All good things must come to an end, and that was what happened to our journey in mid-air. Draco lowered our altitude and landed on the ground. The bat tried to make the landing bearable and less shaky, but that did not happen as planned. With all the turbulence in the air, our eyes spiralled before we could even walk on the soil.
If it were not for Draco's words to alert us, Alice and I would not know that we were back on walking on the road.
"Thanks, Draco. You saved us some time," I said, and expressed my gratitude to the flying beast. I also lowered my head, since it was in my culture to do this.
Draco and Alice did not mind my gestures as the two went along with it. Alice stepped forward and did the same, only to shatter the bar I raised for her.
"Can we ride in the sky again!" Alice shouted, disregarded everything that was happening in front of us.
After seeing our sour faces, Alice cleared her throat and reverted to her actual self. "I meant to say, thank you, Draco, for giving us a lift. We will surely repay you someday."
The gothic girl corrected herself. Alice also lowered her head and raised her skirt at each side. However, because of the injuries on her hands, Alice quivered and released the grip on her clothes. She let out a wry smile and a faint laugh afterwards.
"I guess my hands are too soft right now. Sorry."
Draco and I shook our heads, knowing that Alice was trying her best. The bat went onward and lowered his head to say his goodbyes.
"I will hold on to your words, Princess Alice," Draco remarked, and lifted his head back on our eye-level. "And be careful out there in the world. That place is crawling with creatures far more dangerous than Wonderland. Those monsters would kill you if they wanted to."
Alice nearly became teary and wiped the imaginary tears drenching her eyelids. Draco gyrated back and expanded his wings once again. He prepared to take off as a rocket ship would do in NASA's centre. He gave us a wink and flew skyward, like a bullet launched in the air.
We completely forgot Draco's warnings and pushed those thoughts aside. I could just hope that we would not encounter such monstrosity inside that place.
Within a few seconds, Draco's figure became a black sphere that came close to the sky. We knew the bat headed back to his den, back to his cauldron. His species were all waiting for him in the nest.
Draco was the prince of bats, after all. He also needed to rule them, as Alice would soon do for the magical kingdoms.
It took us a complete five minutes before returning our consciences to our heads after watching Draco leaving us behind. After the bat's disappearance, we focused our thoughts on the pavement before us.
"Are you ready, Princess Alice?" I expressed, and lowered my head.
But instead of the usual exchange, Alice smacked her hand across my scalp, forcing me to kiss the soil. Alice grunted and walked ahead without me, saying mean things like, "I told you not to call me that!"
Oh, how I wished our positions reversed themselves. Did Alice not know how awesome her life was with all those maids and butlers waiting for her service!?
However, I gulped those imaginative thoughts and followed Alice's tail.
....
"We're lost, aren't we, Alice?"
"Shh. I know where we are going. Be quiet, or else I can't concentrate!"
"I told you a million times already! Let me do the navigation. You don't know how to read a map!"
"I gave you the map earlier! You told me to take a left detour at that stone and then a right to that tree, which makes little sense at all! And let me remind you, Mask, that we saw them TEN TIMES ALREADY! How am I supposed to try reading this page when I CAN'T UNDERSTAND A SINGLE THING!"
The two of us had been wandering around this place for hours, yet we still did not know where the heck we were! The one-page sketched map that Alice's teacher gave was like scribbles of elementary students learning how to draw! It was unreadable that my eyes popped out even before giving an outline of the landscapes from the map to the actual world.
My body cannot feel any exhaustion from walking or doing anything. Despite sauntering miles away, all I had ever felt was the crispiness of my stitches getting pulled off by extreme movements. But that differed from Alice, who had a human vessel.
Halfway through our journey, Alice begged for me to have a brief break over the rocks. I had no other choice but to fulfil her command and sat on the stones. We used the surface as a bench and waited for five to fifteen minutes before Alice would give me a sign.
That thing went on for the rest that I had remembered. Alice told me that there was a village close by here. But all we could see were grasses and trees with a cemented road that we kept following for two hours. And we were unfortunate enough to perceive the ruined blocks ahead of us, which was why we used our maps in our directions.
Now that the cemented pavement got destroyed, Alice and I had no other choice but to trust our map. However, that forsaken thing was the problem.
Alice exclaimed that her court magician teacher did not teach her how to read maps. Since she was the princess of Wonderland, that teacher told Alice that she needed to memorise the landscape of her kingdom. However, because of Detroit attacking their empire, that lesson did not happen.
And now, it came back to us to bite our bottoms.
I, who had modern technology called cellular phones, did not know how to read actual maps. Although gugle maps became a trend back in my previous days, that application showed nothing about reading peculiar designs of maps. Those arrows that came from the compass were the only thing I knew about the layout. Besides those legends, I knew nothing about this world.
"That's why I told you to go that way!" Alice insisted, and pulled my wool stuffing towards the East.
I shook my head and let Alice drag me towards the right side of the green meadows. However, that suggestion turned out to be the wrong road. The stone that we made as a bench welcomed our eyes, as if inviting us over for a nap.
Alice, who became vulnerable to temptation, laid her body on the flat surface and slept like a log. That brief break we talked about became an hour of Alice napping sessions. I, who needed no sleep at all, stared at her body for those remaining minutes.
With nothing to do, I snatched the map from Alice. My eyes inspected the cursed image, hoping to understand the sketches once and for all. That teacher of hers should learn a thing for drawing things on a piece of paper! The mountain, which should have been a green bump, looked like fire on the map. It even had an orange hue painted on the design.
"AARGH! There's no way I could understand this. If that lazy Alice couldn't read such a work of art, how could I understand this image?!"
"I can... hear you... stupid…" Even fast asleep, Alice had the energy to reply.
Alice rolled to the side, nearly falling to the ground. I was fortunate enough to notice her body and sprinted my way towards her sides. With my arms readied and extended, I caught her slumbering body in the nick of time.
Despite that occurrence, Alice never woke up from her sleep. She even drooled up a fountain of saliva and kept tumbling off from my hands. My puppet arm barely held her weight, but I pushed her back on the bench and rolled her to the safer side.
"You're a princess, Alice. But why do I feel like a babysitter more than a knight in shining armour?" I expressed, and heaved out a sigh.
I had been studying the map for an hour and finally learned something about it. Alice and I were still in the middle of nowhere, and that was for sure. We had been circling inside this place for a few hours now and still made no progress.
But that journey of getting lost changed after we heard a noise coming from the Northern area, which we trod that part already.
"Do you hear something?" I uttered, and shook Alice's back.
Alice, who thought we were under an attack, jolted from her temporary bed and screamed, "I can cast fireball!" An exhale escaped my mouth as I shook her head once again, making sure that Alice was still with me during this trip. With her pupils as a pinball, Alice finally had the time to perceive the peculiar sound.
"It came from the North. Should we go and check that?" I asked.
I was unsure if that was the right thing to do. There was also a possibility that monsters still lurked in our vicinity, as Draco had warned.