Like a mouse inside a maze
Wandering 'round for daze
With a smile upon my face
I never want to leave this place

The Garden – Guns N' Roses

~ ~ ~

Through the darkness, a single, narrow ray of light broke through. At first I thought it was the sun, but it lacked its warmth and golden hue. I followed it with my gaze, too scared to set out and step forward before I knew where it would lead. At my feet, a treacherous path was winding through the darkness, and up ahead I spotted it - glittering like a diamond in the light, the piano stood there like a lonely star in a velvet black night sky.

My feet felt unsteady as I walked towards it, as if I was taking my first steps after a long rest, and I treaded carefully. The darkness was looming to my left and right, like towering waves that I expected to collapse any second now to bury me underneath them. But I kept moving. And the closer I got to the piano, the more my heart longed to feel the smoothness of the black and white keys underneath my fingertips, to feel how the softest touch would move the hammers and cause the strings to vibrate, casting magic upon the air.

I broke into a run. Hiking up my skirt – why on earth was I wearing such a long dress? – I ran along the path. I lost my shoes along the way. It didn't matter. I cut my feet. It didn't matter.

Panting, I reached the instrument. It stood there, unmoved, as if it wasn't even aware how much I had longed to be with it. Of course it wasn't, that was a silly thought. Yet I knew that it belonged to me just as much as I belonged to it. I had never thought I would have to part from it at all. Now I collapsed on my knees next to it, and my hands softly caressed that familiar edge, right there where the white lacquered surface ended and the translucent plastic began. My heart felt like it was bursting from sheer joy. I was home.

"Hey, Alice," a voice called out.

Still on my knees, I turned around.

"Who's Alice?" I asked.

From the darkness, a figure emerged, a pale girl with dark hair just past her shoulders, and bright, green eyes that almost seemed to glow. She might have been pretty, if it wasn't for the stern frown on her face.

"We really don't have time for this. You've got to hurry."

"Hurry? Why? I just got here," I said as I got back up on my feet to face her on eye level. "Who are you, anyway?"

She ignored my question. "You have to focus. This isn't real. This is a dream. You need to go back."

"I don't understand," I said, and she heaved an annoyed sigh.

"Of course you don't. Never mind. Just wake up already!"

She tapped a finger on my forehead, between my eyebrows, and for a second, the world around me went dark.

When I awoke again, I was lying on the floor of that white room again. I felt cold, and every fiber of my body was aching. My gaze fell on my left forearm, where the silver shackle had burned my flesh so many times that the skin around it was reddened and raw.

With a groan of pain, I propped myself up on my arms and looked at my surroundings. The piano was there, but I had no strength left in me to play. But there was something else. A tiny, white butterfly sat on top of it, easy to miss against the background of the white instrument and in these white surroundings.

I pulled myself up with some difficulty and looked at the little thing. It was made from paper, and I couldn't recall how it got there, but somehow I knew that it was meant for me. I put it in the pocket of my pants, careful not to crumple it.

Feeling like I had accomplished something rather important, I sank back to the floor. I felt very tired, and very cold, and leaning against one leg of the piano, I must have fallen asleep again.

I found myself wandering a gloomy marsh, knee-deep in muddy water, surrounded by a thick fog that made it hard to see much beyond an arm's length. The water below me was so murky that the thought of what might be living in it sent chills up my spine. I couldn't remember how I had gotten there, I could only remember the room with the piano, and the butterfly.

The butterfly!

In a panic, I searched my pocket. If I wasn't careful, it would end up soaked. But my pockets were empty.

Did I lose it? I thought in dismay.

"Come on now, Alice, we don't have time for this."

I whirled around and almost tripped over the uneven ground underneath the water's surface. There was that girl again. She sat cross-legged on a tree stump and held my butterfly in her hands.

"Hey! You stole my butterfly!" I accused her and waded closer.

She raised her head and fixed her green eyes on me, as I approached her insufferably slowly through the murk.

"No, I didn't. It's not really here," she said.

At her words, the paper butterfly began to fold its wings several times, and then took flight. I gasped in awe. I watched it flutter towards me, and extended my hand to provide it a space to land, but when it touched down on my fingertips, it dissolved into silvery dust and disappeared.

"It's gone..." I said sadly.

"No, it was never here," she corrected me. "It's time for you to remember what you came here for. You have a lot of work to do. You need to focus on that."

"I have no idea what you mean."

"He still needs you. They all do."

"Who are you talking about?" I asked, growing more and more annoyed with that girl.

"Don't you remember? You made a promise to someone."

A promise. I remembered something about a promise, made to a friend in an enchanted garden. There were butterflies there, too, I recalled. But I couldn't remember what I had promised.

"You have to find the thread soon," the girl said. "Don't forget that. Find the thread."

At her words, I recalled something else now. A deep, dark hole, a bottomless well. Water everywhere around me. The waves clashing above my head, and the last air being forced from my lungs. And then -

A dreadful sensation took hold of my body, ascending from the depths of my gut towards my heart, encasing it in an iron grip and causing every heartbeat to feel like a painful struggle.

Am I dead?

"You need to go back," the girl said.

"No. No I won't! I don't want to have anything to do with your stupid thread and I don't want to go back! You can't make me go back to that horrible place!"

"I know I can't," she said and tilted her head as she looked at me pensively, "But I don't have to. You never really left."

She reached out and tapped her finger against my forehead again, and somehow, her touch left me paralyzed. I fell backwards, but I didn't hear a splash as I collapse into the water of the mire. Instead it seemed like I continued to fall.

"I won't always be able to help you find your way, Alice," I could hear the girl's voice in the darkness, as if she spoke right next to me. "The next time, you will have to figure it out on your own."

With a loud splash, I finally landed in a body of cold water. For a few panicked seconds, I thought that I was back in that horrid well at the mercy of Charybdis, but this place was different. The surface of the water was calm, only disturbed by my own movements, and dark, and it expanded into all directions around me.

I know this place, I realized. I've been here before.

Treading water, I reached out my hands until they found something. I pulled myself up on the metal grate that was part of a maze-like walkways, concealed just underneath the surface of the water. I looked around, shivering from the cold. And then I noticed something in the distance – a faint light, barely noticeable against the surrounding, all-enveloping shadows.

I suppose that's where I have to go, I thought, and began to carefully make my way across the invisible walkway.