Wonderland Christmas in July.
Category Archives: Alice in Wonderland
When Alice Met Nibber Snapwell
Alice had met many curious creatures in Wonderland, but none quite so official as Nibber Snapwell, Junior Assistant Mechanic of Metaphorical Vehicles, who insisted that even impossible cars must be inspected for whimsy, wobble, wonder, and excessive adventure pressure.
***
Alice bent down slightly, for Nibber Snapwell was standing on an upturned flowerpot and appeared to be taking his height very seriously.
“Are you a mechanic?” she asked.
Nibber straightened his thimble hat.
“I am a Junior Assistant Mechanic of Metaphorical Vehicles,” he replied. “There is an important difference.”
“What is a metaphorical vehicle?”
“A vehicle that may be going somewhere, meaning something, or doing both at once.”
Alice considered this carefully.
“That sounds rather difficult to repair.”
“It is,” said Nibber proudly. “Ordinary mechanics tighten bolts. I tighten possibilities.”
He held up his brass dipstick.
“This measures oil, imagination, road confidence, excessive wobble, and whether a car has begun to think too much about its own purpose.”
Alice looked around the little workshop. There were maps pinned to the walls, lanterns hanging from hooks, jars filled with spare question marks, and a sign that read:
GLOVE COMPARTMENT BETWEEN HERE AND THERE
“Have you repaired many impossible cars?” she asked.
Nibber glanced at his clipboard.
“Seven cars, two flying carts, a nervous omnibus, one wheelbarrow with ambitions, and a teapot that insisted it was a ferry.”
“And was it?”
“Only on Thursdays.”
Alice smiled.
“And what is wrong with the Crazymad Writer’s Fiat?”
Nibber lowered his voice.
“It is not broken.”
“Then why does it need a mechanic?”
“Because,” said Nibber, tapping his clipboard gravely, “it has started wondering whether being a car is enough.”
Alice looked thoughtful.
“In Wonderland,” she said, “things are often more than they first appear.”
“Exactly,” said Nibber. “But the trick is not to become so many things at once that one forgets what one was to begin with.”
Alice nodded.
“So the Fiat does not need to change into something else.”
“No,” said Nibber. “It needs to remember that a car can be magical and still be a car.”
At that moment, somewhere behind the workshop wall, a horn gave a small uncertain beep.
Nibber sighed.
“There. Do you hear that?”
Alice listened.
“It sounds worried.”
“It is,” said Nibber. “Come along. We had better reassure it before it turns the boot into a ballroom.”
Alice followed him towards the glowing doorway marked THIS WAY TO BALLYKILLDUFF, while Nibber marched ahead with his brass dipstick raised like a sword.
“And Alice,” he added over his shoulder, “whatever you do, do not compliment the glove compartment.”
“Why not?”
“Because it will open up.”
The door swung wide.
Beyond it, Alice saw the Crazymad Writer’s garden, the giant gunnera leaves, and a cream-coloured Fiat 600 sitting very quietly indeed.
Too quietly.
Alice smiled.
“I think,” she said, “this is going to be one of those days.”
The Tumblewink of Ballykillduff
The Tumblewink of Ballykillduff
It began, as such things often do, with something so small that no one thought it worth mentioning.
Mrs O’Doolin’s teacups.
They had always hung in a neat and sensible row beside the dresser—handle to the right, pattern facing outward, each one minding its own business in a most respectable fashion.
Until one Tuesday morning (or what strongly insisted it was Tuesday), she found them all facing the wall.
Not broken.
Not fallen.
Simply… turned.
“Well now,” she said, after a pause long enough to consider the matter properly, “that’s not how cups behave.”
By the time the village had gathered its thoughts (which took longer than usual, as several of them had gone slightly missing), other things had begun to occur.
Mr Hanrahan at the signal box discovered that the 9:15 had arrived at 9:15… but from tomorrow.
Jimmy McGroggan insisted his ladder now had one extra rung, though no one could agree where it had come from.
And the sheep—always a reliable measure of reality in Ballykillduff—had arranged themselves in a neat row that appeared, upon closer inspection, to be alphabetical.
No one knew quite how sheep managed such a thing.
Least of all the sheep.
It was Alice who noticed it first.
Not the changes.
Those were everywhere.
No—she noticed the feeling.
That quiet, delicate sense that something had just passed by… not loudly, not boldly, but sideways, as though it had slipped between one moment and the next without troubling either.
She was standing by the hedgerow when she saw it.
At first, it looked like nothing at all.
Then like a scrap of ribbon.
Then like a small, glowing tangle of things that did not entirely agree on what they were.
It drifted—not forward, not back—but slightly aside.
And as it passed a fallen leaf, the leaf stood up straight.
