THE PRESENT: TOM QUAD, OXFORD
P rofessor 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.