by Cameron Jace
“Move.” I point my weapon. “Tell the others to open the gate upstairs. I want a car I can drive right away.”
“But of course.”
I feel like a commando, a fearless warrior, but it still doesn’t make sense, the way he’s scared of me.
The guards open the door for me, then lie flat on their stomachs, as if I am robbing a bank, hands behind their heads.
I step up to climb the stairs the moment when my greatest weakness attacks me. The one weakness that always messed with my escaping plans. I remember the one thing that matters to me the most.
This sucks. Now I have to go back to my cell, willingly. Because I can’t leave my Tiger Lily behind. Now I know what it means to me.
49
Running back with a rifle in my hand, I convince myself I can do it. All I have to do is pick up the Tiger Lily, use the rifle on my way back, and get out of here.
I enter the cell, hug the plant with one hand, and remember the sight of my children in the future. Tiger’s boyish logic, his leadership at such a young age. Lily’s incredible innocence that would make her another version of Alice in Wonderland.
A tear rolls down my cheek. This time-traveling thing is a heart-wrenching journey. I understand the wisdom of not knowing the future now. If we do, we’re doomed by the curse of knowledge.
I step outside, my rifle pointed out.
The guards are still on the floor. This should work. I will find Mrs. Tock, and she will correct the path. I will save Jack, find the keys, and hopefully find my Wonder.
This is going to be all right, I tell myself. What more surprises could happen? I can’t think of any.
But I am wrong.
A firing burst of pain rushes through my knees, so painful I drop the pot on the floor. The image of my children cracking to pieces like china dolls almost kills me right away.
I fall to one knee, dropping the rifle. Then the other knee, which I can’t feel anymore. My body heats up from my toes to the back of my neck.
On my knees, I see Waltraud sneering at me. She has hit me with her baton, right in my knees, and now I can’t even move.
I fall on my face, unable to comprehend what’s happening to me. I needed to escape to find Mrs. Tock. Now, I won’t be able to move. Now… oh, God. Now, I’m paralyzed.
The nightmare.
50
THE PRESENT: INSIDE THE INKLINGS, OXFORD
“What’s happening to her?” Fabiola yelled at the time couple. Alice, lying on the bed, was in great pain. Her hands were trembling, and her knees were twitching.
“Relax, White Queen.” Mrs. Tock was manicuring her fingernails. She seemed satisfied with the red color, now that she blew air onto it. “Pain comes with time travel.”
“Pain is very interesting,” Mr. Tick said, chin up, smoking a pipe. “But you should tell her what’s really going on, Mrs. Tock. We’re all in this together now.”
“What is she supposed to tell me?” Fabiola said.
Mrs. Tock sighed. She stopped breathing on her nails and said, “I can see what’s happening to her exactly.”
“What?” Fabiola said. “How?”
“It’s some form of telepathy,” Mrs. Tock explained. “I can’t contact her, though. I can only see, sometimes vaguely, where she’s at and what’s happening in her journey.”
“A most interesting talent, Mrs. Tock,” Mr. Tick commented. “Proud to be married to someone like you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Tick.”
“Shut up, creeps.” Fabiola reached for her Vorpal sword. “Tell me what you see. What’s happening to her?”
“She woke up in the wrong time,” Mrs. Tock explained. “A day after she killed her classmates.”
“Poor Alice.” Fabiola closed her eyes, her mouth clenched before she took a deep breath to calm herself down. “How can this be fixed?”
“She will have to find me with the address I’ve given her. That’s all,” Mrs. Tock said. “See? We’re not bad people.”
“Always misunderstood, Mrs. Tock,” Mr. Tick added.
“However, she has a little obstacle to solve,” Mrs. Tock said. “Someone has knocked out her knees.”
“Are you joking?”
“Not at all. Alice may be paralyzed from the knees down now,” Mrs. Tock said flatly. “But I’m sure she’ll find a way out.”
