"Ok you can go now," she'd say, and they'd amble on, off to a tea party only they were invited to, and again and again Anna was left alone.
The night grew darker and she heard dogs howling in the distance. Their cries sounded so lonely, like the last lost cry of Wonderland as Alice left it behind. How would the Hatter and the March Hare feel when Alice left, and their entire world was lost? It was all made-up, after all, even the birdwomen and the cucumber-men too, and everyone knew that when the dreamer woke up, the dream died.
Standing atop a yellow bus, she looked out over the sunrise through the low streets of the outer city, and decided that her silly dreams should die too.
It was too weak, like Anna had been beneath the hurt. She had to grow up and stop hoping. Dreams of Wonderland couldn't protect her from mother dogs who only wanted to save their babies. They couldn't help her keep beautiful puppies alive, they couldn't stop her mother and father from leaving her, and they couldn't make these people stop and stay with her, talk to her, play with her.
They were fantasies for little girls and this was not a fantasy world. It was not Wonderland or through the Looking Glass, because at least there Alice had never been alone. This was real and Anna was really alone.
"Keep going," she shouted at a few gray bodies that shuffled by. "Don't look at me!"
They didn't.
The howls of dogs grew closer. Anna put her fingers in her ears, lay down on the cold bus roof and went to sleep.
* * *
She woke to them breathing.
It was sunrise and they surrounded her on all sides in a warm orange light. On her knees she looked up and down the road and saw gray bodies gathered tightly around her van. They were not walking away and heading for the ocean, but looking straight toward her.
She started to cry.
They reached for her with a thousand cold hands. She slipped off the van roof and they welcomed her in. Their hands touched her shoulders and head and back, pressing her from one to the next. It felt like coming home, like her Daddy tucking her tight into bed.
It went on for hours, a giddy slow dance as they eased her gently amongst them. She cried and she laughed, and when she wasn't crying or laughing she was touching their faces and holding their hands and looking into their strange white eyes.
She didn't understand, but it filled her up.
"I missed you," she said through her tears. "I'm sorry I was angry."
The howling of dogs faded far away. She was safe with them, and protected.
"I'll help you," she said. "I'll take you where you need to go. I won't let you get lost."
She led them by the hands, swapping between them constantly: from a faded grandmother to a little boy smaller even than her, from a big fat man to a slender lady with her half her jaw missing. "I'll take you all home."
She led them back through the city, and this time whenever she stopped to rest they stopped too. There was no need for a sling because they were following her; she was the leader and she was protecting them.
They didn't always walk well. Just like her Daddy they got stuck in the simplest places: walking into a streetlight, entering a building which had no exit, getting stuck in a fork of two crashed cars. Like a shepherd she took them by the hand and led them out.
For all that day they walked, until they reached the beach and a long wooden pier, and looked out on the ocean.
"You can go now," she said, crying already, but they didn't go. They stayed with her and that made her cry all the more. She squeezed their fingers and rubbed the backs of their hands against her cheeks. She climbed up their arms to plant kisses on their cold cheeks.
Then she led them into the water. She splashed them and they lumbered gently forward.
"You see," she said, walking out to where the water came up to her neck. "There's nothing to be afraid of. It's all right, I promise."
At last, as that long and wonderful day came to an end, they started to leave. She stood on the beach and waved them into the water.
"Goodbye," she called, like they were her dearest friends and family. "Goodbye."
The water rose up their chests, to their necks then over their heads, one by one until all of them were gone, as though they'd descended an invisible staircase into the earth.
Alone again, this time she felt better. This would be her mission now.
10. YELLOW PIE
She made the same trip many times.
She lost count. She walked back through the city to find them, to welcome them, and each time they came to meet her. She didn't always wait for them seated atop the same van, there weren't always so many, and they didn't always stop to be with her, but with every trip walking them to the water she felt better.
This was what had to happen, and she was a part of helping them do it better.
The holes in her head healed a little and the emptiness inside faded. At times she looked at her Daddy's blank phone and felt glad she hadn't left it in the shadow of the cactus. One day she'd learn how to use it properly, and see the photos that were in it. She'd see him and her and even the Hatter again.
As she walked with her groups, sometimes just a handful of people, sometimes hundreds, she told them everything she knew about the places they passed through, like a tour guide.
"Last time a lady in a blue cap got herself stuck behind that mailbox," she'd say, "which was very funny because it did look like she was reading the letters inside it, and was grasping very hungrily to get one back. Why do you suppose that was, perhaps she had sent a harsh letter to her boyfriend and she regretted it now? Or maybe she wanted to make it harsher? On the other hand, perhaps she was waiting for the results of her application to work for the government spy agency. I've never had a job, but I think working as a government spy must be very exciting."
They listened to her rapt. They looked at her constantly while she was speaking.
