Chapter Text
It was almost Alistair’s bedtime when there was a knock at the door.
It was soft, at first, and Alistair hopped out of his chair to answer it, before his elbow was caught sharply by his mother, holding him back.
“Mummy?” he asked confusedly, trying to twist out of her painful grip. Alice said nothing, staring intently at the door. Her chest rose and fell like a cat’s - quickly and shallowly.
The knock came again, louder this time, and then the sound of something else hitting the door. Something hollow, and metal.
“It’s them.” Alice said, and her voice thickened with tears. “Oh God, it’s them. How the… how did they… oh God. OK. OK.” She pulled Alistair quickly into the kitchen, and shut the door. Then she locked the door with the key around her neck, which Alistair had seen her do before, and leant a chair up against the handle, which he hadn’t.
Alice crouched down, and looked at her son with red, wide eyes. “Alistair, do you remember what you promised me?”
A horrible bang sounded out in the hallway, and a man’s voice shouted something from outside that Alistair didn’t understand.
“Mum, what’s happening?” he asked, eyes stinging at the sight of his mother’s tears.
“Pay attention to me, Alistair. Do you remember?”
He nodded. “But, I don’t have to do it now, do I? Can’t we just talk to them like last-”
Alice yanked him back from the doorway, and gripped both his wrists hard as she stared at him.
“No. It’s too late, Alistair. You have to go to the rabbit hole.” Her hair was matted over one of her eyes, and the one that he could see was ringed with black, like a badger’s. The room was still dark, save for the watery streetlight outside, and the shadows jumbled with her hair, so it looked like part of her head was gone. Alistair wondered whether that was how she would be in a moment.
“You remember what I told you?”
He nodded, helpless.
Alice smiled. “The riddle, well done. What is it? Why is a raven-”
“Like a writing desk?”
“There you go, smart boy. And don’t worry about me, OK? Mummy’s going to be fine, and I love you very very much, but you have to be very fast now. You need to run as fast as you can, all the way out to the stream, and it’s going to be dark but I promise you won’t have to search. The rabbit hole will be there. It will find you. OK?”
Alistair felt his throat open and close, like the rhythm of a pendulum. “OK, Mummy. Love you lots.”
“I love you lots, too, my darling.” Tears streaked her face like the veins in her arms, and she pressed him into her chest so hard that Alistair thought she might snap herself in half. The banging in the hallway got louder.
Alice pulled away, and looked right into her son’s eyes. “Now run.”
So he did.
Alistair ran faster than he’d ever made himself run before. The tops of his legs started to burn as he pushed himself out of the back window, up the garden stairs, over the wooden gate, down the lane in the pitch dark, grass whipping at his ankles. Over the thudding heartbeat in his ears, he heard men shouting in the distance, and a woman’s piercing scream.
Alistair ran faster.
The dark and his tears had obscured his vision so much that he only realised he’d reached the stream when he tripped over a tree root and fell face-first into mud. He rolled onto his side, breathing through the burning pain in his chest, and as the heartbeat in his ears began to quiet, he heard the sound of running water.
The world came into fuzzy clarity in the dark, and the moonlight glinted off the streamwater, illuminating what was on the other side. It was a vast, gnarled tree, its branches dark and low, its roots pulled apart at the centre, knotting with the ground to frame a gaping, shadowed mouth that was about as big as Alistair was wide.
He had not expected the rabbit hole to find him so fast.
He stepped carefully over the stream, and pushed his head inside. It smelled of earth and damp, and Alistair could see absolutely nothing but black. He pushed his arm inside and felt no walls - it seemed to expand out like a cavern, empty and infinite. He had no idea how far down it went.
Alistair backed out of the opening and sat still for a moment, his heart racing, wondering whether he really should go inside. Perhaps this was the wrong rabbit hole. Perhaps he would just fall and fall forever, with no fantastical land to meet him, only terrible dark and damp walls. Perhaps his mother really was mad, and he would only starve to death underneath a tree, having believed her lies about a world at the end of a burrow.
Alistair knew any of these things could be true, so decided to make sure in the only way he knew how. He poked his head inside the rabbit hole again, and began to repeat his mother’s riddle, down into the darkness.
“Why is a raven-”
Alistair stopped short as he heard the incredible echo of his voice bounce back to him. "-like a writing desk?" it replied.
It was a grand, crisp sound, like he’d just shouted into a great marble hallway, and a cool breeze touched upon his face, stirred up from far below.
This was the right rabbit hole. So there was only one thing for it. Alistair sucked in a breath, gripping the grassy edge, and tried to find the strength to fall forward. He remembered his mother’s frantic, darting eyes, the way she always hid him from the following men, the promise he’d made and remade to her for years.
If it all becomes too late, you go to the rabbit hole. And it was far too late now.
“Bye, Mum,” Alistair whispered, and pushed himself forward into nothingness.