He descends the truck and starts the motorcycle, disappearing into the streets.
Gathering what’s left of my energy, I turn back to Tom. “I think now it’s time to tell me more.”
Chapter 35
“It was the flamingo that converted me into working for Black Chess,” Tom begins, still driving through the streets. He has to keep driving in case the Reds are still on our tail.
“The flamingo?”
“The one the Queen of Hearts sent to the asylum,” he says. I didn’t even know about it. “One day, I received an order from Her Majesty to cure a flamingo of hers.”
“Cure it? In an asylum?”
“The poor animal didn’t succumb to her orders, and wouldn’t let her use it as a mallet in a croquet game. She thought the flamingo had psychological issues and wanted it healed into submission.”
“Healed into submission? What kind of healing is that?”
“The Wonderland style. Anyways, I found nothing wrong with it, and began to befriend it,” Tom says. “In my darkest hour when I had no one to talk to, it became my best friend.”
“What does all this nonsense have to do with losing the war?”
“The flamingo was the Queen’s bait.” Tom averts his eyes from mine, and keeps them on the road. It’s easy to see he truly regrets his past and wishes to become someone better. Every passing moment, I am more able to believe he did actually lead the revolution.
“Bait?”
“The preposterous Queen fooled me,” he says. “She knew who I was. She knew of Lewis’ mission. And she was the one who put the pills into my coffee and mock turtle soups until I became an addict.”
I am speechless. The Queen of Hearts has always struck me as stupid, impulsive, and borderline naive, like an angry child farting its way through life. I never thought of her as a planner with hidden agendas. I thought she was just mad at the world because of the circus. “I still don’t understand the flamingo’s role in having you work for Black Chess.”
“I guess your IQ just dropped because you’re dying, Alice,” he says. “The flamingo became my best friend, the one I trusted, talked to all the time. I told it about the things I remembered, the exact details of Lewis’ plan. More shattering than anything else is that at some point the flamingo talked telepathically to me, poisoning my thoughts until I weakened and joined Black Chess in exchange for a reputable position in Parliament. A position where I could be respected, feared, pay my children’s tuition, and get back my wife.”
“And the flamingo, what happened to it?”
“Don’t you know?” He glances at me. “The Queen chopped off its head after that. There are signposts everywhere about the incident.”
“I saw it.”
Suddenly, Tom’s glance turns into a glare, as if seeing a ghost.
“What is it?”
“The Reds.” He speeds up. “They’re after us again.”
Chapter 36
THE FUTURE: MOUNT CEMETERY, GUILDFORD
The Pillar felt the rush of wind slapping him in the face while he drove. The cemetery was only a mile or two away now. He was risking Alice’s life by driving this fast to come here. After all, Mount Cemetery was about two hours away from where he had left Alice. But he had bet on the illogical Wonderlastic rules of time traveling. According to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Wonderlastic Time Travels, distance sometimes meant nothing when time travelers were in different times than where they actually lived. It was the same reason why Alice managed to get from London to Oxford by walking a few streets. According to the book, a traveler could get anywhere he or she wished with good intentions and determination.
Whatever that meant, the Pillar thought. He didn’t care how nonsense worked. What mattered was that it worked. It only took him twenty minutes to arrive.
He didn’t want to give in to thinking about time, and its complications, for too long. After all, time was a loop. A wheel rebirthing and reinventing itself all the time. Which meant he and Alice must have been here before.
But he was thankful he couldn’t remember it, or he would have gone really mad. He thought how perception of time, and life, was nothing but a point of view. It wasn’t real, but there was nothing anyone could do about it. All one could do was live the moment they believed — probably deceivingly — was the present.
He parked the motorcycle and took off his goggles.
Then he jogged toward the gates of Mount Cemetery, not surprised at its decaying form. It was almost buried in vines and crawling insects. No one paid attention or respect to Lewis Carroll’s burial place in the future — and not much in the present, either.
Why would they, when Black Chess’s winning of the war was all about bringing the man’s legacy down?
The Pillar stepped through the shrubs and the mud until he found a crack in the walls. The sky greyed and boomed with rain as he entered the cemetery.
Inside, it wasn’t easy locating Carroll’s burial plot. The cemetery looked like it had been a battlefield at some point in the Wonderland Wars.
The Pillar took off his blue coat, folded it carefully, and placed it at the cleanest place he came across. He pulled back his sleeves, showing his aging skin, peeling off day by day. Something he didn’t want anyone else to see. He didn’t see the point of anyone knowing about his sickness.
After all, why would anyone care?
He located a shovel and walked to the spot where he believed Lewis was buried.
“Sorry for digging you up, mate,” he whispered to the grave. “I need the one thing you took with you to the grave. The Lullaby pills.”
Chapter 37
THE FUTURE: OXFORD STREETS
Tom is a terrible driver. If he keeps driving this way, we’re either going to crash into something or get caught by the Reds who are chasing us on motorcycles now.
“Give me the wheel.” I push him over.
“But you’re bleeding.”
“I can’t None Fu while I’m dying, but I think I can still drive. Look for a gun or something in the back. Do something useful.”
“There is a sleeping dog in the back,” Tom says.
I smile when he says that. That dog was so hungry that when he was fed he felt good enough to sleep through such a chase. “Don’t wake him up,” I say. “Just find a gun and start shooting at the Reds.”
“There is nothing back there, only water hoses.”
I use a lot of what’s left of my power to stare back at him, hoping he will get the message.
Tom smirks and tilts his head. He knuckles his fingers and pops a few pills. “You’re thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Glad to know you’re smart enough to think what I am thinking.” I veer the truck against a couple of motorcycles and squeeze them against a wall.
“Water hose wars it is,” Tom chirps like a child. What can I say? He’s a Wonderlander, after all.
Behind me, he starts hitting the Reds with full-throttle water bullets.
“You remember I’m here for the keys, don’t you?” I shout back.
“I know.” He struggles with the pumping hose, but is doing a good job at keeping the Reds at bay. “That’s what I was going to ask about. How did you find me?”
“I found the note.”
“What note?”
“The one where I kept your address with a scribbling saying that I kept the keys with you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Alice.”