What Color is a Mirror?

The clock tick-tocked on the beige wall.

The Crown Court jury was silent.

I had to be strong. I knew I hadn’t gone mad.

The judge's penetrating stare tore right through me, impatiently waiting for a reply, but I didn’t have one to give.

A Cheshire cat’s smile bobbed in the air above the windowsill.

I lifted a hand to my eyepatch and gingerly touched the dark cover.

My mind’s eye was leaping over everything that had happened in the past year, calculating and reshaping the possible outcomes. Every rabbit trail ended here. There wasn’t any other solution. What was I to do?

Someone in the jury cleared their throat and brought me back to the present.

So I set my jaw.

We would operate Plan B.

The judge caught the subtle movement.

“She won’t speak,” he finally announced, as if the jury hadn’t already figured this out themselves. “Subject refuses to defend herself.”

A hint of a smile flickered across my lips. I had hopefully achieved what I set out to do. But had I wasted enough time? My one-eyed gaze darted to the grandfather clock, its milky face undeterred by my worry. I silently willed the clock to eat time faster as the judge turned his stony gaze back to me.

“Alice Liddel,” he began gravely, “I will ask you this one last time. Your adventures in this so-called ‘Wonderland’ are fantastical, to be sure.” He paused, letting his words sink in. “But you don’t believe they were reality, do you?”

I schooled my face neutral. If only he could catch a glimpse of what I was seeing.

Curly red hair stuck out from underneath one of the jurymen’s ball-cap, making me think of someone I once knew.

The judge lifted his spectacles up to his eyes and peered at the papers on his desk.

“The Mad Hatter,” he read aloud. “Who is he, I wonder?”

A few people in the audience tittered at the name. I squashed my roiling emotions deep down inside my burning chest.

This was not the time for an outburst.

The judge nodded to the officer behind me. The man turned my chair so I was facing the court. My hands fiddled with my blue skirt as I shot a wild glance at the clock. I needed more time.

So I cleared my throat and prepared myself for the worst.

“The Mad Hatter is my closest friend,” I began, projecting my voice to the farthest corners of the room. To my surprise, it didn’t crack when I spoke. “H-he enjoys tea.” I glanced at the judge. He was scribbling notes on a ledger. Was this the right thing to do? It must be. “He also believes in six impossible things before breakfast, a-as do I.”

A young couple in the audience stifled smiles, but I ignored them and continued. “I know many of you believe only in what you see,” I hesitated. “That is why many of you will never truly live.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. White words aligned themselves in the dark, painting a picture I knew I was supposed to speak aloud.

“You believe in what you can see,” I repeated, “sky and ground, fire and water. But I have a question for you: how would you explain the wind to a person who could not feel?”

I opened my eyes now and stared at the judge. He looked baffled for a moment. I took that moment to state my case. “You can’t see the wind, yet you believe in it. Why won’t you give me the freedom to believe in something I can see?”

The judge held up a hand.

“Alice, I am supposed to be asking the questions here, not the other way around.”

I glanced at the clock. I was so close.

“No, I’ll ask the questions,” I argued. The police officers in the room started to move toward me but I held my ground. “Why won’t you choose to believe me?”

I looked at a few of the people in the front row. They didn’t appear to be frightened by me and my eyepatch, only intrigued. I thought back to the Mad Hatter, silently reached inside myself, and plucked my muchness into being. The officers were close enough now that I could see the colors of their eyes. I glanced at the judge. He was set in his ways; I couldn’t change him.

Inside myself, I felt the tiny buzz of time whirring by.

A floating smile appeared beside me.

“Cuckoo, cuckoo,” whispered the Cat. I glanced at the clock. Right on schedule. With a sleight of hand, I slipped my eyepatch off. Instantly the room hushed, frozen in place.

Time had stopped.

The Cat’s eyes appeared in front of me, hovering like binoculars.

“Your left eye looks like a clock,” he stated.

