BEYOND THE DOOR, THE GARDEN OF COSMIC SPECULATION
TIME REMAINING: 11 HOURS, 30 MINUTES
O nce I knock, the doorknob turns, and the door opens, and a gust of wind blows against my chest. It smells of mushrooms.
With a numb tongue and misleading vision, I realize I am not underground anymore. Instead, I’m looking at the colorful world of Wonderland.
It seems hard to grasp its vastness at first—harder to believe this is really happening.
But I step forward onto a green road with yellow bananas for trees, bending on both sides. The banana trees have their sides peeled. A few birds twitter on top on the edges.
The sky is the color of marmalade, which is gross at first sight, but within the context of all the green and yellow, orange shines through. It all looks like a child’s drawing.
There isn’t enough time to take in the surroundings. I prefer to figure out how I’m supposed to find the circus—which isn’t showing on my Wonderland map.
I walk ahead, looking for someone to meet, but the place seems abandoned.
Where did everyone in Wonderland go?
A banana tree bends too close as if spying on me.
“What do you want?” I want to say, but nothing comes out. My tongue feels like cotton.
I am not even sure the banana—or the tree—is as large as I think.
When I stare at my feet, they are bigger than the hole I fell through earlier. They flap loudly as if I’m a seal.
My toe is also scaring me. It’s really awful and big. Red, as if bruised. It’s one big tomato.
I look away.
Where is everyone?
I take another look at my phone. I see a few locations on the map. The Queen of Hearts’ palace, the Muffin Man’s house, and big chessboard land.
I also spot Lewis Carroll’s studio, which looks like it’s on the edge of Wonderland. It makes sense now that I saw him enter Wonderland from a door in Oxford University when I met him through the Tom Tower a couple of weeks ago.
But if Oxford University is tangent to Wonderland, how am I in Scotland right now? Or am I?
It’s mind-boggling. Messed up. Dizzying.
I decide to accept things the way they are, just like the Pillar said.
I hate how the Pillar is always right. Trying to apply logic, or even a fragment of logic, in the insane world I am in is useless.
So I go with the flow.
I have a circus to find.
Strangely enough, the map doesn’t show a circus in Wonderland, and I don’t remember a circus in Lewis Carroll’s book.
I have no idea where to find this circus, or why it’s so important—the March Hare warned me of it, and the Hatter desires it. The Pillar doesn’t know much about it.
“Psst,” I hear a female voice call me. “You can’t keep walking like that in here.”
I stop in my tracks but don’t see anyone around me.
Nothing but a tiger lily bending over toward me, a little too large, of course.
I shake my head, longing for an explanation, as I can’t talk.
“You look like you’re from another world, walking in those jeans and boots,” Tiger Lily says, and suddenly I realize it’s my Tiger Lily. “You should put on the maid’s dress.”
How does she know about the maid’s dress in my bag?
“Hurry!” she insists, as she always does in the real world.
I take a moment to think about it. Whenever she talks to me, I am usually in my hallucinating mode. So what does that mean now? Or is it part of my induced Alice Syndrome?
Tiger Lily grins. I think she knows what I am thinking about. “Ah.” She twists her petals. “You think you’re mad because I’m talking to you.”
I nod.
“I don’t blame you, because frankly: how come a flower talks? ” She snickers. “But the thing is, who will you be talking to if I don’t talk to you? In other words, would you prefer loneliness over madness?”
Well, that’s the Tiger Lily I know. I wonder why I am so attached to her. Whatever happened in the past between me and her?
But if I am going to comply with her logic, I need her to do something for me first. I point at my dangling tongue.
“Are you bargaining now?” She takes a minute to think it over. “I like it when you don’t give up easily. Why not?” She spits blueberries at my tongue.
They break open and tickle me, then sting, but finally, I am able to speak again. “How do I get to the circus?” I ask immediately.
“Ah, the circus,” she says. “You don’t want to go there, Alice. You don’t want to go there.”