there and back again...a splendiferous holiday

oh it's a jolly holiday...and on firesday alice and kira and the pumpkin 
king all folded themselves up neatly into square packages and stuffed 
themselves inside kira's scarlet carriage in search of adventure and 
laughter hidden somewhere in the mountains of east tennesse. "but my 
film!" the pumpkin king cried as the carriage pulled into walmart to 
gather the pictures he had made the week before and put a little bit of 
nibbles into alice's empty belly that was beginning to make very loud 
growling noises. "but wait, we need apples! but wait, we need bubbles!" 
alice cried, running around and grabbing little bits of this and that 
needed for any suitable road trip. "but wait, we need handcuffs!" 
handcuffs? a knowing little giggle to kira as the three of them piled back 
into the car and set off...for chattanooga? (you must remember, alice has 
an infamous sense of direction, and would loose herself inside a paper 
bag.) an hour later, the car is finally going in the right direction and 
three hours behind schedule but with g-love blasting from the speakers and 
bare feet on the windshield, it doesn't matter now, or ever...zoom zoom 
zoom! let's listen to the cure! no live! no, faith no more!!! and the 
pulsing beat of "epic" floats in and courses through and there is so much 
sugar in alice's blood it's amazing she can still see...construction up 
ahead. you can't see for miles. oh well, skip the next song, sing 
"everbody hurts" and go walk on cars? no, just roll the windows down, and 
blow the bubbles out, at everyone, at the stuffy old men in gray overalls, 
and maybe somebody will smile. "i thought someone had opened up a bottle 
of champagne!" shouts one passing trucker, and alice begins a rendition of 
"tiny bubbles" and her hands are all sticky. but pixie sticks and 
tang-a-roos are the cure for anything. so more hills pop out of the 
landscape and the pumpkin king falls to slumber and kira and alice listen 
to his danny elfman scores and watch that one, certain space before you 
hit oak ridge and loudon, that one place where there are trees and trees 
for miles, and you are at that point where you can see around you and 
above you and inbetween...and everything is so green! and the songs from 
edward scissorhands pluck snow angels from alice's heart and tears find 
her face in memory of what she really is when she's not pretending...so, 
where do you guys want to eat? the pumpkin king thinks it might be neat to 
splurge so we dwelve into knoxville traffic straight on kingston pike in 
search of old city because alice knows of this neat irish resturant called 
"sullivan's" which might be worth their attention...old city. where alice 
and rain shared magic barefoot afternoons in the midst of bubbles and cats 
and the neat guy at the elven door who called them faeries and played 
music for them...alice in her new blue cloak with the stars on, somehow 
the wind always knew when she was around. and then that night at the 
mercury theater, meeting ketner and corbin and kyth, having late-night 
conversations in the parking lot about dancing and poetry and schitzoid 
ex-girlfriends and mead and faeries on mountain-tops and role-playing and 
then ketner and the lost girls heading over to perkins to eat ice cream 
and anything else while the sun rose...(that weird guy from the comic book 
store was there, too, but alice never knew him very well.) so anyway, old 
city. the only asphalt alice could probably ever love, so many memories 
down these cobblestone corridors, this place called knoxville, where 
cairbre and the scarecrow and stuart would often wonder, would often paint 
her nose blue...has it really been so long? in and out of stores, and 
finally destination with food in the belly. sullivan's, with all of these 
prom-type people around, though they really weren't promming...some 
soriority fraternity thingamagigee...so nibbling on food and relating to 
the pumpkin king all of the drama of last semester, and how many boys have 
you kissed? and how many girls? (kira unable to remember from all of the 
theater parties she had been to and their games of truth and dare, alice 
not wanting to play still thinking that her kiss might be deadly...) then 
two of the gussied up foxgloves present themselves to their table, alice 
in tam's white tshirt and joe's bluejeans and little platform sandles, 
hair askew and a silly smile at the ketchup stain, "remember us, alice? we 
went to governor's school with you!" two of the 148 angels? here? now? 
