"That's not the Alice." The Queen reached for a spoon, disgusted by a little stain on it.
"How do you know, Majesty?" Margaret asked. "Are you sure?"
"I am sure." The Queen stared at the spoon, thinking of chopping some servants' heads off.
"But Carroll's potion left us oblivious of her looks," Margaret reasoned. "He protected her from us this way."
"True." The Queen called for Maddog to come lick the spoon clean for her. "But Carroll's potion didn't leave the Real Alice unable to recognize who we are." Maddog licked the spoon religiously and the Queen put it back in the cup, stirring two cubes of sugar inside. "If she was the Alice, she'd have recognized us and killed us all."
"It's a plausible assumption," Margaret said. "But there is the incident of this Alice killing her friends in a school bus. She might have lost her memory because of it."
"If she did, she should have already regained her memory under the Pillar's influence." The Queen sipped her tea.
"I doubt the Pillar doesn't know what he is doing," Margaret said. "If he picks a girl and thinks she is Alice, he has enough evidence to back it up."
"Of course, the Pillar knows what he is doing." The Queen wondered why her tea had dog saliva in it this time. "He is playing games with us."
"I am not following, Majesty."
"Damn this tea!" The Queen spat the tea back on the ground. Maddog licked it. "The Pillar needed to have a powerful weapon against us. What better to draw us to the illusion that he has found Alice?"
"You mean he picked just any girl to play us?"
"Not just any girl." The Queen poured tea in a newer cup again, hoping it had no dog saliva in it this time. "He was very smart about the girl he picked. Think of it: an insane girl who killed her friends and used to think she was Alice from Wonderland. Almost every poor girl in this country dreams of being Alice so she could eat big mushrooms and grow stronger and bigger. Pillar picked a troubled, friendless, mad girl, then used her complicated history and insanity to make up a cute little story. Also, he needed to find a lonely and confused girl so he could persuade her that she is the Real Alice."
"So, we shouldn't worry about the Pillar?"
"You should worry about the mess happening in this country!" The Queen reached for the same spoon but stopped. She decided it was better to use a newer spoon to make sure everything was clean this time. "A head stuffed in a football in front of millions of watchers? Then watermelons stuffed with kids' heads? And now a mass murder at Drury Lane Theatre?" She stared at the new spotless spoon and saw it was definitely clean. A smile filled her face as she started to use it to stir the sugar. "A murder by peppers?" she asked Margaret. "What the bloody bollocks of hell!"
"It won't happen again, I promise," Margaret said. "The Cheshire helped the Muffin Man escape the asylum. He taught him all the dirty tricks and backed him up with the killings. He used the Muffin Man's anger against him, and against us."
"The Muffin Man has always been angry since what happened to him in Wonderland.” The Queen said.
“Not just Wonderland, Majesty,” Margaret began, but was cut off by the Queen's waving finger.
“Enough,” Apparently, the Queen didn't want to delve further into the subject. “I don’t want to remember any of this.” She decided to sip her tea when she met Maddog's pleading eyes again. The Queen lowered her hand and let poor Maddog sip from the teacup. If she couldn't give her more nuts, maybe a few sips of tea would make her favorite dog happy. "You should have killed the Muffin Man, I mean your cook, back in Wonderland," she told Margaret as she leaned back in her chair.
Margaret sighed. "I should have.” She tried her best to avoid the Queen’s blaming eyes.
"The Muffin Man has to be stopped this time, Margaret.” The Queen said.
Margaret nodded twice, saying nothing, looking at her feet.
“Killing people is merely the worst he can do. You know what the real threat of the Muffin Man is." The Queen elaborated.
"I know." Margaret said. "He could expose—"
"Shhhh," the Queen warned her again. "I said I don't even want to talk about it. That's what the Cheshire wants. He wants to expose that secret you were about to discuss. The people of Britain, and the whole world, shouldn't know about our secrets."
"Damn the Cheshire!" Margaret sighed. "I shouldn't have used him as an assassin, or he wouldn't have known so much. But I had a lot of dirty work to take care of. Sudan, Libya, and—"
"I said enough." The Queen began to lose her patience. "You make it sound like we're the only ones who take care of our dirty business. You think the Americans don't do the same? You think all those third world countries don't do the same? If you want to rule, you have to sacrifice a few things."
"You're right." Margaret pantomimed zipping her mouth. "It's just that I'm sometimes confused which side the Cheshire is on. Which side are we on? And the Pillar, whose damn side is he on?"
"We don't need to know any of this now." The Queen sipped her tea with unmatched delight. "No Wonderland War is possible without the Real Alice being found. All we need to do is catch the Muffin Man. I have a clear idea how.” The Queen licked her lips, offended by the dog saliva present in the tea again and again.
“How, My Majesty?”
Disgusted by the taste of tea, The Queen stood up and threw the teacup against the wall. Margaret ducked to avoid the flying cup and its saucer while Maddog ran to lick the tea. "Bloody awful tea, smells of dogs all the time!" The Queen roared.
Margaret wondered if she should have better left. But then Queen took a deep breath and calmed down a little. “To stop the Muffin Man, you have to find the Cheshire. Let’s make a deal with him. Let’s promise him a piece of the pie.”
Chapter 4 3
Alice Wonder's house, 7 Folly Bridge, Oxford
The girl at the door had tears in her eyes. She faced Alice's mother, unable to utter the words coherently.
"What happened?" Alice's mother shook her, almost predicting what the girl was about to say.
"I'm sorry, but your daughter, Alice Wonder, died yesterday," the girl announced. Alice's mother sank to her knees, holding on to the girl's hands, as if she had always feared her daughter would die this young.
"How did she die?" asked Edith, Alice's older sister. Her tone was inquisitive and disbelieving. She stood a few steps shy of the threshold, unimpressed by her mother's sentiments.
"She was present in the Drury Lane Theatre when the audience died of pepper poisoning."
"There is no such thing as 'pepper poisoning,'" Lorina, Alice's other sister, grunted, smoothening her fingernails behind Edith. Her sister's death seemed unimportant to her. She wanted to know, though. "The audience were poisoned with something that looked like pepper."
"It's not like that." Edith tapped her sister's hand so she would stop smoothening her fingernails. The sound of it made her go crazy. "They died from sneezing."
"You can't die from sneezing, Edith." Lorina rolled her eyes. "That's like saying a person could die from too much makeup."
"If you can die from hiccupping and laughing, you can die from sneezing," Edith said, not taking her eyes off the stranger girl at the door.