The Alice Hours

The steward was still telling stories, and the children listened with half-open eyes. A weak breeze stirred the grass blades, and the grey clouds floated like ghostly elephants crossing a blue savannah. No one noticed the sleeping girl, hair caught in the grass like tendrils. Deep breathing, exhausted face. Quivering lips.

"Ah, but she was just a dream, you see. I was squeezed between people, and her face was aeons away from mine. Somehow, I felt as if--as if she shared my same heartbeat."

An out of place moth fell from a tree. Nobody noticed.

"I felt that her name was Mary Ann."

The steward stroked his tree bark hair, looking at the children thoughtfully. "She had green eyes. Or were they orange? I never could tell. But she smiled like the moon."

Someone yawned.

"Now that I think of it, they were yellow. Her eyes."

One of the orphans was a boy named Lysander. He was a year younger than Alice, whose age no one really knew. He turned, and saw her, sleeping in the grass. Lysander smiled. A little to the left of the clearing, there was an open drainpipe. A gaping hole in the ground. It was large enough for a child to crawl through. Not that anyone had ever tried. It went straight down: an entirely vertical drop.

Lysander remembered the time he threw a stone down the pipe. One of the Waiting Women found him, scolded him, and dragged him back to the orphanage. He never heard the sound of the stone hitting a curve in the metal.

"If we sent someone down there to find out where the drainpipe leads, then maybe we could escape this place. I mean, it's got to go OUT of here, right?"

"And she's bound to wake up anyway. Once she hits the bottom."

"Right, then."

Lysander, Patrick, Anita. (They did not hate Alice. They merely disliked her, and were curious.)

They dragged Alice by her heels, quietly, while the steward told of his ghost-dream-train-girl-love. The grass cushioned her, but her arms shook as the three children pulled her backwards. The opening was just a few feet away.

"Down you go, little Alice." croaked Lysander, sliding her legs, and then her knees, into the drainpipe's mouth.

"Do come back when you find the other side," whispered Anita, pushing her torso in. Alice's body dangled precariously.

"And if it's a dead end," said Patrick, grinning, "It's perfectly fine not to tell us." He nudged her shoulders and her head, and.

Alice fell.

--------A vacuum: windless, airless, --

Something caught in her throat: a searing, ferocious pain. Fire.

Her eyes flew open, and she saw...goldfish.

"Hellloooo, little earthchildyellowcrown!"

The goldfish were blinking, and talking, and SMILING. They had eyelids. And voices. And wings.

Alice gasped, but there was no air to gasp with. And, and..where was she?

The goldfish followed her as she fell, their fin-wings fluttering (but if there wasn't any air, then how could they fly..?) Strange-looking goldfish, they were. Round, and orange-yellow, with a spattering of glitter.

"Welcome to wonderland, earthchildyellowcrown. You are falling, but not necessarily down." Their voices were tinny, high and warbly.

Alice blinked.

"...Wonderland?'

"Yes, you pretty little thing. Now, go on! You're almost there." One of the fish drew near her face and flicked her eyelash.

"Wonderland. A terrible place, but only if you think it so." The goldish winked, and flew up, into nothing.

Alice screamed, and madness took her.