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Chapter Text

Five years ago...

My head burned with frustration. Merriment that had once been the dominant emotion was gone, far and away. Dashed on the rocks of an unbirthday party gone haywire. The ground outside the Mad Hatter's rose and fell. When I reached the darkest bottoms of hills where upon pink pathways were paved, there was something to me that was not entirely certain that I would be at the top. What got me to the top was the matter that I repeated to myself: I had enough nonsense, and that was a fact.

Who cared what the White Rabbit was doing?

Who could tolerate this world where everything had no firm roots?

I stepped over the gnarled root to a tall blue tree. The world was darker, as though out of nowhere. I thought for a moment that if I looked backwards I would see that where I had been had not been there at all. Through the branches I heard sounds, sounds of more nonsense to come. Where had I ventured to this time?

On the tree nearest to me was presented a quick answer to the question. I leaned inward, taking in through the colorful dark the words scribbled on a sign. "Tulgey Wood… curious. I don't remember this?"

There was something ignited in the back of my head that was the drive to wonder. My frustration fought it back with fury because I had just been telling myself how done with wondering that I had been. This Wonderland was a cursed land, I bore repeating to myself. 

I turned to the darkness, arching my eyebrows. The only curiosity that was worth engaging with was the kind which would enable me to get free from here. "Let me see…"

Something hopped atop my shoulders. The world became larger in some way and I wondered if I had somehow shrank once again. When I turned my head in search of some sense of strange wilderness, there was the sudden presence of something before me. I staggered back with what might've been described as a yelp before coming to notice what it was that I had just encountered. 

There on a branch was a reflection on a looking glass staring back at me of large spectacles. This world was already trying its strange magic on me once again.

I gingerly took the limbs of the living spectacles from my shoulders and sat them onto a branch. "No, no. Please, no more nonsense."

With the latest in that affirmation, I was on my way through the woods once more. They were watching me and I could feel that they wanted to play. I wished that I could want to play as well. As one might say, once bitten and twice shy.

It seemed as though I might have been somewhere where I had once been, but not exactly. That, I supposed, made the best option the way I remembered coming from the Mad Hatter's house some way back. I charted an internal map and scanned the Tulgey Wood once more before I felt reaffirmed in my recollection and stepped forward over a log.

HONK!

I took my foot back to the sounds of angry honking and fell on my rump onto a log. "I beg your pardon!"

A fascinating creature was followed by its children to the glittering black of a pond that I had not previously witnessed. As I watched, my mind was enraptured by the sight of some frogs. Only, they were more than simple frogs. They had almost a toe tapping kind of tune as they bounced from one lily pad to another, drumming and crashing in sequence.

I should have thought that this was more nonsense to frustrate me, but there was that inevitable truth once again roiling through the stews of my mind. It was certainly odd, and something that was unseen. In some manner, I was an explorer, was I not? Like those men over in America who found new sights and found undiscovered peoples to learn all new perspectives. The confusion was laced with a merry spark.

I followed the drum-frogs sounds to where I could navigate over the pond. I thought that I was merely thinking  it, but I was saying it out loud as well. "Goodness. When I get home, I shall write a book about this place."

***

I knew that my mind had gone wandering again when I looked through the looking glass and I saw myself, but I wasn't alone and I was not myself. I was not me, but I was we. Our feet were absent, but we heard them scooting. The click of our heels on the cobblestone beneath the ornate arches registered to my ears as the shuffling of a deck of cards or the fluttering of dresses. In this other world, things had their manner of coming together and my years of experience with it have made me keen to it, as it is.

That flutter-shuffle, that fluffle, came by the dozens and by the hundreds. We had no faces and we had no hands. Our hood was pulled closed, our coattails floated in the exact same way as we moved in an even pace along our coat rack. In that reflection, we must have been numbering in the tens of thousands. The mossy hallway stretched onward and there was no horizon. There was simply more of me moving in that same straight line.

Ahead of the looking glass, it was not any better. We were all there as our crimson fabric self stretching endlessly across that path which we tread. We tread over and over again.

It was Monday, we thought. I could not be sure. Our breakfast was oatmeal, two plums and milk in modest portions. That we could be sure of because that had been what we had been ingesting last Monday and the last Monday before that. It was that moment that it crossed my mind that I was there, eating it all over again. The plainest taste was on top of our tongues.

Made manifest by that thought most unpleasant, the horizon revealed the floating red and white figure. She—I knew that it was a "she" instantly—floated and watched. We should make no more than the rhythm of our fluffle. I also knew in that instance that I should not dare to look at the bricks in the wall. I should not dare to try to listen to the typewriter in the far distance singing their songs with the white roses in the gardens.

"6:00," they sang. Dust puffed from the keys, forming letters with the debris and sounds like words with the tapping of the keys.

"6:00, you better finish your walk.

As proper young ladies should.

6:00, a fluffle and no taste of good.

"Don't you dare let yourself wander

Be there by 6:00.

"You may want to lay in our bed.

Toss that hair all around from your head.

You may feel as though that world is dead.

There's no Wonderland left.

"But you can't let that drag your mind.

By 6:00, you better finish your walk."

They could not fool me. I knew a nonsense land when I saw it. If it were not Wonderland, then what else could it possibly be?

I suppose that was what was making the fluffle fall just out of rhythm. It was what dragged my sights away from the looking glass and away from the world that was nonsense. That world of my own.

I felt a hollow in my stomach as those visions in the mirror became less relevant to me as the mirror, the object were. I could hear the fluffle around me and I could see the tops of the other girls' heads. They were moving by the dozen ahead of me and behind me. They were pulling me in the direction away from the looking glass just with the sounds of their motions and the vision of my mind of me holding so still, that one who was behind me would nudge into me and I would be like Dinah back home, the one who started the tumbling of rows and rows of dominos. I am under the impression that the prefects would not quite enjoy that. Even Wendy would likely have some rather harsh words for such a kerfuffle.

Kerfuffle. Wasn't that a peculiar word? One would almost believe that it weren't real if it were not found in a dictionary.

"Alice!" Wendy's voice was calling. 

That voice always did sound peculiarly like mine. Much to the humor of my classmates, I found myself back at inspecting the looking glass in search of the sound. The image of me grinned a wide and familiar grin with teeth like piano keys. It sang to me and beckoned my mind to wonder even further.

"'Twas Brillig

And the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe

All mimsy were the borogoves

And the Mome Raths outgrabe…"

"Alice! Head straight, please!" Wendy said once again. "Marilyn and Hermione, mouths quiet!"

I was unsure if I ever had taken my eyes off of the mirror as I motioned my neck into the same stiff position—the one that had become so familiar since I was sent away here once my sister had finally had it. For a moment, I felt the twinge in my chest and a ripple up my flesh. Maybe now, she would become fed up with me as well.

Instead, my head when it faced Wendy was met with a smile—one so slight, as for the teacher monitoring the halls to not see it—and a nod. Her voice was soft and so caring, reassuring despite her words. "That was a minor disruption, ladies. Be sure to not repeat it. Heads straight, we are making proper time!"

"Yes, Wendy," I said. I curtsied and my dress didn't reach my calves before I heard from the teacher.

"Yes, Prefect Wendy," said the teacher. 

Her voice was a grip around my body which squeezed my arms to my sides and turned my strides stiff. I nodded and I repeated in that tone that I have so practiced. "Yes, Prefect Wendy."

Wendy squeezed the skirt of her dress. Her eyes were large and blue in such a way that I was certain I was able to understand. We were both on the way to the same place and watched by the same teacher. We were told the same things. These same things which made Wendy appear somehow as if she and I were not only a year apart in age.

I wished to talk to her, but as it were she was too far away and time was soon to run out. It felt odd that a moment was taking as long as it was, but it would not stretch on forever. We had to keep our fluffle onward and toward that outstretched door in the gloom.

That door had its way of taking me to a dream that I once had. As we came to its opening my vision could almost be said to be filled with the image of the rain coming down harder and filling the cobblestone, flooding the gardens, and sweeping me off of my feet to greet me with a sea shanty and waves under a completely black sky. 

The reality was much more grey. Much more silent.

That dimmed light stretched across my row of seats and beamed into my eyes as I was pushed through by those behind me and to my seat, where I felt that familiar ache of the desk against my knees and that familiar brushing of the other girls to either side as we began the class. 

I had my paper ready, my book yawning open. It had been a while since I had seen a book with pictures in it, and this was no exception. The text was shifting around in my head and doing the fluffle with the numerous others. They said that I was gifted in English, and I wondered where exactly I had earned such a statement.

The teacher called over to me for an answer. I felt my mind come together for moments to recite some of what I'd derived from our reading, and she was quick to give me a nod and a stern commendation. I was unsure if it was really a compliment.

My pencil and my hand were on the paper and I was writing something. I could not tell you what. I could not escape a sour feeling inside my belly. 

Was this Monday?

I chanced upon a glance at the calendar.

It was Monday.

Something seemed so peculiar about that. Should this day not feel so similar to Friday? Should the number on the calendar not seem incorrect?

As the teacher spoke, the silence all around pressed my ears. It had things in common, I thought, with a tall and hunched creature standing overhead and holding the sides of my face, squeezing into them and using long fingers to motion my eyes toward the paper where I was to write. A tail that was most similar to an arm squeezed into my wrist and pulled letters across the sheets.  There were mouths on its hands whispering through the backrooms of my head and telling me what I knew, what to say.

It was peculiar, that light coming from the window, I thought. The world around me was clean as could be and this campus had once upon a time enchanted me with its majesty, so why was it that there was now a crack in the window? And why, by chance, did it appear to look much the same as the one that appeared on top of the looking glass?

"When did I find out that there was a crack on the looking—"

The towering thing holding my wrist whispered an order. I stopped and my eyes were full of the anguished emotions which flooded through. "Alice," that voice much like mine said, "these questions, do they not happen to be curiosity?"

I discarded the page and started anew. Maybe there were precious minutes spent on the earlier version which I would be unable to get back, but I suppose that was the cost of curiosity. Curiosity had its way of getting one into trouble and I supposed this was going to be one of the reminders.

That towering thing reached for me yet again and I felt its sinister presence now. A presence that I almost had the presence of mind to fight back against, but I could not be entirely certain which direction that would pull me. Those muffled whispers told me to keep working, but was it not another one of my childish fantasies that had driven my sister mad and left that typewriter untouched for these years?

"This is what is best for you," said the thing with the arm for a tail. The eyes in my mind said that its hands were marked with hearts and were a pale white, but I knew that they were not actually there. They still motioned me to keep doing this work and to ignore their being.

My eyes had that odd feeling of being very, very sorry behind their sockets and it radiated through into my head. My fingers pressed upon my brows and rubbed to soothe the pain away. I knew that it would not work, but it was the option which suited me best. This had been going for quite the while, I should assure you.

There was something to this class. I wish I could say exactly how many days that the emotions had crossed my mind but there was not much that I can be certain of in regards to time. I, however, digress. That saying that I was gifted was such a stroke of irony, I felt, not only became I saw no talent but there was something that seemed so primordial about this method of doing assignments. A typewriter was a much more clean and professional way of looking at things.

"But Alice. You don't use typewriters in either a professional nor clean manner."

"Yes, yes, I am quite aware of that."

I listened in on the silence to make certain that I had not once again talked to myself so openly. The class went on like it had always done for those years that I had been going through these halls and these rooms. I knew that I was safe for now.

My temples throbbed some more. I leaned against my hand and stared at the page, watching as it blurred and it divided into numerous images of itself. Sadly, not any that were particularly of interest to me. They were things for the Handy One to guide me through.

"When did you stop enjoying to write?"

"Just as soon as I had started, I suppose."

"So you would say that if you didn't have a typewriter right now, you would not have a jolly go at it?"

"I most certainly would not…"

I just had to keep telling myself that. The Handy One guided e down the pages of the assignment, through the labyrinth of answers and opinions that they for whatever reason wanted me to share. The sound of scribbling became all that much louder over time as my hearing was consumed by its mighty maw.

Something touched my shoulder and my head leaped up. "Oh!"

My gaze met that of the teacher and that sickness in my belly grew deeper. It was a reflex by now what followed. I stood and I bowed into a curtsy. "I apologise Mrs. Miller."

However, it was not the teacher who had shaken me from my stupor. My head turned to the soft touch of a hand on my dress, my eyes facing the wall whereon another looking glass sat and gave me the image of myself in the mirror. Wendy was there standing beside me.

I could see the concern on her face before the words registered. "Alice? Alice? Are you well?"

My sight was filled with the absences of several other students in the classroom. My head throbbed some more and I rubbed my temples, a sure signal to Wendy that I was indeed not feeling well.

She rested the back of her hand onto my forehead. She went about it like a mother. Those concerned eyes reflected all those years she spent at home with her brothers and their nanny, who was a dog. Small changes in expression told me of worry, relief, and then other types of worry. "You haven't caught a fever."

"It is simply another headache," I assured. I moved over to my books. "I suppose that it is time for arithmetic to begin."

I held back a gasp when I saw that the work on my desk was not English. I had been writing notes on etiquette.

