雙語讀電影 《愛麗絲夢(mèng)游仙境-2》第19章 :我想要聽的就是這些。真的只是這些。

Hatter leaned forward like the prow of a ship as they cut their way deeper into the past. His eagle eyes spotted a f?licker of movement ahead. 
“There they are! Hurry!” he cried. 
As the Chronosphere’s golden light bobbed closer, they could see the royal sisters within its spinning rings. Mirana’s face was pale and drawn, and she eyed Iracebeth warily. Ignoring her sister, Iracebeth had her eyes locked on the ocean. 
Then Iracebeth yanked on a lever and the Chronosphere dove toward a specif?ic day in the past. She steered the Chronosphere through a chilly gray sky. The town of Witzend appeared below, windows glowing as people lit lanterns and f?ires indoors. 
The Chronosphere squeezed through an opening in Witzend Castle and rolled to a stop in an abandoned corridor. Iracebeth clutched her sister’s arm, and she pulled her from the Chronosphere, which began to shrink into a tiny ball. 
“Where are we?” Mirana asked. 
“You know where we are,” Iracebeth answered darkly. 
As Mirana looked around, she realized she did know: they were just outside their childhood bedroom. And she had a pretty good guess as to when they were. Her forehead creased and she hung back as Iracebeth cracked open the door. 
Queen Elsmere’s voice rang out from the room. “Why are these crusts under your bed?” Mirana’s shoulders stiffened. 
“She put them there!” Iracebeth’s young voice cried out. 
“Did you, Mirana?” Elsmere asked. 
In the hallway, the older Iracebeth rounded on her sister. “Did you, Mirana?” she whispered accusingly. 
From within the room, they could hear the younger Iracebeth becoming insistent. “You did! Tell her!” 
“Tell the truth, Mirana,” Queen Elsmere commanded sternly. “Did you eat the tarts and put the crusts there?” 
The sisters both tensed; they knew what came next. Iracebeth’s face f?lushed with anger, and Mirana’s eyes were full of regret. 
Bang! Alice, Hatter, and Time crashed into the corridor. 
“No,” Mirana’s younger self whispered. 
Gong! The clock tower in Witzend sang out, its toll carrying far through the wintry air. Scooping up the Chronosphere from the stone hallway, Alice hurried toward the queens, with Time and Hatter at her side. 
Years of betrayal, loneliness, and anger roared up in Iracebeth as she heard her sister deny the crime again, and she reached for the door, ready to f?ling it open. 
“Iracebeth, wait!” Mirana cried, grabbing her sister’s arm. “I ... I lied.” 
Iracebeth blinked, taken aback. 
“I ate the tarts,” Mirana continued. “And I lied about it.” Tears welled in her deep brown eyes. “If I had just told the truth, none of this would have ever happened. I’m so sorry.” 
Alice and the others came to a halt a few feet away, caught up in the intensity of the moment. 
“Forgive me. Please. If you can,” Mirana f?inished. 
Looking into Mirana’s face, Iracebeth remembered when they used to be the best of friends. 
They would giggle together as they played hopscotch. At the beach, they had made the most amazing pink sand castle together. It had four tall crooked towers circling the main one. Hand in hand, Mirana and Iracebeth had combed the beach to f?ind the prettiest shells to decorate it. 
Sometimes at night, the girls had curled up together to read. Iracebeth had waited patiently for Mirana—the slower reader—to reach the end of the page before she turned to the next. Iracebeth’s hair, always more stubborn than Mirana’s, would fall into her eyes and Mirana would gently tuck it back behind her ears for her. 
Iracebeth felt a tear slide down her cheek at the memories. 
“That’s all I ever wanted to hear. Really it was,” she said, sniff?ing. 
Overcome with emotion, Mirana and Iracebeth collapsed into each other’s arms. For the f?irst time in many years, Iracebeth felt warm from the inside out. 
Creak. The bedroom door opened fully. The younger Iracebeth ran out, and she crashed into Mirana’s and Iracebeth’s skirts and stumbled backward. 
“Oh, bother,” Iracebeth the older said. 
The child version of her looked directly into her older self’s oversized face. She paused in shock. Then she screamed and screamed until— 
Poof! 
Both Iracebeths froze, an orange-red powder crusting over their skin. 
“Iracebeth!” Mirana cried. 
Like a f?irework going off, rust exploded from the two Iracebeths, then crawled along the carpet and up Elsmere and the younger Mirana until they, too, were statues. 
But the rust didn’t stop there. 
It kept spreading, corroding everything around them. 
“Oh, this can’t be good,” Hatter mumbled. 
“She has broken the past! We’ve got to get to the Grand Clock before it stops forever,” Time cried. 
The Grand Clock was not faring well. Wilkins frowned as he and the Seconds pumped levers and greased cogs. 
“Come on, chaps! Keep it swinging,” Wilkins called, his voice desperate. He looked around in dismay. 
Rust was spreading throughout the Grand Clock, making the gears grind slower and throwing off the delicate balance of the clockwork. 
Time was hunched inside the Chronosphere, holding his side in pain as Alice and the rest of their group crowded in next to him. Shooting Time a worried look, Alice steered the Chronosphere out of Witzend Castle and up into the snowy sky. Below them, a circle of rust rippled out from the castle, carpeting the streets, painting the buildings red, and halting people and animals mid-breath. 
