Circus Read online

  Slowing down, I am mesmerized by the fireworks in the sky, the crowd of families, and the endless supply of Wonderland food.

  “Welcome to the circus.” A short ringmaster urges people inside. It’s not the Pillar. Someone I have never seen before. Just a normal man from the 19th century. “Please enter and see the wonders of the world!”

  People start rushing inside while their kids lick on cotton candy. What could be so sinister inside? It looks so beautiful. A circus from about two centuries ago in the heart of...

  Wait, is this still Scotland? London? I have no idea.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, step inside, come closer,” the ringmaster calls out. “You will not believe your eyes. You won’t believe your mind.”

  I approach in my maid’s dress, worried they won’t let me in, but a few kids push me through. Everyone is about to watch the anticipated show.

  “Inside this tent, you will witness something you've never seen or heard before,” the ringmaster chirps. “It’s crazier than dreams, stranger than fiction.”

  I am stepping inside.

  The circus is beautiful. I notice it looks uncannily like the Six O’clock Circus in Mudfog Town, only this one is well taken care of. It’s huge!

  “Welcome to the most amazing show on earth.” The ringmaster follows inside and steps in the ring. “Forget about magicians. Forget about clowns. Forget about trapeze girls.”

  I sit among the enthusiastic crowd, wondering what the show is going to be about. Why would you want to forget about clowns and magicians in a circus? What are we going to see, then?

  And where are the Wonderlanders? I look around and see none of them.

  “Ladies and gentlemen.” The ringmaster raises his hands and the crowd is all seated now. “What you’re about to see will blow your mind.”

  People clap all around me. I have a feeling this circus is famous. Either they have heard of it before, or have actually seen this show already.

  “From America to Brazil, China to Europe, Africa to the North Pole,” the ringmaster brags. “From all over the world, and now here for you in Britain. This is the show you all heard about.” He waves his hand behind an ear, expecting the crowd to shout the name.

  “The Maddest Show on Earth!” the crowd screams.

  The ringmaster smiles, and calls two of his assistants to stand side by side next to him. A bald man and big woman, heavy on her feet. That’s all I can see thus far.

  “Are you ready?” he shouts.

  The crowd’s response is overwhelming.

  Ready for what, I wonder.

  All around him, men are putting a huge steel cage together while a few cute dancers entertain the crowd.

  My heart is racing. What is the cage for? A lion?

  “I suppose you all have your cotton candy with you.” The ringmaster smirks. “Because you will need it.”

  All around me, people pull out bags of cotton candy in all colors.

  I don’t know why but I’m starting to have a bad feeling about this. Fabiola was right. I don’t think I’m going to like what I will see, although I have no idea what to expect.

  Why can’t I see any of the Wonderlanders?

  “We’re close to starting the show,” the ringmaster says. The man and woman next to him look familiar. I squint, hoping I can recognize them. “But like every city and town we stop by, let me tell you about the show you’re about to see. Let me tell you about the Invisible Plague.”

  Invisible Plague? I wonder what that could be.

  As he finishes the sentence, I recognize the two people on his left and right. I can’t believe my eyes. I think I’m going to faint. It’s Waltraud and Ogier, my evil wardens at the Radcliffe Asylum.

  Chapter 55

  Meeting Hall, Buckingham Palace, London

  “Before I resume the video, I have to remind you of what the circus was about,” the Queen said, and Dr. Tom was listening eagerly. “What I want to remind you of is about something they used to call the Invisible Plague.”

  A few squeals escape the crowd. Tom too. He had heard about the Invisible Plague before, but thought it was only a myth. He stared back at the invitation card in his hand and read the list of the guests again, breathing heavily. This couldn’t be.

  “Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, when I lived in Wonderland, things were crazy,” the Queen explained. “Crazy, but beautiful in a nonsensical way. The power of imagination Lewis Carroll had gifted us with had no boundaries. Animals and flowers talked. Endless parties where we threw teacups at each other—and loved it. And more. At some point, most of us could materialize their own thoughts into reality.”

  The crowd sighed.

  “But then the hallucinations began, and things got weirder when that Alice girl entered our world, criticizing our mad ways of living. But who was she to understand the beauty of bonkers and borgroves of Wonderland?” the Queen said. “Let’s not go into what damage she caused, and let’s focus on the rabbit hole she created, the one that broke the realms between Wonderland and the silly human world.”

  Tom fidgeted in his seat. Didn’t she say she was going to explain what the Invisible Plague was? He was curious.

  “Humans began coming into our world, one by one,” the Queen said. “And thus, we crossed over to their world, too. Suddenly, we found ourselves in a world we didn’t belong to. A world of humans in the 19th century in London. Unlike the madly colorful Wonderland, their world was a place of war, poverty, and Victorian darkness.”

  The Queen stopped and ate a few of her favorite peanuts.

  “Of course, humans’ greatest weakness had always been their fear. In particular, the fear of others. They feared anything that was different from them so much that they had the audacity to kill it, exterminate it right away, and call it their enemy. To them, Wonderlanders were the maddest of the mad. At this time in history, insanity had not been medically explained yet, nor was it socially acceptable. Humans were as ignorant as those whom, of this world, call autistic children retarded. Humans were the worst creature the universe created.”

