Never Wonder

"She's real! She's real, and she's far more terrifying than you will ever be!" Alice screamed through the door as the orderly locked her in the dark cupboard of a room. "She imprisoned me! She tortured me! She threatened to cut off my head! And I escaped! I'm not afraid of you!"

From the other side of the door, Alice heard Nurse Nooks scoff. "Yes, yes, I'm sure you're not. Thank you, Alice. I believe the entire hospital has heard quite enough about the 'Queen of Cards' for one night."

"The Queen of Hearts!" Alice bellowed, the falsetto of her girlish voice losing its battle against the heavy door. "She was Queen of Hearts! Ironic title, as she didn't have one! Much like you!"

"You brought this upon yourself, dear," Nurse Nooks informed her. "I am not a villain in a fable, no matter how convenient that may be for you to believe. Behave, and you won't be put in solitary. Blame the queen, or any other figments of your imagination all you wish, but this punishment - like all the others before it - is your doing."

"She's real!" Alice cried, tears of anger streaming down her cheeks. "I imagined nothing! Wonderland is real! I was there!"

"And you shall remain in here," Nurse Nooks tapped on the door, "until you learn to keep your wits about you. Goodnight."

Alice heard Nurse Nooks beckon the orderlies to follow her. There was the patter of receding footsteps. Then...nothing.

Her back to the grimy wall, Alice slid to the floor and tucked her knees against her chest. The stifling room was hardly wide enough for even her petite form to lie down. The only light she could see came from the crack around the bolted door, but she knew the room's dimensions well. She'd been locked inside more times than she could remember.

"There are no wits to keep," she whispered to the dark. "We're all mad here."

~ ~ ~

Alice didn't know for how long she had slept, but she was awakened from a troubling dream when the door to her solitary cell suddenly opened.

"Feeling better?" Nurse Nooks asked. Her tone betrayed her disinterest.

"Not particularly," Alice answered, pushing matted blonde strands of hair off her face. On thin, shaky legs, she stood. "I have a crick in my neck, a bruise on my bum, and I'm hungry as all get-out. But I'm calm, if that's what you really mean."

Nurse Nooks looked down her nose at Alice. "That will do," she said. "Come along."

Walking took some effort, but Alice was begrudgingly grateful for the cup of water she was given as she followed the head nurse back to her tiny, ill-furnished room.

Nurse Nooks ushered her inside, and Alice was surprised to find a girl standing in the room between the uncomfortable bunk beds and the lopsided desk.

The girl appeared to be of similar age to Alice - twelve, perhaps thirteen. She wore the same white hospital gown that Alice wore. Her eyes were swollen and her nose was red, telltale signs of a recent shedding of tears. She wiped her face and tipped her head to Alice, but cowered at the sight of Nurse Nooks' imposing posture and visage.

"Curious," Alice said. She looked up at the beanstalk of a nurse. "Who's this, then?"

"You miss quite a lot when you spend all your time in solitary confinement," Nurse Nooks said, accusation in her harsh, masculine voice. "This is your new bunk mate. She arrived yesterday. Play nice."

"I don't play," Alice sneered.

"Lights out in thirty minutes," Nurse Nooks said, turning on her heel. She marched out of the room, locking the door behind her.

Alice stared at the new girl. She seemed alright. Sad. Probably frightened.

"Did they hurt you?" Alice asked.

The girl shook her head. She had lovely strawberry blonde hair that swished around her narrow shoulders. "No," she said. Her voice was soft. Almost mouse-like.

"You arrived yesterday?"

"Yes," the girl answered. She wore a silver locket around her neck, and she pulled it back and forth across its chain. "In the afternoon. You have been in solitary all this time?"

Alice shrugged. "Not my longest visit."

"How horrid!"

"I deserved it," Alice told the girl. "The doctor tried yet again to convince me that something I know to be real isn't. So, I dumped his tea all over his notes and lap. When an orderly attempted to restrain me, I kicked him square in his face."

She held her head high, pride shining in her eyes. "I am not insane. They see the imagination they lack in themselves manifest through others, and they call it madness. But I know what I know, and no amount of dunking me in ice baths, or injecting me with a myriad of poisons they pass off as medications will 'cure' me. I am not diseased in mind or body. I am simply able to see what most choose to ignore."

"Wonderland," the girl said.

Alice felt as though the floor had dropped out from beneath her. Her heart fluttered in her small chest. She grabbed the doorframe for support. "You... You have been there, too?"

