Present: Near the Ferris Wheel, London
T he gust of air flipped the car two more times on its axis. The Cheshire felt as if someone had punched him in the chest. His mask barely hung on his face, causing pain to his cheeks and nose.
In the distance, the plants the Pillar fought ducked as if in a praying position. They looped downward and flattened onto the earth. Mushrooms behind them began to melt into hot lava the color of marshmallows.
Even the Pillar was blown off his feet to the ground, gripping his hose as it flailed and pulled its jagged edges inward.
Only the children stood protected in their bubble of light, lifted upward as they sweat while reading louder and louder.
The Cheshire heard them read a different phrase all over again. It wasn’t from Alice in Wonderland, but from a well known poem by Lewis Carroll.
They read, ‘Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! ’
“Is this real?” the Cheshire asked the Pillar.
“I haven’t seen him with my own eyes in beast-form before,” the Pillar said, frightened and covered in blood.
“So it’s happening,” the Cheshire could feel the fear in his gut. He had never seen the Jabberwocky too, but had only heard of his atrocious looks and enormous beast size. Now he had to ask the Pillar a question. “So the Jabberwocky never appeared in any of your and Alice’s previous attempts through the Looking Glass?”
The Pillar shook his head. “Never. He always managed to have Alice’s final battle with another evil force.”
The foul wind with fiery fumes attacked the Cheshire’s nostrils. The odor of all demons combined, he thought.
The children kept reading. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! ”
“You’re only alive because the children are reading,” the Pillar said. “I hope you understand now.”
The Cheshire began reciting, “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!”
The Pillar laughed, “Not you, you moron,” he said. “You mean nothing. You and I are adults with exhausted souls. They are pure and have the power of both ignorance and hope.”
“Ignorance of what?” the Cheshire’s words hardly sounded in the whizzing whirlwind of stinky air.
“Ignorant of how evil the Jabberwocky is,” the Pillar said. “They think he is a villain in a book, thus they’re not afraid of him.”
“I see,” the Cheshire clung to a lamp pole that didn’t yet give in. His legs elevated but he held on with his hands. “One last question.”
“You’re being boring, Cheshy,” the Pillar said. “Just try to stay alive.”
“I need to know this before I die,” the Cheshire insisted. “Why now?”
“Why now what?”
“Why did the Jabberwocky show himself now?”
“Alice provoked him somehow. He has no choice but to confront her.”
“And she couldn’t provoke him the previous times?”
The Pillar took a moment to think it over. The memory of the last time in the bus came to him. Still, it puzzled him why the Jabberwocky hadn’t shown before, even when Alice did the unspeakable to save the children of the world. “I don’t know, Cheshy. She had done everything last time. And it cost her a lot. This time, I have no idea how she provoked him.”