Down the Rabbit Hole

Allie had been told not to go beyond the old oak tree.

This was not, in itself, a particularly unreasonable instruction. The field beyond the oak belonged to Mr Bramley, who kept sheep, two bad-tempered geese and, according to Allie's mother, a bull. Allie had never seen the bull, although she had looked for it on several occasions. She had, however, seen the geese, and this led her to suspect that her mother had invented the bull because the geese were not considered sufficiently terrifying.

Allie was nine years old, which was old enough to understand that grown-ups sometimes lied for sensible reasons, but still young enough to consider this terribly unfair. If you wanted somebody to stay out of a field, you should simply say so. Inventing livestock seemed unnecessarily complicated.

She had tested the theory once by asking Mr Bramley whether his bull was dangerous.

"What bull?" he had replied.

Unfortunately, her mother had been standing beside her at the time.

That had resulted in one of those conversations in which Allie had somehow ended up being the person in trouble, despite being the only one who had definitely told the truth. The injustice of this remained with her.

Today, however, she was behaving impeccably.

She was sitting beneath the old oak, precisely where she had promised she would remain, with her back against its broad trunk and a book open across her knees. From there she could just see the upstairs windows of home beyond the hedge and, if she leaned sideways, the corner of the kitchen where her mother was making strawberry jam.

Jam-making had sounded considerably more interesting when Allie had volunteered to help.

She had imagined strawberries bubbling in enormous copper pots while she stirred them with a wooden spoon, occasionally being permitted to taste the results. The reality had involved washing jars, removing little green stalks and being told repeatedly not to touch things because they were hot.

After Allie had asked for the fourth time whether the jam was ready, her mother had suggested she might like to go outside and read.

Allie understood what "might like to" meant when her mother said it in that particular voice.

So here she was, sitting on the grass, lemonade on a small tray by her side and the book open in her lap.

She looked down at the book. She had read the same paragraph three times and still had no idea what it said. This was not the book's fault; there were simply far too many things happening around her for reading.

An ant was attempting to drag something approximately three times its own size across the toe of her left shoe. Allie had been watching its progress for several minutes and had decided that the ant was either exceptionally determined or exceptionally stupid. She wasn't sure whether there was a difference.

Above her, a cloud shaped rather convincingly like a teapot had spent the last ten minutes slowly becoming a duck. Somewhere in the hedge, a blackbird had been singing the same four notes over and over again and, Allie thought, was beginning to sound rather pleased with itself.

She closed the book over one finger and watched the ant.

"You're going the wrong way."

The ant ignored her. Allie moved her foot slightly so that it could continue onto the grass.

"There. Don't say I never do anything for you."

The ant immediately turned around and began heading back towards her shoe.

Allie frowned at it. "Fine."

She reopened her book. The heroine was currently exploring a ruined castle after being specifically warned not to explore the ruined castle. Allie considered this very sensible of her. There would be little point in having a ruined castle in a story if everybody obeyed the warning and stayed outside.

She read another paragraph.

A bee landed on the page. "Excuse me?" The bee walked across the word "mysterious".

Allie waited. She was quite patient, all things considered, but the bee showed no sign of moving.

"I was reading that." Apparently unimpressed by literature, the bee wandered onto the next line. Allie blew gently at it.

Apparently, the bee got the hint and flew away.

"Thank you."

She had just found her place again when her mother called from the house. "Allie?"

Allie raised her head and looked towards the house. Through the open kitchen window, she could see the top of her mother's head moving backwards and forwards, appearing and disappearing as she crossed between the cooker and the table.

"Yes, Mum?"

"You're not in Mr Bramley's field, are you?"

Allie glanced towards the hedge, although quite why she did so she wasn't sure. She was plainly sitting beneath the oak tree and therefore plainly not in Mr Bramley's field.

"No!"

"Good."

There came the unmistakable clatter of something metal being dropped, followed by a word Allie knew perfectly well but had learned was considered extremely serious when used by children and apparently perfectly acceptable when used by mothers making jam.

Allie grinned.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

Another clatter.

"Do you want a sandwich?"

Allie considered the question. Beside her, on a little wooden tray, her glass of lemonade had collected beads of water that were beginning to run together and form a small puddle around its base. There had been biscuits on the tray as well, but these had suffered an unfortunate disappearance some time ago.

"What sort?"

"What sort do you want?"

Allie thought about this carefully. One should never waste a question offering unlimited sandwiches by answering too quickly.

"Ham and cheese."

"I can do ham or cheese."

"Why can't I have both?"

"Because we've only got one slice of ham left and your dad will want it when he gets home."

Allie frowned towards the kitchen window.

"How do you know?"

"Know what?"

"That Dad will want ham?"

There was a pause.

"Because he always wants ham."

"He might want cheese today."

"He won't."

"But he might."

Another pause, slightly longer this time.

"Do you want a sandwich, Allie?"

Allie recognised that tone. It was the same one which generally appeared shortly before choices ceased to be available altogether.

"Cheese, please."

"Come and get it, then."

Allie stared at the house.

"But I'm reading."

Her mother's face appeared at the kitchen window now, flushed from the heat and with a strand of hair stuck across her forehead. She looked towards the oak tree, spotted Allie and smiled.

"You don't look as though you're reading."

Allie immediately picked up her book and held it open in front of her.

"I am."

"What page are you on?"

Allie looked down. "Forty-seven."

"What happens on page forty-seven?"

Allie glanced hurriedly at the print. "Things."

Her mother laughed. "Your sandwich is on the table."

Allie sighed in the exaggerated manner of a child upon whom a great burden has unexpectedly fallen, put her book carefully beside the tray and got to her feet.