"No," the girl said, looking at the floor. Her cheeks turned pink with embarrassment. "It's just...you left out your drawings..." She motioned to a pile of papers scattered across the desk. "Please forgive me. I didn't mean to pry."

The exhilaration of hope Alice had momentarily felt surge through her dissipated as rapidly as it had come, and she collapsed onto the desk chair, weary and discouraged.

"I see," she said. She collected the drawings and written recounts of her adventures and stuffed them into a drawer. Then, standing upon the chair on the very tips of her toes, Alice reached for the tiny window situated just below the ceiling. She flipped the latch and pushed it open, letting in the cool night breeze.

"That's as far as it opens?" the new girl asked as she stared at the four inches of visible night sky. Dismay marred her youthful features.

"I'm afraid so," Alice said, climbing back down. "They can't have even the smallest of us fitting through." She took her seat again. "I'm Alice Liddell, by the bye. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, and so forth, and so on."

"The circumstances are dreary at best," the girl agreed, "but it is a pleasure. I'm happy to know you, Alice. I'm Wendy. Wendy Darling."

"Hello, Wendy," Alice said in practiced politeness. She put her head down on the desktop and encircled her arms around her face. "Having seen my scribbles, I'm sure you think me every bit as mad as does the staff."

"On the contrary," Wendy said, her voice no longer sounding meek and apologetic, "if you are mad, than so I am. And it is so nice to meet a like soul."

Alice sat up, curiosity in her eyes as she studied the other girl. "You believe me?"

"I do."

"But...you said you've never been to Wonderland."

"Only adults are narrow-minded enough to think that seeing is believing. I know better," Wendy stated. "And while I've never had the good fortune to visit Wonderland, I have visited a fantastical place called Neverland."

Alice bolted upright. "You have?!"

"I have," Wendy said with a gentle nod. "Neverland calls to me, louder with each passing day. Therefore, I understand the aches, and pains, and groans with which you miss Wonderland. Given the chance, would you return?"

"Of course," Alice said, sans hesitation. "All of my friends are there. The March Hare, the Dormouse, even the Cheshire Cat... He spoke in riddles more than any sphinx, but he meant well. And Hatter. I miss Hatter most of all. He made me feel like I was the most clever person in the world. In Wonderland, I was a hero. With the help of my friends, I slayed a Jabberwocky. And here," she looked at the locked door in dismay, "I can't even walk through a doorway when I choose to. Here, everything is 'no,' and 'you're wrong,' and 'you're mad.' There, in Wonderland, the impossible became possible. Became probable. Even likely. Why, I often believed and enacted six impossible things before breakfast - on any given day! Here...the most impressive feat I can hope to accomplish is staying out of solitary."

"Who is the woman you drew?" Wendy asked. "The one in the beautiful gown with the dour, frightening face?"

"The Queen of Hearts," Alice said. She opened the drawer and sifted through her drawings. Finding one of the Queen leading her army, she handed it to Wendy. "She planned to execute me. By beheading, of all ghastly things! But I escaped."

"How?" Wendy asked, her eyes wide and enthralled.

"With a clever plan and a bit of magic," Alice said. She smiled a smug little smile. "The Queen cannot behead what she cannot find."

Wendy laughed. "As good a logic as any," she said, her eyes wandering over the drawing. "She looks formidable and cruel. Did she truly have an army of cards?"

"Exactly as I drew them," Alice declared. "Tall as men, armed with swords, and countless in number."

"Goodness!" Wendy cried. "I cannot imagine!"

"It was a sight to behold, I'll tell you that," Alice said. "But what of Neverland? I haven't heard of such a place. Is it far away?"

"Very far. But nearer than you might think." Wendy smiled, nostalgia brightening her tear-stained face.

"Tell me everything!" Alice instructed.

"There is not time enough in one life to explain with accuracy what Neverland is," Wendy said, her smile growing in fondness. "The closest word I can equate it to, is 'freedom.' I stayed there, for a time, along with my two younger brothers."

"Brothers? They saw Neverland too?"

"Yes," Wendy said. She perched on the edge of the lower bunk, brow furrowed in remembrance. "But once we had returned, and attempted to tell others of what we had seen, my brothers grew afraid. They saw the way that adults reacted to me, treating me as though I were feverish or ill, and they wanted no part of it. Eventually, they stopped agreeing with me altogether, insisting that our time in Neverland had been nothing but a dream. I understood why they were afraid, but I cannot condone their cowardice."

Alice nodded. Her elder sister Lorna believed Wonderland to be the stuff of dreams. Lorna had, at some point when Alice wasn't looking, become one of those narrow-minded adults. "Do you miss it?" Alice inquired.

