Alice 2
Written by Dan Oles
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Through the windows of my laboratory, I can glimpse the garden ward. Nurse D- is leading a group of children to the airing room. I listen to great shuffling of feet on the pebble path. Will Alice, I wonder, ever stroll the grounds with the others? Will she ever regain her senses? Or, for the rest of her days will she remain cloistered behind these thick, grey walls? Based on her progress so far, it seems futile to hold out much hope for a cure.

"Little could I have imagined her mind would eventually gambol in unimaginable forests and gardens.”
-
From the papers of Nurse Madeline Sharpe: 27/1/74
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Part 2: Which Dreamed it?

Snow.
The cold seeped into her as she became aware of it on waking.
The floor was painful to walk on with her bare feet, and it was slow going to pull on her winter things.
In the dinning car she sipped her tea thoughtfully, watching the blurring countryside shrouded in white as it moved past the window. She wasn’t very hungry and although she had slept for several hours, she did not feel particularly well rested.
Far from it.
Her endurance drained only compounded her grim and growing annoyance at this trip, perhaps a fool’s errand. Lorina was certainly not in the mood for the young girl who tugged on her dress.
“Who are you?” she asked.
The girl stopped her tugging and stared at Lorina.
After a protracted silence, Lorina tried again.
“What is your name?”
The little girl shook her head. She had golden locks, which jostled as she did so.
Lorina went back to finishing her tea, and felt another tug.
“Excuse me.” Lorina said, glowering at the empty seat opposite her “I am not your mother! Please leave me alone.”
At long last the train squealed into the lonely station: an outpost between the bare country and the civilized lands beyond. Snow fell like ashes from a leaden sky. Lorina unfolded her brolly and raised it high.
“Bloody hell...”
Normally Lorina was loath to use such an unladylike turn of phrase.
She had suspected herself alone this far out, and in such weather, but although the cold and drab surrounds of the crumbling station were mostly empty, entirely they were not.
The little girl was staring at her intently.
“Goodness, your parents were be worried sick!”
The little girl shook her head.
“Of course they will, silly.” Lorina’s hurried steps echoed as she made her way to stand beside the other “Poor dear, how did you come to be lost?”
The child laughed; a shuddery not altogether healthy sound.
She was shaking with the cold.
Lorina drew off her sash and laid it across the girl’s shoulders, tucking it under her arms to keep it wrapped tightly. The girl looked up and smiled.
“Thank you, mother.” The little girl said.
Lorina’s eyes widened.
“Oh no.” were her first words after “No…no…”
The girl knitted her brow.
“I’m not your mother, silly!” Lorina stammered “Your mother is probably still on the train, and she’s going to hate me for keeping a sweet child like you from her! We’ll have to get you home soon…”
“I am home.” The girl said in a whisper.
She pressed the sash in her small hands and sighed. The sigh sounded to Lorina’s ears like peace. It made her smile to think of it.
“You are not.” Lorina said, firmly. “But that is where we’re going when the train comes back! You wouldn’t tell me your name before, but now you’ll have to so I can know who your parents are and send you back.”
“I don’t have a name.”
“Nonsense. Everyone has a name.”
The girl looked up, her eyes as green as Lorina’s.
“You haven’t given one to me yet, mother.”
They looked hard into each other’s eyes for a long moment.
Eventually Lorina shook her head.
“Come, we’ll see if we can’t find the station manager.”
“You won’t find him.” The child said, frowning, “and I shan’t leave this platform until you give me a name.”
“Oh, no?”
The girl stood her ground, folded her arms and looked so imperious that Lorina couldn’t help but laugh.
“No.” the girl said.
“I’ll call you Bridgette then.”
The girl shook her head.
“It must be a good name, mother. It will be my name everafterwards, and it must be a thoughtful name. Do you know what Bridgette means, mother?”
“Lorina.” Lorina muttered.
“That’s not what it means.”
“That’s not what I meant!”
Lorina took a deep breath to calm herself.
“I mean…that’s my name. Call me that and not ‘mother’ if you please.”  
“Why, mother?”
“Because…I’d rather you did.”
“Okay, mother.” The child nodded “I mean Lorina.”
“Thank you.”
“But what’s my name then?”
“Abagail. That’s a nice name.”
“But it doesn’t mean anything.”
“Neither does Lorina.”
The girl shot Lorina through with a very curious expression.
“It meant something to your mother.”
Lorina thought. Originally it was a hunt for a plausible excuse from the whole situation, but as the wheels began to turn names began to flood her mind. One in particular fought for attention, but she kept forcing it under again. That name was special.
Another name floated to the surface and she said it aloud.
“Alice.”
“I like it.” The little girl said.
Lorina opened her eyes, not remembering having closed them.
“That’s my sister’s name.”
“Oh.” The girl looked downcast. “I’d rather have a new name, not one already attached to someone else.”
She consented at last.
“Aceline.” Lorina said, with something like regret “I name you Aceline. It means ‘little noble sort’.”
“I like Alice better.” Aceline said. “But Aceline is fun to say!”
“I’ve always liked the name. It’s French I believe.” Lorina thought on it “I was going to name my child Aceline. I always loved the sound, and the meaning.”
“I don’t understand,” said Aceline “You have named me that!”
“Let’s find the station manager.” Lorina muttered.
She felt a small cold hand creep between her fingers, and take hold of her own.
Together they walked the length of the platform. In the stillness the snow could actually be heard hitting the frozen earth.
There was no station manager or attendants or anyone at all to be found after much searching as Aceline had predicted. The only other person to be found was a surly handsome cab driver who was futily trying to light his pipe just beyond the lip of the station platform. Upon seeing Lorina and Aceline he hurriedly stuffed the pipe into his pocket, cocked his top hat, and brushed down his jacket as well as adopting what he considered to be an ingratiating smile.
“Welcome to you miss…and the lady.” The driver said in his heavy accent “Are you in need of transport to the village just beyond? I’m the only cab I know of.”
Fatigue and cold had rendered Lorina in a less then hospitable frame of mind. Instead of saying anything she just fished in her wallet, produced the fare, and stepped on board, leading Aceline after.
“My first cab ride!” Aceline said with a smile.
“The village it is.” The drvier grumbled, taking his seat.
Then, in a lower voice only barely audible: “No where else to go in this godforsaken place…”
Outside the window the lanterns lit a blinding, curling curtain of snow. Beyond there seemed to be nothing but darkness.
“Teach me a song, mother!” Aceline bounced up and down on her seat with glee “You know so many, and I don’t know a one! Please, teach me a song?”   
“But I’m tired…” Lorina groaned.
Aceline stopped bouncing.
“You look very sad, Lorina.”
The driver barked his orders and the crack of his whip split the night.
They were moving, both of them rocking side to side, side by side.
Aceline reached up and began to play with Lorina’s hair.
“It’s golden like mine,” she said.
“I suppose it is.” Lorina murmured.
“Have you lost something, Lorina?”
“Yes.” Lorina said, “I came here to find it again.”
“Where did you lose it, Lorina?”
Lorina peered into the darkness and whirling white. No details, like a blank canvas.
“Somewhere beyond here.” Lorina said, “It’s a terrible place.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me as well, Aceline.”
Aceline licked her lips and folded her hands in her lap.
Lorina stopped staring into the darkness and looked over at the little girl. Odd. She was dressed in a fine play dress, the color of sunflowers. She had blue ribbons in her hair and the more Lorina looked, the more Aceline began to remind her of something she eventually placed her finger on. On the mantle back home was a picture she liked to look at on occasion, a picture of her mother as a young girl.
Aceline could have walked out of that picture. The effect was a little disturbing, but surprisingly not unpleasant. Lorina felt like to see Aceline was to look back into the past, to see what the mother she could now barely remember must have been like as a child.
“Am I dreaming, mother?” Aceline asked, not looking up.
Lorina didn’t answer.
“I remember…” Aceline continued softly, “nothing else. Not since I found you on the train and tried to make you understand. I couldn’t speak until you taught me to. I didn’t have a name until you gave me one. All I know is…you’re my mother, Lorina. That’s everything.”
Aceline turned to Lorina, tears in her emerald eyes.
“If you’re not, I don’t know what I am” she said, her voice quivering “That’s everything I know, and without that…”
She hung her head.
“Maybe you’re the one that’s dreaming.” Aceline muttered “Maybe that’s what I am, just a dream…”
Then Lorina laid her hand on Aceline’s head, teased her tresses with gently stirring fingers.
“Look at that.” Lorina said, smiling “I couldn’t do this if you were a dream.”
“Why can’t I remember anything?”
“We’ll worry about that later. Did you want to know a song?”
Aceline nodded.
Lorina hummed a little, divining a tune she thought Aceline would understand. As she hummed the words of a childhood rhyme crept into her voice, and she began to sing…