The grass was warm against her ankles as she crossed the garden. Bees hummed lazily amongst the lavender beside the path, and from somewhere beyond the hedge came the occasional indignant honk of one of Mr Bramley's geese. Allie gave the hedge a suspicious glance as she passed. If there really was a bull over there, it was by far the quietest bull in England.

Something white moved beneath the hedge.

Allie stopped.

At first, she thought it was a scrap of paper caught amongst the leaves, but then it moved again and a small white rabbit emerged cautiously into the sunshine.

The sandwich was forgotten.

Allie had seen plenty of rabbits before. There were dozens in the fields around the house, particularly in the evenings, although they were mostly brownish-grey creatures that showed little interest in making friends with nine-year-old girls. Usually, the moment they spotted her, they flashed their white tails and vanished into the nearest hedge.

This one was different.

It was white. Not cream or pale grey, but properly, impossibly white, as though somebody had washed it that morning and hung it out in the sunshine to dry. Its ears stood straight above its head, glowing pink where the sunlight shone through them, and its nose twitched so rapidly that Allie wondered whether it was about to sneeze.

Even more unusually, it appeared to be wearing a collar. A narrow band of red velvet circled its neck, far too neat and fine for any ordinary rabbit Allie had ever seen. There was no tag or bell hanging from it, just the bright red ribbon of velvet against the snowy white fur.

Allie wondered whether it belonged to somebody. That would certainly explain why it wasn't frightened of her, although she couldn't imagine anyone putting a collar quite like that on a rabbit.

"Oh," she whispered.

The rabbit looked at her.

Allie looked back. For several seconds neither of them moved.

There was something rather wonderful about being noticed by an animal roaming the outside. Seeing one was easy enough; rabbits, foxes, squirrels and birds were everywhere if you bothered to look. Being seen by one was different. It felt as though, for just a moment, the animal had allowed you into a world that normally carried on perfectly well without you.

"Hello."

One of the rabbit's ears turned towards her.

Allie smiled. "I'm not going to hurt you."

Apparently reassured, or perhaps simply unimpressed by the threat posed by a girl on her way to collect a cheese sandwich, the rabbit remained where it was.

Allie took a careful step towards it.

The rabbit hopped backwards.

She stopped.

"So that's how we're doing this, is it?"

The rabbit twitched its nose. Allie took another step, it hopped away again, then stopped and looked back at her.

Allie frowned.

Rabbits did not do that. At least, none of the rabbits she had ever met did. They ran away. They did not run away a little bit and then turn around to check whether you were following.

She took another step.

The rabbit hopped towards the hedge, paused for a moment as though making quite certain Allie was still following, then slipped through a gap amongst the leaves.

Allie hurried after it but stopped when she reached the boundary of the garden. On the other side lay Mr Bramley's field, and only a few minutes earlier she had assured her mother, quite truthfully, that she had no intention of going into it.

"No," she said, folding her arms and addressing the gap through which the rabbit had disappeared. "You can come back here."

A white face appeared between the leaves. The rabbit regarded her with enormous dark eyes while its nose continued its endless twitching.

"I'm not allowed over there."

Whether the rabbit understood this or simply found the conversation tedious, it disappeared again.

Allie waited, peering through the hedge in the hope that it might change its mind. When nothing happened, she gave a small shrug and turned towards the house. She had taken only a couple of steps when the leaves rustled behind her.

The rabbit was back.

It sat just beyond the hedge, watching her as though Allie, rather than the rabbit, was the one behaving strangely.

"You really are a very naughty rabbit."

One of its ears flicked.

Allie looked towards the kitchen window. Her mother had disappeared from view, although Allie could still hear the occasional clatter of jam-making coming from inside. She looked back at the rabbit and considered the situation.

Her mother had told her not to go into Mr Bramley's field, and Allie had every intention of obeying her. Unfortunately, there was a small difficulty concerning exactly what constituted going into a field.

Going all the way across it would obviously count. So would wandering about in the middle. Climbing through the hedge and standing on the other side for a moment, however, seemed altogether less certain.

Allie knew perfectly well that this argument would not survive being presented to her mother. Mothers possessed a remarkable ability to find enormous holes in arguments which had seemed perfectly sound before you explained them.

Still, she wasn't going anywhere. She was only going to see where the rabbit went.

Perhaps a minute. Two at most.

Her sandwich would still be waiting when she got back.

Allie pushed aside the leaves and squeezed through the hedge.

Mr Bramley's field looked disappointingly ordinary from the forbidden side. Allie was not quite sure what she had expected, but considering the amount of effort her mother had put into keeping her out of it, she felt there ought to have been something more interesting than grass.

There were sheep, certainly, although they were gathered beneath a tree at the far end of the field and seemed unlikely to cause trouble. There were no geese that Allie could see and, more importantly, there was no bull, imaginary or otherwise.

The rabbit was already some distance ahead of her.

"Wait!"

It waited.

Allie had not expected that.

The little animal sat amongst the long grass with its ears raised, the red velvet collar making a bright ring around its neck. When Allie began walking towards it, the rabbit turned and bounded away again.

"That's cheating."

She hurried after it, trying not to run because running would make what she was doing feel much more like going into Mr Bramley's field. Walking quickly, on the other hand, was surely only an extension of standing just beyond the hedge.

The rabbit led her diagonally across the grass towards a shallow dip in the ground. Each time Allie began to think she had lost it, a flash of white appeared ahead, followed by the briefest glimpse of red as it turned to make sure she was still coming.

She looked back. The hedge was farther away than she had intended. Beyond it she could see the old oak and, through the branches, the roof of home. The kitchen window was hidden now, but she imagined her sandwich sitting on the table and wondered how long it would be before Mum called her again.