"Alice, it is time for lunch," Wendy said, trying and failing to suppress her worry. "Are you most certain that you have a mere headache?"

"Perhaps there is the possibility that I've happened upon a case of what the newspapers call the 'Monday Blues,'" I replied. I studied Mrs. Miller with a glance. She offered little evidence of what she was thinking of the situation, as the staff were prone to. I supposed that Wendy here had volunteered as an emissary to see why a girl so diligent had decided to stay here instead of having some grub.

If that were the case, then it was safe to say that I had my emissary gobsmacked. Wendy's jaw was a little slack as she said slowly with arching eyebrows. "Alice, love, it is a Friday."

My shoulders felt tight and I let out a gasp. "I beg your pardon?"

The calendar had the days marked off. I was indeed at the end of the week that I had seemed to have started this morning. The weight left my head and I felt my hair fluttering across my jaw as I began to fall backward only to be propped upward by Wendy's surprising strength.

I returned to my feet at once. "Thank you, Wendy. Thank you very much."

Wendy took a gander at my work, likely to be sure that my head was indeed in the lesson at hand, and cupped my hand into both of hers. She nodded at Mrs. Miller. "It would seem that our suppositions are correct. She must see the nurse at once!"

Mrs. Miller's only reply was a curt nod.

I followed Wendy's guidance on the way to the exit and out onto the quad's cool air. It was just the same as the Monday that I had missed and, presumably, the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday which I had all forgotten. The powers that be had said that it would rain and lay fog out here in Wockenham, and they were quite consistent at it.

As my brolly was somewhere back in the classroom or the dormitories, we took the longer route to the nurse which involved darting through the cover of the hallways around the plaza between them. As we moved, I felt the throbbing behind my eyes begin to subside, but I didn't wish to tell Wendy such.

"This must be the worst of your headaches yet," Wendy said with her feet moving in a most nervous manner. "Did you see Mrs. Miller back there? She thought you mad!"

I could almost see that smile again. "Most everyone's mad here."

"What was that?" Wendy turned her head.

"I didn't say anything," I replied, hoping that I was correct.

Wendy rubbed her fingers on her chin. "I know, love. It seems as though what occurred in class was just a tad odder, is what I meant to suggest."

We chanced upon the hall with the looking glasses once again and there she stood looking at her, looking at me, looking at us. That crack in the mirror was ever so slightly larger than it was that Monday, it would seem, and behind it I could almost see the eyes of a cat in the dark.

Could it be like that time those five years ago? That time where I ventured off from my sister and lay in the daisies… only to find myself below the tree under which we were reading once I had stirred? Was that not a silly notion? I knew for certain that I had fallen asleep, reading stories of whimsy and under the watch of people who would have said if days or even hours had passed.

Finally, I said to her, "I believe that it was just some minor confusion. As you may have felt before, staying to this schedule on and on, and compounded by my condition."

"You still need rest," Wendy concluded. She tapped my arm so that I could move past the looking glass and toward the nurse's station.

I followed along with her, taking my glances back.

"It seems a tad ill-advised to be looking at the mirror for so long," Wendy said. "I do not mean to be harsh, of course. So disorienting they can be when your consciousness has been altered in such a way, is all that I mean."

"That mirror is bound to break in not too long," I said. "The cold is clearly wreaking havoc on the glass."

"What do you mean by that?"

"The crack is getting a spot extensive," I said.

"Crack?" Wendy turned and looked over my shoulder. "What do you mean by a crack?"

"Why, haven't you noticed?" I pointed a finger to the mirror, right where the crack was.

Wendy stared at it for a few moments. "Alice, there is no crack on that mirror."

I put my hands over my mouth. Perhaps I was mad this entire time? "You don't see it?" 

Wendy gathered my reaction with concern. "Do you remember seeing a boy?"

"A boy? Do you mean one of my suitors? They've not come around to bother me for quite some time."

"He never courted me," Wendy said. "It was always that Tiger Lily."

Now she was speaking in riddles. That was one thing that I was not missing about Wonderland! "Who?"

"Oh! You weren't—bollocks, now I'm getting confused," Wendy said. She took my hands and hers felt less warm than before as they were slicked with cold sweat.

I gasped. "Wendy! What language!"

She smiled in a way she could only do when not in the presence of any teacher. "That can be one of our little secrets, right love?"

I felt some warmth in my face. It was so scandalous! So off from the routine! So unlike Wendy! So odd! So mad! I giggled. I did not know the answer to her riddles but perhaps there was a clue somewhere there. Tiger Lily... like from the storybooks? That was madness too!

Perhaps we were ever more alike than I had assumed. "It can be our secret, darling."

"How about another one, while we are at it?" Wendy disengaged one of her hands to lead me around the halls and past the point sitting straight against the darkness of the woods beside Wockenham School for Ladies.

When I looked into those woods, I could almost see the pink pathways looking back at me and hear the honking of strange creatures. A glimpse of white skittered through the underbrush and my breath caught. I guessed that it was my turn to share a secret.

"Have you ever been to Wonderland?"

Chapter Text

There was marked surprise on Wendy's face. I thought that there may have even been a glint of worry there but that made no sense, did it? "Goodness Alice, you are not saying that you have been to this Wonderland that you speak of?"

Perhaps my phrasing was not the best, but I still found surprise in being asked such a question. It most certainly had to have been an attempt at humor. I chuckled. "Why, of course not. At least, not in the literal sense."

Wendy had that mothering look on her again. I suddenly felt as though I was not talking to a friend but a teacher or some other form of someone who was about to tell me what to do. She said, "So what of the non literal sense?" 

Something caught in my throat. Saying what I had meant to say came off as asinine, to say the least. I had gone to far to not offer her some form of answer. "Well, I sometimes get the notion that I should sit down and write a book sometimes. I have quite the imagination, as it is."

"And you are imagining this Wonderland? What might it be like?" pressed Wendy.

I felt some kind of energy leave my body. In the hallway behind me, I imagined that looking glass cracking some more. Not simply cracking, but ready to shatter. I waved my arm. "Why so curious? Do you not know how that can lead you into trouble?"

"Alice," said Wendy firmly, "we are friends. There is no need to beat around the bush on the matter."

I had to come up with an excuse, and to my surprise there was something in a chest stored from the chest in the back of my skull and unlocked by the key that was the shadows of the trees besides us and the croaks of the frogs. "Why, Wendy, if I do that then would I not be spoiling what was to come tonight? Is this not the day that we are to show our progress in piano?"

There was a skeptical look from Wendy which was remarkably similar to the image of my sister or my mother as they filed through my words to find a mistake within. That one look that told me that I had told them that I was telling a lie. Wendy said, "Was it not a book that you were speaking of?"

"That is just one of my projects about Wonderland," I fibbed. Truth of the matter was, that book was still stewing as a stack of papers on a desk all the way in my quarters and if I hadn't hid it, likely would have been burned years ago.

"This 'Wonderland,'" Wendy said, "certainly sounds like it would be a magical place. Perhaps one with mermaids and pixies?"

"No mermaids," I said immediately, "no pixies."

"Are you certain about that? Perhaps there are pirates or Indians instead?"

"Why, that would simply be copying Never Neverland, would it not," I said. I put my hands on my hips. This was a peculiar set of questions, especially coming from the mouth of Wendy. When I get perplexed, I get frustrated. "There are no Indians and there are no pirates, as far as I had conjured. Things are much odder than that in Wonderland."

Wendy copied my motion by putting her fists onto her hips. "All I'm saying is that it sounds like it might just be complete and utter nonsense, such as that which is unfitting for a school so prestigious."

I sighed. That part of me that imagined things in the looking glass wanted to fight back but I had far too much experience with it. I was a daydreamer and I dreamed of silly things. Things that had already bitten me in the past. It was just so strange that she seemed to have been coming from a place of knowing not too long ago. Or, was it not long ago? Had we been spending a much longer time in these halls than I had felt?

"It is silly," I admitted. 

"Just about as silly as talking about Neverland, wasn't it?"

That I had an admission for as well. "Yes indeed."

I was not going to stand there and start making accusations. I was not that type of friend, and I was a touch bewildered that Wendy was. My nostrils flared a little.

Something floated between the trees, like straps of linen made of bright fur in the shadows. "It is nothing but another brick in your wall."

That happened to be the moment where I clued in, that there was more to this than simple hypocrisy. The years that I had known Wendy, she was just like me in so many ways: consistent, attentive and diligent but ever more so. She never had these kinds of daydreams, at least from what I had been aware of. So, it was curiosity again.

"Curiosity, Alice, don't you know what that leads to?" said the Handy One.

"Yes," but the hands this time only had a grip on part of my body. They pulled my legs forward in compliance with Wendy and into the nurse's station, but part of me was free. They paid me for this resistance by gripping a hand around my brain. I felt the squeeze as we entered the soft light.

I grimaced and felt my temples. Wendy took me by one hand and called for the nurse.

Nurse Briggs was quick to see my grimace and wave a hand. "'Tis not worth making a fuss over. You are looking at theatrics."

Wendy nodded respectfully. "Yes, Mrs. Briggs, I see where you may assume such a thing. After all, her history—"

"If you know her history, you know that she has an odd streak. An exemplary young lady such as you need not concern yourself."

"Yes, Mrs. Briggs. However, is it not the lady's role to serve as a caretaker? To give compassion where it need apply? I can assure you, this goes beyond theatrics."

"You can?" The nurse gave her a look over. "Well, then, I suppose that she can take one of the beds."

This was one of those ways that having Wendy as a friend was useful: her words carried much more weight than mine. It was also another one of those ways that made her talking about Neverland so much stranger. My brain felt another squeeze as I sat on the hard surface of a bed, one of several on a pale row in a dark room.

I scooted back. "Well, if these are supposed to help my body not ache then I suppose laying on some rocks would do the job just as well."

There was still enough privacy for Wendy to smile at me. She touched my hand. "'Tis the best option, it would seem."

"Thank you, Miss Wendy."

An odd look crossed her face then. "No need to be as formal."

She felt my forehead for more fever. It truly was difficult to not think of her as some kind of authority, which had its own set of conflicting emotions. A friend, a grown-up young lady, and a teacher all rolled into one. It was a juxtaposition that rivaled some of those things seen in Wonderland. "You certainly deserve it."

Wendy's head waved slightly to either side. "I was certain that you were angry with me about that… you know…"

Her tone was hushed. I knew what she was talking about. "I will forget about Wonderland."

"Good," Wendy replied. Her sigh carried more than simple relief. "Though if you really were making a song about it, I do hope you have something in reserve for tonight."

"Why, of course I do," I said, "for it would be a bit silly otherwise, wouldn't it?"

Wendy smiled. She began to close the curtains around me. "I shall keep care of your things until you return. Get well soon."

I lay back on the bed with my head within my hands, watching her go into the shadows by the glint of her shoes. Another pair of hands were still gripping my head, that voice whispering into me as it had been so frequently.

"You lied to her."

And came two answers back from within me:

"I'm sorry."

"Who cares?"

I tossed around in the bed in my attempt to shake their grip until I was upright on the bed and my legs were hanging off the sides. Readers might think me a fool, but I should make myself clear: I know what I was feeling. 

I know what being conflicted is.

I know that what was happening was a simple war between the worlds attempting to occupy my head.

It was a fight between Wonderland and the rational. One wanted its permanent spot, the other wouldn't tolerate any kind of occupancy. One was nonsense, completely frustrating nonsense .

There was always an answer to nonsense by the rational. Some way to push it down. That was why, in no uncertain terms, that I felt a wave of confusion as I searched the room and I saw all around me surroundings that were so slightly different than moments before.

The curtains around my bed were white before, but now I could see that there were hearts lining the upper and lower edges. How odd. Perhaps I simply didn't notice?

I scooted back up the bed and stared at the ceiling. I twirled a lock of my hair with my finger and spoke as a whisper to myself. "Well, Alice, this is quite the conundrum that you've ventured into isn't it? To think, you've been veered off so much by a mention of Neverland that you'd not even noticed they changed the curtains. Just goes to show the consequences of curiosity."

It brought to mind some articles in newspapers that I had read about mass delusions. There was a town out in Ireland that was said to have been seeing fairies and pirates, but upon investigation the authorities found nothing. That allegedly made reports flood in ever more, even, and even got the journalists to believe in men with hook hands. It was quite the mind teaser at the time and Wendy had said to me, "They must've taken that from some old storybooks. Had a jolly good laugh out of all those so gullible."

Storybooks… like the ones that had Neverland. I guessed that was simply another way that she was consistent. "Funny that, thinking about her reading that book."

Yet, if that were a simple prank and not a delusion… didn't that make me more delusional than those Irishmen? I had always supposed that I was. You simply did not dream about madness without having a touch of it in you already, as I reasoned. As the Handy One whispered at me in the dark.

"Nonsense has no place," it said, and I could almost hear it not coming from my imagination but from the hearts my curtains. "Keep it down."

"Yes."

"No."

There was a level of shock I felt in that defiance which I could not explain. I stared at the hearts in the curtains and waited for the thing that had been guiding me for so long to come and… I wasn't too sure what the consequences were. Except that I felt as though I may lose my head. I scoffed and I whispered, "How silly."