“You obnoxious little troll.” Fabiola raised her sword.
“She called me a troll.” Mrs. Tock snickered, then mustered a serious face immediately. “Don’t worry, White Queen. Alice’s broken knees are the least of her troubles, trust me.”
“Then what is?” Fabiola asked.
“She will wake up in another room now. She will meet a very important man. And she will have to deal with a big revelation, I believe.”
51
THE PAST: RADCLIFFE ASYLUM, OXFORD
I wake up in the room that scares me the most. A room I suspect is a figment of my imagination. A room where I am a cripple. Where a psychiatrist tells me I am mad. That there is no hope for my recovery but falling deeper into the rabbit hole of my madness.
My knees are numb. I can’t feel them. I can’t move. This feels so real, even in the past. I am not imagining this. Being crippled in this darkened room has always been my reality. I just never knew the circumstances that led to it.
Now it’s clear to me. Waltraud broke my knees while I tried to escape the first day I arrived in the asylum. And that’s when I met the faceless doctor behind the curtain of darkness separating us now.
“Welcome, Alice,” he says. I can’t see him. I can only smell the tobacco he’s smoking from a pipe. “It’s been a long time since we last met.”
As he speaks, I realize I’m not under the Lullaby pill’s influence now. My mind reels with memories. A lot of them now. I think I know who I am. I think I know what happened. But it can’t be true. It just can’t be.
Better listen to what the doctor has to say.
“I think the Lullaby pill was an early call,” he says. “I should have waited a little longer.”
“Why? What are you talking about?”
“I understand if you don’t remember correctly. I also understand if your memories seem a little shuffled. Fact and fiction will meld into each other. But it will only take a few moments before you remember.”
“Remember what?” The headache is killing me once. The memories twice.
“Remember who you really are.” He slightly rocks in his chair. He seems satisfied with this conversation.
“Who in the world am I?” I tilt my head and stare into the darkness he is hiding behind. Imagine you stare into a mirror, and all you see is black. “Answer me!”
“Who do you think you are?”
Playing games again. The tobacco smells like the Pillar’s smoke. I know that much now. Is that possible? “Who am I?” My voice is weakening. I don’t want to start sobbing. Everyone deserves to know who they are.
“Who do you think you are?” he repeats.
“What’s this supposed to mean? Are you saying I’m not the Real Alice?”
“On the contrary,” the voice says. “You’re the Real Alice. Always was. Always will be. And that may be the problem.”
I dismiss his last sentence. I feel healthier in my body all of a sudden because he said I’m the Real Alice. It’s all that mattered to me from the beginning.
“Say it again, please.”
He laughs. “You’re the Real Alice. Don’t doubt that.”
“And you are?” I squint at the darkness. “It’s you, the Pillar, right? For some nonsensical reason, you played this game with me. Maybe you wanted to make sure I was up to the mission of saving lives. Right? Please tell me I’m right. Tell me you’re the Pillar. I won’t hold grudges. Just get it over with.”
The silence that follows is so profound I am aware of my beating heart. The rocking chair bends forward, just a little. Smoke drifts near my face and the voice speaks to me: “No, Alice. I’m not the Pillar.
You can call me Mr. Jay.”
52
THE PRESENT: TOM QUAD, OXFORD
Professor Carter Pillar sat on the bank in the middle of the empty quad. The sky was gray, the color of dull lives, and the rain fell like drops of unmet hopes from the sky.
Every student had left the university by this time. Everyone preferred to stay home on a day like this. A strange day, indeed. The Pillar didn’t mind. He had been used to a certain amount of loneliness in the past. It wasn’t always bad. Sometimes it helped him clear his mind.
He sat, fiddling with the watch in his hand.
Soon Fabiola would come. Soon everything would change. Soon she’d spit and shout in his face like she always did. But this time, it was going to be the darkest hour for both of them. Soon it was going to be really hard to take sides in the Wonderland Wars.
