CHAPTER 1
Sara sat perched on a tree branch in a fork of a long forgotten, beaten path. She smiled a wide toothy smile, as she reached the ending of her favorite book, Alice in Wonderland. As she slowly purred when the wind crept by her long brown hair, tied neatly in a braid, she remembered what it was like when Emma broke the curse. Although it had already been two weeks, she could still feel Henry's eyes on her, trying to expose her.
Many people thought she was mad, with all her disappearing and reappearing, but Sara knew, in her heart, that everybody was mad. She then recalled a conversation with Emma, when she was new to town, and looking for Mary Margaret after she escaped from jail. "But I don't want to go among mad people," Emma had remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," Sara said, her toothy grin growing wider; "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" asked Emma quite impatiently.
"You must be," Sara said nonchalantly, slowly stretching her arms while sitting up on a thick, dipping tree branch, "otherwise you wouldn't have come here." Emma didn't think that proved it at all: however she went on.
"And how do you know that you're mad?"
"To begin with," Sara said, "A dog's not mad. You grant that?"
"I suppose so," Emma said, questioningly.
"Well, then" Sara went on, "you see a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."
"I'd probably call it humming or purring rather than growling" Emma said, quite confused.
"Call it what you like" Sara said, fixing her long, draping blue and gray sweater, to sit properly on her shoulders.
"What I don't understand is why you would purr and wag your-" Emma started, being cut off.
"You can now ask where you would like to go." Sara stated.
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" Emma asked quite muddled.
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," Sara replied.
"I don't much know where –" said Emma.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," Sara responded.
"– as long as I get to Mary Margaret," Emma added.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," Sara replied, tipping back off the tree, then catching herself with cat-like reflexes. "If you only walk long enough. Far enough. And to the right locations…" Sara said, her voice getting softer as she slowly disappeared from view.