Alice into Darkness

Alice into Darkness

A Fantasy story by Sheila Wisz Ellayn

Chapter 1- A Night in November

Alice Layttel pushed the wooden gates open and walked outside into her gardens, happy to feel the cold wind against her face and delighted to see the grass, flowers and trees all illuminated by that frozen light coming from a great white Moon up in the sky...

It was a crisp night of early November, Alice could hear nothing but the wind and a few birds singing in the distance, the sky was full of stars and she was very pleased to discover that she would be completely alone for hours to come.

"I have always loved you" Alice said, looking up at the Moon as she walked between benches and trees- "You beautiful old Moon, provider of this ghostly light that I enjoy so much when I am alone at night... There are no colors in you... Just a gray desert up in the sky."

Alice was wearing a long and elegant black cloak on top of her white and gray dress, her gloves were black as well and all of this colorless attire made a sharp contrast indeed with Alice herself, for her long and curly hair was a beautiful shade of fiery red and her eyes were violet and sparkly...

"I wish that I could live in a gray desert, away from those that just keep talking about colors."

The young woman looked like a shadow in contrast with the fascinating shades of green that could be seen everywhere in the grass and the trees, a green that was completely lost for Alice's eyes just like she had never seen the true colors of her eyes and her hair...

For Alice, her hair was just black and her eyes were dark blue.

The grass, trees and everything green were nothing but a rotten color that she often called Garffen, and she had never understood why everyone loved the Autumn colors in the forest so much...

"Here we are" Alice said, sitting on the grass in front of her favorite bushes of white rose- "Hi my sweeties! Winter draws closer every day and very soon there shall be no more roses, but no worries... I shall paint you all, before the first snow falls..."

Alice drew a crystalline flask from a pocket of her cloak, inside of which a bright red ink swirled around like it was sinister blood... She opened her flask while a great smile formed in her face, and very soon Alice started to paint the white roses red by means of a rather old brush.

"Paint the white roses red, Alice! Always paint the white roses red..."

Alice transformed a white rose after another into what looked like black flowers to her, dark and lifeless flowers that would look great at the gray desert that she imagined as a perfect place in which to live. She had lost count of how many roses she had painted red during her life, for this practice had started ten years ago after she had returned from a magical realm.

"Sometimes, I think that Wonderland was never real" Alice whispered to herself, adding the last touches to a particularly large rose- "I was not really there, all of that was just a dream... but, what if my travel was real, after all? Who knows, I guess I'll never get to know the truth..."

Alice still dreamed about escaping to a Fantasy world, a place in which she could be happy far away from everything that haunted her... However, November the 7th had arrived faster than she had imagined it would be, and she would have to face her cruel fate within a few hours.

The Moon continued to descend towards the horizon, and very soon hundreds of guests would arrive at Layttel Manor to attend one of the most important weddings that Surrey had ever seen...