Below is a passage from the story that I’m writing that will be similar to Alice in Wonderland — more here. Note that this post is my 100th. Pretty exciting milestone.
Bound to protect
Ordered for a purpose
Giving more and more
Until the very end
Jillian considered the riddle as her eyes glanced around the room, taking in the details. Objects of every shape and size littered the desk and shelves. Paintings and other artwork covered the walls. The floor had piles upon piles of boxes and debris, some toppled over, which made it difficult to navigate the room.
Jillian had never seen a room filled with such a wild variety of…of things packed so closely together. Any of which could hold the answer to the riddle! Jillian’s heart grew heavy as she imagined the giant task of examining every object in the room to find the answer.
Jillian recited the riddle to herself. ‘Bound to protect’, ‘Ordered for a purpose‘. It sounded like the description of a knight who vows his protection and his life, and receives orders to protect the kingdom ‘until the very end’. That could be it! She began searching the room for anything related to knights — a suit of armor, a painting depicting a battle, anything…but after more than an hour of searching — under things, behind things, seemingly everywhere — she could find nothing related to knights or battles.
The hopelessness of the situation overwhelmed Jillian, and she felt tears in her eyes as she sank to a rare open spot on the floor. Her hand came to rest on a nearby stack of books — her fingers casually tracing the cover of the top book. She looked down, realizing that she hadn’t noticed these books before. The riddle replayed in her mind: bound, ordered, giving more and more until the end… The answer had to be — a book! A book fit all the clues. But which book?
Jillian started looking through the stack. As she moved from book to book, her initial excitement turned quickly to dismay. There were dozens and dozens of books — thick and thin, big and small — pages upon pages, many in languages, even alphabets, she didn’t recognize. How long would it take her to study each page in each book and find what she needed to escape this room? Days? Weeks? She felt the hopelessness returning as she neared the bottom of the stack of books — and then she stopped. In her hands was a vaguely familiar book — a favorite picture book from her early childhood — about a princess searching for treasure within her father’s castle, exploring room after room, only to realize the best treasure wasn’t gold or jewels, but was instead the everyday memories and keepsakes of a happy life and loving family.
Jillian smiled as she opened the book and started flipping through the pages, momentarily forgetting the seriousness of her situation. Then she stopped and realized — this must be the book she was meant to find! Her heart beat faster as she turned the pages, searching each for some clue about how to escape the room. She grew more worried as she neared the end of the book, wanting both to hurry and find what she was meant to find, and to go slowly so as not to miss it.
As Jillian reached the last couple of pages, she slowed, fearful that she might reach the end of the book and not find what she was looking for. Finally, she held the last page in her hand, dreading to turn it over to see the final picture — fearing it might not give her the answer she sought. She closed her eyes, flipped the page, opened them, and saw…herself. On the last page was a drawing of a girl that looked just like Jillian did now, even wearing the same dress and shoes, sitting in a cluttered room exactly like the one she was now in. She stared at it in disbelief, and then looked up and glanced around the room, half expecting to see the book’s illustrator standing there, drawing pad in hand, recording the moment. She looked back to the page, trying to make sense of the fact that she seemed to be living a moment that was recorded in a book written years ago.
Jillian shook her head. It made no sense, but then neither did many of the events of the past few days. She took a breath, accepted the situation, and began to study the illustration to discover what she was meant to find.
It quickly became clear which detail in the image was most relevant to Jillian’s need to exit the room. Beyond the surprisingly accurate depiction of the room and its clutter, the one item shown that she hadn’t yet found in her search of the room was a dim but noticeable glow originating from low under the desk. Further, the light in the illustration had straight, sharp edges as if it were shining from behind something with a clear geometric outline, like a box or a piece of furniture. She got up and moved to the desk, keeping an eye on the illustration in the book, half expecting the girl in the picture to move with her — but of course the girl didn’t.
Jillian bent down to look under the desk and was disappointed to see no glow. In fact, the space under the desk was uncharacteristically uncluttered, with only a few small items on the floor. She examined each object: a pen, a cup, a small lidless box, inspecting each from all sides, listening, shaking, looking for something unusual, but each seemed completely mundane with no suggestion of being about to do anything unusual such as start to glow. She grouped them nearby, just in case, and looked again at the now-empty space beneath the desk. She ran her hands over the floor and discovered a rectangular section, different in material than the rest, with a wide groove around its edge. Could it be some kind of door? She rapped upon it with her knuckles, pushed down on the section, and even squeezed her fingertips into the groove at its edge searching for enough grip to lift the panel, but the section remained in place.