M-alice.

*

Aunt Cecily thought it wise to bring me a cat. She said she had found it in the back garden, playing among her petunias. It was a stray cat, plump and brown, black strikes, grey eyes and it sat on my bed glancing at me like I was a mouse.

'This might cheer you up a bit dear. Isn't she lovely?' aunt Cecily asked.

'I think it's a he,' I added. 'But it's a very nice kitty,' I said sighing.

All day long I wrote long letters to my mother and I looked at the blue sky through the window and counted the clouds.

The cat twisted its tail round my legs and jumped up in my lap.

'What do you want, you silly thing?'

And then the cat grinned. The cat grinned at me!

This can't be right. Kitties do not grin. I know my own kitties never grinned even though I would have wanted them to. But that was in my childhood.

I pushed it off and turned to my letters. I wouldn't write anymore. The old house smelt like burnt wood and it was very damp inside.

I put on my coat and went outside for a walk. The cat followed me.

Aunt Cecily's small estate was surrounded by some yellow fields of dandelions and I loved ambling through them.

As I walked further and further, the cat did not relent and jumped through the branches of the trees around me to catch up with me.

'Will you please stop following me?' I said briskly.

'But I think you are Alice.'

I looked around confused to see who had spoken but there was no one. There was the house in the horizon and a couple of huts and cabins at the foot of the mountain but there was no living being talking to me.

'Who is there?'

'It's me you silly thing. Honestly, it's very rude when I must reveal myself and people take no notice.'

'Where are you?'

'Up here.'

The cat was staring at me, grinning again on a branch.

'You see, Alice, it's me.'

I almost fainted with surprise.

'You can talk!'

'Well of course I can talk. Most cats can talk, they just have no courage or elegance to do so.'

'Goodness! A cat is talking to me,' I told myself touching my forehead. 'Am I dreaming?'

'You most certainly aren't. If you were dreaming you couldn't look at your palm. But you can, can't you?'

I looked at my palm and saw I was clutching a small pocket-watch.

'What is this? I don't remember holding this…' I muttered confused turning the pocket-watch in my fingers.

'See, this is not a dream. Dreams do not even have pocket-watches,' the cat said matter-of-factly.

'Who are you?'

'I'm the keeper.'

'The keeper?'

'I am the guardian then, but I like calling myself a keeper.'

'What is a keeper?'

'You see, I take care so that no one can ever come into Wonderland,' he told me.

'Wonderland?'

'My home and my creation. I do enjoy living there, because everyone has sense there. Men have no common sense here. Nor do they have clean neckerchiefs.'

I was getting more and more confused.

'Where is Wonderland?'

'In the ear of a whisper.'

'The ear of a whisper?! Is there such a thing? Maybe you mean it metaphorically.'

'What does metaphorically mean?' the cat inquired. 'I do not know about such things, but it is in the ear of a whisper.'

'Whispers have ears…' I muttered and folded my hands. A wind was blowing and my blue dress wasn't enough to keep me warm.

'Yes they most certainly do. I am a very good keeper don't you think? Not even you can remember Wonderland anymore. I recall that you once managed to come there, even though I had put up many barriers. You were the only one. Afterwards I instilled more order.'

'I would have remembered going to a place called Wonderland,' I exclaimed scratching my head. 'I don't think I could have forgotten.'

'Well you went there and now you can't remember. So there you go, I am right, you are wrong,' he said sticking out his tongue.

'Alice!' I heard a voice beckoning me. Aunt Cecily was standing by the hedge, calling me home.

'I must be going, I'd better go,' I whispered and ran away not looking back.