1
Tick-tock-tea-talk.
Wake up, you hairy hare.
The soft, delicate chime that followed those words seemed to be coming from somewhere in the back of my head. I knew that sound, just like I knew that voice that had woken me up for years, almost every single morning.
It didn’t anymore, though. Which was why I considered I might have imagined it.
But the sound came again.
It was of a spoon hitting the side of a teacup once—soft, crisp, almost musical. It vibrated for a little bit, then faded away into the air. The echo of it always remained in my head until I woke up.
Which was exactly what I was trying to donow,too. The past and the present—maybe even the future—collided inside me as my mind tried to cling to the waking world. More difficult than usual, and I couldn’t tell why.
Something smells like rotten seconds,I thought.
Then my eyes finally opened, and my mind went perfectly blank.
That sound. It filled the room again—and I was right, it came from a white teacup as a silver spoon touched the side of it just a few feet away from me, from the head of the table.
Table.
I was sitting at a table.
“There you are! Come, come—open those blinkers wide!”
Laughter.
The voice that said those words wasnotthe same as the one that used to wake me up every morning. It wasn’t a voice I recognized, either, but my eyes closed before I could make out her face because my mind was suddenly overcrowded with thoughts that didn’t even feel like my own.
Teeth. Time. Terror.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, ti?—
Blood. So much blood all over me, sticking to my skin, slipping between my lips, the taste of it rusty, metallic.
My eyes opened again. I sat up straighter as I sucked in a deep breath—yes, I was most definitely sitting at a table, with beautiful plates in front of me, with food and cakes and tea. Roses, red and white, tried to infuse the air with their scent, but all I could smell right now was blood.
Grass, dirt, clocks—tick-tock, tick-tock?—
“There.That’s better. Do give it your bestest best to keep those lookers open, my little tickers!”
More laughter.
A blink and two and three, and I finally could begin to make sense of my surroundings.
The table, set; the people sitting around it, ten; the woman sitting at the head, the White Queen.
Everything came to a halt again.
The White Queenwas sitting at the same table as me—and not only that. I was wearing a dress, a white dress with shimmery tulle around the hips, and a soft silk scarf around myshoulders. My hands were clean and my hair was clean and—where, where, where did all the blood go?!
And the night. And the grass.
And the beasts?
“Give it a moment—you have plenty to spare. Give it a moment and you will feel like yourselves again.”
