“What does it do?” I demand.
“Like I said, I’m not saying because I don’t want to have anything to do with Lewis Carroll.” The Executioner stands up. “But I know who cooked it for him.”
“That’s a start.” The Pillar steps forward. “Who?”
“I’m not telling you that either.” The Executioner smirks. “Not until you entertain me like in the old days, Senor Pillardo. Come on, make me laugh.”
The Pillar stiffens for a fraction of a second. “Of course.” He raises his glass. “Want to play Wonderland logic again?”
“Whatever’s on your mind. Just be sure you make me laugh.” The Executioner hands him a pistol. “And for starters, I laugh when someone shoots one of my guards. How about that for a start?”
“My pleasure.” The Pillar grabs the gun from the table and shoots two of the guards without hesitation.
I swallow hard and step away from him. Never have I imagined him this cruel. But who am I kidding? He has twelve dead people on his conscience.
“Frabjous! Haven’t lost your swift speed, Senor Pillardo.” The Executioner clinks glasses with the Pillar. “Now make me really laugh. Tell me jokes. Tell me about your adventures outside of Mushroomland all of these years. But I have to warn you, if you don’t make me laugh...”
“You will shoot me and the girl, I know.”
“No.” The Executioner approaches him. “I will make you shoot one of those kids outside, make the girl watch it, and then shoot you and her.”
This is the moment when I raise my trembling hand, unable to stay here any longer. “Is there a bathroom nearby?”
“Just outside that door, to the left,” The Executioner says dismissively. He is so much into the Pillar.
I turn and leave. Not for the bathroom. But for the children. It might be close to the end of the world, but I’m finding those children and getting them out of Mushroomland, if it’s the last thing I do before judgement day.
Outside, I don’t bother finding the bathroom. I just want out to look for the children.
Among the Executioner’s soldiers, I pretend I am an airhead brat with a colorful umbrella, trekking around the vast landscape and admiring the roses.
Some of them are irritated by me, borderline offended, but none of them can do anything about it. I have the Executioner’s permission to be out here.
Flashing my stupid-girl smiles, I’m looking for the children in my peripheral vision.
Nighttime isn’t helping much. All I have for light is a small moon up in the sky. For a moment, it looks like a mushroom lighting up the world. But I know better. The coconut’s effect hasn’t fully worked on me yet.
Farther into the landscape, I am happy to be hiding between folds of darkness and even darker trees in the castle’s garden. I am like a cat now. I see everyone from my vantage point but none of them see me. The Cheshire comes to mind instantly, but I don’t want to think about him.
Then I glimpse the children in the distance.
They’re being loaded like sheep into a barred Jeep, surrounded by machine gun men.
Like a cat, I tiptoe closer. Each child is given a gun before getting on the Jeep. Oh, my God.
I mean, I’ve read about drug lords and cartels using young, poor children in their drug business, even in war, but I never thought I’d see it with my own eyes. It seems that the words we read in newspapers, the videos we watch on news cable, no matter how atrocious and unbelievable are never really processed by our brains. We watch these things as if they are a movie, as if they’re not real, until you see them with your own eyes.
But right now, I can’t stand it. Those children aren’t going to become machine gun drug traffickers. Their childhood isn’t going to be taken advantage of by this mean man called the Executioner. I will find a way to get them out of Mushroomland.
This means more to me than the end of the world.
Because frankly, the world will end anyway. It’s the crimes we don’t do anything about that are the real evil.
Taking my shoes off, I pad as slowly as I can, closer to the Jeep.
There are about twenty children, and for some reason, they’re shown out of the Jeep again. One of the machine gun men tells them to wait next to a huge mushroom tree—haven’t seen one before, really, but hey, I could still be imagining things.
Once the kids are alone, I approach them, worried they’ll shoot or resist me because I’m foreign or something.
But they don’t.
They actually look at me as if they know me, anticipating whatever I have to say.
“I’m Alice,” I begin. “I will get you out of here. You want to get out of here, right?”
They nod eagerly, and I realize they don’t speak my language, but they seem to understand me, still. Maybe freedom and children’s rights is a universal thing. No language is really needed.
“Look,” I try to explain things with my hands while I talk. Common sense sign language should work, right? “I don’t know what I’m going to do, but how about you all get into that Jeep again. I can drive it away until we figure out what to do next.”
They follow my pointing finger to the Jeep, guns still in their hands.