That thought ought to have sent her back.

Instead, the rabbit appeared at the top of the little rise ahead and sat looking at her.

"Oh, don't." Its nose twitched. "You know I'm going to get into trouble."

The rabbit seemed remarkably unconcerned by this possibility.

Allie sighed and continued after it.

At the bottom of the slope, the grass gave way to a narrow strip of woodland that bordered the field. Allie knew the woods were there, of course, because she could see their treetops from her bedroom window, but she had never been this close to them before. They had always been simply part of the landscape, like the church spire in the distance or the hills beyond the village, things which existed without requiring investigation.

From here, however, they looked considerably more interesting.

The trees grew close together, their branches meeting overhead and turning the summer sunlight beneath them a soft green. Ferns crowded around their trunks, and the ground was scattered with patches of tiny white flowers which Allie didn't recognise. Somewhere amongst the leaves a wood pigeon cooed solemnly to itself, while insects drifted lazily through shafts of sunlight.

The rabbit disappeared beneath the trees. Allie stopped at the edge of the wood.

This was different. Following a rabbit a little way across a field was one thing. Going into a wood she had specifically never been allowed to visit was quite another, and even the most generous interpretation of her mother's instructions was unlikely to stretch that far.

"Rabbit?"

There was no answer, which was not particularly surprising. Allie peered between the trees. A patch of white appeared beside a fallen log.

"You can stay there if you like. I'm going home."

The rabbit hopped onto the log. For the first time, Allie had an unobstructed view of the little red collar around its neck. It really was a peculiar thing for a rabbit to wear. The velvet looked almost new, and there was a tiny brass buckle beneath its chin which caught the sunlight when it moved.

Somebody must own it, and that changed things. At least, Allie decided that it changed things. If the rabbit was somebody's pet and it had escaped, then leaving it to wander about in the woods would be irresponsible. A fox might get it. Or worse, it might become lost. Perhaps there was a little girl somewhere wondering where her rabbit had gone, and Allie knew perfectly well how dreadful that would feel.

Really, going after it was almost the responsible thing to do. Allie stepped beneath the trees. The rabbit immediately jumped from the log and scampered away.

"You're not making rescuing you very easy."

She followed.

The wood was cooler than the field, and the air smelled pleasantly of damp earth and leaves. Twigs cracked beneath Allie's shoes as she picked her way between the ferns. The rabbit was always ahead of her, sometimes disappearing entirely before its white coat betrayed it again amongst the greens and browns.

Allie began to enjoy herself. This, she thought, was much more like a summer holiday. There was something exciting about being somewhere she had never been before, particularly somewhere she wasn't entirely certain she ought to be. The trees hid the field behind her now, and with it the house, the oak tree and Mr Bramley's sheep. For the first time that afternoon there was nothing familiar in sight.

She imagined telling Millie about it when she came back from Cornwall.

Of course, certain details might require improvement.

There would probably be no need to mention that the adventure had begun because Allie was supposed to be fetching a cheese sandwich. She could say that she had been exploring. Exploring sounded much better.

The rabbit darted between two enormous tree roots. Allie hurried after it and found herself in a small clearing dominated by an ancient beech tree. Its trunk was enormous, wider than Allie could have reached around even if she had possessed three or four additional arms, and its roots rose from the ground in great, twisted ridges before plunging back into the earth.

The rabbit sat between them.

"There you are."

Allie approached slowly. For once, it did not immediately run away.

"Now, if you're somebody's pet, you really ought to let me look at your collar."

She crouched and held out her hand.

The rabbit watched her.

Allie moved a little closer.

"Come on. I'm trying to help."

She was almost near enough to touch it.

The rabbit turned and vanished beneath one of the roots.

"Oh, honestly."

Allie crawled forwards and looked beneath the tree.

There was a hole.

Not a little burrow of the sort she had seen along the edges of fields, but a surprisingly large opening descending between the roots. The earth around it was smooth and dark, and the rabbit's white tail was just visible as it disappeared farther inside.

Allie stared at the hole.

Then she began to smile.

"No."

She sat back on her heels.

There were coincidences, and then there was simply being ridiculous.

A little white rabbit, wearing a red velvet collar, had led a nine-year-old girl across a field and through a wood before disappearing down a rabbit hole.

Allie knew this story.

Everybody knew this story.

She leaned forwards again and peered into the darkness.

"You're supposed to have a waistcoat."

Nothing answered.

"And a pocket watch."

She waited, rather hoping that the rabbit might reappear wearing both, because at this point she felt it would only be polite.

It did not.

Allie laughed.

She was beginning to think that this might be the best thing that had happened all summer.

The hole sloped away beneath the tree, but it did not look especially deep. She could still see the rabbit, or at least a patch of white that she assumed was the rabbit, only a little way inside.

"Come back."

The white patch moved.

Allie lowered herself onto her stomach and reached into the opening.

Her fingers touched fur.

"There!"

The rabbit shot forwards.

Allie stretched after it, pushing her arm farther into the hole while bracing herself against one of the roots with her other hand.

"Nearly got you."

The earth beneath her supporting hand crumbled.

Allie gave a small yelp and pulled backwards, but her elbow slipped into the opening and took her shoulder with it. She kicked for purchase, found some for a moment, then felt the loose soil beneath her shoe give way.

There followed a brief and rather undignified struggle involving Allie, a tree root and a fern which had done absolutely nothing to deserve being dragged into the matter.

The fern lost.

So did Allie.

She slid headfirst into the rabbit hole.

