by Various
‘You’re writing stories again and putting Alice in them,’ I said. I made it sound as though I was accusing Him, because I was.
‘So I am,’ he said. ‘It’s a pity you are no longer Liddell enough to enjoy Wonderland, Lorina, but luckily Alice is.’
I hate how he always twists words and names into something other than themselves. Words ought to mean something precise, but he makes them mean everything and so nothing at all.
‘I’m exactly the right size!’ I said. ‘And even if I amn’t, you’ve no right to put Alice into the story instead!’
‘Alice is charmingly nonsensical, and she will fit nicely into Wonderland, better than you ever did. You will keep on misusing it and disobliging me, and you are far too grown up for children’s stories, so here we are – and there she is. Here and there, and there and here, round and round in circles. If you think about it, Ina, you are really the one who has sent Alice to Wonderland.’
‘That is absolute nonsense!’ I cried. ‘I didn’t do anything! She’s there because of you. Now let her out!’
‘Once upon a time, you asked to be amused, and so I gave you Wonderland to amuse you, you contrary creature. Now you’re unhappy because you have to share it with your sister? Do go away and let Alice be.’
He took me by the elbow and spun me back out into the corridor. The door slammed, and I was left staring up at it, feeling as though something had been taken away from me.
‘I’ll give you amusement!’ I said to the closed door. ‘I’ll give you grown up!’
It was a very nice-sounding thing to say, but I did not know what on earth it could mean, and how else I could help Alice, until I was halfway down the stairs.
‘Oh, my ears and whiskers!’ I cried. ‘Of course! I shall make her too grown up to fit!’
As I have said, there are no rules to Wonderland, and so there is no rule that says you mayn’t trick it. I know perfectly well that Wonderland fits under and over and around our college, like two scrumpled bits of paper that have been pasted together rather lazily on a hot day, and so to move about at college is to move about in Wonderland.
I went barrelling all the way downstairs and through the front door of the deanery, interrupting an argument between our cat, Dinah, and Cook’s friend’s wire-haired puppy. The puppy yelped pitifully and nipped at my ankles, scampering out of the house towards the main quad. Dinah smirked at me and licked her lips, padding away to the garden.
I dashed on through the hallway and into the hot kitchen. Cook was in a rage about Dinah and the puppy, and she seemed to have spilt the pepper for the soup. It floated in the air, and I sneezed. And there, on the table, was what I wanted. Little slices of cake set out ready for Mother’s tea.
I swooped on one of them and carried it away, with Cook’s cries of, ‘LORINA! PUT THAT BACK!’ billowing after me. I snatched up the key to the airing cupboard from its place on the sideboard and took everything into the nursery, where I would not be disturbed.
In Wonderland, anything you like can be true, and anything can be false, just by saying so. So I took up my other sister Edith’s paintbrush from the nursery table and painted ‘Eat Me’ on the cake. I held the cake in one hand and the key in the other and stared at them.
There is a trick to talking to things that I have learned in Wonderland. It is very similar to the way that grownups talk to very little children, and it is enormously useful. You simply do not even entertain the notion that you will not be listened to.
‘You,’ I told the cake sternly, ‘are an expanding cake, and you are delicious. You will find Alice, wherever she is, and you will make her eat you all up, and she will grow and grow and grow.’
I turned to the key. ‘And you,’ I told it just as firmly, ‘are golden and delightful, and you will take Alice where she needs to go as quickly as possible.’
The key and the cake quivered, very gently, in my hands and then went still.
‘Good!’ I said, as though my heart was not pounding, for although I had sometimes twisted His stories, I had never played with Wonderland from the outside before. I walked back out into the dark little deanery hallway, oak-beamed and hung about with a row of dim lamps, and turned to face our three-legged hall table. ‘Now, I shall put you down on this little glass table, and you shall find Alice at once.’
Even after everything, I hardly thought it would work. But, as I watched, the cake and the key suddenly pulsed, and the lamps above my head pulsed too, and then both little objects faded quite away on the table and were gone. It was as upside-down a vision as if one of Dinah’s mice had suddenly turned about and bitten off her own tail.
