The Open Book by Isabelle

For part 1 of this story, check out The Skeleton Key.

I’d been giving Colin chase out past the clearing. When the manicured lawn ended and the stone fence closed the property, we stopped to catch our breath. Fun lay just beyond our reach. On the other side of a half wall easily traversed.

“He wouldn’t have to know,” Colin said, eyeing the tempting thicket of trees and shadows, his eyes glowing with excitement.

“It’s Father, he always knows.”

“Don’t be such a coward, Alice.”

“I am NOT a coward!”

“Then run!” His legs were in the air before I knew what to make of his teasing. Graceful as a wildcat he jumped the fence and ran.

“Oh no you don’t.” I lifted the heavy skirts of my dress and crawled over, scuffing my boots in the process. I’d get an earful from Betsy when she saw, but right now, that didn’t matter half as much as being left behind.

“Tag, you’re it,” I shouted, slapping his shoulder hard as I sped past, my skirt and petticoat heavy in my spare hand. Father would be furious when he caught the mud on my hemlines.

I looked over my shoulder. Colin’s cheeks were turning red.

“Too many of those eclairs! Now you’ll never catch me!”

I ran, with no direction and no concern for time or place or person. The wind caused my hair to flyaway and sweep across my face.

It was worth it though. Freedom.

When I looked back again, Colin was nowhere in sight. “Probably hunched over gasping for air.”

I noticed a small hollow at the very base of a large tree and tucked myself inside, waiting for him to find me.

His calls sounded far, the crunch of his footsteps reduced to vague sounds on the wind. I stifled a giggle. It might be hours before he caught my trail. He was always a dreadful hunter.

Perhaps I could go back home and have tea before returning to find him. My stomach growled in agreement.

“It’s settled then.” I crawled back out of the hollow and started back for home. I kept behind the trees, in case Colin and I crossed paths. The ground was rocky and uneven, never smoothed down by walking feet.

It was why it caught me by surprise.

There, in the middle of the path was a book. An open book. With a soft ribbon laying between it’s pages. I looked around me, suddenly unsure that Colin and I were the only ones walking the woods. But I felt nothing, saw nothing, and so I reached down and picked it up.

The first thing I noticed was the delicate script. Feminine. With a much more steady and practiced hand than my own. It recounted tales of days spent in gardens, writing under the cover a million white roses and being accosted by their sweet scent.

My fingers turned the page eagerly, hungrily seeking more. A strange man who spoke in delightful riddles, whose skills with a needle and thread were almost too good to be real. They were magical.

Glorious tea parties with hundreds of guests, parties and revelry and fun. Experiments conducted in private, locked in a bolted room barred further by a large armoire. The frightening screams and pounds of someone at the door. The monster that howled from the trees in the night… That caused such wretched dreams.

A potion. A cupcake.

Weapons in a losing fight for a crown.

I sat on a fallen log, breathless. This journal, full of such impossible things, stirred a sort of manic excitement within me. I rushed home to tell Father of my discovery.

For many years after, he read to me from the book at night before bed. I would smile at the way he included me in the adventures. I’d dream of myself walking the palace halls and drinking the potion that made me small. Or was it big? I could never keep it all straight in my mind.

It wasn’t until I turned 17 that I picked up the book again. Nearly ten years since I’d first found it. It sat dusty and abandoned on a bookshelf in my room.

Out of habit, I opened it to the page where the blue ribbon still lay, only this time there was no story. No epic worlds to take me away. No Red Queen, no Jabberwocky, no army. Only three words, directed at me.

IT’S TIME, ALICE.