A Tale That Could Not Be [Book 2 of Selvina's Tale series]

Chapter 9: Wonderland

The journey down the hole was numbing and yet pleasing. Selvina felt as if her body was spinning end over end, twirling around, and bouncing all over at the same time yet she only continued to fall. Goldilocks, Wendy and Rapunzel seemed as baffled as she was but they too only fell, their bodies moving in a straight line toward a bottom no one could see. Despite the odd sensation, which would normally make her want to vomit, Selvina felt wonderful. Her skin tingled and her body crackled with the aftereffects of a great rush of ecstasy. She glanced around the walls of the tunnel she fell through and saw blurry shapes pass by, too fast to see clearly. They resembled clocks, apples, cakes, muffins, pictures in elaborate frames, teapots, tables, chairs, roses, chess pieces, beds, and all manner of things but she took it as her mind trying to clarify images it could not fully discern. They were most likely odd-shaped rocks stuck to the side of the glowing blue tunnel.

They fell for what felt like hours, perhaps even days, and during that entire time Peter Pan was laughing. Unlike the girls he was actually spinning end over end, and then twirling around and around like a top, and then after that bouncing along the sides of the tunnel, enjoying the fall as if it was a carnival ride. Selvina tried to ignore him but failed miserably. She could either watch blurry shapes streak by or witness Pan giving in to his insanity and though the latter was more disturbing, it was strangely entertaining.

Eventually, the descent seemed to slow and the multitude of contradicting sensations withered away. The walls of the tunnel turned from blue to green and sharpened into recognizable shapes. Within seconds the girls and Pan no longer hung in the air inside a tunnel but sat on the ground within a vast forest at the edge of a vibrant meadow. The forest was unlike any other, however. Everything appeared mismatched. Some of the tree trunks were colored green and the leaves were brown. Some trunks were entirely composed of leaves wrapped and piled on top of one another in a thick cylindrical shape with vine-like branches stretching out like arms and fingers and ending in leaf-shaped slices of wood. In the meadow were many brilliant flowers with brightly coloured stems and leaves but green petals. Sometimes the petals were leaves and the leaves were petals. There were lady's slipper flowers made of actual slippers. Anemone flowers were real anemones with writhing tentacles. There was a nearby patch of flowers that looked to Selvina like a bunch of colorful balloons stuck to green stems.

"Eww!" Rapunzel cried as she squirmed away from a long plant stem on which hung what looked very much like several bleeding hearts.

Pan, of course, laughed. "Bleeding hearts! They're flowers! See those balloons? Balloon flowers! Over there are lady's slippers that you can actually use as slippers! See those yellow ones that look like cups of butter? Hahaha! Buttercups!"

Wendy stood up and brushed off some dirt from her dress. "What is this place? It's like from a dream..."

"You've got some bloody bizarre dreams then, mate," Goldilocks said as she examined a group of flowers that resembled little, sleeping serpentine dragons. She was about to poke them when Pan cautioned her against it.

"Snapdragons," he informed her. "You've already lost an ear, Goldy. Are you in such a hurry to lose a finger too?"

"You're the one who rid me of this ear!" she fired back, nevertheless moving away from the snapdragons.

Selvina neared a patch of large daisies as big as her head and noticed that, other than their size, they looked like regular daisies. It struck her as peculiar that unlike all the other flowers and plants the only abnormal thing about the daisies were their size. She poked it and it felt like a regular daisy would.

"How strange," he muttered as she moved in for a closer look.

Suddenly, in the very middle of the flower, two large eyes opened up, staring directly at Selvina. She jumped in shock and fell on her backside, her mind attempting to decide whether she had imagined it all or not. The large daisy blinked its eyes, studying her closely, and Selvina soon realized that the flower was indeed looking at her. The flower's eyes lifted slightly, as if gazing at something behind her, narrowed for a moment, and then closed.