‘Good gracious!’ I said to myself. The beginning of my nonsensical plan had worked. ‘Whatever shall I do now?’
As I said it, I happened to look up into the looking-glass hanging over the hall table in its gilt frame. My looking-glass self stared back. I never like to see myself in pictures, but I like how I look in mirrors. I look like a girl who is not afraid of anything.
‘Whatever shall I do now?’ I asked myself again.
‘There is only one thing to do,’ said myself. ‘You must be quite as wicked as you can be – wicked enough to be sent to bed for a week. That is the only way to get through to Alice.’
I realized that I was quite right.
I spun about on my heel and rushed out of the deanery as quick as winking, out into the huge main quad. It is as flat as a map, with a scroll of green grass trimmed by an army of gardeners, and an enormous fountain with a winged statue in its very middle.
I picked up my skirts and set my teeth, and I ran so fast that my feet in their boots twinkled across the grass. The gardeners bellowed, and the dons roared, for no one goes on the grass, most especially not little girls.
But faster and faster I ran, fast enough to feel as though I might fly, as though Wonderland was at my back and all around me – which I knew it was – and I leaped into the air and jumped with a great SPLASH into the fountain.
The sunlight around me vanished just as though someone had cut it out with scissors, and then I was falling into deep water that was salty on my lips. I heard the sounds of other creatures struggling to swim in the sea around me as I kicked and gulped and blinked droplets out of my eyes.
There was something wrong with my arms, I noticed with the odd calm that always comes over me when I fall into Wonderland. In fact, they were not arms at all, but bright green wings, and my nose was a nose no longer, but a curved red beak. I appeared to be a sort of exotic bird. It was another one of His jokes, of course.
A guinea pig swam by me, squeaking, ‘Pardon!’ And then an owl struggled past – and then I caught sight of Alice, tiny as anything, in pursuit of a plump little mouse.
‘Alice!’ I squawked. ‘Alice, you are much too small! You must grow to get out! Listen to me!’
But Alice ignored me and struck out for the shore.
I followed her.
‘Do go away!’ said Alice, once we were both out on dry land.
I shook my feathers crossly. ‘I shan’t!’ I said. ‘Do listen, Alice. If you get big enough, Wonderland can’t hold you any more. It’s the only way out. But, until you can get big, remember to speak politely, and do not listen to nonsense, and never lose your head.’
‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,’ said Alice pertly.
I snapped my beak at her. I was not sure if she saw who I was, or if Wonderland’s trickery had confused her.
‘Alice! I am older than you, and I must know better!’ I cried – and at that moment, something closed round my arm like a vice, and I was dragged out of Wonderland back into the sun.
I was exceedingly wet, and my skirts and hair were all draggled around me. I was a girl again, I noticed, and I was quite pleased about that. But I was less pleased to find that He had hold of me.
‘You meddlesome creature!’ He hissed in my ear. ‘Stay out of this story!’
‘I certainly won’t!’ I snapped at Him, feeling
exceedingly contrary. ‘Anyway, what kind of Ina would I be if I stayed out of things?’
He snarled at me.
‘I don’t suppose you like me playing with words, do you?’ I said triumphantly. ‘Well, if that’s so, you shouldn’t have taught me to.’
There was a disturbance in the air above me, and a shadow loomed over my feet.
‘LORINA LIDDELL!’ bellowed my father, his bush of white hair trembling with rage. ‘WHY?’
‘I found the child in the fountain, Dean, and got her out,’ said He.
‘Very good of you, Dodgson,’ said my father. ‘Lorina, STAND UP.’
I stood, dripping.
‘WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?’
‘No meaning,’ I said. ‘I tripped.’
‘I can tell you are lying,’ said my father. ‘Lorina, you troublesome girl, why can’t you be more like your sister?’
‘If I were more like she, then she should have to be more like me, and no one wants that,’ I said rudely.
‘LORINA!’ roared my father.
‘She is at an awkward age,’ said He.
‘She always has been,’ said my father. ‘She is an awkward child. Go away, Lorina. I shall decide how to punish you later.’