The twig beside it, however, forgot what it was for.
“You must be a Tumblewink,” said Alice, quite calmly.
The creature did not answer.
But something about it… smiled.
Not with a mouth, exactly.
More with the idea of a smile.
Alice stepped closer.
“You’ve been tidying,” she said.
The Tumblewink shimmered.
A button appeared where there had been none before, then vanished again as though it had remembered it belonged elsewhere.
“Yes,” Alice continued, “but not quite properly.”
At this, the Tumblewink gave a small, pleased sort of flicker.
They walked together then—if walked is the correct word for something that moved by gently disagreeing with where it had just been.
Everywhere it passed, things improved… and did not.
A crooked fence straightened itself, while the ground beneath it shifted just enough to make it unnecessary.
A lost glove reappeared—on the wrong hand, worn by someone who did not remember owning it.
A sentence begun by Mrs Fitzgerald—
“I always thought that perhaps—”
—finished itself somewhere else entirely, inside Mr Hanrahan’s head, who responded aloud with,
“—it was the teapot all along.”
No one questioned this.
“Why do you do it?” Alice asked at last.
The Tumblewink paused.
For a moment, it became very still—so still that it almost became nothing.
Then, quite gently, it rearranged the air.
Alice felt it rather than heard it:
Because finished things cannot wander.
They stood in silence.
In the distance, a sheep tried to remember whether it was before or after another sheep and decided it rather preferred not to choose.
Alice looked about her.
Nothing was quite right.
But nothing was quite wrong either.
And somehow… the world felt wider for it.
“Will you stay?” she asked.
The Tumblewink flickered.
For just a moment, it gathered itself into something almost clear—a small, warm shape, like a memory that had not yet decided to fade.
Then it drifted.
Not away.
Not toward.
But between.
The next morning, the teacups were facing outward again.
The clock told the correct time.
The sheep had returned to their usual and entirely disorganised ways.
Everything, it seemed, had been put back as it ought.
And yet…
Mrs O’Doolin would later insist that her favourite cup felt warmer than the others, though she could not say why.
Mr Hanrahan occasionally answered questions no one had asked.
And Alice—
Alice sometimes found herself pausing mid-step, certain—quite certain—that she had just missed something important.
Something small.
Something warm.
Something that had been there…
just before it wasn’t.
And if, on certain quiet evenings in Ballykillduff, a thought goes slightly astray, or a moment feels just a touch unfinished—
no one worries overmuch.
They simply smile,
and leave things… almost as they are.
Because somewhere nearby,
a Tumblewink is still at work.
Do Not Enter.
Do Not Enter.
The Rabbit Hole didn’t usually feature a “Do Not Enter” sign, but today it was draped in neon orange bunting.
Alice, never one to let a sign ruin a good tumble, hopped right over it. As she drifted down, she noticed the usual jam jars and bookshelves had been replaced by floating rubber chickens and mirrors that showed her wearing a very tall, purple top hat.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” she remarked, reaching out to touch a chicken. It let out a loud honk that propelled her downward at twice the speed.
The Un-April Tea Party
When Alice finally landed—not on a heap of sticks and leaves, but on a giant custard pie—she found the March Hare and the Mad Hatter sitting at a table shaped like a question mark.
“No room! No room!” the Hatter shouted, while gesturing wildly to three dozen empty chairs.
“There’s plenty of room,” Alice said, wiping a dollop of lemon curd from her pinafore. She sat down and reached for a teapot.
The March Hare leaned in, his whiskers twitching. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. It’s April First, you know. The day when the logic of Wonderland actually tries to make sense.”
Alice paused. “Make sense? But that sounds lovely.”
“It’s a nightmare!” the Hatter wailed. He picked up his pocket watch. “Look! It’s actually telling the time! It says it’s eight minutes past two. How am I supposed to live under such rigid conditions?”
The Queen’s “Mercy”
A bugle sounded, and the Queen of Hearts marched onto the lawn. Her guards, the playing cards, were all walking backward.
“Off with their heads!” the Queen bellowed.
Alice braced herself, but the Queen suddenly doubled over in a fit of giggles. She pulled a silk string, and instead of an executioner’s axe, a giant bouquet of trick-flowers popped out of the ground, spraying the crowd with sparkling grape juice.
“April Fools!” the Queen shrieked, slapping her knee. “I’m not beheading anyone today. Instead, I’m sentencing you all to… a very sensible nap!“
The cards groaned. A sensible nap was the most boring thing a Wonderland resident could imagine.
The Cheshire Grin
Alice felt a familiar tickle of whiskers against her ear. The Cheshire Cat appeared, or rather, his stripes appeared first, followed by a pair of sunglasses.
