Chapter 56
As Alice climbed, clinging to the unstable rose branches, the maze began to darken, as the morning sun was fully blocked, growing as dark as night.
Her raked arm held when she asked it to and burned each time she asked.
Through billowing clouds of smoke over a barricade of gnomes, everyone Alice had left behind stood trapped.
If the gnomes didn’t reach them, the fire the dragon had made would.
Rain blew with smoke into her eyes, the sting of acrid air drawing tears that blew free.
This was all her fault. She needed to help them. But what could she do?
Alice turned her eyes to the sky. The clouds that hung over her were dark and bloated.
As she closed her eyes, she called out to a power beyond her own comprehension.
She pictured the goddess in her emerald silks with eyes like gemstones, and she imagined the water that carried her beneath the earth that had led her to the dragon; she imagined the wind carrying the water to her—and, as quickly as the flames grew, down came a rain so heavy she could hardly breathe as she attempted to gulp air against the assault of water she took in.
“Are we ready?” Tattypoo shouted. Behind her, Blinkem, Nimmie, and Tinkerton stood at the ready. “Lorelei, ready?” The visibility was nearly zero as sheets of rain poured down upon the barrier like a monsoon over a greenhouse.
“Lemme at ’em!” Nimmie shouted, with a hunting blade drawn.
“Wait!” Tinkerton shouted. “The water is filling; the gnomes are starting to panic.”
Blinkem didn’t care. His eyes locked on Lorelei, who stood with wand raised. “There’s no time!” Blinkem yelled.
“Just wait! Look!” Tinkerton aggressively pointed down, where beyond the barrier at the lowest step, the gnomes, now waist-deep in water, clawed ferociously at one another to try to get above it, blood mixed with the rising water.
“Let it fill so they have no leverage,” Tinkerton said. “Avoid killing us all!”
Blinkem looked out, and Alice was no longer perched atop the maze.
The sky swirled and belted with rolling thunder above Alice.
The water crashed against the stone walls, pulling with it rose petals and debris, until it rushed upon her like a tidal wave. She was thrown below the torrential swell of water. She struggled to regain her footing, but it was as though gravity had vanished.
The river rushed into the maze. Alice clutched the hedge to keep from being pushed backward as the water rose.
It was almost to her head. Another forceful current came, tearing her grip from the hedge and pushing her down.
She tumbled along the bottom of the maze, the pressure of crashing waves rolling her along the ground.
Then, another swell gushed, rocketing her into a current, which eventually drew her to the surface.
She heard screaming in the distance. Climb!
She willed herself toward the tops of the rose branches, struggling to hold on against the ripping tide.
The Palace North, built upon the cliff’s edge, was but an obstruction in the way of what looked like an ocean that rose behind it.
Was all this water from the river? There was no way it was possible.
Could it truly be that Alice was the tide? Was she responsible for this chaos? Had Tattypoo released the bind? Had Alice found the power that lay hidden?
If this was true, could she stop this?
What else could she do but try? There was no other answer.
As water pelted her and wind tore through the kingdom, Alice clung shivering to the branches of the maze.
“I am Alice!” she screamed at the wind that howled around her.
“I am Alice!” she screamed again into the monsoon that threatened to destroy the land.
“I move the sky to the sea!” In desperation, she hoped whatever gift she held could change what had been unleashed.
There was a rolling explosion of thunder, and lightning struck the water that covered the land, with only a few tips of trees poking from below.
Another bolt struck again, and another, then another.
Bolts of lightning struck in a line leading toward her.
She tried to paddle against the current, but the effort was useless, and she remained pinned in place, stuck fast inside the furthest corner of the maze.
Another bolt hit, and the water sizzled. She felt a numbing shock overcome her and water rush over her head, and her vision went white before she lost consciousness.
“Now!” Tattypoo shouted. Blinkem took off as the gnomes tried to climb the stairs, paying no mind to him as the water rushed like a river swell.
Blinkem was halfway to the maze when the current rose and with it, Blinkem’s feet lifted from the ground as the water rose to his shoulders.
He fought the inevitable panic the water brought with it.