“So does your face,” I shot back as I leaped from the wooden chair, ducked around the motionless policemen, and trotted to the back of the room.

Even though I had done it many times, freezing time would never seem normal to me. It was if I was walking inside a photograph. People were in mid-breath as I slowly circled the jury, looking for one thing in particular. From the corner of my eye, I saw a dazzling ring begin to slide off a woman’s finger.

“Cat,” I threatened, “don’t you dare.” A guilty smile appeared in the air beside the woman as the ring slid back up her finger.

The golden-edged mirror hanging at the back of the courtroom caught my eye.

A mirror was a portal.

We had found our escape.

Now to find the bomb.

I ducked beneath a row of chairs and began to search people’s shoes. A time bomb this wonky could be hidden virtually anywhere. A loud crash surprised me and I jerked my head up, promptly hitting my head on the bottom of the wooden chair.

Ouch.

I moaned as I heard a “my bad,” and a scraping sound as the Cat attempted to clean up whatever mess he had made.

Ridiculous.

I had just finished searching shoes and was moving on to bags when a shrill beeping began to throb in the back of my mind.

“Cat,” I panicked, “we’re running out of time!”

Two blue eyes appeared in front of me, then a blindingly white smile.

“And what is time, Alice?”

I huffed loudly and started my frantic digging through bags.

“I don’t have time for your cryptology, Cat! Stop vaporizing and help me!”

Something inside me stirred and I looked up at the face in front of me. It was the gentleman with the curly red hair and the ball-cap. He had two different-colored eyes. How strangely familiar.

I checked his shirt pocket, his jacket pockets, and beneath his cap, and found nothing.

Right before I moved on to the next person, I noticed a leather string tied around his neck.

I carefully lifted up the string and found a small leather bag.

Inside the bag, there was a golden pocket-watch. I turned it over in my hands and admired the weight for a moment before I clicked the lid open.

I gasped.

Inside the pocket-watch was the ticking time bomb.

The Cat floated above me and peered down to get a better look. There were mere minutes before time was destroyed in this realm forever.

“We need to get that to Wonderland, Alice,” the Cat intoned.

I nodded.

We had done it-we had found the time bomb with minutes to spare.

I carefully placed the leather bag back around the neck of the strange-eyed gentleman and looked around the room. People had moved ever-so-slightly. It was time to leave.

When I snapped the lid of the pocket-watch shut, I could have sworn the gentleman blinked.

Things were getting curiouser and curiouser.

But there wasn’t any time to worry. Once the bomb reached Wonderland it was harmless, and this world would be safe.

I ran and the Cat floated to the mirror, the portal.

I placed my hand against my reflection, the Cat placed his paw. In unison, we whispered the awakening words, “What color is a mirror?” Instantly the mirror began to glow, and our reflections warped and swirled until they disappeared completely.

I glanced back at the room and placed my eyepatch over my eye before we slipped through the mirror and disappeared.

The room unfroze as if no time had passed at all. The policemen dashed to the chair where Alice had been and halted in confusion. She was gone. The judge rubbed his eyes because they had suddenly become very dry. The confused jury whispered to each other as the room was searched, but the girl was gone. One moment she had been sitting in the jury box, the next she had disappeared into thin air.

The judge declared it witchcraft and placed a sum on the girl’s head should she be found.

The court and the confused jury were dismissed.

But the gentleman with the curly red hair and strange eyes offered to stay and help clean the aisles for the next hearing.

When the last policeman exited the room, he made his way over to the golden-edged mirror and paused, soaking up the rolling storm of victory.

He had done it. He had learned the awakening words of the portal. It had been difficult not to breathe while Alice searched him, but it was nothing a few months of training couldn’t solve.

All his hard work and perseverance had paid off.

It was time, he thought, to end time once and for all.

What a glorious oxymoron paradox.

He lifted a hand to his reflection, grinned madly and whispered,

“What color is a mirror?”