Chapter 8: Chapter 8: The Climb

The Climb:

(1911 A.D., The Township of Fanoth, Realm of the House of Hearts, Wonderland, the Realm of Ishrakie)

Upon fleeing the train station, Alice finds this part of Wonderland consists of rolling hillocks with patchy groves of pines and hemlocks. The vibrant colours awaken in the predawn light. Viridian grass writhes in the wind. The dancing amber light of the rising sun bounces off of the red clay shingles on the station platform behind her. Pink and yellow wildflowers blink and yawn around her, speckled through the grass as they rise from their nocturnal slumber. Alice’s dress dares the sky to match its blue until suddenly she realises she has been standing out in plain view, mesmerised by the colours. She moves to further conceal herself from detection. Eager to keep pressing onward, she sets off down an overgrown side-trail heading towards the wall that’s rising off in the distance. She avoids the main road.

Finally reaching the end of the trail, she clears the overgrown brush as she crests a large hill. Alice stops and allows herself to catch her breath. The hill slopes down to a flat expanse which ends abruptly at the base of the Wall of the Farthest Edge. Sprawling out before her as far as she can see to either side, encompassing the entire flat land, is a town made up of one and two-story buildings. Several streams enter the city from her right, disappearing among the structures.

The buildings along the outer rim of the town closest to her are mostly hovels or shacks, but the further towards the centre of the town you go, the larger the buildings become. The buildings start alongside the road at the bottom of the hill where she stood. From there, they spread out left, right, and forward, growing more condensed closer to the wall. Her eyes spot a humble wooden sign that reads ‘Welcome to the Township of Fanoth’. Alice slides down the hill and onto the main road, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible.

Vendors lean from their stalls as Alice passes on the road.

“Umbrellas! Hey, little miss, you’ve never seen umbrellas like this!”

“But it isn’t raining,” responds Alice, confused.

“Then perhaps flutes! Spatulas! Sweet onions! Everything you need for your next tea party!” the vendor continues.

Alice continues walking, turning the corner and starting down the main street towards the centre of town. Alice looks down the street towards a large ornate central fountain, there are many small and medium-sized shops and stalls lining the street. Hurried, well-dressed mice bustle up and down the sidewalks, passing smoking dogs playing dice and a feline street performer playing the flute. There are a bunch of dancing porcelain boys and girls singing as a group of mixed species animal children dressed in school clothes play nearby. The air is pungent with the essence of ginger, sugar, baking bread and cooking meat wafting out of the many restaurants along the road.

“What a jovial and cosy-seeming little town. It is actually kind of charming in its own strange way,” muses Alice as she wanders the cobblestone streets, taking it all in. After a while, she feels a gentle tugging at her skirt. Alice turns to see a small raccoon-child. A little girl, she guesses, judging by the clothes. The girl stares up at her with big yellow eyes as if mesmerised by Alice’s appearance.

"Oh, my dear child, aren’t you adorable? Why aren’t you just the cutest little Racoon-child I’ve ever seen… Well, actually, you are the only Racoon-child I’ve ever seen, but you are still cute all the same." Alice’s voice is soft and tender as she smiles bright at the girl who continues to just stare transfixed at her. Alice slowly reaches down and gently scratches the girl’s head, causing her to make strangely cute noise that Alice struggles to find a name for. Suddenly the girl bolts off behind a nearby building as a loud noise erupts from the other side of town, near where the next train stop is supposed to be. Trumpets thunder, loud and furious. Alice takes cover. The trumpets continue as the low roar of stampeding townspeople explodes into a screaming, frenzied mass of panic. The playing children look up from their games and saucers of milk, their faces contorting with terror. Alice crawls beneath a nearby porch. The sound of screaming spreads throughout the rest of the town, growing ever louder. A large group of Cardsmen appears, making their way through the town, unleashing violence and fear upon all those around them. One of the Cardsmen rushes up to a group of two trembling vicenarian feline girls that seemed to be hanging their family’s clothes out to dry together just moments ago.

“Have you seen a girl? She has long, yellow fur growing from the top of her head, but none on her face. She is tiny and pale,” asks the Cardsmen, his voice harsh.

The two catgirls, having been so abruptly dragged from their typical daily mundanity, just stare wide-eyed with fright at the Cardsmen.

