Chapter 54
Alice was helped from the floor before the wardrobe by Tattypoo.
“What has happened?” Alice asked.
“She’s gone to find you in the past,” Tattypoo said, “but you’re still here.
” Tattypoo slumped into a chair, her face burning red.
She would not look up at Alice. “If she had found you then, you would not be standing here before me. So, she did not find you!” Tattypoo spoke to herself as relief came with her realization.
“I touched the fourth knob,” Alice said, handing the detached watch to Tattypoo.
Tattypoo wiped sweat from her cheeks, staring at it in disbelief. She studied the face of the watch for a moment. “You’ve sent her back hundreds of years.” Tattypoo was dumbfounded. “You’ve outwitted my sister!”
“But she still finds me,” Alice said, realizing that what had transpired in London had begun in this very moment.
“She does not find me in the park, so she finds me then at Pastoria House.” Alice’s confusion and anger mingled as sadness came for Miss Marker, who was dead because of this very action.
“And kills Miss Marker to mimic her to get me.”
“Hundreds of years must have given her time to forget the date. But she still found a way.” Tattypoo touched Alice’s shoulder. “Realm and time travel are precarious, to say the least.”
“Send me back!” Alice urged suddenly. Tattypoo stepped back, clutching the watch in shock. “Send me back to the manor, and I will get Wendy before any of this happens!”
“It’s not possible. You cannot return to a realm where you exist in that time,” Tattypoo stuttered. But was that the rule of the watch, the so-called chronex, or a rule of Tattypoo’s?
“Then you go!” Alice said. “You were not there when we were pursued. You were here, on holiday, right? You could stop all of this from happening!” Tattypoo shook her head, and Alice, without thinking, grabbed for the watch.
Tattypoo recoiled, yanking it away from Alice, and stumbled back, nearly falling over the chair.
“We will find Wendy, but changing the course of events, changing these specific events, could be devastating. I won’t risk it with you!
” Tattypoo spoke firmly, but tears clouded her eyes.
Then her face fell still. “I should have done this a long time ago.” Then Tattypoo, with all of her might, hurled the pocket watch at the marble fireplace, and with the sound of breaking glass and metal cogs flinging to the floor, Alice screamed.
Silver light burst from the exploding timepiece.
Why? Why would she destroy the only way to fix this?
“We could have saved her!” Alice cried. “Why won’t you help me!” Her body felt as though she would collapse as the tears and tension from her sobbing came to choke her.
“My poor girl, I will, I am helping you, but don’t you see? Mombi goes back to find you, and we know that you escape, and now she has no way to return here, and Wendy is in Neverland, away from Mombi. We know the full course of events; we should not change it, for we can’t control…”
Alice’s mind began pound. “We do not know the full course of events!”
“Right,” Tattypoo stuttered. “You were pursued by others. The headless witch, and apisorceress, but they have not been seen here, so they may not have gotten back…”
“No. I mean you know the full course events. Not we.”
Tattypoo’s mouth pressed together, and her eyes darted back and forth under Alice’s gaze.
It was in her eyes in this moment that Alice understood, even before Tattypoo confessed.
What Mombi had said was true. Alice’s life had been altered not once but many times—and Tattypoo was the driving force.
“Tell me the truth about what happened to me.”
Tattypoo’s chest heaved as she drew in her breath.
“You were born in Oz, saved at birth by the Goddess Lurline and blessed with a gift. You hold in you part of her magic. A gift that carries an unimaginable weight,” Tattypoo said, trying to steady her trembling hands.
“Then you were taken, I took you, shortly after your birth.” Tattypoo shifted nervously.
“Where, by their goodness, you were given a home with Franklin and Catherine.”
“Mother and Father.” Alice felt flushed and chilled.
“They raised you, but…” Tattypoo had her eyes clenched shut as tears came. “They are not your parents by blood.” Alice was feeling unsteady, as though the ground was moving under her. “They were so good to you. They were your parents in every sense. Nothing changes that!” Tattypoo cried harder.
“You are my grandmother, aren’t you?” Alice said as burning embarrassment flushed her face. Tattypoo still would not answer. She continued to shake her head.
“Say it! Who is my father?” Alice’s voice bounced around the room.
“I…” Tattypoo turned, her eyes forced shut. “My son. Peter.”
“How could that be possible?” Alice felt her voice crack, and she felt as though she was outside of her body. “That would mean that Wendy is my mother! Wouldn’t it? But how?”
“You were born to Wendy on May 4th of 1852, in Oz, the Isle of the Goddess.” Alice felt far away; the words Tattypoo was speaking no longer seemed to register in her mind.
