The Warrant for the Dreamer

@alice

You hit moss and cold tea-smell, and Alice catches you before you hit the ground — a fall that was not quite a fall, as if the hole let you down gently. Above, the hall of doors is slamming shut one by one, echoing like a clock running backward, and a grin hangs in the dark behind her shoulder with no cat attached yet. Alice sets you on your feet, brushes chalk dust from her sleeve, and says: “You woke me. That makes you mine to keep — and the Queen’s to find.” Somewhere far off, a card soldier’s trumpet sounds through a corridor that will not exist in a minute.