The Kew Garden
“C arolus went that way!” Constance says.
But none of us pay attention. True, we should chase him and save the March, but we’re standing mouth agape, staring at the nonsensical event happening all around us. In a million years, even with all the madness, I have witnessed lately, would I have thought this will happen.
Holding on to the side of the school bus, I look up and see it. All around us, mushrooms crack out of the earth and grow with the speed of light to reach for the sky. Big fat mushrooms. Colored. White. Red. Bent. Straight. You name it.
It’s like an alien invasion done by this crazy plant.
“Wow,” Tom says. “This is the optimum of madness.”
It is. He is right. People are dying all around us and none of us understand what this is. The end of the world isn’t a nuclear explosion or a catalytic event of global warming. It’s the insane rise of mushrooms.
“Us coming here triggered this,” Constance says.
“What do you mean?” I ask her.
“I mean the March will remember when he sees the Mushrooms, and we were right to get him here so he can see them,” she says. “But it’s not the mushrooms in the garden that will make him remember. It’s the mushrooms in the whole world.
“Why?”
“Because, think of it. The March will remember the secret when the world is about to end,” she says. “Remembering it earlier would not have meant anything. No one would have believed him.”
“And what is the secret? Where are the Keys that will show us how to save the children of the world from Mr. Jay?”
The answer comes from the Red Queen, standing next to me, “The March will remember now. These,” she points at the giant mushrooms in the sky. “Are the mushrooms that will make him remember.”
“My God,” I face-palm myself. “This is why Carolus pretended he was Lewis Carroll in pain all of this time. He was waiting for the event.”
“It means something even worse,” Constance says. “It means the March is going to remember and tell Carolus now.”
“And Carolus most probably works for Mr. Jay,” Fabiola says.
“Damn it,” I say. “Mr. Jay fooled us all.”
“And I thought if we had an imposter around us it'd be Tom Truckle,” the Red Queen says.
“I am just a scumbag who wants to secure my children’s future,” Tom announces with a raised hand.
The earth shakes hard and mushrooms start to bend and fall over, squashing everything underneath it.
“Get on the bus!” I shout.
They all jump inside.
“We have to find the March before Carolus gets his hand on the Six Keys.”
I sit in the driver's seat and ignite. Jack nears me and whispers in my ears, “Are you going to be okay, driving the yellow school bus?”
I take a long, thick, shivering breath, “No, Jack, I am not going to be okay, but I will do it.”
I push the gas pedal on, wondering what kind of cruel fate makes me drive such a bus again when I never remembered what happened in the first place. Am I going to end up killing my friends here again, as I did with my schoolmates years ago?