lori, her suitemate from long long ago in a galaxy far far away, and 
whitney, completely unrecognizable. "you're not wearing black," they 
laugh, and alice giggles, well yeah i got happy. amazing to think that was 
almost three years ago, yet only three years...so many changes from the 
charcoal stained girl who used to hide in corners of stairwells and write 
her poems in blood and for every wrong done would carve another scar on 
her arm...so much different and so much still the same, so much love and 
life between these two points. and alice smiles because she knows she will 
always remember "o captain my captain" and she will, sometimes, be caught 
dancing in her stains of lipstick, when nobody's watching. so off on the 
road again, it's late and dark and the world is swallowing them whole and 
phone calls aren't enough...and alice gets lost again, because it's just 
her nature, because this world is too much not with her, and off towards 
lexington, but no this isn't right, what's highway 75 anyway? not 80, 
eighty-one alice! you're not completely useless, are you? *sigh* no 
matter, back on the trail though the clock is hugging midnight and ever 
since time's huge dispute with alice it refused to do her bidding. through 
curvatures and up and down, "you really weren't kidding about living out 
in the middle of nowhere," the pumpkin king says, and over that patch of 
the road that fell in with the last heavy snow, and past the dormant 
cornfields, and past the abandoned schoolhouse, and past the boris karloff 
graveyard...past the church and down the hill past the ready-made 
trailor-park, right below the hill with the huge ostentacious bates motel, 
that house where the evil uncle lives when they buldozed alice's faerie 
ring straight out of there (and where are the rats in the rosebush going 
to go now? thorn valley...) there, with the worried little lights blinking 
"where are you alice?" and the truck missing because a certain grandfather 
was too impatient to wait to see if his granddaughter would come to 
him...there, this house, where alice has spent so much of her life, on the 
wicker swings in the front playing make believe games with her little 
brother such as "washing machine" and "resturant," always with some music 
in the background...where alice got skinned knees from riding her bike 
with no brakes down the hill and crashed into trees, where swordfights 
were held, kingdoms were one, times were traveled...where alice's name is 
carved in cement througout the years on every new addition her grandfather 
made to the house. this house, with its spectres and ghosts, with its 
flowers in full-bloom. home, finally home. "why are you so late?! we've 
been worried sick about you!?" an accusing glance to alice. "you didn't 
get lost again, did you?" *shuffle shuffle shuffle* and then kira and the 
pumpkin king start off in their stories, trying to alleviate some of the 
blame from alice's lack of directional sense, but it is too amusing to not 
be honest, and even though kira insists on taking a little bit of the 
punishment "i said i thought it was 75," it is still alice who whimpers as 
her grandfather comes bursting in the door. "why did you have to go off 
and look for me? you knew i'd be here safe eventually!" ah well, call your 
mother, talk to us, and get some sleep...hasn't it been a long day? many 
many stories. what is your major? where are you from? that's an air force 
jacket, right? i was in the air force...who did you say your uncle was 
again? so much...and alice in bliss of being home, with two new faces to 
share in her joy...but sleep for now, with crystaline mountain-stream 
dreams...

so on the second day there was a picnic.

alice had not seen her carnival in many, many moons, sense november or 
perhaps before...an entire winter had spun by since she had danced with 
them, or heard their laughter, or curled up on the couch beside them, or 
watched movies or played video games...or burned wishes or watched falling 
stars or spoke about the existence of nothingness and black holes and 
hurricanes...it was time. it was a day to go picnicing, to find the 
mountains, to watch moss grow. so after being awakened at nine a.m. by 
cairbre and having an entire conversation in thick, silly brittish 
accents, alice rounded up her two companions from the asphalt universe and 
marched them over next door to take a look at her house. trailor, 
actually. and only recently hers, as her mother moved away from it a mere 
few months ago. in a state of being remodeled, her room still always stays 
the same, and "wow, it's so neat to be in a room that has as much stuff on 
the walls as mine does," the pumpkin king states, which must be a 
compliment though alice never really knows. turn off the lights, maybe the 
stars will glow...but no, not dark enough, not enough time, for *knock 
knock knock* there's cairbre at the door, with his hair yet another style 
and shorter than before, and shades and combat boots and earrings and, of 
course, sporting a cure shirt (what else?) and so much, alice has missed 
you so much, and automatically, as if on cue, it all falls back into 
place, just like it always does, with cairbre's perverse jokes and his 
giggliness proving he is in full tigger mode...any new battlemarks or cat 
scratches? and whatever alice was doubting, whatever she thought that 
maybe the carnival was collapsing and maybe they could never stay together 
forever...no, it was silly, so silly to even dream these creatures would 
not forever be a part of her life! "so where's the scarecrow?" and soon he 
arrives, his eyes big and bright and grinning from ear to ear, and how is 
school and life and that guy you're going out with, what's his name...and 
kira and the pumpkin king think it amusing that someone in this universe 
doesn't know tam's name...and how is your art coming along? and what is 
that purplish mark on your neck? the scarecrow has been snagged by another 
vampire...you'd think that labyrinth that leads to his heart would have 
thrown most of them off the path by now...still some boys can still get 
their penknives in, a bite here and a bite there, before they are thrown 
off...so everyone takes their places at the table round, as they always 
have, or the couch, as it may be, with cairbre on the left, and the 
scarecrow on the right, and the space in the middle for the ring 
master...wherever the ring master may be...hwy, let's give her a call! 
