“Where is Mary Ann?” the children wailed, or played along to a silly joke. The parents didn’t know.

“Mary Ann’s gone mad. She can’t come and save you.” He pouted. “But don’t worry.” He waved his hand again. “The Hatter is here to save the day.”

“Yay!” The children relaxed.

“You know what I’m going to do with this ticking bomb?” he said.

The children shook their heads.

“I’m going to put it in my hat”—he did—“and wear my hat again.” He did that, too.

“But the bomb will explode on your head!” a child offered, his friends laughing.

“Not if I use my magic and turn it to something else.” The Hatter smiled.

The children got the message and yelled, “A rabbit.”

The Hatter nodded, took off his hat, and pulled out a white rabbit.

The children in the circus clapped, most of them standing up and chuckling. The parents clapped along, still skeptical and worried.

“So the bomb will not explode?” a child asked.

“Hmm...” The Hatter sighed, but said nothing. He let the white, cute rabbit hop toward the crowd. “There are small slices of carrot underneath each of your chairs.” He pointed. “It would be nice if you feed it, right?”

The children began competing on attracting the rabbit closer, having picked up the small pieces of carrot. The rabbit was really cute. A bit fat, though. It had bulging and pleading eyes that would have softened the greatest Wonderland Monster’s heart.

Suddenly, amidst the circus’s cheering crowd, the rabbit hiccupped.

“Easy on the rabbit,” a parent advised. “You’re feeding it too much.”

But the children realized that this wasn’t the case.

Each time the rabbit hiccupped, its ears glowed red. As protective as the parents were, they weren’t the first to realize what was going on. It was the children who noticed that each time the rabbit hiccupped, it also ticked.

Slowly, and disappointedly, they raised their heads, looking at the Hatter, who sat sipping tea in the middle of the ring. “I guess the magic trick didn’t work.” He shrugged. “Try this.” He sipped again. “Tick?” He placed a hand behind his ear.

“Tock?” the children said reluctantly, unsure of what kind of game this had turned into.

“Boom!” the Hatter cheered, plowed the teacup against one of the poles that held the circus erect, and waved both hands sideways.

That was when everyone began running like crazy.

All but the Hatter. He stood up and clapped frantically at his own prank. He watched the crowd scream their way out of the circus while a white rabbit with a ticking bomb inside followed, heading to spread terror all over London.

The Hatter pulled out his phone and dialed a number. He dialed 666, then flipped the phone upside down so it dialed 999 by itself. Some magic phone.

“Hello,” he said, adjusting his hat. “There is a rabbit loose on the streets of London.”

“A rabbit?” the emergency operator at the end of the line said. She almost hung up.

“A rabbit with a bomb in it,” the Hatter said. “Don’t feed it carrots, or it will hiccup. And, oh, I almost forgot. Only one girl can stop the bomb. Her name is Mary Ann.”

Chapter 1

Psychiatry, Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum, Oxford

Sunday, 6:00 a.m.

The mysterious psychiatrist, hiding behind a curtain of darkness, still tries to persuade me of confessing my madness. I lie helpless on the couch, not caring to stand up. How can I when I am crippled all over again?

This situation has begun occurring too often now. About once every three days. I wake up and I am in this darkened room, crippled and listening to the boring lessons from that nutcase on his rocking chair beside me. Sometimes I doubt he is a real psychiatrist—if any of this is even real. Why won’t he show his face?

But I have to play along. At least until this episode of hallucination—or whatever is really going on—passes.

It usually takes about ten minutes or so. Then I’d be back in my cell. Sleep for a while, then wake up as if nothing ever happened. I am starting to get used to it, only today’s episode started a bit too early. Who examines their patients at six in the morning?

“I see you have a lot of bruises,” the psychiatrist says. “Got into a fight lately?”

“I’ve been practicing.”

“Practicing how to stomp against the walls of your cell?”

“No.” I sigh. “It’s called None Fu.”

“Excuse me?”

“None Fu. An abbreviation for Nothing Fu. Like Kung Fu, you know?”

“Kung means ‘achievement’ or ‘work,’” he notes. “Are you saying you’re practicing an art that is about ‘nothing’?”

“You wouldn’t understand.” I sigh again, wishing the Pillar would send for me. I am hungry for another mad adventure, longing to save somebody’s life. It’s the only way I can stay relatively sane.

“Try me.”

“It’s an art that assumes that all kinds of real training is just bonkers,” I say. “Karate, wrestling, and martial arts don’t really need laws. Laws only imprison a person’s mind, and deprive him from the gift to be free. What you need is ‘True Will.’” I read about it in Jack’s book.

“Just that?”

“Just that.” I nod, aware of the absurdity of my words. “All you need is to ‘believe’ something is possible to get it done, although believing itself isn’t an easy matter.”

“So you say you can fight, defend yourself, by mere belief, without having to take a scientific approach or having trained properly?” His voice is flat. I can’t tell if he is mocking me or considering it.

“Yes.”

“Apparently you didn’t learn much.” Now he sounds like he’s mocking me. “I mean, all those bruises on your body. Did you really hit the walls with your bare hands and feet, like Waltraud informed me?”

“Yes,” I say. “It’s part of the training. I should be repeating it until mastery.” My whole body aches. I have been practicing all week in my cell. Jumping, running against the wall, and walking on my hands. I was following all the nonsensical instructions from the book.

“Mastery?” He smokes that pipe again. I can smell the weirdly familiar tobacco.

“Don’t make fun of me,” I say. “You’re my doctor. You’re supposed to help me.”

“I am helping you,” he insists, “by pushing your imagination so hard that your mind can’t accept the madness you’re imagining anymore. When we reach that tipping point, you’ll find yourself remembering, and accepting your reality.”

“Which is?” I shrug.

“That you’re a troubled girl who killed her friends by driving a school bus into a horrible accident, and that now you’re crippled, locked in an asylum because your mind refuses to admit the truth.” He blurts the sentence in one breath. “It’s a very simple truth, actually. Once you’re able to confront it, you’ll recover.”

I have nothing to say. It scares me to even think about it. Is that all there is to my life? Am I just a mad Alice, thrown down into an imaginary rabbit hole, and now all I need is to confess it was all a dream, just like in Lewis Carroll’s book?

“Alice?” He sounds as if trying to gently wake me up from a nightmare.

“Yes, I’m listening,” I reply. “You said you’re pushing my imagination to the limits until I won’t be able to imagine anymore. Right? And that only then will I be forced to retreat back to reality. Is that how you treat all your patients? Because I don’t think I’ve ever heard about this.”

“It’s a scientific process.” His rocking chair creaks against the floor. “We call it the Rabbit Hole.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“No. It’s a scientific technique,” he says. “The Rabbit Hole is a metaphor for the road you have to fall onto to push your imagination to the max, which will eventually result in igniting a certain suppressed memory or emotion. A memory so real and strong the patient can’t deny it. Thus the patient comes back to the real world, and is cured from their madness. Of course, it’s coined after Lewis Carroll’s book.”