The sound of hastening footsteps in the fog took on sloshy echo. They were running through marsh grass now, wetlands. Their feet were soaked. Perhaps we are at the side of the ocean, thought Ada. “The salt air will do you no good,” she panted to the Tin Ballerina and the Tin Bear. “You will come down with a pox.” “I adore salt,” huffed Humpty Dumpty. “Salt completes me.” “We mustn’t plunge into the sea or we would have to consider drowning,” said the Tin Bear. “And I’m not sure I’m capable of that. I’d be an utter failure.” The noise of their pursuer only intensified. They heard a hunger in that racket, or some other ambition. The Jabberwock, if such it was, must be lost in the fog, too. They cringed at the creak and clang of its limbs, which seemed in the thickening air to be all around them. “We are but poor players a-wandering in the muck and the mire,”
