Alice by Heart by Steven Sater
Author:Steven Sater
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2020-02-03T16:00:00+00:00
And with that, she tapped his hand and, for the first time ever in Wonderland, had to suppress a certain bashfulness: “I mean, I do so love the Lobster Dance . . .”
“Yes, of course,” he blinked, he batted back.
Lord, what a pause ensued. A pause, it seemed, they both were in, but neither knew just how they’d gotten in. Oh dear oh dear, thought Alice. Why must she always keep wanting something more from him? Tripping them both up, into some Absurdist pause, by all her rethinking, by her endless angling. In place of just letting be.
And there, where it seemed only Alice could see, there drifted some—what?—ears? Some mouth of cloud? Some Cheshire tongue releasing a fond familiar hymn: “Oh will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you . . .”
Was that a prompt? That child-rhyme from their book, it was. Hmm. Maybe she could lead with that?
Once more through blinkered looks, she caught his glance. And certainly, half-certainly, she chanted that old storied chant: “Will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance?”
His nose twitched. His ears flinched. “But I’m not in that dance. Not in the book, I’m not.”
“Not yet,” that Cheshire purred—but only Alice heard—from that seeming mouth of tumbledown cloud.
And now, some irrepressible star seemed to rise in the grey lamps of Alice’s eyes. She looked to the White Rabbit, surprising him with her own Cheshire grin. “Not yet.”
White Rabbit flushed. A peony-pink blushing up rose-red. And so . . . self-conscious. He could not dance. (Surely, she knew that.) (He knew she knew that.) (Sure as sure, they both knew that.) He never could dance! “You wouldn’t want to, really—with these ears?”
“The dearest ears,” she (pseudo) deduced, surveying them.
“But, I’m all paws.”
“Aren’t we all?” clucked that Cat-ical tongue. Letting a bit of steam out of the neighboring clouds.
“Well, I’m all soles and eels,” an emboldened Alice ventured. Remembering forward, he smiled a bit. And so she smiled again. But still he nothing said—and so she nothinged back. What next? What next?
Well, you can pause and pause—and pause, Alice thought. Or maybe Chesh thought. But by now, all trace of Cat had disappeared. Only Alfred left. With the Alfredest look on his face, a look which seemed written in a language known only by her . . .
Ohhhh, but she could sense him, poising himself, within himself, upon some dizzy precipice. “Now, shhh,” she pronounced. And resumed their chant:
“You really have no notion how delightful it will be,
When they take us and they throw us, with the Lobsters,
out to sea . . .”
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