"Oh." My face tightens, and my need to catch the Cheshire heightens. “Did you see his face?”
“No, he was wearing a mask of a grinning cat,” she said. "But when I asked him if it's Alice in Wonderland who was coming to save me, he said yes, it was her. He meant you," the girl continues, her head on my shoulder. I fight the tears not to cry. She thinks Alice is her hero from the books, and that she came to save her. Or maybe I am too stupid to notice that she is right. That I am Alice, and that I am destined for much more than a cell in an asylum. "I told him Alice is only seven,” the girl continues. “She can’t save me.”
“What did he say to that?”
"He said, ‘Alice is grown up now, and she will try to save the world.’”
Chapter 28
The Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum, Oxford
Going back to the Radcliffe Asylum, I don't know what's worse: the mad people inside, or the mad people outside.
Dr. Tom Truckle taunts me for ten minutes for being late and jeopardizing his reputation by being a hero. He doesn’t care whatsoever about saving the girl. I feel better about the way the Pillar blackmails him. Also, I try to tell him to get over it. I had shoved the girl out to the public and escaped through the window Jack used. No one had seen me save her but the Pillar’s chauffeur, and the few tourists who cannot prove anything but the existence of a mad girl who ate a block of cheese at the Great Hall. And of course, the media began showing the mad video of the girl who ate the block of cheese, and began connecting me to saving the girl.
Tom permits me to see the Pillar one last time, before I am shoved back to the ward underground. He has given my Tiger Lily to the Pillar, just to anger me. Now, I will have to get it from the Pillar.
As I walk the VIP lounge, I don’t think I could have done much without the Pillar whom I have no idea what to think of. And Jack, who is a total mystery. The fact that every passing second brings me closer to the idea of the existence of a real Wonderland, that everyone I meet seems to be part of it, is both enchanting and maddening at the same time.
I sit on the chair facing the Pillar’s bars, feeling super powerful though.
"Some people say that Lewis Carroll must have been on drugs to write such a whimsical, nonsensical, and radical tale as Alice’s Adventures Under Ground." The Pillar shoots me with one of his seemingly irrelevant remarks, like always. He doesn't even glance at me, treating the hookah as if he's fixing his new Porsche.
"In Wonderland, you mean." I fidget, caught in his mad reality again.
"It was called Under Ground, until Lewis published his first draft in 1865,” the Pillar educates me. “Two thousand copies were published before he came to his senses and collected them back from the market, to republish it again as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”
“Why did he do that?” I am astonished at the way he can change the conversation. I thought we were going to talk about what happened today.
“That’s a big question,” he wiggles his gloved finger. “I don’t really have the answer. Historians will tell you that John Tenniel, his genius painter, wasn’t satisfied with the pictures. The truth is, Lewis hid a lot of messages inside the book, which at first draft, didn’t seem that hidden to Tenniel. Lewis needed to rewrite it one last time.”
“Did he succeed in pulling back the two thousand copies from the market?”
“All but fifty copies,” the Pillar raises his copy, as if he is holding the Olympic torch. “This is one of them.”
“So that's why you treat it like your personal Wonderland bible.”
“I don't think I am a bible man, Alice--I love comics though," he says "But I get your metaphor. There are chapters in here that have never been seen by human eyes.” He steps to a brighter spot in the cell. For the first time, I notice that something is wrong with the Pillar’s skin. It’s why he probably wears too much cloth. It’s like he has a mild allergy, and it looks like his skin is slightly peeling off.
“Why did the Cheshire tell Constance that a girl named Alice was going to save her?” I cut in. There are so many questions in my head. I need an answer to one or two, at least.
"Isn't it strange when you talk about Alice in third person, as if it's not you?"
I shrug. It's the question I have been escaping all day. "I am not Alice," I tell him, even though Constance made me think I must be her. But thinking it over on my way back, I found the idea unbelievable. "I can't be, not even logically. The real Alice lived in the 19th century. We're in the 21st."
"When it comes to Wonderland, what's logic got to do with it?" he says. “You know what I think? I think you're afraid to be Alice."