“Why the long face, Alice?” the Cat purred. “Don’t you like the holiday?”
“It’s all very confusing,” Alice sighed. “If the Queen is being nice, and the Hatter is being punctual, then who is being silly?”
The Cat’s grin grew until it took up half the sky. “You are, of course. You came to a world of nonsense looking for a bit of order, and you found it on the one day we don’t want it.”
He handed her a small, wrapped gift. “Open it.”
Alice carefully untied the ribbon. Inside was a small mirror. When she looked into it, her reflection didn’t look like her at all—it was a white rabbit, looking at its watch and muttering about being late.
“April Fools,” the reflection whispered.
Alice blinked, and suddenly the tea party, the Queen, and the Cat vanished. She was back on the grassy bank, her sister shaking her shoulder.
“Wake up, Alice! You’ve been dreaming.”
Alice sat up, rubbing her eyes. She reached into her pocket and felt something cold and hard. She pulled it out: a tiny, silver whistle shaped like a rubber chicken.
She looked at her sister and smiled. “I think the joke’s on me.”
The Day the Postbox Refused Certain Letters
The Day the Postbox Refused Certain Letters
In Ballykillduff, the postbox had always been green, dependable, and mildly overlooked.
It stood beside the village square, not far from the fountain that sometimes remembered things before they happened, and within polite nodding distance of Mrs Flannery’s shop, where news was sold in equal measure with bread.
No one had ever thought much about the postbox.
Until the morning it began to think about them.
It started, as such things often do, with a small and easily dismissed inconvenience.
Mrs Flannery approached with a letter held between two fingers, as though it might yet change its mind.
“I’ve written to my sister,” she said aloud, because she often did that. “Perfectly reasonable. Perfectly timely.”
She slid the letter into the slot.
The postbox accepted it.
Then paused.
Then, with a quiet and distinctly deliberate motion…
returned it.
The envelope slipped back out, as neat as you please, and landed against her shoe.
Mrs Flannery frowned.
“Well now,” she said. “That’s… unnecessary.”
She tried again.
The postbox tried again.
The result was identical.
By mid-morning, the matter had gathered an audience.
Mr Hanrahan, who dealt in railway timings and therefore trusted systems, posted a form.
The postbox accepted it instantly.
“Functional,” he declared, with satisfaction.
A child posted a drawing of a duck wearing a hat.
The postbox hummed, a soft, approving sound, and swallowed it whole.
“Encouraging,” said Mrs Flannery, who was still holding her letter.
It was Mr Byrne the baker who noticed the sign.
“Ah now,” he said, squinting. “That wasn’t there yesterday.”
There, affixed just beneath the slot, in careful, looping handwriting, was a notice.
NO LETTERS OF REGRET
NO APOLOGIES WRITTEN TOO LATE
NO MESSAGES YOU SHOULD HAVE SAID YEARS AGO
The square fell into a thoughtful sort of silence.
“Well that’s ridiculous,” said Mrs Flannery.
And yet… she did not try to post the letter again.
By afternoon, the situation had worsened in a most peculiar way.
Letters that had been refused did not simply go home.
They lingered.
They gathered.
They rested against the base of the postbox, or perched along the fountain’s edge, or leaned thoughtfully against the green-painted bench.
And when the evening came…
they began to murmur.
Not loudly.
Not enough to cause alarm.
But enough that if one stood still—very still—and listened…
one might hear:
“I should have said it then…”
“It wasn’t meant like that…”
“I thought there would be more time…”
The square, which had always been a place of passing, became a place of pause.
Alice arrived just as the light began to soften.
She had been walking without particular direction, which in Ballykillduff often meant she arrived exactly where she was meant to be.
She regarded the postbox.
The sign.
The small congregation of unsent words.
And then, quite sensibly, she listened.
“Oh,” she said, after a moment.
“That’s rather clear.”
“What is?” asked Mr Hanrahan.
“It isn’t broken,” said Alice. “It’s being particular.”
“That’s worse,” said Mrs Flannery.
Alice walked slowly around the postbox, as though it might reveal something from the correct angle.
“It’s not refusing letters,” she said.
“It’s refusing timing.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Mr Byrne.
“These,” said Alice, gesturing gently to the scattered envelopes, “are all things meant for yesterday. Or last year. Or a moment that has already gone on without them.”
“Well that’s what letters are for,” said Mrs Flannery.
“Sometimes,” said Alice. “But not when they are trying to travel backwards.”
That night, the murmuring grew clearer.
Not louder.
But more certain.
The letters did not accuse.
They did not demand.
They simply… repeated themselves, as though waiting to be heard by the correct moment.
Which, unfortunately, had already passed.
