At first, he was just a grin. A crescent of luminous, disembodied teeth floating six feet off the ground. Then, as if remembering he had an audience, the eyes appeared—two emerald slits that blinked slowly, one after the other, like distant lighthouses.
Alice found him on a branch of the old Twistwood Tree, which grew in impossible directions—some limbs pointing down into the earth, others curling into their own knots like thoughts trying to escape.
She wasn’t sure if she’d heard anything at all. Cheshire Cat Monologue
“Here’s what’s precise,” he said, and his voice was now the rustle of a billion unseen things. “You came looking for answers. But answers are just doors with ‘Exit’ signs painted over them. You don’t need to leave, Alice. You need to realize there was never a room.”
“Good!” He laughed, and the laugh was a physical thing—a ripple through the air that made the mushrooms sway. “Understanding is just a slower kind of madness. The fastest kind is what you’re doing right now. Pretending this is a dream so you don’t have to admit that you are the dream and Wonderland is the dreamer.” At first, he was just a grin
Silence. Then, from somewhere very close to her heart: “Now run along. The Queen has a lovely beheading scheduled for four o’clock. And do try the tarts. They’re terrible. That’s what makes them perfect.”
“That’s not helpful.”
The Duchess’s pepper-pot had long since stopped sneezing, the Queen’s croquet match had devolved into its usual charming chaos of screams and decapitations, and even the Hatter had run out of bad puns. The quiet was, for Wonderland, suspicious.