I moved my finger through my hair. As though there were something that had been sat upon my chest and risen free, I felt my breathing ease and a feeling of something that had been in my throat loosen, if only just slightly.

As the locks curled tightly around my index, they glowed with reflections into my eyes. Reflections of colors changing in a tune. It was green cast upon me from the woods beside my head, and then it was purple, and then it was pink. The corners of my eyes caught similar rhythms coming from out beneath my curtains. Coming from the directions to my sides and at my feet, coming as cones blinking on and off.

Green, purple, pink, purple, green, pink.

Why did it appear that they were coming from halls? There were no indoor hallways that came those ways, at least not any ones that I was familiar with. I turned to my side and gazed into the lights. "Don't do it, Alice."

I still did it nevertheless. I stared at the lights, enraptured by the strangely familiar sight. "I do believe I've seen this before. So where?"

I once again found myself swinging my legs off the side of the bed. As feet met the floor, I heard the most peculiar sound: plunk .

"Oh!" Ripples came out in circles from where my feet touched the floor like the floor was the surface of a pond which a frog had jumped into. When the lights stopped blinking for a second, the ripples disappeared, and then they returned once again when the floor turned its series of colors.

The bed swayed. Now I could see it, bobbing up and down and moving on the surface of the tiles aimlessly. The window crawled upon the wall to follow and the curtains were a constant shield of my vision from my surroundings.

I touched the floor with my fingers and felt cold colorful liquid run through and drip from between them. I let some pool within my palm, trying to let some daylight catch whatever it might be. The woods outside were odd hues in the dark. Those same colors bounced around the branches and shone as cones.

From the branches came an echo of a jaunty and happy tune. A voice disembodied, but jolly with madness.

"'Twas Brillig

And the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe

All mimsy were the borogoves

And the Mome Raths outgrabe.

"“Beware the Jab-Jab-Jabberwock, my girl!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!”

"The Jabberwock?" I felt my shoulders moving to the rhythm.

"Beware the Jab-Jab-Jabberwock!

Dare not let the mind stay enclosed

Dare not let a girl go!

Beware the Jabberwock!"

I tried to resist it but I couldn't. I was dreaming. I was in Wonderland again. That explained this entire ordeal.  I hopped to the top of my bed. I joined in with the song.

"Beware the Jab-Jab-Jabberwock!"

It felt good to hear my voice coming through the Tulgey Wood once again. I danced and with me a chorus of pianos came to life.

"He burbles in the Tulgey Wood!

With eyes of fire!

Jaws ready to snatch!

Ready to come for those who know no good!"

Yellow eyes appeared on the curtain, sudden as the music had begun. I gasped and I fell outwardly onto my rump and into the liquid floor below. With a mighty gasp for air, I pulled myself up and touched pure darkness to hoist my head above the gap. My hair fell before my eyes, concealing half of the face which greeted me.

It was indeed a face, or at least part of it. A grin was below those set of eyes, riffling like piano keys as it swayed to either side as though attached to a bobbing head. 

"'Twas Brillig

And the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe

All mimsy were the borogoves

And the Mome Raths outgrabe."

"Why, it's you!" I held my hands over my face. Was that unusual? To see the same thing in more than one dream?

"Who, you?" said the face on the curtain. It spun around on the curtains as if that same invisible head were rolling on an invisible floor.

"No, not me. It's you! The Cheshire Cat!"

"Aw, so I see that I don't need to introduce myself," purred the Cat. Its face rose up the curtain and mounted atop the rods. Bands of fur faded into existence.

I should have been angry to see it, shouldn't I? After all, it was because of them that I almost lost my head. Except, it was a dream just as this was so I was never at risk of losing my head. So, I found myself smiling more. "Why, you wouldn't need an introduction."

The Cheshire Cat was in full now. "It's been some time, Alice. I thought you might be forgotten."

"That was you in my daydream today!"

"Oh? That was today?" The Cat chortled. It rolled its head off beneath one of its paws. "You ever find time slipping away? As if it were an illusion?"

"Yes!"

"Oh, I wasn't asking you." The Cat beamed down onto me. 

I scrunched my eyebrows. Of course, this would not play by the rules of reality just like last time. I was older and wiser, I decided. I would not let myself be disoriented once more. "Oh, so it was a rhetorical question."

"A what kind of question, Alice?" The Cheshire Cat's head floated above its body and tilted as it descended closer to the floor in which I was embedded.

I moved my hair out of my face. I was not sure if liquid tile would wash free, but that had little bearing on… well, just about everything. "Why, it's a question that is asked when you already know the answer."

"Then, why ask the question at all?" The Cheshire Cat's smile was steady and somehow seemed larger than before. "Does that not come across as a touch bit mad?"

"It is simply a manner of conversation," I said, once again resisting Wonderland's attempts to confound me. "I suppose there is no reason for it if you go beyond the accepted norm."

"Ah," winked the Cat, "so I see. I told you that the Queen of Hearts would love you."

"Love like a beheading," I mused.

"Oh, don't you see?" The Cheshire Cat's head sat on the dark beside my puddle. "A beheading is a jolly time."

For the Cat, I assumed. I pulled myself further out of the patch of light. I made a little joke. Not a big one, but a small one. "I doubt that she saw it your way."

"Oh, she rarely sees it my way. She has a much different kind of madness than mine. She is quite the tyrant, if you hadn't noticed."

I sat at the edge of the light and grabbed the sides of the Cheshire Cat's head. I made another joke. "I'm afraid that I did notice, thank you very much."

The head faded away and I was touching the air, hearing the echo coming from the Cheshire Cat's hollow neck as it pranced along the curtain rod. "You've noticed? Oh dear, I fear to say that I was afraid of hearing that."

"With all due respect, Mr. Cat, I must question how you can be afraid of anything. You are incorporeal!"

"Incorporeal, you say? Is that not a peculiar word? You should write a book someday, somehow."

"A book on the peculiar? Don't you know that is absurd!"

"We're all absurd, my girl," purred the cat. "You, me, I, the Hatter, the Queen, and all of her men—but I fear that I repeat myself."

I squeezed some tile out of my dress. "Indeed."

The Cat chortled some more, its voice coming from all around. I realised then that I had stumbled and fallen into some kind of verbal trap. I wrung my hair and shook my head. "I didn't mean to imply that I am absurd, you are the ones that are absurd!"

"Such as asking questions that you know the answers to, and picking some thoughts over others about which are the most valid?"

Perhaps I should have been frustrated then as well, but I smirked at this assertion. This topsy turvy world had the cleanest air. My limbs felt light. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, is that another rhetorical question?" The Cheshire Cat's face appeared over my shoulder and caused me to jump almost back into the light that was also fluid.

"Why might it be a rhetorical question?"

"Well, you said that you had clued into the Queen being a tyrant—ooh, is this a game? I must say that you have become much more engaging!"

I clenched my jaw with thought. This was becoming a much bigger riddle than I had expected. What might the Queen of Hearts being a tyrant have to do with me being absurd? And what was it about that which could frighten the Cheshire Cat? Was there more of a reason why it believed that I would have forgotten it?

"'Tis not a game, I am genuinely c—c—c—"

"Oh my, cat's got your tongue? I suppose you mean to say 'curious,' do you not Alice?"

"Yes!" This was where I felt a tiny bit of frustration. "I mean that word. I want to know the answers to why you are saying things like this! Why , Mr. Cat, is it so off-putting about my brand of absurdity? What does it have to do with the Queen?"

"And why is 'curious' such a swear to you, Alice?"

I crossed my arms and repeated the lesson as I had memorized with a grin that near matched the Cat's. "Well, curiosity leads one astray. Getting lost in wondering keeps you from seeing and appreciating what is right in front of you. Curiosity leads to nonsense, and where there's nonsense there is no sense! "

The face floated to right in front of mine. I could feel whiskers tickle my nose and risking a sneeze.

The Cheshire Cat trilled. "But, are you not going to school?"

"Another rhetorical question, I presume," I said with a shrug. I climbed up to my feet. My heels still sent ripples through the floor puddle and I almost tipped in once again. I squeezed some more liquid out of my dress and hair. "It has been fun, but there are many more parts to Wonderland to see. So, if you will excuse me I—"

"That question wasn't rhetorical, Alice. If you are going to school, does it not seem odd to dislike curiosity to such a degree? Now, that question was rhetorical."

"Well, you're wrong. There is nothing peculiar about going to school and shunning curiosity."

"Oh, and isn't curiosity not the simple desire to learn?"

"Well, I suppose," I said. I took to the dark and reached for the curtain. I stopped and frowned at my words. What was I doing ? Holding conversation with a madman? All it was doing was attempting to confuse me once again! "... need I remind you, however, that you are from the nonsense world and I am not? "

The Cheshire Cat, now a whole again, leaned against the wall from the top of the curtain rod. "Shall we make a wager?"

I shook my head. "No, I'd rather not. Sure hope this isn't the whole of this dream..."

I parted the curtains and watched the floor for any surprises. I tiptoed away from any hints at light.

"I'll be taking that as a yes," said the Cheshire Cat, their voice a booming echo. "You might want to watch where you venture!"

"Care to say what I'm doing if it's not watching where I venture?" The room was skewed over to one side as if I were standing within a box that had had something sat on top of it and caused the top to lean over away from the bottom. The door was a color red unlike what I'd seen of the school before, the knob thankfully not the chatty kind. I turned the knob.

The Cheshire Cat began to fade away, singing. 

"'Tis yovern and yogoern again

The Queen's direction says

Line tuver

Follow the way and beware the Jabberwock."

Chapter Text

Outside was just as grey as I had remembered it. The central hub of the school's grass lay in contrast to the haze all around. Puddles lined the sides of the pavement and liquid streaked through the gaps in the cobblestone. I almost would have thought that I had awoken and come out to a new evening if it weren't for the remnants of the liquid floor still clinging to my hair and my dress. "My, I do wonder how I will manage to get all of this out?"

My gaze was vigilant for any of the odd residents of this land but try as they might, my eyes were not able to find anything that was unusual in particular beyond the manner in which the courtyard had been so subtly altered. It was ever so much longer, the red bricks on the walls ever so much greyer. The paths seemed less straight and the roses were paradoxically brighter and more red.

"Well, I suppose that if I wish to be cleaner, I should go to the baths," I said with a nod to myself. After all, this spot of Wonderland was not quite as bizarre as many of the other spots. Perhaps my refined mind had tamed it, if ever so slightly.

I stepped down onto one of the paths on the way to the main building. The ground made a sound almost like a drum and to either side of me, the grass sprouted and weaved together into trees. I felt a jump and stumbled back to beneath the covers of the hallway outside the infirmary. The pavement tapped lightly against my heels but what was done was done.

It appeared as if an entire forest had grown in front of me, inside the school courtyard. The pathway which crossed it seemed to continue through. I tilted my head, allowing myself to ponder for just a few moments about my direction. There were certainly things of intrigue within that forest, but what if the other directions? May there also be some wonder if I headed elsewhere?

That was when I heard the call of someone from within the woodlands, jumping off of the walls formed by the dense and all-green trees and rolling from the opening in the forest. That someone sounded peculiarly like I did. "Help! Someone help me!"

My eyebrows raised. As I could not be in two places at once, that left only one that it could be. I toed within the entrance and I called out, "Wendy? Wendy, is that you?"

Of course, I knew that it had to be so I was already along the path. I slipped in a bit of the leftover tile as I moved through the forest. As I moved, the underbrush was there with faces and eyes formed out of leaves and patterns watching as I went. I slowed and watched them watching me. I waited for something to make a sound like a girl crying for help, but as I paced along nothing came of the sort.

"Please! Help me!"

Wendy's voice was so slightly closer. I raised my hands around my mouth and called. "Come this way!"

I moved forward, turning my head as I moved to see the path behind me. To no surprise, I was not able to see where I had come. The way back through here had been replaced with more grey haze that swallowed up paths that diverged and converged like scribbles. What was that about the Jabberwock? Was this a part of the Tulgey Wood?

"Oh goodness!" Wendy's voice was echoing closer now. "Won't someone help?"

I had no time to deduce what kind of nonsense that the Cheshire Cat was singing about. I had just this dream, and chances were that I would not come back here any time. The odds were of this dream recurring were already astronomical.

I turned my head back to the path ahead and crashed into something that wasn't there before. There was a brick wall, and I was standing in a spot that looked ever so vaguely like the spot where there was a fountain within the courtyard. I rubbed the pain from my nose as I stepped away from the sudden obstacle. "Well, you could be a little less abrupt!"

I suppose I was expecting the wall to be alive, but that would have been following some kind of pattern. My foot caught something soft and I jerked it upward at the sound of a faint voice telling me, "I beg your pardon!"

I turned my head downward and through the shadows could see a little blue dress, long blonde hair, and a pinafore. It was me, only younger, and about as tall as a mouse. She was groaning and laying in a small crater. I kneeled to get a closer look, a type of confusion that I hadn't yet seen filling me. "I do apologise."

