A/N; Hello, all! Alright….if you will, please allow me one moment of shameless begging. I'm very, very, VERY grateful for all the traffic this story has received so far in such a short time, and I certainly appreciate the scores of Story Alerts, but listen….I'm begging you….if you're reading this story, please, please, please, PLEASE, LEAVE A REVIEW!! To all you wonderful people who have left me reviews, THANK YOU! It's for the readers like you that I do what I do! Seriously, reviews are what encourage me to get updatesout faster, so the more I get, the sooner the story continues. So if you've read this, favorited it, or have it on alert, but haven't left a review…..please, please, consider reviewing!! Even short ones help!
( exhale ) Ok. Sorry about that.
And I apologize for the short length of these chapters thus far; I'm trying to get them out in a timely manner. Once the story picks up some speed, I promise they'll get longer. Enjoy!
Disclaimer; I own nothing. Alice in Wonderland the novel belongs ( belonged? ) to Lewis Carroll, and the film belongs to Tim Burton.
Dreams of a Memory
Chapter 2
How long had it been? Hours?
She had no way of knowing. All she knew was that try as she might, she couldn't sleep….and neither could she wake up.
Alice lay flat on her back in the bottom of the marmalade jar, her hands folded across her stomach, gazing up through the glistening glass ring to the sky above. The sea had calmed, the gently rolling troughs and crests bobbing her softly along. She sighed lowly.
"I do wish I hadn't cried so much," she remarked absently to herself. Her voice resonated funnily in her little glass room. "What am I to do now?" she wondered aloud.
Though I suppose it doesn't matter….thought she……I'm bound to wake up sooner or later….aren't I? Alexander is sure to check on me in the morning.
Alexander….
The moment her name crossed his mind, a heavy pang pressed against Alice's heart. Now that she had really realized---admitted to herself?---how obviously he cared for her, she couldn't shake a dreadful, weighty sensation of guilt. Could she have been leading him on without knowing it? A warm smile here, a nod there, a gay laugh at one of his jokes? Thinking back on their year and one half of shared apprenticeship, she could suddenly call to mind hundreds of little gestures that she had meant as nothing more than genial, but in the wrong light, might perhaps be taken as more. She had believed them to be nothing more than friends…close friends, almost siblings perhaps, but….in love? Never.
"I don't fall in love," Alice sadly reminded herself.
It was true. In all her twenty-one years, she had never once met anyone who lit that secret spark inside her, who made her believe there was anything at all left to be discovered between her and another human heart. And it wasn't as if she'd never had opportunities; she had been dull towards Hamish Ascot, dull towards that boat-hand on her first voyage to China who gave her crimson looks, dull to any number of Lord Ascot's younger business associates who failed to conceal their true interests…and now she was, if possible, even duller toward poor Alexander, the only one of her score of suitors who might have proved an even faintly pleasing candidate.
What if she never fell in love?
"And my face won't last forever," she murmured, as if reciting lines from a verse she'd once heard.
Then, out of nowhere, it came again.
Well, I should hope it will last at least as long as you do!
Alice sat bolt upright, her heart beating faster. She supposed the voice shouldn't really alarm her so---there were far stranger things than voices without faces, especially in her dreams----but there was something about this particular call that left her uneasy. She was absolutely certain she had heard it somewhere before….but where? From whom? It was at the very tip of her thoughts, yet at the same time wholly obscured….like a face she hadn't seen since infancy, a face entrenched at the center of her memory, so deep it was all but entirely inaccessible.
"Who is talking to me?" she called out to no one. She rose shakily to her feet in the drifting marmalade jar, her still-damp nightdress clinging to her arms and legs. She waited, half expecting an answer.
Nothing….only the sounds of the ocean.
Alice growled in frustration, slapping the glass wall of the jar with her palm. Far away in a silver sky, the sun was just beginning to rise, the stars ever so slowly winking away.
"I've never had such an exasperating dream," she grumbled.
"As fond of talking to yourself as ever, I see."
Alice shrieked in surprise, spinning about so quickly she fell down straight on her backside. Looking up, her heart gave a great, frightened jolt and her eyes grew wide with astonishment. Hovering just above the mouth of her marmalade jar was what appeared to be a crescent moon fallen down to earth….an enormous, floating sliver of brightest white….but after gazing curiously at it an instant longer, Alice realized that it was a smiling mouth, a double row of pointed teeth, laced together and grinning madly. Her chest still throbbing, she swallowed thickly and climbed back to her feet.
"H-hello?" she asked uncertainly.
The enormous mouth opened and spoke, never once losing its toothy smile. Its voice was also somehow familiar to her, though very different from the one that had been invading her thoughts.
"What's this? Quivering with fear? It's not like you at all, Alice."
It knows my name? she thought, then clucked her tongue at her own silliness. Of course it does, it is my dream.
"I'm not afraid," she answered. "You only startled me."
"Of course, of course," the smiling mouth answered in a velvety tone. As Alice watched it, two pools of iridescent light began clouding together above it and had soon formed a pair of large, gleaming, pearl-round eyes, the pupils vertical slits dividing the opalescent orbs. Alice swallowed again.
"If I may be so bold as to inquire," the face asked with almost sinister politeness, "What are you doing in the middle of the sea in a marmalade jar? Surely there are more convenient modes of travel."