Allie discovered almost immediately that falling down a rabbit hole was considerably less graceful than books had led her to believe.

For a start, there were roots.

There were a great many roots, in fact, and almost all of them seemed determined to introduce themselves personally on the way past. One caught in her hair, another scraped along her shoulder, while a particularly inconsiderate specimen hooked itself beneath the back of her dress and held her suspended for several seconds before deciding that it had done quite enough and letting her go.

Allie dropped another few feet, landed on something soft and leafy, rolled sideways and continued her journey head over heels.

There was also an astonishing quantity of dirt.

It found its way into her hair, down the back of her dress and, somehow, into both shoes. A small stone managed to lodge itself somewhere particularly uncomfortable beneath her knickers, which Allie considered a remarkable achievement given the speed at which everything was happening.

She bounced from one side of the tunnel to the other, gathering leaves and twigs as she went, until she finally emerged from the bottom in a small avalanche of loose earth and landed with a bump upon something considerably harder than she would have preferred.

For a moment she sat there, legs spread untidily in front of her, hair covering most of her face and one shoe threatening to come off.

"Ow." It seemed the most appropriate thing to say.

Allie pushed the hair from her eyes and cautiously inspected herself. Both knees were still where knees were supposed to be, as were her elbows, although one of them had acquired a graze which looked as though it might require a plaster when she got home. Her shoulder hurt where she had struck a root, her bottom had strong opinions about the manner in which it had arrived, and the stone beneath her knickers had apparently decided to remain as a souvenir.

She wriggled.

The stone moved somewhere worse.

"Oh, for goodness' sake."

There are certain problems which can be dealt with elegantly and others which require a person to put a hand down the back of their clothes and hop about until matters improve. Fortunately, there was nobody present to observe Allie's solution, and after a brief but determined struggle, the offending stone was removed and thrown away.

It bounced twice.

Then disappeared over the edge of something.

Allie stopped. She had been so occupied with her own difficulties that she had not yet properly examined where she had landed. This was not, as she had expected, the bottom of a burrow.

The ground beneath her was smooth grey stone, worn almost shiny in places, and the tunnel behind her emerged from a wall of tangled roots and dark earth. Ahead, however, the passage continued between two rows of pale stone, curving gently away into a peculiar blue-green light.

Allie stared. Her bruised bottom was immediately forgotten.

"Wow."

There was no better word for it.

Tiny patches of luminous moss grew along the walls, glowing softly like hundreds of little night-lights. Fine silver threads hung from the ceiling, although whether they were roots, cobwebs or something else entirely was impossible to tell. Drops of water clung to them and caught the strange light, so that the whole passage glittered whenever Allie moved.

Then, at the far end of the tunnel, something white appeared.

The rabbit.

Allie scrambled to her feet.

"You!" Even to her own ears, she almost sounded a little cross.

The small white tail bobbed once as the rabbit rounded the corner. For the briefest moment Allie caught the flash of its red velvet collar, and then it was gone.

"Wait!"

Allie hurried after it, managing three steps before the loose shoe finally came off.

She went back for it.

Adventures, she decided as she pushed her foot firmly inside, involved a surprising amount of inconvenience.

The rabbit had vanished by the time she reached the bend, but Allie was not worried. She had found it before and would find it again. More importantly, she was beginning to understand something rather extraordinary.

She really had fallen down a rabbit hole.

Not a pretend rabbit hole. Not the shallow little scrape beneath the tree she had imagined it to be, but a proper one, leading somewhere that quite obviously had no business existing beneath Mr Bramley's field.

Allie grinned.

This was brilliant.

She wished Millie were here.

She wished, for perhaps half a second, that Mum was here too, although Mum would undoubtedly insist they climb straight back out again and would therefore rather spoil things.

Allie looked behind her. The hole through which she had arrived was considerably higher than she remembered.

She frowned. Perhaps getting back up might be a little difficult. Still, that was a problem for later, and later problems were generally much less interesting than present adventures.

She brushed the worst of the dirt from her dress, pulled a twig from her hair and set off after the rabbit.

The passage wound gently downwards, which Allie thought was rather unnecessary considering how far down she had already come. The glowing moss became brighter as she went, changing gradually from blue to green and then to a cheerful golden yellow. Here and there, tiny mushrooms grew from cracks in the stone, their caps no larger than shirt buttons and covered in little silver spots.

Allie bent to examine one.

It sneezed.

She jumped backwards. And the mushroom trembled.

Allie stared at it. "Did you just sneeze?"

The mushroom offered no explanation. Allie crouched again.

"Do it again."

Nothing happened. She waited… The mushroom remained obstinately mushroom-like.

"Fine."

Allie stood and continued along the passage, although she looked back twice in case it did anything interesting while it thought she wasn't watching.

Ahead, the tunnel widened. The golden light grew stronger, and with it came a breeze carrying the unmistakable smell of flowers and warm grass. Allie quickened her pace.

She rounded the final bend and stepped out into sunshine. For several seconds she could do nothing but stare.

A meadow stretched away before her beneath a sky of the most astonishing blue. Grass rippled in the breeze, dotted everywhere with flowers in colours Allie knew and several she was reasonably certain nobody had invented yet. Great curling trees stood around the edges of the meadow, their branches heavy with purple leaves, while tiny golden creatures fluttered amongst them like butterflies made from sparks.

Far away, beyond rolling green hills, towers rose into the sky; some leaned. One appeared to be upside down. Another had an enormous teapot balanced upon its roof.

Allie laughed. It was impossible not to.

She had wanted an adventure. She had followed a white rabbit down a rabbit hole, and now, quite wonderfully, she appeared to have found one.

