Prologue ~ All at the Blank Computer Screens

Posted on Friday, 3 December 1999, at 12 : 10 p.m.

All at the blank computer screens
Full hopelessly we stare;
For all our tales are tied in knots,
And will require much care,
While others seem to pull great works
Out of thinnest air.

Ah, Dwiggies all! How well you know
My dark and dismal plight,
For you have had those brilliant thoughts
That keep you up at night!
Why do they never seem so grand
Reveal'd in morning's light?

Imperious Emma takes command
And orders all "to marry":
In gentler tones Anne calms the moods
Of whiny sister Mary.
While Lizzy runs off laughing; she'll
Not be induced to tarry.

Anon to brief compliance won,
They dance as if on strings
Through tales of heroes old and new,
Of sailors, spies, and kings,
And quest unendingly for sets
Of matching wedding rings.

And ever, as the fingers cramped
And eyes began to blur,
And chapters long were posted with
A satisfying whirrr,
"It's not enough!" "More! Give us more!"
The commenters concur.

Thus grow the tales in Austenland
Thus slowly, day by day,
And dots are earned painstakingly
Ere we go off to play,
To read the works of fellow scribes
And have our little say.

Kathlyn! Take my childish tale
And lay it with the ranks
Of modern day retellings and of
Fantasy's best pranks,
And take as well, my editor,
Sincerest, heart-felt, thanks.

Chapter I ~ Down the Rabbit's Hole

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister in the garden, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had caught up the book her sister was puzzling over, but it had no weddings or parties in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without weddings or parties?"

So she was considering, in her own mind (as well as she could, for she would never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding), whether the pleasure of eating strawberries and cream would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the strawberries, when suddenly a very handsome rabbit with pink eyes strode quickly by her.

This was not at all alarming, nor was Alice at all surprised when the Rabbit muttered to itself "Upon my word, I shall be very late indeed!" (although in hindsight she realised that it was rather out of the way); but, when the Rabbit actually took a well-starched, monogrammed handkerchief out of its waistcoat-pocket, and wiped its brow with it, and then marched on, Alice rose with alacrity, for it struck her that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket (in such a fashionable waistcoat) or a handkerchief to take out of it, and, forgetting in her curiosity her resolution to read with her sister, she ran across the lawn after the rabbit, and had almost caught up to it, when it disappeared into a large rabbit-hole under the shrubbery.

Now Alice was very used to having her own way, and without considering the consequences of her actions, she followed the rabbit into his hole.

She crawled straight through the passage for some way before she very suddenly found herself falling straight down.

As if to make up for her earlier speed, she now fell very slowly, and had plenty of time to observe the sides of the hole, and to see that they were very much like the walls at home. There were cupboards, a book shelf occupied only by the Baronetage, and maps and portraits hanging on pegs. On another shelf was a jar labelled "NUTELLA," and she took it down as she passed, "For," she thought, "they may not have anything good to eat under the ground. Why, who knows if they even make pudding!" To her dismay, however, the jar was empty, and she placed it on another shelf.

"Well!" she thought. "After such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of falling off my horse! My sister shall think me so brave! Why, I wouldn't say anything about it, even if I fell off a cliff!" (Which was very likely true.)

She continued down, past tall, elegantly curtained windows. "How extravagant this Rabbit is!" thought Alice, "to build windows for the purpose of looking into dirt!"

She fell for so long that it puzzled her. "I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth;" she said aloud, "I wonder if I shall fall right to the other side!" She began to work out, in her mind, just what was on the other side of the Earth; she supposed that she would float up somewhere in the Pacific Ocean (for you see, Alice was the cleverest of her family, and so she was very likely right), "and I shall have to swim to land. . .and ask the name of the country. Please, Sirs, is this Australia? Or Indonesia?" (and she tried to curtsey as she spoke, but gave up as she could not even curtsey in the air without her feet tangling) "And what an ignorant little girl they'll think me for asking! No, that won't do, I shall simply ask them the name of the nearest major city."