Oh, how good and evil interjected in every aspect of life. Who was really good and who was bad? That should have been Hamlet’s most daring question, not “to be or not to be.”
In the middle of the rain, the Pillar pulled out a yellow piece of paper. With a ballpoint pen, he wrote something on it. One word. That was all it took. He folded the paper and tucked it back in his pocket, patted it a couple of times, closed his eyes, and let the rain wash over him.
He stared once more at his watch. It was time already.
The yellow paper in his pocket felt good. So good. Because the one word he’d written on it — it was all that mattered. The one word was the Pillar’s Wonder.
53
THE PAST: PSYCHIATRY ROOM, RADCLIFFE ASYLUM, OXFORD
“Why do people call you Mr. Jay?” I say. “How do I know you?”
“We’ve known each other for a long time, Alice,” he says. “A little after the circus in Wonderland.”
“You were at the Circus?”
“Not exactly. But we’ll get into that later.”
“Later when?”
“After the Lullaby’s effect totally withers away.”
“Why did you give it to me, then, when it messed with my head so much?”
“I didn’t give it to you,” he says.
“Who did, then?”
“It was Waltraud who popped it down your throat.” He pauses for a smoke. “But the real question is: whose idea was it to give you the pill?”
“Whose idea was it?” I realize I already know the answer. It’s slowly coming back to me, like a gathering of a million crows veiling my soul with darkness.
“You asked for the Lullaby pill, Alice.”
“Me?”
“Yes. It was you.”
“I think I remember that now,” I say. The words are too heavy on my tongue. “I don’t quite remember why.”
“It’s a bit complicated,” Mr. Jay says. “I can’t imagine why, too. But it was your call. And I wouldn’t deny you anything you wish for, not after all you have done for me.”
“For you? What have I done?”
“You killed everyone on the bus, Alice,” Mr. Jay says. “You have no idea how much I’m pleased.”
Slivers of memories flash before my eyes. I can see clearer now. No rabbit was driving the bus. Not even Carolus Ludovicus, who I saw embarking the bus in an earlier vision while I was in Mushroomland.
It was me who killed everyone on the bus. Always me. And I loved it.
“If you hadn’t killed them, we’d never have a chance to win the Wonderland Wars,” he says. “Of course, it’s still a long shot to actually win the war and embrace the world with madness. But we’d never have the slightest of hopes if you haven’t helped.”
This is when I wish my bed were my coffin. I wish I’d sink deep into the dirt, deep enough to hide from the truth. “I helped you in winning the Wonderland Wars?” I remember the Reds in the future telling me they weren’t going to kill me. That Mr. Jay had advised against it. It just can’t be. I think I know now why I live in a Wonderland Compound in the future, and why Tom Truckle wouldn’t tell me why he led the revolution, not me.
“The best help we ever had,” Mr. Jay says.
“What do you mean when you say ‘we’? Whom did I help? Who are you?”
The man lets out a brief chuckle, one that cuts through my veins. “Black Chess, Alice. Black Chess.”
54
Sometimes the truth is a slow burn of continuous pain. The longer it takes to reveal, the more it cuts through. A sword’s stroke is always merciful; a thousand small cuts are the real torture.
“Are you saying I’m…”
“Yes, you are, Alice,” Mr. Jay says. “Once the Lullaby’s effect leaves you, you will remember you’re one of us.”
All the tears in the world can’t baptize me now.
“We’ve been planning the bus accident for years. It was our best plan. And, of course, only you could do it, but let’s not get into why only you could do it now,” Mr. Jay says. “The Real Alice whom everyone in Wonderland feared. The one and only.”
“Feared?”
“Oh, girl. The heads you chopped off. The blood you shed.” Mr. Jay is overly impressed. He may be my boss, but he is fascinated by me. “Carroll had a point, making everyone forget your face. This, or every Wonderlander, would have spent the rest of their lives crapping in their pants, remembering you.”