just to let her know we still love her and that she ought to call us and 
talk to us and speak to us even though she's all tangled up in mister 
wrong number...though the carnival rejoices that someone has finally come 
into her life, it's been too long...so hellos and goodbyes are said and 
let's take the marshmallows just in case and this time everyone piles into 
the scarecrow's carriage and the pumpkin king exchanges musical words with 
cairbre. joy division. "this is what i paint to." so with the windows down 
and the music up and kira alice's hair slapping the pumpkin king in the 
face, they travel down the old country roads towards greeneville to find 
ice and food and anything else requiring for picnicing. (does anyone know 
how to spell "picnicing," anyway?!) "hey, booboo, let's go get a pic-a-nic 
basket!" "but yogi, here comes ranger smith!" "well then, let's go suck 
the ranger's dick!" more of cairbre's perversity, done in his perfect 
cartoon imitation voice. too much, just the two of them, here in the car, 
and part of the asphalt universe with her...and then worlds collide. so 
through town, past greeneville high school, past the small little main 
street and the tourist trap general morgan inn, but that was where i ate 
dinner the night of prom, alice thinks...that's where theseus ate veal and 
the jupiter girl and i shared stories about our wardrobes at home, dressed 
as almost complimentary opposites of eachother, and more coffee and more 
mocha and puck with those eyes...and then my prom left without me, and 
puck and i dancing and laughing in that street, on that sidewalk...and 
there, that's where he sang that lullaby to me, right under that awning, 
and that jewlery shop where we looked in the windows and he spoke of 
finding an engagement ring for me...this street, covered in memories. but 
happy, here, nice fond remembrances..."i have rememberances of yours, my 
lord..." and then hamlet went mad and cut off all of his hair...oh well. 
there, there's the really big old house that serves as a mortuary where 
younger i used to see lestat and louis standing at the railing and younger 
i saw my great-grandfather sent to another world and younger still my mum 
and i sprawled out on the football field watching fireworks below it 
speaking of who would have what room...this house, which served as the 
model for the house in my book, and there...you can almost see the bubbles 
and the lilacs charlotte is throwing off the edge...but alice thinks that 
perhaps the carnival can still dance in the house the way they have always 
dreamed, but not now, not yet anyway. here, subway, go get your sandwiches 
girl, and stop thinking so much! "i am too much of a good mood to think of 
anything serious today!" cairbre announces, and pounce out of the car and 
into the resturant with separate orders and kira and alice dancing to 
"wild west" playing on the radio. "have you ever seen reality bites? "no. 
why?" "just a similar scene," the pumpkin king smiles, as kira shares her 
rather traumatic experiences in dance school and alice attacks cairbre 
with tickles. after ice and food is found, the starving artists load up 
the carriage with their new goods ("and some guy was blasting foreigner!" 