Somewhere in the long grass ahead, a little white tail bobbed into view. Allie smiled and hurried after it. The rabbit was remarkably easy to follow across the meadow. Its white coat bobbed above the grass every few moments, and whenever the flowers grew too tall to see it properly, Allie had only to look for the flash of red velvet between the stems.

It seemed to be in rather more of a hurry now.

"Wait for me!"

The rabbit did nothing of the sort.

Allie gathered her dress slightly and hurried after it, scattering a cloud of tiny blue insects which rose around her like confetti. They sparkled in the sunlight before settling again amongst the flowers, and Allie made a mental note to tell Millie about them.

She was beginning to accumulate quite a list.

The upside-down tower would certainly require mentioning. So would the sneezing mushroom, although Allie suspected Millie might not believe that part. The rabbit itself was evidence of sorts, provided she could eventually persuade it to come home with her.

Mum might object. Mum objected to most suggestions involving animals coming home. Allie had once found a hedgehog in the garden and prepared a perfectly comfortable bed for it in her wardrobe, only to have the entire arrangement discovered before bedtime. The hedgehog had been returned to the garden despite Allie's argument that it had not actually complained.

The rabbit disappeared over the crest of a little hill and Allie followed.

At the top she stopped. The meadow continued beyond, but the flowers changed. The bright reds and yellows became smaller and paler until almost everything below her was white. Thousands of delicate blossoms covered the shallow valley ahead, nodding gently in the breeze.

Allie smiled as she walked down the slope. Then she realised that some of the white things were not flowers. A curved object lay amongst the grass beside her shoe. It was smooth and pale, rather like a stick which had been left too long in the sun.

Allie bent to look at it. It was a bone.

"Oh."

She straightened and noticed another a little farther away.

Then another.

Once she knew what she was looking for, they seemed to be everywhere. Bones nestled amongst the flowers as naturally as fallen branches. Long ones lay half-hidden beneath the grass, while smaller pieces had gathered in little hollows where the wind had apparently rolled them together. A skull rested beneath a patch of daisies with several of the flowers growing cheerfully through one empty eye socket.

Allie approached it cautiously. It was much too large to belong to a rabbit.

She knew that immediately. It was also the wrong shape for a person, which made her feel considerably better. There were horns, at least, Allie thought they were horns. They curled backwards from the skull in elegant spirals, and something green and feathery had made a nest inside one of them.

"Sheep," Allie decided seriously.

Mr Bramley's sheep did not have horns like that, but there was no reason sheep here should be obliged to resemble Mr Bramley's. The explanation seemed perfectly satisfactory.

Then she noticed the crows. There were perhaps twenty of them sitting along the branches of a tree at the bottom of the valley. All of them were watching her.

Allie stopped walking and looked at them. “Curious.” She thought it was a very grown-up way to approach the subject of crows.

The crows did not move.

She had seen groups of birds plenty of times before, of course. Starlings gathered on telephone wires, gulls gathered anywhere somebody had chips, and pigeons appeared to gather simply because another pigeon had done so first.

But these crows were different. They were arranged along the branches in neat black rows, their heads turned towards her.

One tilted its head, a second copied it, and then all the others did the same.

Allie laughed uncertainly.

"Hello."

The crows continued watching. She remembered something her teacher, Mrs Carter, had told the class during a lesson about collective nouns.

A group of lions was a pride; owls were a parliament. Geese were a gaggle, which Allie thought suited Mr Bramley's perfectly.

And crows...

Allie frowned. Then she remembered.

"A murder." The word sounded rather peculiar here.

She looked at the birds. "You're called a murder of crows," she informed them.

One of the crows gave a quiet croak of agreement.

Allie wondered who had decided that. Perhaps somebody simply hadn't liked crows very much. It did seem unfair. Nobody called a group of robins a massacre or a collection of sparrows a stabbing.

She continued down the hill. The crows followed her with their eyes, though Allie tried not to notice.

The bones became more numerous as she went, although most were clearly from animals. There were antlers, horns and long, narrow skulls with impressive teeth. One enormous ribcage rose from the grass like the remains of a little white boat, and Allie paused to admire it.

Whatever had owned those ribs must have been enormous.

Perhaps there were dragons here. That was an exciting thought.

It became a slightly less exciting thought when Allie considered where the dragon might be now. She walked a little faster.

Ahead, the white rabbit appeared inside the enormous ribcage.

"There you are!" It looked back at her; the red collar flashed brightly against its fur.

Then the rabbit bounded through the curved bones and disappeared into the flowers beyond. Allie hurried towards it.

As she passed beneath the tree, every crow took flight at once. The sudden thunder of wings made her duck and throw her arms over her head. Black shapes filled the air above her, circling once before sweeping across the valley in a great dark cloud.

Allie watched them go. "Well, that was rude."

A single crow remained. It sat on the lowest branch and looked down at her. Something pale hung from its beak.

Allie squinted. For a moment she thought it was a worm. Then the crow tipped back its head and swallowed. Allie could not be certain, but the little pale object had looked remarkably like a finger.

The crow ruffled its feathers.

Allie stared at it. "No."

The crow stared back.

"That wasn't a finger."

The crow offered no opinion on the matter. Allie decided that it had probably been a worm after all. There were bound to be unusual worms in a place with sneezing mushrooms and upside-down towers, and some of them might quite reasonably have little knobbly bits on the ends and a bright pink tip that reminded her of the nail polish Millie liked to use when they dressed up as princesses.

This explanation was not quite as satisfactory as the sheep. Nevertheless, it would have to do.

Allie looked for the rabbit and, rather conveniently, a patch of white moved amongst the flowers ahead. She hurried after it, while behind her the last crow spread its wings and followed.

