The Passage

A cool ribbon of wind slithered between the palmetto leaves and pine trees, over the parked cars in the driveway, through the screen door and over the head of a very bored eight year old girl named Sierra. She pet her cat, Lucky, and said to him, "I'm going outside, but you can't come." She then popped onto her feet, leaving poor Lucky to roll into the crease of the couch, and she fluttered onto the front porch. She raised her face into the sun, pleased that the icy wind of winter was transforming into a more Floridian spring. Her plastic pink shoe buckled under the weight of her foot as she begged time to bring her some sort of entertainment. She gasped, "Bored, bored, bored," with the inner edges of her breath.

"Can we go to the park," she called out to her mom with a sideways glance toward the kitchen area of the house.

"I don't know. We'll see," called back a busy mom.

"We'll see," returned Sierra. "That means, no," she whined, burying her gaze into the still brownish grass that carpeted her front yard.

A mystical looking woodpecker with a white head and a red stripe on its face slid down from the clouds right near Sierra. It looped back up toward the tops of the trees and disappeared into the woods. An echo of drumming spilled out from the path it took, to which Sierra decided to secure the binoculars to see if she could find him between the slender trunks of pines and short stocky palm trees. She followed the sound, planting a pair of binoculars to her deep brown, hungry eyes. As she scoured the trees, she found herself wandering in paths between trees in her yard while navigating through the lenses of the binoculars. In a startling moment, she tripped on something soft. Lucky snuck out when she was pondering an escape to the park. Sierra bent herself downward to pet him when the glare of a not-so-outsidy thing beckoned the turn of her eyes.

Sierra turned toward the overgrowth, and there before the strangling grasp of muscadine vines, she saw a very new looking book opened to some page in the middle. Sierra shed the binoculars and scooted to the book. She sank down to see what kind of book it was. It was a big book; the size book that big kids and grown-ups read. There were no pictures, and the words were small. The top of the page had the chapter title, ""A Mad Tea Party." She decided to try biting into the words on the page left open by either the force of wind or the magic of the day.

"There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and the talking over its head. `Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse,' thought Alice; `only, as it's asleep, I suppose it doesn't mind.'

The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it: `No room! No room!' they cried out when they saw Alice coming. `There's PLENTY of room!' said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table."

Sierra curled her eyebrows in discontent. She wasn't interested in reading a book with words she did not understand. She wasn't sure some of the words were even words. "Gibberish," she fumed, then trotted back to the house while summoning her mom to examine Sierra's new find.
"Mom, look," she bellowed.

"Just a minute," squeaked her mom, who was changing Sierra's baby brother's very full diaper. Sierra's mom was accustomed to being shown very simple happenings by her very observant little girl. "Look at how I chew my gum," and "Look at the way this leaf has fallen," are common Sierra-esque exclamations. Sierra's mom was not in a hurry to unearth the newest of curiosities, but she wrapped baby Dane up in his diaper and clothes, scooped him onto her hip and said, "Alright, what is it, Sierra."

Sierra trailed her uninterested mom through the sinews of pine-needle paths to the clearing in the yard where an open book displayed its contents with an eager grin. "See, mom. I found a book," said Sierra as she spread her hand toward her mystical find. Her mother cocked her head to the side, knelt by the book and sighed.

"Where did you get this book?" She asked.

"I'm telling you, mom, I found it here."

"Hmm, that's odd."

"Do you think someone put it here?" Asked Sierra.

"Maybe the fairies brought it for you," exhaled Mom.

Sierra had nearly forgotten about the fairies. When she was smaller, the fairies left her gifts wrapped in glitter-tinged chiffon. Her mom and grandmom told her about Evening Kiss, the night fairy who wanted little children to get to bed on time so that they can have lovely dreams and peaceful rest. Evening Kiss wove webs of rainbows and danced in the starlight. One night she left a pretty card by Sierra's night stand that had a picture of the mysterious Evening Kiss. "Are the fairies real, Mom?" Sierra asked, giving a slanted smile. Her fists were clenched onto the belief that they most certainly were real, but her little maturing mind was beginning to analyze the nature of humanity. Sometimes people say things just to be nice, she conceded to herself. Sometimes dads mean to send a gift on Christmas, but don't have the resources to send them until February, and sometimes people we visit say it's okay to ask for anything we want even though they might not want to give away their favorite chocolates.