the pumpkin king cries in disbelief) and the travelers pack themselves 
back into the carriage of the scarecrow, lace their shoestrings up, grab 
their bottles of juice and carrot cakes and make their way to the 
moutains...to the mountains. on past the roads less taken, traveling the 
wide yellow line of that snake to the other side of the world, past the 
roadkill trailor-side trash-heaps, past the whole of appalachia living in 
leftover buses. "where in the hell are you taking us?" the pumpkin king 
worries, as cairbre begins to hum the theme to deliverance and alice 
merely watches the barefoot children pluck chickens out of their hair and 
wonders how the mumbles boy is doing...and yes, it always gets worse when 
you go back up towards the mountains, for unknown rules carved in some 
rosetta stone lost somewhere. there are rags here and the riches were lost 
and there's no turning back, these people have lived for centuries on 
scraps, and i'm sure they are not changing the story anytime soon...and 
the mumbles boy, squinting through broken glasses and wearing his shoes 
out, makes spagetti for alice somewhere in her past, tells her of his 
adventures with potato guns and barbed wire, takes her down to the 
basement to collect firewood, to smoke his cigarette, takes her to the 
barn to carve her name in the beams of the loft with his pocketknife and 
go stirring up the wasps in the hayfields. this, so much of this with him, 
her mumbles boy and that musky wolf smell that clung to every inch of him 
and the den he made a nest out of...though rumor has it his charcoal 
drawings have been washed out of his blue-stained room (he had to hide the 
demons from the probation officer, after all...they'd never believe him) 
and did you still throw his roses to the sea, alice? ah well, that was a 
long time ago, when the mumbles boy discovered the mystery of alice's 
feet, when alice still kept it all covered, when he and stephen and alice 
would pass notes back and forth in health class, never paying attention, 
making little jokes about stephen's paperback copy of the necronomicon, 
sexual innuindos and stephen tripping on acid...so long ago, alice can't 
even remember where she put the hair eric cut now...she always left them 
when they cut their hair, or they always left her. barbers are bad things. 
the road, it twists around, and they make a right at the music barn (and 
what exactly is the music barn, anyway?) and then, the forest envelops 
them, the green shade, the mountains, the ripple of water, and here. this 
is horse creek. where alice bathed herself in icicles when she was small. 
where her mother and her mother's mother have frolicked since childhood, 
where family reunions have been held since the place before time forgot, 
where alice might have been born centuries before if the weather had been 
right. alice was a mermaid here, alice was a pookah with cat ears seducing 
a sad-eyed satyr by the water's edge, alice was a young child dancing with 
kim and butterflies, alice was throwing marshmallows at charlie the 
wonderbird, alice was taking photographs of the mumbles boy, alice 
splashed numerous cousins, alice blew bubbles, alice and the lost girls 
wondered and wandered and made hot dogs and roasted marshmallows and got 
home before dark...how far up the mountain has she been? far enough to see 
the old foundation, and the apple orchard, but never the top, no not 
quite...but it's not over yet. but this place, this is enchantment, this 
is beyond words, this is a secret (or at least she likes to think so) and 
this is the place where hearts can be healed if you let them...so she 
turns to her friends and they find a table and eat in silence as a 
butterfly lands on the cheshire cat's nose and the pumpkin king's camera 
begins to give out. kira makes a puppet out of her marshmallow treat, and 
alice plays with the safety button on the lid of her cranberry juice, the 
safety buttons like the ones she always took from cairbre's bottles of 
lipton ice, the ones she still carries with her wherever she goes 
("whenever you're in trouble, just push the safety button!") click. click. 
click. do you want to visit heaven? up a little mountain path, past where 
the cars are allowed to go, under a few broken logs and over those moss 
covered rocks, with the sunlight dappling in shadows of watercolours 
through the aftergrowth and those silly little bridges and the box with 
the registration cards just in case you get lost but with not a pen to 
write with...this is where the butterflies play when no one is looking, 
here, see that waterfall? and kira, she wants to be dangerous today, she 
wants to walk across the fallen logs and she has the grace and alice is 
sure she'd always land on her feet, but just to be sure...just to be sure, 
stay close to me dear, after all i do want a roommate next 
semester...another bridge, can we play poohsticks? cairbre and alice snap 
the twigs in half and watch to see whose gets across first...and cairbre 
always wins at poohsticks, maybe because its satyrday, or maybe just 
because he believes. the scarecrow is silent, and it gnaws at alice just a 
little, because oftentimes silence means not-so-nice things, often silence 
means there is too much going on in someone's head..."how long has it been 
since you've been to the mountains?" "at least a year. maybe more." and so 
that explains it. the scarecrow, like charlotte, needs a certain amount of 
the green to exist and survive and to make eyes happy and mouths clean. 
