by Cameron Jace
The Pillar winked at the Queen while ushering his bride to his mushroom carriage. Instead of a pumpkin-shaped one, he had it mushroomed and smoked. It was long, like the limousine he would ride in the real world later. The Pillar liked long cars. Was he compensating for the shortness of other things on his behalf?
He rode in the carriage with his bride, and they drove away. The Queen’s sister couldn’t stop kissing him.
“I love you, so much, Pilly,” she said.
“Me too,” he arched an eyebrow in the backseat. “Just forget the Pilly thing. I like people calling me Pilla da Killa.”
She laughed, hand on her heart. “Why? Who are you planning to kill?”
He winked at her and leaned in to kiss her again.
“So, where are we spending the honeymoon?” she wondered.
“In my mushroom hut.”
“That’s it? I thought you’d take me to—”
“Trust me, the mushroom hut is the best,” he explained. “As longed as we smoke the hookah, in our minds we’ll be visiting anywhere in the world.”
She laughed again. Even his chauffeur was annoyed. How did the Pillar get the girl to love him so much?
She rested her head on his chest and patted him. “I love you so much, Pilla da Killa. I wonder if you love me as much.”
The Pillar grinned. “You have no idea how much you mean to me, White Queen. No idea.”
27
Present: Warehouse Location, London
Fabiola wakes up screaming as we’re fighting the Reds. I tell Constance to check on her. Since most of the Reds are escaping now, I have only a few to finish.
“She needs you, not me,” Constance says telepathically. “Go, we can finish the few Reds left.”
I dart back to Fabiola.
She is sweating like a pig. Her beautiful face seems like she’s aged years now.
“Are you okay?” I hug her. “What can I do for you?”
“Hug me closer,” she says surprisingly. “You have no idea what I have been through.”
“I know, the hospital and the wounds you got from Russia.”
“Not that,” she says in my ear. “You have no idea what happened to me in Wonderland, Alice.”
“I thought you were all badass in Wonderland?”
“That came later.”
I slide away to look in her eyes. “Later?”
“I’m like you. My life is a prolonged revenge story, trying to hurt those who had hurt me,” she admits.
“Then why did you go to the Vatican?”
“It was the only place I could cool down, slow down, and persuade myself that forgiveness was a virtue.”
“Is it?”
“It is, but it doesn’t take away the pain.”
“What are you talking about?” I am curious.
“All in time, Alice,” she says, standing up. “That’s if I live long enough to tell.”
“Are you sure you can walk—”
She smiles. Then winks. “Look at you.”
I realize the wound on my thigh has healed. I raise my head and ask, “So we’re invincible?”
“As long you keep on fighting after getting the wound, you should be okay,” she says. “That’s the power of the Vorpal sword.”
“Then why did you end up in the hospital after Russia?”
She leans closer and whispers in my ear, “Because I stopped believing.”
“So that’s the weakness,” I say.
“You have no idea how easy it is to stop believing, to take the easy way out, to sit and whine. We think it’s not going to happen, that we’re quote un-quote invincible. It’s not like that. Want to believe in something? Then do the hard work and keep believing day after day, even if it gets you nowhere.”
From the corner of my eye, I realize the Reds have escaped.
“I believe!” a voice shrieks.
Oh, it’s the March, waking up again.
In a second, we all gather around him. He is the most important of us all.
“Are you okay, March?” I ask him.
“Tell us where the Keys are,” Constance demands.
Hazy and disoriented, he looks like someone who's slept too much but doesn’t feel like he has slept at all. “I know where the Six Keys are. I know what they do.”
“Spit it out,” Constance says.
The March spits.
“Not like that,” I calm him, and Constance, down. “She means tell us.”
“I will remember when I see the mushrooms,” he says.
“But you said you know,” I tell him.
“I know that I know,” he explains. “And to know what I know that I know, I have to see the mushrooms.”
“You mean in London?” Lewis interferes.
“Lewis,” the March smiles. “It’s been long, dude. Where have you been?”
“Dude?” Jack is both offended and confused. Why would the March use the word dude?
“That cap on his head is messing with his brain,” Constance tells me telepathically.
“All right,” I tell the March. “Where in London, then?”
“A garden, one of my designs,” he says. “I can’t remember which.”
“A garden of mushrooms?” Tom Truckle arrives, so interested, now that we are safe. I hope he is not after the Keys as well. “In London?”
The March nods. “But I am not sure about the London thing. I am just speculating.”
“If it’s a garden then it could be the Poison Garden in Alnwick, Northumberland,” Lewis suggests. “It’s where the Pillar used to live. His portal between real life and Wonderland.”
“So it’s been there for centuries?” I wonder. “It means the March didn’t design it.”
“We don’t know when the March started designing gardens,” Fabiola says. “It could be an old thing in Wonderland.”
“I don’t know either,” the March says. “Poor March,” he pats himself.
“He is hallucinating,” Constance tells me telepathically. We can’t trust him.
I nod at her, letting her know it’s okay. The March is always trustable.