When she ran out of stories about the last groups through, she made up facts about the stranger buildings they passed by, like, "Here is where Abramov Lincoln was born, did you know that? He was a great president and he helped the black people get nice houses, which was a good thing to do, and he wore a tall hat and was born about a thousand years ago. Do you see the strange shape on top of the building, all made of glass? That's to help remember his hat."
When she had exhausted all she knew about famous people, she sometimes told them little bits from Alice. "Now this is not true," she warned them each time, "but it's a nice story all the same, and may help you get through the day."
She liked to tell the darker stories for some reason, as they felt more fitting, and taught more about getting-through-the-day. Saying the words of Jabberwocky was one of her favorites; feeling the strange roll and flex of their shapes and sounds on her tongue and in her mouth was great fun. Especially she enjoyed acting out the noisy bits, even leaping around to try for a reaction from her audience.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!" she'd shout suddenly. "The jaws the clack, the claws that catch, beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!"
Sometimes she talked about the dream where her Daddy had told her about the Jabberwock and how cold it was. Telling these others about it, about the vorpal blade they might need and the frabjous day they would have upon their victory, felt like supporting her father. This was their training and she was their general, sending them off to battle.
Each time they went into the water, she felt certain they were a more tightly knit group. They knew what to expect, which was the most she could offer them. They didn't need feeding or stroking but they always listened to all of her warnings and preparation, taking everything in with their glowing white eyes.
Gradually there were fewer of them.
Once Anna walked for two days and nights before coming across any at all. That was all right, because there were plenty of other things to do now, though it was strange. In her new free time she ate and drank, especially Coke and red strings which were delicious, and s
he found new clothes to wear and tried them on, and there were picture books to look at in open shops. She always ate candy bars from the shops that she liked, one each day, trying all the separate tastes.
Some were crunchy, some were too sweet, some had chunky peanuts which got stuck in her teeth, so picking them out became another fun distraction.
Once she walked for three days straight, taking new roads that led her out of the city completely and into a landscape that alternated between sandy like a beach and long flat and green. She dropped into the fields and smelled the plants but couldn't identify what they were.
At the end of three days she met a single gray man dragging himself down the street. Both of his legs were missing, tailing off in ropey gray strands like the chef's belly. She walked with him for a little while.
"You've been in the wars, haven't you," she said, "but you keep going. I like that more than anything. You're strong inside, even if you're not strong outside."
He looked up at her with his fading white eyes.
"Was it a car crash? Dogs, maybe? Tell me if I'm getting warmer. A train crash? Oh it was a train crash? Well well then."
They walked and crawled on, though his pace was terribly slow.
"I've never been in a train crash," Anna went on. "I expect they're very scary. But here you are, keeping on. It's a good thing you're doing, I'm sure. The ocean is a long way, it's so cold, but you'll keep going won't you? Maybe you'll see my Daddy out there."
A tear ran down her cheek, surprising her. She'd grown too tough for tears, but actually this felt good, like a nice warm rain that washes the dust away.
"Tell him I love him, won't you? Tell him I helped you along the way. It's a long hard road, but we're both walking it together aren't we? That's all any of us have. I got strong again and we helped each other. Tell him that when you see him, will you? Tell him I miss him, but I'm doing OK."
They walked together for hours. She left him at the edge of the city.
"You can handle it from here," she said. "You're a little too slow for me."
He didn't seem to mind. He crawled off. Anna waved and went back to walking inward, away from the ocean.
* * *
She didn't go back to the sea again after that. She continued walking inward whether the groups were large or small. She spent time with them, until they were ready to move on, but she didn't escort them all the way.
"Just keep going straight," she told them, "follow the sun and you'll be there in a flash."
Sometimes they stayed with her for a day, or a day and a night, and sometimes they walked past her without stopping or even looking in her direction. She waved them on just the same. When they stopped for longer though, she gave them a special treat: reading from a copy of Alice through the Looking Glass.
She'd found the book in a bookstore, the exact same copy her Daddy used to read to her. It was very handsome in blue leather, with a creaky spine and raspy yellow pages. She couldn't really read it but she pretended to, following the pictures for her cues.
They came and they went, and so did she. She recorded the number of passing days in the book. At seven she knew that was a week, and she celebrated with a Snickers bar. At fourteen that was two weeks and she had two Snickers bars, though that was really one too many and made her a little sick.
The world kept changing. The green fields faded away and everything became orange and sandy with red rocks all around. There were places with more cars and there were places with fewer, and the towns got smaller then suddenly bigger. She walked sometimes at night and sometimes by day and sometimes both, keeping up the pace her Daddy had set so long ago. Her legs were thick and strong now.
Once she got stranded in a long sandy stretch, and felt thirsty for the first time. She drank all her water and walked on. She got dizzy and weak, but at last there was a small restaurant on the roadside, and through the windows she could see lots of lovely water bottles in the fridge, but all the doors were locked tight.
It seemed terrible, but she broke her way in through the window by throwing rocks at it. She threw a lot to be sure all the jagged glass was gone. She dragged a picnic table over and climbed in like Alice going through the looking glass.
