Alice In Dreaming Land

• Michelle Rankin, Grade 8, Canberra High School
• Short Story
• 2014

Excellence Award in the 'Write As Rain 2014' competition

Little Alice sat with her feet dangling. Her red shoes kept hitting the earth when she swung her legs back and forth. Her mother used to get angry with her when she came home with dirt all over her shoes, but Alice kept going back to her spot, and the polish her mother used to clean the shoes was always handy.
It was like Alice was drawn to the spot- she found it fascinating, but it was only just a hole in the ground, not that wide and definitely not big enough for a girl like Alice, even though she was skinny. She discovered it one day when her family moved to the meadow. Alice liked to explore the grassy plains, but the girl had found a forest nearby. She usually sat in a tree or where she sat now, at the hole by her feet.
Alice was curious about that hole- it wasn’t construction, and it wasn’t some forgotten garden plot. This hole was great for dreaming about, if you had a good imagination. Alice couldn’t see the bottom, and she had tried dropping stones down. They seemed to continue falling and she couldn’t hear them land.
The young girl lay on the grass with her blonde hair spread all around her. She thought about the birds, sitting in the trees above her, and wondered if they ever thought what was down that hole. A slight breeze shifted through the forest, causing some green leaves to fall from their branches. One of the birds flew down and hopped around the leaf-scattered forest floor for a while. Alice sat up and opened a pocket. She pulled out a cracker and snapped it in two halves, and handed one to the bird, who cocked its head and flew away.
Alice sighed, and then popped the cracker halves in her mouth. She gazed at the hole again, imagining a green frog hopping out of it. The frog had a little gold crown, and when it saw her, it took the crown off and bowed to her, which made Alice giggle.
A voice called her name from the meadow, and when Alice turned, she saw her mother.
“Alice, dear, are you playing in the dirt again? How am I going to get rid of those grass stains on your skirt!” she sighed. “Tea is ready, back at the house.”
She turned and walked back out of the forest.
Alice picked herself off the ground, brushing off loose leaves and dirt, but of course the stains stayed on the blue skirt she wore.
The girl opened her pocket again and found another cracker, which she broke and sprinkled the pieces on the ground.
As she skipped out of the forest, she turned to see if a bird had eaten the crumbs, but there wasn’t one. In the corner of her eye, though, she could have sworn she saw a white rabbit wearing a top hat leap out of the hole in the ground.