“Also the Poison Garden isn’t in London, Lewis,” Fabiola says.
“He said he isn’t sure about London,” Constance remarks.
“Why does everything have to be so complicated?” Tom growls.
“What if it were out of London,” Fabiola says. “We can’t leave London in this mess outside. We should take the easier solution.”
“Which is?” I ask him.
“The Mushroom Garden in London,” she says, “It’s well known and is closer. A lot of people have their wedding there. They call it the Kew Garden. It’s our fastest solution and our best bet.”
“Let’s go,” Jack says. “I’ve found an ice-cream truck outside. We can take it."
28
King’s Cross Station, London
Margaret stood in the bathroom, staring at her reflection in the mirror. She still wore her hoodie over the top of her face, counting on its shadow to conceal the rest. She just couldn’t stare at it anymore. She hated the Pillar so much.
Back in the limousine when she accompanied the Queen, she’d thought that this was the end. That she’d just met her maker in a glorious explosion. But she didn’t. She made it out alive.
On her back, amidst the smoke and the screaming all around her, she saw the Pillar’s shadow looming over her. With a machine gun in her hand, she was sure he was going to finish her.
“Why are you doing this?” She coughed at him. If she could have run or defended herself, she would have, but she was weak.
“Look at you, ugly Duchess,” the Pillar said. “The explosion took your fake beauty back.”
“That’s none of you concern Pillar,” she said. “You know the price I paid for this beauty.”
“You mean the price you made someone else pay,” he spat on the floor next to her.
“You’re not a saint yourself,” she said. “In fact, you might be the worst
. You are the worst.”
“I guess I am,” he said absently, looking behind him. He had to move fast, or the police would catch him.
“So you’re going to finish me now?” She asked.
“No,” he said. “I will give you one last chance. Not to live, but to know — and of course, let Mr. Jay know.”
“About you?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me, please. I don’t think mid dying, but I just can’t understand. Why are you doing this?”
“I wrote the reason behind all of this in a yellow Wonder note, which I gave Alice, earlier,” he said. “She refused to read it, and buried in the bottom of her Tiger Lily pot.”
“So?”
“The pot is in a locker in King’s Cross train station,” he explained. “I’ll let you live if you go get it.”
“Why would you do that?”
He sighed again. “I want the world to know why I am doing this, in case I die doing it.”
She shrugged, not sure if he was playing her, but said, “Deal,” she stretched out a hand, inviting him to shake it.
“I will never shake your hand, Duchess,” he said. “Just go get the note.”
Then he disappeared into the smoke.
Back in the bathroom, Margaret took a deep breath and one last look in the mirror. Outside, she could hear a bigger explosion now. She left the bathroom and darted toward the lockers to see.
Hallelujah! The outlaws blew up the lockers. Now everything was scattered all over. But was the pot going to be intact? Was she going to find the yellow Wonder note?
29
Ice-Cream Truck, Out of the Warehouse
“Can anyone explain to me how the March is supposed to remember when he finds the mushrooms?” Constance asks in the backseat.
Jack had worked on the abandoned truck outside and ignited it back into life. I guess he was also a mechanic in Wonderland or something — Fabiola commented that he liked to fix cars.
Now we’re all stuffed into this ice-cream truck, with Jack driving. The best thing about the truck is that the locks on the doors are still intact, so we are safe inside. I would have preferred a big, badass police van, the one that transports prisoners and has barred windows. But hey, where is such a vehicle when you need one?
“I am assuming that he needs to eat the mushroom,” Lewis explains. He and Tom Truckle are sitting opposite of Fabiola and me. We couldn’t get the Mushroomers on board in our travels, so we locked them safely in the warehouse — after we found a new food and drink source — and promised to come back later.
“Eat?” Tom asks.
“Don’t hang on every word,” I tell him. “We’re experimenting here. So why mushrooms, Lewis?”
“What do you mean?” he grips his weapon tighter.
“I mean you took a mushroom to forget. The March needs one to remember,” I say. “In the books, I have been depicted as the girl who grows taller or shorter when she eats mushrooms. What’s this all about?”
“It’s magic mushrooms,” Tom grins, being an expert in pills and hallucinatory drugs. “I heard the first documented hallucinogenic mushroom experience took place in 1799. Guess where? In Green Park, London. That’s why you’re all bonkers.”
“Are you saying madness is induced?” I ask him.
“Well,” Lewis says hesitantly. “There are theories that madness didn’t exist before that date, or even in Green Park, 1799.”
“But that doesn’t add up,” Constance says. “Madness had been reported all through history, way back.”
“Those were possessions,” Fabiola suggests. “Or mere diseases that had been mistaken for insanity.”
“Like vampires,” Tom says. “There are no vampires, but certain diseases centuries ago made people need to drink blood — or made them think they needed to drink blood, to be precise.”
“Don’t say there are no vampires.” Constance grins at him with scary teeth. Tom leans away from her.
