Two Years Ago: Yellow Bus, London
A lice stood at the station waiting for the yellow bus.
It was a sunny day. July the first. The Famous Alice Day when kids celebrated the maddening events of the book. Still, Alice rubbed her arms against the chill running through her body.
She wasn’t cold. She was scared.
She shook to the vibrating phone in her back pocket. Another unnecessary scare jump, she thought. She wasn’t picking it up. She knew who it was. Professor Carter Pillar.
The students standing next to her ignored her. She had gotten used to that. She was the freak. The girl who thought she was the Real Alice and had crossed over to save this world’s children from the Jabberwocky.
She didn’t blame them. Who would have believed her? Fiction touched people on deep levels but they still insisted on it being just fiction. Because what if fiction was true? With all its adventures and heroes and bittersweet stories, it would have made human in real-life look dull and boring. No real fun. No real emotion. No real life. And no grand purpose.
Only those who had crossed over with her from Wonderland believed her, but then most of them were loyal to Black Chess.
Alice checked the schedule on the station and saw the bus would arrive in two minutes.
She gasped.
Jabberwocky was going to be on the bus.
Even though all she had to do was to drive it against some wall or something and kill him in his human form — the Pillar reckoned the Jabberwocky’s weak spot was when in human form; he’d die like any other human, though he’d be able to resurrect himself as the dead, but then he wouldn’t be as effective. He wouldn’t be Jabberwocky anymore.
Her phone vibrated again.
The Pillar sent her a message.
The bus is coming.
She typed back, annoyed.
No shit.
The Pillar wrote.
You have to make it work this time.
She wrote.
Alice has to save the world, again! I know.
The Pillar wrote:
We can’t afford to cross over through the Looking Glass anymore. Every time we do it, something happens to us. Something happens to Wonderland.
She hesitated to write back. As much as she loathed the Pillar at this point, never knowing his intentions and watching him hurt a lot of people, he was the only one who believed in her—and accepted her for whom she was.
But this wasn't the first time she tried to kill the Jabberwocky. This had been happening for so many years. Since she and Lewis and the Jabberwocky first crossed over through the Looking Glass. Since the facts of life stained their naive and pure souls of fictional Wonderland.
The Pillar had only crossed recently when she realized she needed him to kill the Jabberwocky. Though Nemesis, it was the perfect collaboration. She wanted to save the children. The Pillar wanted to rule Black Chess—she had always known she would have to deal with him later, but the Pillar was nothing compared to the Jabberwocky’s darkness.
The bus arrived.
I see the yellow bus, she wrote.
The Pillar wrote:
Funny how college kids still get a yellow school bus.
Alice wrote:
It’s a substitute bus. There aren’t supposed to be yellow school buses in London, but I suppose even reality has become a distorted version of itself when visited through the Looking Glass. Anyway, the original one broke down yesterday.
The Pillar wrote:
Believe in yourself, Alice. You can do it.
Alice wrote:
I remember you saying this to me before.
The Pillar wrote:
Yeah, about five times now. Every time we cross over in this endless time loop through the mirror. I’m bored of remembering tomorrow by now.
Alice was just as bored. More like frustrated. They had made up the term ‘Remember Tomorrow’ mocking their repeated attempts to cross over and save the children. They had failed so many times that they joked Alice would end up in an asylum eventually—which actually happened that year. Most of the time, they couldn’t remember what had happened in the previous journey, not until they spent enough time in the Real World to adjust.
She stood up and took a deep breath as the bus stopped and then she stood in line.
Up the yellow rabbit hole, The Pillar wrote.
Alice wrote:
You mean the yellow brick road :P
Maybe Lewis Carroll and L. Frank Baum knew each other, The Pillar wrote.
Alice wrote:
I wouldn’t be surprised.
The Pillar wrote:
Can you see Jack?
Alice shrugged. She had avoided looking, but now she was forced to check.
Yeah, he is waving at me from behind the window. Lorena and Edith are inside as well.
The Pillar wrote:
It’s always a bonus to kill your stepsister, Cinderella.
Alice said:
This is the hardest part. That I have to kill others.
The Pillar said:
Don’t worry, no good souls are on this bus. I manipulated everything. All Black Chess or Inklings. This is pure Wonderland. No real-life students, though they pretend to be.
Alice wrote:
I have to go, I’ll call you when it’s over.
She stood right in front of the yellow bus, ready to embark when the Pillar sent her:
No need to call me later.
She didn’t understand and got inside.
The first smile she caught was Jack’s, waving at her enthusiastically and probably wanting to kiss her soon. He was her boyfriend at the moment.
Right behind him, in the last row by the window, sat the Pillar, ridiculously wearing a tennis bandana, white shirt, blue shorts, and sneakers, pretending to be a student — maybe one from the 80s era, since he missed the note the world had moved on.