The crow proved to be rather better at following Allie than Allie was at following the rabbit.

Whenever she glanced back, it was there. Sometimes it flew lazily overhead, keeping pace with her, while at other times it settled upon a convenient branch or rock and waited for her to catch up. Allie began to suspect that it had taken an interest in her, which was flattering in a way, although she would have preferred to attract the attention of something that had not recently swallowed a worm with painted fingernails.

"Don't you have crow things to do?"

The crow landed on the bleached antler of something long dead and gave her a thoughtful look.

Ahead, the white flowers thinned, and the meadow began to climb. The rabbit remained visible only in glimpses now, bouncing in and out of the longer grass as it made for another line of trees.

"You're going into another wood?"

The rabbit naturally did not consult her on the matter.

Allie followed, although not quite so quickly as before. Her knees had begun to remind her of their journey down the rabbit hole, and the graze on her elbow was starting to sting. More importantly, she was beginning to wonder how long she had been gone.

It was difficult to tell. The sun still hung high in the wonderfully blue sky and showed no particular inclination to move anywhere. Perhaps time worked differently here. It often did in stories.

That was rather convenient.

Allie imagined returning home after an enormous adventure to discover that only five minutes had passed. Mum would still be making jam, her sandwich would still be waiting, and she could spend the rest of the afternoon deciding whether to tell anyone what had happened.

She probably wouldn't.

Nobody would believe her.

Dad might, although Dad had once claimed to have met Father Christmas in a pub in Portsmouth, so his standards of evidence were not especially demanding.

The rabbit disappeared amongst the trees. Allie reached the edge of the wood a few moments later and peered inside. This one was quite different from the wood beside Mr Bramley's field.

The trees were taller, for a start, with smooth silver-grey trunks that rose almost perfectly straight before disappearing into a roof of dark leaves. They grew so closely together that very little sunlight reached the ground, and what did arrive came in narrow golden shafts filled with drifting specks of dust.

Allie stepped beneath the branches. It was pleasantly cool after the meadow. The ground was soft with fallen leaves, and tiny pale flowers grew around the roots of the trees. Some were shaped like little bells, while others resembled stars and gave off a faint blue glow in the shadows. Allie bent to smell one and discovered that it had the rather unexpected scent of toast.

She smelled another… Strawberries. The next smelled distinctly of her mother's washing-up liquid.

Allie laughed. "That's silly."

She was tempted to continue along the row to see what all the others smelled like, but a movement farther between the trees reminded her that she was supposed to be following the rabbit.

The crow landed above her. "You again."

It shuffled along the branch.

Allie looked for the rabbit, pointedly doing her best to ignore her feathered stalker.

There. A flash of white passed between two trees perhaps thirty yards ahead. She followed.

The wood became darker as she went, although it remained full of interesting things. Little clusters of luminous mushrooms grew amongst the roots, and delicate silver webs stretched between the lower branches. One web was large enough to cover Allie's bedroom window.

She admired it from a sensible distance. The spider responsible was nowhere to be seen, and Allie thought this was probably for the best. Anything capable of making a web that size might require considerably more newspaper than her father generally used when removing spiders from the bath.

As she walked on the trees gradually changed. Their smooth trunks became darker and more twisted, and great roots rose from the ground like sleeping animals before plunging back beneath the leaves. The cheerful little flowers became less common, although here and there one still glowed bravely in the gloom.

The rabbit appeared again. It was closer this time.

"Got you!"

Allie hurried forwards. The rabbit did not look back. Until now it had always paused to make sure she was following, but this time it ran straight ahead, its little body low to the ground and its ears flattened backwards.

Allie slowed.

"Rabbit?"

It disappeared behind a tree.

She ran to catch up as something rustled in the undergrowth to her right. Allie looked towards it.

Nothing moved.

"Hello?"

The crow above her gave a sudden harsh cry, making Allie jump.

"Oh! Don't do that."

The bird launched itself from the branch and flew ahead, disappearing between the trees.

Allie watched it go. "Fine. Goodbye." She continued after the rabbit.

The wood had become very quiet. Allie hadn't noticed at first because she had been listening for the rabbit, but the little sounds which had accompanied her through the forest had disappeared. There were no insects humming amongst the flowers, no birds calling overhead and none of the gentle rustling she had heard earlier.

Even the leaves seemed to have stopped moving, which was particularly odd because Allie could still feel the breeze against her face.

Allie could hear her own footsteps. She could also hear something else. A soft thudding came from somewhere ahead, quick and irregular.

She frowned. "Rabbit?" The sound stopped.

Allie waited. For several seconds there was nothing. Then came a noise unlike anything she had heard before.

It was high and thin and terribly loud in the stillness of the wood, a shriek so sudden that Allie jumped and clapped both hands over her ears. The sound came again.

This time she knew it was an animal. Something was frightened.

Very frightened.

"Rabbit!" Allie ran.

She forgot her sore knees and the graze on her elbow and hurried between the trees, following the sound. Branches caught at her dress and leaves slid beneath her shoes, but she kept going.

The shrieking stopped.

Allie stopped too.

"Rabbit?" she called out quietly.

Silence answered.

She looked around. The trees stood close together here, their branches so thick overhead that only scraps of sunlight found their way through. The glowing flowers had disappeared entirely.

Allie took another step. "Where are you?"

Something red lay amongst the leaves.

She stared at it.

For one hopeful moment she thought it was a flower. Then she recognised the velvet.

Allie walked towards it slowly. The rabbit's collar lay on the ground. Its tiny brass buckle was still fastened, which did seem peculiar.

