“You know your Greek mythology well,” Malcolm commented.
And the Matrix. “I like stories,” I explained, a little excited at the thought of the connection between mythology and this place. “Whether they be ancient or not. Anyways, to call himself a god, he must be a little full of himself then.”
“Is he full of himself? He has converted many citizens as you have seen.” Malcolm waved his hand to gesture towards those who stood near us.
I took a look around. He was right, there were a lot of people and I couldn’t see any of their faces. I wondered if it was like that everywhere or in just this part of the kingdom. Either way, it was still a lot of people. He had to be strong to be able to convert so many people. It was hard to think that the people around me were the personifications of people’s dreams in the real world. I wondered how many people around me I actually knew.
“How big is this kingdom?” I asked.
Chase opened up his arms. “It’s huge! This is just one section called the Garden District.”
“How many districts are there?”
“Within this kingdom? About two dozen,” Chase answered. “Most people stay within the kingdom but there are others who are from outside the kingdom, which is where the ruins of Heart, Red, and White Kingdoms are.”
“Two dozen? Wow. Where is the Circus?” As I didn’t see any tents around this area, and this place seemed too strange to have a Circus going on, which was odd to think, really.
“In the heart of Wonderland, near the Dark Forest. They were smart when they figured out how to infiltrate the kingdom—so obviously no one even saw it coming.”
That made sense, sometimes the best place to hide something was right in front of other people’s faces. “Which is how the King and Queen were affected so fast.”
Chase shrugged. “It was more complicated than that but I don’t want to get into the details just yet. Howard will be able to explain more than any of us.”
I nodded. “All right, what can you tell me?”
He grinned. “That math test was hard, how did you do on it?”
I shoved him as we made it to the boundary of the Garden District.
CHAPTER 8
I gasped as we stepped outside the walls of the Garden District. The mountains and forests surrounded the area with trees larger than life. I felt like I was in the Redwood forest somehow surrounded by the Alps. I had never seen anything so majestic. I couldn’t wait to get back home and paint what I had seen, but I knew I would never be able to bring this scene justice.
“So where exactly are we going? I mean I know we are going towards where Howard is, but other than that I’m not sure.” I asked as I stared up at the trees we walked beneath. They were tall, like friggin’ tall. I didn’t want to know what happened when one of them fell.
It would be loud and destructive, that’s what would happen.
“You see where those two hills meet in the distance?” Melvin pointed. I nodded. “That is where we are going.”
“And we are walking the entire way?” I asked, hoping that was not the case. I knew it was, I hadn’t seen one type of vehicle during the entire time we were walking. Strange, really, but this world wasn’t like ours, and maybe they didn’t want to draw any attention.
“Yes, we should be there before nightfall,” he started down the steep slope as I kept staring forward at what direction we were heading towards. Nothing like a good hike after practically no sleep and being dumped into an entirely new world. At least I wasn’t in my pajamas anymore. Always look on the positive side of things, that was my motto, or at least I tried to make it my motto.
I followed the boys down the slope, slipping and sliding most of the way. The ground was a bit wet causing a muddy mess. Sometimes I thought I was definitely going to fall on my butt, but alas I did not, thankfully. Nothing new for an Oregon girl though.
I started to fall behind the rest of them, typical. Although I was good at ballet and balancing, my fear of falling off of something was still pretty high. I didn’t like the thought of falling and getting my clothes muddy, then having to walk all that way to get to wherever we were going. Walking with muddy wet clothes was horrible, absolutely horrible. So I was more careful than they were and that made me start to fall behind. And them being typical boys didn’t give a crap. So at least that was the same between this world and my world.
It was still strange to think that I was in a different world, that is if this wasn’t just a dream. I think in the back of my mind I really still thought it was a dream and that was why the ‘freak-out’ factor hadn’t hit me yet. That, or maybe I just watched too much anime that I didn’t find this to be as horrible as a normal person would. Then again, did I truly understand the stakes here? Probably not, but I also had no idea why I was brought here nor why some little boy had tried to kill me.
We finally got to the bottom of the large hill the Garden District was on. As I approached where the rest of the boys were, I noticed they were ducked under the overgrowth, watching something in the distance. Chase grabbed my wrist and pulled me down next to them.
“Careful, they’re on the lookout for us,” he said in a hushed tone.
I looked towards where they were staring. Five men on