Blinkem kicked furiously, with the sound of bolts from wands and gurgling gnomes at his back, until he reached the entrance of the maze.
He took a deep breath and plunged beneath branches and debris into the water, opening his eyes in the stinging, churning water.
He kicked deeper to see beyond the choppy surf, and the current pulled him down, sucking him into the maze.
Suddenly, the current violently increased.
Blinkem tumbled and rolled as branches and stones tore over him. The maze was collapsing.
Through surging water, Blinkem, miraculously, saw billowing skirts caught in the bending limbs of a stripped tree.
He tumbled with such force that he struggled to catch himself on a tree close to Alice.
He could see her body was limp. The onslaught of water pulled him past the spot where she was pinned.
Blinkem scaled his way around the inner wall of remaining trees, and was close, but between him and Alice, a tidal wave of water poured like a broken dam.
Alice’s head was barely above water. Blinkem clung tightly to the outermost tree.
The trees that had once formed a hedge were now bent obstacles in the current that threatened to rip them from the ground.
Alice coughed and spat, her head below the water, and then she slipped from the branch.
Blinkem lunged forward, letting the current lead him to Alice.
He grabbed wildly and felt his hand clutch her waist. Her arms locked around his as the water tried to rip her away.
With the hand that clutched the mangled swath of stripped branches, Blinkem felt the slack of the tree begin to give.
He had only a moment before the tree would be pulled from the ground.
“Alice!” he shouted. “Climb over me!” If she used him to hold on, he could get her to a secure branch, but Alice could not hear him as the water rushed over her head with her spitting and heaving against it.
Blinkem yanked with all his might against the tree he held and kicked, dragging Alice past him as the tree he had been holding onto tore from the earth.
Alice reached out and clung to the branches of the last remaining hedge tree on the north side of the labyrinth. Blinkem put his arms around her and grabbed the largest branches so he could act as both her shield and net.
Alice coughed violently as Blinkem clung around her. The cold water that rushed up stung her eyes and invaded her nose. “Alice, are you with me?” Blinkem shouted. She nodded, though she wasn’t sure where they were.
“I have caused this,” she struggled to say as her consciousness was returning with the force of the waves that pummeled her. In the distance, the water had engulfed the steps of the palace, and her companions huddled beyond sheets of water.
“Alice, then you can stop this!” Blinkem shouted, his nose nearly pressed to hers, as a wave rushed over them.
“It’s impossible. How can I?” she shouted, her heart racing as the water chilled her and her wet hair slapped across her face.
“Because it’s you, Alice, you do impossible things! You always have!” Blinkem held her face firmly. “It’s all possible in you,” he said through gritted teeth as the water seemed to drop in temperature. She shook her head with their foreheads together as his teeth chattered.
“How?” she whispered again, but his faith steadied her.
She closed her eyes, willing the wind to shift, picturing the sea beyond Oz.
The water slowed—for a moment. A test, a thread she could pull.
“To the sea,” she whispered, and the tide began to obey.
And the wound in her arm, which she had long since forgotten to notice, ceased pounding, and there was no more blood.
A lightning crack sizzled nearby. Alice’s mind snapped back as Blinkem’s grip loosened, a swell submerged them, and the tree holding them broke.
Alice’s feet spun overhead, and Blinkem’s knees and feet slammed into her before he rushed over the top of her, sending her down.
He reached for her, his hands gripping before they were gone.
Alice reached out through ripping water, but Blinkem was gone.
She balled into herself as best she could, clawing downward to try and hold something to orient herself as the earth dragged beneath her feet.
She thought of Blinkem, of everyone. She could stop this, but what if it were already over?
What if they were all lost? Alice’s body plunged forward from the force of another wave, and her hands found a slick frigid marble, a pillar.
She wrapped her body around it as the water worked to yank her away.
Her lungs pounded. Climb! she thought. She thought of Wendy.
Alice held still, her ears muffled, holding the thought of Wendy against the force of the tidal rush.
The water hammered her skull, but beneath it, a hum rose in her chest, sharp and alive.
