Page 40 of Knot My Wonderland: Part Two
"So how do we... awaken it fully?" I asked, both excited and apprehensive at the prospect.
"Through trust," Vee answered, his silver eyes gleaming. "Complete surrender to partnership rather than partial collaboration."
"You want me to let it take control?" I tensed, memories of the Queen's collar flashing through my mind.
"Not control," Heart corrected gently. "Communion. There's a profound difference."
Dee approached, temporal devices humming softly. "The pattern doesn't want to control you, Alice. It wants to dance with you - to move as one being rather than two entities.”
I studied their faces, seeing truth in their expressions but still feeling uncertainty coil in my stomach. The pattern sensed my hesitation, silver and gold light pulsing with gentle reassurance beneath my skin. It wasn't demanding, wasn't pushing—simply waiting for me to decide.
"What would full communion look like?" I asked, needing to understand before I committed to anything.
"Imagine," Vee said, settling onto the silver grass beside me, "that instead of asking the pattern to show you something, you allow it to experience the world through your senses while you experience existence through its consciousness."
Chi's form flickered as he considered the implications. "It's like... sharing the same dance instead of taking turns leading."
"The pattern would still be you," Heart added quickly, noting my expression. "Your thoughts, your choices, your will. But enhanced by its ancient wisdom and perspective."
I closed my eyes, feeling the pattern's presence like a gentle tide washing through me. Unlike the Queen's invasive control, this felt like an invitation—a hand extended in friendship rather than a chain around my throat.
"How do we begin?" I asked, opening my eyes to find all four of them watching me with varying expressions of encouragement.
"Sit," Vee instructed, gesturing to the silver grass. "Make yourself comfortable."
I settled cross-legged on the ground, the metallic blades cool against my skin. Heart took position directly across from me, while Chi and the Tweedles formed a protective circle around us.
"First, establish connection with all your anchors," Dee explained, his devices humming softly. "Feel each bond—gold, silver, and opalescent. They'll stabilize you during the communion."
I closed my eyes again, focusing on the golden warmth of Heart's bond first, feeling its pulse with protective strength between us. Next came Chi's silver clarity, cool and steady like moonlight on water. Finally, the opalescent flow of the Tweedles' temporal connection, existing both forward and backward through time. Each bond hummed with its ownunique resonance, creating a harmonious chord that centered me completely.
"Good," Vee murmured, his voice seeming to come from multiple directions at once. "Now, instead of reaching for the pattern as you normally would, simply... invite it forward."
I took a deep breath, releasing the instinctive control I'd maintained even during our recent exercises. Rather than directing the silver and gold light, I mentally stepped aside, creating space for the pattern to come forward if it chose to.
The response was immediate and breathtaking. Silver and gold light surged beneath my skin like a tidal wave breaking free after centuries of restraint. It flowed through my veins, not just illuminating them from within but transforming them into channels of pure, undiluted magic. The sensation wasn't painful—it was exhilarating, like taking a full breath after a lifetime of shallow ones.
I gasped as awareness expanded beyond the boundaries of my own consciousness. The pattern didn't just show me possibilities anymore; it shared them, unfolding millennia of accumulated knowledge not as information but as lived experience. I felt the birth of Wonderland itself, reality coalescing from pure imagination. I witnessed the First Queen weaving the pattern into existence, not as a tool of power but as a bridge between worlds that were never meant to be separate.
"Alice?" Heart's voice seemed to come from both outside and inside me simultaneously. "Are you alright?"
I tried to speak but found my voice carrying harmonics that hadn't been there before—layers of meaning beyond simple words. "I'm... more than alright," I managed, opening eyes that I somehow knew now glowed with silver and gold light. "I can see everything."
Through the pattern's expanded consciousness, I perceived not just the silver meadow around us but the threads connectingall of Wonderland—every living thing, every magical construct, every possibility branching out like an infinite web of light. The Red Queen's corruption appeared as dark knots in the weave, places where the natural flow had been twisted into stagnation.
"What do you see?" Chi asked, his form appearing to me both as his familiar teal-eyed self and as a nexus of silver energy that pulsed with protective devotion.
"The damage," I whispered, my voice carrying the pattern's ancient sorrow. "She's been severing connections for centuries. Not just between people, but between realities themselves."
Through the pattern's heightened awareness, I could perceive the Red Queen's true crime—she hadn't simply corrupted magic, she'd been systematically isolating pieces of Wonderland from the greater tapestry of existence. Whole regions existed in magical quarantine, their natural connections to other realms severed like cut nerves.
"The plague that killed Rosalind…and so many others…," I breathed, understanding flooding through me as the pattern shared its memories. "It wasn't natural, was it?"
Vee's silver eyes darkened with confirmation. "The Queen's first experiments with blood magic. She was trying to enhance her daughter's connection to the pattern, but instead, created a cascade of failure that?—"
"That isolated her from everything,” I finished, the pattern's memories washing through me like a tide of grief. "She couldn't accept that Rosalind was dying, so she tried to force a deeper connection. But the pattern isn't meant to be seized—it has to be offered freely."
Through the communion, I felt the echo of that ancient tragedy. Rosalind, weak and fading, had begged her mother to let her go peacefully. But the Queen's desperation had driven her to attempt magical interventions that violated the very nature of connection itself. The result had severed not just Rosalind fromlife, but created the magical wound that became the plague—a spreading disconnection that consumed anyone it touched.
