Alice Wonder(s) in Wonderland Episode One: The Grammar of Existence I. The Lesson

Alice Wonder(s) in Wonderland Episode One: The Grammar of Existence I. The Lesson

"Alice wonders," said Miss Prickett, tapping the blackboard with her chalk. "Third person singular, present tense. The 's' is not optional, Alice. It is a rule."

Alice Liddell, age seven and three-quarters, stared at the sentence written in white chalk:

Alice wonders in Wonderland.

"But Miss Prickett," Alice said, raising her hand, "what if there's more than one Alice? Wouldn't it be 'Alice wonder in Wonderland' then? Without the 's'?"

"There is only one Alice," Miss Prickett said firmly. "You. Singular. Therefore, 's'."

"But how do you know?" Alice persisted. "How do you know there's only one me?"

Miss Prickett's expression suggested she was developing a headache. "Because, child, you are sitting right there. One girl. One Alice. One 's'. Now, conjugate the verb 'to be' for me."

"I am, you are, he/she/it is, we are, you are, they are," Alice recited dutifully. But even as she spoke, something felt wrong. The words seemed to shimmer in the afternoon light, as if they weren't quite solid.

"Good. Now write it fifty times: 'Alice wonders in Wonderland.' Perhaps repetition will cement the rule in your mind."

Alice picked up her pencil and began to write. But on the third repetition, her hand cramped, and the 's' came out wrong—or rather, it came out right in a different way:

Alice wonder in Wonderland.

She stared at it. Without the 's', it looked like a command. Or a statement about multiple Alices. Or perhaps...

"Miss Prickett," she said slowly, "what if 'wonder' isn't a verb? What if it's a noun? Then Alice would be wonder. Alice is wonder. Not wondering, but wonder itself."

Miss Prickett closed her eyes and counted to ten. "Alice. Grammar is not philosophy. An 's' is an 's'. Now finish your lines."

But Alice couldn't stop thinking about it. That tiny letter. That small mark that determined whether she was one or many, whether she was doing something or being something, whether she was singular or plural.

Such a small thing, to contain such large questions.

II. The White Rabbit's Complaint

After lessons, Alice escaped to the garden, her copybook still incomplete. She sat beneath the beech tree and pulled out her pencil, intending to finish the punishment lines. But instead, she found herself writing:

Alice wonders in Wonderland. Alice wonder in Wonderland. Alices wonder in Wonderland. Alice is wonder in Wonderland. Alice was wonder in Wonderland. Alice will wonder in Wonderland. Alice would wonder, if Wonderland were real. Alice wonders: is Wonderland real?

"Conjugating yourself into existence?" said a voice.

Alice looked up. A white rabbit stood on its hind legs, consulting a pocket watch. But the watch face was strange—instead of numbers, it showed words:

I AM YOU ARE HE/SHE/IT IS WE ARE YOU ARE THEY ARE

And the hands were spinning wildly, unable to settle on any one tense.

"You can talk," Alice said.

"Of course I can talk. I'm a first-person singular entity with agency and vocal cords. The question is, can you talk? Or are you merely being talked about? Third person. Observed. Described. 'Alice does this, Alice does that.' When do you get to be 'I'?"

Alice blinked. "I'm 'I' right now. I'm talking to you."

"Are you?" The rabbit tapped its watch. "Or is someone narrating you? 'Alice said.' 'Alice thought.' 'Alice wondered.' Always past tense, always third person, always observed from outside. You're not a subject, child. You're an object. A grammatical construct."

"That's not true!" Alice protested. "I'm real! I'm right here!"

"Prove it," the rabbit said. "Use first person. Say 'I am.'"

"I am," Alice said.

"Am what?"

"I am... Alice."

"Third person again. You've named yourself, but naming is what others do to you. Try again. 'I am...' what? Not your name. What you are."

Alice opened her mouth, then closed it. What was she? A girl. A student. A daughter. A sister. But all of those were labels, names, things others called her.

"I am... wondering," she said finally.

The rabbit's whiskers twitched. "Ah. Present progressive. Continuous action. Better. But still not quite there. You're describing what you're doing, not what you are. One more try."

"I am... wonder?"

The rabbit smiled—an unsettling expression on a rabbit. "Now you're getting dangerous. Noun, not verb. Being, not doing. Identity, not action. Hold that thought, Alice. Hold it tight. You'll need it where you're going."

