White Hearts Hospital, London
L ying on her back and all alone, Fabiola fixed her stare toward the ceiling. The speed with which her wounds healed exceeded her expectations. Some of her Wonderland powers must have crossed over with her into this world – though the healing wasn’t fast enough to cure her wounds within a day or two.
It’s been three days and no one but the March Hare has visited her. Not even the women who used to confess to her in the Vatican. They were embarrassed of her, she’d heard. None of them loved her anymore. The White Queen who'd denounced the Church and walked away with the devil, they said about her.
At times, she wished she had died in Kalmykia. It’d have been an honorable goodbye, all in the name of protecting Wonderland. All her life, she had trusted in Lewis Carroll's legacy and fought a noble war, not sure what it was all about – as if any warrior or soldier ever knew.
But soon, when she remembered Him, that wish of dying disappeared. She had waited for so long to kill the man who'd once killed the children. She had to see him suffer before she died.
“Him?” A voice echoed in her room, interrupting her thoughts.
She edged on the bed and squinted against the yellow light coming from a dim lamp near the window. Someone was sitting on the couch nearby. Someone in a priest’s outfit.
“Lewis?”
“Yes!” A rabbit peeked its head out of the priest’s pocket. “Lewis and me!”
“You scared me.” She eased her head back onto the pillow. “You seriously need to make up your mind whether you’re dead or alive.”
“Somewhere in b-b-between.” His voice was warm, calm, but stuttering.
“A terrible answer. I mean Carolus wants you dead, but you’re already dead?”
“I’m dead, Fabiola.” Lewis nodded, patting the rabbit, which showed a saddened face. “But my spirit still lives on; thanks to the children reading my book each day, or I’d have vanished forever.”
“So it’s true, you’re alive as long as the Alice books aren't out of print?”
“Not alive. Just there. My spirit.”
“And Carolus wants to kill even that?”
“Correct.” Lewis crossed one leg over the other. “But I’m not here to talk about me. I’m here to talk about you – and Him.”
“I don’t want to talk about Him.”
“None of us wants to, but we have no choice.”
“Of course we have.”
“No, we don’t.”
Fabiola titled her head toward him again, a little worried. “What do you mean?”
“It’s time, Fabiola.”
“Time for what?”
“For that thing we’ve been waiting for all along.”
“Of course not.” Fabiola’s face wrinkled. “It’s too soon.”
“No, it’s not.” Lewis stood up. “Alice knows.”
“So what’s new?” Fabiola shook her head. “She knows she is Black Chess. That’s what I’ve been trying —“
“It’s not that,” Lewis interrupted.
The rabbit nodded agreeably. “It’s not about that.”
“I thought you said she knows…” Fabiola interrupted her own words with muffled moan. “Oh, my. You mean she knows about…”
“The Chessmaster told her,” Lewis said. “She doesn’t know everything, but she is a smart girl. She will figure it out. Soon she will know the truth about her family. You know what that means, right?”
Fabiola nodded in silence, lowering her head, tears threatening to burst out of her wounded eyes, and guilt painting her features.