I was lying on my bed, reading one of the books required as summer work for my English class next year. Alice in Wonderland.

After Humphrey Dumpty had dropped me- or should I say pushed me- off back at home, nothing unusual had happened for an entire week. A week that had dragged. A week full of misery.

I had plenty of call for misery in any case, of course. But this week had been especially painful. My aunt had insisted that I- of all people, I- should make the arrangements for my parents’ wake.

It wasn’t odious, or strenuous, but I had resented it. I should be the very last person called upon to do this. Yet my aunt had insisted that she hadn’t known her brother, my father, well enough to assist.

So I had spent the week making arrangements. The flowers I had chosen were daisies and night lilies. They had been twined around everything at the funeral.

The funeral. That had been a horrible memory. The place had rapidly filled up with people I didn’t know, strangers.

A man had patted my hand- later I would learn that he was the speaker at the funeral, and had told me, “In some way it was a blessing they had gone together.”

That wasn’t true. It wasn’t a blessing. If it was a blessing, they wouldn’t have died. If it was really a blessing, they wouldn’t have left me alone.

The only person I had been even slightly happy to see had been my mother’s best friend –Miss Gardenia. She had been at our house often, since she and my mother had loved to garden together. I had always liked that her name was a flower, and she liked gardening.

Now she had red, puffy eyes. She had latched onto my hand, needing me for support almost as much as I had needed her. There was only one difference. I still had yet to cry.

It was looking at her that did it for me. Seeing such honest grief in someone else’s face broke something inside of me. Sadness that I had been holding in reserve suddenly rushed through me.

Hurriedly, I had turned away, and right into the arms of my boyfriend. He had enfolded me into a hug, which had been just about the last thing that I needed at that moment.

The tears that had been threatening had spilled over right there in the middle of the funeral. I had been mortified, but I still hadn’t been able to stop crying.

I covered my face with my book. That had been a horrible memory that I did not want to relive. I had never –I mean never –cried in public like that before. And if I had my way, it would never happen again.

“Alice… are you asleep?” a languorous voice purred, breaking through the relative silence.

“No, Ches…” I groaned. Wait… “Ches?!” I shouted, sitting up suddenly.

The Cheshire cat grinned cheekily at me from his perch on desk. “Good morning, Alice.”

“Ches!” I hissed, glancing nervously at the door. My aunt could arrive at any moment! “What are you doing here?!”

“Mm, Dee sent me,” he drawled. “There’s something you should see. She says… it will make you feel better.”

“I feel fine!” I lied, scowling at him.

Those blue eyes seemed to see right through me. He stood up and came to lean over the bed, looking at me very seriously. “Have ready quick smiles with lightsome laughter soft flowing after,” he instructed me.

“Wh-what the heck does that even mean?” I spat.

He looked at me reproachfully. “Ah, Alice, this must be an off day for you. Learn well your grammar and never stammer,” he admonished.

I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, I don’t have to go see… whatever it is you want me to see. I’m busy here.”

Ches pouted. “But Alice,” he whined. “You’re always busy!”

I frowned at him. “I don’t have time,” I reminded him. “I have a life to live.”

“Exactly! Come now,” he added, and grabbed my hand.

As I was tugged to my feet, I protested, “I am not going through the mirror again!”

Ches laughed. “Don’t worry Alice. I have my own ways of getting around the place.”

I didn’t have time to reply. The room began to disappear in patches, the way Cheshire always did. But when I looked at him he was perfectly whole. He grinned. I was getting used to that grin, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. It made me feel as though I would never get rid of this band of freaks.

“Is this the way things always look to you?” I asked.

“Yes, things do seem to have a problem with staying visible and in the same place, time, and dimension,” he sighed.

“But that’s impossible! You can’t have different parts of you in different dimensions!” I exclaimed.

He shrugged. “In that case, I often do six impossible things before breakfast.”

“B-but that’s…” I didn’t want to say impossible, but it was!

Ches frowned. “Eat bread with butter, once more don’t stutter,” he chided.

“What are you quoting at me?” I sighed as the room began to resolve itself into a beach.

“It’s the latest Rules and Regulations. You’d best learn them, you know, or you could lose your torso,” he said gloomily.

I looked around me. “Well, I suppose I’m here now. What did Dee want me to see?” I asked.

“The Caucus Races,” Ches answered with, as usual, a grin, and began pulling me across the sand dunes.

I frowned, thinking back to my annotated copy of Alice in Wonderland. “You lot do go out of order terribly, you know. Anyway, I know about the Caucus races. Carroll was using them as a metaphor to make fun of Parliament.”

Ches didn’t answer.

“How far do we have to go?” I demanded.

Ches laughed. “As they say: Go walk of six miles!”

“What?!”

“Don’t worry, Alice,” he assured me as we rounded the top of the nearest dune. “Six miles is a bit of overstatement. It’s just here.”

What I saw before me was an enormous rock, tall and thin. It was actually shaped like a needle, but with a flat top. A ways away was a tower with a platform, and beside that there were a few dark shapes on the sand.

