"Hey, Crane?" Abby looks up from her poring over the books in the Archive.
"Yes, Lieutenant?"
"Remember what you said about trees being a symbol of the entrance to the Underworld?"
"If you mean to remind me of how we miserably failed to stop Pandora," He pauses briefly, sarcastically, "Then yes."
"Well, that made me think of, well, Alice in Wonderland."
"You mean Louis Carroll's piece of work?" Ichabod snorts in jest, "His writings were like that of a drunk describing the rose-tinted lenses of a pre-adolescent."
"Alice passed through a tree the Cheshire Cat opened up. And from there, she was in the Kingdom of Hearts."
"Hmm, so you're suggesting … an allegory of sorts. That Carroll may have known something about such portals?"
"His stories are really out there."
"Perhaps... The Queen of Hearts was a mad woman, and her kingdom was driven to madness as she was," Crane closes his book, "But that may not be so. After all, his works are adapted into many versions, and that part with the tree may not have been part of the original."
"Maybe. I was thinking about the Disney version."
"Remember what I said about what they did to Cinderella..."
Abby laughs, looking down, "Right, right..."