Two days later, to our great surprise, Millie and Jack signed a 'Declaration of Intent to Marry, giving their names as Jack Dawkins and Agnes Fleming.
Ernest invited us all for a drink in his study to wish the couple the best of luck for the future. Jack stood up, formally thanked us for our kindness, and proposed a toast to Ernest and Albert. That done, he sat back down and, with a smile on his face, said,
"Well, I know this has come as a bit of a shock. We owe you all an explanation, and Agnes has volunteered to do it."
"Forced to do it more like it," said Agnes. "Jack is still a bit shy about public speaking, but I hope you have noticed the improvement in his speech. He has been working hard at it. I told him that I didn't mind, cockney accent and rhyming slang included, but he wanted to set a good example for baby Oliver, and I could hardly disagree with that."
At the sound of the child's name, there was a gasp from those who realised her true identity for the first time, but some of us had already guessed.
Yes, I am Agnes Fleming, and I first saw life in the novel Oliver Twist as an unmarried but pregnant woman. My father evicted me from the family home and left me destitute. I had no choice but to throw myself at the mercy of a workhouse, and it was within those grim walls that I died in childbirth. My role in the novel was brief, but important in that I gave birth to Oliver, the hero of the story. The name 'Oliver Twist' was the name given to my child by the Beadle of the Workhouse, Mr Bumble; it had no connection to me or my family."
She went on to tell us that when she gained independence from the novel, she began her life in the World of Fiction, or 'Fiction,' as people there call it for short, and her stay there was brief but happy.
David Copperfield rose to his feet and asked her a question.
"I thought I recognised you. May I ask how long you lived in Fiction?"
"A matter of weeks," Agnes replied. "I was on a different level from you, of course, on the Oliver Twist, 'Shelf,' as we call our different counties, but I once saw your own Agnes, Agnes Wickfield, by chance, through a gap in the border between our shelves.
The previous version of myself still lives in 'Fiction', of course, but she knows nothing of me, and the new life I began. However, I remember my past life and share her memories.
I went to bed as normal on my last night there, although I did not know that to be the case at the time. The next morning, I awoke in a strange but comfortable bed with Oliver by my side.
"Did you know where you were?" David asked.
"Not at first. I was later to learn I was in a world called 'The Melting Pot.'
I had moved on as an alternate version of Agnes Fleming. The version of me that existed in 'Fiction' would have woken up the next morning as usual, unaware that another version of herself was now living an independent life in another world. The ability to remember a former life only occurs once, A fact that Jack and I were to learn to our disadvantage when we left the 'Melting Pot.'
" I knew Jack by sight in the World of Fiction, but I did not much like his character in Oliver Twist and never spoke to him. It was only in the Melting Pot that I first met Jack properly. To my surprise, I found that he was kind and gentle and helped me a great deal with caring for the baby.
"The Melting Pot was a place of rehabilitation, a haven of healing and regrowth, where those treated harshly by life in their original creation were given time to develop into more rounded versions of their characters. With sympathetic counselling, the particularly unfortunate ones, like Jack, for example, would be the type of person they would have become had their parents provided them with a loving and caring childhood.
"Without the deprivation and cruelty endured by their original selves, their true personalities shone through. Jack had become a different person during his time in the 'Melting Pot,' and now had only a couple of weeks left before he departed to start a new life.
Jack had filled out a bit and was much healthier, now looking more his true age of eighteen, the same as me. His arrested physical development was undoubtedly due to the deprivations of hunger and want that he had endured since birth. That he had not shown hate towards the society that had neglected him so badly was a sign of his innate good character waiting for the opportunity to shine through."
"Thank you, Agnes," said Ernest. "That was all remarkably interesting. I take it that the 'Melting Pot' was the last place you remember living before finding yourself on the bridge in London?"
"Yes, sir," she said.
"Good. Now, perhaps we could persuade Jack to tell us his story in his own words. We know nothing about him, except for his outstanding role as guide and mentor to Peregrine as they navigated the dangerous streets of London together. Will you give us an account of your early life, Jack? We would be very grateful if you would."
"I don't know hardly where to begin," Jack said, clearly embarrassed.
"Take your time, Jack; we are all friends here," said Ernest.
"Well, my name is Jack Dawkins, and I first came to independent life in the 'World of Fiction.' Agnes and I lived on the same Oliver Twist shelf, but in different chapters. We did not know each other, although I had seen her on social occasions when all the players got together. I was officially a 'principal character' in the novel, and I attracted a certain amount of attention, but it was not usually friendly due to my notoriety, and I was generally unpopular.
Agnes Fleming dies at the start of the novel and does not play a further part, but she always got a fair bit of respect, not just for her role of Oliver's mother, but for her kind nature.
"In Oliver Twist, my name was 'The Artful Dodger,' and I got up to a fair bit of mischief—criminal mischief, picking pockets, and the like—for my boss, Fagin. I don't remember much about being a child. I always thought of myself as a man who thieved to live. In the end, the police arrested me, and the judge gave me a sentence of transportation. That was the end of my role in the novel.
"But this one time, without any known reason, I was suddenly plucked from the air in the 'World of Fiction,' and found myself back in the identity of the 'Artful Dodger,' at the point where the novel left me.
"I was in a prison cell, and through the high, barred window, I could see daylight and hear screeching of seagulls, as if we were close to the sea. The police must have driven me from the court in London to a port on the coast to await my transportation to Australia.
"This scared me, and before I knew it, there I was, repenting the ways of my old life and blubbing like a baby. It got so bad that I would have said my prayers if I had known any. Eventually, I fell asleep and dreamt of my mother. I don't remember her face or anything about our short time together, but I knew it was her. She was full of remorse for abandoning me as a child, and she said she wanted me to have a fresh start.
"I woke up the next morning and, for the first time in my life, found myself in a bed with clean sheets and pillows. I had somehow arrived in the 'Melting Pot.' Agnes has told you about how we came together. She reckons it was fate, and it might have been.
We recognised each other as like souls. Two people who had never known love when they most needed it, and now they had love to give. Our relationship flourished, but all too soon, I was moved out of the 'Melting Pot.'
When I first arrived in London from the Melting Pot, it was in the new identity of Jack, a boy who lived on his wits and had scrapes with the law but who was not a criminal. When Peregrine and I first met Agnes in London, she was destitute and called herself 'Millie.' We did not recognise each other, just as Agnes had predicted before I left the Melting Pot.
When I met 'Millie' and her baby for the second time at the hotel, we both felt a sensation as if we knew each other from another place but couldn't remember where. I also felt a natural closeness with baby Oliver, but it was only when we arrived here on Earth Minor that our memories resurfaced.
I reckon that considering all we have been through, we were due a bit of good fortune,
I could not have been more fortunate than to be reunited with Agnes.
Never again will we be parted."
He sat down, and Agnes rose to her feet. With shining eyes, she looked at Jack and said.
" No, Jack, never again…"