Behind Sanity

Chapter Twenty-Seven

                                                                    Behind Sanity

                                                             Chapter Twenty-Seven

                                                                               1

                They’re all people.  They all used to be human beings.

                These were Alice’s thoughts after leaving the Caterpillar’s splattered remains.  In White Rabbit’s silence, she could think of nothing else.  She could hardly believe it, and yet it made sense.  She stared at the rabbit moving off before her, and she couldn’t help but wonder…

                 “You used to be a man,” she said suddenly. “Not a rabbit, but a human.”

                He did not stop for her words.  In fact, he did not seem to falter at all.

                “To admit such a thing would in incriminating, Alice,” he told her simply. “Therefore, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

               Remembering what the rabbit had said about the Queen’s warnings, she forced the idea from her mind for the time.  It would be much better for him if she kept silent about the matter.

               Alice’s hair was almost completely dry from her near drowning in the Pool of Tears.  She followed Rabbit without much difficulty now – she didn’t go too slowly and he didn’t go too fast.  She quite liked this arrangement.

               She could tell by now that the air was moist and heavy, so she guessed they were coming near to water again.  There was also something else about the breeze that was blowing against her.  What was that taste in the air?  Was that salt?  She didn’t think that there would be salt water in the woods.  She could hardly imagine it, yet things here had a way of surprising her. 

               Surely though, they had not gone in a circle and come back around to the pool.  That would be ludicrous.

                She followed Rabbit through some thick grass that she almost lost him in, but after some trying, she finally made her way through.  She could hear the water now, and as she stepped away from the grass, she could see the water as well.  It was right in front of her, a lovely vale with a grand waterfall emptying into it from high rocks above.

                "It’s lovely,” she said, almost absently.

               White Rabbit chuckled a bit.

                “Yes, yes, Alice,” he said quickly. “You’ll rethink that later.”

                “So what’s the agenda?” she asked anxiously.

                "Well,” began the rabbit. “I suppose we climb.”

                Alice looked back at him with an appalled look, thinking that surely he must not mean what she had first thought.  Surely he did not mean to climb the cliff of the waterfall!

                  “Climb what?” she asked with wide eyes and a distasteful expression, as though she’d been insulted that the thought had even come into her brain.