Chapter 10

“Faith is overrated?” I ran my fingers through my hair. I did not know what to think. “Faith is underrated! I need to have faith in order to get through this. I need to know that I am doing something right.” I sat down in the middle of the road.

The road was something incredible. It was comfortable. I have sat on many roads, and let me tell you, they are usually hard, dirty and not safe. But this one, it was different. The gravel was painted purple (which made the Cheshire Cat a bit hard to make out), and it was like sitting on a bunch of very small cotton balls. It also smelled like cotton candy. Luckily, I was not hungry anymore, so I was not tempted to eat it. Well, there was a small chance that I could taste it, but I wasn’t going to do that with an audience.

“Go on. I know you want to.” The Cheshire Cat sat down on the road next to me. “Taste the gravel. It does taste like cotton candy. It’s good in a pinch when you can’t get any actual food.”

“How did you…?” I asked, putting a small pebble in my mouth. “Oh my goodness.” It was delicious. It tasted like the pink cotton candy, which everyone knows is the best.

“Don’t worry about it. And your spirit guides are just up ahead. They’re waiting for you in the woods. Take the second left, then the third right.” For a Cat that was supposed to make things more confusing, he was awfully good with directions. “Oh, and I'm afraid I have to expel a rather ferocious hairball. You're on your own, girl.”

I was grateful for his parting gift. It sounded more like him than the SAT vocabulary he was throwing at me.

I walked along the purple gravel, a little more relieved than I was under the tree. I wouldn’t say that I was refreshed and ready to fight, but I had more faith in myself. Since I had heard that someone was just up ahead to help me. It was high time I talked to someone mostly sane.

The woods were boring. It was just like any woods back home. They had trees and other paths. The trees were plain. They had brown bark, green leaves, and other boring ornaments that most trees have. Occasionally, a squirrel scurried past my feet, but I never really paid them any mind. It was just a squirrel.

When I made the second left – which was further down the path than I had expected – things made a turn for the weird. Well, weirder than they already were. The trees turned colors. Brown bark became aqua, green leaves turned pink. It was the strangest thing I had ever seen. The trees switched their colors as I walked past. It was like they were waking up from a dream, and I had disturbed their slumber. The third right was much quicker than the lefts, and I almost missed it. I was so distracted by the trees! As I made the turn, the woods opened up into a glen. It was not the beautiful glen that I’ve seen in movies since I was little.  It was harsh, dead, brown and gray. It was nothing like the woods that I had just walked through. No color at all.

“I’m glad you could make it, Cassandra,” one of the women in the middle of the glen said. The women, all nine of them, worse blue silk Grecian gowns.

“Me, too, I guess. It’s been a long day.” As I walked closer to them, I noticed that they were all dazzlingly beautiful. I felt a little overwhelmed and, to be honest, not good enough to be in their presence.

“We are sorry, Cassandra,” they said in unison.

“Yeah, well, what can ya do about it? This is my lot in life.” They gestured for me to sit on the ground and join their circle.

“You are so strong, Cassandra. You can do this,” another one of the Muses reached out for my hand to comfort me.

“My mind changes minute to minute. One minute I think I can do this, the next I’m standing in Roderick’s gallery looking at lost stories and feeling defeated.” I held my head in my hands, afraid to look at the beautiful women around me. I didn’t want them to see how scared I was.

“You,” The Muse closest to me looked around to her sisters, “met Roderick?”

Just like when most women get together their voices sang out within each other. They talked over one another, asked questions in a near-shrieking tone, and generally looked scared.  

“Sisters,” the one opposite of me boomed. “Let us be quiet and find out what happened.” The Muses stopped talking.

            So I relayed the story to the women in the circle. I told them about how I was plucked from the path in front of the White Rabbit’s house. I told them about Roderick’s plan to swallow up literature and keep it all for his own pleasure. I told them about the paintings.

            Oh, those paintings. They haunted me. Each painting was burned into my mind. I would never forget the faces of the characters I have never met, and would never meet. I was saddened by that thought. There were so many characters to meet, and now they could be gone from the world forever. I didn’t know what else to do. Was it possible to save those stories? Or could I only save those who had not been yet taken?

            My parents always had art in the house, so I was used to being affected by paintings. My mother brought with her paintings of Africa, Greece, and other ancient civilizations that adorned the walls of the den in our home. They were so lifelike. Remembering them made me miss her. She would have been in awe of those paintings. She loved art.

            “Cassandra, how did you get to the gallery?” All nine pairs of eyes were upon me.

            “I was walking, and then I ran into an invisible wall. He was sat on a velvet throne, and just started talking to me. He said something about me not winning, that I would fail. He led me through a galley-type thing. It was filled wall to wall with moving pictures. He told me that these pictures were stories that he had stolen and was keeping for his own amusement.”

            “Why was he stealing the stories?”

            “He said that people didn’t need them anymore. He said that we were living in a world of Twitter, and Instagram, and 140 characters. He laughed at the prospect of people not reading anymore, and being proud of it!” I was now in tears, again, at the thought of books being obsolete. Books were my only friends as a child. They comforted me on rainy days, picked me up when I was down. Books were my protection against the world. Without books, how could I fight ignorance? How could the world fight ignorance?

            “When he sent be back to Wonderland, he just dropped be back somewhere random. I lost Alice, I lost the White Rabbit – if he’s even real – and I was scared. So I just sat on the ground for a while. I was so done with saving this world.” I finally looked each one in the eyes.

            “Why would you be done? Don’t you want to save literature?” The smallest one asked.

            “Yeah, I mean, kind of. I was feeling really defeated. And how bad could he be if he wanted to save the stories, right? I know too many people who are proud of the fact that they hate reading, that they’ve never read a full book. It makes me sad, but how do we combat it? By saving Wonderland? I just don’t know anymore.”  I hung my head in shame.  I didn’t know what to do anymore. I didn’t know why I was chosen.

            “Why me?”

            “Because you’re special.” I scoffed. I wasn’t special. I was weird.