Children of wonderland-part 1

The figure moved quickly, vaulting out the small window and rating across the lawn and over the fence, disappearing into the trees before anyone had the chance to notice the absence of a certain object from the overly secure safe in the basement.

The figure ran through the unnaturally silent wood with hardly a sound except for the whisper of rustling leaves. The figure was silent in the thick woods, the figure having memorized every rock and tree since childhood to prepare for this one task. So now the figure was swift and agile as a rabbit in those trees.

The figure turned suddenly into a pass between two trees and into a small passage through the rock cliffs that lined the border of the wood, invisible to anyone who didn’t already know it was there. The figure crawled through the tunnel, gasping and panting in the tight space.

The figure emerged into another wood on the other side of the cliff just as the sun was climbing over the distant mountains in the east. The figure took off south, though not as quiet as before. The sun was nearly set before the figure decided to rest, having slowed down significantly in the past hours.

For the first time, the figure removed her hood to reveal her wacky, purple and orange, hair that stuck up at impossible angles and waved around her head as if underwater. Her eyes were cat-like and shifted and changed colors with her mood, or just whenever. Her eyes were too big for her face, just like her constant grin. The grin was a treasured trait in her family and a rare one. If a new child had the grin in her family it was cause for celebration, and, in her family, those celebrations never ended.

She sat down on a log and panted. Her endurance was impressive, even by her family's standards, but she did have her limits. She heard a twig snap behind her and froze, hoping for it to just be a deer. But she never did have any good luck.

“You’re pretty far from home little lady.” said a male voice behind her, and she thanked her lucky stars that she had put her hood back up.

“I believe I am rather closer to home than you are to yours.” She said, not daring to turn around, lest he sees her eyes or hair.

“Now how would you know where my home is little girl. I, however, know that there are no homes, other than mine, for miles around. So you cannot be closer to your home than I am to mine.”

Unable to resist the opportunity for a good riddle, the girl replied, “No, that is where you are wrong, if you live nearby but I live closer than there must be other homes here as well, just not ones that you know about, but I assure you I am closer to my home than you are to yours.” she had been spending too much time with the hatter family, she decided, from the way that her words came in the hatter-style riddle rather than her usual style, which made much less sense.

The man walked forward slowly and put a hand on her shoulder to turn her toward him. She could sense his unease in the air around her, she could tell he sensed how tense she was as well. “Stop,” she said before he could turn her around. The man froze and, after a moment, said, “Why?”

She let out a breath and made herself sound natural, “I-I just don’t want to have to move from this spot is all, I have been running all day and would very much like to just sit still and look ahead.” She mentally face-palmed herself for the weak excuse.

The man was really confused now and just stayed frozen for a moment before removing his hand. “What’s your name girl?” he asked and she her back went taunt, all of her muscles were taught at this point and she was no longer capable of forming words. He asked again and she began to panic. She closed her eyes and pulled her hood tighter around her hair.

“I am no one you need concern yourself with. If I were you I would take this opportunity to run.”

The man did no such thing. He didn’t hesitate this time and whipped her around by her shoulders to face him. Her grin was back but her eyes were still closed and her hood was still wrapped tightly around her head. He was not even trying to hide his frustration with her as he demanded “Tell me your name or I call the cops and send you back home run away!” she decided to stop pretending as well and let her limbs tremble, all the while that eerie grin sat plastered on her face.

“I will not, and you will not, and we will just go on not doing what we do not want to do, or what we did want to do but the other of us would not benefit from doing it.” she could tell he was confused, even without seeing him. Her grin widened and the man took a step back.

She finally opened her eyes, shifting colors and thin pulls on full display. The man took another step back. He was wearing a camouflage jacket and had a hunting rifle strapped to his back. She stood and stepped toward him. He stepped back. She cocked her head to the side and said “Can we just do that please.” he didn’t seem to be functioning properly, but, then again, no one seemed to when they first saw her eyes, not in this world anyway.

“If you would kindly stop threatening me, I would like to go home now, but I cannot. If I tried to go home now I would pass out from exhaustion, and I wouldn't want that now would I,” she was walking forward now and he was stumbling back, never meeting her eyes. But that was to be expected.

“I want to go home but am forced to rest, I have been running non stop, and it seems to have taken my best, If I continue on I will drop, a theory I am not willing to test, It is a race against the clock, TICK TOCK TICK TOCK!” she was shouting at him now and he stumbled back, tripping over a rock and falling to the ground. She caught herself speaking in rhymes and screaming. She really had spent too much time with the Hatters.

She stopped herself suddenly and stood up straight. “I’ve forgotten what I was thinking…” she said quietly. “All well! I have to get home.” with that she evaporated into the air, leaving the man questioning his sanity. It only got worse when he heard the mad laughter echoing through the air around him before stopping abruptly and never coming back, except, of course, in his nightmares where the laughter and the girl would always wait for him.

