Jabberwocky

Alpha Diallo

Jessica, a girl at school in modern day Britain, and Flora, a young woman living in Victorian London, join forces to defeat the terrifying Jabberwock which lurks in the world behind the mirror. 

Jessica hates school. The girls she's grown up with, counted as friends even, have started to turn against her and she doesn't know why. Suddenly there are conversations she's not part of, clubs she can't join and words she doesn't understand.  Jessica feels different from all her friends and wonders why she has to follow what they all expect of her in order to be liked.  Why can’t she just be herself, and feeling alone, confused and desperate, who can Jessica turn to for help?

130 years previously on the sight of Jessica’s school stood an asylum for women.  Flora is a spirited young girl, on the brink of womanhood, living in late Victorian London. Intelligent and creative, she has pushed what could be allowed of a respectable young lady to her family’s limits.  Her family considers her creativity to be verging on ‘hysteria’, a condition which means being sent to the women’s asylum for correction.  Flora can leave this fate if she agrees to calm down, marry the respectable Edward and live the life arranged for her.  If her engagement is announced Flora fears every minute of her life will be already mapped out and she becomes desperate to find another way to escape.

In their unhappiness, Flora and Jessica catch sight of each other in the mirror, standing on the same spot but separated by 130 years. This impossible event is only the start of a journey for both of them to the World of Nonsense, a world unlike either of theirs, but which offers them an escape from the pressures of home. However, delightful as this new world is to them, it too has its darker side, and very soon they find themselves facing something more terrifying than ever: the Jabberwock. The Jabberwock is a creature created from the full force of all of their combined oppressors.  Can they slay the Jabberwock and return home to freedom? And what will they find waiting for them even if they do?

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