The Heart of Wonderland

Chapter 13

Alison sank into the chair. She felt as if all the air had been sucked out of her lungs. "It's real, isn't it?" She marvelled at the idea. "Wonderland is real." Crazy as it seemed, it made a strange kind of sense. The knight she'd seen before the crash, the dreams, the mysterious note her father had left her—it all added up to one thing.

Wonderland was real.

"My father named me after Alice," she told Mrs. Kim. "It was his favorite children's story."

Mrs. Kim looked at Alison with knowing eyes. "But it's more than just a story. You've been there. You know it's real."

"But...how?" As Mrs. Kim's words began to really sink in, Alison felt dizzy, as if she was on a carnival ride that wouldn't stop.

"Your father was Wonderland's Keeper," Mrs. Kim said, "sworn to protect Wonderland and its magic. And now that he is gone, this responsibility falls to you. This is why you are unable to speak of Wonderland to anyone who is not connected to Wonderland by blood or enchantment. The magic that links you to Wonderland prevents you from revealing its secrets."

"Whoa, back up. What's a Keeper? And why am I only hearing about this now? My dad never mentioned any of this."

Mrs. Kim looked at Maddox lying in the bed. "He was the Keeper, just as my son—Maddox's father—was meant to be Wonderland's Guardian."

Alison pressed a hand to her churning stomach. After spending so much time worrying that she was losing her mind, hearing Mrs. Kim acknowledge that Wonderland was real was almost too much to take in.

"I don't understand," she said. "What's a Keeper? And what was your son supposed to guard?"

Mrs. Kim returned her attention to Alison. "For as long as anyone can remember, your ancestors been charged with safeguarding the Heart of Wonderland. No one knows when or how the Heart was created, only that it is as old as Wonderland itself. It is said that the Heart contains the soul of Wonderland, the magic that keeps it alive. But the magic caught in the Heart is unstable. There has only been one family charged with keeping it safe." She smiled. "Your family."

Alison shook her head slowly. "You're saying my father knew about this? That he believed in all this?"

Mrs. Kim sighed. "He knew and believed, but unfortunately he grew tired of his obligations and the secrecy surrounding them." She stared off into the distance. "Just as my son did."

"You said he was guarding something?"

"Just as your family keeps the magic of Wonderland stable, mine is tasked with guarding the Heart itself. Our families have worked together for generations to keep Wonderland safe. But my son and your father were part of a new generation, with less regard for the old ways."

"Are you saying my dad walked away from his job as Keeper?"

"Nothing so drastic as that," Mrs. Kim reassured Alison. "He merely...became less vigilant. He loved you and your mother very much, and he had a business to run here in this world."

She looked down at Maddox and her eyes shone with unshed tears. "My son had similar feelings, although he rejected his role as a Guardian entirely. I had hoped to pass down the responsibility to him, but he refused. Even as a teenager, he wanted nothing to do with Wonderland."

"What is this Heart our families are supposed to protect?" Alison wanted to know. "Is it, like, an actual heart or is that a metaphor?" She imagined a beating human heart suspended in midair over an altar like something out of an Indiana Jones movie.