Harrietta “The white Rabbit”'s Arc

Chapter 6 of 7

Alice stood on the grass and looked at her own hands. The dress had no color. Her shoes were two blue smudges. Harrietta saw a paper nailed to the nearest tree. The paper said Alice did not exist. Another paper said the same thing. The hedge was full of them. Alice read one, then another. Her shoulders dropped. The edges of her sleeves began to thin. Harrietta could see the grass through them. "He posted these," Harrietta said. Her voice came out small. Alice did not answer. She turned in a slow circle. The flamingo under her arm blinked once. Alice walked back to the open book on the stand. She tore the page she had come from straight down the spine and held it up. A painted blue dress sat on the torn paper. "I was here," Alice said. "That is mine." She folded the page and tucked it into her sash. Her hand passed halfway through the cloth before it caught. She started walking. Harrietta followed. They passed an iron post stuck with wooden arrows. The arrows pointed every way at once. I'm late. Yesterday. Madness. Rabbit Hole. Alice turned in place under it, reading each one, and spun once more before she picked a direction with no sign at all. She walked past the last hedge, past the last cobble, into the part of Wonderland Chester had not bothered to build. Ink ran loose on the ground here. The dark seeped between Alice's shoes and did not stain them. Alice stopped in a clearing and knelt. She gathered loose boards from the ink, and stones, and a curl of white rose vine. She worked fast. She did not speak. A small dark blue cottage rose under her hands, crooked, with a thin spire and yellow windows. White roses climbed the walls. When Alice stepped back, the cottage stood firm. Her sleeves filled in a little. Harrietta could no longer see the grass through them. Harrietta sat down on the front step to wait. After a while she noticed the hedge of white roses by the door. Blue paint was running down the petals. Fat drops gathered at the leaf tips and fell. Alice came out and stopped beside her. They both looked at the hedge. "That is the color of my dress," Alice said. She knelt and held a cupped hand under a petal until a drop fell into her palm. She did this until her palm was full. Inside the cottage Alice set a small glass vial on the wooden table and poured the blue into it. She tied a paper tag to the neck and wrote two words on it. Drink me. She set it in the center of the table and stepped back. Her hands were solid now. Harrietta watched the vial sit there, small and bright, and felt the ticking in her head quiet by half. Alice was real. Alice would stay long enough to help.