arrived. The cat said welcome, and the welcome took shape. A tower of stacked teacups rose from the cobbles, climbing higher than the table, capped with a small top hat for a roof. "A home," the cat said. "For your clockth." Ticktock climbed the cups and tipped his dead watches inside one by one. They clinked down through the porcelain like coins into a well. The tower swallowed them and asked for more. The problem remained. He had nowhere to crown his future guests. A perfect freeze without a ridiculous hat was just a stopped person. Embarrassing. He set down one teacup, only one, and got to work on the empty cobblestones beside the tower. He hammered planks from nowhere into a stall. He hung a striped awning. He stacked top hats, cone hats, hats with bells, hats shaped like cakes, hats stitched from feathers and ribbons. He nailed up a wooden sign that priced hats at twenty and nonsense at nothing. He nailed up another that read Mad Hatter in curling letters. He stepped back and sipped tea that tathted cold and hot at the same time. The stall was full. The supply problem was solved. Now every frozen guest would wear something stupid on their head, and the tea party would finally look correct. He smiled at the empty chairs around the long table and began choosing which hat the first arrival would wear.