Phone Booth, London
M other Bird’s journey was long. Determined to make that phone call, she walked the deadly streets of London, looking for one last intact phone booth. It wasn’t an easy job, but she found one last one.
Panting, she squeezed her chubby figure inside and rested on the phone set. She picked it up and flattened that paper again. She dialed.
A beep.
Two beeps
Three —
“Hello?” a young woman’s voice was panting on the other side.
“I’m Mother Bird,” she said. “I am supposed to call this—”
“I know who you are,” the young woman said. “Are you giving us the green light?”
Mother Bird looked at the paper. The instructions were to say yes to this question. Which she did.
“Awesome!” the young woman said.
To Mother Bird’s surprise, she heard the woman talk to children. “It’s time. We can start reading now. Get ready kids.”
“May I ask what this is about?” Mother Bird said.
“Not yet,” said the young woman. “What are your instructions?”
“What do you mean?” said Mother Bird.
“Were you instructed to give me a green light, and also the others?”
Mother Bird read the paper again, “It says I should give the green light to the number I call.”
“Yes? How about New York?”
“New York too,” Mother Bird read from her paper.
“Tokyo?”
“Yes.”
“Amsterdam?”
“Yes.”
“Cape Town?
“Yes.”
“Buenos Aires?”
“Let me see,” Mother Bird checked the list, “Yes, that too.”
“Moscow?”
“Yes.”
“That’s great news, Mother Bird. Thank you,” the young woman talked to the children again. “Tell them in Moscow; they can start reading. And in Tokyo!”
Mother Bird shrugged. She was missing out on the unexplained excitement. “May I ask what you are reading, young lady?”
“Lewis Carroll books, of course,” the woman said. “It’s the end. It’s also the beginning.”
“I am confused,” Mother Bird said. “What’s this all about?”
“Wait a minute,” the young woman’s voice dimmed into suspicious tones. “You are the Mother Bird we are expecting, right?”
“I guess so?” she said. “I was given a million pound to make this phone call when the mushroom event happens.”
“I appreciate that,” the young woman said. “But you need to prove you’re not an imposter so I can let the reading begin.”
“How do I do that?”
“Simple,” the young woman said. “Tell me the name of the man who told you to call us? Not the banker, the other man.”
“Ah,” Mother Bird remembered the Pillar. “You mean the man who drank tea but said he’d prefer drinking hookah?”
“That’s him,” the young woman said. “Tell me the name he whispered in your ears. His real name.”
Mother Bird told her.
The young woman said, “Brilliant! Thank you very much. I have to tell the children it’s him.”
Mother Bird heard the young woman tell the name to the children who hurrayed and celebrated right away. The young woman said, “Children, it’s the Hatter! He made Mother Bird call us. It’s all true. The Mad Hatter is alive.”
THE END…
Alice Wonder will return in the finale