No one remembers a time when the Tasseographer (he/him) was not Underland’s great prophet, the herald of the White Order, the dead’s highest power. No one remembers it but the Tasseographer himself, or so he says: preaching the imminent return of the Queen of Underland and all the prosperity she brings with her, an age he has seen—in tea leaves and dreams and visions unknown, in sights only his long-dead eye can see. He is older than any Underlander active, oldest amongst those spared from the reddened beaks of the horrible underwocks. He is writhing and rotting, so distended and green, yellow, slipping, maggot-worms running through him, dancing and swirling, grinning as he proclaims again and again:

“In Underland’s greatest time of strife

Comes a bonny boy in blue and white

And striking out, strong and hawky,

Slays the dread Queen of Underwocky

“Bathed in red and with its head

Comes the bonny boy to us, the dead

And we shall bow down and kiss the hand

Of the new Queen of all Underland”