The Pillar felt the rush of wind slapping him in the face while he drove. The cemetery was only a mile or two away now. He was risking Alice’s life by driving this fast to come here. After all, Mount Cemetery was about two hours away from where he had left Alice. But he had bet on the illogical Wonderlastic rules of time traveling. According to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Wonderlastic Time Travels, distance sometimes meant nothing when time travelers were in different times than where they actually lived. It was the same reason why Alice managed to get from London to Oxford by walking a few streets. According to the book, a traveler could get anywhere he or she wished with good intentions and determination.
Whatever that meant, the Pillar thought. He didn’t care how nonsense worked. What mattered was that it worked. It only took him twenty minutes to arrive.
He didn’t want to give in to thinking about time, and its complications, for too long. After all, time was a loop. A wheel rebirthing and reinventing itself all the time. Which meant he and Alice must have been here before.
But he was thankful he couldn’t remember it, or he would have gone really mad. He thought how perception of time, and life, was nothing but a point of view. It wasn’t real, but there was nothing anyone could do about it. All one could do was live the moment they believed — probably deceivingly — was the present.
He parked the motorcycle and took off his goggles.
Then he jogged toward the gates of Mount Cemetery, not surprised at its decaying form. It was almost buried in vines and crawling insects. No one paid attention or respect to Lewis Carroll’s burial place in the future — and not much in the present, either.
Why would they, when Black Chess’s winning of the war was all about bringing the man’s legacy down?
The Pillar stepped through the shrubs and the mud until he found a crack in the walls. The sky greyed and boomed with rain as he entered the cemetery.
Inside, it wasn’t easy locating Carroll’s burial plot. The cemetery looked like it had been a battlefield at some point in the Wonderland Wars.
The Pillar took off his blue coat, folded it carefully, and placed it at the cleanest place he came across. He pulled back his sleeves, showing his aging skin, peeling off day by day. Something he didn’t want anyone else to see. He didn’t see the point of anyone knowing about his sickness.
After all, why would anyone care?
He located a shovel and walked to the spot where he believed Lewis was buried.
“Sorry for digging you up, mate,” he whispered to the grave. “I need the one thing you took with you to the grave. The Lullaby pills.”
Chapter 37
THE FUTURE: OXFORD STREETS
Tom is a terrible driver. If he keeps driving this way, we’re either going to crash into something or get caught by the Reds who are chasing us on motorcycles now.
“Give me the wheel.” I push him over.
“But you’re bleeding.”
“I can’t None Fu while I’m dying, but I think I can still drive. Look for a gun or something in the back. Do something useful.”
“There is a sleeping dog in the back,” Tom says.
I smile when he says that. That dog was so hungry that when he was fed he felt good enough to sleep through such a chase. “Don’t wake him up,” I say. “Just find a gun and start shooting at the Reds.”
“There is nothing back there, only water hoses.”
I use a lot of what’s left of my power to stare back at him, hoping he will get the message.
Tom smirks and tilts his head. He knuckles his fingers and pops a few pills. “You’re thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Glad to know you’re smart enough to think what I am thinking.” I veer the truck against a couple of motorcycles and squeeze them against a wall.
“Water hose wars it is,” Tom chirps like a child. What can I say? He’s a Wonderlander, after all.
Behind me, he starts hitting the Reds with full-throttle water bullets.
“You remember I’m here for the keys, don’t you?” I shout back.
“I know.” He struggles with the pumping hose, but is doing a good job at keeping the Reds at bay. “That’s what I was going to ask about. How did you find me?”
“I found the note.”
“What note?”
“The one where I kept your address with a scribbling saying that I kept the keys with you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Alice.”
“What do you mean? We must have had a deal or something. I must have kept the keys with you after the war. Or why do I have this note?”
“True, I was in possession of the keys once.” He sounds like he is keeping something from me again. “But you couldn’t have possibly made a note to come and take them from me.”
“Why not?” I want to face him but I am busy with the wheel, totally ignoring my bleeding nose, although my blood is staining the wheel by now, and my vision is dimming.