I picked me up with my fingers, but as I did so she screamed and thrashed with all her might. The thin fabric of her dress slipped from my grip and she dropped to the ground, terrified as she hurtled toward her ultimate fate. Yet, when she hit the ground, she was quick to pick up and scurry away. As I watched her scurry, I could see more flashes of blue all coming around from where I had stepped. There might have been dozens of them—dozens of me, coming out from a gap on the bricks as though they were on a fountain that had sprung a leak. I crouched to them, my eyes searching for a mushroom or a bottle or a carrot so as to make this interaction less cumbersome. "Alice? What is going on, Alice?"

The ones who paid attention to me were quick to skedaddle the other way. I huffed. Won't you look at that, I couldn't even talk to myself properly.

I let befuddlement come over me. Whilst they yelped and they shouted, none of them were loud enough to have been who was calling. They were, perhaps, not worth the time, but their—or our —presence was sure a the kind of mind teaser which had staying power in my head.

"H—Help me!"

I reared my head back. This time, when I heard it it was coming from right beside me. It seemed to have been coming from the other side of the wall and coming through the tiny gaps as though they were wide holes. "Help you?"

"Help me!"

I scratched my head. "How might I possibly help you?"

I paced around, feeling a mighty sting as I heard that voice coming from the wall. My dress had dried now—thankfully, not stained from my encounter before—leaving me wondering just how long I had been contemplating this. The little versions of me kept trickling free and forcing my steps to move every which way to avoid stepping on them. Birds chirped, tooted, and honked around me. Metal clinking came from the air.

If someone was on the other side of the wall… there must have been a door somewhere, most certainly? Walls would not simply appear around someone. I heard the cries for help hammering up against my ears as I pondered this. My fingers touched the wall gently. "Don't you—or me—worry. I'll find a way out of this!"

I moved along the wall. While there was that resemblance to the plaza within the courtyard, my steps only served to illustrate the differences. There was a door here somewhere, or a mushroom. A solution would come easily so long as I kept at it. This was my dream, after all.

I wandered and I wandered along the edge, until I felt a knob within my hand. "Yes!"

I turned the knob and I stepped through, my chest filling up with triumph. I didn't happen to notice the steep drop-off until I was already at the bottom and pulling myself off some carpet. The plume of dust which flew around me caused me to cough and throw my arms around.

A voice with a slow cadence greeted me. "Why, let me help you with that young lady!"

My hair was thrown back by a gust of soot and dust. I had no chance to cover my eyes before it was jammed underneath my eyelids and forced tears to run down my face. I coughed some more, the salt from my tears touching my young as my mouth draped wide with each and every heave. I was scant able to hear the others inside whatever space that I'd found myself in. One was calling my name, one sounded oddly proud of themselves.

"Gracious!" My hands felt for something, anything, until I grabbed something along its edges which felt like it may have been a sink. I threw my head down and submerged it underwater before pulling it out. My hair draped all around my face, but the irritation was gone.

There was something which looked like a lizard with fur and a tambourine for a head staring me back as I wiped my eyes. Its brows were lowered in an angry gaze, little claws clinging onto the edge of a filthy birdbath. "Ah, bugger."

I attempted to shoo it away. "My apologies. I was simply—"

"Why, a what sort of schooling is there nowadays to produce a young lady with that kind of attitude," said the same voice that had come before the spray of soot.

I flinched as I faced their direction, but there was no immediate punishment for my apparent transgression. What I got was the cold shoulder.

I was in a room with a flickering soft orange glow coming from a tall crooked fireplace. Its walls were half-built and lined with colorful floral wallpapers. Sand dunes spilled over the tops of the walls, grains trickling onto the carpet by the second. 

With their back to me was the owner of this, a tall and thin man—no, not a man. He was wearing a dark waistcoat with a tall white collar around his head. As he moved, he had a strange waddling gait and I could see that his nose was a long break. A hairpiece bounced over his bald head as he trotted. It was a buzzard, towering and smelling of decay.

"Alice?" The voice that was coming wasn't his. It was a woman's voice, and not just any woman's.

The Buzzard moved out of the way to show none other than Wendy, sitting in a chair with a cup of tea and smiling just the way that we practiced in school. Only, there was an extra kind of movement to her lips.

"Help me," she mouthed.

The Buzzard stepped back in front of her, his eyes closed. "Such a beauty has been never seen since the birth of starlight. An elegant, delicate thing radiating the brilliance of a hearth and giving the same heat within my heart."

For as beautiful as he was describing her, his voice sure did sound detached from the matter. I found myself tapping my toe with impatience at the sound. There was something to it that I felt as though I had heard before half a dozen times, if not more.

My patience thinned in only a few instances. I stamped across the floor and wove around the Buzzard as he made one of his blind paces. I crouched beside her. She was by all appearances not hurt. In fact, the manner in which her eyelids drooped told me that I was looking at boredom in its highest form.

"Wendy? What has happened here?"

"I may ask you that very same question," she replied.

The Buzzard paused. "What question might that be, madam?"

She sipped her tea. "Were you not speaking of this recipe?"

The Buzzard's arms flew out, displaying an impressive wingspan of black and shimmering feathers. "A recipe? You must be joking, madam! How can a man focus on making tea when faced by a beauty of such proportions such as yourself! Miss…"

"Wendy Darling, sir."

"Miss Darling!" The Buzzard trotted at a quicker pace. "What a name befitting your timeless beauty! By the gods, a name for a goddess!"

Wendy nodded politely and sipped some more tea. She leaned toward me and muttered something to my ear. "That is the third time that I've told him my name…"

"What was that?" the Buzzard opened one eye and leaned his head over to the side. I ducked behind the chair in just the nick of time.

"I've said nothing," denied Wendy.

"Why of course not. A young and nubile lady such as you knows the rudeness of speaking out of turn! Why, that brings to mind a song that I've written. Would you care to have a listen?"

"Yes, that sounds lovely."

Wendy sounded genuine there. I suppose that it was some form of a break from the drudgery she'd experienced so far. She drank her tea some more as the Buzzard marched to a multicolored piano at the corner of the room, beginning to play some notes. She leaned back to where she assumed I was and muttered some more. "I desperately need to powder my nose."

I looked over the top of the chair. The Buzzard was making a rather nice melody, as much as I loathe to admit it. It reminded me of certain sea shanties.

"I've been daydreaming! 

Daydreaming about you!

Daydreaming about a life so pure!

"Young lady, eyes so blue!

Never had a harsh word to say!

She takes the blues away!

"She knows not to shout!

Never to pout!

Never to toot!

Can shine a boot!

"I've been daydreaming!

A daydream about life so true!

About you!

"Your hand in mine!

Children by the nines!

"I've been daydreaming!

Daydreaming about you!

Daydreaming about a life so pure!

"Take my hand, fair maiden!

Never living a life jaded!

I've made this song about you!

"You who knows not to shout!

Never to pout!

Never to toot!

Won't you shine my boot?

"Your hand in mine!

Children by the nine!"

He stopped to catch a breath, moving those feathers along the piano like they were long and delicate fingers. I could not decide in that moment if that was a heartwarming song, or one that should have made me very uncomfortable. Can a buzzard and a human even have children? I probably shouldn't doubt Wonderland.

I plugged one of my ears and leaned to Wendy. "Have you any ideas?"

She sat her tea on its plate in her other hand. She scraped her nails on the ceramic surface. "Well, I suppose I could fly out of here if he weren't a bird, and it weren't rude to abandon one during their speech."

After sucking in a hefty amount of air and almost seeming to drain the oxygen out of the room, be bellowed the lyrics to his song.

"By gosh, he reminds me of Timothy," I said, scoffing at the thought.

Wendy's voice was hard to hear over the singing and the music. She rolled her eyebrows. "Timothy? You mean to tell me that he was courting you too?"

"Oh! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—"

"There are bigger issues at hand, Alice," Wendy said. She sipped more tea and crossed her legs tighter. A small bit of her beverage splashed as she jabbed it over to the Buzzard.

The Buzzard paused his singing. "Why, did you say something, madam?"

Wendy's slight frown clued me in that was an indication the Buzzard had already forgotten her name. Her eyes were wide with thought even though she kept a pleasant and neutral smile the best she could. "Well, uh, I have a plus one."

She pointed her thumb over the back of the chair.

What are you DOING?

The Buzzard stood at the tips of their long toes, stretching their gangly limbs until they caught sight of me coiled behind the chair. I felt exposed. "What might you be doing behind there?"

For a second, I thought that perhaps he'd forgotten me in the same way that he had forgotten Wendy's name so many times and Wendy seemed to as well. Instead, however, he snorted from stop and waved a wing. "You will leave the premises at once!"

Wendy leaned forward, placing her feet firmly onto the ground. He threw a gust of wind her way that blew her back down. "But, sir, I thought you'd said for me to leave!"

"Not you, madam," the Buzzard droned, "that little witch clinging to the back of my chair. To think someone so rude has been helping themselves to my accomodations! I ought—I ought—I ought to call the Queen's men here this instant!"

I felt a twinge of fear, despite the absurdity. Despite the fact that this were most certainly a dream. This dream was even more like the one from the past than I had registered to that point. "Oh no!"

Wendy gasped and shook her head. "Sir, I do not believe that it is quite so serious. Surely, if she simply left the premises then the matter would be settled in its entirety? Without the need to bother royalty with such small matters?"

"No, no, that will not do. Such matters require the full force of Her Majesty's men!"

"Why, wouldn't that ruin the good company? You have been a very accommodating host. It would be a terrible shame to see that bogged down by such matters as men barging in to take a prisoner," asserted Wendy. There was a nervous timbre to her voice. She had caught onto that her previous plan—whatever it may have been—had failed and she was attempting to search for another solution.

"Hmm," pondered the Buzzard. "So, as long as she leaves you may forget the intrusion?"

Wendy nodded. There was clearly an internal fury behind her smile, but that would only be obvious to someone who knew her. She sipped her tea, crossed her legs tighter, and said, "Yes, sir. In fact, I have heard on good authority that she quite despises the piano."

The Buzzard gasped and draped his feathers over his face. "How barbaric!"

While he was caught up in his grief, I ventured a glimpse at the table to Wendy's other side, where there was a row of sweet biscuits with colorful icing. It was a wonder that Wendy hadn't had a hankering for any whilst stewing in her boredom. Perhaps she was so bored that she had circled around to being distracted with it, almost like a typical day of schooling.

"Barbaric indeed," Wendy said. She was still sounding dishonest. "Especially in regards to your playing, which shows a remarkable level of talent! Why do you not go and play some more? That will most assuredly solve our conundrum."

I moved myself as far away from view as I was able to as the Buzzard contemplated Wendy's words. He trotted and flapped his wings. "A wonderful suggestion, indeed! Madam, I hope you are ready for the most romantic song in my library!"

The Buzzard moved over to the piano and fluttered on top of the seat.

Wendy finally let out a sigh as he began to play his next tune, which date I say sounded too dour to be romantic as he'd described. She tried to get a glance at me from where I'd been before. "Alice?"

I took a biscuit from the tray. "I'm over here."

"I have him distracted. You may be able to sneak past."

"Won't that leave you?"

We watched the way that his head moved around as he hit the piano keys. Despite the slow song, he was shaking his head and throwing it backwards and forwards as though he were in the middle of a passionate ballad.

"I have an idea," Wendy said.

"I have an idea too."

We described our ideas to one another and then we took action. 

"I do apologise if this turns me into a giant and I squish you," I said to Wendy. 

"Say what ?" 

I nibbled the edge of my cookie, partially to mitigate the amount of growth and partially to be sure just in case it would shrink me instead that I didn't end up lost inside that filthy carpet. The next thing I heard was Wendy yelping as the world around me expanded in size. The slight jump I did as I realised that I was shrinking was enough to leave me suspended in midair.

The floor looked as though I was floating above a fabric. Well, floating for a second before I was falling past the velvet cliffs and flailing my arms with the vague hope that I could somehow fly this time. The only thing that felt lighter than my body was my head. Why, yes, of course I screamed.

As I fell, a pearlescent monolith moved swiftly in front of me. I crashed face-first into it and bounced upward, leaning with my back against a teacup once my injuries were done being acquired. Big splashes of tea came around me as Wendy moved the plate around and to look me in the eyes. You never see how blue a person's eyes are until you are fourteen centimeters tall.

Wendy put a hand on her face and shook her head. She whispered and it sounded like a powerful wind. "Seems as though we got tails for this."

She looked over me and to the Buzzard before putting on one of those inauthentic smiles. Her ginger movements out of the chair made sounds most similar to a storm cracking apart a forest. She spoke over my head, "Such a lovely arrangement."

As I could see by peering through the gaps between them, her fingers were curled around the teacup's handle and covering me from the view of the Buzzard. I wasn't certain how she managed to keep those hands as lovely as they were when compared to mine. As we grew closer, she readied the plate and the cup for their destination.

She sat beside the Buzzard on the stool and moved me toward the corner of the piano, where a bone was being repurposed as a way of propping the lid open to display all the cords. The ground below me rang with the sound of it being sat and didn't quite stop as the chords sent tremors up the sides of the piano.