She saw Lurline then—not in the water, but in her mind’s eye—her silken voice whispering, “This is yours, my child of wonder. Wield it. Oz waits for your command.”
Alice’s knees buckled. She had called the storm.
She could end it. With her eyes forced shut from the water’s fury, she suddenly felt the water wick from her and thrash chaotically from her face, then arms, then body.
She held her eyes closed. “The water will go to the sea,” she began to chant and did so over and over.
The sound of a tunnel of wind swirled around her.
“The winds will blow every drop that has been brought here to the sea,” she whispered.
“I am Alice of Oz. The winds will blow,” she repeated softly into the wind over and over.
After some moments, it was only, “the wind will blow,” that she repeated, while the wind howled all around her.
“There!” screamed Tinkerton to Nimmie. The water receded slowly from a whirlpool somewhere in the middle of the maze.
Nimmie spotted Blinkem gasping in a current, trying to stay above the water outside the whirlpool.
From the air, the massive dragon dove like an eagle catching fish.
It vanished beneath the water for a moment, and when it rose again, it lifted Blinkem out of the turbulent surf, clutching his arms in its talons.
With a few short flaps of the dragon’s wings, Blinkem was left shivering on the marble steps.
“Alice! Tell her to find Alice!” Nimmie shouted to everyone to command the dragon, who was under no one’s command.
A gust of wind that could have blown an entire Munchkin village off the face of Oz came, and, with it, the waters rushed backward around the palace, back toward the ocean or river or wherever they had come from.
Nimmie squinted against the terrible wind, praying for a sign of Alice.
What she saw was the most miraculous thing she had ever seen.
In the center of the maze, where all the roses, trees, and much of the stone had been carried off and scattered across the land, stood Alice beside a single marble pillar.
Around her, a swirling dome, like a crystal ball, entrapped her, but it was not crystal.
It churned like water as the wind blew around Alice, and from within Alice herself emanated a glittering silver light.
She looked like a fallen angel in a silver bubble.
“Can she get out?” Nimmie asked, but no one responded. Blinkem stood unmoving, Tattypoo held her heart, and Tinkerton began to outright weep.
“The wind will blow, the wind will blow…” Alice whispered, and gradually, she lifted her head up, though her eyes remained tightly shut.
Then, as she began to open them, silver flecks of light slowly sparkled and dimmed.
With her eyes fully open, she could see the light that was pouring from her skin, circling through her and around her, to create an orb.
Her tears came uncontrollably, and the silver light combusted and fell and scattered like grains of sand in the wind, and the bubble fell away, vanishing.
Alice fell to the ground, her body frigid and broken.
“What have I done?” she cried.
With her hands buried in the muddy earth, Alice felt the ground jolt beneath her.
She remained on all fours as another tremor rippled through the soil.
Somewhere above, the echo of stone crumbling filled the air.
She lifted her gaze toward the black sky, watching as chunks of the northern palace tumbled from its turret. An earthquake?
Alice tried to stand. In the distance, her friends clung to railings as the ground heaved like a ship caught in a storm. Then came a deep, aching sound—a plowing, tearing force—followed by an explosion of dirt and stone. The blast sent her sprawling forward. Another eruption. And another.
Alice struggled to steady herself as towering shards of jagged rock burst from the earth like arrows through an animal’s hide.
The ground convulsed, spitting stone spires into the sky, sealing her in.
She picked herself up and staggered toward an opening, desperate to escape, but another violent surge hurled her back.
She was trapped. A prisoner in a fortress of dagger-like stones that stretched to the sky.
And the sky hung still, black clouds in an opaque spindle above her hiding the sun.
Inside the spiked prison, Alice circled the small, confined space.
For a moment, the earth did not move, but only a moment.
Then, at the center of it, the dirt began to sag and then crumble, and a hole formed as if being dug from below.
She could not escape the gnomes in this fortress. She could not escape anything.
“He has found her,” Tattypoo said in a trance before she began to tear down the stairs as the earth continue to shake. Blinkem followed suit with Tinkerton and Nimmie just behind. “Alice!” Tattypoo screamed. “Get out!”