Ches pulled me past the tower. As we passed it, a voice from above boomed, “HELLO! WHAT’S THIS? OH, I SAY! IT’S ALICE!”

One of the shapes in the sand stood, revealing itself to be a very unwelcome Hatter, who ran forward to greet me.

“Alice!” he exclaimed. “I thought you weren’t coming!”

“So did I,” I muttered. “What’s March doing up there?”

“He’s the Crazy Commentator, of course,” Hatter scoffed. “Fancy not knowing that.”

“Right,” I sighed, ignoring his idiocy. “And this is the Caucus races?”

The rest of the usual suspects were wandering up.

“Are you here to watch?” Dodo asked.

I glanced at Dee, who nodded enthusiastically. “…Yes.”

Dee squealed and grabbed my hand, pulling me down to sit beside her on the dunes, Hatter sprawling out behind us. His ridiculously long legs kicked intermittently, sending up sprays of sand. I ignored him, even when the sand pattered against the back of my t-shirt.

“All right,” I said, leaning over towards Dee. “The idea is to run around and around until they’re dry, right?”

She nodded. “It’s so exciting! And winning is such an honor,” she told me very seriously.

Remembering the book, I asked, “What are the rules?” I hadn’t got far enough to know who won, but from what I had read, it was pointless and a total waste of time.

“Rules?”

There were hesitant footsteps behind us.

“Hello, Mouse.”

Ches’s eyes gleamed. He grinned again, but this time it looked… wicked. “Mouse,” he purred.

I craned my neck to see a portly man in his early forties, trying very hard not to shake like a leaf. Nestled in his sandy-brown hair were two delicate ears, much like those of the Dormouse.

“Hello, Hatter, Dee, Mr. Cheshire,” he said.

I smiled up at him. “Hello. I’m Alice Liddell. You must be Mr. Mouse,” I said, holding out my hand to shake. He took it with a shaky smile and I continued, “Are you participating in the event?”

His eyes crinkled up kindly. “No, Miss Alice. Broke my leg last month, see. I’m not running for a while yet.” Looking down, I saw that his foot was indeed bandaged up, and he was limping heavily.

“Oh, no?” Ches drawled, his tail lashing predatorily.

“Moral: Behave,” Dee snapped, pulling his ear.

“I’m so sorry,” I said with a smile. “I hope you feel better in time for next year.”

He laughed. The Dormouse peeked out from behind him. “Hello, Alice,” he said.

“Dormouse! How are you?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s fine,” Hatter said dismissively, waving his expressive, gloved hands. “The child won’t shut up about running in the silly race.”

“It’s not silly!” Dormouse protested.

“Of course it’s not,” I assured him.

“WELCOME ONE AND ALL!” March boomed over his megaphone.

“Oh, is it starting?” I asked.

Two figures were approaching. The taller of the two waved up at March with one feathery wing. Let’s be honest, I wasn’t really surprised by all the animal-people anymore. “Hello!” she called.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s just One and All,” Dee said, still glaring at Ches.

“They’re in the race too,” a certain tiny and adorable mouse-boy put in, sticking his tongue out at his competition.

The two came and sat on the sand facing Dee and myself. “We have a few seconds before the race starts,” the taller of the two declared. She smiled at me. “You must be the famous Alice. I’m One.”

I put on a polite smile and shook her hand.

“I’m All,” the boy beside her said.

I nodded, smiled. “Alice.”

He looked at Hatter, then back to me. “Whoa.”

Hatter ignored him, instead striking up a conversation with …George. The thing is, if Hatter was crazy all the time, if he was always talking to George, if he was just nuts, I could probably deal with it. It’s the oscillating he does, sane one moment and crazy the next, that I found so infuriating.

Dodo stood, then, shook the sand out of his skirt, and said, “We should get going. It’s time for the Drenching.”

All groaned and flopped back into the sand, making a very authentic sand angel. One laughed. “All, your feathers will get all crusty. Come on, the race will start soon,” she said, and they, Dodo and Dormouse wandered down the dune.

“What’s the drenching?” I asked Dee.

She waved a hand. “Oh, it’s symbolic. Mouse knows.”

“Yes? Oh. Er. Yes,” the worried man said. “It, er, it all goes back to the First Annual Caucus race. You see, the First Alice-”

Hatter’s cheerful babble in the background had halted. I glanced back at him, only to see that his face had completely shut off.

“Er, yes, the First Alice cried copious tears when she first arrived, drenching myself and several others in salt and such, and causing the C to flow wide and far over its banks.” I could tell by thus point that he was really getting into the stride of his story. “We began the first race to appease her and make her stop-”

“Wasn’t it to dry off?” I asked.

“It did have that fortunate side effect, yes, but we started running in the first place just to get her to stop crying,” Mouse explained.

That damn book.

“It was Dodo’s idea, of course. He always was so good at dealing with children. But ever since then we thought it would be the right thing to do to start out drenched in the water of the C, which is, of course, still salty from her tears,” Mouse concluded.