Gon— 
The chime of the church’s clock cut off abruptly as rust covered the tower. 
Hatter’s mouth tugged down at the sight. 
“I still don’t understand why we had to bring her with us,” he muttered to Alice. He glanced at the rust-frozen f?igure stretched out on the bottom of the Chronosphere, taking up most of the f?loorspace. Mirana had tears running down her cheeks as she cradled Iracebeth’s head in her lap. But Hatter couldn’t summon much sympathy for the Red Queen. 
Alice patted his shoulder with her free hand. She knew how hard it could be to forgive. But she was discovering that everyone had a past. Nobody was all good or all bad. Iracebeth had had her share of pain; she just hadn’t known how to handle it. 
The Chronosphere popped out into the f?lowing light above the Ocean of Time, and Alice spun them toward the present. 
Yet a troubling new wave had formed in the ocean below them. Like a row of toy soldiers falling down, one after another, the days began to crackle, each one’s moments inf?iltrated by rust. 
“It’s catching up!” Hatter cried worriedly. 
They rocketed forward, f?lashing by familiar days. But the rust was right behind them, invading the scenes of their past. F?inally, they burst into the present above Iracebeth’s castle. 
The Hightopps and Alice’s friends stared up as the Chronosphere zoomed by. 
“That crazy boy might actually pull this off—” Zanik was saying when a wave of rust slammed into him, freezing him with his mouth open. 
The rust swept over the others, catching Bayard, McTwisp, Mallymkun, and Thackery. The Tweedles backed up as far as they could, huddling together, but the wave washed over them, as well. 
As Hatter saw his family and friends suspended mid-motion, their eyes wide with alarm, he winced. 
“Hurry, Alice, please,” Hatter urged. 
Alice threw her weight against a lever, and the Chronosphere banged inside Iracebeth’s castle. 
Behind them, the doors to the castle burst open, and a liquid wave of rust poured into the chamber. It splashed against the wall and split into two waves that bore down on the Chronosphere while Alice maneuvered it up the root staircase. 
With a loud creak, a section of ceiling gave way and crashed into the space where the Chronosphere had just been. Time groaned as he gazed through the new gap: the sky had turned a gritty red and brown as rust cascaded down on the land. 
Doing her best to concentrate, Alice tugged on a lever, and the Chronosphere pivoted, spinning into a room off the stairwell. Ahead of them, Iracebeth’s black grandfather clock loomed. 
Two waves of rust f?looded into the room, racing along the curved walls toward the clock. Eyeing the distance and the waves, Hatter didn’t think they would make it. 
“Well, I’ve really enjoyed our time together, Alice,” Hatter said. A wistful smile crossed his face. 
Alice ignored him. She, too, was making calculations. Without warning, she slammed on the brakes, sending the Chronosphere into a tight spin. 
As it whirled in place, the two waves crashed into each other in front of the clock. Then they both receded for a moment, the force of their impact reversing their directions. 
Seeing their chance, Alice threw off the brakes and thrust the Chronosphere forward, straight toward the clock. 
Boom! The clock exploded as the Chronosphere crashed through it and plummeted into the dark space beyond, rust pouring through the gap behind it. 
Alice spotted in the distance and coaxed more speed from the Chronosphere. Almost there, she thought. She aimed for a stained glass window, and with a crash, bang, boom, the Chronosphere smashed through it and bounced along the f?loor of the Grand Clock’s chamber. 
F?inally knocking into a pillar, the Chronosphere spun to a stop, spitting everyone out, as though it couldn’t handle holding them any longer. Time went f?lying and Iracebeth’s metal frame clanked against the f?loor. Alice staggered to her feet and snatched up the shrinking Chronosphere. With no time to waste, she raced along the f?loor toward the center of the Grand Clock, her friends just behind her. Close on their heels, waves of liquid rust crashed into the room from all sides, pouring toward the Grand Clock. 
Alice led the charge, with Time, Hatter, and Mirana running behind her, dodging around unrecognizable stalagmites and lumps. With a grimace, Alice realized some of them were the struggling, rust-decayed forms of Seconds, Minutes, and Hours. Closer to the center, they passed by Wilkins, his body cemented to the ground with rust. 
“We did our best, sir,” Wilkins said as Time drew near. 
Time saluted him but kept running. Now waves of rust lapped at the group’s feet. Mirana fell f?irst; then Wilkins was washed over. Encircling Hatter’s legs, the rust began to climb upward. 
“Alice,” Hatter said, his voice carrying a mixture of sadness and hope. 
Alice wouldn’t stop, couldn’t stop. Everything depended on her. 
She hopped through the Grand Clock, whose pieces were barely moving now. The gears were almost stationary and the hammers creaked up and down at a snail’s pace. 
A few steps behind her, Time cried out as the wave of rust caught up to him. He sank to his knees, then crumpled under its weight. 
It was the end of Time. 
The hammer above Alice froze as the Grand Clock gave out. Stepping into the gap at the center of the clock, Alice felt something wrap around her ankles. The odd sensation moved up her legs, encasing her in a gritty metal powder. 
As her waist became constricted, she stretched up, focusing her eyes on the center of the clock. 
Rust raced up her outstretched arm. With one f?inal push, her f?ingers slammed the Chronosphere into place, then froze a hairsbreadth away. 
Underland lay silent and motionless under a blanket of rust. 
Not a puff of breath or a beating heart could be heard. 
There could be no world without Time. 

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