and since his recent excursions in the world of two places of employment 
wrestling at him at the same time, it only makes sense that it is time to 
recharge. alice looks to the pumpkin king, whom she imagines has never 
seen the mountains, the one who slept on the hollywood sign, the one who 
believes in bright lights and loud cars, the one who has always danced in 
sidewalks and who has seen nicolas cage..."LA used to look like this," he 
mumbles, increduously, with wide-eyes capturing all that his camera 
cannot. "yes," alice nods, swinging her little boots, the ones with the 
jupiter girl's shoestrings, over the edge. "but why...how could anyone 
look at this, see this, and think 'gee, i think we should bulldoze all of 
this out of here and build a new shopping mall.' how could anyone want to 
destroy this?" alice wishes she had an answer...she's been searching so 
long. perhaps she thought the pumpkin king might have it, but he's even 
more baffled than she's ever been. there's money, but that's not entirely 
true. once upon a time when all the world was new and looked like such a 
fresh crisp apple scene as this one on a spring day, that was just it--the 
entire world looked like this. man, having nothing else to compare it to, 
and thinking the world to be inexhaustable, could not understand or 
appreciate the true beauty of what it was destroying. and perhaps that is 
why it was the pumpkin king's eyes which grew the widest at the place, for 
when a person has not seen the beauty of a place, he can appreciate it 
even more when he finally visits...as alice has learned, leaving such a 
place makes one's heart hurt even more...so down beyond the mountain, 
walking backwards, talking of star trek, of tv shows, of movies, of the 
stupidity of humanity, two of alice's worlds rolled into one, both 
blinking at her with big eyes. back to the car, back to the world of 
walmart, trying to find something to fix a camera with, wandering the toy 
aisle as perversity was found in bendable toys and the search went on for 
a mister potato head for kira and alice purchased a small jingly eyore for 
cairbre to place in his car. then a quick trip to the ice cream store 
where alice used to work, where once upon a time she was pushed to tears 
by breaking her wrists on efforts of frozen chocolate strawberry with the 
megabitches screaming obscenities at her...but there were some customers, 
the ones with the stories, the ones whose sons won baseball games, the one 
whose brother was in the hospital, the one who wanted to open a karate 
school...they gave their stories to alice and she listened, here, and gave 
little children free reeses pieces and missed the fireworks on the fourth 
of july though the man with xray eyes would drive down every other day or 
so just to check up on her...so here again, with gold medal ribbon and 
sundaes and cappachino blasts the travelers watch the blond haired lady 
yell and whine at the poor three hands behind the counter and their broken 
computer, and alice only shakes her head..."oh the drama," the scarecrow 
laughs, and she pokes at his purplish mark just to remind him that he's 
not completely immune...so yes, greeneville's just a little weird 
sometimes, but i swear some of the most wonderous creatures in the world 
live here, and you saw the mountains for yourself, right? right? ah well, 
let's travel back home, and pick a few daisies before the play...

so when the group of wanderers returned to alice's domain, they picked 
daisies.

picking daisies has been a tradition in the carnival for ages, for as long 
as anyone can remember. daisies and honeysuckles, lilacs and four-leaf 
clovers...anything flowering, anything green. it is rumored that cairbre 
plucked the first one, and that the others spring from there, but so many 
flowers have been gathered at gathering and passed around that one young 
woman was given her name at such an event, becoming the happy daisy girl 
after being covered and drowned and bathed in the little white flowers 
which happen to run rampant where alice lives, in her little cream 
coloured house, next to the slabs of concrete where her grandfather had 
placed her name year after year, measuring her life, like the little 
pencil notch marks in the kitchen doorway to show how much she's grown. 
