Alice much ado about nothing”'s Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The hedges thinned and then stopped. Alice and Harrietta stepped out into open void, the kind of nowhere that had no floor except where they put their feet. Giant dandelion puffs drifted past them, taller than the cottage they had left behind. Alice held the half-full vial against the flamingo's chest. She looked down at her sleeve. The sketched lines were paler than an hour ago. She could see the dandelions through her wrist. Harrietta sat on nothing and made it look like a chair. She clicked her watch open, shut, open. "You have to build, Alice. Build. Anywhere. Here is fine, here is fine. You're going see-through, you're going— pick a spot. Pick." "I don't know where to start," Alice said. A seed tuft brushed her cheek and passed through it. She flinched. "If I pick wrong, I waste it. If I wait, I'm gone." Harrietta's ears pinned back. She poured a thumb of grey tea from a dented cup and pushed it toward Alice's knee. "Small first. Small. Start small, love. A thing you can hold." Alice uncorked the vial. One drop on her fingertip. She thought of a butterfly with bread for wings, peanut butter on one side, jelly on the other. She drew it in the air with the wet finger. The line held. Wings unfolded from nothing, soft and crusted at the edges. The butterfly bobbed once and flew off after a dandelion. Blue welled up on the seed-tuft where the butterfly had landed and slid down the stem. Alice caught three drops in the vial. Not enough. Her forearm was still fading. "Bigger," Harrietta said. "Bigger, bigger. Do the house again. Do it here." Alice pressed her palm flat against the empty air. She thought of the cottage. Blue shingles. Yellow windows. White roses climbing the sides. She pushed. The void resisted, then gave. Wood cracked into being. A door swung open on a hinge that had not existed a breath ago. The little house stood in the nowhere, roof steaming, panels wet. Ink dripped from every seam, dark at first, then blue, then bluer. It ran down the boards and pooled on the step. Harrietta scrambled with the vial. She held it under a corner post. The vial filled past the halfway mark, past three quarters, and stopped a finger short of the neck. Alice corked it fast. She looked at her arm. Still colorless lines. But solid. She flexed her fingers and they did not blur. Harrietta pressed the vial into Alice's palm. "Not yet. Not yet. One more drop and you drink. One more." Alice nodded. The flamingo blinked at the new house, then at the vial, then closed its eye. Somewhere past the second cottage, another dandelion drifted by, and Alice heard something inside the walls begin to move.