I wobbled as I changed positions to peer over and watch Wendy and the Buzzard. Two giants mingling about, something about the size of me made the situation come across as extra absurd.

"You're being a touch… forward for a young lady, don't you think?" said the Buzzard.

"Indeed, I'm—it's just that this arrangement is so romantic! " Wendy batted her eyelashes and put her hands across her lap. Those teeth were particularly enchanting.

The Buzzard looked away from her with a satisfied huff and continued to play the piano, this time hitting the keys even harder.

This had the consequence of sending small sprays of tea into my face and slicking the edge of the cup as I attempted to use it to stand to my full height. The trembling ground threw the heels of my shoes out from under me several times before I managed to get a hold of it. My knees wobbled as I moved.

The edge of the plate was quite the steep step off. I felt my heart race and my vision began to distort as I readied myself. What stretched before me seemed to go on endlessly and be the only thing in the world. I staggered to either side and tried to keep my footing until finally giving in and falling onto my rump, where I slid over to the edge of the plate and placed my feet onto the narrow ridge that was the tip of the piano's side.

I took a breath and moved my eyes away from where I was about to go, to watch the giant shaking my entire world as Wendy distracted him to the best of her ability. To my good fortune, she was nearer-by so that her perfume was what was taking up my nostrils instead of his putrid odor. Her eyes were colossal with worry. She waved her hand and whispered encouragement.

I gave her an inauthentic nod and stood. The shaking of the floor beneath me nearly got me that very moment to topple over into the chord-filled flickering void that was the interior of the piano. "Uh-oh!"

I brought my hands out to balance myself. I flapped my arms around until they seemed to finally do the trick. By then, the sounds booming around me were partly dulled by the drumming of blood vessels within my ears. Maybe I yelped, maybe I did not. I wasn't sure at the time.

"Can't you fly?" I vaguely heard Wendy's voice.

I mocked a curtsy. "Now is not the time for sarcasm, darling."

'Twas a mistake to make the gesture. Next thing I knew, I was trying to find my balance once again whilst Wendy gawked with an expression most confused. I wobbled and then staggered forward until crashing into the bone and ricocheting off of it.

My rump hit the piano next and next I knew, I was on a speedy downward slide along the piano's arm. It wasn't clear whether me or Wendy squealed first. 

Had the plan failed? And was I about to die, or whatever came of you whenever such a fate was about to befall you whilst sleeping? Certainly, this would be grounds to jar me awake? 

Those were just a few of my thoughts as I was jettisoned off of the arm and above the abyss that was the shadowy corners of this firelit room. Thankfully, I was able to get some answers as I went through my diagonal fall.

The Buzzard, so engrossed in his music that he was still swaying his head, got a nasty surprise when the piano lid collapsed and clamped onto his nose. He was not able to even let out a yell as his rear end threw itself into the air. He flapped his wings in desperation to free himself.

In that time, Wendy jumped after me. I got a less than soft landing against the breast of her dress and was thrown up into the air several times before she caught me and cupped her hands around me. The world was entirely black and pitching in extreme ways as she moved. I wasn't quite sure where until I caught a glimpse thanks to the frenzy of her run. Her hand was around the doorknob, and then the world was black once more.

"Well, isn't this a pickle," Wendy said presumably to the Buzzard, "I shall leave at once to find aid, good gentleman!"

She slammed the door. I was able to tell by how much it rattled my bones. I bounced up and down between her arm and her waist trying to suppress the sickness in my belly until she finally allowed me to see the light once again.

We were at the edge of some woodlands and right beside a creek that sang gentle tunes. The leaves floating on its surface seemed like boats to me. She placed me down on a rock and nearly blew me away with the air coming off of her dress as she sat down beside me.

She glimpsed around. "How queer… I was certain that we'd been in a desert..."

I took hold of part of her dress to begin my climb up to the peak of her leg. By the time I was done, I felt a touch winded. "This world is nonsense, Wendy."

"I've caught onto that," her voice a touch sour but her face glowing with intense relief. She looked over to the purples and the oranges of the sky, seeming to stare at the stars.

All at once, I grew to my full size. Wendy likely would have jumped if it were not for my weight keeping her down. I felt my face flush and quickly got off, paying no mind to the rocks digging at my legs and bottom.

Wendy first hugged me. "Alice! Alice! I cannot believe it!"

I hugged her back. It was true that she had been in my dreams before, but I was certainly in disbelief that she had managed to wander into Wonderland. Typically speaking, the dreams involving her were some manner of embarrassing schoolyard affair.

Then, she pulled me away and gave me a scolding look. "Is this what you mean by a non literal visit?"

Chapter Text

There was nothing particularly unusual about Wendy scolding me in these dreams, although it was usually for the reason of some manner of very obvious moral, physical, or educational failure. It was also typical for me to wilt at her words and say the usual phrase "Yes, Wendy."

Perhaps I should have been clued in on several different matters when I had the presence of mind to gape like a moron whilst trying to piece together what the very not-obvious trouble was. Or, when I was able to say, "I beg your pardon? 'Tis nothing but a dream?"

Wendy took one hand off of my arm and then squeezed my skin between her index and thumb.

"Yowch!" I jerked away and rubbed my arm. "What has gotten over you?"

"My apologies. I had to experiment there. They say to pinch someone to tell if they are dreaming. We're still here, so you're not dreaming."

"Well, that doesn't truly mean that. For all that I know, the pinch is just part of the dream." I pinched myself… I guess so I could make a point. "Oof!"

Wendy's hands were on her hips now, watching me and no longer seeming too angry. "Did that prove it to you?"

"No," I said. "I know for a fact that this has to be a dream. I have been here before, yes, but never in a real manner."

"Alice." Wendy rested a hand on my shoulder. There was a slight shake to her head as she said, "We were just in the sitting room of an overly courting buzzard—one that can talk mind you. There is no need to keep on lying."

I jerked away and gave her a frown. This had to have been some type of skewed version of Wendy produced by my unconscious mind. Like all of Wonderland, there to lure in me with whimsy or comfort only to then attempt to drive me into pulling out my own hair. The only thing which struck me as queer about this assessment was that she seemed to see the absurdity of this world. Even then, I supposed that was just another random variance to the world.

"I won't be getting my leg pulled by the likes of you," I said firmly.

Wendy's temper looked to be flaring once again. "Alice, stop this at once! I know that you believe in this place! Why are you being so stubborn?"

"'Stubborn?' Are you not describing yourself at this moment?" 

I hadn't seen her behave this childishly before. Whatever this pastiche made of my friend was, all I knew is that it was the most inauthentic creation of my mind that I'd ever seen. There had to have been a limit of some sort before it became so obviously not Wendy that I would be able to disregard it altogether.

Wendy's nostrils flared just a little before she heaved out a sigh. "I feel as though we're escalating things when we need not."

She stared at the ground and I saw her eyebrows peak at the sight of a black serpent made up of a stick of liquorice slithering up through the rocks. She watched it for a few moments as it snapped at leaves that turned into small flying lizards. A little smile crossed her face and, it turned out, mine too. I supposed it was still too early for me to be entirely done with the nonsense.

Wendy's fingers slid softly between mine. "You've made such a wonderland, Alice. Why do we not go for a walk?"

She looked at the stars in the colorful sky through the curly branches of fat trees. Somehow I knew to not keep on arguing and to trust her in that moment. "You'll find that a wonderland isn't all that it's chalked up to be."

"I'm quite aware." With her light tug, I was following her along the banks. Striding over rocks of many colors and the shadows that came from those odd trees. "More aware than you know."

"That dirty old buzzard really colored your image, did it not?"

"Yes, but actually no. Alice, I believe that I should come clean."

All of the sudden, the way she had been talking seemed less like nonsense and more like sense that I hadn't comprehended before.  "Clean about what?"

And Wendy was singing, carrying me along.

"Eighteen, my head's cracked by confusion

Stuck in a role of disillusion

I said that I wanted to grow up

They'd never know what had come up

"Now I struggle to understand

I found it out, but can no longer comprehend"

I leaned my head over as we moved quicker. Before I had known it, she was pulling me closer into a sort of dance. I sang along with her. "What can you no longer understand?"

"Trapped in my own room

Noone else who understood it

Fantasies shifted into regrets

I said that I wanted to grow up.

"Now I struggle to understand

I found it out, but can no longer comprehend."

I nodded along. I wasn't entirely certain that I understood, but I would ask for clarity after she was done with pouring her soul out to me. I added to her lyrics.

"Time can be an abyss

Goes by, unable to be processed

Once in my life I was little more than ten

I struggle to comprehend"

She took both my hands. We were spinning across the yellow dirt on the trails. Was it just me, or did she seem to be floating? She kept her tune going.

"It can be hard to understand

Why it ticks by, now you're a woman

I struggle to understand

I found it out but I can no longer comprehend"

I looked into her eyes, trying to extract the meaning through the rush of emotion. I sang along:

"In from then it's felt an eternity

Life of uncertainty

I wonder through the land

I struggle, trying to understand

"Can you grow up too fast?

Childhood a moment that just won't last?"

She gave me a nod. And then we were harmonizing. As though I could see into her future by hearing elements of her past.

"Now I struggle to understand

I found it out, but no longer comprehend

Where it's all leading."

We leaned up against a tree, across from one another but not looking each other in the face. Of all the things to wonder about in Wonderland, what had just happened was leaving that sort of lingering wonder which felt so familiar. As though I was following the White Rabbit again, too curious to bother with thinking about the consequences.

"You wanted to know what I no longer understood," Wendy said, panting. "I suppose there's a litany of things out there… but the thing which eggs at me here is that I don't feel like I understand Neverland anymore."

"Neverland?" It hadn't been too long before that I'd heard that word, so there was no surprise to hearing it. Only a pique of curiosity. "You're speaking of the same Neverland as from the storybooks?"

"When I was younger, it was only a stage play," Wendy said. "And I knew everything that there was to know about Neverland, Peter Pan, Captain Hook, pixies, and mermaids."

"I remember that play too," I replied. "It was most enchanting… which I suppose is why they stopped taking me to it after some time. Wait!"

I unstuck myself from the tree to have a gander at her. "You're the Wendy from the play?"

Wendy shook her head. "It was easy to imagine myself as her. For as long as I could, I wondered if that had made it easier for me to go there when I did."

"You went there in a dream?"

"Well, it wasn't simply a dream," Wendy explained. "For a while, I could remember what it felt like to stand on a cloud. I could remember the tickle of wind in my hair as I flew through the sky. I remembered the way that the mermaids' scales shimmered under the sun and the jingling of pixie bells. Then, those things started to fade away. I was being told by my brothers what had happened, but soon John was there with me and our father calling the whole thing ' poppycock .'"

I tried to remember how much I felt Wonderland back when I was a child and all I could remember was coming out of my slumber, already certain that it was nothing but a dream. Was I a victim of the same kind of illusion? Or was her imagination somehow more vivid than mine was whenever she had experienced Neverland? "And you're very certain that it wasn't a dream?"

"Well, I sure wasn't certain that it was a dream," Wendy answered. "I knew something was changing as I was growing and I fought it off as much as I could. When I saw what was happening, it was clear at first that it was the magic of that place… and then it was not so clear besides that I had it written down…"

There was something in my brain that jumped at the mention of that action. "You wrote it down?"

"Before I could forget," Wendy said. "I was the expert on Peter Pan and I was going to stay that way, even if it seemed like nothing but a storybook. I don't think it ever truly faded away into that form of unconsciousness, maybe because of my efforts. Are you saying that you've written about Wonderland too?"

I shook my head, feeling some kind of sting in my chest. "Wonderland was just a dream. It is just a dream, certainly? I could see myself sleeping. I stirred myself awake. That much I'm sure about."

"How certain?" asked Wendy in a soft tone.

"Certain enough that I kept the world on my mind," I said. "And only in my mind. They wouldn't allow it to leave it. It's nothing but childish poppycock! This world already disproved why it isn't worth the fantasy."

Wendy scratched her chin. "That is quite peculiar. Being honest, if you weren't so persistent then I am sure that I wouldn't believe you. Alice, I can assure you now that this is real."

My body felt heavier, like I was pressing deeper into the earth. The wispy clouds overhead looked to be staircases and I wondered if I were able to fly. I dragged my fingers through my hair. "This is a very peculiar kind of dream… but, how can it be anything else?"

"My theory," Wendy said, "it was John's too. You know, he's studying anthropology. The Indians. Anyway, I digress, but the theory is that a dream isn't only in your head. It's not completely real, but it's not complete fiction either."

She drew a diagram in the dirt with her foot. "There's our world (notice Big Ben), there's the world of utter fantasy, and then there's the world of dreams. The world of dreams—the world of magic—is right there between them."

I leaned over the diagram. "So, did you visit someone else's dream worlf when you went to Neverland?"

"Maybe," Wendy said, "it would sure explain how I ended up in a flirty buzzard's room instead of the school. It could also be that this entire thing is just one big other world. Neverland is part of Wonderland, or vice a versa?"