Allie bent and picked it up. The velvet was damp. There was white fur caught around the buckle.

"Oh." She turned it over in her hand.

One end of the red velvet was darker than the other, almost brown in the poor light, and when Allie touched it with her thumb, it left a sticky smear across her skin.

She stared at the mark. Perhaps the rabbit had hurt itself.

That would explain the screaming. It did not quite explain how a fastened collar had come off.

Allie looked amongst the trees. "Rabbit?"

Something purred.

Allie stopped and smiled, dropping the collar as she looked around. It was a lovely sound. Deep and warm, the sort of contented rumble made by a very large and particularly comfortable cat.

Allie looked around.

"Hello?"

The purring stopped.

Allie laughed despite herself. A small laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.

Of course there would be a cat. There had to be.

A white rabbit, a rabbit hole and now a cat. She knew exactly what sort of cat ought to live in a place like this.

"Are you hiding?" Nothing answered. She was not really sure why she expected animals to answer, but in all her years she had always somehow known they could if they wanted to.

Allie peered into the shadows. Then she saw the smile.

It hung between two trees perhaps twenty feet away. A broad white grin floated in the darkness with nothing whatsoever attached to it.

Allie's eyes widened.

"No way." The grin grew wider.

Allie laughed.

She had forgotten all about the sticky collar on the ground behind her.

"I know who you are." The smile remained exactly where it was.

Allie stepped closer. This was wonderful.

It was really, actually wonderful.

She had always liked the cat best. Another step brought her near enough for a little more light to reach the grin.

That was when Allie noticed the teeth. There were an astonishing number of them. They were beautifully white, certainly, and wonderfully clean apart from one or two little reddish stains around the gums, but they were not the broad, square teeth Allie remembered from the pictures in her book.

These teeth were pointed. Every one of them. Long, slender points overlapped one another inside the enormous smile, rather like the teeth of a shark, if a shark had possessed the good manners to smile before eating you.

Allie stopped. The grin moved forwards, and something enormous moved with it.

Black fur emerged from the darkness so gradually that Allie realised the creature had been there all along. It was simply so dark that its body had disappeared against the shadows.

Two yellow eyes opened above the smile.

Allie took a step backwards, and her heel brushed against something in the leaves. She glanced down and saw the little red collar she had dropped only moments before. Then back at the creature. The cat licked its lips. Its tongue was surprisingly pink. Caught between two of those splendid white teeth was a tiny tuft of fur.

The purring began again. Allie stared at the little tuft of fur. It was white.

There were, she knew, plenty of white things in the world. Clouds were white. Milk was white. So were daisies, polar bears and several of Mum's towels before Dad accidentally washed them with a red sock.

There was absolutely no reason for a piece of white fur caught between a cat's teeth to have anything whatsoever to do with a white rabbit.

Except for the collar at her feet… And the screaming… And the reddish stains around the cat's mouth.

Allie felt a little cross. "Did you eat the rabbit?"

The cat's grin widened. It was a remarkably expressive grin.

Allie took one step backwards.

The cat took one forwards.

It really was an extraordinary animal. Now that it had emerged from the shadows, Allie could see that it was considerably larger than any cat had a right to be. Its shoulders would have reached almost to her waist, and its black coat was so thick and glossy that the few scraps of light penetrating the branches seemed to disappear into it.

Under other circumstances, Allie would very much have liked to stroke it. These were not other circumstances.

She took another step backwards.

The cat followed.

"Nice kitty."

The cat purred. Allie had always thought purring meant that a cat was happy. She still thought so. That was rather the problem.

The cat lowered its head.

Allie ran. There are few dignified ways to run through a forest when one is nine years old, wearing a dress and being pursued by something with enough teeth to supply an entire family of crocodiles. Allie did not waste time searching for one.

She ran as fast as she could. Branches caught at her hair and scratched her arms. Her shoes slipped on leaves, her lungs began to hurt, and the graze on her elbow, which had behaved quite reasonably recently, decided that this was an excellent moment to start stinging again.

Behind her came the soft thump of paws.

Allie did not look back. This was sensible. Then she looked back.

This was not.

The cat was perhaps thirty feet behind her, moving between the trees with enormous, effortless bounds. Its yellow eyes never left her and, most impressively of all, it continued smiling as it ran.

Allie gave a dignified yelp and faced forwards again.

A fallen tree lay across the path. She scrambled over it, caught her dress on a broken branch and heard the fabric tear. Ordinarily this would have been a matter of considerable concern, particularly as Mum had specifically told her to be careful with that dress.

At present, Allie felt Mum might be persuaded to overlook it.

She landed on the other side and ran on. The forest grew darker with trees rushing past on either side. Allie had no idea where she was going and increasingly little interest in finding out, provided wherever it was contained fewer cats.

The footsteps behind her stopped.

Allie kept running. After another dozen yards she realised she could no longer hear anything following. She slowed.

Then stopped.

Her chest heaved as she listened.

Nothing.

Allie leaned against a tree and tried to breathe quietly, which proved difficult because her lungs had apparently decided breathing should now involve enormous gulping noises.

Perhaps the cat had given up.

That seemed unlikely.

Perhaps it had gone back to finish the rabbit.

That seemed worse.

Allie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and discovered that at some point she had begun crying.

"I want Mum." It was the first time she had said it aloud, possibly because the adventure had lost a considerable amount of its charm.

Allie looked around.

The forest offered no useful suggestions. She had no idea where the tunnel was. She had no idea where the field of bones was. She did not even know which direction she had come from.

A drop of water landed on her cheek. Allie looked up. Although the sky was hidden from view, there was no sign of rain.

There was, however, a grin. It hung from the branch directly above her.

