My first fanfic! I've been reading it for ages though. ;) Anyway, just so you know, it's supposed to be random (it's Alice in Wonderland, for pete's sake) and hopefully Puck and Sabrina are In Character! I really tried hard with that, although I couldn't help but write it in my own style as opposed to Michael Buckley's. I often wonder if my writing is too repetitive, so reviews would be nice, especially since, as I said, this is my first fic.
Oh, and I gave it this title because Lewis Carroll's book (which is wonderful and you should go read it if you haven't) is actually called Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, not Alice in Wonderland, as Disney (much as I love them) likes you to think. That is all.
***
Sabrina Grimm had never fallen down the rabbit-hole before. You might be thinking, 'hey, I've never fallen down the rabbit-hole before, either' but that is because you probably do not live in Ferryport Landing, where riding magic carpets and living with Shakespeare characters - and yes, falling down rabbit-holes - is perfectly ordinary. Actually, Sabrina had been trying to escape her Shakespearean housemate on Aladdin's flying carpet when she fell down the rabbit-hole.
She wasn't really sure how it had happened, only that one moment she was whizzing through the air on the carpet, and the next she was whizzing through the air without the carpet. She could only assume it had something to do with Puck. She wasn't overly concerned, since he was fleet on his wings and would, of course, catch her just seconds before she splattered to her death in the peaceful hills below. Absently, she wondered if he had knocked her off the carpet so he could do exactly that and then gloat about saving her life again. The fact that he was the reason she needed saving wouldn't bother him.
But the expected arms beneath her, accompanied by the whoosh of fairy wings and a filthy, boyish grin, never came. Instead, she crashed through something hard and painful that sounded and felt like old wood. She couldn't understand what was happening; she ought to have hit the ground long before, but she looked up and saw the ground and a gaping hole above her and continued falling. The fall slowed, however, and she started taking note of her surroundings. It was the sort of thing detectives did and Sabrina was a detective. The hole was long, obviously, since she hadn't reached the end of it, and in some ways it was exactly what you would expect of a rabbit-hole. The walls were cylindrical and made of packed black earth, with roots and worms wriggling in and out of it.
That was where normalcy ended, however, and madness began. There were all sorts of peculiar things on the walls. There was a portrait of a fat pompous king who looked like Henry the Eighth, but Sabrina couldn't be sure, to which someone had added googly eyes, a moustache, and lipstick. They had also hung the painting upside down. Sabrina only noticed the armchair clinging near the wall when she landed on it.
"Oof!" she grunted but then used the reprieve as an opportunity to study the tunnel further. There was a pot of tea, continuously pouring itself into a cup, which promptly tipped over and dumped its contents down the hole. Then it straightened up again and was refilled. A bookshelf hovered directly beneath her feet, and she reached down to pull out a book. In doing so, she tumbled off the couch and continued her leisurely descent down the tunnel.
"Well, this is obviously the rabbit-hole," Sabrina said aloud and opened the book. Inside it was gibberish, as far as she could tell. The words weren't even written in straight lines. "As if anyone could read this!" she exclaimed and set the tome down on the top of a passing china cabinet.
She attempted to look down, which only made her turn a somersault and end up exactly how she started, so she had no way of knowing how much longer she would be falling. For a brief moment she wondered what was taking Puck so long, but a tree growing sparkling pink paper hearts pulled her attention away. She plucked one of the hearts as she passed and examined it in her hands. It crumbled as she turned it over and covered her palms with glitter which refused to rub off no matter how she scrubbed her hands on her jeans.
"I don't remember Alice falling for this long," she commented, but it had been a very long time since she read the story. Just as she finished this thought, however, her feet hit something hard. Her legs were still accustomed to falling and buckled, sending her face-first into the dizzying black and white tiles. Another "Oof!" escaped her lips when something heavy landed on top of her.
"Honestly, Grimm," said the something before she kicked it off of her. "Of all the stupid places to fly a magic carpet, you had to go right above the rabbit-hole to Wonderland."
Sabrina picked herself up and left Puck on the floor. "Everything would have been fine if you hadn't knocked me off of it."
Puck was indignant. "I didn't knock you off it!"
"Oh, so I just decided to fall off it to my death, is that it?" she demanded, hands on her hips.
"I wouldn't be surprised!" he insisted, jumping to his feet.
"Why would I do a stupid thing like that?"