“W… we uhh umm, I mean… that is to say,” responds one of the feline girls, her voice weak and stuttering.

The Cardsmen growls impatiently as he draws his sword and sinks it into the belly of the stuttering cat girl. The Cardsman’s steeled eyes are colder than the shimmering metal of his sword as he twists his bloodied blade inside her. The catgirl shrieks and writhes in agony as her gory innards pour from her pierced abdomen. The Cardsman drags his blade forcefully down her stomach until finally ripping the blade free at her groin. The feline girl’s lifeless body falls limply to the ground, not more than five feet from the porch where Alice lies hiding. Alice covers her mouth to keep from crying out. The remaining cat-girl cowers into a fetal position against the wall behind her.

The Cardsmen advance upon the terrified girl. He picks her back up off the ground by her ears as he pulls out a small dagger and slices off her left ear, causing her to fall back down to the ground. The girl sobs with pain and horror as she picks up her severed ear and tries desperately to reattach it to her now red-drenched head. One of the Cardsman lifts the girl by her throat. He pulls her whimpering face close to his and places the tip of his dagger just centimetres from her right eye menacingly.

“Cease your crying, girl, so that I may ask you again, and for your sake, I hope you have a better answer than your friend did.”

The girl continues to blather in his grip, fear smothering her sanity.

“TELL ME, WHERE IS THE GIRL?” screams the Cardsman into the blood-soaked face of the writhing humanoid-cat in his hand.

“Ple… please Sir I… I... don’t know a… about any girl, sir!” responds the pleading girl as the Cardsmen chokes her harder still, causing blood and saliva to burst from her mouth.

The Cardsman slides the tip of the dagger into the corner of the girl’s right eye, carving it out and flinging it to the ground before stepping on it. He loosens his grip slightly, allowing her wrenching wails of suffering to escape her throat, red spurting from her now-empty right eye socket.

“The girl we seek was on the train heading this way. Given her head start, she undoubtedly beat us here, so stop lying to me with that deceitful tongue of yours before I cut it from your mouth. TELL ME WHERE SHE IS,” the girl in his hands breaks completely from the situation, giving way to even more frantic, nonsensical babbling and crying.

“Have it your way then,” continues the Cardsman, thrusting his dagger deep into the girl’s ear wound, piercing her skull, sending great spasms through her body as she goes silent. The girl’s body convulses as it dangles from his hand. He tosses her corpse down hard to the ground.

Alice turns away, hiding her face in the crook of her elbow, trying to drown out the girl’s pleas for mercy... More soldiers on horseback pass by Alice’s position on the other side of the porch. Their axes arc down, cleaving into bone. Citizens fall in their wake. She scurries from under the deck after they pass, disappearing around the corner of a nearby mushroom-shaped house. Alice makes it a bit further into the town unseen, leaping from shadow to shadow. Eventually, she is forced to dive into a nearby muddy trench of one of the larger streams that run through the town.

She crawls through the putrid muck and waste of the glorified open sewer gutter that is her only path to salvation for nearly an hour, pausing for a moment as she comes upon the scene of a group of soldiers tossing the lifeless bodies of a racoon-man and his small boy down into the muddy trench. Their bodies roll down the sloped edge of the trench, coming to a stop in the trench just a few yards ahead of her current position.

“What monsters! Wicked soldiers of a wicked queen!” spews Alice under her breath.

Alice slowly crawls her way to the slain bodies of the man and the boy. The man lies face up, face locked in the agonizing throws of death. Alice examines the slain body of the small racoon-boy as she mutters a brief silent prayer for him and then leans close to his ear.

“Please forgive me for this… all this was my fault. I’m so sorry. I’m afraid I require your cloak… I cannot offer you anything in return that would equal what you have already given for me. So this is yours,” whispers Alice before placing a soft goodbye kiss on the boy’s head and then, not wanting to linger any longer than necessary, she hurriedly puts on the boy’s brown cloak and smears globs of river mud onto her dress to cover up its bright blue colour.

From a nearby carpentry workshop comes a chorus of horrible screams as the whole thing erupts in a blazing conflagration of scorching heat and choking black smoke. Cardsmen toss gentlemanly raccoons, pleading weasels and crying ferret children into the burning workshop. The smell of burning flesh fills the air.