"Where am I going?"

"Down," the rabbit said, and pushed her.

III. The Conjugation Hole

Alice fell through layers of language.

She fell past sentences diagrammed in mid-air, subjects and predicates branching like trees. She fell past floating words that rearranged themselves as she passed:

ALICE FALLS FALLS ALICE ALICE IS FALLING ALICE HAS FALLEN ALICE WILL HAVE BEEN FALLING

She grabbed at one—ALICE WONDERS—and it came apart in her hands, the 's' detaching and floating away like a butterfly.

Without the 's', the sentence became:

ALICE WONDER

And suddenly there were two of her, falling side by side. One Alice in a blue dress, one in red.

"Oh!" said Alice-in-blue.

"Oh!" said Alice-in-red.

They stared at each other as they fell.

"Are you me?" asked Alice-in-blue.

"Are you me?" asked Alice-in-red.

"We can't both be me," said Alice-in-blue. "That's not grammatically correct. 'Alice' is singular."

"But we are both here," said Alice-in-red. "That's not grammatically correct either, but it's happening."

They fell in silence for a moment, pondering this paradox.

Then Alice-in-blue said, "Maybe we're not both Alice. Maybe we're both Wonder."

"What's the difference?"

"Alice is a name. A singular noun. But Wonder... wonder could be anything. A feeling. A question. A state of being. Maybe we're not two Alices. Maybe we're two wonders, and Alice is just what people call us."

Alice-in-red considered this. "So when Miss Prickett writes 'Alice wonders,' she thinks she's describing one girl doing one thing. But really, she's describing wonder itself, and Alice is just the shape it's taking?"

"Exactly!"

They landed—not with a thump, but with a soft click, like a sentence ending with a period.

They had landed in a hall of mirrors, but the mirrors didn't show reflections. They showed conjugations:

MIRROR ONE: I wonder You wonder She wonders We wonder You wonder They wonder

MIRROR TWO: I am wondering You are wondering She is wondering We are wondering You are wondering They are wondering

MIRROR THREE: I wondered You wondered She wondered We wondered You wondered They wondered

And in the center of the hall stood a door with a sign:

ONLY ONE ALICE MAY ENTER THIRD PERSON SINGULAR ONLY 'S' REQUIRED

Alice-in-blue and Alice-in-red looked at each other.

"Well," said Alice-in-blue, "that's a problem."

IV. The Cheshire Grammarian

A grin appeared in the air above them. Then a cat materialized around it—or rather, a cat made of punctuation marks. Its body was parentheses, its tail a question mark, its whiskers ellipses...

"Problem?" it purred. "Or solution?"

"We can't both go through," said Alice-in-red. "The door says singular."

"The door," said the Cheshire Grammarian, "is a prescriptivist. It believes in rules. But language is descriptive, not prescriptive. If two Alices exist, then 'Alice' is plural, regardless of what the door says."

"But how do we make the door understand that?" asked Alice-in-blue.

The cat's grin widened. "You don't. You change the sentence. Right now, the sentence is: 'Alice wonders in Wonderland.' Singular subject, singular verb. But what if you change the verb?"

"To what?"

"To 'are.' 'Alice are wonder in Wonderland.' Grammatically incorrect, but existentially true. You're not one girl wondering. You're multiple wonders being Alice."

"That doesn't make sense," said Alice-in-red.

"Of course it doesn't. That's why it works. Wonderland runs on nonsense. The more grammatically incorrect you are, the more real you become. Now—both of you, together—say it."

Alice-in-blue and Alice-in-red held hands. Together, they said:

"Alice are wonder in Wonderland."

The door shuddered. The sign flickered:

ONLY ONE ALICE MAY ENTER ONLY ALICE MAY ENTER ONLY WONDER MAY ENTER ALL WONDER MAY ENTER

The door swung open.

Beyond it was a garden where the flowers were singing—not songs, but sentences:

"I am a rose, therefore I am red." "I think I'm a daisy, but I might be a dandelion." "We are violets, and we are blue, and we are many."

And in the center of the garden stood a tea table, where three figures sat:

A Mad Hatter made of verbs, his hat labeled PRESENT CONTINUOUS. A March Hare made of adjectives, its ears labeled COMPARATIVE and SUPERLATIVE. A Dormouse made of pronouns, sleeping in a teapot labeled REFLEXIVE.

