Chapter 45
As Alice’s eyes focused, three figures knelt around her, the mist maidens.
“Help me,” she said softly, but the maidens slowly vanished as the mist, too, vanished, as though it had never been there at all.
A rippling pink light came into view, and whispering voices swirled around Alice.
She got to her knees and found she was on the shore of a lake surrounded by towering trees, which loomed in near blackness.
Were it not for the pink moon, she wouldn’t have seen that they were covered in roses.
They were not trees but rose bushes that towered in the sky.
She remembered touching the unicorn’s horn, but how had she arrived here?
Alice’s momentary disorientation was shocked from her as a cracking spark flashed over the lake.
The sparking grew brighter and larger, and a hole began to open in the air.
As if the lake and backdrop of trees were merely a curtain, an opening formed like a ring of golden sparkling fire, and a figure emerged in the distance.
Alice began to stand, getting ready to run.
“Alice! My sweet girl!” shouted a familiar voice as the circle of light closed and then, a second later, opened directly in front of Alice.
The woman in the ring of fire stepped down onto the shore. Alice knew the face immediately. “It’s me, dear,” Miss Molloy said.
“Miss Molloy!” Alice shouted, then cupped her mouth, for the forest shouted it back at her.
Alice began weeping. There was no way to stop it.
The wave of emotions rushed so wildly to her.
Miss Molloy grabbed Alice with tremendous force and rocked her as she, too, wept.
“How are you here?” Alice could hardly reconcile that her two worlds now were crossed.
Miss Molloy, from Pastoria House, her dearest guardian, now held her on a lakeshore in Oz.
“I’m so terribly sorry, dear,” Molloy cooed, hardly able to control her sobs. “I’ve been all over, up and down and around. Finally!”
“What do you mean?”
“Is Wendy with you?” Molloy said eagerly, gripping Alice’s arms.
“No…” She tried, but the words were lost as her mind tried to quantify what had even happened to her. She knew it wouldn’t make sense to Molloy, but what of this made any sense? “Miss Molloy, I’m so happy to see you!” Alice cried through sobs that caused her to shake.
“My sweet girl, you don’t know the half of it. I was worried half to death.”
“But how? How could you find me, when I don’t even know where it is I am or how I even ended up here?” Alice desperately hoped for some sense in all of this, though, judging by Molloy’s wide eyes, she did not have the answers.
“I found you thanks to my dear friend Rosemarie’s flowers,” Miss Molloy said, wiping her tears and then Alice’s. “The roses that surround this lake, the roots, are connected or… I’m sorry, dear. I don’t truly know how the roses work exactly.”
“They whisper,” Alice said, listening as she did.
“That they do.” Molloy’s eyes were soft and kind. “They whisper to some, Alice.”
“To witches?” Alice felt another wave of sobbing coming over her. Her emotions were overpowering all composure.
“Yes, dear. Something you should have been told about before being thrust into all this.”
Alice took a deep breath, trying to calm herself.
“They are noisy here!” Molloy said as the roses’ sounds escalated.
“I’ve become pretty good at tuning it out.
They can be such a nuisance, all that hushed chatter!
” Molloy said with a smile, trying to console Alice.
Molloy was a witch; this much was evident based on the sparking circle of fire.
How could Molloy be here in the Land of Oz and Headmistress of Pastoria House?
The thoughts were cut short by a thrash in the water.
A tremendous, large creature was near the shore. Alice grabbed Molloy tighter.
“Come. We must go quickly. I’m in no state to outrun a crocodile, never was in fact!
” Miss Molloy said. With a great wave of her wand, she drew another crackling circle of light.
It was blinding and radiated heat that threatened to burn as Wendy’s voice hummed softly in Alice’s mind again, If you see a crocodile, don’t forget to scream.
Alice took Molloy’s hands and stepped over the blinding threshold as the scent of gardens and salt water air filled her senses.
As the light passed behind her, Alice found she stood upon marble before an enormous ivory palace surrounded by a forest, with a great river far in the distance.
“Welcome to Palace North,” Miss Molloy said, motioning to the grand marble staircase that led up to the palace.
This palace belonged to Blinkem, Alice thought, in awe.