A woodsmanly boar bravely charges one of the Cardsmen with a pitchfork, piercing his plate-mail armour. The Cardsman cries out in pain as a dark, oily ooze drips down the metallic scales of his armour from the wound. Ethereal steam curls off the strange black sludge. The boar pushes the pitchfork in even harder, driving the Cardsman to the ground. Two Cardsmen approaching from behind launch a sneak attack on the boar, cutting off his arms. The brave boar falls to the ground in a squealing, bleeding mess as the Cardsmen crowd around, mocking and laughing before proceeding to stomp the boar to death under their heels.

Feeling the attention move away from her area, Alice bolts further down the trench towards the edge of town and the towering wall just beyond it. Violence trails behind her as she moves ever onward.

Guilt shreds Alice’s heart as her thoughts are consumed with the violence being carried out in pursuit of her. Eventually, the riverbank gives way to canal walls. She sprints between footbridges to keep from being seen as Cardsmen firebomb another nearby building. She feels the heat through her mud-caked cloak. The long arm of an orangutan hangs into the canal as she steps over the body of a beautiful but disemboweled rabbit woman, a strewn sack of groceries beside her.

Sunset pink tints the clouds overhead, and a bitter chill breeze swirls past Alice as she finally reaches the monolithic wall. Alice takes refuge inside a gigantic pile of broken clocks. The base section of the wall appears to be made of giant slabs of cut stone. The sheer overwhelming scale of the wall fills Alice’s heart with dread and awe, its massive height piercing the clouds. Finally safe, Alice sits among scattered gears and lifeless cuckoos as she tries to catch her breath and recompose herself. Thoughts of doubt consume her mind; I can’t do this. I’m just a little girl. That’s all I am. That’s all I can be.

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“Did you know humans are the only creatures to feel self-pity?” chimes a voice she knows all too well.

The sly grin of the Cheshire Cat forms on the face of a nearby clock. Ears grow out of the top and whiskers sprout from the centre. Alice lifts her head to find the source of the voice.

“Oh, Mr. Cat… I’m far too tired to answer your questions,” responds Alice, whimpering.

“Very well, I’ll answer it myself…” continuing in a mockingly high impersonation “No, I didn’t know that. I don’t know very much at all because I’m just a dumb girl who doesn’t think too deeply lest it gives me early wrinkles,” jeers Cheshire, amused.

“You don’t need to be nasty. I’m already having a terrible day. I have no hope of reaching the top of this wall,” moans Alice.

Cheshire’s smile melts from the clock, morphing into the spectral shape of his full feline form.

“If it’s hope you’re searching for, you will have a much longer journey than I thought,” continues Cheshire.

Alice lets her face disappear into her arms as tears rain from her eyes.

“How disappointing! Do you act like this every time you see a wall? Don’t you know the whole point of a wall is to find a way past it?” proclaims Cheshire impatiently.

“I thought the point of a wall was to keep people out,” mutters Alice.

“Only the people who build walls believe that,” counters Cheshire.

“Is there not a tiny door I can go through, or a magic vine that can lift me to the top?” pleads Alice, desperate for an easier way through the hardship looming before her.

“Until now, you have been in a part of Wonderland that is bound by its own set of rules. You haven’t had to truly work at all, you have just moved from adventure to adventure dealing only with some slight changes to your body.”

“Slight changes? I’d say they were more than slight,” barks Alice in frustration.

“Yes, yes, you got bigger, then smaller, then bigger again. These changes are child’s play. Soon you will face a world far less whimsical than the one you’ve grown accustomed to,” presses Cheshire, his tone gathering a subtle taint of sinister menace.

Alice sits up with a huff. “This was the plan all along, wasn’t it? To have me go through Wonderland learning nothing and then just kick me out into this other place that is totally different, being completely unprepared,” rages Alice.

“Plan? Hmm… plan. Does it have to be written down to be considered a plan?” asks Cheshire, grinning widely.

“No. It’s a plan if it’s something that was decided beforehand, right?” continues Cheshire, answering his own question.

“Home… Mother… Why? Why must getting home be so hard? Oh, how I miss my mother, her soothing songs before bed and her gentle cheek kisses,” blathers Alice to herself between whimpers.

The twisted grin of the cat folds in on itself as his feline visage fades into little more than dust while exhaustion consumes Alice, dragging her off into tormented sleep.

