1. Curiously Reoccurring Arrival
Alice held the limp, stuffed white rabbit under its floppy arms, the never-having-lived body pressed to hers. Again at that place—similar, but not. Different, but not. Things there had once been only pleasantly bright and confusing, colorful and odd. It had changed to something less—a little darker perhaps, but even the Cheshire cat—once a thick-furred tabby (with or without its head) had become rail-thin and ragged. He showed signs of battlement—teeth sharpened, some now missing, and tell-tale tattooing covered the skin on his sparsely furred body.
Whoever had caught the thing? Did it perhaps do all of that scarring to itself?
“Wiser for the wear” the Cheshire had said when Alice had discovered and needlessly freed the beast from a copper samovar that second time around. Or was it Worn for the wisdom? Word to the wonderer?
Alice could not remember. It didn’t matter. And now here on this third visit—she wondered if she was ever going to see anyone she knew (knew of) there? She cast a worried, unamused glance to the ever-changing sky. It fluctuated back and forth between aqua and orange, now and then releasing keys from the heavens. She quickly caught on to take cover under lofty tree branches at those moments--the falling skeleton keys smarted when tinking down on her head.
But it was getting darker now and the ground was softening and getting more difficult to walk on. A few more steps took her onto a large flat rock and she realized that the ground had become a moving river. Her balance teetered and she landed on her backside, the rabbit still in hand. Alice sat still as her raft was carried downstream for a time, the banks’ edges too far on either side of her to pull herself to shore just yet.
“There has got to be somewhere that I am headed,” she thought to herself. “Because as long as you are somewhere, there is always somewhere else to go. And I am somewhere, but where? Certainly not where I was a moment ago!”
And certain objects of oddity began to drift by her then, all in clear, ornate glass bottles with twined tags labeling them. Alice reached less than carefully to pluck one up, the freshly used content steaming up the crystal clearness, so the long, thin object was only a grayish, pinkish blurry thing—
Silver Marrow Knife
She continued to float along, a sudden and distinct change in the objects in the water happening now. The bottles were turning into hand mirrors, all floating as though flat on their backs, and a large green frog hopped from one reflective surface to another as though they were lily pads. It paused as it and Alice crossed one another, its bulgy eyes locking with hers for a moment.
“Don’t look too deeply into them—“ it croaked. Alice assumed it meant the mirrors, and she leaned over the edge of the rock to the now still water to see her reflection in the glass.
A pale face with blue, red-rimmed eyes stared back at her. She blinked and her eyes traveled down to her neck—it was lined with perfect thick black-stitched ‘X’s, the line of severage faint but perfectly encircling her throat. She remembered clearly how it had happened:
It had been sunny and warm and she had been watching the fat, fuzzy bumble bees floating around and dipping into the Queen of Hearts’ red roses, their legs heavy with saffron-yellow pollen. She had only just reached out to touch one—to see if it really was as furry as it looked, and its intended red-painted-on-white landing pad shattered under her closeness. Alice had heard the Queen wailing before she’d even left the palace, and clouds had rolled in to the command of “Off with her head!” Before she knew it, Alice had been bent over a giant deck of cards and with an axe shaped like a spade, her head had been neatly removed with the slightest crunching sounding in her ears. It hadn’t hurt, really, but had been deafeningly loud, and the spray had gotten all over her pinafore. How, later it had been reattached—she could not remember.
“Don’t look too deeply, I said,” the frog was croaking again, as it had hopped back to her. She looked up, startled at the frog’s return.
“Well, I suppose I really wasn’t looking, since I had got to thinking—“
“Thinking too deeply is as bad as looking too deeply.”
The abruptness of it rudely cutting Alice off left her tongue-tied for a moment.
“There is no diff--?”
“No. None.”
“Oh—“ She was wondering just then if the frog’s quick answers were intentional, or was it just plain rude?
“Nope—“ it was going on. “—Can’t be looking too deeply around here—mark my words—“
“But—“
“Have you got them marked?”
“Well, no. You see, I haven’t my pen—“
“Mark them! With dust upon the air if you must!”
Alice looked up into the invisible air in front of her. Her mouth opened to make a remark, but the frog croaked again.
“No! Do not!”
“Well what then, should I be looking at or thinking about?”
“Well anything, really.”
Alice sighed and stood up, now that the rock was close enough for her to jump to the embankment. The frog followed, but she tried in earnest to ignore it.
“Where do you go now?” asked the frog.
“I really don’t know,” admitted an annoyed Alice.
“Well don’t you think you should?” it asked, almost before she had finished answering. She stopped, her arms akimbo.
“You really have no sort of manners, interrupting like that, have you?”
The frog blinked at her for a moment before it began to cry.
“Why are you treating me like this?” it sobbed. “I didn’t do anything to deserve it!”
And while Alice disagreed, and certainly it had gotten her temper to flare (most definitely the fault of pepper!) she could not help feeling badly at snapping out at it.
“I am sorry, truly,” she said. It only sniffed as best as a frog could, and continued to look pathetic. “Please don’t be sore at me,” she said continuing on.
In the moments of silence that followed, she recalled a conversation from one afternoon while having tea with some of the “grown-ups”. There had been a parlor full of ladies, all of them haughtily putting on airs. One was saying to another:
“So she said to Mabel ‘I really wish you would stop wearing that frog’—“
And Alice had seen that the woman who had spoken wore a painted broken china frog brooch on her blouse. There was some controversy over the pin and how the woman who had wanted it removed supposedly had “froggy legs” her own self, but she was not insulted by the brooch--rather, she collected frogs and wished for it to be removed and forgotten so she might add it to her menagerie.
“Why don’t you talk to me anymore?” the frog suddenly wailed out at Alice. But she supposed answering would only warrant a greater argument about absolutely nothing, and so she went on. She really hoped to eventually run into someone—or thing—that would be worth her talking to. And after all—it was perfectly acceptable to talk to things there! Her first visit had been quite a lot of nonsense, but at least the conversations had been interesting. And now, this time around—and she had only been there a short time as it was, she felt—it had been quite frustrating and pointless. Her head began to hurt some.
“Shall I eat it for you?”
Alice looked back to see the Cheshire cat laying on his back playfully, while dangling the frog by one leg over his wide-opened mouth.
“I don’t care.”
And perhaps she truly didn’t anymore. The cat sat up and studied her for a moment, before giving a shrug and shoving it into his mouth. It made a terrible sound as it went down, but was quickly silenced. For a moment, Alice’s stomach turned, but she followed on down the embankment. She supposed she should feel badly that the frog had just been devoured, even if it had been most irritating.
“You’re going the wrong way, I think,” the cat quipped.
“How do you know?” she asked, perhaps a bit too harshly.
“Now, now--No need to be nasty with me about it. I just happen to know that if you keep going there, you will run into Her, and you don’t want to be doing that just yet.”
“Well where am I supposed to be going then?” she asked, this time trying to sound a little nicer.
“Over there.” And the raggedy cat thumbed over his left shoulder. This brought Alice to stop.
“Why there?”
“Just a suggestion.”
But there was a spark in the Cheshire’s eyes that got Alice curious.
“And what will I find over that way?”
“Shall we go see?” And already, he was turning in that direction. But to go on, they had to cross the now-solid river, the cat watching that he did not step on the mirrors.
“And mind that you do the same,” he said to her. “I am sure you know all about the perils brought on by broken mirrors.”
And she did as she was told, crossing the minefield of reflections at long, careful last.