“There is so much you don’t know about me.”
“Better talk now, or I’ll do to you what I am doing to them.” I smash Reds into each other. “How come you’re the Mock Turtle? You’re a Wonderlander?”
“A neglected one, actually.” He ducks behind me. “No one ever noticed me back then.”
“I guess that’s why Lewis wrote so briefly about you.”
“Even though I inspired the famous mock turtle soup.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” I somersault and kick two Reds in midair. “Its taste sucks. Who eats turtle soup?”
“That’s why I decided I’d be the director of an insane asylum,” he says. “Among the Mushroomers who fear and respect me.”
“I doubt that. They thought you were the maddest one in the asylum.”
“I don’t care what they thought. I had a plan.”
“A plan?”
“Of course. I was supposed to connect with all asylums in the world and make sure they were filled with sane people.”
“What kind of plan was that? Who told you that?”
“Lewis told me to.”
Chapter 31
I turn back and glare at him, choking a Red with one hand. With all of my skills, I wonder how we lost the war. “Don’t lie to me, Turtle!”
“I’m not,” he says. “Look behind you.”
I do, pulling Tom up with me while I’m doing another parkour move in the asylum’s corridor.
“Lewis wanted to guarantee the Inklings win the war. He set alternative plans everywhere to help the cause,” he says. “One day, when I was crying myself to death in Wonderland, he offered me a chance to be a hero.”
“You?” I don’t know if I am supposed to believe him. Shouldn’t it be me who becomes the hero?
“It was a long shot. The plan was that I collect the sanest scientists, teachers, and useful men and women into an asylum.”
“Are you saying the Mushroomers were sane?”
“In the beginning, yes. Although spending too much time in the asylum messed with their minds.”
“That’s the most stupid plan I ever heard.”
“It’s not. Lewis knew the Queen would wreak havoc on the sane world, spreading the insane everywhere. Remember how mad the world already was when you were in the asylum? The wars, the poverty, and sickness? The Queen of Hearts has been planning this since long ago, even before she posed as the Queen of England.”
“Go on.” I punch another Red, advancing in the corridor. “Be brief.”
“I framed sane people into being insane, so I could get them into the asylum,” he says. “Of course, they weren’t supposed to know that. Who’d have believed me when I told them about Wonderland?”
“Are you saying I was framed into thinking I’m mad?”
Tom shrugs, pulls out a pill, and swallows it in the middle of my fighting. “I’ll explain all about you, but last.”
“Why? I want to know what you know about me now.”
“You have to hear the rest first.”
I am too busy to argue, having reached the vast Tom Quad. The garden is thronged with too many Reds waiting for me. I have incredible None Flu skills, but even Bruce Lee can’t fight an army.
“I kept framing sane people. I even created the Hole, where the March Hare was kept,” Tom continues. “Lewis had told me he was so valuable he needed to be kept away from the Queen and Black Chess.”
“Can’t you just summarize the story?” I am busy now, fighting aimlessly, with hopes of reaching the door at the Tom Tower. Once we reach it, we’ll be out of here. “I get it. Lewis ordered you to collect the sane people and keep them in the asylum, so when the Wonderland Wars came we’d have a secret army, disguised as mad people. I changed my mind now; the plan seems brilliant because it’d go undetected by Black Chess. But you said you were the reason why we lost the war. Why, Tom?”
“The pills,” he says. “Life in the asylum was driving me mad. My kids and wife hated me, and Lewis denied me the luxury to tell anyone about it.”
Chapter 32
“Not even me?” I say. “If you were on my side, you should have told me. Why did you resist the Pillar when he asked for me to kill Wonderland Monsters?”
“Like I said, I’ll be getting into that part later. What matters now is that when I took those pills, I didn’t know they had side effects.”
“Don’t tell me you forgot things.”
“I did.”