“No,” I say. “No guns. You don’t need them.”
They’re reluctant about it, but cooperate eventually. One after the other they get into the Jeep, smiling at me. It’s lovely how a child’s smile makes your life seem worthless in order to save them.
But it’s not funny at all seeing each one of them is missing knuckles on their last two fingers, starting from the pinky. I can’t explain how this breaks my heart. I suddenly feel embarrassed complaining about shock therapy back in the asylum. At least no one cut off a piece of me.
“Hey.” I stop a boy and kneel down to face him. “Who did that to you?” I point at the missing fingers.
“The Executioner.” Of course.
“Why?”
“Mark.”
“Mark?” I blink. “Who’s Mark?”
“No.” The boy waves his forefinger. “Slave. Mark.”
My hands reach for my mouth to cup a shriek. “It’s a mark? Like a tattoo? You’re a salve?”
“Executioner slave.” The boy taps his chest and then points to the rest of the children. “Travel. Drug. Sell.”
“Not anymore.” I hug him closer. “I will take care of you.”
The boy smiles broadly, as if I have bought him a gift. I mean, God, he doesn’t even know what they are doing to him, trapped within the walls of mushroom all around.
Before he gets in the Jeep, he turns around and touches my hair. “Alice,” he whispers. “Mother say Alice come. Alice save us.”
Inside the Jeep, lights still out, I try to think of a plan.
So what? I am going to ignite the vehicle with the kids inside and just try to escape Mushroomland?
It doesn’t really sound like a plan, and now that I’ve given the children hope, it really doesn’t sound like a plan.
“Think, Alice.” I bang my hands on the wheel, staring at the machine gun men in the distance. It’ll only be minutes before they come back.
My hatred for the Pillar increases. Or maybe I should blame myself for counting too much on him. Who was I fooling? I wasn’t the least bit surprised when I learned he was a drug lord. I bet he marked children like the Executioner does. That bastard.
I fiddle with my umbrella, realizing it only has a few bullets. I can go back to put one in the Executioner and then another in the Pillar, but what good will that do for the children?
Suddenly, one of the machine gun men sees us and blows red fireworks in the sky, exposing the Jeep for everyone to see.
It’s too late now for a plan. Survival instinct at its core.
I push the pedal and bump into every hedge and mushroom in my way, trying to chug my way out of here.
Jeeps start following me, shooting at us.
Now I’m worried one of the kids will get hurt. I ask them to duck, but for how long?
Farther I drive, my hands gripping the wheel, my brain still foggy.
Alice save us. Had the boy’s mother predicted my arrival, like Constance believed in me?
What do you do when everyone believes in you, and deep down inside you know you’re insane?
I take a left onto an even muddier road. The Jeep slows down. But I am not stopping. I grip the wheel harder, grit my teeth as I push the pedal against its capacity.
But it’s not the chasing that stops me. It’s the flaring white light someone directs in my face.
I end up seeing nothing, only feeling the weight of the Jeep rolling on its side. My head bumps into something, and all I end up with is the aching sound of the wheels circling the air.
Are the children hurt?
It’s only a minute before I see the Executioner looking down on me. “I should have killed you once I saw you.” He pulls his gun out again.
Next to him, the Pillar’s face comes into focus. His face is inanimate. And for the first time, I can see his real intentions. His eyes are so dead I don’t think he ever cared for me one bit.
He tucks his cigar back in his mouth and says, “Love that look on someone’s face, just before they die.”
But on the contrary, everything was just fine.
The face she’d asked for to cover up her ugliness, and put her Duchess days behind, was like nothing she’d ever seen. In fact, she loved how she looked. It suited her prestige and made people trust her—which was most crucial to her title in the Parliament.
Then why did the Queen of Hearts keep calling her ugly?
Margaret looked away from the mirror and out at the River Thames. She knew why the Queen treated her this way. Because she couldn’t forget how ugly she was in Wonderland. Because the Queen envied her for being able to pull such a trick in the real world.
The Queen herself had asked the same doctors to make her taller—the Queen’s biggest setback. But science in this world only knew how to make extreme makeovers with faces. Making someone taller wasn’t an option yet.
How Margaret wished to kill this obnoxious Queen. How she wished to rip her to pieces.
But none of that was feasible before they collected the Six Impossible Keys.
It just had to be done. And now she had to find someone to send after that madman, the Pillar who seemed to be looking for a cure in Columbia.
