In the hour of truth, Margaret Kent stood in front of her mirror again. She couldn’t get her eyes off her fake beauty. All those plastic surgeries and the money she spent did a good job in fooling the citizens everywhere. Her face had earned her a few good jumps in her career, a lot of money, and even admiration and respect.
But if it was so good, why couldn’t Margaret forget her own ugliness whenever she looked into this mirror?
Unable to help it, Margaret brought a chair and smashed it into the mirror. She hit it until her arms tired and her makeup thinned. Then she fell to the floor crying.
This hour of truth was incredibly devastating to her.
A few miles away, the Queen of Hearts also stared into the mirror. However, she didn’t worry about her looks. She had made peace with her looks years ago. It wasn’t the looks.
The Queen piled up chair after chair so she could stand on top of them. All she ever wanted was to be taller. Even a little bit taller would have sufficed. Every head she chopped was in hope to make others shorter – and so she’d be taller. If not in physical measures, then in the eyes of those she ruled.
Sometime she told herself she didn’t really mean to kill anyone.
But the question always remained. How high could she stand on the chairs in front of the mirror?
At the highest point, where she felt a tinge of satisfaction, all the chairs tumbled down again.
Picking herself off the ground, she ran to the door and yelled. “Off with their heads!”
The guards looked puzzled, not sure whose head she wanted to chop off this time.
“I’m sorry, My Queen,” one brave guard offered. “Whose head would you like us to cut off?”
“Since you opened your mouth”—she pouted—“Then it’s you. Off with your head!”
How she wished the hour of truth would soon end.
As for Carolus, he now lived in a small room in the Queen’s garden, waiting for his pills to calm him down every few hours. The rest of the time he kept reading that scary book called Alice in Wonderland. Oh, how it gave him a headache. He understood nothing of it and ended up looking forward to finding a way to put an end to this Lewis Carroll someday.
The truth brought nothing but headaches to him, so he gave in to sleep.
In the streets of London, the Cheshire had locked Jack in a basement while he strolled out, jumping from body to another.
The Cheshire used those people’s bodies to do horrible things. The least of which was using the body of a ninety-year-old woman and lighting a car on fire.
But whatever he did, something was missing. What? It was simple. The Cheshire longed to know who he really was. Sure, he was a cat many, many years ago. But cats don’t have names—no really, people make them up and think that the cats care.
In the hour of truth, the Cheshire realized that he could be anyone he ever wanted, except one: himself.
Farther and farther, Tom Truckle still kept the secret of his identity, which wasn’t that hard to figure out, but most people just didn’t notice. And to make sure he wouldn’t feel the need to tell anyone, he locked himself up in the VIP floor of the asylum, now that the Pillar was gone.
But if the hour made him realize anything, then it was his utter loneliness in this world. His children didn’t love him, nor did his wife, and hardly did anyone else.
Tom ended up talking to his best friend in the world. The flamingo, which turned out to be a perfectly lovable animal.
In the few last minutes of the hour of truth, he told the flamingo who he really was. The flamingo’s eyes widened, wondering how no one ever noticed.
Epilogue Part Two
Oxford. The Hour of Truth, between 5:30 PM
Alice, at the hour of truth was a bit off her rocker. She was about to kill the lights in the Inklings when she saw Lewis Carroll sitting on one of the tables.
“I’m not imagining you, am I?”
“No,” he said, resting one leg on another, his hands gently set on his legs. “It’s one of the privileges of the Inklings. Sometimes I can pass through and meet you in this world.”
“So what are you? Dead?” Alice stood frozen.
“It’s complicated, and I don’t have much time to tell,” he said. “I’m here to thank you.”
“Thank you!” His funny, curious rabbit peeked out of his pocket.
“For what?”
“For not killing me—Carolus, I mean.”
“Yeah, about that,” Alice said. “How did you let that happen, Lewis? I can’t believe something so evil could come out of you.”
“It’s a long story. Now is not the time to talk about it.”
“Then what do you want to talk about?”
“That you have to stop worrying if you’re the real Alice or not,” he said. “I’m telling you, it’s you.”
“Yes, sure,” she said reluctantly. “But how can I be sure you’re real in the first place? How can I be sure anything is real?”