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

if I was, I shouldn’t want yours : I don’t like them raw.’
          ‘Well, be off, then!’ said the Raven in a sulky tone, as it settled down again into its nest, and watching her with its beady mistrustful black eyes. Alice crouched down among the trees as well as she could, for her neck kept getting entangled among the skeleton branches, and every now and then she had to stop and untwist it. After a while she remembered that she still held the pieces of mushroom in her hands, and she set to work very carefully, nibbling first at one and then at the other, and growing sometimes taller and sometimes shorter, until she had succeeded in bringing herself down to her usual height.
          It was so long since she had been anything near the right size, that it felt quite strange at first; but she got used to it in a few minutes, and began talking to herself, as usual. ‘Come, there’s half my plan done now! How puzzling all these changes are! I’m never sure what I’m going to be, from one minute to another! Now if only I could find some creature willing to give me a bit of itself to eat, I would be just right! However, I’ve got back to my right size: the next thing is, to get into that beautiful graveyard—how is that to be done, I wonder?’ As she said this, she came suddenly upon an open place, with a little house in it about four feet high.
          ‘Whoever lives there,’ thought Alice, ‘it’ll never do to come upon them this size: why, I should frighten them out of their wits!’ So she began nibbling at the right hand bit again, and did not venture to go near the house till she had brought herself down to nine inches high.

Chapter VI

    The Tiny Corpse and Pepper

          F or a minute or two she stood looking at the house, shivering violently, fighting against the enormous and mindless hunger that kept growing inside her, and wondering what to do next, when suddenly a footman in livery came running out of the wood—(she considered him to be a footman because he was in livery: otherwise, judging by his face only, she would have called him a corpse)—and rapped loudly at the door with his torn and bony knuckles. It was opened by another footman in livery, with a round face, and large eyes; and both footmen, Alice noticed, looked pale and not quite alive, and not quite dead either. They both also smelled terrible; she could smell them even from her distant bush. Each of them also wore strange jeweled collars around their necks. And both had powdered hair that curled all over their heads. She felt very curious to know what it was all about, and crept a little way out of the wood to listen.
          The arriving Footman gave a snarling grunt and began by producing from under his arm a great letter, nearly as large as himself, stained by dark blood stains and other unthinkable fluids, and this he handed over to the other, saying, in a solemn tone, ‘For the Duchess. An Invitation from the Queen to play croquet.’ The door Footman repeated, in the same solemn tone, only changing the order of the words a little, ‘From the Queen. An invitation for the Duchess to play croquet.’
          Then they both bowed low, and their curls got entangled together. And then there was a great tumult of flailing arms and gnashing teeth, and the two footmen were attacking one another, tearing at their powdered wigs and blood stained jackets.
          Alice laughed so much at this, that she had to run back into the wood for fear of their hearing her; and when she next peeped out the delivery Footman was gone, and the other was sitting on the ground near the door, staring stupidly up into the sky, licking its bony bloody fingers. Alice didn’t like to think what had happened to the other footman, but she saw no corpse lying about, only one of those odd jeweled collars lying in the dust.
          Alice went timidly up to the door, and knocked.
          ‘There’s no sort of use in