"It was a bit of an accident," Alice replied sheepishly.
"I see," the face crooned. Another waft of mist, this time a swirl of pinks and blues, was coming together to form a nose, a pair of pointed ears, and furry whiskers. Of course, it was a cat.
Alice narrowed her eyes indignantly. "I might ask you a similar question, you know. What are you doing here?"
"Looking for you, silly girl," said the cat, for it was now completely a cat---or rather, almost completely, for it was only the floating head of a cat. "Good thing, too----heaven knows what beastly, fangsome fish might have come along and swallowed a little bug like you right up, had I not found you in time."
"That's all very well," Alice remarked. "But what good is your having found me, if we're both lost at sea?"
The cat clucked it's rough, pink tongue. "So little faith! You've not changed a wink. Hold tight to yourself, small Alice."
And then, before she could speak another word, Alice was knocked flat to the floor of the jar as the whole vessel was abruptly yanked up and out of the water. She let out a small cry, falling to her face and gazing down through the glass bottom at the swiftly shrinking waves. Looking up, she saw two great furry legs and a pair of monstrous paws wrapped tight round the mouth of the jar as the great smiling cat held her aloft, flying like a wingless bird through the air. After a few breathless moments, Alice regained her bearings enough to rise to her feet and press her hands against the glass wall, peering through at the world below her. To the horizon, the sun was now swiftly rising and dabbing the Eastern sky with pink. Far beyond them, but growing closer every second, was land, a wild green country stretching after a winding line of sandy beach.
Perhaps it's India? Alice hoped, and I'll soon be awake in the bungalow again.
"Mr. Cat," she called, raising her voice over the rush of wind as they flew, "Where is it we're going?"
"Home, silly," the cat answered shortly, his smile never once failing.
Hm. Doubt that I'll get much of use out of this fellow, thought Alice. Still, she could not help another question.
"How is it you knew where to find me, Mr. Cat?" she asked.
"Why so stiff, small Alice?" the cat grinned down at her, ignoring her question. "Do forego the formality and call me by name."
"But I don't know your name," she replied.
At that, the cat's ear-to-ear smile flickered. Looking suddenly strange without his gaudy grin, they came to an abrupt halt in midair, and he twisted the jar so as to peer one great eye straight in at her. He looked quizzically curious.
"Don't know it?" he crooned. "Just what are you at? Are you playing a game with me?"
"I assure you I'm not," she answered, becoming a bit irritated with his coyness. "If you would tell me your name, I'd be glad to oblige you."
The cat watched her a moment longer, then smiled broadly again.
"I see. Dear me….this is most bothersome, isn't it? I was hoping things might go a bit easier this time. Poor Tarrant isn't going to like this one bit, not to mention----but, no matter. You'll catch up soon enough, I suppose. Allow me to reintroduce myself…..Cheshire's the name."
Alice pursed her mouth, but cut a small curtsy out of sheer habit. "Pleasure to meet you Mr. Cheshire."
The cat sighed heavily as they began to fly forward again. "I can see this is going to be a tiresome ordeal."
Alice shook her head, chalking off his mystical ramblings to nonsense. How she did wish to wake up!
"How I do wish I'd wake up," she grumbled her thoughts under her breath. She thought she saw Cheshire turn an eye in her direction and shake his head once or twice, but she wasn't quite sure….he seemed to have a way of moving about without really moving at all.
In a matter of minutes, they had left the vast endlessness of the sea of tears behind, and were at last looking down over solid ground. Cheshire, as he called himself, lowered Alice's marmalade jar down until the bottom of it touched the wet sand of the shoreline. With one paw he carelessly tipped it on its side, ignored her small oof as she fell to her stomach against the floor, tossing a glare in his direction.
"Right then," he muttered drolly, catching her off guard as his body suddenly evaporated, and he was once again a floating head. "I must be off. Best of luck with the race."
Alice's eyes widened. She quickly climbed to her feet and hurried through the mouth of the jar onto the sand, which she sank only very little into, because of her diminutive size.
"Wait!" she cried out to him as he began to ascend. "Mr. Cheshire! You mean you're going to leave me here?"
"Tsk tsk, such little gratitude!" the grinning cat mewed. "I brought you to the shore, didn't I? Would you prefer to have been left as a tidbit for the gulls?"
"Please, I'm very grateful, but I've no idea where to go from here!"
Cheshire shook his head, and as he did bits of it turned to colored dust and drifted away, until there was nothing left but his eyes and his smiling teeth.
"Well, if all of this is only a dream, then what does it matter? You can't expect me to play nanny all day. But if you want my advice, I would go towards the race. It's the quickest way for you to get dry. Until we meet again, small Alice….perhaps by then, you'll be the right size. Ta ta."
"Wait!" Alice pleaded, but it was too late….what remained of Cheshire's face had already vanished in thin air. Alice let her arms fall to her sides, defeated.
"The race?" Whatever did he mean by that?
Alice looked up and down the beach in both directions, but she could see nothing except sand and ocean, and beyond the beach the enormous trunks of a dim forest.
Sighing, she lifted her skirts in her hands and set off at a weary trudge towards the forest.
A/N; There you are, on dry land at last! I promise the next chapter will be longer….please leave a review!! I'm a junkie and I need my fix!