“Back there, beyond the maze just over the bluff, is the Ruby Palace. We’re neighbors, really.
” Behind Alice stood a labyrinth of white rose hedges that stretched stories above her.
“This way,” Molloy said, gesturing up the stairs.
Was Blinkem here? Alice wondered. Was he safe? Then the sudden realization hit her. All this time, the journey she’d been on was to arrive here.
“Miss Molloy, do you know Tattypoo?” Alice asked as hope dimly began to grow in her.
“Oh my gracious! My sweet child. I sure do. So do you!” Miss Molloy winked.
“Tattypoo is my first name. Tattypoo Molloy, well, Molloy is my second husband’s name.
May he rest,” she said, reaching out her hand to Alice.
Molloy was the woman who had sent Blinkem to observe and consequently save Alice, and the woman who was the most likely to hold the answers to Alice’s questions.
“I have been looking for you!” Alice said, and tears came again without warning. “We have,” she added, wondering why exactly Blinkem hadn’t told her that Tattypoo was, in fact, Miss Molloy from Pastoria House.
“And I you, dear. Don’t worry about Blinkem. He is on his way, and once we know it’s safe, your companions will join. We just took a shortcut.”
Tattypoo took Alice’s hand, midway up the grand staircase to the palace. “Please don’t think ill of me for this.” She spun her wand and opened a portal mid-stair, beyond which was the palace foyer.
Alice grinned tightly, looking at Tattypoo, a woman who, in all senses of the word she loved, but who now held innumerable secrets, many of them specifically from Alice.
Alice allowed her to step through the sparking portal as she followed, but the questions that came to Alice stirred a feeling that Alice couldn’t shake. Distrust.
No sooner had they arrived in the palace’s hexagonal marble foyer with golden architectural insets than two young girls in white tailored gowns with gold piping came scurrying toward them.
Tattypoo raised her hand to stop the girls.
“I have just walked in the door! What have I said about bombarding me with action-required requests?”
“We are sorry, but this is very urgent,” said a familiar girl with a long black braid and olive skin. She smiled a greeting at Alice, and Alice smiled back, remembering her distinctly. Her name was Lorelei, and she had lived on the second floor of Pastoria House until two years ago.
Alice was about to speak when the second girl tried to slip an urgent matter before Tattypoo, thrusting a document forward, but Tattypoo dismissed her before she got a word out.
“We will be in my workshop. No distractions. This is of utmost importance,” Tattypoo said.
The girls nodded, disappointed but obedient. “Oh! Please have some nibbles brought.”
Tattypoo’s workshop, as she called it, was a disaster, with piles of books and official-looking documents scattered all around.
Alice scanned tabletops, trying to take in the sheer amount of information that lay recklessly about.
As Tattypoo attempted to explain what being a witch truly meant in Oz, her thoughts were as scattered as the workshop, and she intermittently muttered under her breath, cursing her own mess.
“What is Pastoria House?” Alice asked as Tattypoo Molloy shuffled about, opening and shutting the drawers of her enormous desk that stood nearly as tall as Alice’s bust.
“It’s a safe haven, was, rather, established years ago…”
“1851,” Alice said.
“Right, you forget nothing,” Tattypoo said, averting her eyes again. “It was a place to harbor young witches when we could find them, and then eventually bring them here.”
“How do you know I am? How did you know who I was? I have no powers to my knowledge.”
Tattypoo then shuffled papers around without reason and still would not meet Alice’s eyes.
“So many girls have gone through there. It’s hard to recall where the tips came from exactly.
But I’ll never forget the day I picked you up to bring you there!
” Alice smiled considerately, but why had Alice been left alone for so long?
Everyone, save for her and Wendy, had been brought to an enchanted land!
“What happened to Miss Marker? I saw her before coming here.”
Tattypoo’s eyes softened as she shook her head. “Oh! Oh, dear.” She pulled herself into the ornate desk chair and took a deep breath. “I found her, stuffed in the cupboards of my office at Pastoria, she was expired, a horrible loss.”
Alice stood for a moment. Had she heard that correctly? “She has died?” Tattypoo nodded. “That’s not possible. I saw her! Her skin was peeling off.”