Allie made a very unladylike sound.

The cat dropped.

She ran before it reached the ground. This time there was no path at all. Allie crashed through ferns and bushes, ducked beneath branches and squeezed between trees wherever the gaps looked too narrow for the creature behind her.

The cat seemed to find this tremendous fun.

Sometimes Allie heard it behind her. Sometimes she saw its yellow eyes amongst the trees to her left. Once she was quite certain the grin appeared ahead of her before vanishing and reappearing somewhere else entirely.

This struck Allie as cheating. "Go away!"

The cat did not.

Then, between the trees, Allie saw a light. Not blue mushroom-light or the strange glow of the flowers.

Yellow light… Warm light.

A window. Allie didn’t really have to think very hard. She ran towards it.

More lights appeared as she drew closer, little golden lanterns hanging amongst the branches. The trees thinned and opened onto a garden enclosed by a neat little fence. At its centre stood the most wonderfully peculiar house Allie had ever seen.

It had three storeys, although none appeared to agree about where the others ought to be. The roof leaned considerably to one side, the chimney leaned considerably to the other, and every window was a different shape. Smoke curled cheerfully from the chimney, and flower boxes overflowed beneath the windows.

Best of all, somebody was home.

A long table stood in the garden beneath strings of lanterns.

It was laid for tea. There were cakes, and sandwiches. There were tiny, iced buns with cherries on top, plates of biscuits, bowls of strawberries and at least four different teapots.

Allie could have cried at the sight of the sandwiches alone. A man stood at the far end of the table arranging cups. He wore a long green coat, a bright waistcoat and an enormous top hat decorated with ribbons, feathers and what appeared to be a teaspoon.

Allie knew him immediately.

"Help!"

The man looked up.

Allie scrambled over the little gate. "Please! There's a cat!"

The Hatter hurried towards her.

"My goodness!" He caught her by the shoulders as she almost collided with him. Allie clung to his coat.

"There's something chasing me. It ate the rabbit, and it has these horrible teeth and—"

"There, there." His voice was wonderfully gentle.

Allie began crying properly. The Hatter put an arm around her shoulders and guided her towards the table.

"You poor little thing. Look at the state of you."

"I'm lost."

"Then you have been extremely fortunate to find somewhere."

This seemed perfectly logical to Allie.

He pulled out a chair. "Sit."

Allie sat.

The Hatter poured tea into a delicate china cup decorated with tiny blue flowers.

"Sugar?"

"Two, please."

"Excellent choice."

He added three, but Allie was too tired to object.

"Milk?"

"Yes, please." The Hatter poured milk and pushed the cup towards her.

"Drink."

Allie wrapped both hands around it. The tea was warm and sweet and quite possibly the best thing she had ever tasted. The Hatter selected a sandwich from a silver tray.

"Cheese?"

Allie stared at it.

"Yes."

He placed two on her plate.

That nearly made her cry again. "Mum made me a cheese sandwich."

"Did she?"

"I was going to get it."

"Then you have had a remarkably long journey to the table."

Allie gave a watery little laugh. She liked him. That was perhaps the nicest thing about finding the Hatter. He was exactly the sort of person she had expected to find here: peculiar, certainly, but kind.

The cat was somewhere outside the garden, and Allie was safe.

She ate half a sandwich in three bites.

"Slowly," said the Hatter. "We have all the time in the world."

Allie looked around the table. There were twelve chairs and every place was set.

"Are other people coming?"

The Hatter followed her gaze. "People are always coming."

That was an odd answer.

Allie noticed that each cup was different. Hers had blue flowers. The one beside it was yellow with little painted bees. Something had been scratched into the yellow cup. Allie leaned closer.

LUCY.

The cup beyond it had a name too.

JAMES.

Then EMILY.

THOMAS.

SOPHIE.

Allie looked around the table.

"Whose are these?"

"Whose are what?"

"The cups."

The Hatter smiled.

"Everyone has a cup."

Allie looked at her own but there was nothing written on it. She felt strangely pleased about that.

Something beneath the table touched her ankle, making her give a little jump. She looked down. A small shoe lay beneath the chair beside her. It was blue, with a silver buckle.

There was no foot in it, which was certainly preferable to the alternative, although Allie couldn't help wondering where the other shoe had gone.

She bent to pick it up.

"Leave that, please."

Allie straightened. "Sorry."

His smile returned. "No harm done."

Allie put both hands around her teacup. From somewhere beyond the garden came a purr. Her cup rattled against its saucer as Allie looked towards the trees.

"No."

The Hatter continued arranging cakes.

"It's here."

"Pardon?"

"The cat."

The purring grew louder.

Allie stood. "We have to go inside."

The Hatter looked towards the forest. Two yellow eyes opened between the trees. Then came the grin. Allie backed away from the table.

"Please."

The cat stepped into the lantern light. Blood still stained its very wonderful and very sharp teeth. Allie grabbed the Hatter's sleeve.

"That's it! That's the thing that ate the rabbit!"

The Hatter looked at the cat. For several seconds he said nothing. Then his face brightened.

"Ah!" He removed his hat and placed it carefully upon the table. "There you are."

Allie stopped. The cat purred as the Hatter smiled at it.

"I was beginning to wonder where you'd got to."

Allie slowly released his sleeve.

The Hatter reached into his coat pocket. What he removed was small, and red, and velvet. Allie stared at a little collar lying across his palm. It was identical to the one she had left in the forest.

The Hatter looked at Allie. Then at the empty, blue-flowered cup in front of her.

"Now then," he said pleasantly, "we really ought to put your name on that."

Behind Allie, the garden gate clicked shut.