Wonder

“Yes, I do.” The woman smirked and walked away.

The Queen felt exceptionally euphoric. She jumped in place and yelled at the top of her lungs, “Guards!”

A couple of them hurried into the room.

“Off with your head!” she ordered.

The guards looked perplexed, staring at each other. “Which of our heads do you want to chop off, My Queen? Me or him?”

“Who cares.” She waved a hand and sat on her throne. “I just want to see a head roll before me. Now!”

Chapter 25

THE FUTURE: OXFORD ASYLUM

I am lying on a patient’s bed, rolled by a young doctor inside the asylum. The doctor is signing my admission papers, telling the nurses I’m a sane person caught outside. Turns out the Queen ordered all sane people into asylums all over the world. Sane people are fed well inside until their turn comes to attend Westminster Circus, where the mad take revenge on the sane.

Whatever all of this means.

The doctor finishes the papers and starts rolling me inside. The doctor is not really a doctor. He is the Pillar possessing a young doctor’s soul.

The deal the Pillar made was to let the Cheshire help him possess another person’s soul so we could figure out our way into the asylum. I didn’t know it before, but the soul-possessing gift can be passed. The Cheshire never told it to anyone. He only agreed because he thinks he loves me. And the Pillar, being the Pillar, took immoral advantage of that.

“Don’t move until I find a way to get to that Mock Turtle,” the Pillar says in the doctor’s voice. Poor, handsome doctor, blond hair, well built, under the Pillar’s influence now.

“How are you going to find him?” I ask.

“The lesser-practiced art of asking, dear Alice,” the Pillar says. “It works like a charm when you’re good looking.”

He stops by a couple of nurses. “Sweeties,” I hear him say. “Looking fantastic today.”

“Oh.” One of them blushes — I tilt my head to see her. She is a redhead. “Thank you, doctor. What was your name again?”

Oops. We didn’t ask before the Pillar possessed him.

“Call me doctor.” The Pillar smiles.

“Doctor?” the other one, shorter, with thick glasses, asks.

“Of course. Dr. Doctor,” the Pillar says. “Instead of James, Jack, or John. Boring, right?”

They giggle. “How can we help you, Dr. Doctor?”

“See how sweet the words drool out of your sugary mouth?” he says.

I close my eyes, roll them behind my eyelids, and try not to laugh.

“You’re so sweet,” the shorter one says.

“Did you ever hear about that patient, Mock Turtle?” the Pillar says.

“Of course,” the bigger nurse says. “Pfff. The revolutionist.”

“Revolutionist?”

“You don’t go out much to the real world, do you?” the shorter one says. “Never heard about the Inklings?”

Things are getting weirder by the minute.

“Excuse my ignorance,” the Pillar says. “But I hate those sane people already.”

“The Mock Turtle is the leader of the revolution against the Queen,” the bigger one says.

“Long live the Queen,” the shorter one adds.

“Of course, long live the Queen,” the Pillar says. “Although she’s too short to live that long,” he says under his breath.

I wonder about the Inklings in the future. Who is leading them in the future? And why am I in a compound, living a luxurious life away from them? Part of a plan?

“Do you know where I can find him, sweeties?” the Pillar says.

“He is in section six,” the shorter one says.

“And where is that?”

“The one known as the Door to Wonderland in Christ Church. But you must have heard of it.”

“Of course I have.” The Pillar fluff-talks them for a few seconds and then rolls my bed ahead.

“You really know where this Door to Wonderland is?” I say, tilting my head back to look at him.

“I do. It’s a door near the library that Lewis Carroll used to stare at for hours while writing the book,” the Pillar says. “It’s said that the dean of the university at the time locked it because it was a real door to Wonderland. And…”

“And what?”

“It’s supposed to be your favorite place for playing as a child.”

“Me?”

“Yes,” the Pillar says. “In fact, it makes sense for this Mock Turtle to wait for you there. If you really keep the keys with him, then the name of the place is like a secret code between you and him. Your favorite childhood place. Makes sense.”

“Do you think me living in the compound is a camouflage, a trick to hide my true identity in the future, and the Mock Turtle being the leader of the revolution is only to delude the Queen?”

“We’re about to know in a second.” The Pillar stops.

I get out of bed and stare at the door he is pointing at. It leads to a garden. A vast one that is the same design as the one in my house at the compound. It looks like another part of Wonderland.

“I’m very curious about this Mock Turtle now,” I say. “Who could it be?”

“The last person that would ever cross your mind,” the Pillar says, pointing at him standing in the middle of the garden.

Chapter 26

THE PRESENT: MARGARET KENT’S OFFICE

The phone rang, and Margaret picked it up. “Who is it?”

“The Cheshire.”

“What do you want?” she said. “Aren’t you supposed to guard the Inklings until Alice awakes?”

“Something came up.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m getting signals from Jack’s mind.”

“Signals?”

“I can read his mind.”

“You don’t say.”

“I’m seeing memories.”

“I bet they’re all playing cards and None Fu games.”

“No.” The Cheshire hesitated. Margaret sensed he wasn’t quite himself. Something was happening to him. “They’re mostly about Alice.”

Margaret shrugged. She stood up, locked her door, and went back to her desk. “Anything useful?”

“A lot of lovey-dovey memories,” he said. “I’m still digging.”

“Anything about her being the Real Alice?” she asked eagerly. “Come on, there must a lead in her past to prove it’s her.”

“You sound too eager to know.”

“Yes, Cheshire, I want to know.” She gritted her teeth. “You know what it means if it’s hers.”

“Not really sure,” he lamented. “I’m not that involved in this Wonderland War.”

“You don’t understand,” Margaret said. “All of the Real Alice’s secrets lay in the few years after the circus. That’s where it all happened. You have to rummage through that wreckage in Jack’s mind. Harder.”

The Cheshire kept to himself for a while. Margaret couldn’t dismiss the possibility that the infamous cat was warming up to Jack and Alice, even if just a little.

“Cheshire,” she said. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” He was surely lying. “There is this memory about why Jack came back after she killed him.”

“And?”

“I can’t put my finger on it,” the Cheshire said. “But he came back to tell her something so important to him.”

“Tell her who she really is, maybe?” Margaret leaned back in her chair, a smile curving her lips. “That’s fantastic.”

“It’s driving me crazy.”

“You are crazy.”

“You think so?”

“‘We’re all mad here.’ Your words, not mine.”

“Yeah. I forgot.”

“It’s okay. Just understand that things are starting to get really exciting.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to. Just figure out why Jack came back, and if she is the Real Alice.” Margaret hung up then closed her eyes.

The few past weeks she had resisted the idea that the Pillar had found the Real Alice. It was a scary thought to Wonderlanders. But there hadn’t been enough evidence to support it.

Since Margaret needed all she could bargain with to get her thing back from the Queen, it’d be great if she came across proof that the girl in the asylum was the Real Alice. That would be perfect timing.