My father turned to speak to Him, and while He was occupied I ran. Fountain weed had got uncomfortably into the neck and waist of my dress, but I ignored it.
I thought that I had done enough – but I could not quite be sure.
There was another thing I wanted to try to give Alice every possible chance.
Back to the deanery again I went, leaving wet footprints on the hall tiles, through the kitchen (pepper all around me) and out into the deanery garden.
As I knew she would be, Dinah was there, stalking a lizard who was sunning itself on the cucumber frames.
‘Dinah!’ I said. ‘Wicked Dinah! Come here!’
Dinah hissed at me as the lizard fled.
‘Nonsense,’ I said to her sternly. ‘Don’t complain at me, madam. I need you.’
‘Prrrowt,’ said Dinah, flouncing her tail.
‘Hush,’ I told her, and I picked her up by her fat furry middle – she was about to have kittens again.
She sagged in my arms and gently bit my wrist.
‘Now, Dinah,’ I told her as I carried her across the garden. I was using my grown-up ordering voice again. ‘Listen to me extremely carefully. It is absolutely essential that you go into Wonderland and help Alice there. Do you understand? Make her as big and as strong as you can, and don’t let her lose her head.’
‘Rrrrow,’ said Dinah, baring her teeth in a smile.
I put her into the crook of the garden tree, her favourite perch, and tapped her sternly on the nose. ‘Go on!’ I said.
And, as I watched, Dinah faded from view. Her smile went first, and then her velvety paws. The tip of her tail was just vanishing as the deanery door was thrown open, and my mother came marching out into the garden. She had heard about the fountain.
‘LORINA LIDDELL!’ she screamed. ‘COME HERE!’
‘I shan’t!’ I cried, filled with boldness, and I ran as fast as I could – I had been doing rather a lot of running, and it was almost enough to dry me off – for the other door in the garden, the one that Alice and Edith and I have been expressly forbidden from ever going through.
It is always locked, and I knew that I would have to call on Wonderland one last time.
‘Open up!’ I shouted at it. ‘Open for me at once!’
And the door opened. Before me stood the manicured hedges and the rows upon rows of red and white roses of the dean’s private garden. It was not a place for little girls – But I, I thought, am not a little girl any more. I am as big as anything.
My mother shouted behind me. The gardeners shouted around me. I left footprints on the grass and scattered rose petals in the air. Some of them caught on my dress and in my hair.
Then I was out the other side of the garden, through the door that leads to the meadow, pelting back along the sandy path towards the river bank. I had to hurry. I had to see whether what I had done had worked – if Alice was safely home again.
At last, I slid down the bank, panting and sweating and shedding leaves and petals on to the grass. There was Alice, still asleep just where I had left her, her arm thrown up to shield her face. I bent over her, my heart beating, and a few more red petals floated down on to her cheek.
Alice opened her eyes and blinked up at me.
‘Wake up, Alice dear!’ I said to her. ‘Why, what a long sleep you’ve had!’
‘I had the strangest dream!’ Alice sighed, rubbing her hands over her face and disarranging her short dark hair. ‘There was a rabbit, and a cat, and a garden, and I shrank, and then I grew and grew and grew – and now I’m here again!’
‘Alice!’ I cried happily. ‘I believe you kept your head!’
‘Of course I did,’ said Alice, wrinkling up her nose. ‘But what would you know? You’re too big to have dreams like this one any more.’
Plum Cakes at Dawn
Or, What Happened When the Dormouse Went to Night Court
by Lauren St John
What I adore most about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is the sheer exuberance of Lewis Carroll’s prose and characters and the delicious sense that absolutely anything is possible and indeed probable. As one fantastical event follows another and the Queen and various animals become increasingly hot-headed and irrational, I love it that for the most part Alice – and, in his brief appearances, the Dormouse – greets each fresh triumph or disaster with equanimity, polite curiosity and, quite often, a charming sweetness. Since the Dormouse is forever dozing, I thought that a bout of insomnia might allow him to experience some of the fun of which he’s missed out. I hope very much that you enjoy it.
Lauren St John
The Dormouse awoke with a sneeze and a splutter.