******

From a small nearby hole in the dirt, a female Vole wearing an elegant red bonnet emerges. She hops onto an old sardine box and then climbs steadily up, a miniature trellis adorning the side of a nearby clock. Her brown fur is speckled with grey. Alice can clearly see the ridge of the little creature’s spine as the Vole reaches the clock’s roof. Alice calls out to her, making her jump.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” says Alice in a tone as meek and kind as she can manage.

“That’s alright, dear. What are you doing sitting there in the grime?” responds the Vole, smiling cheerfully.

“I need to get past this wall here, but I have no hope of climbing to the top of it. I don’t know what else to do,” explains Alice.

“Do not hope,” says the vole. “Hope does nothing. Decide what would make you happy and work toward that,” responds the Vole with a firm and confident nod.

“How can I start working if I have no hope of succeeding?” queries back Alice confused.

“When I climb to the top of these clocks, I’m not thinking about being at the top. I’m only thinking about the next step in front of me,” answers the Vole as she gestures to the path she was about to proceed upon.

The Vole turns to look at Alice one last time before scurrying away.

Alice nods and crawls out of her ticking sanctuary. Approaching the base of the grand wall, she doffs the dead boy’s cloak and takes a moment to stretch out her muscles a little.

“The only thing that will make me happy is leaving Wonderland and never coming back. I hate it here and I will not let myself die here,” she declares to herself sternly.

She feels the wall for even the slightest crevices between the stones. The ancient, weathered stone allows plenty of handholds. With one last glance behind her, she starts to climb. Her shoes are scuffed. Her knuckles are skinned, but she makes it up to a narrow lip where she can stand. The stonework is interwoven with mirrors the size of windows, cracked fine china, dingy silverware and old saw handles. As she continues the climb, she sees her face reflected in one of the mirrors. Her face is covered in acne. Her brow has thickened into one solid unibrow, accentuated by the bones themselves as if she had a Neanderthal’s bone structure.

“Dear me! I’m hideous!” shrieks Alice in disgust.

She scrambles further up so that she doesn’t have to see what a troll she has become. Alice looks up, watching only her handholds. Have my arms grown? Have I not regained my original size? Have I been here so long that I’m naturally taller? Questions continue to buzz in her mind as she watches herself climb.

Passing another mirror, she shuts her eyes until her face has passed; however, curiosity takes over, causing her to look down and see the front of her dress swelled outward in a way it never had been. Afraid to let go or look down any further, she climbs higher. She is surprised a few more metres up by a third mirror, showing her a different face. This version of her face is unblemished by acne but covered in muck, dirty but beautiful. The more she looks at herself in the mirror, the more she notices how much older her face seems, not full-grown, but older than she remembers. How long have I been here? She asks herself. Strange, she no longer knows.

A few more metres up the wall, there is a row of large-reflective crystalline masses that seem to jut out from the masonry of the wall. This row of crystalline protrusions seems to stretch horizontally along the entire length of the wall, from what she can tell. As Alice climbs up between two of these crystals, she notices that one of its reflective sides provides her with a full-length image of her own reflection that profiles her entire body. She is horrified at her own appearance even more than before. Her arms are fat. Loose skin bunches at her elbows, filled with flab. Rolls of fat on her back and waist test the seams of her dress. Alice looks down at her actual body. It is her normal body, dirty and tired, but still the body she remembers coming in with. She looks back at the mirror. The fat arms and back rolls quiver in the cold brisk air as she continues to climb higher. Is this how others see me? She ponders to herself.

She decides to ignore all other mirrors and reflective surfaces. Staring up, she sees protruding wind chimes and a fishing pole with a basket tied to the line. They sway slightly in the breeze. The material make-up of the wall shifts abruptly from the weathered stone to compressed mud with metal pipes inlaid like a bird’s nest.

Still further up, the wall stretches out towards the heavens. Alice’s arms shake with exertion. She is sweating so bad it reminds her of the time at her grandma’s when she got pneumonia. Alice curls up to rest in a group of pipes projecting out in a medium basin-like shape. When the wet noodles protruding from her torso become arms once again, she sets back out. Ten feet. Twenty feet. Fifty. She climbs onward. The wall is a world unto itself. She shimmies past terrariums. Ant farms pulsate with pixelated life. Birds swoop into mailboxes. The inhabitants form cliques in the patchwork habitat, beetles with beetles, Sky Monkeys with Sky Monkeys.

