Alice Looking Into

By Laurel Hanson

Alice was feeling quite irritated with the world when she opened the front door and discovered a folded square of paper addressed to her upon the step. The message it contained looked like gobbledygook until she remembered she’d seen this sort of thing before. Holding it up to the mirror in the hall, she read the reversed letters: You have been in and you have gone through but sharper eyes would look into

“Into what?” Alice asked Dinah who looked back and licked her paw.

“A sentence mustn’t end with a preposition,” Alice huffed, “as then one doesn’t know if it’s got where it’s going. After all,” she added, “how am I to look into a thing when there’s nothing to look into?” Oh bother, she’d ended her sentence with a preposition, too. “Except the paper,” she finished hastily, and then realized that’s exactly where the message was telling her to look.

Jumping up, she lit the candle at the kitchen table and held the paper near the flame. Along with a somewhat sharp, sulphureous odor, the invisible message slowly revealed itself in brown letters: I am being held prisoner. Come in secret to the back door of the Pennyroyal Music Hall today at noon sharp.

“I don’t suppose it would be proper to do so since this message is from a stranger,” she told Dinah.

Then again, she prevaricated, the stranger must know her. If one person knew the other, didn’t that make them only half a stranger?

***

The bell in Tom Tower struck twelve just as Alice arrived at the back door of the music hall, and she was surprised to find it unlocked. She slipped into the gloomy interior, her Mary Janes padding lightly upon the wooden planks. Inside were all manner of puppets in baskets, costumes on hangers, and instruments in cases awaiting the evening’s performance.

“Psst!” someone hissed.

Alice followed the voice to a cage on a table in which a brown hare wearing an orange bow tie leaned nonchalantly against the bars and said, “Alice, I presume?”

She let out a gasp. “Why, you’re a…”

“Dapper fellow?” he supplied, straightening his bow tie.

“March hare!” she finished.

The hare rolled his eyes. “Certainly not. That’s my cousin. We’re nothing alike. I have dignity and poise. I’m an August hare. Obviously.”

“Yes, rather,” Alice replied.

“He told me to seek you out if ever I got in a pinch, and I’m in a pinch now, as you can see.” He tapped the bars.

“Quite,” Alice concurred. “But whyever are you here?”

“I was harenapped!” He clapped a paw to his brow. “I had popped into your world on a spot of business for the Duchess—but never mind all that—I was trapped by a magician. She’s been pulling me out of a hat ever since. How would you like to be stuffed into a hat just to be pulled out again every evening and twice on Saturdays?”

“I shouldn’t think I would care for it one bit,” Alice agreed. “But what I meant was why are you here instead of there?”

“Oh, I say! Hardly fair to blame the victim.” He put his paws on his hips and gave her a hard look, which is not easy for a hare.

“It’s just that I haven’t seen anyone from Wonderland in ever so long.”

“I expect,” the hare said sternly, “that’s because you haven’t been looking.”

Alice was rather put out by his observation, but before she could muster a response, the hare made a rolling motion with his paw. “So… get on with it.”

“What am I to get on with? That is to say, with what am I to get on? Oh, bother!”

He squinted at her. “Free me, of course!”

She studied the lock on the cage. It looked quite sturdy. “I don’t have a key.”

The hare grabbed both his ears. “Don’t tell me you didn’t bring a paper clip or a hair pin?”

“I didn’t know I’d need to pick a lock!”

“I did say I was a captive.”

“Well, yes, but…” Alice spluttered and then drew upon her dignity. “You could have been more informative in your missive.”

“Time was tight, and I had only so much… err, ink.”

Alice saw that might be a problem for a caged hare trying to pen an invisible message. “Why wherever did you get the lemon juice with which to write it?”

His jaw dropped. “Lemon juice? Is that what you think I used?”

“Of course! What else?”

The hare dragged a foot through the shavings in his cage and said, “Never mind. Look. Every day, sharp as tacks, the magician heads off to the tavern for a ploughman’s. She’ll be back soon, so could we just concentrate on the lock?”

Alice hesitated. She’d taught herself how to pick locks after the last time a key had eluded her. That wasn’t the problem. But if she were to free the hare, wouldn’t that be stealing? Then again, this was a talking hare. Surely, if a creature could speak, one would think that made a difference.

“Ahem,” the hare ahemmed. “Time’s a-wasting.”

She jammed her hands into her apron pockets and pulled out a candy. No, that wouldn’t do. A ribbon? Again, no.

She glanced around and spotted the costumes. Aha! Hastily she unbent one of the wire hangers, slid it into the lock, and jiggled until she heard a satisfying click.

The August hare sprang out of the cage like a March hare, saluted her, and made a mad dash for the open door.

As Alice watched him disappear into the sunshine, she realized the hare had been right. What with growing up being so terribly difficult, it had gotten ever so much harder to remember Wonderland. “From now on,” she told herself, “I will keep my eyes sharp and look into… why, everything!” Skipping out into the wide world, she added, “And I won’t give a toss for the prepositions!”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Laurel Hanson  is a writer who grew up traveling around the world until finally settling in Maine. Except for that one time she ran a haunted inn, her career has centered on the art of communication. Her stories have appeared with Havok, Flash Fiction Magazine, Literally Stories, Moonday Magazine, and the latest Read on Run anthology.

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