The Queen stopped and ate a few of her favorite peanuts.

“Of course, humans’ greatest weakness had always been their fear. In particular, the fear of others. They feared anything that was different from them so much that they had the audacity to kill it, exterminate it right away, and call it their enemy. To them, Wonderlanders were the maddest of the mad. At this time in history, insanity had not been medically explained yet, nor was it socially acceptable. Humans were as ignorant as those whom, of this world, call autistic children retarded. Humans were the worst creature the universe created.”

Tom’s perception of the Queen had been that of a total lunatic who longed for nothing but the obedience of others—like the flamingo in the asylum. Not that his perception of her had changed drastically now, but she wasn’t as shallow as he’d thought. She actually had a story to tell. One that was going to blow his mind. He listened tentatively.

“So humans didn’t just call us mad then,” the Queen said. “They thought of us as a plague. And our plague, or disease, was an invisible one that affected our brains and had no well-known cure. Thus, the Invisible Plague.”

Tom let out a sigh. Now his suspicion about the names of the people on the list was confirmed. Each and every one of them had been mad once. True, most of them were of notable prestige in their countries—senators, mayors, and even people who worked in the White House and the British Parliament. All of them had also been mad at some point in their lives.

How the government hired people who were once mad always boggled his mind.

Tom was sitting among more than two hundred mad lunatics from all over the world. Rich. Famous. Powerful lunatics.

“Now, you understand why I have summoned you to this meeting,” the Queen said. “We’re all the same, whether some of you were a Wonderlander once, or just labeled mad in this world.” Her gaze intensified. “And you know what humans do to those of the Invisible Plague. You know what happens to you when you’re called mad in this world.”

Tom scratched his head. What was she talking about?

“I’m not talking about asylums and straitjackets,” the Queen said. “I’m talking about the atrocities humans committed against those who needed help instead of being called ‘mentally retarded.’ I am talking about what humans have done to the likes of us in the past. I’m talking about the...”

She raised her hands in the air, and with them the crowd stood up. The mad crowd from all over the world, saying the same words in unison, as if it were a ritual: “You’re talking about what happened to us in the circus.”

Chapter 56

The circus

Time remaining: 7 hours, 00 minutes

Before I can comprehend what Waltraud and Ogier are doing here, several people are pushed into the cage.

The crowd is screaming. I grit my teeth against their squeals. All of them stand up and clap, blocking my view.

I am going crazy. Who is in the cage below?

I try to look, but the crowd won’t let me. Furiously, I jump outside the tier to the small aisles. I still can’t see those in the cage, so I descend the rows barefoot, the image clearer with each step down.

This can’t be true.

This can’t be true.

This can’t be true.

I see Lewis Carroll holding the bars of the cage from inside, pleading for mercy.

What is going on? I run faster.

Then I see Duchess Margaret Kent behind him. Everyone is booing and throwing cotton candy at her.

I run closer.

I see the Queen of Hearts, her hands cuffed as she screams at the crowd. Then I see the Muffin Man. The March Hare.

Oh my God. What’s going on?

“Please don’t,” Lewis says to the crowd. “You don’t understand. They’re just different. They won’t hurt you.”

I am a few steps away from the cage when I see Fabiola in the back, crying herself to death. Then there is Jack.

Jack!

I grip the cage. “What’s going on, Jack?”

“You shouldn’t be here, Alice,” Jack shouts at me, cotton candy sticking to his face. “Run!”

“I won’t run, Jack.” The scene is overwhelming. I’m going to cry. I realize that almost everyone from Wonderland is inside the cage. “Tell me how I can help.”

“Run, Alice!” Lewis yells. “Run!”

I turn and look at the supposedly sane people of the world, shouting and discriminating against those behind the cage. Men, women, and their children. Where in the world does such madness come from? Why do they hate them so much?

As answers form slowly in my cloudy head, the ringmaster spells it out for me.

“Look at those freaks!” he announces. “Aren’t they funny? Aren’t they amusing? Aren’t they disgusting?”

Freaks? Is that what humans thought of the Wonderlanders when they crossed over to their world? Because they looked and acted differently?

“Those mad, mad, mad creatures!” the ringmaster says. “Hit them with your cotton candy. Laugh at that grinning cat. Amuse yourself with this short freak that thinks she’s a queen. Entertain yourself with the silly jokes of the man with the hat who throws tea parties and always thinks it’s six o’ clock.” He points at someone with a long hat. I can’t see his face in the shadows, but I’m assuming he is the Mad Hatter.

Suddenly, the crowd is given teacups, and they start throwing them at the Mad Hatter.

They laugh at them.

My head veers between those thought of as mad, freaks in the cage, and those supposedly sane people throwing cups at them.

“Stop it!” I scream at the crowd. “Who the heck do you think you are? It’s not them who’re freaks. It’s you!”

Then I realize my mistake.

Everything stops as they stare at me.

Chapter 57

Meeting Hall, Buckingham Palace, London

“It started as a joke,” the Queen said. “At first, no one understood a person suffering from a mental disorder. Usually they thought those people were possessed by demons, causing to have those hallucinations. Then they thought of them as witches. In both cases, they were killed, if not burned at the stake.”

Tom was sweating by now. Surely he sat among the maddest of the mad in the world, but the Queen was also reciting the true dark history of humans, which had been repeatedly documented—only historians always preferred to stay away from it.

People with a mental illness were used as a tourist attraction, a means for entertainment, all over the years.

In his office, Tom had a drawing of people watching mad people for entertainment.

“Then when physicians began suggesting this was an illness, calling it the Invisible Plague, humans came up with this humiliating idea of gathering the mad in a prison, as if they had committed a crime,” the Queen explained. “And in a world were money dominates everything, there was nothing wrong with making a shilling or a buck on the side. The mad people were put into cages as a tourist attraction. People from all over the world would entertain themselves by watching them for a fee. It was like going to comedy movie.”

Tom reached for his pills and swallowed. A handful. Everything the Queen had talked about, he knew for a fact.

“So we, mad people, Wonderlanders, instead of being cured, were a source of a few laughs and snickers,” the Queen said. “We became the freaks in the circus.” She signaled for her mad crowd to sit again. “And now it’s time we have our revenge.” She clicked her remote and the screen flickered again.

It was time to see what she had on her mind.

Chapter 58

The circus

Time remaining: 6 hours, 47 minutes