“It’s been ages since I’ve seen a witch perform a mimic illusion.
” Tattypoo seemed short of breath or like her chest was tight.
“The illusion can be held for a quite some time, but if they take on the illusion of someone who has died, their skin, the mask that is created, cannot morph back. It cracks and decays as the original body that they have emulated. Like a reptile sheds its skin.”
“Someone killed Miss Marker to get to me…”
“I hate to say it, dear. Yes.”
“Who? Poor Miss Marker.” Alice felt dread rise in her stomach as guilt flooded her. “Why would someone be after me?”
Tattypoo shrugged awkwardly as she seemed to struggle to take air into her chest. “It doesn’t seem like it was just one witch in pursuit of you. I’m perplexed and mortified by what I found at the manor.” Tattypoo shuddered. “Let us worry of this later, and try to get our footing first.”
The dismissal sent the warning flag up for Alice. How could one not worry about an appearance-changing murderer? Or murderers? “Have you searched for Wendy?”
“Yes, I am visiting every place I know that has a place between worlds.” Tattypoo’s voice was a pitch higher than it need be if she were answering earnestly. “Portals, dear, to travel.” Alice nodded, for she knew as much.
“Wendy wore slippers, made of… lurlicite,” Alice said, “and she said she wished she were in Neverland, and then vanished.”
Tattypoo’s eyes fought widening for a split second, then she began nodding. “That is helpful. That narrows the search.”
“Where is Neverland?” Alice asked as her heart sped up. Molloy knew!
“In our realm’s maps, it is known as the Isle of the Goddess, and it’s just a portal away.
Though where that one is I can’t be certain, but all realms are connected through Oz.
All roads lead to Oz, as they say!” Tattypoo couldn’t hide the look of worry that was creeping over her face.
“Neverland is a name that children called it, one in particular.”
“Peter?” Alice said, since, other than Wendy, he was the only one she knew had been there.
“Yes,” Tattypoo said abruptly, causing the hairs to raise on Alice’s arms. “Where are those nibbles?” Tattypoo returned to the paper shuffling tactic, and Alice’s agitation made a quick return.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she said calmly, though she wanted to throw everything from Tattypoo’s messy desk. Was no one capable of telling her the truth? “Please, I am begging you, the intrigue is making me feel mad, and for the first time in my life, madness is not the probability.”
Tattypoo paused her shuffling, looked up and sighed. Finally, she met Alice’s eyes. “Peter is a complicated boy, well, man,” she said. “At the time Wendy gave birth, there was no way he could handle what would be in front of him. He wasn’t capable.” Tattypoo gazed off to the crackling fire.
“You know him well?” Alice asked softly, careful not to spook Tattypoo into another evasive tactic.
“Peter is my son,” Tattypoo said, and Alice felt chills wash over her, like the chill of the hydrotherapy tub. Wendy’s child was Tattypoo’s granddaughter?
“She waited for him!” Alice said sharply as anger rose from a place she didn’t quite know. “Why didn’t he come for Wendy? Why didn’t you make him come to her?”
“We do not see eye to eye. In fact, it’s been ages since I have heard from my son. I don’t have an explanation. It just wouldn’t be right.”
“But –”
“Alice. Leave it there,” Tattypoo said in the sternest tone Alice had ever heard her use.
Something felt very wrong. At least, it felt as though something very wrong had happened.
“Did Wendy know you were Peter’s mother?” Alice asked, suddenly wondering why Wendy hadn’t told Alice.
“No, absolutely not. Very few know. But as I said, leave it there.”
“Where is her child?” Alice fired questions as quickly as they came to her.
“Lost,” Tattypoo said without hesitation.
“Wendy believes that she found a good home.”
“Oh yes! She did but moved around. Very hard to keep track of children who are outside of Pastoria records. She is perfectly fine, I’m sure of it.” Tattypoo said, but no comfort came to Alice.
“You must help me find Wendy; we have to find her.” Alice was desperate to know there was a way.
“Yes, leave it with me,” Tattypoo promised. “I don’t know a way to the isle, but I’ll get you answers. We will find her.”
The words should have been reassuring. But they weren’t. Because, like everything else, they were built on the unknown.