The water was good. It kept her going. The candy was good too. She munched on red strings for the rest of the day, until her lips went all tangy and red covered her hands like bright coloring ink, and she wasn't even hungry anymore but just chewing because it was fun to chew.
After six weeks she came to a city that glimmered on the horizon.
The landscape had changed again, passing through rocky hills and low mountains to long stretches of rough brown scrub, where heaps of rocks stood around spidery upside-down trees. She followed roads now, unlike her Daddy, so she didn't see the ocean people too often, only when they trudged across her path.
"Hi there," she'd call out, "good trip?"
They'd stay with her or they wouldn't. She'd tell them stories or not. Sooner or later they'd wander away again, off the road and into the distance, in floods or long lines or one at a time.
The city grew closer, so she could pick out the individual spires of its glass towers. She'd seen cities like it before, rising out of nothing like icicles, vanishing back into nothing. They were great places to get new clothes or picture books.
But this one was different, and as she grew closer she understood why. Usually the large glass towers were plain, or had neat words across their tops, but one here was different. It was tall and shiny like so many others, but it had also been painted on. The picture was of a bright yellow circle with a bit cut out like a missing pie-slice or a mouth, and a black dot above it that looked like an eye or a currant.
She'd never seen anything like it before. It was so bright and strange, like one of the silly creations she might have drawn herself. It almost looked like it was smiling.
"What precisely are you?" She asked it several times as she drew closer through a long hot day. "What are you for?"
It didn't answer at once, but that didn't mean anything. The gray people never answered any of her questions, but that didn't make them meaningless. They had a purpose and a drive, and so did this. It meant something, and she was going to find out exactly what.
11. HOT DOGS
It meant people.
In the tall building beneath the big yellow cake-face, in a wide open entry hall that was taller than her whole house had been, she found a lot of strange stuff, including a big blackboard with two names written on it which she spelled out carefully.
AMO
LARA
They had numbers after them which were probably dates, but Anna hadn't really learned dates yet. There were lots of bits of rectangular plastic in a bowl, and briefly she thought they might be batteries for her phone, but when she tried to slot them in somewhere they didn't fit.
There were folding computers but she didn't know what to do with them at all. There were funny little brightly colored capsules sitting next to machines in fancy stacked pyramids. She experimented with one, popping the foil seal carefully, but what came out was brown dust that smelled like old bark. She kicked it away and hid the popped capsule back in the pyramid carefully.
There were also comics, a big stack of them. They were all the same, and on the cover was a picture of a pile of the flood, stacking up like the bitter capsules in the middle of a city. They were gray and terrifying and so sad.
Anna lifted the top copy up reverentially, taking in the colors and shapes. She'd never seen anything like it. She opened it up and studied the pictures carefully. Of course she couldn't read well, but the story was clear, about this Amo and Lara. They fell in love and then they were separated. Amo fought the ocean for a long time, because he didn't realize they were friendly. Then he did.
Tears came to Anna's eyes. This was her story too. This was the story of her father and all her friends along the way. She read it through then started again at the beginning.
Amo was smart and he
liked to draw things, like her. His drawings were impossible things made real, like the yellow face on the building. Anna admired that. He'd made this comic and this odd collection of bits too. The more she looked at his face in the comic, and saw him hang off skyscrapers and fight and then learn he should stop fighting, the more she liked him.
He seemed like her friend already. Lara was nice too, though there wasn't too much about her. She was pretty, and she looked a little like Anna, and she worked in a shop that made brown water. Anna wrinkled her nose at that. It seemed a strange job.
There was another person too, a dark-skinned man in a wheelchair who looked a little like her Daddy. He had two different names, one of them was Robert, the other she couldn't really spell. It didn't seem like a real name. He was Amo's friend; he'd been a diver once, but now he could only lie in a bed because his legs didn't work. It wasn't completely clear what happened to him, but he saved Amo's life.
Anna studied the comic and chewed on a pen. She liked these people. They were tough and brave, like her. Already it felt like she'd been traveling with them for months, and they'd been together since the beginning. In the tradition of Amo, and making impossible things real, she decided to do it herself. With the pen she added to the comic, drawing herself into the panels wherever there was space: a little dark girl in a blue and white dress. She wrote
ANNA
above her head. It wasn't neat but she could read it. She was here too. She was just like them.
She wrote her name in chalk on the billboard as well. She had to do it three times before it was up to her satisfaction. She didn't know what to write for a date so she drew a smiley pie-face there instead. She picked up one of the shiny capsules and put it in her pack with her Daddy's phone, because it was pretty.
Then she set out. The map in the comic wasn't so clear to her, but she knew which way the ocean was, and that was the way it seemed to be pointing, down a road called I-70. Outside on the street she could read the letters for I-70 on the blue street signs hanging over the road. Amo had left a large arrow painted on the asphalt too, which made it easy.
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