(two inches in eight years. impressive.) so alice and cairbre and kira and 
the pumpkin king and the scarecrow scurried through the back garden,
daisies. through the petal-filled memories of he-loves-me, 
he-loves-me-not, alice remembering the four-leaf bouquets, the wishes 
burned, the barefoot weddings, sticking arms out the windows trying to fly 
in the scarecrow's carriage, dancing down old city, alice's nose turned 
blue in pool halls, so many years this family of hers strung around her 
heart, so many games with nerf guns and huge purple beach balls, so many 
nights gathered around the ring master's tarot readings or the scarecrow's 
cryptic notebooks or cairbre's music pouring from their universal speakers 
or stuart's cigarette's burning holes in the rug. so many nights, and the 
one when cairbre got stuck in the mud and had to spend the night in 
alice's house, and she tucked him in, and watched his dreams in the 
morning. so many tickles, so much laughter, so much love through these 
three or four rings. and those peach trees that once long ago were planted 
when the first gathering happened, and all of the moonshine cherries and 
excursions with ouji boards and ren and stimpy cartoons and old horror 
flicks and staring at the stars, always the stars, stuart concentrating on 
the brightest ones. those peach trees, they are flowering peaches, they've 
grown. so much time, when now alice is the same age cairbe was when they 
met, first. cairbre and the ring master and alice racing down the highway 
as cairbre takes the wheel with his knees and the ring master dances with 
the cheshire cat to the bubble gum songs and then, there, in the lights 
and magic of the long haired, lipstick band and its loudness pouring over 
alice's bubbles in waves, when she lost her wings, when they all giggled 
in the hotel afterwards, watching the home shopping network in boxer 
shorts and putting on makeup together, so much. lost in the mountains with 
hot tempers, playing in toys-r-us, quoting cartoons, watching mystery 
science theater, taking alice to the resturant at the end of the universe 
the night her life ended the first time. six years. eternities times 
eternities. forevers and forevers and forevers. and now, here, where two 
universes meet, in the backyard, picking daisies. "you should all come to 
my house this summer," cairbre more giggles, "it would be really neat." 
and alice laughs in amazement, that finally some other universe is 
compatable with another, that she doesn't have to relentlessly separate 
the chesspieces anymore, that finally some can merge and converge. and 
tales of parties and tales of daisies and silly other conversational 
pieces, what are you majoring in, different musical bands, why do your 
shoes turn funny colours, and why the pumpkin king has been ruthlessly 
nicknamed "shaft, the pumpkin head." accidental chorus lines to two 
separate songs, though nothing really fits the king much better, and then 
why is he always so gloomy looking, with a frowning face...? "but if we're 
ever going to get to the play, we'd best get going." the play...oh yes, 
the play! the one for this year, with the same handful of faeries that 
made up alice's faerie train a year ago when she was queen, when she wore 
her glitter in the footlights, when her wings were visible. has it really 
been a year? alice counts the months over and over on her fingers, but 
indeed the figures are correct, and so much time has escaped her, so much 
making its way past...a year ago, when alice danced across the stage in 
the guise of titania, defending her changeling child and crossing the 
wrath of oberon, only to have her eyes stained to fall in love with the 
ass's head (though, in truth, her eyes fell on the green-stained one in 
the curtains instead and she ran away with the puck when the show was 
over.) that stage, where they first kissed, where she danced with the 
jupiter girl in the aisles, in the bower where oberon continued to step on 
her wings...yes, she was really going back there now, so take a really 
deep breath before you say goodbye to your carnival once more...and you 
know, as sure as the sun will set today, they will soon come back to you, 
and your game is nowhere near ended. some things last entire lifetimes, 
and this is one. the circus forever, a carnival never ended, as you stand 
and watch as the moon rises for the very first time...folded in kira's 
carriage semi-perfectly, off to go find cole porter in a glass bottle, as 
alice test the stitch-marks wounds and pokes at them every now and again 
to see if they are still sore...and cole porter, who once long ago taught 
alice that some lives were not for her, and some realities are twisited 
into mahogany, and some would grow old while she remained young, the gypsy 
girl assures the pumpkin king once again that yes, she really does know 
where she is going, she promises, she won't get lost, not again, not here, 
not on this route that is perfectly etched in her memory with every 
quickening heartbeat, with every pitter patter of the irish tunes that 
would tinge her breath with excitement the closer she came to the puck boy 
waiting in the wings for her, him with his tulips and their surge cans and 
their perfect saturdays. she knows this road better than any, than all. 
