Snow White had her seven captors—I mean, “dwarfs.”
“This place is…” I said, my voice trailing off.
Duke nodded. “It certainly is.”
“Enough said?”
“Enough said.”
On a warm summer’s day, the park would’ve been charming, butbreaking into it on a cloudy day in October when we were the only souls walking the winding paths…it was positively unnerving. Almost as bad as Wonderland.
In my peripheral vision, I saw movement, then heard a rustle of leaves.
Duke and I ducked into a dark artificial cave, which turned out to be the mine where the seven dwarfs dug up colorful jewels.
“Security guard?” I said to Duke as he peeked out.
“Better. And worse.” He pointed down the walkway.
An elk. A massive male elk with antlers tall enough to scrape the bottom branches of the trees. He walked the path as if he owned it and perhaps he did. This forest had been home to his kind far longer than it was home to ours.
We watched in awe as he ambled past us to the wooden fence, effortlessly leapt over it, and disappeared into his true forest.
A magnificent beast, three times the size of even the biggest deer I’d ever seen.
“Wow,” I breathed. “Glad we left Koshka at home. He’d try to ride him.”
“You don’t see that in Chicago every day,” Duke said. “Come along.”
As fast as we could, we made our way down Storybook Lane.
“There,” Duke said, pointing to the Wonderland exhibit.
We ran to the Mad Tea Party, made of concrete and painted garish colors, which were chipped and fading.
“Yeah, that’s the March Hare,” I said, leaning against the exhibit fence. “Now what?”
“We didn’t think that far ahead,” Duke answered.
For a moment, we both stared at the scene—the table, the teacups, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse. What were we waiting for? Like Duke said, we hadn’t really thought this far ahead, obsessed as we were with finding the right March Hare. But now that we’d found what was certainly the only March Hare in all of Oregon…what did we do?
“I’m going to do something stupid,” I said.
“Full steam ahead.”
“Hello!” I shouted. Shouted? Bellowed? One of those I did. “This is Rainy March, and I’m looking for the March Hare! You there, Hare?”
Duke winced and covered his ears. I was probably bellowing more than shouting now that I think back.
He lowered his hands from his ears. “Anything?”
“No answer.”
“My turn to do something stupid now,” he said.
“Go for it.”
He went over the barrier fence with a quick, athletic leap.
