Alice in Zombieland (12 page)

     
‘Well, there was Mystery,’ the Corpse Turtle replied, counting off the subjects on his flappers, ‘—Mystery, ancient and modern, with Seaography: then Drawling—the Drawling-master was an old conger-eel, that used to come once a week: HE taught us Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.’

     
‘What was
that
like?’ said Alice.

     
‘Well, I can’t show it you myself,’ the Corpse Turtle said: ‘I’m too stiff. And the Gryphon never learnt it.’

     
‘Hadn’t time,’ said the Gryphon: ‘I went to the Classics master, though. He was an old crab,
he
was.’

     
‘I never went to him,’ the Corpse Turtle said with a sigh: ‘he taught Laughing and Grief, they used to say.’

     
‘So he did, so he did,’ said the Gryphon, sighing in his turn; and both creatures hid their faces in their paws.

     
‘And how many hours a day did you do lessons?’ said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.

     
‘Ten hours the first day,’ said the Corpse Turtle: ‘nine the next, and so on.’

     
‘What a curious plan!’ exclaimed Alice.

     
‘That’s the reason they’re called lessons,’ the Gryphon remarked: ‘because they lessen from day to day.’

     
This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over a little before she made her next remark. ‘Then the eleventh day must have been a holiday?’

     
‘Of course it was,’ said the Corpse Turtle.

     
‘And how did you manage on the twelfth?’ Alice went on eagerly.

     
‘That’s enough about lessons,’ the Gryphon interrupted in a very decided tone: ‘tell her something about the games now.’

     
‘But wait,’ Alice snapped, angry that he refused to get round to the point of the story. ‘How did you become a Corpse Turtle, if you please?’

     
The Corpse Turtle groaned again and tried to scuttle its dead body off the rock. It was the Gryphon that answered: ‘It was the Red Queen, of course. She killed him, used his flippers for soup.’

     
Alice shivered, feeling sickened by the old woman’s cruelty. Why had she not used his whole body for the soup instead of leaving him stuck on a rock with no way to get back to his sea home?

     
The Corpse Turtle finally gave up, and turned back to Alice and the Gryphon. ‘No use trying to avoid it. The games it is.’

Chapter X

The Zombie Lobster Quadrille

     
T
he Corpse Turtle
sighed deeply, and tried to draw back one ragged stump of a flapper across his dead white eyes. He looked at Alice, and tried to speak, but for a minute or two sobs choked his voice. ‘Same as if he had a bone in his throat,’ said the Gryphon: and it set to work shaking him and punching him in the back. At last the Corpse Turtle recovered his voice, and he went on again: ‘You may not have lived much under the sea—’ (‘I haven’t,’ said Alice)— ‘and perhaps you were never even introduced to a lobster—’ (Alice began to say ‘I once tasted—’ but checked herself hastily, and said ‘No, never’) ‘—so you can have no idea what a delightful thing a Zombie Lobster Quadrille is!’

     
‘No, indeed,’ said Alice. ‘What sort of a dance is it? How can dead things dance?’

     
‘Why,’ said the Gryphon, ‘it’s quite simple, really. You first must dig up all your dead (if they haven’t already seen fit to raise themselves) and then form into a line along the sea-shore—’

     
‘Two lines!’ cried the Corpse Turtle. ‘Seals, turtles, salmon, and so on; then, when you’ve cleared all the jelly-fish out of the way—’

     
‘
That
generally takes some time,’ interrupted the Gryphon.

     
‘—you advance twice—’

     
‘Each with a zombie lobster as a partner!’ cried the Gryphon.

     
‘Of course,’ the Corpse Turtle said: ‘advance twice, set to partners—’

     
‘—change lobsters, and retire in same order,’ continued the Gryphon.

     
‘Then, you know,’ the Corpse Turtle went on, ‘you throw the—’

     
‘The lobsters!’ shouted the Gryphon, with a bound into the air.

     
‘—as far out to sea as you can—’

     
‘Swim after them!’ screamed the Gryphon.

     
‘Turn a somersault in the sea!’ cried the Corpse Turtle, capering wildly about.

     
‘Change lobster’s again!’ yelled the Gryphon at the top of its voice.

     
‘Back to land again, and that’s all the first figure,’ said the Corpse Turtle, suddenly dropping his voice; and the two creatures, who had been jumping about like mad things all this time, sat down again very sadly and quietly, and looked at Alice.

     
‘It must be a very pretty dance,’ said Alice timidly.

     
‘Would you like to see a little of it?’ said the Corpse Turtle.

     
‘Very much indeed,’ said Alice.

     
‘Come, let’s try the first figure!’ said the Corpse Turtle to the Gryphon. ‘We can do without lobsters, you know. Which shall sing?’

     
‘Oh,
you
sing,’ said the Gryphon. ‘I’ve forgotten the words.’

     
So they began solemnly dancing round and round Alice, every now and then treading on her toes when they passed too close, small bits of the Corpse Turtle and ratty feathers from the Gryphon falling to the cold sea sand with every new pass, and waving their forepaws to mark the time, while the Corpse Turtle sang this, very slowly and sadly:

-

‘“Will you walk a little faster?” said a whiting to a snail.

