THE ANTIPATHIES AND THE WELL OF DREAMS — PART TWO

THE ANTIPATHIES AND THE WELL OF DREAMS — PART TWO Spoilers through Grimm Fairy Tales Presents Wonderland #36. This picks up where Part One left off. I just finished #36, and now there's more to add to what the Antipathies were telling Calie about the Well. Their warning comes back in the middle of the fight with the Terror, and Calie finally understands what it means for the way she's been using her power. But first she has to get through Cheshire. At the end of #35, he was supposed to wake the man the Terror had been possessing. Instead, the Terror got into his head. Now we're inside that nightmare with him, going back into the violence he used to be part of. The Hatter is there, there are bodies everywhere, and the conversation keeps coming back to the White Rook and the people who were supposed to stand with the White Queen. The Terror talks about a nightmare that is also a memory. He goes straight at the part of Cheshire that enjoyed the hunt and the killing. That's what makes this so ugly. Cheshire has been trying to do something different, and the Terror knows exactly what to drag back up. There are these two-headed birds in the memory, speaking about the past and future, the White Rook, the Bishop, the pawns. The Hatter mocks them while Cheshire attacks. It gives us another look at how vicious the two of them were together, and how much of Wonderland's history Calie still doesn't know. Then Cheshire turns on her in the present. Calie tries to tell him that the nightmare isn't who he is. He pushes back hard. He claims that this is his truest self, talks about his desire for blood, and throws what he knows about her own doubts and anger back at her. She's standing in front of someone who has been protecting her, hearing him say he has wanted to end her life. Calie takes off her helmet and gives him her name. Calie Liddle. He keeps seeing the White Queen, and she reminds him that they're both more than one thing. He chose to leave his old life and follow her. He still has the ability to choose. That follows directly from what happened to her in the Well. She had to decide who she actually was and whether she still wanted the old life she saw in that dream. Here she has to reach Cheshire through his own past and remind him that he hasn't lost the choice he already made. He comes back enough to tell her something terrible. He says he killed people who would have fought beside her, people meant to become her champions. He names the White Bishop, the White Knight, and the White Rook. He also dismisses the army she has now as inexperienced and inadequate. That's a lot to drop on her while they're still trying to stop the Terror. Calie doesn't settle it there. She tells him they'll talk later, and he urges her to go after their enemy before he gets away. The confession is left sitting between them. Helping her now hasn't erased the people he says he took from her before she could even meet them. Then the Antipathies' warning comes back. Calie knows fear. She's lived through enough of it that the Terror can't simply assume she'll collapse when he reaches for it. She still feels it, but she describes it as something that drives her forward. While she's facing him, she remembers the Antipathies repeating that the Well is finite. And she gets it: she's taking too much. Using her powers draws on Wonderland itself. The place she's trying to protect is also the source she's reaching into every time she uses them. That gives the warning a direct consequence. She can't keep treating that power as something she can pour into every fight without thinking about what she's taking from the realm. So she changes what she's doing. She lets the heavy armor go and faces the Terror more openly, challenging him to show her the nightmares. The next time we see them back at the castle, he's their prisoner with the En Passant around his neck. The relic has done what they needed it to do. Calie tells the guards to keep it on him because it suppresses his power. She wants him held in the dungeon and questioned when he's conscious, to find out whether he's another nightmare of Wonderland or something more. They brought him back alive. That's where things stand after the fight, and it's important because the end of the issue doesn't leave him safely locked away. Before that, Calie goes back to Earth and checks on Violet. Violet wants to handle her own problems. Calie has to accept that her daughter is growing up and doesn't want her mother stepping into everything. That brings us back to the dream in the Well again, where she saw an older Violet who wanted a life of her own. Now she's dealing with the actual daughter she chose to return to, with all the distance and worry that comes with it. Calie is also back at the old Liddle house, facing what she's ready to leave behind. She accepts an invitation for coffee and decides it's time to move on. After all the fighting, the story gives her a moment to make a choice about her own life. Meanwhile, back in the dungeon, Jack and Cheshire are with the captive Terror. A rabbit figure comes down, gets close to Jack and his keys, and the Terror says the White Queen has succeeded in her quest and theirs. By the time Jack realizes something is wrong, the cell is open and the prisoner is gone. The En Passant is gone with him. So the last pages don't establish that the binding failed. Cheshire specifically says the artifact was still binding the Terror when he disappeared. Someone got a physical prisoner out of that cell, and the issue leaves Jack and Cheshire trying to work out what happened. Cheshire's last question is where the Squire is. That's a question at this point, not proof of what she did. I'm keeping this at #36 rather than jumping ahead to the answer. The big addition to the Well discussion is that Calie now understands the warning well enough to change how she fights. Her power has a cost to Wonderland. At the same time, Cheshire has admitted how much of her possible support he helped destroy, and the artifact they worked to retrieve has disappeared with their prisoner. She gets through this battle with a clearer understanding of what she's responsible for, and a lot less room to assume she's got everything under control.