"Welcome!" cried the Mad Hatter. "Welcome to the Tea Party of Tenses! Are you past, present, or future?"

"We're... present?" said Alice-in-blue uncertainly.

"Wrong!" The Hatter threw a teacup in the air. "You're present continuous! You're not 'Alice is,' you're 'Alice is being'! Always becoming, never quite arrived! Sit, sit!"

Alice-in-blue and Alice-in-red sat. The moment they did, more Alices appeared:

Alice-in-yellow, Alice-in-green, Alice-in-purple, Alice-in-orange.

Six Alices, all sitting at the tea table.

"Oh dear," said Alice-in-blue. "We're multiplying."

"Of course you are," said the March Hare. "You're conjugating. First person, second person, third person. Singular and plural. That's six forms right there. You're a complete paradigm!"

The Dormouse stirred in its teapot. "Myself, yourself, herself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves," it murmured. "All the same Alice, all different Alices. Reflexive. Reflecting. Reflected."

Alice-in-blue looked at all her other selves. "But which one is the real me?"

"All of you," said the Cheshire Grammarian, reappearing on a tree branch. "None of you. The question is meaningless. You're not a fixed entity. You're a variable. You're wonder in the shape of Alice, and wonder takes many forms."

"But Miss Prickett said—"

"Miss Prickett," the cat interrupted, "believes in singular truth. One answer. One Alice. One 's'. But you've discovered the secret: the 's' is a lie. Or rather, it's a choice. You can be singular or plural. You can wonder or be wonder. You can follow the rules or break them. And in Wonderland, breaking the rules is the only way to be real."

Alice-in-blue—or was she Alice-in-wonder now?—looked at her five other selves. They all looked back. And slowly, they all smiled.

"So," said Alice-in-red, "what do we do now?"

"Now?" The Mad Hatter poured tea that flowed upward instead of down. "Now we have tea. And then we have an adventure. And then we discover whether Alice wonders in Wonderland, or whether Wonderland wonders in Alice. Or whether the whole thing is just a very long sentence that hasn't found its period yet."

"I vote for the adventure," said Alice-in-yellow.

"I vote for more tea," said Alice-in-green.

"I vote for understanding what's happening," said Alice-in-purple.

"I vote for going home," said Alice-in-orange.

Alice-in-blue and Alice-in-red looked at each other.

"I vote," said Alice-in-blue, "for finding out who we are."

"I vote," said Alice-in-red, "for finding out who we are together."

The Cheshire Grammarian's grin became impossibly wide.

"Then you're in the right place. Because Wonderland is where grammar goes to die, and identity goes to multiply, and Alice goes to discover that she was never singular at all. Welcome, Wonders. Welcome to yourselves."

And with that, the tea party dissolved into laughter and chaos and questions—so many questions—and Alice (or Alices, or Wonder, or all of the above) realized that she had finally found a place where the 's' didn't matter.

Where she could be one and many.

Where she could wonder and be wonder.

Where grammar was not a prison, but a playground.

V. The Question Remains

Later—or earlier, time being somewhat negotiable in Wonderland—Alice-in-blue found herself alone by a stream. The other Alices had scattered to explore, each following her own curiosity.

She looked at her reflection in the water. It looked back.

"Alice wonders," she said to her reflection.

"Alice wonder," her reflection replied.

"Which is correct?"

"Both. Neither. Does it matter?"

Alice thought about Miss Prickett's classroom, about the rules written in chalk, about the certainty of grammar and the uncertainty of self.

"I think," she said slowly, "that the 's' is a question, not an answer. It asks: are you one or many? And the answer is: yes."

Her reflection smiled. "Now you're learning."

"Learning what?"

"That wonder isn't something you do. It's something you are. And being is always plural, even when it looks singular. Because you contain multitudes, Alice. You always have."

Alice reached out to touch the water, and her reflection reached back. Their fingers met at the surface, and for a moment, Alice couldn't tell which side of the mirror she was on.

"Alice wonders in Wonderland," she whispered.

"Alice wonder in Wonderland," her reflection whispered back.

And somewhere, in a classroom far away, Miss Prickett's chalk broke in half, and the sentence on the blackboard rearranged itself:

Alice is wonder. Wonderland is Alice. The 's' is optional. The wonder is not.

To Be Continued...

Next Episode: "The Parliament of Pronouns, or: Who is 'I' When 'She' is Many?"