Alice much ado about nothing”'s Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Alice stayed inside the cottage longer than she meant to. The walls held. The roses outside the window did not peel away. When she finally opened the door, the flamingo hung limp in her arm, its eye blinking slower than before, like a candle running out. Harrietta was still on the step. She had not moved. Harrietta had stacked her teacups into a tower beside her knee. Three cups, three saucers, perfectly aligned. A pocket watch lay open on the top saucer. She had been counting minutes. "You came out. You came out. Good. I thought— I thought you'd gone back in. Back into the page. Or thinner. You looked thinner this morning, you did." She stood up fast. "You have to exist, Alice. Someone has to see you. I see you. That counts. That has to count." Alice sat down on the step beside the teacup tower. The flamingo blinked once and did not open its eye again for a long moment. "I'm here," Alice said. "I built a door. Doors mean you're somewhere." Harrietta nodded too many times. Then she stopped nodding. She was staring past Alice's shoulder. The white roses around the cottage were dripping. Not water. Blue. Fat blue beads slid down the petals and pooled in the dirt. Alice stood. She touched one bloom. Her fingertip came away wet and bright, the exact blue her dress used to be. She looked down at her sketched sleeve. Still empty. Still only lines. But the color was here. The color had followed the cottage out of her. "Get me a cup," Alice said. Harrietta handed one down from the tower without a word. Alice held it under the lowest rose and let the blue gather. One drop. Three. Ten. She moved cup to cup, bush to bush, until she had filled a glass vial Harrietta produced from her coat pocket. The vial was half full. Not enough. Alice knew, the way you know a recipe is short an egg. She corked it. She tore a strip from the hem of her colorless dress, scratched two words on it with a charred twig from the step, and tied it to the neck. Drink me. So she would not forget, and would not drink early. "It was the building," Alice said. "I made something. The color came back where I made something." Harrietta picked up her watch and clicked it shut. "Then we find more," she said. "More cottages. More walls. More you." She stepped off the step at last. The teacup tower stayed behind, neat and abandoned. Alice tucked the half-full vial against the flamingo's chest and walked with Harrietta into the hedges, looking for the next place a color might be hiding.