I’m darkness wrapped in black blood, dipped into the abyss of the deepest ocean. “So, the whole search for the Real Alice wasn’t to find the girl who will save the world?”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about. No one’s really searching now, but they surely will in the future,” Mr. Jay says. “The Inklings will gather someday. Some kind of prophecy. But they’ll be too late.”
“So the Inklings fear me, too?”
“Some of them do,” he says. “Some of them foolishly think you can be converted. But I know you will never do that. You’re Black Chess’s most precious warrior.”
“Why do you doubt that?”
“Let’s face it, Alice. You’ve done things that can’t be forgiven. Remember messing with Carroll’s mind, splitting his self in two, and creating the Carolus part in him? It was genius.”
“I did that?”
“You fed him a heavy dose of Lullaby pills, mixed with the Executioner’s drugs until the man collapsed. He collapsed so hard he made a deal with his split image to kill himself through you.”
The curtains fall. I have nothing to say. The play is over. And when the curtains are draped, there will be no audience left to applaud. Because I may have killed them all.
“Let’s not think about this now,” he says. “I’m really curious why you wanted to take the Lullaby pills after all you’ve done.”
This, I don’t remember. If I was this dark beast of Wonderland, why’d I ask to forget what I had done later? Maybe some part of me, a small one, though, realized the gruesomeness of what I had done. A part that couldn’t go on being the Real Evil Alice anymore. A part of me that longed for redemption. A part that wanted to forget through a Lullaby pill. A part of me that preferred I’d spend the rest of my life in an asylum. Better mad than being the Real Alice.
I really hope this tiny part is still inside me somewhere.
55
THE PRESENT: MARGARET’S OFFICE, PARLIAMENT
The call came while Margaret was staring at her reflection in the mirror, wondering if she was really as beautiful as she managed to fake.
“Margaret speaking.”
“It’s done,” Carolus answered.
“Are you sure?”
“We should celebrate,” he said. “She is the Real Alice. And she knows it. She is one of us.”
Margaret’s smile almost messed with her surgical beauty. She was advised against smiling too much and stretching out her Botox festival. But she couldn’t help it. This was the moment everyone in Black Chess had waited for. This was the moment the Queen would be forced to give her back what she had taken from her.
“Of course Alice is back,” she said. “One of us. No one can stop us from winn
ing the war anymore.”
No one can stop me from taking what belongs to me.
56
THE PRESENT: BUCKINGHAM PALACE, LONDON
The Queen received a similar call, from the Cheshire this time.
“Margaret doesn’t know I’ve called you,” the Cheshire said. “She will try to keep the news from you, so you’ll give her back what she wants.”
“Don’t worry about the ugly Duchess.” The Queen was Caucus-racing in her chamber. A known Wonderlastic way of celebration. You run in place, expecting to win a race, only to realize you’re stuck where you are because fate is chaining your feet. “Just tell me she is the Real Alice.”
“She is.”
“Holy Mushrooms and Wonderland Lilies!” She gasped. “It’s her. All that I’ve been waiting for. Are you sure? I mean, is she still the nasty, unforgiving, ruthless girl we’ve always known?”
“Too soon to tell. But Mrs. Tock confirmed what she saw in the past. She even saw her meeting with Mr. Jay.”
“Then it’s her. Damn you, Lewis, for erasing her image from our minds. We could have found her earlier. Tell me, Cheshire, how is she taking it?”
“Mrs. Tock says the girl is pretty shocked. There is still that small part of her that wishes she could redeem herself, but I think it’s too small to have an effect on her when she comes back to the present.”
“I wouldn’t dismiss this part.” The Queen rubbed her chin. “From what I understand now, she asked for the pill after the bus accident. She does have that goodie-goodie part in her. It must be suppressed.”
“I believe this is what she did,” the Cheshire said. “Mrs. Tock believes Alice took incredible doses of Lullaby pills so she’d forget who she is.”