Not Quite Wonderland

Dreams are strange and mischevious creatures.

Last night, for instance, I was conducting a one-woman raid on the palace of the Queen of Hearts. After escaping rising (and poisonous) floodlevels by jumping from rooftop to rooftop, I gained access to the upper gallery, where an ordinary broom, bristles dipped in a convenient puddle, became a weapon powerful enough to disintegrate the flesh of whomever it touched. My secret ingredient was ordinary water - while safe to me, the Cardfolk and their minions (variously giant attack dogs, Jabba-esque slugs and zombies) found it deadly. Which is odd, because, in the course of my adventures, I kept on finding glasses and bottles of the stuff in every room, ready for me to fling in the face of my next adversary.

After my first attempts were thwarted by zombie-staff, I discovered a secret passageway leading into a labryinth of winter passages, unleashing five benevolent ice-sprites in the process. Thus aided, I continued into the royal chambers, melting two dogs, a Jabba-creature, the King and, finally, the Queen herself, like the Wicked Witch of the West. By the time I reached the Chamber of the Bishop-Knave, I was running out of water. Old, feeble and bed-bound, my final quarry shouldn't have presented much of a problem, except that he tried to beg for mercy, to be left alive - crippled as he was, what harm could he do? Following some dream-logic, I explained this wasn't possible; that in order for the curse to be broken, he had to die as well. At that, he leapt up and attacked me, dodging whatever water I threw at him until, finally, he tripped and fell, allowing me to splash a final glassful in his eyes and run.

Outside, I headed uphill through a maze of dark and narrow streets, which, instinctively, I recognised as belonging to Old London. A light snow was falling, and although I knew where I was supposed to go, the way proved to be a dead end. Then the ground began to shake, and a giant stone horse, ridden by a giant stone rider - a stentorian version of a statue in Trafalgar Square, silhouetted against an overlarge and misplaced Nelson's Column - came to life. It had been sitting between two narrow, black Victorian townhouses, and as they strode past where I was hiding (I had to move, twice, to avoid the hooves) I saw a staircase revealed behind their former resting place.

Running over, I climbed the stairs, baulking at a passing zombie - unnecessarily, as he apparently couldn't see me. The stairs became a ladder: one half of a sheer, almost vertical wooden watchtower straddling a river on either side, with a tiny, unsheltered platform at the top. It was here I waited and, looking west, saw a kind of ever-present sunrise/sunset on the horizon. A single ray of light fell back down where Old London had been, illuminating instead a field, a wood and a save-sphere (mentally stolen from Final Fantasy X). Relieved and tired, I climbed back town, dodged a final zombie-traveller, and saved my progress by a wooden noticeboard covered with multi-coloured sheets of paper. I kept one eye firm on the menu which had popped up across my right-hand vision, until it finally informed me that my data had, indeed, been saved beyond corruption.

Then I woke up.