SIX O'CLOCK CIRCUS, MUDFOG TOWN, ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF LONDON
TIME REMAINING: 3 HOURS, 07 MINUTES
I am back in the Six O’clock Circus, where it all started. The Pillar is watching me while I crawl on my hands and knees and dig into the sand where the Piccadilly writing had been embedded before.
I dig everywhere for that device the Hatter told me about. I have to find it. Time is running out.
“Will you ever talk to me?” the Pillar says. “I’ve been begging you all the way here on the plane. What’s going on, Alice?”
“I have to find a device that will locate the rabbit so I can stop the bomb.” I am still digging like a mad rabbit. “It’s buried in the sand.”
“And I suppose the Hatter told you this somehow while you were in the hole in the Garden of Cosmic Speculation?”
“Yes. It’s a long story.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it?” he says. “Because there was nothing inside that hole. It was just a hole . We couldn’t even find a rabbit.”
“Are you questioning my sanity now?” I snap.
The Pillar sighs.
“Because I am certified, you know. The beauty of it is I can do and believe whatever I want.”
“You’re not making sense, Alice. Let’s slow down.”
“Sense?” I am on the verge of shouting. “What has ever made sense since I met you? Just shut up and let me find the device.” Inside, I want to cry. Why? Because he is right. Nothing makes sense. Even if some of the events made some sense before, I’m too deep in the rabbit hole of absurdity to recall such events.
But somehow, I keep chugging my way through. God only knows where it will lead me.
“Okay, I admit I may have been insensitive,” the Pillar says. I wonder why he isn’t sarcastic at the moment. Why is he so serious about wanting to know what happened in the hole? It’s not like him. “Just tell me about the rabbit hole in the Garden of Cosmic Speculation. What happened in there?”
“It’s a portal to Wonderland.”
“Are you saying you were in Wonderland?” The Pillar seems eager to know.
‘Not quite so.” I shrug. “It’s part Wonderland, part real world, part time machine.” I am well aware of how impossible this sounds, but I trust in what I saw. I trust my mind—ironically, I do.
“Hmm...” The Pillar rubs his chin.
“Look, you’re supposed to be the one who always believes me, the one who always encourages me to save lives.” I stand up. “So don't go hmm on me.”
“I’m not. I am only wondering why you’re not really telling me what you saw.”
“You want to know what I saw?” The tension in my arms seems to be the aftermath of the horrific scene of the circus where the Wonderlanders where humiliated. It seems as if it all starts to sink in now. And it’s too much to take. “I saw the circus!”
The Pillar grimaces. It’s like I have stuffed him inside a pinball machine and kicked him all around.
“I saw the real circus. The Invisible Plague. I saw what humans, the likes of me, did to the Wonderlanders, only because they were different.” I am shivering. “Is that what the Wonderland Wars are all about, Pillar? Is that why there’s a plan by the Wonderland Monsters to destroy every living human? Why haven’t you told me about it? Why have you lied to me?”
I hate it that tears stream down my face. I hate them.
But the image of Lewis, Fabiola, Jack, the girl, and the March Hare being taken by the British constables and sent to the circus shattered me. The image of humans rejecting anyone who is different from them makes me hate my own kind.
“I didn’t know how to explain such a horrific thing to you,” the Pillar says. He looks saddened. Surprisingly ashamed. “You wouldn’t have believed me. No one would have believed me. It’s a fact, buried deep down in the tombs of history books, deep down in the conscience of mankind. Something no one wants to talk about anymore. I mean, lining up mentally ill people in a cage for entertainment, as if they were animals in a zoo? Who would have believed me?”
“But you lied to me and told me Lewis locked the Wonderland Monsters in Wonderland.”
“I didn’t lie. It’s true. Some of them he managed to lock in Wonderland, and some he managed to give new identities in the real world, like Fabiola,” the Pillar says. “It was complicated. On one hand, humans tortured Wonderlanders, so he was trying to protect us all from them. And on the other hand, Wonderlanders, like the Cheshire, a victim of human atrocities too many times, had become a clear threat to the world. I don’t even think Lewis knew what he was doing.”
“And now what?” I say. “How do you expect me to hunt the Wonderland Monsters knowing what we humans have done to them? Do you have any idea how confused I am?”
“A monster is a monster.” He grabs my arms tightly. “No matter the circumstance that turned them into one.”
“Coming from you, a man who killed twelve innocent people.” I push him away.
“Forget about me. Don’t you see what’s happening here? Whoever showed you the circus wanted you to think that way.” The Pillar grits his teeth. “They want you to sympathize with the Wonderland Monsters.”
I realize his remark is right on the money. It may explain what most of this was about. This Hatter, probably on good terms with the Queen of Hearts and the Cheshire, wants me to feel for them, if not join them against the world.
Could it be this Hatter is actually the Cheshire?
As I think, my feet hit a bulge in the sand. I kneel down and see something protruding from it. I dig again.
Here it is.
A small, round thing, like a compass, but with a black digital screen. A red dot shimmers on the far left side of it. “Here it is.” I show it to the Pillar. “The rabbit’s location. I need to go there now.”
The Pillar takes a moment, staring at it. His face dims a little.
“What now?” I say.
“I’m just wondering what the rabbit is doing in your house, where we were yesterday.”