Still she fell. Alice was growing increasingly bored, so she began talking again. "Dinah'll miss me very much to-night, I should think!" (Dinah was the Cat.) "I do wish she were here with me, for she could catch the Rabbit much quicker than I. But it is much too large for her to eat, so what would she do with it, I wonder?"

And here Alice felt that she was dozing off, and had just begun to dream that Dinah was taking tea with the Rabbit, and advising him to retrench, or else give up his hole, when suddenly,

SSSSSSCRUNCHHHHHH!

down she came upon a pile of leaves. These cushioned her landing rather nicely, and she was not at all hurt; she jumped to her feet, and could see the White Rabbit striding along the passage before her. Throwing propriety to the (subterrestreal?) wind, Alice sprinted down the passage, and as the rabbit turned a corner, she heard it intone "In faith, it is very late." She was so close behind it that she was very surprised, when she turned the same corner, to see no sign of the Rabbit at all. The passage was now more of a hall, long and low with doors all along each wall. Alice tried each door, but found them all locked, and she wished that her sister was with her, "for she is old enough to wear
her hair up, and might lend me a hairpin to pick the locks." Alice had never had occasion to pick a lock before, but she considered such a skill as paramount for one intending to meddle in the lives of others. One really must start somewhere, she rationalized.

As Alice walked sadly past the doors, she suddenly noticed a small table with three curving legs, all made of glass; "and though I myself have drawn designs for many a prettier table, this one is well enough." More specifically, she noticed what was on the table, for it was occupied by a tiny golden key. She happily snatched up the key and tried it in each lock, but it was so small as to be completely useless. At last she noticed a small covered skreen on one wall and, moving it aside, found a door not much more than a foot high; fitting the golden key into the lock, she was delighted to feel it turn smoothly.

Alice opened the door and peeped through into the loveliest garden she had ever seen. She wished that she could leave the dark hall and take a turn under the avenue of trees, but she could scarcely get her head through the doorway; "and it will not go far without my shoulders," thought poor Alice, "not to mention my feet! Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a folding chair: one of those nice long ones with arm rests and floral-print fabric. . ."

It was no use, and Alice wandered back to the table, half hoping to find a key to a larger door, or an instruction booklet on folding up like a lawn chair, "or perhaps building a lawn chair!" Instead, she found a little bottle ("which was certainly not here before,") labelled

DRINK ME

It was all very well to say "Drink me," but our Alice was too clever to do that in a hurry. "No, I'll look first," she said to no-one in particular, "and see whether it's marked 'poison' or not"; for she had read several nice little stories about people who had been shot, and stabbed, and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that if you are cut very deeply with a knife, you usually bleed; that you must always be very nice to authors lest you incur their wrath; and she had never forgotten that, if you find a bottle marked "poison," it is much better to make the villains drink it.

However this bottle was not marked "poison," so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it delicious (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of sweetbreads, asparagus, pork, strawberries, nutella, and all the very best sorts of pudding), she very soon finished it off.

"What a curious feeling!" said Alice. "I must have The Shrinks!

And so it was indeed: she finished shrinking at a height of ten inches, and her spirits leaped at the thought that she was just small enough to walk through the tiny door.

Alas, she remembered that she had left the key on the table when she took up the bottle! Her stature now prevented her from reaching it; she could see it through the glass, but though she tried valiantly to climb one of the legs, it was too slippery, and she kept falling until she had to sit down and cry.

"Come, grown girls don't cry like that!" she told herself rather sharply. "I order you to leave off this minute!" She usually showed excellent judgement in making plans (though she hardly ever followed them), and sometimes scolded herself so severely as to hurt her own feelings; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of charades she was playing against herself, for this interesting child was very fond of pretending to be two people. "But it's no use now," thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be two people! I should only be twice as lost, and half as big, and. . ."

