Alice in Zombieland by Lewis & Cook Carroll Read Free Book Online Page A

as she spoke, but no result seemed to follow, except a little shaking among the distant dead leaves.
          As there seemed to be no chance of getting her hands up to her head, she tried to get her head down to them, and was delighted to find that her neck would bend about easily in any direction, like a serpent. She had just succeeded in curving it down into a graceful zigzag, and was going to dive in among the dying branches, when a sharp hiss made her draw back in a hurry: a large black raven had flown into her face, and was beating her violently with its long black wings.
          ‘Serpent!’ screamed the Raven.
          ‘I’m not a serpent!’ said Alice indignantly. ‘Let me alone!’
          ‘Serpent, I say again!’ cawed the Raven, but in a more subdued tone, and added with a kind of sob, ‘I’ve tried every way, and nothing seems to suit them!’
          ‘I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about,’ said Alice.
          ‘I’ve tried the roots of trees, and I’ve tried banks, and I’ve tried hedges, and I’ve tried the gravestones and the tombs, too!’ the Raven went on, without attending to her; ‘but those serpents! There’s no pleasing them!’
          Alice was more and more puzzled, but she thought there was no use in saying anything more till the Raven had finished.
          ‘As if it wasn’t trouble enough feeding off the corpses of the dead,’ said the Raven, flapping its shiny black wings; ‘but I must be on the look-out for serpents night and day! Why, I haven’t had a wink of sleep these three weeks!’
          ‘I’m very sorry you’ve been annoyed,’ said Alice, who was beginning to see its meaning. But now as she got closer to the fat bird, she began to think of her hunger again, and her eyes lit up with a most dastardly eagerness. The Raven saw it and backed away on the branch upon which it was sitting. Alice smiled thinly, trying to pretend that she had not been just now thinking what the Raven might taste like if she grabbed it and plucked off its wings.
          ‘And just as I’d taken the highest tree in the wood,’ continued the Raven, raising its voice to a shriek, ‘and just as I was thinking I should be free of them at last, they must needs come wriggling down from the sky! Ugh, Serpent!’
          ‘But I’m not a serpent, I tell you!’ said Alice. ‘I’m a—I’m a—’
          ‘Well! What are you?’ said the Raven, beating those delicious looking wings once more in her face. ‘I can see you’re trying to invent something!’
          ‘I—I’m a little girl,’ said Alice, rather doubtfully, as she remembered the number of changes she had gone through that day.
          ‘A likely story indeed!’ said the Raven in a tone of the deepest contempt. ‘I’ve seen a good many little girls in my time-both alive and dead, young lady, but never one with such a neck as that! No, no! You’re a serpent; and there’s no use denying it. I suppose you’ll be telling me next that you never tasted an egg!’
          ‘I have tasted eggs, certainly,’ said Alice, who was a very truthful child; ‘but little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you know.’ And maybe even nice fat ravens, she thought while licking her dry cold lips.
          ‘I don’t believe it,’ said the Raven; ‘but if they do, why then they’re a kind of serpent, that’s all I can say. Oh, why can’t the Red Queen take better care of your kind? Why must I be frightened even this far above the ground? ’
          This was such a new idea to Alice, that she was quite silent for a minute or two, which gave the Raven the opportunity of adding, ‘You’re looking for eggs, I know that well enough; and what does it matter to me whether you’re a little girl or a serpent?’
          ‘It matters a good deal to me ,’ said Alice hastily; ‘but I’m not looking for eggs, as it happens; and