The Trial.

"Let the judgment begin."

The Herald blew a single note that echoed through the courtroom before lowering his trumpet.

One of the hourglass-headed attendants stepped forward, set a large scale before the Queen, then returned to his place.

I became aware of what I had missed only moments before. The knives above me were lower than they had been when I sat down.

By how much I couldn't say, but the difference was measurable. The sea of blades held a stillness that felt profoundly unsettling.

The Queen of Hearts looked down at me from her chair. "Alice! You are accused of stealing time."

I looked at her.

"Specifically," she continued, opening the first page of the stack before her, "Three hours, forty-one minutes, and some seconds, from a Tuesday in October. Taken without consent." She looked up. "How do you plead?"

"I don't know what that means," I replied.

"No," she agreed. "Of course you wouldn't. The court will explain."

One of the hourglass-headed attendants moved to the end of the long table and placed something where I could see it.

A clock face. It had no hands, just like the ones at the Mad Hatter's shop.

Curiously, the numbers on the clock were written in reverse, counting backward from twelve to one.

"Tuesday in October," the Queen said. "A specific Tuesday. The court has records for this Tuesday. The court has records of every minute in it, from the moment the sky in the world above went from dark to light until the moment it went from light to dark again." She folded her hands on the chair's armrests. "Those three hours on that Tuesday have never been accounted for. They exist in no record. They produced no evidence of existing. They occurred, of course, because time happens, and then they were gone, stolen by someone." She paused. "The time doesn’t make sense. Things that should connect don't. There is a gap where there shouldn't be one."

I noticed the blades descending further the longer she spoke.

"I was unconscious for part of arriving here." I said, "I heard time moves strangely here. I don't think I am responsible for those missing hours."

"No one said anything about you arriving here," she noted pleasantly.

I didn't know what to say.

"The Tuesday in question," she continued, "occurred before Wonderland. In the world above where you came from." She looked at me with her abyssal eyes. "Where were you, Alice, for three hours, forty-one minutes on that Tuesday?"

"I don't have my memories," I responded.

"Of course you don't," she said, turning another page. "Convenient."

"However," she continued, "as I said before, there are records." She reached into her coat, produced a small object, and placed it in the left pan of the scale.

The right pan rose.

From where I sat, I could see what she'd placed. A small golden key.

"The lost time was found on the road," she said. "And this is the evidence for it."

"That key proves nothing about where I was," I shot back.

"No," she said. "It proves, however, that a thing was opened—or closed—depending on what it was used for," she said, tilting her head.

The blades descended again; this time, I could feel the mounting pressure in the air.

I looked at the clock face on the table again.

"The court's position," she said, "is that time is not a renewable resource. It cannot be replaced once taken. Whatever occurred in those three hours, whatever used them, those hours are gone, and something must account for their absence." She looked at me as if she were tired of explaining it to me over and over. "Wonderland accounts for everything. That is its primary function. This judgment also exists because it was accounted for. And any gap existing is unacceptable!"

"I believe the court has a problem, then," I said. "Because a person can't be held responsible for time they have no memory of."

"A person," she replied, "can be held responsible for the conditions that produced the forgetting itself."

I looked at her.

"You didn't lose your memories on the road." She said, "The End Road is truthful. Wonderland IS Truthful. So if we are going to get to the core of it, the question isn't what you forgot. The question is what made you forget."

The blades were so low now that had I stood up, the steel would have brushed against my hair.

I chose to remain seated.

"Forgetting isn't always an act," I replied. "Sometimes it's a consequence. When a memory fails and degrades, the mind discards what it deems useless."

"Yes. The mind." She reached into her coat again and placed a second object in the left pan. The right rose further. The gap between them was significant now.

What she placed there was a small square of lined paper. I could see that something was written on it, but I couldn't read it. However, the neat way it was folded and the dark, red-colored stain blooming across its edge felt strangely familiar.

"It's a list," she said. "Found in Wonderland's deeper pockets. Lists are interesting. People make them when they want to remember. And so the act of writing replaces the act of holding it in their mind. To externalize the record so the interior can be cleaned!"

The gallery started murmuring loudly.

"The list isn't mine," I responded. "So how would that change anything?"

"Of course it won't change anything," she agreed. "It was written by someone else. About someone else. About the stolen time." She looked at the folded paper in the pan. "The interesting thing about that list is that it constitutes evidence that the time existed. Someone was present for those hours and lived them. That someone was other than you." She looked at me. "Which raises the question again. What were you doing at those hours?"

I closed my eyes for a moment, attempting to parse her logic. I took a deep breath.

"If someone else documented those hours," I said, "those hours weren't missing. They exist in the person's record. So the gap the court is trying to assume I stole doesn't exist—"

"The gap," she cut me off, "exists in your record."

"My record is incomplete," I said. "That's been established. I have no memory."

She leaned forward. "And yet you arrived in Wonderland. And the court is just another stop on the End Road. And it leads to the white rabbit. And do you think, Alice, that the White Rabbit appears for people with incomplete records?" She let out a laugh, as if making fun of my understanding. "He appears when the time is ready. For those who know their past and present. You are not simply a man with missing memories. You are a man Wonderland sent for."

Above me stood the blades.

I could see the individual strands of hair now. Each blade was hanging by a single thread.

"Then Wonderland sent for the wrong man," I said.

She looked at me, but now I couldn't really tell her expression or what she was thinking as the blades covered all of my vision.

My speech quickened. "I saw the White Rabbit. When I first opened my eyes. If I were what the court is suggesting, a man responsible for a gap in the record who stole time. But the fact that I am following it makes me the one who's trying to recover those hours, the one who is trying to find them. So it doesn't make me the cause of why it doesn't exist."

The Queen of Hearts was silent.

The attendants were too.

She looked at the scale for a long time.

"The court will note your answer."

She pushed the stack of papers aside, sending them cascading to the floor. The sheets scattered before slowly bursting into flames.

"The judgment," she said, "is suspended. The court cannot reach a verdict on a record this incomplete. The gap will remain, for the court cannot fill it." She stood. "The road may fill it. The White Rabbit may fill it. And when the record is complete, judgment will proceed as fate dictates."

I noticed the knives ascending just enough to clear my head before they stopped, and in doing so, I stood up and stretched my arms.

I heard a noise and looked to the far right, where a mundane door had materialized out of thin air.

I walked toward the door with no other words. I could feel the weight of the blades; I couldn't help but lower my head to ensure they didn't strike me.

I stopped before the doors.

"That golden key," I said without turning around, "what does it open?"

Silence.

"That is what the court would very much like to know."

I walked through the door. through a pitch-black corridor. After taking three steps inside the corridor, I heard a sound behind me.

I turned to see that the courtroom floor, where I had just been standing, had vanished.

And so did the ground I stood on.

I could hear the blades beginning their descent behind me. The sound of them colliding with each other made it seem like a thunderstorm.

The area I was in held a pretty safe space, but I couldn't help but feel a bit nervous, as if one knife were to change its course of direction, I would be gone.

It was pitch black, with nothing beneath me and the red sky far, far above.

Down, down, down.

I crossed my arms, knowing for certainty that I would not die if I ever reached the bottom.

The reason? The Queen's own words.

The End Road was truthful. Wonderland was truthful.