The Radcliffe Asylum
I ’m baffled listening to Constance telling me about who she is and about her powers. It’s not quite clear to me how she is the embodiment of every girl Lewis has ever photographed, but it’s something I’m willing to understand later. What needs clarification is how I saw another girl in Fabiola’s vision.
“Like I told you, it’s a trick of perception.” Constance is cute, but determined. She has a sense of unusual sarcasm to her tone, and she treats adults as if they’re stupid. “Do you even remember the face of the girl you saw in your vision?”
“No, I don’t.” I can’t understand why yet.
“That’s it. It’s like dreaming. Most people can’t recall the stranger’s face they encounter in their dreams. Fabiola’s vision did that to you.”
“Then why do I remember every other face I saw?”
“Because you’ve already known them in real life,” she says. “And because I’m not one girl. I’m all of Lewis Carroll’s girls in one.”
“That’s odd, Constance.”
“It is. What’s odder is that my face changes through the years. Can you imagine being seven-years-old for two hundred years?”
“I can’t, really. But I assume Lewis had a plan for you.”
“Of course he had. Part of it was to fly under the radar of Black Chess.”
“What do you mean?”
“All this time they’ve known me as an Inkling. That small helpless girl who draws Alice in Wonderland images on the wall. This led them to neglect me and underestimate my powers.”
“Which are?”
“Coming to save you, for instance. That’s only part of the secrets I hold.” She prided herself.
“But why didn’t you tell me when I first met you?”
Constance’s face changed. She looks sideways and begins whispering in my ear. “I will tell you later.”
“Why?” I whisper back, being playful and childish, which she seems not to like.
“Don’t talk to me as if I were a child.” She sighed. “Anyway, I’m not comfortable with telling you everything now, because there is a chance we have a traitor among us. Let’s escape this place first.”
It is my intention to insist on knowing more, but then Tom points at the TV screen. Outside the Pillar is approaching the crowd. It’s an important moment. A heavy one. The Mushroomers behind me consider him heroic by giving himself up and letting Constance in. Tom is still skeptical and thinks the Pillar may have fooled us by faking his way out of the situation.
As for me, I don’t know what to think. But there is this ball of fire flaming in my chest. I think the only way to put it out is to either watch the Pillar die or kill him myself.