By Hannah Carter
“Alice, dear… you really are too much for the real world to handle.” The Red Queen’s smile flickered to life in the darkness, much like the Cheshire Cat’s. She emerged from behind a gnarled Tumtum tree with a scarlet lantern held aloft. The fairy inside chittered angrily as it thrashed at the bars, and I yearned to free her.
Society, with all its rules and stigmas and thoughts, kept me caged, too. As a girl who could create portals to magical worlds, I was an oddity that no one in their Wonderlessland understood.
“It doesn’t matter.” The conviction in my voice felt frail. I swallowed, but I couldn’t reclaim the strength from seconds before when I’d rushed into the forest to stop the Red Queen. “I won’t let you capture the White Queen.”
“You and who, dear? Your family thought you a raving lunatic and put you in an asylum when you talked about Wonderland. Your friends have abandoned you, even after swearing they understood and loved you. How does it feel, to know that you are utterly alone?” Leaves crunched underfoot as the Red Queen stalked towards me. Instinctively, I stepped back.
The Red Queen snapped her fingers. A rabbit hole, crafted from the White Rabbit’s stolen power, opened under me. I shrieked, clawing at the ground to stop my descent.
Dirt tumbled down the rabbit hole as my fingernails sank into the soil. From below, the faint tick-tock of the rabbit’s clock drifted upward.
My shoes dug at the burrow walls, but I sank lower. My frantic heartbeat roared in my ears as the Red Queen knelt in front of me.
“You think you can save Wonderland? The White Queen?” she hissed. “You are no one, Alice. Lost. Friendless. Forgotten.” She grabbed my hand, hoisting me into the air. I screamed, dangling above the rabbit hole, suddenly as tiny as her words made me feel. “Down the rabbit hole you go, Alice, never to be seen again.”
I plummeted.
“No!” I kicked and scratched at nothing, desperate to grab a Tumtum root, a tail of the Cheshire Cat—anything. “Help! Please!”
The Red Queen’s cackle reverberated around me as hopelessness sunk in. I’d trusted the other asylum patients, my newfound friends. The Society of Madwomen, they’d called themselves. They’d promised to help me save Wonderland after the Red Queen crossed over using one of my portals.
But they’d vanished. Left me to face her all by myself.
Mad little Alice, lonesome once more.
My cries died. Time slowed around me as I surrendered to my freefall. Perhaps I could have summoned a portal, but what then? That would only thrust me back into reality, where I would be no less alone.
Maybe the Red Queen was right.
Maybe it was better this way.
Death seemed so easy when life seemed so hard.
“Alice!” a familiar, feminine voice yelled.
A dormouse burst out of a burrow beside me. Although I would have crushed it at my normal size, this one snatched me out of midair with seemingly no effort. I wheezed as my momentum shifted, and instead of going down, down, down, the dormouse dug its claws into the dirt and clambered up. The journey to the surface felt so much shorter with a companion—only a few tick-tocks on the clock—before we emerged into the Tumtum Forest. The dormouse deposited me on the ground, and I collapsed, sputtering and coughing.
Hands took mine—now regular size again—and yanked my shivering body into a tight embrace.
Sugar-plum perfume and warm arms enveloped me. “The trees move,” a candy-sweet voice whispered. “Like pawns on a chessboard. The Red Queen separated us to isolate you, Alice.”
“Clara?” I croaked. A girl my age, another member of the Society of Madwomen. “I thought you’d left me. That I was… too much.” My voice caught in my throat.
“Alice, I can bring nutcrackers to life and talk to mice.” Clara cradled my head against hers. “You’re never too much. We’re all mad here.”
Clara pulled me to my feet, but I didn’t have the strength to leave her arms yet. Although I was alone no longer, I needed more to not feel lonely.
Right ahead, Clara’s nutcracker held his sword at the Red Queen’s throat, although she remained calm. “You really think Clara can help you? Accept your madness?”
My breath caught in my throat. I remembered my family as they abandoned me in the asylum—their curling sneers, their hard voices. Remembered how my peers had laughed at me, whispered that I would never make a good wife now that I’d gone mad.
Something shifted behind Clara and me, and the Red Queen smirked. “Checkmate.”
One of the Tumtum trees wrapped its branches around Clara and ripped her away. I cried out, her warmth suddenly out of reach. Another tree slammed its branches into the nutcracker, splintering it into two halves.
“You are a powerless, insignificant pawn,” the Red Queen snarled. She lunged at me, lantern wielded like a club.
“She’s powerless!” Clara thrashed against the tree. “You create the portals, Alice!”
The lantern swung towards my neck. I ducked, gasping as my breath returned, along with the truth.
The Red Queen had used my portal to come to Wonderland. The White Rabbit’s power to trap me. Her only power lay in what she stole.
At my command, a portal opened up at the Red Queen’s feet. She screeched and swung her lantern at me again, but I grabbed it, her dangling on the precipice of the portal.
“You’re weak,” she breathed.
“No. I’m mad,” I snarled. “And I’m far too much for you to handle.” I wrenched the lantern away and kicked the Red Queen out of my Wonderland.
Freed, Clara rushed over and wrapped her arms around me. “You were marvelous, Alice.”
I was not alone.
I was Alice. Proud member of the Society of Madwomen.
But to the right people, my madness would never be too much.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Good to see Clara come to Alice’s aid!
Loved this, what a twist to bring Clara in! Super exciting and flowed very nicely.
Awesome to see these characters again! Glad to see Clara return to show Alice that she is not alone and remind her she is much more than what she thinks of herself! 🙂 Wonderful story as always, Hannah! 😊
A dramatic follow up to the tale so far, I would love to see more on how Alice interacts with the Madwomen! This version of Wonderland you’re establishing is one that inspires me to actually wonder about what else is out there in store for your Menagerie of Madwomen and their misadventures.
As the Red Queen falls into the portal, her final words echo in Wonderland:
“The cake is a lie!”
Powerful, evocative story. Suspenseful, compelling… really wonderful.