Now, she wasn't so sure about this whole adventure. When the icy cold puffs welled from the hole, the air clung to her whole body for a few seconds, longer than seemed natural. She could see the coldness in the air. In her wet clothes she shivered for a moment, until the warm July air flowed back. She wanted to leave this place, to run back to the safety of the garden she knew so well. But she could not. It was as though she were hypnotized, or rooted like a tree. The gusts of cold continued every few seconds. She had the frightening thought that the hillside was breathing. The ravine was beginning to fill with wisps of cold haze, rising to her ankles, her knees, her waist. Now she noticed what she'd been hearing for several seconds. It sounded like the wind chimes, from the garden, but tinier. She remembered the line from the Edgar Allen Poe poem she liked so much, "Hear the tinkling of the bells, silver bells." Those bells told of a world of merriment, and she wasn't so sure about these.
She could no longer see her feet in the haze. Looking up she tried to see some kind of clue within the hole, but it was too far above her head to see inside. That didn't seem right somehow, but too much was happening to her to keep her thoughts straight. The haze was rising, her head was spinning, the walls of the ravine and the black hole seemed to be moving away. The world slipped from view as the haze rose above her head. The silvery bells gave a last strong splash of sound then stopped.
Everything stopped.
The sounds, the flowing haze, her spinning head, everything froze.
Then the haze began to move, to flow slowly down the ravine toward the creek. Again the July heat moved in, and the haze swirled to nothingness.
But nothing was the same. The ravine was gone. Alex stood on the floor of a narrow valley, with cliffs running, unbroken, on both sides. High above her, a great yawning cave looked out from the cliffside over the valley. Partway up the cliffs, giant ferns grew. The top of the cliffs were overgrown with giant trees she could not identify. And far overhead, so far she could not see any details, a canopy of branches crisscrossed the sky.
She hugged her arms to herself in fright, but this place had it's own exotic beauty. In the distance, a river ran across the mouth of the valley. It looked like an easy walk, and she knew she wanted to get away from the black cave, though she didn't know why. She began walking, but the way was difficult, because she had to wade through a thick, spongy grass that rose above her knees. She trudged on for several minutes, then came to an area where the grass was matted down. She remembered seeing pictures, when she was a kid, of wheat fields in England that had mysterious circles of flattened wheat stalks. It was fun to suppose that somehow flying saucers were involved. But this was real, this was right in front of her, and she saw it with her own eyes. What was it Alice had said? "Curiouser and curiouser."
This flattened area was not round, but stretched. She crossed the area, then re-entered the taller grass. Again, after a few minutes, she entered another clearing.
Puzzled, she left the clearing, and climbed up a big boulder to try to get a better view of her surroundings. The surface of the boulder was slightly slimy and slippery, and softer than a boulder had a right to be. She stood atop the boulder, and stared in surprise along the sloping valley floor: the clearings looked just like footprints! Startled, she slipped and lost her footing, plopped on her backside, and bounced. Then she slowly slid down the boulder, and landed on her dignity. Looking up, she now knew what the boulder was: a mushroom bigger than herself. Something was very definitely strange.
She pushed her way to the nearest footprint, then sat on a boulder (or was it really a pebble) sunk halfway into the flattened moss. Time to do some thinking.
Somehow, either she had shrunk, or the world had grown, or she was suddenly in some strange new land. There were things she recognized, such as the mushroom, though she had never seen one while standing underneath it. The trees seemed the same, though they were so far away they were hard to see. The best clue was the line of footprint-clearings, which seemed to end below the dark hole, and start somewhere down toward the river. It was hard to explain those by anything but the "shrinking" theory. And if that was true, the river was probably her aunt and uncle's little stream.
All at once, she felt a darkening as a black shadow passed over her. Then a flapping sound, like wings. Looking up, she saw first the claws, then the yellow eyes, then the rest of the giant black crow swooping down toward her. She raised her hands over her head, but knew she could not defend herself against the monstrous bird, which shrieked a loud "caw" of triumph. She was frozen in place!