"Snowdrop, drop that!" A little girl commanded angrily. The cat that the command was directed towards paid the girl no heed and continued to attempt to eat the girl's black headband. The girl huffed and shoved the cat away from the headband and took it back and nestled it neatly in her bold hair. She then turned to another, much older, cat and waggled her finger.
"Dinah, you really do need to keep your children in check." She scolded. The cat simply blinked her eyes and swished her tail lazily.
Suddenly, the girl's mother appeared in her doorway. " Alice , I want to make some pies but we do not have enough berries. Would you be a dear and fetch some in the pail?" Her mother asked.
Alice stood, brushing the cat hair off of her pretty dress. "Of course, Mother." She said politely. She took the pail from her mother, trotted down the stairs, and exited the house. She headed towards the river, where the best berry bushes grew. She began whistling as she picked, stopping once in awhile to sneak a berry for herself.
A voice behind her startled her so bad she almost fell into the bushes. "I recognize that song. It's that terribly irritating un-birthday song the Hatter is always singing isn't it?" The voice asked.
Alice turned around and almost screamed her lungs out at the small white rabbit and a red waistcoat and round spectacles standing just a little ways away from her. "Oh no, not you!"
The white rabbit shuffled his feet a little and sighed. "Oh, they told me you were going to be trouble, now didn't they?"
Alice couldn't tear her eyes away from the familiar yet strange creature before her. "What do you want? No, I don't care. Go away!"
"I will not go away. I need you to come with me back to Wonderland." The rabbit explained.
Alice folded her arms. "I am never ever going back that terrible place!" She protested. "I shall just sit here until I wake up. Dreams are the only way that you can be here, and dreams cannot go on forever."
"I can assure you, Alice, that this is no dream." He argued, starting to get cross. "Now come along! They took my pocket watch so I would come here and I am getting quite agitated to be without it."
"No." Alice said, sitting down and crossing her legs.
"Come on now." The rabbit pleaded. "You are acting as if you are five."
"I am eleven now, thank you very much." Alice told him angrily.
The rabbit sighed. He stared at Alice for a moment before suddenly lunging at Alice , seizing the bow from her hair, and darting off through the bushes.
Alice screamed and ran after him, forgetting all about her resolution to stay still. The leapt over bushes and weaved around trees until she came upon the thing she dreaded most: the rabbit hole. She looked around, but the rabbit was nowhere in sight.
"He must have gone down the hole." she said to herself. She got on her hands and knees and poked her head into the hole. She cautiously moved forward, feeling for the rim of the tunnel that lead to Wonderland. She reached it and decided to give up. There was no way she was going down there again.
She began to back out of the hole when her foot struck something that made a pained sound. The rabbit was behind her!
"Down you go." The rabbit yelled, shoving her forcefully before she had time to react. She tried to dig her fingers into the ground to no avail. The ground underneath her palms disappeared and she tumbled into the tunnel headfirst.
She was off to Wonderland again.