Alice Liddell's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Alice knelt in front of the blue door, watching the brass key in the lock. It looked normal at first — solid metal, warm to the touch, perfectly still. Then she noticed the edges had started to blur. Not melt exactly, but soften, like butter left too long in the sun. A tiny drop of brass fell onto the floor and disappeared before it landed. She could fit through the door at her current size if she crawled. The doorway was small but not impossible — maybe two feet high, just wide enough for her shoulders if she turned sideways. The daylight beyond was real. She could see grass and sky and nothing that glowed or shifted or tried to tell her what to do. But the key was dissolving, and once it was gone, the door would lock again. She'd lose her only exit because she'd been too stubborn to make herself smaller. Alice stood and walked to the far end of the corridor. The cake sat on the glass table exactly where it had been before, garish pink icing spelling out "Eat Me" in letters that seemed too eager. She hated that it had been right. That Wonderland had known she would need it and had placed it there waiting for her to give in. She picked up the cake. It was lighter than it should have been, and it smelled like nothing at all. She ate it in three bites, chewing fast so she wouldn't have time to regret it. The shrinking happened immediately — her dress pooling around her, the corridor growing into a canyon, the cake table becoming a cliff she could no longer reach. She was three inches tall again, exactly the size she'd been when she drank from the bottle. But this time she'd chosen it. This time she knew what she was trading and why. She ran back to the blue door, which now towered above her like a church entrance, and stepped through into the daylight before the key finished melting and the choice disappeared forever.