"Why would the fairies give me a book?" Sierra mumbled. "They used to give me pretty things and candy. They should know I like to read about Junie B. Jones and Captain Underpants. I never even heard of this Alice girl."

"Maybe they want you to read this book," quipped her mom.

"Read it?"

"Yes, Sierra. Read the book."

"Can I have some macaroni with cheese?" probed the easily distracted Sierra.

"Read the book until lunchtime."

Sierra saw the book as an immensely trying task. Sierra surmised that fairies cannot exist, so why should she labor over crazy words in a book her mom obviously planted beneath the trees. Or did she? Sierra reflected on the whereabouts of her mom during the day. Her Step-Dad was inside, too. It's possible that her mom just thought the fairies brought the book, but if they didn't, then who did?

Sierra curled herself into the corner of her front porch with the book. Sierra followed Alice down the rabbit hole, to the hall with the many doors. She experienced the whimsical garden. All the while, Sierra pondered the ridiculousness of such a story. 'What a baby story,' she thought to herself. Rabbits don't wear clothes, and things don't make you shrink and grow. Sierra hesitantly continued reading until she finally understood the conflict within Alice at the passage that read, "Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way."

Just then, Sierra got the mind to make something come to life. From the book, Sierra ripped some pages from the binding. She ran into the house and grabbed her scissors. She sauntered to her mysterious find, and began clipping shapes from the pages. She made flowers and wings. She made fairy wings. Then, she stuck the flowers to various sticks she found on the ground. She was most pleased with the shape of her fairy wings. They looked just like butterfly wings, and so she attached them to pine needles and vines and hung them from an old oak tree branch hanging just over the spot where she found the book. Bits and scraps from various pages fluttered in the wind below Sierra's completely real rendition of some fairy laden wonderland.

Her landscape was frozen, save for the movement created by the wind. Nobody was singing or dancing, and the butterfly fairies were swinging in circles instead of venturing into some new leafy cove. While Sierra was impressed with the wonderland she'd created, she began to feel heavy with the oncoming surge of boredom. Her thoughts fell slowly into the design of the small letters strung across each flower petal and each fairy wing, and she indulged herself in discovering which texts were preserved in her scenic mosaic.

Unfolding one fairy wing, Sierra read, "Alice looked all round her at the flowers and the blades of grass, but she did not see anything that looked like the right thing..." One flower exclaimed, "I think, you out to tell me who YOU are, first.'" Another fairy chastised her with the words, "`Keep your temper,'" A small triangle of clipping shared, "Of the mushroom,' said the Caterpillar"

Sierra conjectured that she might have enjoyed finding out what these phrases meant. A small drop of regret moistened her lips. Then, she heard her mother calling through the opened screen door.

"Macaroni's ready."

Sierra quickly collected the small shapes of pages she'd left on the earth, but left her frozen scene to mimic reality under the overhang of nature. She sat by the couch to eat her macaroni when her mom asked, "So, how far did you get?"

"I didn't go anywhere," responded Sierra.

"In the book," Sierra's mom quipped.

"Oh," said Sierra, feeling heat pour into her cheeks. "I read the first chapter and started thinking about it."

Her mom shrugged her shoulders in approval, then asked, "What's your favorite part so far? I don't think I've read that book."

"That Alice was expecting unexpected things. She gets bored like I do." Sierra knew her mom had read the book, and she was feeling the unease of understanding that she and her mom were conversing in a world of unrealities. Her mom did in fact read the story, and Sierra was not in fact reading the story, nor was she contemplating reading the story.

Sierra's mom glanced outside the window where she could plainly see the paper flowers and paper wings blowing in the wind. "Did you see any of the fairies?" she asked turning back to Sierra.
Sierra fell into a cemented silence for a few lingering seconds. She did hear things in the woods while cutting the whimsical, weird story into bits and pieces. She knew there were squirrels and birds, but she also knew that she might then, and forever possibly experience real life fairies. She's never known for sure if Alice fell asleep or actually experienced some talking rabbit. Fairies might exist, even if they didn't bring her the book. It was a strange yet harmless juxtaposition for Sierra. She looked at her mom, her big brown eyes saturated with both innocence and knowledge, and said, "I heard Evening Kiss, and I saw the edge of her wings as she flew behind the tops of those trees."