Marble Monuments

First light had crested the hill, watery yellow as Taxis’ gown but palely flickering as Alisabeth’s. It spread out past the tower and reached into the continuous plains beyond, walking along the strangely checkered ground and beside the two of them. It strengthened all the while, casting shadows out in lines far longer than their forms of origin. Also extended in shadow fell the scattered marble spires, passing in naturally wrought sculpture by the trek on which the rabbit led the gravedigger. Some rose stoically in the structure of crystalline points; some were topped with polished spheres; some vaulted in temple-like columns, Grecian in some vaguely nostalgic fashion. In fact, all of them were vaguely nostalgic, distorted by sheer size but familiar as the yard, as the mist: headstones and obelisks. It was only when Alice noticed, passing through a dell of sorts and crowded all around not by trees, but by spires and bluish shrubs, the shadows of engravings upon them. There were no names, but dates and epithets and mournings. The familiarity became truly conspicuous then.

“Memorial monuments,” he murmured to himself. “They’re gravestones.”

“Well of course they are.” Taxis threw the words over her shoulder back at him. “Do you truly know nothing of Underland?”

He whispered, “Truly.” Taxis sighed sharply, but he didn’t pay her any further mind. He didn’t pay her any further mind because he saw a flicker in the corner of his eye, a glimpse of black red-blue-yellow and a grin. He glanced after it, but it was gone: illusory, of course; a waking dream, perhaps. But behind it, what his eyes could grasp and settle upon firmly, was a panel of marble, engraved sharply, distinct enough to read even from beneath where it loomed in half shadow. 

Alisabeth paused, blue coat swaying around her as she turned to look. She read the little bit that was there. The epithet inscribed upon the great obelisk was a simple poem—a limerick, though Alice didn’t have the education to know the word:

Once there lived a thin father otter,

Who fished all for his otter daughter.

He fed her so well

That at last he fell

To selfless starvation, self-slaughter.

Her brow creased, wide eyes darkening beneath it. The shadow of that gaunt grin flickered once more in her peripheral. Once more, it disappeared when she turned to meet it.