Alice Liddell's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Alice didn't move toward any of the doors. She'd already played this game with the bottle that shrank her, and she wasn't interested in a repeat performance where Wonderland got to decide what size she ought to be. The doors were a distraction, the same way the mushroom door in the field had been a distraction. She turned and examined the walls instead. The glow came from thin lines carved into the stone, forming patterns that looked almost like writing but shifted when she tried to focus on them. At the center of the wall opposite the stairs, one symbol stayed still: a heart. She pressed her palm against it. The wall swung inward, revealing a long corridor lined with doors on both sides. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, stretching farther than she could see. Each door was different — different colors, different heights, different shapes entirely. Some had keyholes, some had knockers, some had nothing at all. At the far end of the corridor sat a table she recognized. Glass top, delicate legs, exactly like the one from the hall where she'd found the bottle. On it sat a cake with garish icing and the words "Eat Me" written in red. Alice walked past the first twenty doors without trying any of them. She'd learned her lesson. The obvious choice was always wrong. The cake wanted her to eat it, which meant eating it would trap her here in some new way. She stopped in front of a plain wooden door with no markings at all. It had no keyhole, no handle, nothing to suggest how it opened. She pushed it. It didn't move. She tried three more doors the same way. All locked or stuck or simply refusing to acknowledge her. Then she heard footsteps behind her — quick, light, frantic. She turned and saw a white rabbit in a waistcoat running straight toward her, pulling a watch from his pocket. He looked up, saw her, and his eyes went wide. "You're not supposed to be here yet," he said, and dropped a small brass key at her feet before darting past her and disappearing through a purple door that slammed shut behind him. Alice picked up the key. It was warm, just like the heart-shaped one had been. She looked back at the plain wooden door she'd been trying to open. The key wouldn't fit there — it was too small. But six doors down, there was a tiny blue door she'd dismissed as useless. She knelt in front of it and the key slid into the lock perfectly. Through the keyhole, she could see daylight. Real daylight, not the pale glow of Wonderland. She'd found a way forward, but it would only fit her if she made herself smaller again. The choice was hers this time, not the bottle's. That made all the difference.