Suddenly, she spotted a little snuffbox that was lying under the table; although she did not take snuff, she opened it, and found in it a very small pudding, on which the words "EAT ME" were carefully spelled out in kidney beans. "Well I'll eat it," said Alice, "and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; and if it makes me grow wings, I can fly back up the rabbit hole; and if it makes me grow horns. . ." she really could not think of any practical use she could have for horns, so she decided to shut up and eat.

Having picked off every kidney bean, and every bit of pudding that had touched a kidney bean, Alice ate a little bit, and waited to see what would happen. Holding one hand on the top of her head to feel which way it was going, she was astonished to find that she was as small as ever. This is, of course, what generally happens when one eats pudding, but so many strange things had happened to Alice lately that she had given up expecting normal reactions.

The pudding was excellent, however, and she was hungry, and she very soon finished it off.

Chapter II ~ The Pool of Tears

Posted on Saturday, 4 December 1999, at 12 : 33 p.m.

"Peculiarer and peculiarer!" cried Alice, startled out of good grammar. "Now I'm opening out like the largest lawn-chair there ever was. Good-bye, toes!" (she could now scarce see them for the distance.) "Oh, my poor little toes, I wonder who will keep you clean, and see that you don't get ingrown nail? I'm sure I shan't bother, you know, but I'll tell you what, which is a great deal more than I do for my hands; I'll take you for a pedicure every Shrove Tuesday, and have you painted in all the colours of the rainbow! How shall you like - oof!"

She had grown so much, and so quickly, that she struck her head against the roof of the hall! "Stupid Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone," she muttered, "I knew that pudding had milk in it!"

No matter; she was tall, she was HUGE, and she rushed to find the tiny golden key, and to open the lilliputian door, and - uh-oh.

Alice began to cry.

"Don't be ridiculous," she chided herself, "you're much too big to cry," (she was very nearly right,) "so stop at once! I absolutely insist!"

It had no effect - she merely cried harder than ever, until her tears formed a large pool, quite four inches deep, which stretched half the length of the hall.

Through her sobs she heard a far-off tramp of small feet, for which noise she was very thankful as it stopped her crying. Wiping her eyes, she perceived the White Rabbit, formally attired, carrying a pot of Gowland's lotion in one hand and a mirror in the other: he came marching along as quickly as possible, all the while talking to himself. "Oh! the Duchess, the Duchess! Oh! pray God, let her not snub me, though I have kept her waiting!"

Alice stepped forward as the Rabbit approached. "I do beg your pardon," she began, but before she could continue, the Rabbit leapt into the air, dropt the pot and the mirror, and ran off out of sight.

Alice took up the pot and the mirror, for she did have a very few freckles, which she thought the Gowland might aid. So she kept applying the lotion to her nose, talking all the while.

"I do not see how every thing can be so very odd today, when yesterday was quite ordinary! Perhaps," (for she was very clever, and this seemed a logical theory,) "perhaps I was switched in the night! But if I'm not I, then who could I have been switched with?" And she began thinking of all the girls she knew, whom she might now be.

"I'm sure I'm not Jane," she said, "for she is so dreadfully pale, and I" she checked the mirror "have a lovely complexion. I can't be Harriet either, for I know all sorts of things, and she is not a sensible girl, nor a girl of any information. Besides, she's I, and I'm - no, that's not right. Well, if I know all the things I used to, then I must be I, mustn't I? So let's see - cogito, ergo sup - no, I oughtn't to think about supper; I've already had pudding! Who needs Latin? What about History? The battle of Agicourt was fought in the year 1066, between the Visigoths and the - oh, heavens! I must be Harriet! I'll try and say 'How doth the little -'" and she sat very primly, as though she were in her school-room, and began to speak, but it sounded wrong somehow:-

"How doth the little sycophant
Improve his meagre lot,
And add to his poor self esteem
With favours dearly bought!