Ky-me Nay-mo
Ky-me Nay-mo

Kilt-a ky-mo
Ky-me
Nay-mo
Ky-me
Rim strim stram-a-diddle

Larra-bum-a-ring
Ting
rig-num bulletin a-ky-mo.

“What does it mean?”
“Nothing” Lorina said. “Its nonsense. Just a song.”
Aceline tried the words, rolling them around with her tongue.
“I like it.” She said at last “It’s an old song, I can tell. It sounds like the carriage wheels turning in the snow.”
Lorina laughed. The ideas of a child!
But as she settled back in her seat and felt rather then saw Aceline lean against her shoulder, she found herself marking the sounds of the wheels below her, slipping every so often, grinding on rocks, and the creaking of the cab’s wooden frame.
Ky-me nay-mo…ky-me naymo…
Then the sounds faded away and she fell into a troubled sleep.
        -
“Lo, one who exists, and yet does not.” The voice like a shadow hissed, “He smiles at our misfortunes and accomplishments alike. He shows no distaste. Only interest. He watches the doings of those he sees, awaiting the inevitable.”
“Who are you?” Lorina asked.
She could hear someone smiling.
“I growl when I’m pleased, and wag my tail when I’m angry.”
“It sounds more like purring then growling.” Lorina countered.
It was still too dark to see, and she did not know she was dreaming.
“It all really depends…” the voice said “on which side of the glass one is on.”
“Which side are we on then?” Lorina asked.
        -
Her only answer before she awoke with a start was a ringing peel of laughter which lingered in her ears, even as she came to her senses to feel the cold of the window against her cheek and hear the driver shouting “We’re here miss!”
And they were.