The girl, however, was very real and was very much still there. She had simply gone invisible for a while, her favorite, and most useful, power. She had decided to hover in the air around the man until he left.

When the man left she moved back to the log she had been sitting on to pick up her bag and check it for the object she had trained her whole life to retrieve. She pulled out the small velvet pouch that it had been in when she broke into the safe to retrieve it. She took out the necklace. It was silver with a small clock engraved in the glass on the front. She unlatched the glass front and sung it open to reveal a perfect mirror, not a smudge on its surface. She could have used it then and there, but to use it before getting home so it could be instilled with the proper magic, rather than the crude stuff that seemed to have been stuffed into it at the last second.

She tucked the necklace back into her bag and returned to full visibility, preferring that people see her and say ‘hello’ than be so rude as to not offer the proper greeting. She slid the bag onto her shoulders and began walking in the direction of her home. After a while, she began to feel the fatigue set in and the world began to tilt. She tried to steady herself against a tree, but it seemed to move away from her as she reached for it and she fell. The ground never hit her though. She instead floated in the air inches above the ground, as he feet had while she ran and walked and even as she sat, she had never touched the ground in her life. She found that keeping it that way would be difficult then and there. Her energy was drained and her muscles were sore and she no longer had the energy to keep herself in the air, not in this world. So she collapsed. The leaves crunched beneath her weight for the first time ever, but she was already asleep.

She woke up a while later and immediately noticed that her bag was not on her shoulders. She started, then realized why her bag was missing. She was in the arms of a man, not the man from earlier, but one dressed similarly with a similar rifle and her bag strapped to his back. She squinted up at him and growled. He looked down at her and said, “Looks like you finally woke up sleeping beauty. Mind telling me where you come from?” This man was friendly, she’d give him that, but she still didn’t trust him. So, instead of answering, she just crossed her arms and looked away from him, into the trees in front of them.

“At least tell me your name.”

She said nothing.

“Is there anything you will tell me?” he asked, patiently.

She remained silent.

The man sighed and said, “My name’s Jeff, I’m a hunter and live a few miles south of here, I’m taking you there now to get you fed and cleaned up. I have two daughters, three sons, and a lovely wife named Natalie.” he paused as if waiting for her to say something. When she said nothing he said, “Your turn.”

Deciding that he would probably think her mad, but not caring what he thought of her she said, “My name is Chess. I live in a place not far from here where everyone's mad and no one cares, I, myself, am mad. I am only here because my family sent me to recover an heirloom from a thief, Now that I have completed my task I am to return home. A task, that is impossible when sane people like you, and even Alice herself for that matter, follow me around!” she hadn't meant to yell but she was not herself after all of that running and her lack of sleep.

“You seem to be describing my youngest daughter's favorite fairy tale ‘Alice's adventures in wonderland’ you do know that the story is not real, it is only fiction.”

Her eyes flashed. She shoved herself out of his arms and rolled to her feet. She hardly noticed when her hood fell back. The man didn’t react to her colorful, unruly hair like she thought he would, but that did not tame her temper. She lunged at him and struck an open-palmed blow to his chest, effectively knocking him to the ground.

“Not real!?” she shouted, “NOT REAL!?”

His eyes were locked on hers as if entranced by the solid red she knew they had shifted to.

“DO I LOOK REAL TO YOU!?” she yelled, not caring about her very visible oddities.

“I-I...What… I…” he stuttered, unsure how to tame her wrath.

He didn’t have to, however, she did that herself. She let herself calm down, knowing that her anger would solve nothing.

“I apologize for my outburst,” she said, helping the man to his feet, “I was simply upset that you speculated that I should not exist, a speculation that tends to occur a lot and makes me very angry.”

The man just stood there in stunned silence for a while before saying quietly, “So, you’re saying you’re from wonderland.” she nodded.

“Then that makes you the Cheshire cat then.”

She shook her head, “The Cheshire cat was my great great great great grandfather, and the original owner of the heirloom you handle so carelessly.”

The man nodded, obviously thinking this was a dream or something along those lines.

“I suppose you are to be heading home then?” he asked, finally meeting her eyes, though tentatively, and, even when he did, he shrank under her strange gaze.

“I suppose so, though I will probably pass out from the strain, I have been running all night and half the day.” with that she turned and began to march away into the trees.

“Wait!” Jeff shouted at her back after processing her words and realizing the bag was gone from his shoulders, and he couldn't recall giving it back to her. She turned back to him with her over-sized grin and her head cocked sweetly to the side, giving the man the distinct impression that he had been manipulated by her.

“Yeeees.” she said, her voice dripping with honey.

“You shouldn't be out here t night, not with the wolfs about and all.” she stiffened, but only for a moment before accepting quickly, too quickly.

Jeff motioned for her to follow him in the direction they had been heading before he had insulted her existence.