The following morning, Ballykillduff was quieter than usual.
Not empty.
Not unhappy.
Just… aware.
Mrs Flannery opened her shop and said, to no one in particular:
“I should have told her I missed her.”
Then, after a pause, she added:
“I still do.”
Mr Byrne, weighing out flour, said:
“I was wrong about the oven.”
And then, after another pause:
“I know that now.”
Mr Hanrahan stood by the station and said:
“That wasn’t necessary. What I said.”
And though no one answered, the air itself seemed to acknowledge the effort.
Alice returned to the square carrying a single envelope.
It was plain.
Unaddressed, at first glance.
But as she turned it in her hands, the words revealed themselves—not written so much as decided.
To Whoever I Was Meant To Be
She considered the postbox.
The sign.
The quiet gathering of letters that no longer whispered quite so urgently.
“Well,” she said, “this doesn’t seem to belong to yesterday.”
She stepped forward and placed the envelope into the slot.
The postbox did not hesitate.
It accepted the letter.
Completely.
Without pause.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Which, in Ballykillduff, was often the beginning of something.
Over the next few days, the changes were small.
So small they might have gone unnoticed, had the village not been paying attention.
People spoke more.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
But at the right time.
A hand on a shoulder.
A word said before it became too late to say it easily.
A laugh shared instead of saved.
An apology given before it required a letter.
The pile of unsent letters grew thinner.
Not because they were posted.
But because they were no longer needed.
One morning, the sign changed.
No one saw it happen.
No one heard it being written.
But there it was, in the same careful hand:
SAY IT WHILE IT STILL MATTERS
The postbox returned to its usual stillness.
Green.
Dependable.
Mildly overlooked.
But from time to time, if one posted a letter that seemed… slightly delayed…
it might pause.
Just briefly.
As though considering.
And if you stood very quietly beside it—
not always, but sometimes—
you might hear a soft, thoughtful hum.
Not disapproving.
Not quite approving.
Just… attentive.
As though the postbox, having once learned the difference,
had no intention of forgetting it again.
Tea is a serious business
“Tea, my dear sir, is a serious business!” Tarrant Hightopp, the Mad Hatter, bellowed, his voice echoing over the brass and steam. He was a whirl of tweed and copper gears, balanced on a massive clock face that marked the heart of the great Steampunk London. His goggles were pushed up into his perpetually patched top hat, but his eyes, a glinting, unpredictable green, were narrowed with focused madness.
Facing him, claws out and his waistcoat already shredded, was the March Hare, also known as Thackery Earwicket. He was a creature of kinetic energy, his fur matted with coal dust, holding a broken porcelain cup like a jagged weapon.
Their disagreement, as it so often was, was existential. Thackery had just suggested that a proper five-second steeping time for the Earl Grey-9000 was sufficient. To Tarrant, who had spent the last hour meticulously fine-tuning his custom-built, dual-spout ‘Goliath’ teapot, this was nothing short of blasphemy.
“You speak of SACRILEGE!” Tarrant roared, swinging the Goliath. The massive, brass teapot, a wonder of miniature clockwork, hummed with internal energy, its pressure gauges twitching. “This is not merely tea, Thackery! This is ‘Chrono-Brew’! Every drop must be synchronized with the precise oscillation of the central chronometer!”
“Gah! More of your clockwork claptrap!” Thackery spat, his long ears twitching in fury. He feinted left, then lunged right, the jagged edge of his teacup narrowly missing the Hatter’s coat. “I say five seconds! If you can’t feel the brew, you don’t deserve the brew!”
“Feel it? I designed it to operate at exactly five-hundred and twelve milliseconds past the optimal temperature coefficient for maximum flavor-to-gear ratio!” Tarrant parried Thackery’s strike with the snout of the Goliath, sending a small spray of water into the air.
Below them, the city pulsed. Massive airships, looking like barnacled metal whales, slipped through the smoky sky. Steam-driven factories, a forest of chimneys, chugged out black plumes. Towering clock towers, including a familiar, but far more complex, Big Ben, loomed in the haze. The entire landscape was a symphony of brass, copper, and iron.
Thackery threw a broken, steaming saucer, which Tarrant dodged with a flourish that was half ballet, half clumsy panic. “It’s about the spirit, Tarrant! The untamed, wild essence of the leaf!”
“Untamed! Hah!” The Hatter used his boots, outfitted with specialized gear-traction pads, to secure his footing on the clockwork floor. He pulled a small lever on the side of the teapot. “Your ‘untamed’ approach produces a chaotic swill! Witness the power of true, calculated, controlled flavor!”
The Goliath’s gears whirred with new intensity. A tiny puff of steam, precise and controlled, burst from the main spout, creating a small, smoky cloud that briefly obscured the battle.