I grabbed a stick, which seemed angry with me as I drew a dot on the line in the diagram. "Maybe Wonderland is closer to fantasy than reality?"

Wendy sighed and paced around. "I don't think I can understand. This sounds like absolute bollocks, even as we speak of it now."

What I was saying sounded like bollocks too. The stick with arms jabbing me in the hand seemed absurd, even as it was happening. "Yes, it does seem very silly."

"Yet it takes faith and trust ," Wendy said. "The facts of the matter is that the rules to get to Neverland—the world between awake and sleep—are very firmly established. Michael says it, John said it, my journals say it, and even the storybooks say it. Did you follow the second star to the right?"

"No." I rubbed my temples. There was a bit of a headache coming on and I couldn't help but think back to that conversation that I'd had with the Cheshire Cat.  It was a madman, for certain, but a madman hinting at something that I was still unable to put together.

"So you didn't follow the directions, and you don't believe," Wendy recounted, pondering. I wondered if she was getting a headache as well. "This is utter nonsense."

That was Wonderland in a nutshell, but was nonetheless frustrating to hear. If I were to believe what this dream was telling me, then Wendy was both smarter than me and had actively studied magic but still didn't know what was going on. "Why, if you're saying it then we have come upon quite the conundrum."

Wendy sighed. She stared back at the sky and now I was able to understand exactly where she was looking. In the area between the deep and dark purple where it faded upward into that dull orange light, two stars started to glow brighter. Maybe it was my imagination, the dream conjuring that image to suit the moment, but in that moment of time I was with her and staring somewhere past the horizon.

I offered my hand to her and she accepted it, sighing again. We were as one, trying to comprehend something that our minds had been conditioned to not accept. To not understand. 

She leaned her head on my shoulder and it occurred to me that this wasn't the kind of physical contact that was allowed to be seen at the school. How many parts of the both of us were put under lock and key or sealed past walls by just… growing up? Being on a schedule? Learning things without any real drive to learn them?

"Second star to the right, continue until morning," Wendy said.

"That's where Neverland is," I said softly.

"It is utter nonsense," Wendy said. "Yet, it worked. At least, that is what my journals say it did."

I felt a ball in my throat. The Handy One was not grabbing me by the head anymore and I don't know where it had gone, but I could still in some way feel that it should be there. Whatever I was doing was some kind of mistake and I felt it without even that whisper in my ear. I suppose you couldn't daydream about monsters when you were already dreaming. 

Thinking about odd beasts even when there were others moving around my feet and through the trees, which yawned and scratched where small critters had been. That must have been the image in the encyclopedia when you looked up "not all there."

"Nonsense," I repeated.

"There are secrets in Neverland," proclaimed Wendy, her tone very unsure. "A method to the madness. I have to let myself believe."

I allowed myself to feel her presence some more. I need not an explanation about where her—or my—imagination was going. The roads led to Neverland, regardless of whether I was here with myself or here with Wendy. If I were here with Wendy, then at the very least I had someone who could understand the feeling of not feeling like I was going in the right direction.

"And what if Neverland is like I said, not in the same place as this? Closer to our world?" That even felt silly because what was Wonderland if it was not my world? It had everything that I imagined and made manifest.

"I don't know, Alice for certain," said Wendy, "all we can do is hazard some guesses. Neverland isn't the real world, that we can agree. Does it really change anything if it's not this world either?"

I knew that she was going to say that. I nodded and listened to the sounds of her hair scratching up against mine. We were near now a small waterfall coming off of rocks colored like autumn leaves, where large tadpoles jumped upstream. The trickling of the water and the glittering of those big stars across the babbling black surface may well have eased me if it weren't for the fact of the matter that I'd been getting soaked every other minute.  "Wendy, do you still need to tinkle?"

"Desperately so," she replied, flushing with embarrassment.

"Most surely there should be a place to go over there," I said.

"Well, I hazard a guess that we have our heading," Wendy said. She eyed the creek for some kind of way to bypass it one way, I searched the other.

Down the way, a group of planks marched on as though they were in an army formation and singing a tune. Their limbs limbs and tails were comparable to lizards and knotted together as they reached the creek, forming a bridge. I nudged Wendy. "Over there!"

We lifted our dresses to scurry over to the forming bridge. It shouldn't have surprised me so much when the planks hissed and growled as our feet reached them.

One of the planks bit Wendy on the ankle. "Yowch! You naughty thing!"

She kicked it off long enough to make a jump to the other edge of the creek. She didn't quite make it and hit the water with a splash and a groan.

I rolled over to the bank and pulled her up by the arm. The first of many pebbles struck my eyebrow and forced me to release her. Luckily, she wasn't scared off in the other direction as we ran to take cover. The planks chased after. The hisses grew louder behind us.

Chapter Text

"Fast things, aren't they?" Wendy said.

I shook one of the plank lizards off of the edge of my dress, which left a rather unsightly tear. There was not much time between my doing this and some of the others catching up to me, which barely gave me enough time to raise my dress as highly as I could while still preserving modesty. "I agree."

Wendy grabbed a non-sentient stick and shoved one of the creatures away. "Shoo! Shoo now, we've made a mere mistake!"

I jumped around whilst staying on the move in my attempts to escape the angry planks. Following her lead, I moved one away with my foot and said, "We truly do beg your pardon!"

The plank lizards weren't in any kind of reconciling mood, it would seem. One bit Wendy on the shoe and she made a fairly loud scream before shaking it off. She made certain that her shoe was still intact before she continued to ward the things away with her mighty stick. I attempted to follow her lead, but had the misfortune of grabbing at one of the creatures instead.

It flapped around by the tail in my hand as though it were a grand fish caught by a less-than-thorough fisherman, snapping at my hair and trying to be a general pest. I put my finger before it. "You stop that! This has gone on long enough!"

My voice did not carry the same amount of authority as Wendy's. She was soon by my side and sacrificed the stick to the creature as I dropped it. "Now shoo, I say! 'Twas a mistake!"

That particular plank lizard and its nearest two neighbors were ones to retreat but the others were still there, some gathering up rocks and lining up as soldiers to fire them at me and Wendy. She took a branch and allowed its leaves to catch the attack. She put a hand around my waist and spun me into a direction which appeared to be a cobblestone pathway.

I pondered aloud, "Shelter?"

"That's what I’m hoping," Wendy said. She shooed some more of the creatures off with a branch, looking to be getting a bit of a thrill out of it now.

"Goodness, with how much of a take-charge kind of girl you art it is quite the surprise that you didn't figure—” a plank lizard almost got me “—a way past the Buzzard without crying out."

The plank lizards snapped away Wendy's shield and she danced like a crab on top of a rock as they hissed and casted more stones. "I do not know of what you're speaking, Alice!"

I got the idea to toss a rock back at the creatures. That only made them angrier and overwhelmed my senses some more to where the only thing that was diluting the confusion was the instinctual drive to head the other way of these creatures. I wouldn't describe them as scary, but that is an entirely other matter than whether or not you felt like running.

"The wall," I said and caught a pebble in my mouth. I spat it out before continuing to speak, heading now down the cobblestone path alongside Wendy. "I heard you calling to me from behind it!"

"I couldn't—" Wendy was interrupted by a plank lizard tugging at her dress "—very well have been calling so loudly to be heard from behind a wall."

I recalled the manner that the Buzzard had been able to pick up on our quiet conversation, even whilst his back was turned and he was busy with his romantic monologue, yes. I had simply been going by the assumption up to that point that it had been the fantastical manner in which Wonderland behaved that had allowed it.

I had no time to remark about such in that moment, as a plank lizard had taken a lock of my hair and was pulling at me from a branch. I was able to overpower it well enough, but that led me into having the creature swinging from my head and repeatedly whacking me on the rump as I ran.

I winced with every wack and felt it crawl up my hair some more. "Wendy!"

She puzzled for a solution but found none before we were along a quaint road which stretched onward for a considerable distance. Nearest to us was a row of twisty shops with bricks of many colors and top floors which seemed to lean over to peer at us, orange lantern light coming from behind floral curtains. She led my way into the nearest shop, right along a corner in the woods.

The shop was dark, as it was seemingly a state of perpetual dusk outside. Those same lanterns that I had just witnessed hanged from the beaks of birds that were partly made out of brackets. They would have been most curious if I still hadn't been feeling the scratches of small feet along my back and the slapping of a tail on the back of my legs.

Wendy tried her hand once again by jabbing at the creature and saying, "That's quite enough!"

The creature used my hair as a swing in an attempt to swat Wendy in the face. She quickly pushed it away before it could succeed in anything other than giving me some more discomfort. "Wendy, please, just get it out!"

"But you have such lovely hair!"

It was hard to appreciate the compliment when the plank lizard was still chewing away at my hair (although I must admit that the scratching at my back was a small bit of relief from discomfort I was before unaware of.)  "It will not stay lovely with this thing in it!"

Wendy nodded as she toed around, still hesitating to do anything that may cause harm to me or to my hair. She brought herself in front of me and waved her hand. "Shopkeeper! May we have assistance?"

There was a sigh from behind me. I heard the creaking of a small door and the tapping of shoes along the floorboards. I could see in Wendy's face that what was behind me was to be another queer thing we encountered. Their voice was like a bleat, "Wha-at seems to be the i-issue, miss?"

"My friend has a lizard in her hair. Or a plank. Maybe a soldier? It's been nothing but a pest for quite some time now." She was skittering around in place, not looking at me or at the shopkeeper behind me. I wondered what sort of frightful thing that it must have been.

"Ah, I see now. You are dealing with a jubunick," said whatever the thing behind me was. They didn't sound particularly bothered with it.

"A Jabberwock?"

A bleat escaped from behind me. "N-OH! Not such a thing! This be a mere creature of the woods."

I knew now that the Jabberwock wasn't something conjured by a single mad mind, although I couldn't rule out that it was from other things. Wendy gave me a curious look but I was still too preoccupied with the plank lizard in my hair. Now, it had climbed enough that it was scratching at my shoulders.

"You came to the right sort of place," said the shopkeeper. 

I heard something snip and saw Wendy look briefly concerned before her shoulders relaxed as something draped across my shoulders, very warm and soft. She took it off and held it in front of me. It was some sort of green wool scarf, with the jubunick inside and very content. Oddly, it seemed to have a purr like a cat's. 

The purring appeared to be tempting Wendy into petting the creature so she chose some light conversation. “Why, this place has many things for you to use to tell stories back home.”

I had a look around at all the strange curios. A bird hanging with a cage for its body that had other birds in it and large colorful mushrooms with stool legs were only a few of the things which stood out. “Oh, do you like those?”

“Some can be quite thrilling, even to a jaded old maid such as I,” Wendy said.

She and I had a laugh together. The jubunick continued to behave as though it were a cute and not-vicious animal.

I reached out to touch it, but pulled my fingers away before I could dare there to be another attack. I turned to the shopkeeper. "You wouldn't think that it was attempting to bite our heads off just a few moments ago!"

I jumped at the sight of a dark face with slit pupils. For a moment, I thought that I was looking at the Devil himself come having done some kind of trick to acquire our souls. Yet, when I got a full look at it I saw that it was a mere sheep standing upright as though it were a person. No taller than a few footballs high and green instead of white, with wool laced in needles that it worked at with hooves as if such a thing weren't physically impossible. More hooves were on the floor—the source of those "shoes" that were tapping as they were coming up behind me.

The Sheep peered at me from behind spectacles. "Why, did you not provoke this?"

"We did nothing to provoke such an intensive attack," said Wendy. I nodded in agreement, glad to have someone who felt confident enough to make such a proclamation.

"You-ou ladies must have," said the Sheep. "As you can see, these creatures are most docile. Only bad manners may bring about such an attack!"

"What could you possibly mean by bad manners?" said Wendy.

I shook my head in her direction. She was still quite inexperienced in these matters. I knew that there was very likely a reply coming that would seem silly at best, backwards at worst, though admittedly it would be useful to know what kind of "manners" would be useful in this situation.

"Everybody knows that before you cross a bridge made by the jubunicks," said the Sheep, "you must greet them. Said 'how do you do-oo'—"

" 'How do you do,' " Wendy and I repeated. It seemed so simple that I wanted to beat myself over the head for it.

"No, ' how do you do'—"

We repeated once again and the Sheep tutted her lips. She shook her head. "I suppose you have that much correct, but you are of quite the advanced age to not know the second part."

"What's the second part?" asked Wendy, using the same tone of voice as when it was time to ask questions in the classroom and before she had mastered all of the ways of academia.

"'Your mother wears army boots.'"

It sounded vaguely insulting. Wendy was quick to pull her head back and frown. "I beg your pardon, miss?"

"That is the second part," said the Sheep.

Wendy petted the odd animal in her arms, her eyes weaving a story about just how hard it was to accept these instructions. I was quick to give her reassurance in the matter. "That is quite absurd."

The Sheep had her back turned to us. They turned her head over. "What was that, miss?"

"Oh, nothing of importance," Wendy said, second guessing her idea of questioning it any further at that moment. "Just on the matter of where to release this… this animal?"