Never mind that Columbia was the best place to look for those who created this plague, but it was also where Margaret had made most of her fortune.
Margaret had been one of the first to arrive from Wonderland. With her political position, she was able to make millions of pounds by endorsing drug trafficking and child slavery in Columbia.
A very profitable business, indeed.
She worried the Pillar would mess up things there. His travel to Columbia seemed to have a deeper reason behind it. True, he was there to find a cure of sorts, but why go back to that place he hated so much?
Why go back to that dark pit of his past?
Margaret sighed, deciding her priority was to find a cure and keep her assets in Columbia safe. She had to call someone to do it.
She walked back to her desk, and dialed a number. It belonged to the last Wonderlander she’d ever work with, but it seemed that every Wonderlander needed to make a stand now.
Either you were part of Black Chess, or you were an Inklings. There was no other way around it now.
And even though no one understands me, the Executioner ends up curious to know what I have to say before I die.
“I was only coughing.” I wipe the gun’s staining powder from my lips. From the corner of my eye, I can see the kids aren’t hurt.
The Pillar raises an eyebrow at me, probably impressed with my comeback.
The Executioner loads his gun again, ready to finish me.
“Wait,” I say. “Since you’re a Wonderlander, you must be looking for the keys like everyone else.” My look is sharp and challenging. “The Six Impossible Keys.”
The Executioner pulls his gun to a halt. I believe I caught his interest. Behind him, the Pillar scratches his temples.
“Continue...” The Executioner waves the gun at me.
“I know where one of them is,” I say, reminding myself I’ll never tell about the one key I have hidden in my back pocket. The one Lewis Carroll gave me. “Last week, the Mad Hatter took it from me.”
“From you?” The Executioner seems skeptical. “Why would you have a key to Wonderland?”
“Well.” I rub the back of my neck. “Like I said before, I am Alice from Wonderland. I just don’t remember a lot of it. I had the key hidden in a bucket in the basement of my family’s house.”
The Executioner scans me from top to bottom.
“You don’t want to kill me, in case I know of the whereabouts of the other keys,” I follow up, not sure if the Pillar will back me up if I mention him to the Executioner, so I don’t. He wanted me dead a minute ago.
The Executioner gazes back at the Pillar and then back at me. His eyes are sharp, as if he’s trying to read through my soul.
It’s a long moment. I take advantage of it and smile at the children behind me, assuring them they will be all right.
The moment stretches even more, and I begin to worry the Executioner won’t believe me.
But he breaks the long silence with a spitting laugh. His men laugh with him. He lowers his head toward me and says, “You’re the maddest girl I have ever seen.” He raises his eyebrows. “I love mad people. That’s why I will not kill you until I’m thoroughly entertained by your hallucinations.”
The Pillar, me, and the Executioner are sitting around a table in the middle of his garden. I can hear the sounds of war in the distance, still not sure what his men are fighting over.
But the war is the least of my worries now. It’s the Executioner and his sadistic games. He literally wants us to play a game now.
“It’s a very easy game,” he says. “But most entertaining to me.”
The Pillar says nothing, and neither do I. The Executioner had each of us hold a gun and place it atop the table, both hands placed palm down.
“Here is how it’s going to be played,” the Executioner says. “I will ask you a question.” He is talking to me. I’ve become his priority now. He thinks I am mad, and it amuses him. “If you give the right answer, you will pass for this round. If it’s wrong, I will shoot you.”
“Suspenseful.” The Pillar puffs his cigar. “I love suspense.”
“Then it’ll be your turn to ask me a question.” The Executioner is still talking to me. “If I answer it the wrong way, you can shoot me.”
“Justice,” the Pillar says nonchalantly. “Not a fan.”
“Then Senor Pillardo will join in,” the Executioner follows. “Easy game. Say the truth and you will live.”
“How can you tell I am telling the truth when you ask me?” I say.
“The same way you can tell I am telling the truth when I ask you.” The Executioner grins.
“Nonsense,” the Pillar comments. “My favorite.”
“I’m not following,” I tell the Executioner.
“Here is the thing, young lady,” the Executioner says. “This is a game of nonsense—which, if you think you’re Alice, you should know a lot about.”
“Trust me. Nonsense has been my middle name since I met the Pillar—I mean, Senor Pillardo,” I say. “But I still don’t have a grip on this game.”