Playing Hearts Read Online Free PDF Page A

much both in and of Underland to find it ridiculous by
observation. I wanted to test it.
    The next day after
school, I wandered down to the creek behind the highschool. I didn’t want the
twin boys I was sharing a foster home with to stumble over me, and since all of
the highschoolers smoked beneath the overpass during periods, they wouldn’t see me either. The creek ran shallow in a few sheltered spots where I
could water-gaze without being disturbed. I found one of the quieter ones
beneath the swaying fronds of a weeping willow, where the water eddied gently
in a curved cut-out of the bank, and crawled in beneath the fronds. I had already
been seeing flashes of Underland as I followed the stream, but when I settled
on my stomach to gaze into the water properly, Hatter and Hare appeared
immediately, sharp and clear. They weren’t at their tea table; they were in a
foresty part of Underland, dark and green and foreboding. Hatter and Hare
looked distinctly out of place in it. Hare, for some incomprehensible reason,
seemed to be carrying a crutch, and I saw Hatter’s top hat as he passed close
by my line of sight. In the ripply bit at the top of it I saw another view of
him and Hare- this one of them walking in the sunny glade close by their tea
table. They looked just the same but for their surroundings. I wondered if that
other picture was what the Queen saw when she looked at them, and if so, how ?
What were they up to? They were talking to each other but I couldn’t hear what
they were saying. I never did hear through the ripples, and I wasn’t sure if
that was because it wasn’t possible, or if I just hadn’t learned the trick of
it yet. As I watched them they slipped silently into a darkened cave, heavy
with shadow and sinister with dark mossy bones. It didn’t look like a safe
place to be. My reflected view took me through with them into the bare interior
of the cave, where cobwebs soon began to drape from the walls and curved
ceiling. At least, I thought they were cobwebs, until Hatter and Hare
passed close by a particularly heavy patch and I discovered that they were
actually wool. It was everywhere, draped in the corners and nooks, dangling
from the ceiling in massive loops and tangles, forming giant dust-bunnies
around the floor of the cave. I gazed at it, fascinated, and wondered if a cave
hung with wool was any less frightening than a cave hung about with cobwebs, if
they both had bones out the front. I was inclined to think that it was. In
Underland you just didn’t know what sort of madness you would meet with, and
the kind of madness that had woollen cobwebs juxtaposed with human and animal
bones was perhaps even more terrifying than that which had cobwebs. At least
you expected cobwebs when it came to caves and bones.
    The woollen cobwebs grew
in size and fluffiness the further Hatter and Hare went. Soon they didn’t even
look like cobwebs anymore: they looked exactly what they were, great mountains
of unwound wool heaped up toward the sides of the cave. I saw Hatter looking at
the piles, and he seemed satisfied with them; but Hare was nervous, twitching,
and inclined to tap against the cave floor with his powerful back legs as if he
was preparing to run. That left me to wonder exactly who lived in a cave,
apparently ate humans and animals alike, and had a passion for wool. Hatter and
Hare didn’t seem to concern themselves with the question: what I could read of
Hatter’s lips (Hare's were impossible to guess at) was merely the usual back
and forth I was used to with them. It meant nothing and something at the same
time.
    I was so intent on trying
to read their lips that I didn’t notice the small thread of wool that seemed to
be moving until the piles of wool ended abruptly and the single, taut, moving
thread was the only skerrick of wool still to be seen against the darkness of
the cave. It stretched far back into the darkness, still moving at a good
speed, and as Hatter and Hare followed it, I