Alice, famously, struggles with speech in Wonderland. She recites “How Doth the Little Busy Bee” only to have it come out as “How Doth the Little Crocodile.” Her words are eaten and transformed. The creatures of Wonderland constantly interrupt, mishear, and reinterpret her. She lacks a stable “tooth” — a fixed voice of authority.

So here is the question the Graias Alice asks you: If you had only one eye to share — one way of seeing truth — who would you pass it to? And when it is your turn to be blind, can you still speak with the shared tooth? Perhaps we are all Graias Alice: waiting at the edge of the known world, holding something precious and absurd, passing it hand to hand, eye to eye, wondering if this time — just this time — the story will end not in beheading, but in waking up. “Curiouser and curiouser,” said Alice — and the three gray sisters nodded, for they had seen it all before.

In the shadowy margins of Greek mythology, long before Perseus sliced off Medusa’s head, there were the (“Gray Ones” or “Old Women”). Three sisters — Enyo, Pemphredo, and Deino — born with grey hair, swan-like bodies, and a single eye and one tooth to share among them. They were gatekeepers of knowledge, stationed at the entrance to the Gorgons’ lair.

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