Again, grammer grammer grammer!! But I lack the time and patience to read through it before posting here, so it will get done eventually, but not today...
Chapter Three
Naturally, Elsa had no idea where Merriot was supposed to be, but she didn’t have any more time to ask, because very suddenly, Zeya launched herself forwards, heading across the street. “Zeya!” Elsa cried, hurrying forwards, but she was forced to pull back, for she was nearly run over by a strange looking carriage-type thing that had a single seat and gigantically tall wheels. But by the time she turned towards the street again, the spider was out of sight.
“Oh dear,” Elsa exclaimed, sitting down on a marble bench that she found just beside the street. One end was occupied by a young lady who was talking to an elderly gentleman, but she was sure to avoid them, as they ignored her. “What am I going to do now?” she had heard that if you ever were to get lost that you should remain where you are, so that the rescue party might find you. But she highly doubted that a rescue party would be sent out when she was surrounded by people. Troubled by these thoughts, and facing the dilemma of not knowing how to get back home, Elsa stood up and started walking down the busy street. She felt very out of place amongst all the nice dresses that the other ladies were wearing in her still dirty school uniform, and she attempted to shrink out of sight whenever someone looked at her, which was quite rarely.
As she walked, she noticed that the entire city was very clean. Not once did she see a piece of trash, neither did she pass someone who smelled the least bit unpleasant. A few times, she spotted a person standing on the corner of a street, playing a strange instrument she had never seen before, made all of pipes and several different open spaces that made no sense to her. As she passed shop windows, she peered inside, only to find the most curious items on display. She thought she saw a three-headed elephant no bigger then her hand, sitting in a small cage and honking pitifully. There were fruits that looked like black pears sitting on a stand beside a spiked red, orange and blue round-thing the size of cantaloupe. By the time she reached the end of the street, she was beginning to wonder what kind of city Marriot was, and where it was at all. But then she spotted the fountain, and felt fairly sure that she was very far away from home indeed.
It was very large and very white, built in the center of a kind of traffic circle that could be better described as crossways between roads. The statue on the third tier was of a woman in a long robe of some kind holding a sword in one hand and a scroll in the other, but there was a predatory bird of some kind sitting on her shoulder. The statue was made of the same kind of white marble as the fountain, and Elsa felt as though the bird’s white eyes were focused on her as she approached.
“Step right up! Step right up! This will be the best show you have ever seen!”
“Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls. Children of all ages, even your dog there! Prepare to be amazed!”
Over the general hubbub of the people, two cries rang out, and Elsa turned her gaze from the statue to see that two men had climbed up onto the edge of the bottom basin of the fountain. They were mirror opposites of each other, both dressed in strange, lopsided hats and dressed in a patchwork of cloth, looking as though it had been hastily sewn together. The only difference between them is that for the one on the left, every second triangle of fabric was blue, while the other’s was red. Their faces were painted snow white, while jagged smiles of blue or red finished their make-up.
Already, there was a crowd gathering around their ankles. Mostly of children, but the odd elder or parent was there two, and all were watching the twins with equal excitement.
The shouting continued, but as Elsa watched, the red twin’s eyes landed on her, and he froze. His welcoming smile fading to only his painted one, while a look of astonishment took over. He elbowed his twin in the ribs and whispered something, nodding in her direction before the twin exchanged a quick glance and raised their arms to the audience. “Now, if you’ll just wait here,” the red twin said, flashing the showy smile of someone who was trying to sell something. “The performance will begin shortly.” Then the two leapt off of the fountain and started through the crowd, moving directly towards Elsa.
She knew she should be running, or doing something in response to what had just happened. But the thought came too late, she was just beginning to turn when the twins caught up to her, each man grabbing one of her arms and beginning to pull her along without even breaking their stride.
“Hey!” Elsa shrieked, pulling against their grasp, “Let me go!” Their grasp, however, was like iron clamps, and though they weren’t particularly hurting her, there was no way she could break out of it.
“Hush!” the blue twin hissed, behind the face paint he was looking quite grim, and when she looked up at him she saw that he was looking around with a sort of nervousness. “We won’t hurt you, but you obviously need some help.”
“What?” she stopped screaming, and her panic gave way to something of extreme annoyance. “What makes you think that?”
“You stick out like a pig in a flock of sheep.” The red twin replied casually, as though it was perfectly obvious. “You can’t go walking around here dressed in something like that. Why are you here anyway?”
Elsa was fairly sure that the term ‘flock’ was only used for birds, but decided not to point this out. “I don’t even know. A humming spider at my window said that the juggler I met in the haunted field had sent her to bring me here.” Saying this out loud, she realized how positively ridiculous that sounded and shrank a little inside.
But the twins didn’t seem to find it ridiculous at all, and Elsa was surer then ever that Merriot was a very strange place. She caught a glance that they cast each other over the top of her head and was about to comment on this when the blue twin spoke again. “We’d better take you to our master, he’ll know what to do with you.”
“Your master?” Elsa didn’t like the sounds of that at all. “What is he going to do?”
The red twin shrugged as they took a sudden sharp turn and was then walking down a less crowded street lined with tall, narrow houses built extremely close together. “We don’t know, but it’s going to be –“
He was cut off by a sudden and angry shriek from above their heads. The three looked up at the same time in the same unison a trio of puppets might have to see the source of the shriek plummeting towards them.
Since her sudden and confusing journey to this shining city, Elsa had seen more strange things then most people would have seen in their entire lives. But the creature now swooping towards them topped it all.
At first, Elsa thought it was a bird. It had a gigantic beak the color of an olive, and claws the length of her arm in the same color. It had feathers a bright, horrible yellow that were stained with dirt and grime that came up to its neck, but its head was that of a gigantic snake, with wide luminous eyes that were staring straight at her. She had no idea what it was, except the ugliest creature she had ever seen.
“What is that?” Was the first thing that came out of Elsa’s mouth as she stared at it, but naturally, it was not the time for answering questions, and the twins were not inclined to do so at that moment.
The both tried running in different directions, pulling her both ways and ending up in the same spot, next they tried to go the way the other had gone the first time and spun in a complete circle before bashing into each other and landing a few feet apart on their bottoms, rubbing their forehead.
It was an excellent thing that Elsa had not been relying on them to save her, for they would have done a horribly poor job, but shocked as she was at seeing such a beast flying towards her, she had enough sense to throw herself to the ground just before its claws caught her.
The thing gave an angry shriek as in made an ungraceful recovery of missing her, by nearly hitting the road before flapping it’s way back into the air, making a strange sort of hissing noise as it turned around to dive again.
“Run!” The twins bellowed at the same time, scrambling to their feet and both racing off in different directions, both shouting “This way!” over their shoulders at her.
Feeling frazzled and annoyed on top of terrified, Elsa darted to her left after the red twin, into a narrow gap between the closely built houses. But even as she was reaching the other end of the buildings, everything began to blur. Just a little at first, smoothing at the edges like a painting that had gotten water spilled over it. But then the scene began to drip away as Elsa’s legs began to grow heavier, as though she was trying to run through tar, and within moments a complete whiteness had taken over.
I love it but now it sounds like Alice in Wonderland, but not the traditional story. There's that new movie of Alice in Wonderland which is all about her return to Wonderland. Johnny Depp's in it