CHAPTER TWENTY: FOUND

“—jum!” Albert finished. He was standing in the shade of a redwood tree. From the angle of the sunlight, it was late afternoon. How long had he been gone—a day? A few days? Or only a few minutes? His parents would let him know pretty quick.

“Hello?” Albert said to a nearby huckleberry bush experimentally.

It did not answer, which was what usually happened when one spoke to a bush, but after all he’d been through it seemed like a very dull thing for a huckleberry bush to do.

A perfectly normal blue jay sat on a branch of the huckleberry bush, lectured him for a moment, and flew away when his cell phone rang.

He looked at the cell phone for a moment with surprise. It had been so long since he’d used it, he’d forgotten he had it. He knew the phone didn’t work in Wonderland, or wherever he had been, so he must be home.

He wondered whether all people who saw a boojum ended up here in his world. Albert sighed. It was an interesting question, but no longer an important one.

“Hello?” Albert said.

“If you feel like dealing with lesser beings, Albert, dinner is ready,” his mother said. She sounded miffed but ready to accept an apology.

“Sure, Mom. I’m coming.”

He was pleased to see the Site in the distance and began walking toward it. Apparently both he and Alice could get what they wanted. Or he could, anyway. The cracker box might not work, or if it did Alice might not be able to figure out how. He wished her luck. He was just sorry that he hadn’t had time to say good bye to her.

If Mr. Katz was right about the Dreamtime, he and Alice might still be crossing the Topiary Steppes or even fighting the jabberwock. Things in Wonderland happen over and over or all it once—it didn’t matter which. It was more likely that everything that had happened had been a regular dream. He hated adventures that turned out to be dreams.

Albert found his family, still wearing their heaviest clothes, sitting at a picnic table in front of their tent. In the middle of the table a lantern burned with a friendly orange glow. Mom was doling out the canned chili into the heavy plastic bowls she’d brought. He was just in time for dinner—or “Brillig” as they said in Wonderland.

“So?” Albert’s father asked.

Albert shrugged, the gave his father his best smile. “You sure made good time getting here,” he said.

“I did, didn’t I?” his father answered, pleased.

“Lily, don’t you have something to say to Albert?” his mother asked.

Lily looked into her chili, embarrassed. “I’m sorry I kicked your stuff on the floor,” she said.

“That’s okay,” Albert replied. “We were all a little cranky from the long drive.”

“Would you like some crackers with your chili?” his mother asked. She held out a box. And to Albert’s surprise, it was a box of Aka Baka Soda Crackers.

“Where did you get those?” he asked.

“At the little Redwood Store in the village,” his mother said. “They have a lot of strange brands.”

“Did you have those crackers before I walked into the forest?”

“I don’t remember. Does it matter?”

“I guess not,” Albert said, though it really did. If the box had been at the Site before he left, he might have seen it and inserted it into his dream. If his mother had bought them after he was gone, that meant—Albert wasn’t sure what it meant.

He thrust the hand he wasn’t using to eat into his pocket to get it warm and felt something round. He knew what it was, and its presence changed everything. He pulled it from his pocket and looked at it in the palm of his hand—a big leather-covered button with a hideous face stamped onto it. A twist of black thread was still attached at the back. The button from the jabberwock’s vest!

“What’s that?” Lily asked.

“Just a little something I picked up in the forest,” Albert said, enormously pleased.