The glowing embers in the fireplace came to life in cheerful flames. The candles perched about the room flickered awake. Lights illuminated in the rest of the house like dominoes, one after the other. Eyes were already open. The new span of consciousness had begun.
Alice pushed back the blankets and placed her feet on the patterned rug. It was from Arabia according to the stories in the green and gold book on the third book shelf in the fiction section. In the stories they had magic and could take people away on adventures. She placed her feet into slippers and moved to the wardrobe. It contained today's outfit and nothing else. It was the maroon dress again. She pulled out the cream blouse hanging next to it and slipped it over her head, tying the ribbon at her neck. The ends of the sleeves required buttoning to cinch them tightly to the wrists. Oh bother. She pulled the petticoat up over the bloomers before tucking the ends of the blouse under the band. Finally she could put on the dress. As she admired the rose detailing in the lace of the dress, she noticed a pair of brown heeled boots in the bottom of the wardrobe. So she was wearing shoes today. She pulled her hair up and out of her face in simple twintails.
Alice left her bedroom for breakfast. The food was displayed simply on plain white dishes. She ate alone as she had done for all of her memory. When the meal was finished she went to her favorite room, the library. It was lined from ceiling to floor with books. Alice had, on rather boring days, rearranged them in all the ways she could think of; by author, title, color, length, apparent genre. There were a total of 5,104 books precisely. She'd read most of the fiction and was now working her way through the non-fiction.
Today she was reading a book on music. The book explained tempo and tenor and scales. She'd only heard music a few times. One instrument made quick sounds that varied between high and low pitches at the same time. Another made noises similar to a whistle. Both were hauntingly beautiful and rarely came from the direction of the East wing. No matter how much Alice searched, she could never find the source of the sounds. From books, she'd narrowed down the whistling instrument to one of several wind instruments. As she read her current book, she tried to whistle and hum the tunes she'd created.
The only sound besides her humming was the sound of the page turning. It was quiet and warm. The peace she felt was disturbed by a loud screeching sound. Alice flung the book away and made a shriek of her own as her eyes searched for the source. The noise happened again. It continued in a series of patterns and, after listening with eyes wide, Alice realized it was music.
She ran down the halls the best she could in her boots, this time West not East. This end of the house was less explored. She'd been in most of the rooms, but she hadn't seen anything worth plundering through. She stopped outside the room the noise emitted from. The gilded handle would not turn. It was locked. Alice lightly knocked on the center of the door. The noise left and there was silence again. Alice pressed her ear to the door. There was nothing. No breathing, or footsteps, or floor boards creaking. The room was empty once more. Alice gave a frustrated huff before heading to the parlor.
She didn't know how or why, but she always knew where her next meal would be served. When she entered the parlor, her eyes gravitated to the darkest thing in the room. The mahogany grandfather clock stood still and lifeless in the corner. According to many stories and one book on cuckoo clocks, the hands were supposed to move and the pendulum swing. Using the cuckoo book she'd tried to take it apart and fix it, but the diagrams could only help her so much. For now, the clock was merely a piece of decoration instead of a time keeper. Alice sat in the striped silk chair next to the side table that contained a silver tray of sandwiches and tea.
As she ate, Alice took notice of how dusty the room had become. This room did not see much use. A parlor was for entertaining guests after all. She'd never had guests before, but that was no excuse to let the room be a squalor. If there ever were guests, it would be embarrassing for them to be entertained in such filth. She would just have to see to it then. It would give her something to do until she got tired and went to bed.
A bucket, soap, and cloths were conveniently available in the water closet when Alice went looking. She rolled up her sleeves and removed her shoes before she started wiping down the wooden furniture. The grandfather clock went from a faded black to its true reddish brown. She ran a cloth across the top of the fireplace as well as the decorative knick knacks that rested there. The giant rug underneath the chairs and couches was scrubbed to the best of her ability and the one velvet couch was only wiped at with a dry cloth as she wasn't sure how to clean either of them. She dusted lightly at the paintings of flowers and sunny meadows and thought of what it might feel like. And when she polished the floor, she imagined she was Cinderella cleaning for her evil step sisters.
The muscles of her arms ached by the time the room was clean. The last things she cleaned as she exited, where the gas light fixtures that she turned off one by one while cleaning them. The room was left in darkness besides the oil lamp that she carried out with her. The hall lamps extinguished as she descended to her room.