"Because you know how much I hate saving your butt all the time?" Puck suggested. Sabrina rolled her eyes and threw her hands up in the air, turning away from him. The wonky little room was far more interesting than him anyway.
"Or maybe," he continued, "you just love that I save you all the time and since I haven't done for a whole day you were - "
Sabrina wandered a little ways away. She was sure she could see a pattern in the mismatched tiles on the floor, and she felt a sudden determination to follow it. Something in her brain told her to stop and stay with Puck, even if he was rambling, but her feet refused to listen and her eyes stayed glued to the floor. She walked until she saw a little glass table in front of her which her brain knew hadn't been there before, but it looked so at home and perfectly suited to the room that she though it just must have been there all along.
There was a little white box on it and when she picked it up she saw it was covered in carvings of rabbits and clocks. Sabrina flicked the tiny brass clasp and opened it. Inside was a collection of tiny cakes. One was star-shaped, another circular, and more besides. She picked up the star. It was golden yellow, glistening with mint-green frosting. It was topped with a chalky Valentine's Day heart, bearing the words 'EAT ME'. Sabrina's mouth was only too happy to oblige it, even though her brain was screaming at her not to.
"It could be that you are actually crazy and have a death wish and just don't know it and really did throw yourself off the carpet on purpose and that's why - " Puck's voice suddenly changed. "Hey! Grimm, no! What are you doing? Don't eat that. Put it down!"
The glass table tipped and shattered when he ran into it, knocking the box flying out of her hand. But it was too late; Sabrina put the cake in her mouth, chewed, and swallowed it before he even reached her. In the blink of an eye, she was growing. First she realized she was taller than Puck, which she never had been before, and then she had to sit down because her head was touching the ceiling, but when she did, her head was still touching the ceiling. Then, since her foot had nowhere else to go, it slammed into Puck, which was unfortunate for him since it was now as big as he was, and pushed him all the way to the wall where it would have squashed him if he had not flown up above it. Sabrina was bent almost double in the tiny room; her shoulders were pressing against the dirt ceiling and crushing the tunnel.
"Puck!" she cried. "What do I do?"
"Uh, you need to drink something," he said, searching the room.
"Hurry!" She could feel the soil crumbling above her. It rained on her, falling down her shirt and into her hair. When she finally stopped growing, one of the lamps which had been suspended in the hole rested on her shoulder.
"Got it!" Puck cried triumphantly, holding up a sparkling crystal bottle. She had no idea where he got it from but didn't care. It was large and bulky in his grubby hand, but it was little more than a thimble to Sabrina. She took it eagerly, forgetting to be careful. The glass cracked between her fingers, and the clear liquid it held spilled out with the blood from the cuts.
Puck's face turned red with annoyance. "Geez, Grimm! Can't you be more careful?"
Sabrina looked and the glass in her hand and panicked a little. "What now?"
"I don't know!" the fairy snapped, then softened ever so slightly. "I guess you could try lick it off your fingers."
This idea didn't really appeal to Sabrina since her fingers were bleeding where the glass had broken, and there was still glitter from the paper heart all over them, but she did it anyway, carefully flicking the shards away before she stuck her fingers in her mouth. As suddenly as when she ate the cake, she was back to her normal size, shorter than Puck and far, far beneath him, as he was still floating up near the ceiling.
She felt a little dizzy. She wondered if it was because of the psychedelic roof tiles or her size-changing adventure. That didn't make sense - she had eaten Eat-me cakes before and she hadn't felt dizzy then. But the tiles where so pretty and colourful, surely it wasn't them either.
"I think I like the blue ones best," she said, without realizing she had spoken.
"What?" Puck asked, sitting down beside her and squinting suspiciously at the roof tiles. Sabrina was watching the blue ones dance with the green ones while the red ones acted annoyed instead of just asking the yellow ones to dance, like any sensible person would have done. She didn't see it, but she could feel Puck turn his suspicious gaze to her. It quickly became anger. "Stupid Wonderland," he muttered. Then he jumped up. "Wait! Roof tiles! No!" His wings unfurled and he whirled around to inspect the room. The only evidence left of Sabrina's growth spurt was the mound of dirt on the floor, crowned with the still-glowing lamp. The dirt ceiling, and most importantly, the tunnel, was gone, replaced by the dancing tiles.
There was no way out.