The Jabberwock Came Whiffling by Mel Gilden

Author:Mel Gilden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Lewis Carroll, fantasy, jabberwock, Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass
ISBN: 9781479409402
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2014-08-14T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN: FLYING PIG MALL

Once outside the music faded immediately. He took his fingers from his ears and turned to look at the truck stop. To Albert’s surprise, the last of the building and the last of the music were just fading to nothing. Soon all he could hear was wind moving through the branches of trees.

“What do you make of that?” Albert asked Alice.

When she did not answer he turned to look at her and was surprised that she was no longer there. Instead, he was standing at the edge of a vast marble plain surrounded by the broken columns and crosspieces of a desolate and ruined city made of marble. Boughs of trees and drifts of leaves stretched across the plain in long tidal lines. Yet it wasn’t exactly a city. He stared at the ruins for a while, then blinked. The glass in the display windows was either still intact or gone entirely—it was difficult to tell from this distance—but he knew what he was looking at: It was an enormous outdoor shopping mall.

The music obviously had something to do with his arriving here, but what? He decided that it didn’t matter. Here he was, and he would have to deal with the situation.

But the fact that Alice was nowhere in sight worried him a lot more than how music moved people and things around. He’d kinda gotten used to having her nearby. He tried to calm himself with the idea that if something bad had happened to her, the chances were good that the same bad thing would have happened to him.

Mountain peaks were still tipped with gold where the setting sun touched them, though the valley where the mall lay was gloomy with the coming night, which was why he was able to see the stars when he looked straight up. The experience of seeing sunlight and stars at the same time was a strange one, but not unpleasant. As the sun faded from the peaks, the white mall looked more and more ghostly.

Albert’s mouth watered at the perfume of cooking meat. He eagerly followed it up a wide stairway (the unicorn’s Big Stairway?) made of the same marble as the rest of the city. As he climbed it he heard Alice singing:

They’re driving me to Distraction.

And I am taking all bets

That they’re driving me to Distraction

’Cause that’s where the county seat sets.

Not a great song, but it had a catchy tune that helped wash the Aka Baka song out of his head, and Alice sounded relaxed and happy, which was good news. At the top of the stairs he found her in an open courtyard in front of a row of stores; one sold sporting goods, another sold shoes, and a third sold what looked like formal clothing. She was sitting on a marble bench, roasting some animal over a fire built in the middle of the marble floor from the plentiful pieces of fallen wood. The fire flickered red on her face, making it appear ruddy with health.

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