“Fabiola is right,” Lewis says, as we’re rocking to Jack’s driving now. The sounds of war outside are worrisome, but Jack only takes smaller, abandoned routes. “Take me for example. I have a split personality. Inside me, there is a monster called Carolus. He was born out of my suffering from migraines—”
“Or out of the figment of your imagination,” Tom snickers.
“The point is,” Lewis continues, neglecting Tom. “Did Carolus appear because of the migraines, or the medicine I took for the migraines?”
“It’s like shock therapy,” Constance still eyes Tom. “Did it help or did it make people who’d been just ill and mistaken for insane, actually insane.”
“So tell me more about this event in 1799,” I ask Lewis.
“A British man who had been in the habit of gathering mushrooms from the garden and cooking them ended up experiencing hallucinations,” Lewis says. “Black spots, odd flashing colors, disorientation and such. Then, when he went to the doctor he forgot why he was there.”
“Wicked,” I chew on the words. “Like most of us with half memories, not knowing why we’re here.”
“And so it’s been reported in the British Medical and Physical Journal as the first incident of its kind,” Lewis says.
“So why is this significant?” Constance asks.
“Because not one incident like it had been reported before,” Fabiola replies. “It is proof that insanity didn’t exist before.”
“And it’s because of mushrooms?” I tilt my head.
“That could be…” Lewis says.
“Nonsense,” Tom adds. “That could be nonsense.”
Lewis says, “Later people reported seeing others with weird dilated pupils, infrequent pulses and breathing everywhere when they cooked the mushrooms.”
“Then,” Fabiola says, “people started to fear for themselves. They were afraid to die. Mushrooms became the equivalent of apples: a poisonous food that could kill.”
“I don’t see how this induces insanity?” Constance says.
“A year later, another British man had different symptoms from eating the mushrooms,” Lewis says. “As the reports describe it, he had an attack with fits of uncontrollable laughter.”
“That was the first time doctors noted that symptoms of eating mushrooms are out of this world.” Fabiola says. “And,” she exchanges a look with Lewis, a slight smile on her lips, “it’s been the first documented time a doctor writes a very peculiar word in their reports about a mushroom-eating patient.”
“What word?” I ask.
Lewis smiles too. “Nonsense. The word was nonsense.”
30
PAST: Wonderland
The White Queen lived happily ever after. Well, for a few months.
The mushroom’s effect was perfect. Never had she doubted her love for the Pillar. Not one day. The world moved on. Wonderland came to accept the fact that the beauty had just married the beast.
She spent her days living in the forest, lazy, smoking and joking. The Pillar was a funny man. Unchained of all society’s boundaries. His days were a mixture of sleep, and leaning back and reflecting upon the stars atop of a purple mushroom. He never worried, and was never angry. It was like he had figured out the secret of life, and it kept him smiling.
Of course, it wasn’t the secret of life. It was the mushrooms and the hookah smoke. He’d managed to sedate her anxieties and worries about tomorrow into purple haze and midnight dances. Life was beautiful with the Pillar. She’d married a catch.
Sometimes, when she asked him about the way he made a living, he said he’d inherited the garden from his parents. The garden was lush with fruits, vegetables, and animals that he sold and didn’t need to work another day.
“But why is it full of mushrooms?” she asked.
“They’re like fungus,” he said. “They just grow here. But you know what? They’re delicious.”
She ate one and giggled happily.
“And you know what else?” he said. “They can make you taller.”
/>
“Really?”
“And shorter.”
“You don’t say.”
Fabiola spent a few days with that game of growing taller and smaller. Sometimes she veered a bit far to the edges of the forest, and locals would call to her from behind the trees, asking her why she liked the Pillar, saying that he would eventually hurt her. She opposed their predictions and ordered them to leave.
“Why do people not like you, Pillar?” she asked him later.
“Because I am coo-hooo-hooo-lll,” he coughed the smoked out of his mouth. His beady eyes excited her. He did not care for this world, whatsoever.
She grabbed the hookah and smiled back.
Until the day another person called her from behind the bushes and vines. A taller, younger man with a hat. A tall hat. He wore funny rings, and teacups dangled from his sleeves. They clinked.
“Who are you?” she asked, not out of sheer curiosity, but an unusual tickling in her tummy. Butterflies? But she never knew this man.
“Remember me?” he asked her.
“Should I?” her eyes widened.
“I’m the Hatter.”
“Ah,” she said. “Of course, that explains why I recognized you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“You’ve heard?” he was offended.
“Yeah. You’re hosting those crazy tea parties where you break teacups and drink yourself to sleep.”
“You don’t remember, do you?” the hatter stepped up. She took a step back behind the bush. “What did the Pillar give you?”
“He gave me happiness and a great life no girl can dream of.”
“I mean, what does he…” he thought for a while, trying to utter the right words. “I mean what do you eat every day, or drink?”
“Such a rude question, why do you ask?”
“I don’t mean to be rude,” he played along. “I see you are so beautiful and wonder if the food you eat makes you look stronger and more attractive.”
