Weaver

You Can't Be Alice

Maya picked an old green book and read the cover, then she handed it to Alice, “Let’s do Alice in Wonderland! It makes sense.”

                Alice looked at the book, feeling a little nervous. She turned to Erica, “How does this work exactly? Will we be in the story?”

                “Well, yes,” Erica said, “but you won’t be a main character, you’ll just be yourself. There are ‘choose your own adventure’ stories where you are the main character, but for story books like these we can’t have readers changing the stories, if you know what I mean,” she grinned, “so once you open that you’ll be pitched into the story, there’s no saying what point, since it isn’t an exact science, magic. Then when you want to get out, you say the code word on the inside of the cover.”

                “Anything else we should know?” Now that the rules were clear she was eager to begin, “I mean, it’s perfectly safe isn’t it?”

                “Perfectly,” Erica said, “don’t worry! You’re not any main characters, so that saves you from getting stabbed or eaten or anything like that. But the other characters will talk to you, so just sort of go along with it,” she backed away, “go to it ladies. Make sure you note the word to take you back.”

                Alice exchanged a look with Maya, who nodded. She opened the cover carefully, and read the word written in cursive on the inside, “Codswallop.”

                “Well that won’t be hard to remember,” Maya giggled nervously.

                “Ready?” Alice said, “What do I do, Erica? Just flip it open in the middle?”

                “You got it,” Erica leaned against one of the bookshelves, looking amused at their excitement, “go ahead ladies.”

                “Okay,” Alice took a deep breath and looked at Maya, “ready? She received a nod, so she flipped the book open to the very middle.

                She had time enough to hear Erica yell, “shut your eyes!” and then the world exploded in white and silver, the pages of the book looming up, swallowing up the room around them. Alice heard Maya shout in alarm, but she couldn’t see anything but black and white words whizzing by. The next moment there was the sudden heady sensation of falling, spinning wildly out of control. Alice gasped in alarm, and then beneath her a patch of green and blue appeared, spinning crazily toward her at high speeds, coming closer, closer, closer….

                Alice opened her mouth to scream. She was spinning out of control, about to hit the looming patch of green at what felt like one hundred miles an hour! Her body spun in midair, and then she hit the surface of the green thing, with a startled “oof!”

                For a second she just lay there, staring down at the green ground, then she rolled over with a groan, blinking up at a clear blue sky. It’s a nice day, she thought, not a cloud in sight. And I’m not dead. That’s nice. Why hadn’t she hit the ground way harder? Beside her there was a thump, and another loud grunt. She looked over to see Maya lying flat on her back on the grass beside her, looking stunned.

                Alice got her breath back, “Are you alright?”

                “I...I think so,” Maya stammered, “I may need a minute.”

                Alice struggled to sit up, feeling slightly dizzy. When she was once again in an upright position and the world wasn’t spinning in lazy circles, she looked around. They appeared to be in some sort of meadow, surrounded by gnarled old oak trees that seemed to lean over them in concern. The grass was vibrantly green underneath them, far greener than any sort of grass she’d ever seen in her life, and there were clusters of flowers at the bases of the trees, in the most outrageous shades of pink and purple.