Ice-cream Truck
“C heck this out,” Constance points the phone she confiscated from Tom Truckle. “The Kew Garden where the mushrooms are has its own guards.”
“Really?” I snatch the phone from her.
“Do you have internet?” Jack wonders. “I thought phone coverage would be dead by now.”
“It’s a Wonderland War, not a Walking Dead Episode, Jack,” Constance says. “Though it soon will be, unless we save the world and find that most precious thing.”
“Why would they have their own guards?” I ask, reading the Wikipedia article. “It says they’ve had their police since 1897.”
Constance looked back over her shoulder to check on Fabiola and Lewis in the back to ask them, but they seemed engaged in a conversation of their own. She gave it up and talked back to Alice, “I think this is evidence that the March is right.”
“Why?” Jack asks.
I answer on Constance’s behalf, “A private police guarding the garden suggests there is some secret there. Maybe they’ve been waiting for the March’s arrival for two centuries.”
“I agree on that,” Constance says. “The plot thickens, though I’m still confused why the March forgot after being told the secret.”
I nod. It’s been puzzling me as well.
“Maybe the secret was too hard to hold on to,” Jack says. “So he went to the Pillar as well,” Jack squints at his conclusion. “But it doesn’t add up since the Pillar doesn’t know where the Six Keys are.”
Constance sighs, hands on her waist. “Why six keys?”
“Six impossible things. It’s one of Lewis’ most memorable sayings in the book,” I told her, pointing at Lewis and Fabiola. “What do you think they are talking about?”
Fabiola and Lewis sat guarding the March Hare. Tom sat a bit on the end of the seat, looking out a small window. The March was breathing. He looked like he was dreaming, in deep sleep, solemn and serene, without troubles now that he’d passed on that part of the secret.
“Shouldn’t we try to wake him up?” Fabiola wondered.
“I’ve tried,” Lewis said. “He has to wake up on his own. Sleeping long enough should help him remember.”
“And you don’t remember Lewis?” she leaned forward to the seat opposite to him. “Are you hiding something from me?”
Lewis looked back into her eyes, “I never lie to you.”
“I know, but I had to ask,” she said. “I mean, without you, I would have still been married to the Pillar.”
“We all wanted to help you out,” Lewis said, then his face drooped. “Though what happened to you after your awakening was worse.”
She leaned back again, not wanting to remember. It was worse.
“Sometimes I think maybe I should have let you be married to the Pillar, brainwashed by his mushrooms,” he said. “But then again, someone had to tell you the truth so you could make up your mind.”
“It was my destiny,” she pointed at her scars, which everyone mistakes for tattoos.
“Is that why didn’t kill him? Because you still loved him?”
“Why do you keep asking me this?”
“Because you keep saying you didn’t kill him, or attempt it, because of Alice. I don’t buy it.”
Fabiola looked away, then nodded in Tom’s direction. She didn’t want him to hear. Then she turned to look at the March sleeping again. “Do you at least know what the Six Keys are? I mean, you and I have an idea of what they do, but what are they?”
“What do you mean ‘are’?” Lewis questioned. “They are keys.”
Fabiola sighed, eyes fixed on the March. “I am starting to doubt that they even exist.”