The animals came, tentative at first, sniffing and puttering round the form of the girl. She was sprawled face down, sobbing, and they had never seen someone who looked so old and yet so childlike at the same time, as if she had stepped through a looking-glass and entered their world from another dimension.
The undignified sounds of stomping and singing alerted her; she sat up at once. The cheery bluebirds and delicate deer of her kingdom were nowhere to be seen, but there was a giant Dodo bird in a waistcoat and eight pink dancing starfish and a few lobsters and a pelican all circling her as if this were a jolly caucus-race and not the worst moment of her life.
"I'm sure I'll get along somehow," the girl mumbled to herself. "Everything will be all right." She dusted off her skirt and approached the Dodo bird, who was dancing so vigorously that his wig was dangling in front of his face and causing him to repeatedly crash into the nearest lobster.
"Oh," said the girl, "excuse me."
"Backward, forward, inward, outward, bottom to the top," sang the Dodo bird. "Never a beginning, there can never be a stop!"
"Maybe you know where I can stay," the girl tried again, her voice shaking slightly. "In the woods somewhere?"
"Skipping, hopping, tripping," shouted the Dodo bird, "fancy-free and gay! Started it tomorrow, but will finish yesterday!"
This is a very silly song, the girl thought. She carefully extricated herself from the center of the dance, knocking a few starfish out of place as she ran back through the woods. The forest was quieter, more manicured and decorated than she remembered it being the night before when her nightmares chased her from the clutches of the Queen's huntsman. She felt as though something invisible were lurking in the branches now, not a menace but a curious kind of creature.
She walked in circles along the path until the landscape rotated, almost of its own accord, to bring her to a clearing. Down the hill sat a bright pink house with a straw thatched roof and violets climbing up the stone walls. The girl tiptoed across the lawn to the little pink door of the cottage and knocked. Out burst a rabbit, all white with an ill-fitting red sweater and gray trousers and spectacles. He looked very nervous and frazzled, and the girl's heart could not help but go out to him.
"My name is Snow White," the girl began, and he promptly screamed.
"Help! Assistance! Monster!"
At precisely that moment, Snow White noticed a giant leg pushing through the door of the cottage and two arms springing from the second-story windows and two great big Mary Janes making deep furrows in the front yard. There was muffled shouting coming from inside, and the girl thought perhaps the monster was in some kind of distress. It couldn't be very comfortable sitting in a house with all your extremeties poking out of the windows and doors, after all.
The White Rabbit was back in an instant with help: the large Dodo bird, whose caucus-race ditty had finally come to an end, and Bill, a lizard-looking fellow with a smart cap and a ladder.
"Do you mind?" Snow White asked Bill, who was too busy helping the Dodo bird smash the Rabbit's furniture for kindling to answer. She dragged his ladder to the side of the house and climbed up to the front window, where the monster's face was framed by the curtains. "Hello? Monster? Are you all right?"
The monster looked insulted. She was giant, all right, but with the softened features of a young girl and the righteous indignation of a Carpenter who had just been cheated out of a dinner of oysters.
"I am not a monster, I am a girl," said the monster, "and my name is Alice. I don't know quite what the White Rabbit is up to, but you must fetch me some shrinking potion at once before he thinks of some nasty way to expulse me from his house."
Snow White wrung her hands. She had never seen a monster before, not even a girlish one, and she had no idea what a shrinking potion was or how to procure one or how to stop the White Rabbit and the Dodo bird and Bill from setting fire to the entire cottage. The Dodo bird had hoisted Bill onto his shoulders and Bill struck a match that was dancing very close to the roof of the house.
"We'll smoke the blighter out!" the Dodo bird cried. "We'll smoke the monster out!"
Snow White turned on the topmost rung of the ladder to object and felt herself falling, falling down to the pile of blazing carrot clocks and birdhouses.
When she opened her eyes, she was safe on the ground in a forest glade, the afternoon sun breezing through her hair and the little woodland creatures scattering in surprise among the flowers and brush. There were no singing starfish, nor rabbits in trousers, nor giants in thatched houses. Snow White could have kissed the ground with joy.
"I didn't mean to frighten you," Snow White told the animals. "But you don't know what I've been through!"