The March Hare didn’t wait. He crashed through the steam, a blur of fur and rage. “CALCULATED? It tastes like industrial lubricant!”
Their fight wasn’t a duel of death, but of conviction. A thousand tiny pieces of metal, a million gears, and an endless stream of hot water were their weapons and their shield. In the heart of a city built on order and power, two masters of the absurd were locked in a perfect, chaotic dance, proving that even in a world of gears and steel, the most important battle was always over the perfect cup of tea. Their shouts were swallowed by the deep, rhythmic groan of the city’s machinery, but their madness was the only thing truly alive.
Alice and the Quiet Thing Beneath Wonderland
Alice and the Quiet Thing Beneath Wonderland
Alice did not remember falling.
That was the first wrongness.
There was no rush of wind, no tumbling of teacups, no curious shelves of marmalade and maps. No polite gravity conducting her downward like a well-mannered host.
Instead, she was simply there.
Standing.
Waiting.
Wonderland had received her without ceremony.
At first glance, it seemed unchanged.
The trees still leaned at uncertain angles, as though listening to secrets beneath the soil. The air still shimmered faintly, like a thought not quite finished. A path still wound forward in the manner of paths that had not yet decided where they led.
But nothing greeted her.
No White Rabbit.
No chatter.
No argument.
Even the silence felt… deliberate.
Alice took a step forward.
The ground did not echo.
“Hallo?” she called.
Her voice did not return.
Not even incorrectly.
She walked.
And as she walked, she noticed something most unsettling of all:
Everything was almost right.
The flowers were in bloom—but none turned to look at her.
A teacup sat upon a table—but the tea within it did not ripple.
A signpost pointed in three directions—but the words had been carefully erased, as though they had once said something important and someone had decided they should not say it anymore.
Alice reached out and touched the sign.
It was warm.
“You should not read things that have been forgotten.”
The voice came from nowhere.
And everywhere.
Alice turned.
At first, she thought it was the Cheshire Cat—but no.
This thing did not grin.
It had no face.
Only a suggestion of one, like a memory rubbed thin.
“I didn’t read anything,” Alice said.
“That is why you are still here,” said the thing.
Alice took a step back.
“Where is everyone?”
The thing did not answer immediately.
Instead, the air seemed to shift, as though it were deciding how much truth could be allowed.
“They are where they were always going,” it said at last.
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only answer left.”
Alice turned and began to walk faster.
The path resisted.
Not visibly—nothing so obvious—but it lengthened in small, unnoticeable ways. The distance between her and the next tree stretched like a thought being delayed.
She broke into a run.
And then she saw it.
The tea party.
The table was laid.
The cups were filled.
The chairs were occupied.
But the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse sat perfectly still, as though waiting for a cue that had never come.
Alice approached slowly.
“Hatter?” she said.
He did not respond.
She reached out and touched his sleeve.
It crumbled.
Not into dust—but into something softer. Lighter.
Like ash that had once been laughter.
“No,” Alice whispered.
She stepped back.
The March Hare’s teacup slipped from his fingers, though he had not moved.
It hit the table.
And made no sound.
“They spoke too much,” said the voice again.
Alice turned sharply.
The faceless thing stood closer now.
“They filled the air with contradictions. Questions. Noise. It was… inefficient.”
“Inefficient?” Alice said, her voice trembling. “That’s what Wonderland is.”
“It was,” said the thing.
Alice shook her head.
“No. No, this is wrong. This is all wrong.”
“Yes,” said the thing, almost gently. “That is why it had to be corrected.”
Alice ran.
She ran through the silent woods, past flowers that would not speak, past streams that refused to flow, past clocks that had stopped at times that meant nothing at all.
And at last, she reached the Queen’s court.
The Queen of Hearts sat upon her throne.
Perfectly composed.
Perfectly still.
Her crown did not tremble. Her voice did not rage. Her eyes did not burn.
Alice approached slowly.
“Your Majesty?” she said.
The Queen did not answer.
Alice stepped closer.
And closer.
And then she saw—
The Queen was not breathing.
“She was the last,” said the thing.
Alice did not turn this time.
“Why?” she whispered.
“Because she could not be predicted,” it said. “And what cannot be predicted cannot be permitted.”
Alice clenched her hands.
“This place is meant to be unpredictable,” she said. “It’s meant to be strange, and wild, and… and alive.”
The thing was silent for a moment.
Then it said:
“And yet, you came back.”
Alice froze.
“I… of course I did.”
“Why?”
Alice hesitated.
Because it mattered.
Because it was hers.
Because somewhere in all the nonsense, there had been meaning.
“I don’t know,” she said.
The thing moved closer.
And now, for the first time, Alice felt it looking at her.
Truly looking.
“You do not belong here anymore,” it said.
The words settled into the air like a verdict.
Alice opened her mouth to protest—but nothing came.
Because somewhere, quietly, terribly—
She knew it was true.
“You grew,” said the thing.
“You learned.”
“You began to expect things to make sense.”
Alice shook her head weakly.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“No one ever does.”
The silence deepened.
Alice looked around at the stillness. The absence. The careful, suffocating order of it all.
“What happens now?” she asked.
The thing did not hesitate.
“Now,” it said, “you will leave.”
“And Wonderland?”
For the first time, something like hesitation entered the thing’s voice.
“It will remain,” it said.
“Like this?”
“Yes.”
Alice closed her eyes.
And in that moment, she remembered—
The nonsense.
The arguments.
The songs.
The impossible, ridiculous, glorious chaos of it all.
She remembered a place where nothing made sense—and therefore everything mattered.
When she opened her eyes again, they were no longer afraid.
“You’re wrong,” she said.
The thing stilled.
Alice stepped forward.
“You think nonsense is noise,” she said. “But it isn’t. It’s… space. It’s room for things to be.”
The air trembled.
“You removed everything that couldn’t be predicted,” she continued. “But that’s where life lives.”
The thing shifted.
Uncertain.
For the first time.
Alice took another step.
“And you forgot something very important.”
“What is that?”
Alice smiled.
Not brightly.
Not cheerfully.
But with something fierce and fragile and terribly human.
“That nonsense doesn’t disappear,” she said.
“It waits.”
And somewhere—
Very far away—
A teacup rattled.
The Queen’s fingers twitched.
The wind, which had forgotten how to move, made a small and uncertain attempt.
The thing recoiled.
“What have you done?”
Alice said nothing.
Because she had done nothing at all.
She had simply remembered.
And Wonderland—
very slowly—
began to remember itself.
Alice and the Catastrophe of Sensible Behaviour
Alice and the Catastrophe of Sensible Behaviour
Alice had only just sat down beneath a perfectly unreasonable tree (which insisted it was a hatstand on alternate Tuesdays) when something most alarming occurred.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
For nearly three seconds.
Alice leapt to her feet at once.
“This will never do,” she said. “If things begin making sense, Wonderland may collapse into a pamphlet.”
At this, the tree-hatstand shuddered and dropped three teaspoons, a cucumber, and a mildly offended pigeon.
“Too late,” said the pigeon. “I’ve been logical all morning.”
Alice gasped. “How dreadful! We must find the source of it before everything becomes tidy.”
She had not gone ten steps before encountering the White Rabbit, who was standing very still and consulting a watch that ticked in complete agreement with itself.
“No contradictions,” he murmured happily. “No paradoxes. Everything precisely where it ought to be!”
Alice seized him by the ears (politely).
“This is an emergency,” she said. “Your watch is behaving.”
The Rabbit blinked. “Well yes, that is generally the point of—”
“Exactly!” cried Alice. “Utter disaster!”
They hurried along a path that refused to twist (which Alice found extremely suspicious) until they reached the Mad Hatter, who was sitting at a table drinking tea in a perfectly ordinary manner.
He lifted his cup.
He sipped.
He put it down again.
Alice staggered backward.
“Hatter,” she whispered, “have you lost your mind?”
“No,” said the Hatter calmly. “I tidied it.”
“You tidied it?”
“Yes. Alphabetised my thoughts. Removed all unnecessary nonsense. Very freeing.”
At this, a teacup fainted.
Alice turned to the March Hare, who was sitting beside him reading a book titled Reasonable Behaviour and Its Consequences.
“Do something absurd at once!” Alice demanded.
The Hare adjusted his spectacles. “I would prefer not to.”
Alice clutched her head. “We are doomed.”
Just then, the sky folded itself into thirds (as skies do when they are worried) and the Cheshire Cat appeared, though only his eyebrows had arrived on time.
“Well,” said the eyebrows, “this looks serious.”
“The nonsense is disappearing!” Alice cried. “Everything is becoming sensible!”
The rest of the Cat slowly assembled itself, piece by deliberate piece.
“How unfortunate,” he said. “Without nonsense, I shall have to make points.”
Everyone shuddered.
They made their way to the Queen of Hearts, who was sitting upon her throne conducting a very calm and well-reasoned discussion about garden maintenance.
“No executions today,” she was saying. “Let us consider everyone’s perspective.”
Alice burst into tears.
“Your Majesty!” she cried. “You must do something unreasonable at once!”
The Queen frowned. “Why?”
“Because if you don’t, Wonderland will become… normal!”
A silence fell.
Even the cards stopped shuffling themselves.
Normal.
The word echoed about like a well-behaved echo.
At last, a small voice spoke.
It was the Dormouse, who had been asleep for so long that he had forgotten how to wake up properly.
“Perhaps,” he said, “we have simply run out of nonsense.”
“Impossible!” cried Alice.
“Not at all,” said the Cheshire Cat. “Nonsense must be replenished. It does not grow on trees—”
The tree-hatstand coughed politely.
“—well, not reliably.”
Alice thought very hard.
Then, quite suddenly, she stood upon the Queen’s throne, balanced a teapot upon her head, declared herself to be “The Duchess of Unfinished Sandwiches,” and began reciting the multiplication table backwards in rhymes involving bananas.
The effect was immediate.
The sky unfolded itself with a snap.
The Hatter dropped his teacup and began arguing with it.
The Rabbit’s watch started running sideways.
The Queen leapt to her feet.
“OFF WITH—no, wait—ON WITH—no—OH JUST DO SOMETHING CONFUSING!”
The cards burst into delighted chaos.
The March Hare threw his book into a passing metaphor.
And the pigeon applauded so enthusiastically it became a small orchestra.
The Cheshire Cat grinned.
“Ah,” he said. “Balance restored.”
Alice climbed down, slightly out of breath.
“That was close,” she said.
“Yes,” said the Cat. “Another minute of sense and we might all have become useful.”
Alice shuddered.
“I should hate that.”
And so, with nonsense safely reinstated, Wonderland returned to its usual state of cheerful confusion.
Which, as Alice later remarked, was exactly as it ought not to be—and therefore, perfectly correct.
The rabbit hole didn’t lead to a tea party this time
The rabbit hole didn’t lead to a tea party this time.
As Alice tumbled through the dark, she didn’t pass rocking chairs or bookshelves. Instead, she brushed past hanging bundles of dried hemlock and jars of preserved nightmares. When she finally landed, the grass wasn’t green; it was a bruised purple, and the air smelled of ozone and singed sugar.
The Shadow Over Wonderland
Wonderland had changed. The Queen of Hearts was gone, replaced by something much more calculated. High atop the mushroom forest sat a castle made of jagged obsidian. There lived The Witch of the Withered Rose.
She didn’t want heads; she wanted stories. She fed on the whimsy of others until they were nothing but hollow shells. The Mad Hatter sat in a corner, staring at a blank teacup, his madness replaced by a terrifying, quiet sanity.
The Encounter
Alice wandered into the clearing of the Great Oak, where the Witch stood waiting. She wasn’t green or warty; she was tall, draped in silk the color of an oil slick, with eyes that looked like solar eclipses.
“You’re late, Alice,” the Witch purred, stirring a cauldron that simmered with silver smoke. “I’ve already bottled the Cheshire Cat’s grin. It makes a lovely nightlight.”
“I don’t think I like your decorating taste,” Alice said, her voice trembling only slightly. “And I’d like my friends back, if it’s all the same to you.”
The Witch laughed, a sound like glass breaking. “In this world, Alice, ‘curiouser and curiouser’ is a death sentence. Give me your imagination, and I’ll let you go back to your boring parlor in London.”
The Twist of Logic
Alice looked at the cauldron. She remembered that in Wonderland, things were only as powerful as you believed them to be.
“You’re not a witch,” Alice said boldly, stepping forward. “You’re just a bad habit. You’re the feeling of growing up and forgetting how to play.”
The Witch shrieked, her obsidian form flickering. “I am the end of dreams!”
“No,” Alice countered, “You’re just a very tall, very grumpy woman in a dress that needs a good wash. And since this is my dream, I think it’s time for a change in the weather.”
Alice didn’t use a sword or magic. She simply imagined the sun. Not just a normal sun, but a sun made of lemon drops and laughter.
The Result:
* The obsidian castle melted into a giant puddle of blackberry jam.
* The Witch shrank until she was no bigger than a thimble, scurrying away into the roots of a tree.
* The Cheshire Cat’s grin popped out of its jar and reattached itself to the air with a satisfied pop.
Alice sat up in the meadow back home, the smell of damp grass filling her lungs. She looked down and noticed a single, withered black rose petal tucked into her apron. She smiled and tossed it into the wind.
Alice and the Jellyfish That Preferred Dice.
****************************************
Chapter One
It began, as many things in Ballykillduff do, with something that ought not to have been in the square.
Alice noticed it first.
She had been sitting on the familiar stone bench—just beneath the trees that whispered opinions when the wind was in the mood—when something softly plopped onto the cobbles.
Not a loud plop.
Not even a particularly confident one.
More of a polite uncertainty of a plop.
Alice turned.
There, beside the green post box (which was behaving itself for once), lay a jellyfish.
Now, this would have been surprising enough.
But what made it considerably worse was that the jellyfish was:
-
Nowhere near the sea
-
Glowing faintly like a lantern that had forgotten its purpose
-
Holding a pair of dice
Not near dice.
Not next to dice.
Holding them.
With a sort of thoughtful wobble.
“Good morning,” said Alice, because it seemed the sort of thing one ought to say to a landlocked philosophical jellyfish.
The jellyfish pulsed gently.
“Statistically unlikely,” it replied.
Alice blinked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your greeting,” said the jellyfish, rotating slightly as though considering her from several emotional angles. “Given the conditions, it is improbable that this is a good morning.”
Alice considered this.
“Yes,” she said. “But it’s the sort of thing one says anyway.”
“Ah,” said the jellyfish. “A customary inaccuracy. I approve.”
By now, Ballykillduff had begun to notice.
Seamus appeared first, carrying a cup of tea that he had no intention of spilling, despite the circumstances.
Behind him came Mrs Kavanagh, who believed firmly that anything unusual could be improved with a shawl.
Jimmy McGroggan arrived shortly after, already building something with springs.
“What have we got?” said Seamus.
“A jellyfish,” said Alice.
“Inland,” said Seamus.
“With dice,” added Alice.
Seamus nodded.
“Right so.”
The jellyfish raised its dice.
“These,” it said, “are unsatisfactory.”
“Why?” asked Alice.
“They behave too predictably.”
Alice stared.
“I thought dice were supposed to be unpredictable.”
The jellyfish gave a soft, luminous sigh.
“They are random, not interesting.”
This caused Jimmy McGroggan to drop three springs and pick them up again in a different order.
“That,” he said, “is a very important distinction.”
The jellyfish rolled the dice.
They landed on the cobbles.
Six and two.
“Observe,” said the jellyfish. “An outcome. Entirely reasonable. Entirely dull.”
It rolled again.
Three and four.
“Still dull.”
Again.
Five and one.
“Endlessly obedient to expectation.”
Alice crouched beside it.
“What would you prefer them to do?”
The jellyfish paused.
Then, quite carefully, it said:
“I would like them to refuse.”
This caused a silence.
Even Ballykillduff, which had seen rivers forget their destinations and weather pause for reflection, took a moment.
“Refuse what?” asked Alice.
“To be numbers,” said the jellyfish simply.
Jimmy McGroggan’s eyes lit up in a way that suggested future complications.
“I might have something for that,” he said.
From a pocket that was definitely not large enough, he produced a small contraption consisting of:
-
A clock face with no hands
-
A teaspoon that pointed accusingly
-
A tiny bell that rang when ignored
He attached it—very gently—to one of the dice.
“Now,” said Jimmy, stepping back, “roll it.”
The jellyfish rolled the altered die.
It landed.
Paused.
Then… instead of showing a number…
It displayed:
“Perhaps.”
The entire square leaned closer.
The jellyfish trembled with delight.
“Yes,” it whispered. “Yes, that is better.”
They rolled again.
The second die—untouched—showed a five.
The altered one now read:
“Ask Again Later.”
Mrs Kavanagh sat down.
“I don’t like it,” she said, though she clearly did.
Seamus sipped his tea.
“I do,” he said. “It’s honest.”
Alice smiled.
“But what happens when both dice refuse?” she asked.
The jellyfish considered this very seriously.
Then it rolled them both.
They landed together.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then—
The first die read:
“Why Not?”
The second read:
“Go On So.”
At this, something quite extraordinary occurred.
The air in Ballykillduff shifted.
Not dramatically.
Not loudly.
But decisively.
Somewhere, a decision that had been waiting for years quietly made itself.
A door that had never opened… did.
A letter that had never been sent… found its way.
And Jimmy McGroggan’s unfinished invention… finished itself, just to see how it felt.
The jellyfish glowed brighter.
“This,” it said softly, “is a much more interesting universe.”
Alice nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “It does seem to have improved slightly.”
“Will you stay?” she asked.
The jellyfish floated a little higher, its edges shimmering like thought itself.
“No,” it said. “I drift.”
“Where to?”
The jellyfish rolled its dice one final time.
They landed.
Together.
Gently.
They read:
“Somewhere Else.”
And with that—
It lifted into the air.
Not quickly.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
And then, like a thought one almost remembers…
It was gone.
Alice looked down at the cobbles.
The dice remained.
She picked them up.
Turned them in her hands.
Rolled them once.
They landed at her feet.
They read:
“Continue.”
Alice smiled.
And in Ballykillduff—
that was quite enough to begin another story.
The Crazymad Writer Writes Again 