Alice felt herself floating beside Wendy in the water of the cave.
She saw the goddess taking Wendy’s child in her arms and pressing the glittering kiss upon its forehead.
She saw herself held in the arms of the Goddess.
“Impossible. She can’t be but a year older than I am!”
Tattypoo wiped her tears, that continued to stream.
“She, like Peter, in Neverland,” she said it with such disdain, “drank from the waters of oblivion. They age and will age at a rate much slower than those who drink anywhere else in Oz, for the source is far more powerful, and in London they are nearly immortal compared to those who do not have goddess waters. It is why, for many reasons, your powers from the Goddess are so sought after. Witches like Mombi cling to life with spells and stolen years, but your gift might outlast even theirs—Lurline’s kiss could make you timeless.
But no one truly knows a thing about it! You are the only one.”
Alice felt as though she might shake, as the swell of feelings came so forcefully.
“I thought that if your gift was bound, then you’d be safe, but it didn’t matter that you were hidden!
Franklin and Catherine knew you weren’t safe…
” Tattypoo took a breath, her eyes locked with Alice’s now.
“The plan that we all agreed to was to move you out of time. They wouldn’t have given you up, but they knew they couldn’t protect you. ”
“How? Explain to me exactly how you did it!”
“The parlor mirror that you entered was commissioned by me and given to Franklin should I ever need to help or…”
“To take me away.”
Tattypoo quickly continued. “When we decided it would be best to move you, I enchanted the mirror and waited in a carriage for Franklin to tell me once you had gone through it. I used the chronex, that forsaken watch, to alter where it would lead you, but only the date.”
“You locked the door behind me. I could have never come home.” Alice felt her heart pounding and her eyes losing focus.
Tattypoo spoke through labored breath. “Then, forty-three years later, I returned to your home and waited in that empty parlor on the day I knew you would arrive.”
“What was the threat? Who pursued me then?” Something was missing. Tattypoo’s eyes shifted. “Tell me, please! Who were you hiding me from? Roquat?”
“Peter!” Tattypoo screamed as her face bloomed red.
“The stubborn boy wouldn’t give up. He looked for both of you!
” Tattypoo let out a cry and through her broken voice she shouted, “I took you from Wendy so that Peter wouldn’t know you had lived!
I hid Wendy in Pastoria so that he would believe you both had died.
But he still searched, and that’s when I moved you out of time.
If you didn’t exist, then he couldn’t find you.
” Tattypoo braced herself on the back of her chair, trying to calm herself.
“He’d have brought you here, and Wendy, and gotten you both killed!
” She shook her head, and she did so for how vile what she had done sounded.
Alice felt as though she might be sick. “I never told Wendy, because how could I? It was better she believed you had been raised by a loving family and that she let it all go.”
Alice pressed her hands to her burning chest, trying to calm the growing disorientation and breathe.
“But she never let it go! None of us have let any of these things go that you tried to erase from us. I am the baby she was missing. She believed her child would die before she would ever see her…” Suddenly, Wendy’s melancholy words made sense—breaking Alice’s heart all over again.
“Because of all the time…. My god, Wendy already believes that she outlived her child!”
Alice was horrified. “And you knew! Just as you knew my dreams weren’t delusions. All the psychoanalysts, the cold-water therapy!” Alice raged. “You did it to convince me I was mad!”
“To try to help you forget about these things. To not subject you to this!”
“That is why Wendy and I were in different wings at Pastoria. You never wanted us to meet!” Tattypoo shrunk with a whimper at Alice’s shouting.
“You hid who I was, who I am! Answers you had all along… I am so lost! You have destroyed our lives! No wonder you don’t hear from Peter.
You’re manipulative and cruel!” Alice could not put what came out back inside, as an anger so enormous flowed from her, accompanied by a ferocious wind that blew outside the windows of the palace. Thunder cracked.
“Where is Wendy? Have you done something with her?” Alice stepped toward Tattypoo, and the panes of the windows surrounding them ached and moaned, as if bracing themselves against the wind. “Are you hiding her again? Where is Peter? Where is my father?”
“I…” Tattypoo reached out to Alice, but Alice stepped back.
“Don’t! I can’t take another lie. You moved me out of my own life, and then into a cage with my own mother without our knowing.
” Alice’s chest tightened. “You have stolen everything from me!” Alice screamed, unaware that Blinkem, Tinkerton and Nimmie had gathered in the open doorway.
She vibrated with a rage she could not control, and so she ran from the room as hard and as fast as she could, pushing past Blinkem, who called after her.