After a two-hour flight, we land in Glasgow in some private plane arranged by the Pillar.
I can’t help but wonder about the Pillar’s connections—and fortune—but he dismisses my inquiry whenever I ask. The idea of a super-rich professor favoring being in an asylum over his wealth in the outside world thickens the pile of questions on my part. I know the Pillar will only tell me what he wants to tell me, so it’s up to me to figure out the rest of the puzzles.
Once we leave the airport, we’re told we’ll soon meet up with Inspector Dormouse at the Garden of Cosmic Speculation. It’s an hour drive to Dumfries, where it’s located. I also learn that the inspector had to coordinate with Scotland Yard to allow us a visit to the garden.
“So you actually knew about Snail Mound?” I ask, sitting in the back of another limousine, driven by the Pillar’s chauffeur.
“I knew about the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, but not Snail Mound,” the Pillar says, entertaining himself with a hand-held hookah. “The Garden of Cosmic Speculation is incredibly vast, so it needs a specific map. I didn’t know there was a place called Snail Mound inside.”
“So what is this garden exactly?” I scroll through my phone, staring at the unbelievably amazing pictures of the inside of the garden. Uncannily, it reminds me of Wonderland. I think whoever sees it would think of Alice’s books instantly. I wonder why Lewis Carroll movies haven’t been shot here.
“There are two versions about the Garden of Cosmic Speculation. One that is told to the public, and one that is the truth. Let me educate you with what is generally told to the public.” The Pillar drags from his pipe. Eyes turning beady. He loves it. “The garden is a thirty-acre sculpture garden. It was created by professor, architect, and landscaper Jittery March at his own home, Portrack House, near Dumfries in South West Scotland.”
“Okay?” Still looking at the pictures, I am mesmerized by the garden’s beauty. It’s almost hypnotic looking at it. Part of it is designed to look like the man-sized chessboard in Alice in Wonderland, only its square tiles are green and silver.
“Common people will tell you that the garden is inspired by science and mathematics, with sculptures and landscaping on these themes, such as black holes and all that hard-to-comprehend stuff,” the Pillar says. “The garden’s main motif is green, but it actually has very few and selected plants. People will tell you that Professor Jittery was looking to represent mathematical formulas and scientific phenomena in a setting which elegantly combines natural features and artificial symmetry and curves.”
I blink at the complicated words. Am I insane to not understand half of what he just said?
“See? It’s all some jibber-jabber, snobbishly complicated talk, mainly meant for you to not understand anything and not question why it looks uncannily like the Wonderland carved in the collective conscious of the world.” He coughs. “Scottish tobacco. Horrible.” He puts his small hookah away and orders the chauffeur to hand him a Scottish bagpipe. Instead of playing some tune with it, he amazingly starts to drag from it like a regular hookah. “Hmm...” His beady eyes smile. “So where were we?”
“You told me about how the public is supposed to think of the Garden of Cosmic Speculation,” I remind him, in case he is wasted by now.
“Ah, that.”
“So what is the version the public doesn’t know about?” I say, pretending I didn’t hear it from the March Hare. I’d like to hear the Pillar’s version.
A moment of silence passes before he continues. “This garden was created by the lunatic scientist you met in the secret asylum they call the Hole.” The Pillar lowers his voice, as if reading a children’s mystery novel in a book club. “Who in reality is the March Hare, another Wonderland character thrown out into this world.”
“So what?” I shake my shoulders. “This isn’t the first Wonderland character who lives a completely different life in the modern world and excels at it. Like Fabiola.”
“Indeed, but the March Hare designed this garden for a reason,” the Pillar says. “The March Hare mapped the Garden of Cosmic Speculation after his faint memory of what Wonderland really looked like. That’s what they don’t tell you on Wikipedia.”
Chapter 35
The Pillar’s limousine on its way to the Garden of Cosmic Speculation
Time remaining: 14 hours, 04 minutes
“Why would he do that?” I ask the Pillar, as his chauffeur takes a bump in the road. I am trying to dig more info about the garden and the March Hare, although I already learned most of what I’m hearing now.