There are signs along the climb. One reads ‘Congratulations Ravens! Mid-wall Champs three years running!’

Although it is hard work to move up the wall, Alice grows accustomed to the grind. It becomes familiar quickly. She even makes a few friends every so often.

Another sign reads ‘There is no “I” in team’. She rolls her eyes. Some parts of the wall are lined with stacks of books. “A Separate Peace” by John Knowles. “Catcher in the Rye” by J. D. Salinger. “The Giver”, Lois Lowry. A Shakespeare anthology. “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe. The next section of the wall’s masonry is littered with smashed and battered statues. Alice takes another break, sitting on the stone legs of a nameless general’s horse. As she sits, she notices a small butterfly alights one of the horse’s hoofs.

“Hey! Hello, hello there. You seem new new. You look pretty. You remind me of the Yule-Father. What did you get for Yuletide??” the butterfly asks.

“Well, it’s been a while, but I remember my parents got me a new Sunday dress and a diary, and as for Santa, he brought me a flute even though I asked him for a piano,” responds Alice, her gaze suddenly drawn to the source of the tiny voice addressing her.

“You do know there is no Santa?” counters the butterfly.

“What do you mean?” replies Alice, confused.

“Santa is just something your parents make up. He’s not real. Nope, nope. Not at all. There is only the Yule-Father.” The butterfly chuckles in a friendly manner.

Something clicks in Alice’s head. A truth switch triggers, and she realises rather abruptly that perhaps elders are not infallible. She wonders what else she has been told that is a lie. This ignites a small simmer inside her, which she uses to push herself onward. The butterfly twips around her as she climbs.

She reaches an intersection of two materials. One section is made of barbells and jump ropes. The other is made of yarn and cluttered with spring-form cake pans. She scoots onto the softer section.

“You know, my sister is a wonderful gardener. She grows cucumbers, strawberries, and herbs. She lets me help sometimes,” explains Alice as she digs her toes into the wall to push herself up even further.

“I don’t have a sister. Sometimes I wish I did,” replies the butterfly as she nods her head.

“Oh yes. Having a sister is wonderful,” muses Alice, feeling a warm flush in her cheeks.

“Maybe we can be sisters!” replies the butterfly gleefully.

Alice giggles. Having a butterfly for a sister. How absurd!

“But then again, you’re the best friend I’ve had here in Wonderland,” responds Alice with an amused giggle.

Sister Butterfly helps Alice forget her burning muscles and the calluses forming on her palms. Occasionally Sister butterfly will leave for a bit to run errands, but she always eventually returns. Alice stops counting the days, sleeping intermittently where sturdy protruding junk allows. As she nears the top, the climb becomes harder, the wind more intense, and the air colder and thinner.

“Dear me, Sister Butterfly, whoever built this wall seems to have just piled up a bunch of nonsense in my way,” declares Alice, struggling to breathe and unable to shield herself from the bitter chill of the air now enveloping her.

“They can make it better, but the Red Queen refuses to give them proper funding,” replies Sister Butterfly with a tone of civil dismay. Alice continues to climb until at last one day, gripping the strap of a purse, she lifts her other hand and finds only air. She mounts the top of the wall, victorious and exhausted as her heart cries out triumphantly. She lays out on the top of the wall, allowing herself to rest and regain her composure.

After a few minutes of rest, she rises back to her feet and turns to look out upon the new land that now stretches before her. She finds the wall follows a mountain range, perfectly bisecting them at their peaks. The mountains are covered by evergreen forest to their belt-line. The trees thin out near the top, being replaced with craggy boulders and patches of long grass poking out here and there like hairy moles. The forest continues as far as Alice can see. Mountains make the land ahead uneven, like explosions of stone frozen in time.

“Wow, we got the whole wide world ahead of us now,” says Sister Butterfly.

“Yes, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to do next,” responds Alice, her voice shaky with uncertainty.

“Well, whatever happens, let’s promise to be friends forever,” presses Sister Butterfly.

“Deal.” Alice curls up her pinky, and Sister Butterfly lands on it. They climb together down the wall and begin walking towards the nearest mountain summit.