His ribs twitched from being tickled, and his tummy hurt from being poked, and his tail ached from being pulled. The other animals peered down at him as if he were an exhibit in a science museum.
‘What?’ he cried. ‘What have I missed?’
‘Taxes are up; wages are down,’ the Goat said gloomily.
The Dormouse didn’t pay any taxes or earn a wage, but he squeaked with horror to show his support and dozed off again.
When next he opened his eyes, the animals were shaking their heads in sorrow.
‘What? What have I missed?’
‘The price of nuts has gone nuts,’ the Squirrel said bitterly, ‘and the chances of you and I ending up as a snack for a Hawk Monster have increased by five hundred and thirty-two per cent.’
This time, the Dormouse’s squeak of horror was genuine. Unable to bear it, he went back to sleep at once.
He was woken a minute later by a fearful clanking and screeching. A knight in an ill-fitting suit of armour came trotting out of the forest on a Palomino stallion. He was brandishing a newspaper and yelling, ‘EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!’
The Dodo burst from his burrow, stumpy wings covering his ears. ‘Dear sir, might I suggest that you apply oil to your kneecaps and breastplate before you and your horse go stone deaf.’
‘Pardon?’ said the Knight.
‘It’s too late,’ declared the Goat. ‘He and his horse are already deafer than a yew tree and candyfloss combined.’
With the ghastliest crashing, grinding, neighing and stamping that ever tormented an eardrum, the Palomino pranced to a halt, whereupon the Knight unfurled a banner: TRIAL OF THE CENTURY! THE QUEEN VS THE QUEEN.
‘WONDERLAND DAILY NEWS EXCLUSIVE,’ yelled the Knight. ‘THE QUEEN IS BATTLING THE QUEEN. WATCH THEM FIGHT TO THE DEATH. PISTOLS AND PLUM CAKES AT DAWN.’
The Dormouse wanted nothing more than to return to dreamland and erase this whole nightmarish episode from his head, but there was no chance of a lie-in while such a cacophony was terrifying the very birds from the trees.
‘Why is the Queen fighting herself?
’ he asked his dear friend the Dodo.
A soldier who was snoozing, unshaven, beneath a bush, sat up and said rudely, ‘What a stupid question. This is why you animals are known as dumb beasts. Of course the Queen is not battling the Queen. The Queen Bee is suing the Queen. Isn’t that obvious?’
‘I’m not sure it is,’ said the Dodo, adjusting his glasses. ‘Why, if I may be so bold, is the Queen Bee suing the Queen?’
‘How should I know?’ snapped the soldier. ‘All I’ve been told is that the trial starts at one minute to midnight at the Night Court. Be there or be a Dodo all your life. See if I care.’
An instant later, he was snoring under a silver birch.
The Dormouse fully sympathized with him and fervently wished that he could be snoring too. Sadly, the animals were in an uproar over the battling queens. Slumber was quite impossible.
The White Rabbit dashed past them in a panic, clutching a broken pocket watch. ‘Oh, no, it’s late. I’m in a state and so irate. Why, oh why, did I trip over the grate?’
Before anyone could offer advice, he was gone in a blur, his white tail bobbing in the direction of the town square. The Knight and his steed clanked and neighed after him. The Goat and the Squirrel followed, though rather more sedately.
As darkness descended, the Dormouse curled up in his nest and tried every conceivable cure for insomnia: pie crust, macadamia nuts, full-fat cheese and a documentary on slow-worms. Nothing helped.
The Dodo felt for him. ‘Why don’t you accompany me to the Night Court?’ he suggested. ‘Court cases are among the most tedious experiences in the universe. If warring queens don’t send you to sleep, nothing will.’
The first difficulty was getting there. The Dormouse’s legs were too tiny to walk the length of the royal estate. Unfortunately, the river taxi service had closed down because the fish had taken to riding bicycles.
In the end, they persuaded a wily trout in an oxygen mask to take them on a rickshaw for three times the usual fare. The Trout moaned the whole way. ‘I don’t know what the river is coming to. There are more balloons than bass. Comes to something when it’s safer on the land than it is in the water.’