THE MAGIC SHOES: 4) ALICE

Meltdown Monday Madness

We all look towards the direction from which the white rabbit had been scampering and, sure enough, a girl with long blonde hair and blue eyes appears, trying desperately to keep up.

“Alice?” I say.

She stops in her tracks. I gather she is startled by the sight of our mad tea party

“No room!” hollers the Mad Hatter.

“No room!” hollers the March Hare.

The Dormouse has fallen back to sleep.

“There’s plenty of room,” says Alice indignantly seating herself in an armchair at the other end of the table.

There is a little talk about wine or no wine. Then, the Mad Hatter suggests to Alice that her hair needs cutting, only to be told by Alice he’s very rude. Out of the blue the Mad Hatter says, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

“Because it can produce a few notes,” I say, “though they are very flat, and it is never put with the wrong end in front.”

The Mad Hatter glares at me, cross-eyed with an expression of astonishment splashed across his face. “How did you know that?”

The Dormouse, who seems to be talking in his sleep, says, “Who knows what?”

“It comes directly from Lewis Carroll,” I say with a triumphant smile. “Long after he wrote this book.”

“What book?” asks the March Hare.

“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” I say.

“Me?” Alice points a forefinger at herself.

“Who… are… you?” asks the Mad Hatter, looking first my way, then at Alice.

“That’s exactly what the Caterpillar asked Alice before her arrival here,” I say.

“How do you know that?” Alice demands.

I sigh, throwing up my arms. “I picked up this book…” I look down at my shoes, which seems to be smiling back at me. “Oh dear…” I remove the turquoise talisman from the pocket of my jeans and study it. “I think I know how I got here. I believe I’ve traveled through some kind of a portal.”

“A pothole?” huffs the March Hare, looking down its nose at the disc. “Never heard of such a thing.”

The Dormouse startles awake. “He means porthole!”

“You’ve come through a porthole?” says Alice. “I arrived via a rabbit hole.”

“Well,” I say, “please remind me how you get back out.”

Alice shakes her head in dismay. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be here right now. I would be out of here. But if you’ve read a book about this, you should already know, not I, because I haven’t got out of here yet, though I’m glad to hear I will.”

“I didn’t get a chance to reach the end,” I say. “I just opened the book—and landed here.”

Alice shrugs. “Then we are both in the same boat.”

“No,” says the March Hare. “He was in a boat with a porthole and you came out of a rabbit hole.”

“Which,” the Mad Hatter pronounces, “renders both of you holy.”

“We have no time for religion here,” yelps the Dormouse.

“Nor tolerance,” adds the March Hare.

Just then, the White Rabbit reappears and takes a seat at the table. “It’s very late,” he says, dabbing at his perspiring face with a handkerchief.

“It’s never late here,” huffs the Mad Hatter, holding out his watch. “It is always six o’clock, neither late nor early.”

“You know what this means?” I say.

Five sets of eyes fix upon me.

“This is the ultimate way of living in the moment.”

“How so?” poses the March Hare.

“Because, if it’s always six o’clock, time is no longer fluid from one moment to the next. We are always in this moment.”

“But I’m still late,” says the White Rabbit, sweating profusely and always in a hurry.

“Late for what?” asks Alice, frustrated by having to chase the rabbit ever since falling down its hole.

“I already told you,” the White Rabbit replies, somewhat exasperated. “I’m late for an important date!”

I try to cut through all the nonsense. “”Okay, okay, if you won’t tell us what this mystery date of yours is all about, can you at least explain the consequences of your being late?”

The White Rabbit points at the Mad Hatter. “Ask him.”

“Why?”

“Because he already knows the consequences.”

The Mad Hatter crosses his eyes and thumbs himself. “Me?”

“You,” says the White Rabbit.

“Who?” shrills the Dormouse.

“You quarreled with Time,” says the White Rabbit. “So you no longer have time to wash the dishes between time for tea. And that’s why it is always six o’clock with you. I, on the other hand, do not wish to quarrel with time.”

“Which is why,” I sigh, “you are always in a hurry.”

“Time is a cheeky little thing,” says the Mad Hatter. “It doesn’t like to behave so I let it do as it pleases.”

Prompted by my colorful shoes, I rise. The shoes turn me away from the table. “It seems,” I say, looking back at the tea party, “I have no choice but to take my leave.” (Resistance to the magic shoes, I’ve already discovered, is futile. They go where they go—and I go along with them.)

The nonsensical babbling emanating from the Tea Party participants continues as my shoes weightlessly lead me towards a house with a thatched roof and a chimney shaped like an ear.

They take me through the open front door into the foyer where, on a round pedestal table, rests Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland—the very book I’d been reading before plopping into the Mad Hatter’s tea party.

“Ah,” I say to my magic shoes, “we’re going back to Cecil Court? I sure hope so.”

Without considering how to handle the book—or portal—for such a return, I open it, indiscriminately, and find myself staring at Chapter Five.

And suddenly I’m sitting upon a mushroom facing a caterpillar wearing spectacles.