"Set it free outdoors, it should send word to its friends about the apology you've given it," said the Sheep with a quick wave of her hoof. Yet more needles had appeared on her body, sewing together fabrics which readied to be snipped off at a moment's notice.

Wendy tightened the scarf around the plank lizard as she handed it over to me. I took it with a small rush of nervousness before seeing that it remained content. I was curious about why the sudden exchange, and as though she'd read my mind, she explained. "As I recall, one of us must keep an eye on the second star to the right and never look away for too long. If one's not looking, the other must make haste."

That added a lot of clarity to what she was doing in the shop, still staring in the direction from which that sky's light shone upon her face. How it worked when we both had different stars to the right, I saw no need to question. I didn't question this either.

I moved on over to the door, heard the jingle of a bell, and then the thing that has chased us here ran in over to the others that were part of its troop. Their hissing was quelled by its arrival.

I was still wary of their presence so I made no protest when Wendy directed me over to watch the window. She did a light curtsy over the way of the Sheep. "Might you have a loo that I can have a use of?"

"Yes, lass, it is just up that staircase," said the Sheep.

As Wendy headed over, the Sheep released a loud bleat and caused her to jump. She turned to address the Sheep. "What is the bother?"

I saw it out of the corner of my eye that there were even more needles in the Sheep's wool now. "You can use the loo. I never said that you may use the loo."

Wendy sounded a touch embarrassed, as if she'd missed some kind of important detail even though all she'd just encountered was another brand of poppycock. "My apologies, miss. May I use the toilet?"

"I suppose so," bleated the sheep. "Where did you ladies learn your manners?"

Wendy had already headed to the loo, which I hoped wasn't able to talk or shoot water or move out of the way when she attempted to sit. That was, if she even got to it before she was dropped into another escapade. I hazarded a glimpse over just because for whatever reason, I felt as though I wouldn't be able to hear what kind of farce that happened upstairs. "Oh, Wendy, be careful."

I moved my gaze back over to the stars and jumped at the sight of the Sheep standing in my peripherals. She said again, "Where did you learn your manners?"

"Well, in my case I suppose it was mostly Mother, my sister, and Wockenham."

"What is a Wockenham?"

"Well, it's quite the little city and quite the impressive school. A touch boring, the school is. You know that there's quite a bit of hammering in the things that you need to know," I wagged my finger in a playful gesture. I ignored the way that I was unsure upon mentioning it that I wasn't talking about the absolute most boring place on Earth.

"They need to up their lessons on manners," said the Sheep.

"Pardon me?" Yes, I was somewhat annoyed by being berated by something which smelled like the nastier sides of a circus tent.

"No, pardon me," said the Sheep in apology. "You may see that I have some trouble keeping my manners. For a pair of younger girls such as you two out traveling and seeing the world, I would've expected far worse."

This felt as though it was the nicest way that someone in Wonderland had treated me and in all honesty, lifted some weights off of my shoulders which I hadn't been aware of. Still, there was likely a catch to all of this.

"Wendy?" I called, suddenly sure that something had happened to her. "Wendy?"

I just about gasped when she came down the stairs wobbling from their odd shape and partly spiralling direction, but nonetheless unharmed and looking relieved. "Why, what is it Alice?"

"Nothing," I said. "I'd grown briefly concerned."

Wendy placed her eyes out the window. She came to my side. "This will be quite the long journey. Would be a shame for us to damage our uniforms so much. Do you by chance sell dresses, miss?"

"We have quite the selection. Have your pick of anything that catches your fancy, ladies," said the Sheep.

It seemed unlikely to me that we would have any type of money on us and even if we had, the money would be no good here. "How are we to pay?"

"Do you not have any money?" said the Sheep.

I searched for a bag to appear or maybe even for something to suddenly be tucked into the band around my waist, but there was no such a thing. Wendy directed me to watch the stars whilst she went about the same check-up. 

"Dearest me," said Wendy, "it appears that we've left our money somewhere."

"Can you row?" the Sheep passed to us each a pair of needles, one in each of our hands.

I kept the glitter of the objects in my peripheral vision, wondering just about what was going to come of this while Wendy was much more direct with her confusion. "We surely can row, but not with needles. I say, we would need oars."

The shop's ceiling clattered away and the walls sank downward. The floor underneath my feet curved downward and the walls finally hugged at my sides. The needles in my hands were all the sudden a lot heavier and I could see now as I risked a look their way that they had become oars. Their weight dropped them into the water for me.

In an instant we were in a small boat with the Sheep and somehow we were also drifting away from the store which I'd just seen transform.

Wendy gasped along with her oars splashing. We quickly got ourselves into a rhythm, paddling across a shallow but dark creek which moved toward the horizon where those stars glowed.

Wendy rowed and grunted, " What are we doing?"

"Since you're unable to pay, I see it best that you catch a pair of dresses so that you can replace the ones you buy," said the Sheep.

"I suppose that is… reasonable," I said. It most certainly wasn't. How did one catch a dress in a creek? How was it that I was still questioning such matters?

"Thank you, miss," Wendy said—clearly sounding once again wary of causing a sort of disruption.

I could see the shadow of a big net on the water where she was seated. She passed it over my way and gestured to me to look into the water. I shook my head. "I don't suppose that dresses are worth this much trouble."

"I will need to scratch up quite a lot of funds if too much damage comes to this uniform," Wendy said.

I agreed with her. I had the same trouble. The school would most certainly punish us harshly if we were to come back with extremely dirtied clothing. This was a dream, however, so there wasn't a need for me to worry too harshly about the matter. Nonetheless, something about the setting sent a spark of wonder through my heart and that agreement I had with the figment of my dream were well enough able to get me to look into the water.

My reflection on the water looked as though it was split apart into jagged pieces, the image not changing with the creek's current. To my left were the two stars to the right, still showing themselves proudly on this canvas. It was with the canvas's wavering that I could see to the bottom, full of things which caught the eye. Those same large tadpoles danced and swam around, some wearing very nice bow ties around what I supposed were their necks. Besides the water were some very lovely scented rushes.

They were so lovely, in fact, that I reached over to grab at them and collect as many that I could. However, when I had a fair few collected I saw them quickly wilt and start to melt away. It may have been silly, but I felt a little wilt inside of me too. I sighed and rowed some more to keep an eye for any submerged articles of clothing.

Wendy grunted some more with some of her rows. Going by her tone, she had decided to check on me when she heard me sigh. "There's cruel irony here," she complained, "we were only chased by those lizards because we were trying to get over this creek… and now here we are."

"At the least, we haven't gotten wet," I offered.

"Hm," Wendy said before resuming making sounds of strain.

I saw a glimpse of blue beneath the water's surface. Before I could truly process, I was swinging the big net all around and beneath the boat. I caught something, but when I attempted to pull it upward my strength gave way. The handle of the net slipped from my grip, then rattled as it smacked me by the chin and did so repeatedly. I wobbled in my seat, hurrying to grab hold of my oars.

However, the oars were gone. Wendy was no longer making strained noises but was instead gibbering to herself with heavy confusion. "What happened?"

"I don't know!" I took a look around the environment. Along the banks now were tall and purple rocks and upon them all manner of eye-grasping creatures such as a pelican whose beak and head were formed out of a saxophone, making merry music which contrasted directly with that feeling of impending doom.

My broken up reflection even seemed to be flinching. 

Wendy stammered as she searched around for a solution. "No need to panic! I'll find a way around this! It's nothing more than an inconvenience!"

I could see that the current was increasing its intensity and I threw my hands into the water to try to paddle in vein. Wendy joined in behind me but our combined strength was not very impressive up against the forces of nature. The water shifted hues to a murky lavender and white. Jovial tadpoles nibbled playfully at my fingers.

"Help?" I begged of the tadpoles.

They were unable to understand. They continued to have fun with me and Wendy, who let out some involuntary giggles from their play. 

Or perhaps they were the laugh of madness—the laugh that came when all rationality was thrown out of the window and your basal instincts drove you to behave in odd ways. It was hard to say because as abruptly as the water had changed color, it had also begun to run much more loudly. Unless that were one of the ways that my dream land worked unlike reality, then that meant one ghastly thing:

We were approaching a waterfall.

I'm quite unsure that there would be a better phrase for being in a lot of trouble which you are helpless to stop than "along a creek and without an oar."

Maybe "heading to a waterfall and without an oar" would be a more evocative turn of phrase?

"I do quite believe we are about to get wet. Very wet," Wendy remarked. "The fates are frowning upon us."

The boat tilted from beneath us and I kept my eyes on the sky not because of Neverland, but because I was very much not a fan of the sight that I'd seen when I looked directly ahead.

"You have any ideas?"

That was what I said right as we finally fell off of the waterfall's edge.

Chapter Text

Our screams echoed across the colorful rocks. They came back to us so many times that it sounded as though there were an entire army of Alices or Wendys shrieking like baboons who had just lost their marbles.

Somehow, our panic hadn't caused us to release the boat. As a matter of fact, we were gripping it much harder than before. We kept out grips so tight that I imagined we would be able to see our knuckles even in the faded light. We kept the grip even as our boat spun around to where it was on top of us.

That was mighty handy for us because as we went down and it spiraled on top of us, our descent began to slow. Not only slow, but it even reversed.

Wendy crossed over in front of me, grinning with that kind of smile you got when the word "relief" was an understatement. She clung to the spinning boat. "Well," she stated dryly, "this is wonderful."

Water trickled down my back. It's quite funny the way that a feeling of relief allows for so many things to be dismissed outright. "There have been far worse situations."

"I'd hazard even at school," Wendy said. She watched the sky and so did I. The air was cool and refreshing in my hair and along my neck. "Wonder how far it'll take us?"

"All along the way to Neverland, with good fortune," I said. The boat's spinning was not particularly fast, but even then I was able to feel my lower half swaying to the side as it corkscrewed.

"I don't believe my arms will hold until morning," Wendy mused. She took a look upwards at the boat as it was my turn to keep an eye on our destination. "Though I don't think that I'll question my dexterity again."

This got me to noticing that I hadn't even felt my weight this entire time and, thankfully, that didn't cause me to start to fall as though my mind were to decide to overpower matter. The effect was that it was that we were floating except not quite, and the boat was overhead instead of underneath us. "I say, is this much like flying?"

In hindsight all that talking of flying was literal, was it not?

"Cannot truly remember what it felt like. Only that once upon a time, I had to have done it," she replied. "For all I know, this is me flying."

"If so, thank you. Don't think we would've been out of that without your help." I was fairly confident that it was simply the way of Wonderland doing this, but there was no such a thing as certainty.

"Thank you for hurrying to my aid… even though it wasn't me behind that wall."

"I still got to you, did I not?" My chest swelled up with pride. I'm aware that is a rather dire sin, but what else are you to feel when your friend was so thankful for your help?

"That you did," Wendy said, keeping her eye on the sky which we were soaring through. "Care to see where this is taking us?"

I struggled to take it in, as the world was moving at such a pace and it would not be long until it was my turn to keep my gaze fixated on the stars, but what I saw caused my breath to be taken.

We were far higher than I had assumed our speed would take us. Trees seemed like patches on a great quilt of many colors and designs. The quilt had small wrinkles, which were in fact big hills, and they all seemed to be growing in size to reach a set of peaks cloaked in a pink mist.

By the time I was done looking, there was a pain in my neck because I had strained from trying to stay fixated for too long. I briefly wondered where exactly on that landscape was the palace which I'd once narrowly escaped, then I dismissed the thought on the grounds that this was its own dream.

"Seems as though we're headed clear for those mountains," I said with uncertainty. I was able to feel us getting higher now. For all I knew, we would be over their peaks by the time that we reached them.

"Oh dear. I do wish where we're headed were clearer," Wendy said, her concern directed at me.

"It'll be quite all right," I said. "Assuming that we don't end up in a most ghastly sort of place."

Wendy had a nervous smile. If she were not thinking of our last two escapades, then it was most curious what about Neverland would inspire this feeling. "What would you say the odds of that are?"

"I would say the odds are high, but not certain." 

I said that just as I felt the toes of my shoes begin to slide across something. It didn't sound quite like stone, and it didn't sound like dirt or grass either. The best that I could think to compare it to was the way scooting your feet through autumn leaves sounded. 

Since it was yet to be my turn to watch the rest of the sky, I checked to see where my feet had gone. By the time in which I was able to have a look, we were already floating away from the would-be platform. That platform was one of those same clouds that has seen earlier, shaped like stairs 

That meant that we were far higher up than we had been some few moments before. In my peripherals, it was clear that was not the last of the staircases. We had entered a realm of sunset colors where there were many doors and stairs. 

Wendy had already seen the change in scenery, going by the way that she looked on in wonder and in confusion. She had a smile but if once again looked to be inauthentic, at least in part.

Not that I could blame her. My feet were just moving on a cloud as though it were solid and not lighter than air. Were we somehow lighter than that even, at that moment? Even though we could still feel our fingers against the boat's hard wood grain?

The boat above us rocked lightly and changed the direction of its floating ever so slightly. We were once again drifting, spinning slowly downwards to a spot that I was unable to see. "Seems as though we have our heading."

