sitting in a chair scolding her kitten, Kitty, when she notices the alternate world inside the Looking Glass. She determines to explore this other world, and as soon as she steps inside, she finds a place much like yet much different from her home. She encounters a smiling clock, animate chess pieces and a book with backwards text, but determined to see all of this amazing new place before she has to return, she abandons the living room and steps outside.
After a confusing romp through the garden, talking flowers direct Alice to the Red Queen, who informs Alice that she is a part of a giant chess game. Alice's goal is to become a queen herself, and the Red Queen instructs her that she must begin in this second square and inevitably reach the eighth square in order for this aspiration to be realized. She explains also a bit of the backwards nature of life in the Looking-Glass world.