The Wonderland Chronicles: Realm of Three Kingdoms

Chapter Two: Down the Rabbit Hole (Part I)

I gasped as my whole body tipped forward and my hands slipped abruptly off the dirt edge. The rest of me followed, tumbling downwards into the void. I screamed and screamed, scraping the edges of the chasm with outstretched arms, trying to stop myself. The sides rapidly grew further and further apart and soon I was plummeting straight down in total darkness, feeling nothing but empty space around me.

Still screaming, I watched in horror, as the halo of light that was the hole above grew smaller and smaller above me until it was nothing but a pinprick. Soon it disappeared entirely. Oh my goodness, I thought to myself. What have I done?

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I was still falling, the depth of this abyss completely unfathomable. Impossible. It had been at least a minute and I was still plunging downward, nothing to see, and nothing to hear but the whooshing of air past my ears.

My sense of time became skewed until soon I couldn't be sure if I had been falling for one minute, or hours. I was anticipating my demise with dread, as surely I would crash to the floor of this plunging tunnel at some point. I had stopped screaming as my voice had cracked, my throat hoarse and painful from overuse. I wrapped my arms around myself as I continued to drop, hair and skirts whipping around me as I cried quietly, completely overwhelmed and confused. I kept spiraling down and down.

I had never felt so terribly alone and frightened. I tried to prepare myself for death. Unless this hole somehow went on forever, I would hit the bottom eventually, which would be fatal this speed. The latter was honestly preferable to plummeting in a black pit of emptiness for eternity.

Suddenly, a ball of light flew by my face and I looked up in astonishment to see it was an old lantern. What in the world was a lit lantern doing down here? And even curiouser, was the fact that it appeared to be floating in one place, now far above me, while Iwas the one moving!

After I had passed the lantern, the chasm actually began to brighten and I looked around in wonder. Luminescent mushrooms and other fungi lined the dirt walls of the widening tunnel, glowing with a blue-green light that allowed me a small amount of visibility. More items came in to view as I fell: a hammer, chair, an axe, a picnic basket, a pen, top hat, a book, a hunk of wood, and a shoe to name a few.

I was scared that some of these things would hit me, but I just kept plunging through, none of them harming me. More random objects flew past me, becoming more frequent and surrounding me closer. I managed to turn in the air so I was looking below me and gasped.

Leaves and twigs swirled around directly below, looking like the canopy of a forest. As I drew nearer, I put my hand in front of my face to shield it and curled up, trying to protect myself as much as possible. This was not going to be pleasant.

I shrieked as with a loud crash, I hit the foliage and fell through. The coarse, sharp edges of the leaves and twigs stung against my skin, but otherwise did not harm me. I slowly cracked my eyes open to find that I was completely immersed in this floating pile of brush, and still plummeting. Reaching out, I grabbed a handful and brought them towards me, crinkling them up in a fist. They were simply normal leaves. Some of them were from various different trees like conifers and beech, but mostly they were oak leaves and twigs.

I wondered if the greenery had also fallen down this hole, and stayed here? Perhaps that is what happened to all of the things I'd seen? I paled. Does that mean that I would indeed remain here as well? Simply another victim of this bizarre abyss, doomed to float here endlessly?