It seemed a good sign that Wendy's anxiety wasn't any higher than what it had been prior to the descent. She had even a more active puzzling look as though there were something familiar that she couldn't recall. Said Wendy, "Any moment now."

I witnessed us move over a large yellow surface which didn't look particularly solid. Yet as the boat gently lowered us,  Wendy's heels made a clear tapping sound after submerging somewhere in the wisps. My feet touched solid ground as well. The boat drifted down over us and we had to part out of its way for it to land without much of a sound. We paid attention to the fact that if we stepped back too far, we may find ourselves falling once again and only moved a few steps.

Up here, the air was somehow more wet and more cool than in Wockenham during this time of year. There was something refreshing to it and which enchanted the imagination. I wondered if we might have stumbled upon a stairway to Heaven and if that were an indicator that we hadn't truly made it out of the waterfall, but there were no staircases that headed higher and none on our level populated by anything divine. "Where do you think this takes us? It's quite like having a train stop, is it not?"

Wendy was taking in the new sensation. She pulled me closer to her by the shoulder and I thought for a second that this may have been a way of grounding herself. The staircase was much like the one back at the Sheep's home in shape, only made out of steps that didn't quite seem like they should be solid even as me and Wendy linked together to step down the first few.

Her curls waved up against my cheeks. I stared down, watching that slight curve to the case become a full spiral due to the sheer distance to the bottom. A bottom which I was unable to see because of all of the intersecting cloud staircases in a pattern not dissimilar from a jigsaw. Some of them I could see starting with platforms or even with doorways, others I could not be certain were not part of the set that we were on.

Wendy's grip loosened a little in my hand so I grabbed her harder. She reaffirmed her grip. "Flying would be most useful right now."

She took two steps downward before giving me a tug to follow and we repeated this cautious sort of wandering until we had finally thrown most of our doubts about the sturdiness of our platform. That didn't mean that we ever released our grips, as that was becoming quite the habit and only parts of the stairway had railing to keep us steady.

I wasn't one for counting steps, but I knew that for a while we had the rails to either side of us. It was at least long enough that even though we for whatever reason had better endurance than any of our days on track, there was still a burn to my legs before we reached the end of said set of rails.

"Goodness," Wendy complained, "again?"

This time there was a slight twist to how the stairs were treating us. They narrowed to where they were unable to keep us on them if we remained side-by-side. Wendy near enough led us both off of the edge before she noticed.

She let go of my hand and gently pushed me back as she staggered upward. She breathed harshly, "Are you really certain that you are unable to fly?"

I nodded and she nudged me upward some more. She moved down onto the first narrow step before she took my hand again and sat it onto one of her shoulders.. "Here we are. One by one."

The wind was colder and felt like it was pressing to either of my sides as I made my way following her. Digging my fingers into her shoulders so tightly that I can feel her collar bone through the fabric. I apologised so many times that I couldn't recite, but she feigned not caring.

It had to have been her younger brothers. She went on about them the way a mother would her sons, or how my sister would sometimes speak of me when in polite conversation with neighbors. Something about being around them had given her this disposition. It made me feel a touch more guilty than I'd already been for digging my hands into her and for the fact that I was feeling a bit of a thrill. It was not dissimilar, I thought, to coming by an amusement park.

"Have you ever been to the scenic railway?" said I without much breath.

"You aren't saying that you've taken on a strange kind of thrill by this, Alice?" replied Wendy.

I decided to fib by shaking my head. "They are quite the fright, aren't they?"

This part of the staircase had inclines and steep declines, not unlike the point of conversation. We reached the peak of an incline and hurried as much as we could down the decline, maybe unconsciously now associating it with that scenic railway.

"It is too bad, Alice," said Wendy, "I find that I feel the greatest thrill of adventure when in hindsight."

That was what this was, wasn't it? An adventure. We were moving with that void of sky to either of our sides. The star to our right was still some considerable distance, floating happily and brightly on the blanket which we dared to not directly follow it onto. The hue now was mostly a deep violet and blue.

We came upon another set of stair rails a few moments afterward and sighed some. We followed their odd curve down towards a platform that was not quite square, not quite round,  but not quite shapeless either. There was a doorway which pointed to the horizon where our goal was and the second Wendy was on the platform, she was marching and throwing up little bits of greyish lavender fog with her feet.

I followed, my heart racing with curiosity at what may possibly be driving her. I was firmly over her shoulder when she got to the door and put her hand around it. "What is it?"

She took a glimpse at the star and at me. "Just a bit of hope."

She opened the door and put her upper body inside. Even though I had to be the watcher of the sky at this moment, I was still able to see the inside and that there were things blocking the horizon there. It even seemed a touch brighter than up above in some way.

What came next was the loudest that I'd heard Wendy speak.  She put her hands around her face and yelled, "PETER! PETER PAN! ARE YOU OUT THERE?"

She got a response, but not the one that either of us were hoping for. Someone responded from between whatever there was blocking Wendy's view. "Goodness! Have they taught you any manners?"

Wendy moved into a curtsy, looking rather embarrassed. "My apologies. Me and my friend are needing some assistance."

"What sort for you to be blasting my eardrums?"

"None that you can offer, sir. I truly beg your pardon." She closed the door and faced me. Not all of her embarrassment escaped her face as she shrugged her shoulders. "That was worth an attempt… I suppose…"

I raised a finger. "Don't mind me, Wendy, but would that doorway not be a useful way to get off of these clouds?"

Wendy once again was attempting to conceal her embarrassment. She turned away whilst saying, "Good gosh, of all the things to slip my mind!"

She opened the door again, but what was on the other side was not the same as what we had seen just moments before. On the other side was the sounds of pirates and cannonballs, one of which shot overhead and disappeared beyond line of sight. She closed the door in quite the hurry.

"Let us hope," she remarked, "that we never have to deal in that part of Neverland."

Not that I wanted to deal with pirates, but the idea of stepping away from this cloud platform seemed too tempting. "Say, maybe that is Neverland and we simply need multiple tries to get it correct?"

Wendy tilted her head. "You may have something there!"

She opened the door to more sounds of pirates. Swords clashing and even a few rather vulgar flirtatious remarks came our way. That was over in a few seconds as Wendy slammed the door whilst shaking her head. She took my hand, "I say we look for another door."

I needn't say anything for her to know that I was in agreement. We moved away from the platform, taking literal turns with one another to look back and be certain that the pirates had no means of finding a way back here, before we were on another staircase.

The staircase was still pointing to the star and it may have been the most unusual one that I had seen yet. It, more accurately, was several different types of staircases stacked on top of one another similarly to a very tall wedding cake but the layers went large or small at random.

We hurried down the first part with me right behind her before there was just enough room for us to go down together for a tremendous amount of steps. Then, it got so wide that an unseen force pulled us apart before then we curved around and found the gap in the middle of it, which led to a nearly as wide set but which did not pull us apart.

We stuck for those many steps very close together, daring not to get too close to the edges for they once again lacked the courtesy to have a banister and now we were a touch bit frightened that there may be more tomfoolery by the unseen force. 

Thankfully, that seemed to have used its tricks for the time being as we were made to first run down an L-shaped extension of the stairs which made now a wooden sound and then to a spiral almost like what one would see in a lighthouse until that then gained edges and we were moving in squares.

"I believe I've forgotten how even ground feels," I said to Wendy.

She kept me close. We were once again on a suitably wide set of stairs but one which also held no banisters for us to stay secure on. "I believe that I forgot about ten kilometers up."

We giggled a little bit. I suppose that we should have been more terrified at the moment but whether it be mundanity from being up here as long as we had, security in one another, that awful word curiosity, or us simply both being stark raving mad and only now being aware of it, we simply didn't. Perhaps, only I wasn't.

If I were to ask Wendy if she were masking fear, then she would obviously say no. She was the prefect, the one always keeping an eye on others. I just had to soothe my curiosity with the idea that her pulse was in fact her taking some kind of thrill out of this much the same way that we'd discussed before.

We moved back down to what seemed like the floor of a floating room. The walls were only waist height and yet were decorated with several doors of varying twisted shapes and heights. One nearest to me was appropriate for a woman of my height but the others were fit for giants or elves. Down a few steps, hovering within banisters were more doors.

"We seem to have found the public square," I said. "That boat must have left us at the wrong stop."

"Clever girl," Wendy chuckled. nudged me to keep watch on our destination before she headed just beside me to open the door. She had very little time to speak before a loud combination between a rattling and a hiss stopped her. "My apologies, miss."

She closed the door and tried opening it again. The location now seemed to be a beach wherein there was a rather wonderful light coming across from some kind of dock. "Hm, not Neverland."

"May be a rather lovely place to stay," I offered.

Wendy scratched her head. Then someone wearing a bag over their head and holding a pickaxe leaned across the doorway. They gave us both such a fright that she was quick to slam the door without consideration that they may have been friendly. 

Wendy wiped her forehead. "Let us not risk a repeat of the pirate door."

She moved over to the next door, which was so tall she strained to open it and could merely crack it open. On the other side was a wall of jigsaw puzzles with little red hearts. "Hmm, queer. Doubtful that it's Neverland."

As she closed it and the number of the doors only seemed to grow, a question arose from within me. "Is there a particular reason that one of us shouldn't look for too long away from the star?"

"It is a precaution," Wendy said, "so that we do not forget."

"So as long as I can remember which star that I am watching, then we can split up and look into more doors?"

Wendy contemplated the thought for a second before saying. "'Tis not worth the risk, but perhaps there can still be a way of saving time if you open some right after I do. Just be careful. Seems like these can be quite jeopardous."

She opened a door to the sound of a wolf howl and stepped a foot inside. "Peter Pan! Is that you?"

She quickly changed her mind and closed the door. She looked over my way. "More Wonderland."

Her next test didn't give her any better results and so it was my turn. I hurried to the first door that I could find, which was only about as high as one of my shoes. For a moment I expected it to talk to me, but it instead just waited until I were finally able to open it. When I looked inside, it smelled like food yet all I was able to see were rats. I yelped and closed it before one of the vile creatures could come on through.

"I am just going to assume," I informed Wendy, "that what I will see there will never be a pixie."

"You'd want to avoid pixies regardless," Wendy said.

I gasped, "Are you saying that they are how the creatures in those nightmarish fairytales behave?"

"I cannot be entirely certain," Wendy said as she began to take her turn to look through a door. "All I know is that one attempted to have me killed, for reasons I'm unaware of."

"Tinker Bell, like in the storybook? You don't suppose she was jealous of you?" 

Wendy closed the door and reopened it. "If so, then she would most certainly be jealous of you. All the more reason to be wary."

I nodded before being assured that it were my turn, then I opened the door nearest to me that was about the correct size for a human, only bent sideways as though being looked at through the looking glass at a funhouse. 

The other side was just as strange as the doorway. From where I was standing, there was more sky, but entire chunks of earth were floating through the air as well as solid paths weaving around like long ribbons. Farm animals and immense pieces of American foods moved around like clouds through its orange and watercolor-like void. I could hear young boys yelling and even spotted one drifting away on a very peculiar bicycle through the void. A pathway made out of what seemed to be a chessboard, kilometers long, moved into view, and there were yet many other doors.

"Wendy," I said, touching my lip from confusion and curiosity, "what by chance does Neverland look like?"

"Well, it is an island so you'd expect a lot of what you may see on one there. I don't recall having any notes about the specifics," Wendy's voice cracked with bits of longing. "It was lovely. I think."

"No islands floating in the sky?"

"None that I documented," Wendy said.

I closed the door. "Was simply wondering. That sky was even stranger than the one that we were in right now."

"Oh," Wendy said. "You will have to describe it to me. Preferably, it won't give me a headache as this world is doing."

I opened the door again. On the other side was a cow, which offered warm milk to me. "Medicine for the sick lady?"

I knew the consequences of consuming things in Wonderland, so I politely refused and closed the door.

Wendy rubbed her forehead and moved over to another door which led her to nowhere. She passed the baton over my way just as several doors around began to vanish.

I heard them creak and spotted in my view a few swing downward almost like they were opening, but just the wrong way, before puffing away as mist. I opened one that was remaining as quickly as I could.

On the other side I was met with a blank blue sky which tore open to reveal that behind it was a background made of black and powdery white lines. The man who tore the sky smiled at me. "Many doors, yes?"

Then a second head appeared as he moved the first. "Especially for those who—"

Finally, a third head. "—Are too rigid in their thoughts, yes girl?"

I hadn't time to argue with him and something about the way he was dressed in only a yellow undershirt and odd trousers unsettled me worse than him having three heads or knowing my name. So, I curtsied and closed the door.

Wendy opened one of the few remaining doors behind me. "Peter, we—"

I heard the man's voice again, "Just another brick in your wall, is this?"

Wendy closed the door. "Someone's quite interested in that wall you spoke of."

She headed down to the next door and music notes as though from a page flew over her shoulders. Someone sang from the beyond. 

"Don't faaall away… 

Leave the memories dead in the past

Dead in the past again."

The sounds were most harsh on the ears. Wendy took me down the next few steps and into the last door. I heard the sounds of more singing and could see the star still on the horizon. We stepped through