“There’s a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my tail.

See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!

They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance?

Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?

Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance?

“You can really have no notion how delightful it will be

When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!”

But the snail replied “Too far, too far!” and gave a look askance—

Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance.

 
Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.

 
Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join the dance.

‘“What matters it how far we go?” his scaly friend replied.

“There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.

The further off from England the nearer is to France—

Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.

 
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?

 
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance?”’

-

     
‘Thank you, it’s a very interesting dance to watch,’ said Alice, feeling very glad that it was over at last: ‘and I do so like that curious song about the whiting!’

     
‘Oh, as to the whiting,’ said the Corpse Turtle, ‘they—you’ve seen them, of course?’

     
‘Yes,’ said Alice, ‘I’ve often seen them at dinn—’ she checked herself hastily.

     
‘I don’t know where Dinn may be,’ said the Corpse Turtle, ‘but if you’ve seen them so often, of course you know what they’re like.’

     
‘I believe so,’ Alice replied thoughtfully. ‘They have their tails in their mouths—and they’re all over crumbs.’

     
‘You’re wrong about the crumbs,’ said the Corpse Turtle: ‘crumbs would all wash off in the sea. But they
have
their tails in their mouths; and the reason is—’ here the Corpse Turtle yawned and shut his eyes. ‘Tell her about the reason and all that,’ he said to the Gryphon.

     
‘The reason is,’ said the Gryphon, ‘that they
would
go with the zombie lobsters to the dance. So they got torn apart and thrown out to sea. So they had to fall a long way. So they got their tails fast in their mouths. So they couldn’t get them out again. That’s all.’

     
‘Thank you,’ said Alice, ‘it’s very interesting. I never knew so much about a whiting before.’

     
‘I can tell you more than that, if you like,’ said the Gryphon. ‘Do you know why it’s called a whiting?’

     
‘I never thought about it,’ said Alice. ‘Why?’

     
‘
It does the boots and shoes
.’ the Gryphon replied very solemnly.

     
Alice was thoroughly puzzled. ‘Does the boots and shoes!’ she repeated in a wondering tone.

     
‘Why, what are
your
shoes done with?’ said the Gryphon. ‘I mean, what makes them so shiny?’

     
Alice looked down at them, and considered a little before she gave her answer. ‘They’re done with blacking, I believe.’

     
‘Boots and shoes under the sea,’ the Gryphon went on in a deep voice, ‘are done with a whiting. Now you know.’

     
‘And what are they made of?’ Alice asked in a tone of great curiosity.

     
‘Soles and eels, of course,’ the Gryphon replied rather impatiently: ‘any shrimp could have told you that.’

     
‘If I’d been the whiting,’ said Alice, whose thoughts were still running on the song, ‘I’d have said to the porpoise, “Keep back, please: we don’t want
you
with us!”’

     
‘They were obliged to have him with them,’ the Mock Turtle said: ‘no wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise.’

     
‘Wouldn’t it really?’ said Alice in a tone of great surprise.

     
‘Of course not,’ said the Corpse Turtle: ‘why, if a fish came to
me
, and told me he was going a journey, I should say “With what porpoise?”’

     
‘Don’t you mean “purpose”?’ said Alice.

     
‘I mean what I say,’ the Corpse Turtle replied in an offended tone. And the Gryphon added ‘Come, let’s hear some of
your
adventures.’

     
‘I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,’ said Alice a little timidly: ‘but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.’

     
‘Explain all that,’ said the Corpse Turtle.

     
‘No, no! The adventures first,’ said the Gryphon in an impatient tone: ‘explanations take such a dreadful time.’

     
So Alice began telling them her adventures from the time when she first saw the Black Rat. She was a little nervous about it just at first, the two creatures got so close to her, one on each side, and opened their eyes and mouths so
very
wide, but she gained courage as she went on. Her listeners were perfectly quiet till she got to the part about her repeating ‘
You are old, Father William
,’ to the Wurm, and the words all coming different, and then the Corpse Turtle drew a long breath, and said ‘That’s very curious.’

     
‘It’s all about as curious as it can be,’ said the Gryphon.

     
‘It all came different!’ the Corpse Turtle repeated thoughtfully. ‘I should like to hear her try and repeat something now. Tell her to begin.’ He looked at the Gryphon as if he thought it had some kind of authority over Alice.

     
‘Stand up and repeat “’
Tis the voice of the sluggard
,”’ said the Gryphon.

     
‘How the creatures order one about, and make one repeat lessons!’ thought Alice; ‘I might as well be at school at once.’ However, she got up, and began to repeat it, but her head was so full of the Zombie Lobster Quadrille, that she hardly knew what she was saying, and the words came very queer indeed:

-

 
‘’Tis the voice of the Dead Lobster; I heard him declare,

 
“You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.”

 
As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose

 
Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.’

 
When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark,

 
And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark,