Wonderland Christmas in July.
Tag Archives: a new alice in wonderland story
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.
The Day the Hot Cross Buns Refused to Behave.
The Day the Hot Cross Buns Refused to Behave.
In Ballykillduff, there are certain things one may rely upon.
The post box is green.
The wind comes in sideways.
And on Good Friday, Mrs Flannery’s hot cross buns behave themselves.
The wind comes in sideways.
And on Good Friday, Mrs Flannery’s hot cross buns behave themselves.
Except, of course, for the year they didn’t.
It began, as all respectable disasters do, with a smell.
Not an ordinary smell—no, Ballykillduff had long ago grown accustomed to smells that suggested something mildly supernatural was occurring behind the butcher’s or under the bridge. This was a confident smell. A proud smell. A smell that marched down Main Street like it owned the place.
“Buns,” said Mr Byrne, the baker, stepping outside his shop and sniffing the air with professional concern. “Hot cross buns. And not mine.”
This was troubling. Mr Byrne’s buns were the official buns of Ballykillduff, having won the Annual Bun-Related Excellence Award three years running (and once by default when no one else remembered to bake any).
Mrs Flannery emerged from her shop just as the smell intensified.
“Do you smell that?” she asked.
“I do,” said Mr Byrne. “And I don’t like the tone of it.”
They followed the scent to the village square, where a small crowd had gathered around the fountain—the one that occasionally remembered things it hadn’t seen yet.
At first, no one spoke.
Then Jimmy McGroggan (who distrusted anything that rose, floated, or behaved optimistically) pointed upward.
“There,” he said. “Look.”
Hovering just above the fountain were buns.
Hot cross buns.
Not one or two, mind you—but dozens. They bobbed gently in the air like well-behaved balloons, each one perfectly golden, each one marked with a neat white cross, and each one—most suspiciously—steaming.
“Well,” said Mrs Flannery after a long pause. “That’s new.”
At precisely nine o’clock, the buns began to descend.
Now, in most villages, this would have caused panic. Screaming. Possibly the ringing of a bell.
In Ballykillduff, however, people simply stepped back slightly and allowed events to continue, as they generally did.
The buns landed neatly on the paving stones in a tidy arrangement that suggested either great intelligence or an alarming degree of organisation.
Then one of them bounced.
Just once.
A soft, polite bounce.
“Did you see that?” whispered someone.
Another bun rolled forward slightly, as if clearing its throat.
Then—quite without warning—the entire collection began to move.
They did not scatter.
That would have been understandable.
Instead, they arranged themselves into a queue.
A perfectly straight queue.
Facing Mr Byrne’s bakery.
Mr Byrne stared at them.
“I refuse,” he said firmly, “to be queued at by baked goods.”
The buns waited.
There was no pushing, no jostling, no attempt to skip ahead. If anything, they were more polite than the average Ballykillduff resident on a busy morning.
After a moment, the front bun gave a small hop forward and tapped—very gently—against the bakery door.
Tap.
Silence.
Tap tap.
Mr Byrne folded his arms.
“I’m not serving them,” he said.
“You might have to,” said Mrs Flannery. “They seem committed.”
The situation escalated when the buns began producing exact change.
No one saw where the coins came from.
They simply… appeared. Small, neat piles of coins sat beside each bun, as if they had always been there and everyone had just been too distracted to notice.
Jimmy McGroggan crouched down and examined one.
“Well,” he muttered, “at least they’re paying customers.”
Reluctantly, Mr Byrne opened the door.
The buns shuffled forward.
One by one, they entered the shop.
What followed has since been described (in the official village minutes) as “a most peculiar but orderly transaction.”
Each bun approached the counter.
Paused.
Then nudged its coins forward.
Mr Byrne, after a long internal debate about the collapse of reality, handed each bun… another bun.
“No refunds,” he added automatically.
The buns accepted this.
They turned.
And left.
By mid-morning, Ballykillduff had a new problem.
There were now twice as many buns.
Because each bun had purchased a bun.
And those buns, it appeared, were just as capable of independent thought as the original batch.
“They’re multiplying,” said Mrs Flannery.
“They’re investing,” corrected Jimmy.
By noon, the buns had formed committees.
There was a Bun for Queue Management.
A Bun for Fair Distribution.
And, somewhat ominously, a Bun for Future Planning.
The village grew uneasy.
It is one thing for buns to bounce.
It is quite another for them to organise.
The crisis reached its peak at half past two, when the buns held a meeting in the square.
Mr Byrne, Mrs Flannery, Jimmy McGroggan, and several concerned residents gathered at a safe and respectful distance.
The Bun for Future Planning rolled to the front.
It cleared its… crust.
Then, with great dignity, it tipped itself slightly forward.
And stopped.
Nothing happened.
“Is that it?” asked someone.
“I think so,” said Mr Byrne.
They waited.
The buns remained perfectly still.
Then, slowly—very slowly—the steam began to fade.
The warmth softened.
The bounce diminished.
And, one by one, the buns simply… became buns.
Ordinary buns.
Still. Quiet. Entirely uninterested in commerce or governance.
By evening, Ballykillduff had returned to normal.
Mostly.
Mr Byrne gathered the remaining buns and placed them carefully on a tray.
“Well,” he said, “they seem harmless now.”
“Are you going to sell them?” asked Mrs Flannery.
Mr Byrne paused.
He considered the events of the day.
The queues.
The coins.
The committees.
The brief but undeniable sense that he had been professionally outperformed by his own product.
“No,” he said firmly. “These are not for sale.”
“What will you do with them?”
Mr Byrne looked out at the village square, where everything was once again behaving in a reasonably predictable manner.
“I think,” he said slowly, “we shall eat them… quietly… and not discuss this ever again.”
And that is precisely what Ballykillduff did.
Except, of course, for one small detail.
The next morning, when Mr Byrne opened the bakery door, he found—neatly arranged on the counter—
A single coin.
And beside it…
One perfectly warm, very fresh hot cross bun.
Waiting its turn.
*************************************************************
Epilogue — The Bun That Waited
The following morning in Ballykillduff arrived with its usual sense of mild uncertainty.
The post box was green (as expected).
The wind was sideways (as required).
And Mr Byrne opened his bakery door with the careful expression of a man who had been professionally challenged by baked goods and was not eager for a rematch.
The wind was sideways (as required).
And Mr Byrne opened his bakery door with the careful expression of a man who had been professionally challenged by baked goods and was not eager for a rematch.
There, upon the counter, sat the bun.
Neat. Warm. Patient.
And beside it—
A single coin.
Mr Byrne stared at it for a long time.
“Well,” he said at last, “we are not doing this again.”
“Doing what?” came a voice behind him.
He turned.
Standing in the doorway, brushing a stray lock of long blonde hair from her face, was a girl in a blue pinafore dress, looking at the bun with great interest.
“I’m fairly certain,” she said, stepping inside, “that this is the sort of thing one ought to investigate.”
Mr Byrne narrowed his eyes.
“You’re not from here.”
“No,” said Alice pleasantly. “But I do seem to arrive in places just as they begin to behave oddly. Or perhaps I arrive because they already have.”
She leaned closer to the bun.
It did not move.
But it did seem, in a way that was difficult to prove, to be waiting.
“For what?” asked Mr Byrne.
Alice considered this.
“For its turn,” she said.
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
Mrs Flannery appeared moments later, followed by Jimmy McGroggan, who had come prepared for disappointment and, if necessary, mild outrage.
“What’s the situation?” Jimmy asked.
Mr Byrne pointed.
“The situation,” he said, “is that we have a bun. A coin. And a sense of unfinished business.”
Jimmy squinted.
“It looks quiet enough.”
Alice smiled.
“Oh, things often do—right up until they aren’t.”
There was a pause.
The kind of pause Ballykillduff understood well.
A pause in which something might happen… or might decide not to… or might wait just long enough to be inconvenient.
Then, very gently—
The bun gave a small bounce.
Just once.
Jimmy stepped back.
“I knew it,” he said. “Optimism.”
The coin slid forward by the smallest imaginable distance.
Clink.
Mr Byrne closed his eyes.
“No committees,” he muttered. “No queues. No financial independence.”
Alice, however, looked delighted.
“Oh, I don’t think it wants all that again,” she said. “I think it only wants to see what happens next.”
“And what does happen next?” asked Mrs Flannery.
Alice straightened.
She looked at the bun.
Then at the coin.
Then at Mr Byrne.
“Well,” she said, very gently, “it’s paid.”
Mr Byrne hesitated.
He glanced at the shelves.
At the ovens.
At the quiet, perfectly ordinary buns that had returned to their proper, non-ambitious state.
Then he sighed.
“All right,” he said. “But just the once.”
He reached behind the counter and picked up a fresh hot cross bun.
He placed it carefully in front of the waiting one.
“There,” he said. “Transaction complete.”
The bun did not move immediately.
It seemed to consider the moment.
Then—
It nudged the new bun slightly.
As if acknowledging it.
As if passing something on.
And then—
It settled.
Perfectly still.
Entirely ordinary.
Alice watched this with great satisfaction.
“You see?” she said.
“No,” said Jimmy. “I don’t.”
“It didn’t want to multiply,” Alice explained. “It didn’t want to organise. It didn’t even want to queue.”
“What did it want, then?” asked Mrs Flannery.
Alice smiled.
“To finish.”
There was a quietness in the bakery then.
A soft, settled sort of quiet.
The kind that comes after something has made up its mind to stop being peculiar.
Mr Byrne looked at the two buns.
Then, cautiously, he picked one up.
It behaved.
He took a bite.
It was excellent.
“Well,” he said after a moment, “that’s that, then.”
Alice stepped back toward the door.
“Will you be staying?” asked Mrs Flannery.
Alice shook her head.
“No, I think not. Things seem to be concluding here.”