“Come on then.”

She nodded stiffly and followed closely behind him.

Soon they came to a modest cabin in a small clearing with a small vegetable garden in the front and flowers lining the perimeter of the house.

The man turned her toward him and said, “I do not want you lashing out at my family like you did to me, got it? And you also cannot mention where you’re from. To my family, you are a runaway from one of the nearby towns. Got it?” she nodded tersely and followed him into the house.

The inside of the house was larger than it looked on the outside. When she first walked in, Chess was in a small living room with a large couch lining the back wall and a small coffee table in the middle of the room. To her right there was a staircase leading to a second floor. To her left, she could see two doorways, the farthest one appearing to lead to a kitchen-dining room area and the other to a small library.

Chess looked around curiously, her eyes taking in every detail. From the discoloring of the coffee table where someone had spilled something on the wood, to the tiny scrapes on the floor where the cabinet had been moved against the wall. She noticed everything, the slight hint of ginger in the air from a batch of gingerbread that had been baked a few hours ago at least, to the way the air shifted as someone moved around in the kitchen.

“Natalie!” Jeff called.

There was a rustling in the kitchen and a tall, heavy built woman appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. Chess resisted the urge to evaporate, fearing they would freak out. After all, magic did not officially exist in this world.

“Jeff!” the woman exclaimed and ran to embrace her husband.

Just then five sets of footsteps thundered down the steps, followed by two girls, about thirteen or fourteen, both with blond hair like their mothers, and three boys, their ages ranging from about six to twenty, two with brown hair like their fathers and the youngest with blond hair. The parents broke their embrace and Natalie, seeming to notice Chess for the first time, started in surprise. Chess, suddenly self-conscious, pulled her hood over her hair, eyeing the curious stares of the children. Jeff took his wife aside, probably to talk about Chess out of earshot of the children. Jeff turned to her and said, “Stay here please.” and took his wife to the kitchen. Chess grinned.

The oldest child, a tall, muscular boy with neat brown hair, combed back in a way that Chess rarely saw in her own mad world and brown eyes that reminded her of the jabberwocks nest. The boy was the first brave enough to approach the strange girl with the color-changing cat eyes.

“So, what’s your name?” he asked, not quite meeting her eyes.

“What, no hello? I swear, the Hatters are more polite than you people, not once today have I been greeted with a proper hello.” she folded her arms in front of her chest and waited for his response.

“Hello then, what's your name?” he asked again, still not meeting her eyes.

“At least be decent enough to look me in the eyes, and, by the way, it’s too late for hello.”

He met her eyes and just stood there for a moment, as if in a trance before finally saying, “Would you kindly tell me your name.”

“My name is Chess, your father found me passed out in the woods and decided to take me here, he thinks I’m insane and a runaway. He is wrong, but he told me not to tell any of you where I am from so I will not, for now. I have never been good at following rules.” the boy shook her hand and stepped back, seeming to have nothing to say to that.

The adults re-entered the room and Natalie walked up to Chess and bent to look her in the eyes, but seemed presently unnerved by the shifting colors and instead looked at a spot on her forehead.

“Hello honey, I’m Natalie. I’m going to show you to the guest bedroom upstairs and help you get cleaned up and get you new clothes and things, would you like that honey.” Chess looked at her, she seemed nice enough, but so did the red queen, and she had murdered her father and exiled her sister.

“Sure, but you do not touch my stuff. If you do I will have to take the life of you and your family.” the smile froze on her face and she cast a nervous glance at her husband, who returned the look. They clearly thought her mad, and, to be fair, they were right, to a point. She was mad, but she was not a psychopath who murdered for fun. But the mix up was not uncommon for people from this world.

“Okay honey, let’s go upstairs now okay.” she took chess by the hand and led her, past the row of children, up the stairs. The second oldest boy-and he closest child to her age, looking to be around sixteen- holding her gaze without flinching, or even showing the usual signs of unease. She was intrigued by the boy instantly.

Natalie led her to a small-narrow room with flowered wallpaper and curtains with a matching bed in the center of it. There was a trunk on the floor at the foot of the bed and a closet to the right, near the window. There was also another door, one that apparently led to an attached bathroom. The children swarmed behind their mother to watch the strange girl enter the room. She walked to the window first, throwing open the shades and casting the last rays of the sinking sun into the room.

If any of the observers in the doorway were paying attention they'd have noticed the fact that Chess cast no shadow, and the fact that her cat eyes couldn't be contact lenses, because they reflected the light the way that no contact lens ever could. In fact, one of the observers did notice these things, the same boy who had held her gaze now had his brow furrowed in confusion as all the little things, all the odd things began to reveal themselves to him.

Author's Note

you can correct grammar, but remember, this is my first draft and I am still working on it. Part 2 has already been started and will come out soon, in about two to three weeks if I can, maybe later if I can't.