the world could collapse and she could still find her way blind to this 
theatre, to this one where once she really was a queen. there, on those 
steps where the jupiter girl smoked cigarettes between the acts and shared 
her journal with alice, there where they spoke of love and lust and the 
jupiter girl's german version of "chim chim chiree" blaring through 
alice's mind...these memories, so fresh. so vivid. half an ocean away, 
where the jupiter girl is still blowing bubbles at the stars, and wherever 
the puck boy might be hiding tonight, as alice's eyes search the crowd 
frantically in fear that he might be there, directly ahead, his hand in 
that girl's, his lips in hers, and no no no i'm no going to cry, not now, 
not after all this time, no way, but it still stings, that little sliver 
of the broken heart still lodged beneath the surface, the infection 
throbbing with each passing moment. and there, that's the jupiter girl's 
song from the tank girl movie, the cole porter "let's do it," and alice 
swims in memories of graham's car and his sunroof and letting the universe 
out the back and so much, so much love...and on the stage, alice smiles as 
she watches her little faeries take on the guise of french whores, dancing 
with their legs kicked up, as the players transform into starving artists, 
as her king becomes a disillusioned judge...so much different, but it's 
still the same smell, the same wood, and alice curls up with her feet 
beneath, watching the fragments of faerie garments used in the costuming 
of the garden of eden scene, the tears coming again, more freely now. yes, 
she misses the glitter, but its gone, its time to let it go... she lets 
the rain fall, in each oceanic tear, and finds her way backstage to the 
arms of those she loved the best, to her king and his beautiful red hair, 
to lysander who takes her hand and she whispers the word "acorn" and all 
is understood, to cobweb with her bright and shining eyes and musical 
laughter, to the british director with the magical scarves who let alice 
finally have her voice, to mogwai who believed in her, that she would make 
it, and to the black coffee blues who never dreamed so much...and she 
perched there, where she did so many moons ago, on her black wall, 
overseeing and watching, where she was the queen with her companion 
watching the universe pretend to be something she already was...her wall, 
the black one. her perch, which she has never forgotten. "i can't 
believe...i didn't dream in a million years you would show up tonight!" 
the blues exclaims, and to alice's delight they escort her to dinner, he 
and mogwai, these two she thought enemies who had, apparently, knitted up 
the loose ends of their differences when they journeyed to the far north. 
amazed, with laughter, again her troubadors make their way into 
established resturants, with fingerfoods, with famined stomachs, so much 
to say and only a few short minutes. and boy george plays as her dearest 
friends give the pumpkin king odd looks as he throws off the heterosexual 
shackles of a male shovinist world, as they tell alice that the picture 
taken of her and puck is now on the tusculumn college viewbook, and 
secrets are revealed, in and out of conversation. the black coffee blues 
leads alice outside to reveal his secrets to the universe that so closely 
echo her own, ones she isn't even sure she's even spoken off. so much 
happiness, here, knowing that her handful of misfits and bards and shadows 
will be safe, and well, even without her, because her wings linger behind, 
even if she seldom does. yes, there is contentment here, in a moment, in a 
flash, when suddenly everything has turned right, and this peace...this 
inner peace that remains in alice's heart in exploding colours of 
wonderfullness, though the pumpkin king grits his teeth as he is asked if 
he enjoyed the play, and kira mumbles something about the return of the 
cult of alice. alice lingers as long as she can find excuses to, but the 
hour is growing late and she doesn't have much time before she must be 
home again and asleep and in bed (and yes, alice still has a curfew, much 
to the amazement of her two house guests.) and mogwai and the black coffee 
blues say their goodbyes near tears, though it won't be long now, she 
promises, only a few short weeks...though her stomach turns and she knows 
it will never be enough. missing so many people out of her life, and every 
time she returns she attempts to brush all of them into these holes, but 
time is too short to stretch it as long as she would like. these two, once 
upon a time when her heart was first broken, they gathered her pieces up 
in their hammock and sang to her and made blankets our of the sky and 
tickled her into laughter, and nothing in a middle years will ever make up 
for that, when mogwai gave alice the leather pouch full of dreams and told 
her to sleep with angels, or when the black coffee blues promised her she 
could always find him in the showers. they mean more than words could say, 
and she can't even try. so now, they part again, and she and kira and the 
pumpkin king make their way back to sleep so they can prepare for the long 
journey home to the asphalt universe where they will dance once more...