"You are the Real Alice," he says. "Alice." He rolls his eyes. "And I am just a caterpillar. A special one, though." He seems vain about it. "But I can only guide you, teach you, and sometimes save you. I just can't confront the Muffin Man."
The panicking people around are still there, but I feel as if they have disappeared. I am all in my head now, trying to find the words to say and live up to their consequences. Lewis' vision seems to prove to be significant at every passing moment. It's mostly about Lewis struggling with the kids' poor health in Victorian times. The Muffin Man's case is all about the same, but in modern times. It can't be mad, because I couldn't have predicted it. Should I tell the Pillar about the vision?
"Professor Pillar," I say.
"Yes?" He cranes his neck forward.
"What is it I have to do to stop the Muffin Man?" I take a deep breath, my heart racing.
"From what I see, there is nothing you can do." He raises his voice against the crowd's shouting. "Not in this life."
For a moment, I am taken aback, upset that he would be playing games again. He knocks someone else with his cane and says, "Remember when we wanted to stop the Cheshire to save Constance? Remember what I told you before we knew his motives?"
"That a man's weakness lies in his past."
"Clever student." He nods.
"How are we going to know about he Muffin Man's past now?" I ask. "He has no name. His has no records. His file in the asylum doesn't say much. He has his face concealed."
"I know his past in this world, but trust me, it's irrelevant."
"Don't confuse me like that," I say politely. "We don't have enough time."
"Time." The Pillar flashes his cane in the air and circles me, knocking off whoever gets in his way. "Time, Alice! You have to go back in time." He acts like a performer on Broadway about to sing a finale song.
"To Wonderland?"
"Not exactly, but kind of." He continues circling, moving like Gene Kelly from Singin' in the Rain while the world is falling apart around us. "To know the Muffin Man's real motives, you will go back and try to stop whatever happened to him and turned a cook into a serial killer."
"Is that even possible?"
He stops in front of me. "Only if you're the Real Alice."
"And if I am not?"
"You will die, somewhere in the past," he says bluntly. "Frankly, who needs a mad girl who isn't Alice?" He is nonchalant about it.
"I am ready to do it," I say.
"It's not going to be easy."
"Don't!"
"I won't." He smiles. "So let me tell you how you could time-travel back to yesterday to save the world today." He signals for me to follow him. "And by the way, Alice, who said the Muffin Man has no name?"
"He has a name?"
"Of course. If he hadn't just popped up on national TV, I would have had time to tell you."
"Why am I going back in time if we know his name?"
"Because his name is Gorgon Ramstein."
Chapter 5 1
Wolsey's kitchen, Christ Church, Oxford University
Gorgon Ramstein, dressed in his cook's outfit, was chopping carrots on a metallic kitchen table in Wolsey's kitchen. He wasn't really cooking, or preparing to. Chopping carrots was his personal meditation to calm himself down and cope with the urge to kill again.
Every now and then he accidentally cut himself. He didn't mind. Blood spattering had stopped being a distraction years ago.
And now?
Now nothing mattered as long as the Queen didn't publicly apologize, as long as his demands had not been met.
Gorgon cut himself again. This time, the anger was too strong. He hurled the heavy kitchen knife at the wall and roared at the empty kitchen.
The knife plowed against one of the two turtle shells hanging on the wall. He looked at them through the haze in one eye. That turtle shell, he thought.
Only a few people knew that this turtle shell was Lewis Carroll's inspiration for the Mock Turtle character. Fewer people knew about the historical significance of the rarely visited kitchen underneath Oxford University.
Wolsey's kitchen. Oxford's legendary kitchen since the sixteenth century, where so many secrets were buried and hidden.
Gorgon was taught the art of cooking in this kitchen. He learned about the passion for cooking. That there was a rhythm, a tempo, and a song and dance to it.
Who were Auguste Escoffier, Alexis Soyer, or Isabella Beeton compared to him? They might have been great names carved in Victorian history books, but Gorgon knew he was something else. He was legendary. An icon to be remembered. He wasn't just a cook. He was a scientist turned cook. His approach was detailed and meticulous like no one else's.
But all that was gone now. And not because of what Margaret Kent did to his lawyer and his family in this world. His anger and hatred, although suppressed for years in the asylum, began when he was in Wonderland.
He pounded a heavy fist on the table, remembering what the Queen of Hearts did to him in Wonderland. The spoons and knives shook all over and bowls slipped to the floor. The pain was so strong that he fell to his knees from his own impact. And then a tear trickled like a drop of olive oil down his face. A tear that came out of his empty socket.
Slowly, Gorgon stood up and went to a side table, where he swallowed a muffin whole without even chewing it. Gorgon loved muffins—and pepper. He loved them because his kids were crazy about them.
Gorgon washed blood off his hand, staring at his reflection in the mirror.
It wasn't like he hadn't seen it before, but his image seemed to shock him this time. He had turned from victim to a ruthless killer, and he didn't know if he should like it.
The Cheshire certainly liked it.
Gorgon stood six feet four. His hands were lanky and very useful in cooking. He wore his double-breasted white jacket, which was actually the asylum's straitjacket. The main idea behind cooks wearing double-breasted jackets had been the possibility to reverse it many times and hide the cooking stains. In the past, when this kitchen was still proudly called Wolsey's kitchen, there was no time to change before presenting the food to the obnoxious and pretentious Victorian rich who had enough money to pay for it. They had to flip the working side of the jacket and present the cleaner side within minutes.
To Gorgon the idea was almost the same when he committed his murders, except he used it to hide the bloodstains of previous victims. It allowed him to kill two victims in the span of minutes before he had to change the jacket. Kill, reverse, and kill again. Or better: kill, reverse, escape while looking clean.
No one ever thought of the cooks to become serial killers.
Still, Gorgon's jacket had many other purposes. The thick cotton cloth of his jacket protected him from the heat of the stove and oven back then in Wonderland. Victorian kitchens weren't as safe as today's kitchens. Cooking was a dangerous profession back then; you were exposed to the insanely large stoves and not really protected from the splattering of boiling liquids. A good jacket had been a must. In present times, it helped him hide from his pursuers in a heated place that people usually avoided.
Under the jacket, he wore specially tailored trousers. They had black and white patterns. In the past, cooks wore patterned trousers to hide minor stains. Gorgon used them to mock the White Queen's belief in what she called the Chessboard of Life, where good people walked on white tiles and bad people walked on black. Gorgon believed he had walked both tiles evenly.