  Tom’s perception of the Queen had been that of a total lunatic who longed for nothing but the obedience of others—like the flamingo in the asylum. Not that his perception of her had changed drastically now, but she wasn’t as shallow as he’d thought. She actually had a story to tell. One that was going to blow his mind. He listened tentatively.

  “So humans didn’t just call us mad then,” the Queen said. “They thought of us as a plague. And our plague, or disease, was an invisible one that affected our brains and had no well-known cure. Thus, the Invisible Plague.”

  Tom let out a sigh. Now his suspicion about the names of the people on the list was confirmed. Each and every one of them had been mad once. True, most of them were of notable prestige in their countries—senators, mayors, and even people who worked in the White House and the British Parliament. All of them had also been mad at some point in their lives.

  How the government hired people who were once mad always boggled his mind.

  Tom was sitting among more than two hundred mad lunatics from all over the world. Rich. Famous. Powerful lunatics.

  “Now, you understand why I have summoned you to this meeting,” the Queen said. “We’re all the same, whether some of you were a Wonderlander once, or just labeled mad in this world.” Her gaze intensified. “And you know what humans do to those of the Invisible Plague. You know what happens to you when you’re called mad in this world.”

  Tom scratched his head. What was she talking about?

  “I’m not talking about asylums and straitjackets,” the Queen said. “I’m talking about the atrocities humans committed against those who needed help instead of being called ‘mentally retarded.’ I am talking about what humans have done to the likes of us in the past. I’m talking about the...”

  She raised her hands in the air, and with them the crowd stood up. The mad crowd from all over the world, saying the same words in u
nison, as if it were a ritual: “You’re talking about what happened to us in the circus.”

  Chapter 56

  The circus

  Time remaining: 7 hours, 00 minutes

  Before I can comprehend what Waltraud and Ogier are doing here, several people are pushed into the cage.

  The crowd is screaming. I grit my teeth against their squeals. All of them stand up and clap, blocking my view.

  I am going crazy. Who is in the cage below?

  I try to look, but the crowd won’t let me. Furiously, I jump outside the tier to the small aisles. I still can’t see those in the cage, so I descend the rows barefoot, the image clearer with each step down.

  This can’t be true.

  This can’t be true.

  This can’t be true.

  I see Lewis Carroll holding the bars of the cage from inside, pleading for mercy.

  What is going on? I run faster.

  Then I see Duchess Margaret Kent behind him. Everyone is booing and throwing cotton candy at her.

  I run closer.

  I see the Queen of Hearts, her hands cuffed as she screams at the crowd. Then I see the Muffin Man. The March Hare.

  Oh my God. What’s going on?

  “Please don’t,” Lewis says to the crowd. “You don’t understand. They’re just different. They won’t hurt you.”

  I am a few steps away from the cage when I see Fabiola in the back, crying herself to death. Then there is Jack.

  Jack!

  I grip the cage. “What’s going on, Jack?”

  “You shouldn’t be here, Alice,” Jack shouts at me, cotton candy sticking to his face. “Run!”

  “I won’t run, Jack.” The scene is overwhelming. I’m going to cry. I realize that almost everyone from Wonderland is inside the cage. “Tell me how I can help.”

  “Run, Alice!” Lewis yells. “Run!”

  I turn and look at the supposedly sane people of the world, shouting and discriminating against those behind the cage. Men, women, and their children. Where in the world does such madness come from? Why do they hate them so much?

  As answers form slowly in my cloudy head, the ringmaster spells it out for me.

  “Look at those freaks!” he announces. “Aren’t they funny? Aren’t they amusing? Aren’t they disgusting?”

  Freaks? Is that what humans thought of the Wonderlanders when they crossed over to their world? Because they looked and acted differently?

  “Those mad, mad, mad creatures!” the ringmaster says. “Hit them with your cotton candy. Laugh at that grinning cat. Amuse yourself with this short freak that thinks she’s a queen. Entertain yourself with the silly jokes of the man with the hat who throws tea parties and always thinks it’s six o’ clock.” He points at someone with a long hat. I can’t see his face in the shadows, but I’m assuming he is the Mad Hatter.

  Suddenly, the crowd is given teacups, and they start throwing them at the Mad Hatter.

  They laugh at them.

  My head veers between those thought of as mad, freaks in the cage, and those supposedly sane people throwing cups at them.

  “Stop it!” I scream at the crowd. “Who the heck do you think you are? It’s not them who’re freaks. It’s you!”

  Then I realize my mistake.

  Everything stops as they stare at me.

  Chapter 57

  Meeting Hall, Buckingham Palace, London

  “It started as a joke,” the Queen said. “At first, no one understood a person suffering from a mental disorder. Usually they thought those people were possessed by demons, causing to have those hallucinations. Then they thought of them as witches. In both cases, they were killed, if not burned at the stake.”

  Tom was sweating by now. Surely he sat among the maddest of the mad in the world, but the Queen was also reciting the true dark history of humans, which had been repeatedly documented—only historians always preferred to stay away from it.

