Knjigice
Fairy tale · Classic fairy tales
Through the Looking-Glass
The story of a girl who stepped through a mirror into a back-to-front world
Also in: Alica v ogledalu (Slovenian) · Alica v zrkadle (Slovak)
It was a cold winter afternoon, and snow fell softly outside. Alice sat in the armchair by the fire, playing with Kitty, the black kitten, who had unwound a whole ball of wool. "Kitty, do you wonder what the house in the mirror is like?" Alice asked, looking up at the great mirror over the mantelpiece. "Everything looks the same — only the other way round. How I'd love to go and see!"
1
Alice climbed up onto the mantelpiece. And look — the mirror misted over like silver fog and turned soft as gauze! She hopped through and landed in the room on the other side. Everything was reversed: the pictures on the walls were smiling, the clock was pulling faces, and across the hearth rug, quite truly, little chess pieces were strolling about.
2
Outside, a garden like no other was waiting for Alice. "You speak nicely, when you speak," said a tall lily. Alice gasped: "You can talk?" — "Of course," said a rose, "when there's anybody worth talking to." The daisies all chattered at once, until the lily shook a leaf at them and told them to hush.
3
From a little hill Alice saw something wonderful: the whole country was divided by hedges and brooks into squares — like a giant chessboard! "Here we play a game of chess as big as the world," said the Red Queen, who was suddenly standing beside her. "If you like, you may be a White Pawn. When you reach the Eighth Square, you shall be a Queen." Alice clapped her hands with joy.
4
The Red Queen took her by the hand, and off they ran. They ran faster and faster, till Alice's hair streamed behind her — yet the trees by the path never moved an inch. "We've been in the same place the whole time!" panted Alice. "Of course," said the Queen. "Here it takes all the running you can do to stay in one place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run twice as fast!"
5
All at once Alice was sitting on a train. Opposite her sat a gentleman dressed in a white paper coat, next to him a goat, and by the window a beetle, sighing quietly. "Tickets, please!" called the guard, examining Alice through a little telescope. Then the train gave a hop — hop! — and jumped clean over a brook, and Alice sailed straight onto the Third Square.
6
Under a tree stood two plump twins in matching school caps, as like as two eggs: Tweedledum and Tweedledee. They linked arms and danced in a ring, then recited, both together, a long poem about a walrus and a carpenter and some very curious oysters. When they finished, they bowed — one to the left, one to the right, exactly like a mirror.
7
Out of the wood came the White Queen, her hair all untidy and her crown askew. "I live backwards," she explained to Alice, "so I remember best the things that will happen the week after next." She offered Alice a position: "Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday — but never jam today." — "But sometime it must come to today!" said Alice, astonished.
8
On a high wall sat a great egg-shaped fellow with a wide grin and a splendid cravat: Humpty Dumpty. "When I use a word," he said proudly, "it means just what I choose it to mean." He also explained that he celebrated un-birthdays — three hundred and sixty-four of them a year! And all the while he rocked so perilously that Alice quite trembled for him.
9
Through the wood she was escorted by the White Knight on his shaggy white horse. Every so often he slid off — once to the left, once to the right — and each time Alice helped him back up. He showed her his inventions: an umbrella for rain that falls upwards, and a mousetrap on the saddle. At the wood's edge he waved goodbye: "You go on, and I shall wait here and wave until you are out of sight."
10
Alice jumped the last little brook and stood on the Eighth Square. On her head she felt something heavy and golden — a crown! "I'm a Queen!" she cried. Beside her, all of a sudden, appeared the Red Queen and the White Queen. "A proper Queen must first pass her examination," said the Red Queen sternly, and asked Alice nothing but impossible riddles.
11
Then began the grand feast — and what a feast! The roast bowed and spoke, the pudding scolded Alice for being rude, the candles grew right up to the ceiling, and the soup ladle marched along the table. "I can't stand this any longer!" cried Alice. She pulled the tablecloth and seized the Red Queen, who shrank into a tiny little figure. She shook her: "Now then, turn into — a kitten!"
12
And truly — she held no queen at all, only Kitty the black kitten! Alice was sitting in the armchair by the fire again, the flames crackling kindly, the snow still falling outside. "Kitty," she said thoughtfully, "so you were the Red Queen all along." Kitty only closed her eyes and purred, and the mirror over the mantelpiece shone quietly as before.
13The End