"I do," Wendy replied. "I miss my friends, like Tiger Lily. I miss the adventure. Nothing seems exciting anymore once you have escaped a flying ship full of vicious pirates. This world's troubles seem lackluster and colorless by comparison. And, then, of course...there's Peter."

"A boy?!" Alice cried.

"Shhhh!!" Wendy made a pacifying motion with her hand. "Yes. A boy. A hero. He was our guide. We never would have known Neverland existed if not for him."

"A heroic guide to a faraway land. He's quite attractive, I'd wager," Alice said, wiggling her eyebrows.

"Yes." Wendy blushed. "He's called Peter Pan. The bravest boy I've ever known."

"You fancy him!" Alice teased.

"Of course I do," Wendy murmured. "A girl cannot help but love the boy who taught her to fly."

Alice smiled. Staring at Wendy's happy, blissful face, she felt a warmth spread through her body that she had not felt since before being admitted to the hospital. This was a place without hope. But hope, it seemed, still lived inside the two of them.

Alice jolted with a sudden start. Something Wendy had said struck her like a slap.

"Fly?" she repeated. "This boy, Peter, taught you to fly?"

"Yes," Wendy said. "The only way to get to Neverland is to fly, so he taught me. And he swore to come back for me once every spring. He kept his promise. He returned. We were about to leave. Then my mother came up the stairs and saw me attempting to jump out of my bedroom window. I wouldn't have been hurt. I would have flown. But she thought I was trying to harm myself, and that's how I ended up here."

Alice nodded. Stupid adults. "But how?" she asked. "How would you have flown?"

"With this," Wendy said. She took the locket from around her neck and carefully opened it. Inside, sitting atop the deep-set photograph, was a pile of green ash. "It's pixie dust. All I have left. I considered showing it to the doctors, as proof that I don't belong here, but it would be a waste. It would not work for them. Pixie dust only works if you believe. And they don't. To them, this would be nothing more than colorful ashes."

"Then why not use it to escape?" Alice asked, her excitement mounting.

Wendy gave her a sad smile. "This is hardly enough for one use," she said. "If I were smaller, perhaps..." She shook her head. "It doesn't matter. I'm not. And I doubt this is enough to get me out of here."

"Smaller, you say?" Alice asked with a cheeky grin.

Standing, she reached above Wendy to the top bunk, feeling beneath the threadbare mattress. Finding the object of her search, she presented it to her new friend.

"You brought a piece of Neverland with you, and I brought a piece of Wonderland with me," she said.

Wendy stared at the somewhat-flattened red and white object in Alice's open palm. "It looks like...a piece of a mushroom?" she guessed.

"It is," Alice said. "This mushroom is how I escaped the Queen of Hearts. When you eat it, it makes you small."

Wendy's eyes widened. "How small?"

"Oh, I would say...about the size of a pixie," Alice said with a knowing glint in her eye. "Definitely small enough to fit through there." She pointed up at the open window, wiggling her fingers in merriment. "I haven't used it yet because I thought I'd get lost among the weeds, and wander around in circles until the magic wore off. But now..."

"Now, we make ourselves small, and we fly out of here," Wendy surmised, her grin growing as wide as Alice's.

"Yes!" Alice cried. "We will have that freedom we both so long for!" Suddenly, her smile faltered and she let out a groan. "But there is one problem."

"What's that?"

"I don't know which way to go," Alice confessed. She set the mushroom on the desk and tugged her fingers through her blonde tangles. "I don't know which way is home. Or London. Or Wonderland."

Wendy giggled, looking relieved. "Is that all? Direction is the easy bit," she said. "Second star to the right and straight on till morning."

"That will lead us home?"

"That will lead us somewhere very good."

"Somewhere very good is not here," Alice deduced, a thoughtful expression blossoming on her rosy face. "I think I will like it very much. I've grown, and shrank, and fell, and floated, but I've never flown." She picked up the mushroom, split it in two, and offered one half to Wendy. "Shall we?"

Wendy hesitated. "And if we fail?" she asked. "If none of this works at all, and we fail miserably, and it turns out that we both are simply... mad?"

"If we fail, at least we'll never have to wonder. At least we would have tried," Alice said. "And that's the bravest thing there is - willingly walking into uncertainty."

Wendy smiled. "Even trying would be an awfully big adventure."

"Precisely," Alice agreed. She leaned in, gripping Wendy's hands in her own. "Perhaps we will fail. And perhaps we are mad. But I'll tell you a secret: all the best people are."

~ Fin ~