  People with a mental illness were used as a tourist attraction, a means for entertainment, all over the years.

  In his office, Tom had a drawing of people watching mad people for entertainment.

  “Then when physicians began suggesting this was an illness, calling it the Invisible Plague, humans came up with this humiliating idea of gathering the mad in a prison, as if they had committed a crime,” the Queen explained. “And in a world were money dominates everything, there was nothing wrong with making a shilling or a buck on the side. The mad people were put into cages as a tourist attraction. People from all over the world would entertain themselves by watching them for a fee. It was like going to comedy movie.”

  Tom reached for his pills and swallowed. A handful. Everything the Queen had talked about, he knew for a fact.

  “So we, mad people, Wonderlanders, instead of being cured, were a source of a few laughs and snickers,” the Queen said. “We became the freaks in the circus.” She signaled for her mad crowd to sit again. “And now it’s time we have our revenge.” She clicked her remote and the screen flickered again.

  It was time to see what she had on her mind.

  Chapter 58

  The circus

  Time remaining: 6 hours, 47 minutes

  I stand, staring at the crowd in the circus with my heart pounding in my feet. What are they going to do to me?

  When I think of it, the only real human in the cage is Lewis Carroll. Still, they didn’t spare him. Of course, because he was defending the Wonderlanders—so Lewis didn’t always just think of them as monsters?

  I assume they will do the same to me now.

  Caught between running and saving those in the cage, I realize this is some sort of a memory. It’s doubtful I can change much about it. Whoever led me here wanted me to just see this.

  Why? I have no idea.

  Maybe he wants me to sympathize with Black Chess and their crimes in the real world.

  I am confused. Who’s mad and who isn’t?

  Those who turned evil after what happened to them in the cage, or those people throwing cotton candy at those poor souls?

  “Run!” Fabiola shouts.

  Her voice reminds me of the room she wanted me to see back in the maze.

  I turn around and run, tears filling my eyes. On my way out, teacups smash all around me.

  The way back into the maze seems easier. I think I know my way, and I wonder if any of those in the circus will follow me here.

  As I run, I try to connect the dots.

  So when I saw Lewis Carroll lock the Wonderland Monsters behind the doors of Wonderland, was he protecting the world from them, or protecting them from the world?

  Fabiola said the circus happened in the last days before he locked them in, so it’s safe to think he was protecting them. Or maybe he was protecting some and locking up others.

  I like this assumption better, because apparently not all of those in the cage turned out to be part of Black Chess. Fabiola isn’t, for instance. The event at the circus had a different effect on each of them.

  Also, I am not sure why I haven’t seen the Pillar, but I could have missed him in all this mess.

  Panting, I reach the door.

  I turn the knob and step into a room where people are gathered around a meal in Lewis Carroll’s studio.

  The image brings instant tears to my eyes, and I fight the weakness in my body that’s bringing me down to my knees.

  Chapter 59

  Meeting Hall, Buckingham Palace, London

  Dr. Tom Truckle watched the Queen’s video with intent. It was hard to predict where this was going, but the crowd around him was shocked.

  It seemed strange for a man like him to sympathize with the mad, but he did—at least momentarily.

  He kept watching the video, eagerly wanting to know what the Queen had on her mind. What kind of revenge was she talking about? How did the mad have their revenge?

  The video he was watching detailed what had happened to the Queen and Wonderlanders in the circus. The torture, the
humiliation, and the human race’s fear of what was different or new to them.

  Even Tom, a man who rarely sympathized with the insane, hated his own kind for the few moments he watched what had happened to the Wonderlanders.

  Chapter 60

  Behind the Door, the Maze, on the borders of Wonderland

  Time remaining: 6 hours, 11 minutes

  The people gathered inside Lewis Carroll’s studio are my friends. Those who, according to Fabiola, walked the white tiles on the Chessboard of Life.

  “Alice!” Lewis cheers with a glass of wine in his hand. He is sitting at the head of a table filled with all kinds of colorful food. The place looks cozy, like how you would expect your family’s house to look.

  To his right sits Fabiola, nodding and smiling at me. “We missed you, Alice. I thought we’d wait for you to say prayers before we began eating.”

  I step closer and wipe the tears from my eyes. Is this room some sort of a dream?

  A dream within a dream? A madness within hallucinations?

  “You have to taste those vegetables,” says the March Hare, looking as sane and relaxed as he ever has. “I grew them myself in my garden.”

  I am starting to assume this isn’t a dream. I think the door transported me to another time, maybe before the circus, when life seemed peaceful in Wonderland.

  Those at the table may be all the friends I had at this time.

  “Missed you, Alice!” A younger girl, next to Fabiola, waves at me. She has a cute smile, but I don’t recall meeting her before.

  I wave back and approach the table.

  “The best chicken soup in Wonderland,” a voice says behind me. It’s Jack. He brings a bowl of soup filled with playing cards to the table and sits next to the March Hare. “Come sit, girl.”

  I sit opposite Lewis Carroll, wondering when this really happened. But in any case, I’m glad, because this means I am her. I am the Real Alice, right?

  We start all holding hands, and Fabiola asks me to say a prayer again.