She paused.
Then added, with a thoughtful look toward the counter—
“Though one never knows when something might decide it hasn’t quite finished after all.”
Jimmy groaned.
“Don’t say that.”
And with that, Alice stepped out into Ballykillduff.
The wind caught her hair.
The village carried on.
And inside the bakery, everything remained exactly as it ought to be.
Except—
If you looked very closely—
You might notice, tucked just behind the till—
A second coin.
Waiting.
Not impatiently.
Just… patiently enough.
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.
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 Day the Frost Blinked
February 25th, 2026 — The Day the Frost Blinked
The frost arrived late.
It did not settle in the night as frost properly should, but wandered into Ballykillduff sometime after breakfast, looking faintly apologetic and extremely decorative.
Alice noticed it first on the gate.
At precisely eleven minutes past ten, the iron latch glittered.
At twelve minutes past ten, it stopped.
At thirteen minutes past ten, it glittered again.
“It’s blinking,” Alice said calmly, which is the sort of thing one must say calmly if one wishes to be believed.
The frost had begun appearing and disappearing in polite intervals — hedge, path, rooftop, sheep — as though winter were reconsidering its position.
Alice stepped into the square. Each time the frost shimmered into existence, the air grew crisp and silver; each time it vanished, the village returned to its damp February self.
“Make up your mind,” she advised the sky.
The sky, which had been undecided all month, hesitated once more — and then, with a soft sigh, allowed the frost to remain.
Not thick.
Not harsh.
Just enough to turn the puddles into mirrors.
Alice looked down and saw not her reflection, but a faint suggestion of spring standing just behind her shoulder.
“Ah,” she said.
The frost did not blink again.
And somewhere beneath the quiet silver crust of February 25th, something green made up its mind to begin.
February 25th, 2026 — The Hat That Refused to Thaw
The frost had only just decided to behave itself in Ballykillduff when the sky coughed politely and produced a hat.
Not a rabbit.
Not a teacup.
Just a hat.
It fell with dignity, landed upright in the square, and waited.
Alice, who had already negotiated with blinking frost that morning, approached it cautiously.
The hat cleared its throat.
A moment later, the Mad Hatter unfolded himself out of it as though he had merely been stored there for convenience.
“Good morning!” he cried. “I’ve come for the Thawing!”
“We are not thawing,” Alice said firmly. “We are gently transitioning.”
“Ah,” said the Hatter, peering at the frost. “A hesitant season. Very dangerous. They tend to wobble.”
He removed a small silver teaspoon from his sleeve and began tapping the frost on the cobbles.
Ping.
A patch melted.
Ping.
A daisy appeared.
Ping.
A sheep sneezed and turned very briefly pink.
Alice caught his wrist before he could strike again.
“We’ve only just persuaded February to sit still,” she said. “If you start stirring it, we shall have daffodils arguing with snowflakes.”
The Hatter considered this gravely.
“Yes,” he agreed. “They never agree on colours.”
He placed the spoon back into his sleeve, stamped his hat once (which caused three crocuses to pop up apologetically), and looked at Alice with unusual sincerity.
“Very well. No mischief. Only observation.”
They stood together in the soft silver light, watching the frost hold its breath and spring wait its turn.
After several whole minutes of remarkable good behaviour, the Hatter leaned closer.
“Between ourselves,” he whispered, “March is terribly impatient.”
Then he folded neatly back into his hat.
The hat tipped itself.
And vanished.
The frost did not blink.
But somewhere beneath the cobbles, something giggled.
Alice on Top of the World
Alice discovered quite by accident that the world has a top.
Most people, she had noticed, were too busy walking around it to check.
It wasn’t marked by a flag or a signpost—nothing as sensible as that. Instead, it felt like a place the world itself had agreed upon in a moment of quiet pride. When Alice stepped there, the ground did not wobble or roll away. It simply paused, as though holding its breath.
Below her, the Earth unfolded in bright, broken shapes: seas made of blue ideas, continents stitched together with yellows and greens, clouds cut into careful pieces like a puzzle no one had finished. The sun shone from one side and the moon from the other, neither arguing about whose turn it was.
Alice put her hands on her hips—not because she felt particularly brave, but because it seemed like the correct posture for standing somewhere important.
She waited for something dramatic to happen.
Nothing did.
“Well,” she said to the air, which was listening, “that’s rather the point, isn’t it?”
From up here, worries shrank into polite little shapes. Arguments lost their sharp edges. Even time—dangling somewhere nearby with its pocket watch—seemed unsure whether to tick forward or simply admire the view.
Alice realised then that being on top of the world did not mean ruling it, or shouting instructions down at it. It meant seeing how all the pieces fitted together, even the crooked ones. Especially the crooked ones.
After a while, she stepped down again, because no place likes to be stood upon forever.
But the world remembered.
And from that day on, whenever things felt impossibly large, Alice smiled—quietly—knowing exactly where the top was, and that she had already been there once.
The Crazymad Writer Writes Again 