How well he spreads his flattery,
How cleanly licks each boot,
And polishes those apples with
A fervour absolute."

As she said this, she glanced into the mirror, and was surprised to see that the entirety of her face fit neatly within the frame. "How odd," she thought, "I must be growing small again." She stood and, walking to the table to compare its height to hers, found that it was now taller than her, and she was still shrinking away at an alarming rate. Realizing that this was due to the mirror in her hand, she threw it down, and, at two inches high, stopped shrinking.

"At least I'm small enough to go into the garden!" For in her pocket was the little golden key, "and if that's not proof that I'm not Harriet, I don't know what is, for she is stupid enough to have left it up on the table." She took the key out of her pocket (she was obliged to wrap both her arms about it), but as she was congratulating herself, her foot slipped, and she fell right over her head into salt water. She thought at first that she had fallen into the sea, "and in that case I can go back by post," she said to herself (Alice had been to Weymouth once in her life, and had come to the general conclusion that, wherever you go to on the English coast, you find a great number of assemblies, an assortment of pianofortes, a range of secret engagements, and the post). She was wrong, however, and she soon realized that she was in her very own pool of tears.

"I suppose," she comforted herself, "that drowning in my own tears will teach me not to cry so very much!" and she had nearly begun to weep again at that thought, when she heard a great splashing nearby and, thinking it must be a whale or a seamonster, turned round to look. Of course, as she herself was so very small, this great creaure turned out to be nothing more than a mouse.

She supposed that if the Rabbit was able to speak, so ought the mouse be, and she bagan: "Pray, sir, can you help me find a way to land, if it be not too much trouble, sir?" (Alice had never before spoken to a mouse, but she supposed one ought to be very respectful). The mouse surveyed her rather brifly, and seemed to her to bow slightly, but it said nothing.

"Perhaps it doesn't understand English," thought Alice. "I daresay it's an Italian mouse, come over with Julius Caesar." (For, though Alice had read something of this great general in one of her sister's books, she had no clear notion how long ago he had fought.) So she began again: "Dov'e la mia gatta?" which was the first sentence in her Italian lesson-book. At this, the Mouse looked aghast, but still said nothing.

"Oh, I beg your pardon!" cried Alice, realizing what she had said. "I quite forgot you didn't like cats!"

"Not like cats!" The Mouse was indignant. "Who am I, pray, that I should like cats?"

"Of course, certainly," said Alice in a comforting tone: "but you needn't be angry about it. I only wish, though, that you could see our cat, Dinah. I feel sure that you would like her excessively, for she is so benevolent and good, so strongly attached to the family, and such a capital one for catching mice - oh, I beg your pardon!" Alice had spoken without thinking, and now the Mouse seemed truly offended. "We won't talk of her any more if you'd rather not."

"We, indeed!" cried the Mouse with a sneer. "Don't palm all your abuses of propriety off on me. Our family dispises cat: nasty, ill-bred, meddling things! Pray do not mention them again!"

"No, indeed!" and Alice searched fo some new topic of conversation. "Are you - are you fond - of - of dogs?" Tha Mouse did not even look at her, so Alice contimued merrily: "There are new puppies, near our house. You ought to see them. They have such soft paws, and such big brown eyes, and the man who owns them says that when they're grown they'll be frightfully useful. he says they'll kill all the rats and - oh, gracious!" Alice bemoaned her tactlessness. "I'm afraid I've offended it again!" For the Mouse had deserted her entirely, and was swimming away.

So she called sweetly after it, "Dear, kind Mouse, wait for me, and I will promise not to talk about cats or dogs." Then the Mouse waited, and when Alice caught up with it, said kindly, "Very well, but let us get to shore," for it was not so very ill-natured as it liked to appear, but only dismayed, as any Mouse might be, at finding itself floating in a pool crowded with other animals which had fallen in. There was a Duck and a Dodo, an Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures. Alice could see the shore now, and they all swam towards it.