“So, it wasn’t salty before?” I asked, amazed.

“No, it was,” Ches assured me. “But then it was salty because of chemicals and whatnot. Now it’s salty properly, from tears.”

Just as I opened my mouth to tell him how ridiculous he was being, March started shouting again. “AND AS THE RACERS LINE UP AT THE STARTING PEBBLE, BILL THE LIZARD, OUR GRACIOUS REFEREE, HOLDS UP THE CEREMONIAL FLAG. WHO WILL WIN THIS YEAR? HOW CAN SUCH GLORY BE ATTAINED? WHO STOLE MY FAVORITE SCARF? AND OTHER QUESTIONS!”

“Sh! Hush, hush! It’s starting!” Dee commanded.

“AND THEY’RE OFF! ALL IS IN THE LEAD… NO, PARDON ME, THAT’S ONE. ER, SORRY FOLKS. ONE IS IN THE LEAD, CLOSELY FOLLOWED BY ONE OR THE OTHER OF THE CRABS! DODO HAS BECOME TANGLED IN HIS TRIMMINGS, HARD LUCK THERE… OH AND HE’S JUST TRIPPED OVER DORMOUSE, WHO, TRUE TO FORM, HAS FALLEN ASLEEP ON THE TRACK. AND HERE COMES THE FIRST WAVE!”

Just as he said it, a giant wave of C water came crashing down over the contestants, drenching them all to the bone. Dormouse actually got an advantage from this, as the wave pulled his unresisting form out with it, all the way to second place. The rest of the competitors continued struggling through the wet sand.

“This is ridiculous,” I declared.

“Shush.”

Dormouse had woken up, causing an enthusiastic round of jeers from Hatter. He ambled sleepily around the track, which circled the spire of rock I had seen before. Dodo was becoming seriously encumbered by his skirt. One and All kept hopping in the air, which was probably a good strategy for getting dry faster, except that the waves came at regular intervals, keeping anyone from drying off at all.

“We could be here all night!” I pointed out.

Nobody replied, so I stood up to go and do something about it. It wasn’t that I minded sports –my boyfriend was a football player, after all. I quite enjoy track and field myself, and must confess a certain talent at tennis. But this was just plain stupid, and I couldn’t be having with that.

AHA! AND MISS ALICE HAS JOINED THE RACE! NO, I TELL A LIE, SHE’S PICKED UP DORMOUSE –LUCKY CHAP, WHAT? AND IS CARRYING HIM… I SAY, SHE’S CARRYING HIM STRIGHT TO THE ‘HAYSTACK IN THE SHAPE OF A NEEDLE’.”

March was correct in all particulars. I had been trying to get in a word with Dodo about calling the whole nonsense off, when I had spotted dormouse snoring gently on the sand yet again. I scooped him up and draped him onto my back to save him from drowning. His sopping jacket was making him a bit heavy, but I could manage pretty well.

I saw the next wave looming in the horizon. That absolutely would not do. I was not getting soaked in this idiotic game. I needed higher ground. The highest around was the stupid rock. So yeah, I climbed it. No big deal, right?

“HOW DELIGHTFUL! ALICE IS CHEATING!” March blared.

“Alice, are we cheating?” Dormouse asked sleepily.

“No,” I grumbled, getting a grip on the top of the rock. I was lucky that my father had been so into rock-climbing. I’d done is hundreds of times.

“Oh good.”

“AND THEY’VE REACHED THE TOP! ALICE, APPARENTLY UNCONCERNED BY HER BLATANT DISREGARD FOR THE RULES, POTATOES ARE TASTY. I MEAN, IS SITTING DOWN AND… DORMOUSE HAS FALLEN ASLEEP. GOOD SHOW! BACK ON THE GROUND, DODO FELL DOWN AGAIN, BUT IS USING THIS TO HIS ADVANTAGE!”

One and All and one or the other of the crabs had tripped over Dodo, forming a disorganized jumble of limbs. A wave crashed over them, leaving myself and the Dormouse to dry in peace.

The race continued on in that form, making absolutely no progress, until I drifted off into a light nap. I was awoken by March apparently shrieking into my ear. “ALICE! WAKE UP, YOU’VE WON!”

And then I was falling. Again. I can’t even begin to tell you how sick I was of falling. I must have been startled and fallen off the rock, most likely to my death. Uncanny how much falling I’d done lately, compared to the amount of dying that had resulted. It was getting sort of dull.

Luckily for me, I didn’t land on the sand below. Honestly, I would have been surprised if I had. Instead, I landed on my bed at my aunt and uncle’s.

“That’s just too convenient, isn’t it? Don’t you think, Ches?” I demanded, sitting up.

He didn’t reply, but his chuckle faded away into the dark corners of my room, and the air felt empty of his presence.

Groaning, I picked up Alice In Wonderland. My eyes scanned the page, searching for anything that even remotely resembled today’s spectacle. It was dangerous to trust that book. It was a children’s story. The real thing was less charming.