“Ah, stupid me.” She blushed.
“I’m beginning to have second thoughts of possessing someone like you. So stupid, I could lose my cat mojo.”
“No, no. I promise I’d buy someone’s brain. How many IQ’s are good for you?”
The Cheshire simply hung up. It wasn’t worth it, really. He switched the channel and watched Dumb and Dumber.
The Queen on the other hand was shocked, listening to the terrible beep of the phone. Had the Cheshire just given up on her? How was she going to cheat Death now?
She suddenly felt a shudder, followed by terrible cramps in her stomach. There was no escaping now.
She fell to her knees, even her dogs abandoned her. She swirled and screamed and cursed and spat bubbles of stupidness out of her mouth. But nothing helped.
Fading away, she saw strange men wearing black armors and looking like the Chessmaster, entering the room. They picked her up and began pulling her as her bones scraped the floor.
“Where are you taking me?” she barely spoke.
One of the knights laughed and said, “To the afterlife. Time to pay your debt.”
Chapter 51
Chess City, Kalmykia, Russia
Walking through the ghost city, it’s hard not to feel like a tourist. A special one, in that matter. The enormous chess pieces and constructions are dazzling, sometimes infused with Buddhist architecture; it’s an almost ethereal experience.
“How do you like it in here?” The Pillar asks.
“It’s incredible,” I say. “But I have to admit the city is also intimidating.”
“Of course, because it’s empty.”
“So we’re going to walk the city? Looking for Carroll’s Knight?”
“I’m not sure. The clue didn’t explain things further.”
“I have an idea,” I tell him. “With all due respect, all those beautiful designs are a camouflage.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the city’s main attraction is this,” I point at the incredibly large chessboard, like the one in Marostica.
“I agree,” The Pillar says. “But I also don’t see how it could lead us to Carroll’s Knight.”
“Why?”
“Look, Alice. True, it’s the largest chessboard I’ve ever seen, but it’s empty, just like the city.”
The Pillar is right. The chessboard is void of any chess pieces.
In silence, feeling mesmerized and intimidated at the same time, we reach the chessboard. The sun behind us is shimmering with a patch of orange flaring behind the cloudy skies. Surprisingly, there is no snow in Chess City, making me think the March Hare may have been right about it being a portal to Wonderland.
The chessboards are huge tiles of black and white, like the one in the Vatican. The tiles are incredibly huge, they could host four to five people, shoulder to shoulder.
“I think you owe me an explanation.” I tell The Pillar, influenced by the images before me.
“What would that be?”
“How come I walked the white tiles in the Vatican’s chessboard?”
“What do you mean? You’re Alice, the only one who can save the world from Wonderland Monsters.”
“That’s the Alice you want me to be.”
“This is the Alice you are. We’re not going through this again.”
“But we have to, because at some point I was the Bad Alice and I’ve worked for Black Chess. It doesn’t make sense that if I have walked the white chess tiles inside a most important place like in the Vatican? Did Fabiola manipulate it?”
“Of course, she didn’t,” The Pillar says. “Fabiola helped you because she thought you were a nice girl who could save lives while being brainwashed by me. If she’d known it was really you, she’d have killed you.”
“Then why did she show me the vision of the Circus?”
“Either to make you realize Black Chess’s madness, or she was testing you so she could, like I said, kill you if you were the Bad Alice.”
“Some things you say about her make me wonder why you love her.”
The Pillar shrugs. “I know. But hey, I’m as bad myself.”
Sometimes I can’t help it when I listen to him. I suppress a laugh and stay focused on what I need to know. “You still haven’t told me how the Bad Alice was able to walk the white tiles in the Vatican.”
“Because of your intentions.”
“Excuse me?”
“We all have good and evil inside us. It comes and goes. Some of us dip our heads too far in the dark, and some only have snippets of bad thoughts clouding our heads from time to time. For instance, it may cross your mind to pull down the window and verbally abuse the reckless driver next to you in a rare episode of road rage. But it just subsides and you don’t give into it, once you remind yourself that being good is a choice, not a gene.”
“Stop the metaphors. I need firm answers now.”
“Because your intentions were good, Alice, that’s why you walked the white tiles.” The Pillar’s voice is flat like a truth of bare bones without flesh to conceal its hardness.