“Who are you?” Everyone needs to know. Flowers sway and sing, “Who are you?” Bubbles burst across his cheeks to whisper, “Who are you?” He has the answer to this; it’s an easy one he’ll never miss.

But wait! Past and present whos must be considered. How can he hope to explain who he is in this where? He’s only just become a wonder; there are much wheres left to discover! So it’s a trick. A dastardly trap to make him want his reason back. He won’t fall for it; not one bit!

“I hardly know just at present, dear rabbit. I know who I was when I got up this morning” — does he? — “but I think I must have been changed several times since then!”

“Is that so? You really don’t know?” she suggests out of sight, yet her voice surrounds him. He turns! But she’s not there. The queerest of feelings creeps into his empty cupboard — what is it? 

Wonderland’s first room is full of mushrooms. Tall and short, big and small, he wanders under these spotted umbrellas. It’s like his mother used to say: there’re umbrellas abound when rain’s nowhere to be found. The coincidence of bad luck! 

“Come quick, my twit,” she purrs affectionately. His mother never called him like this. Made his soul sing on command. Let worry and reason be secondary to life. Living: this feeling claims its name with eager claws! 

“What’s this newest twist?” he asks, for if twits were birds they’d rhyme any word. High above their heads is the brass knob of a wooden door. Where, nowhere, anywhere, a hundred umbrellas couldn’t solve this conundrum. For doors are meant to be opened just a signs are meant to be read and rabbits are meant to be followed — it’s a matter of course!

“A twisted twist,” she clarifies, blowing bubbles from a hookah. “Who are you?” The chorus begins again with feeling. He turns! She rests upon a red mushroom, regal red lips puckering. But she’s been there all along — has she? “Left for you to make twistless!”

“Would a thousand umbrellas help? I’m afraid I can’t remember things as I used to,” he shamefully admits. As small as he is, he sees no solution. Doors are meant to be opened by appropriately sized whos. Insurmountable challenges fill living with fear. 

“Can’t remember what things?” she says and she smokes. More bubbles pop. “Who are you?”

“Tell me who you are first, dear rabbit,” he asks her to lead at 12:03. 

“Why?” she poses; as he is unable to think of any good reason, he looks to umbrellas on sunny days.

His mother once told him a story like this. “Suppose I grew big and tall, instead of being so short and small.” She sits up to catch it before it slips. “How many umbrellas would make my mother content?” The badder the luck, the coincidentaller her cries; he sadly never learned how to swim.

“One!” She begins with a start, then continues, “Side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.”

“One side of what? The other side of what?” He balks. 

“Of the umbrella!” She jumps from the mushroom, landing with mastered poise. Pats once at its spotted canopy.

He stretches his arms round it as far as they would go and breaks off a bit of the edge with each hand. Left or right. Right must, reasonably, be right. Wonderland leaves reason in cupboards like old china.

Lips inches from his third decision, a hum rumbles at the surrounding foliage. Flowers stop singing, petals closing. Mushroom stalks sink into the ground with a plop! She hops off to hide while he gives pause, petrified. 

Light askew, a shadow grew along the purple walls. With dark spots and a devious grin, its red eyes wan into dangerous slits. Salty air dries his mouth, slack-jawed in awe. Its hum is a purr most foul. “Who are you?” it demands with delight.

“I’m a wonder like you!” he squeaks. Heavy breaths turn his clothes inside out. He stands still, going nowhere. Absurd as it is to play mouse before a cat, he has neither sign to read nor rabbit to follow.

Being a wonder is harder than he thought. That’s it! What would a wonder do? He’d eat a mushroom!

Swallowing the gooey white chunk he snatched with his right hand, his stomach shrinks. Shrieks as his chin violently strikes his foot. Now 3 inches tall, he scurries under a trembling umbrella.

She sits near him in the shifting darkness. “Oh, how I wonder where my wonder went,” the cat coos somewhere out of sight, yet its voice surrounds him. Ears flop against his forehead. He bids she keep her wits; he’s this story’s twit. 

“It’s every wonder for themselves on the day of the twelves,” she chants with her distinctive inflection. Rising and falling. Coming and going. Hopping circles round him. “It creeps to find its mouse in the walls of every house.” 

“Who is it?” he whispers across her cheeks. 

Her teeth glow white in the black, and she sweetly answers then unanswers, “Cheshire.”

His coincidental luck must be the baddest to succumb to such madness. But he must get used to this to be a wonder — it’s a matter of course! This dream twists at reality’s seams. For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened, that Alice began to think that very few things indeed are really impossible.