Chapter 28
The door had a circular crank attached to two connectors of a coupling system, like the wheel of a ship. Alice gave it a heavy pull, but the wheel wouldn’t budge.
Both Blinkem and Tinkerton crawled through the hole and attempted to open the door, but it was rusted and likely swollen from the dampness of the rock walls.
After they expertly engineered the removal of additional rocks from the opening, the captain came to assist. In a matter of minutes, the door was uncoupled, and the men pulled it open.
A dark corridor stretched before them.
“I’ll lead,” Blinkem said, coming around Alice, who squinted into the darkness. Blinkem jumped as the dragon scurried past them.
“I don’t think we were meant to let that dragon out,” Tinkerton said as the dragon disappeared into the darkness.
Blinkem suddenly shot a look back through the hole into the cave.
Tinkerton and Alice turned. “Do you hear something?” Tinkerton asked, and then a strange gargling and the pattering of clawed feet came from some distance in the cave.
“What is that?” Alice asked, stepping back into the dark corridor, where no silver light shone beneath her.
“Gnomes,” Blinkem whispered.
“Now we know what the dragon ate,” Tinkerton whispered and stepped into the corridor, as well. Blinkem followed suit, and the men pulled the vaulted door shut.
There came a gush of cold air that pulled from behind them, as the dragon exhaled a stream of blue fire some ways down the corridor. “She’s showing us the way!”
Tinkerton laughed. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
They followed the dragon through long tunnels that slowly inclined, and the dragon continued to race ahead, shining its blue light for them to follow. Blinkem led the way, and at the back, the copper man trotted and clanged his metal feet against the stone.
After what seemed like hours, they reached another vault door, which was easily opened by the captain.
“This is our exit,” Blinkem said as the tail of the dragon disappeared up a spiral stairwell made of earth, stone, and root.
They climbed up and around the stairwell, with Tinkerton having to half-drag his invention, as the steps became too narrow for its large feet. At the top of the stairwell was a rope ladder that led to an organic opening where moss grew, and soft moonlight shone from outside.
Alice breathed deeply as Blinkem scaled the ladder before turning with his hand outstretched to her. Alice took his hand and was guided out of the hidden passage.
Alice stepped outside of the passageway, discovering that it was a hollow gap in the crux of two enormous roots of a massive tree, its canopy buzzing with chirping bugs and the songs of nightingales.
She looked around, standing upon soft moss and earth illuminated by otherworldly blue and green mushrooms that grew like corkscrews from the ground.
They were all too familiar to her. Large playful dragonflies floated around her.
Alice stared up into the sky beyond the dense tree coverage as Tinkerton and Blinkem worked together to lift the captain from the tree hole.
The leaves rustled above Alice, and a dark shadow passed before the bright sunspot high above her.
Chills ran over her arms as the feathered dragon spiraled through the air above the treetops, letting out a cry that could only mean freedom.
In the light, its feathers radiantly shone a glowing blue, like a comet, as bursts of silver glittered and dimmed across her body.
Alice felt a swell inside her as the air drew bumps from her skin.
“It is Wonderland,” she whispered. “It has been real all along.” Tears began to fill her eyes.
Alice, who only today had resigned herself to being a girl with no home, was now in a forest in the strange land of Oz, the land that she knew in her heart was the very same she dreamt of. Wonderland was but her vision of Oz.
“Welcome to the mainland of Oz, Alice,” Tinkerton said dreamily. Alice knew she was always meant to come here. She knew not why, but she knew she belonged, as though she had been in that very place before—a place that was not a dream at all, for it was real and had been waiting for her.