Madelaine’s Adventures Inside Wonderland

When too many words spell trouble

Madelaine Fields was totally unlike any of the other girls in her class. She didn’t have a FlikBeat, or LinkUp or Clipchat account, and she never watched VisiBox videos. She also didn’t do dolls, or painting, or drawing, and she wasn’t much fussed with ponies, rabbits, or cats.

But… she was seriously into books.

And when I say into, I really do mean into.

She only had to open a book—any book at all—and run her fingertips over the text. Moments later, she would slip inside, sometimes settling between the lines, sometimes squishing into the spaces between the words.

And… very, very occasionally—just for a little while, mind!—she’d insert herself into the story.

The Grand Master Wordsmith didn’t allow this, of course, and Madelaine was perfectly well aware of what might happen if she got caught.

Book-mothers would often warn their daughters about storying, telling tales of naughty little girls who’d ignored their mother’s warnings. Little girls who’d then got swallowed up—frozen faceless and nameless in the narrative, with no backstory, no front story, and no way back into the non-fiction world.

And Madelaine’s mother had often shared these warnings with Madelaine, using examples from her very own family. But Madelaine took precious little notice of what her mother said, and continued storying regardless. She was a headstrong little madam, and considered herself much too clever and much too sneaky ever to get caught.

Until the day she did.

***

It was in the week before Christmas, and Madelaine was in her bedroom, scanning the books in her bookcase.

“What’ll it be tonight?” she whispered, running her finger along the spines of the books arrayed on the bottom shelf.

When she got to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, her eyes lit up. “Yes!” she cried gleefully. “That’ll be just perfect. I haven’t been into that one in ages!”

Now, Madelaine was always very particular about the books that she bought, and she’d been especially pleased to get hold of the 2015 Macmillan Children’s Books edition of Alice, partly, because it included all the original illustrations, but mainly because it was printed with lots of room to accommodate her storying.

She took the book down from the shelf and quickly flicked through to the end of Chapter 7. She knew from her previous visits here that the text finished halfway down page 100, leaving almost a whole half-page of white space in which she was free to go storying at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.

She ran her fingers lightly over the last few lines on the page, closed her eyes tight shut and pictured herself there with Alice.

When Alice walked down the passage and “…found herself at last in the beautiful garden, among the bright flower-beds and the cool fountains,” Madelaine simply slipped in behind her and skipped over the final full stop.

“She’s back!” the March Hare called out to Alice when he saw her, but Alice had already crossed into Chapter 8.

“Who’s back?” the Dormouse squeaked from inside the teapot.

“Why, it’s little Maddie Fields!” the Mad Hatter replied. But Madelaine scowled at this.

“It’s not Maddie, it’s Madelaine, if you please!” she corrected, and the Mad Hatter stopped smiling and put on his silly sorry face.

The March Hare jumped onto the tabletop and tried to smooth things over. He helped the Dormouse out of the teapot, dried him with a napkin, poured four cups of tea, and offered Madelaine a cream cake.

‍ ‍ ***

Madelaine drank her tea and ate the cake, and she continued to chat away happily with her fictional friends for quite some time. She knew perfectly well that she could only stay storying for a little while—keeping just to the untexted area on the page. That way, the book would return to its original state when she left.

If she tarried and chatted too long, she knew that she could end up like her Great-Aunt Mildred’s daughter, Felicity, who’d been condemned to wander endlessly along the shoreline in Swallows and Amazons.

Today, however, she got carried away and lost track of time.

“Another cup of tea?” the Mad Hatter had asked when she’d finished the first, and Madelaine said no thank you, but he poured another anyway.

“Do help yourself to more cake,” the March Hare said, and Madelaine said she really mustn’t but took one all the same.

And all this extra dialogue and the associated attributions added more and more words to the text, putting the narrative seriously at risk of spilling over and messing up the formatting on page 101.

When the conversation continued and the words did spill over, the ever-vigilant Para-Watchers reported this to the Grand Master Wordsmith, and he immediately dispatched a three-man Text Sanitation team.

***

As the Dormouse set about to entertain her with a second tune on the spoons, Madelaine made her apologies. “I’d love to stay and listen,” she said, “I truly, truly would. But I really must be going home now.”

“Oh, don’t bother to stop and talk with us then!” said the Two of Spades in a huff, and Madelaine spun around and saw the Two with the Five and the Seven, occupied in painting the Queen of Hearts’ white roses red. She immediately realised she was now in danger.

She pushed back her chair, leapt from the table, and tried desperately to weave through the added words and back onto page 100—but she was much too late. The Sanitation team were already in the upper left-hand margin and stood with their arms linked to block her passage.

They deleted all her dialogue, took away her thoughts, and pasted what remained as a decoration on the teapot.

And if one day when you read Alice, you happen to spot this figure on the teapot, do make sure you call her Madelaine and not Maddie, because she’ll get ever so cross if you don’t!