Kingdom Keepers VI

by Ridley Pearson

“We pretend we didn’t see anything and call Security. No heroics. Got it?”

  “Hey, you and I are paired up, Whitman. No heroics. Agreed.”

  “Same for you two,” Finn said, mostly to Willa.

  “Way ahead of you,” she said.

  Charlene looked at Maybeck and he looked back at her, and for a moment Finn thought he was going to be sick.

  “Let’s do this.”

  * * *

  The Aruba orientation in the ship’s Walt Disney Theatre began with a welcome to the audience from Christian, the director of entertainment. He stood alone on the huge stage in his ship whites, pressed and sharp. He cracked a joke about the ceiling falling while a slideshow of Aruba played behind him on a screen bigger than most houses.

  Finn and Maybeck heard him clearly over the backstage speakers, and caught the blinding white of his uniform out of the corners of their eyes.

  Charlene and Willa separated from the two boys upon entering backstage—two performers looking for the beauty salon. They descended the stairs leading to where Chernabog’s crate had been found earlier, empty.

  Upstairs, Finn pushed the walkie-talkie’s button. “Clear?” he asked Philby, adjusting the iPhone earbud in his right ear.

  “Yes. I don’t see anyone.” Philby was monitoring the backstage cameras, running interference for both search parties.

  Maybeck led the way, cutting across the back of the deep stage behind the giant projection screen.

  Backstage areas were separated by drops—thick fabric curtain dividers. As Finn and Maybeck approached, they saw the metal hull walls stacked with well-organized groupings of stage furniture and show props, all of it tied down and secured. Neon tape designated safe walking lanes. To his credit, and to Finn’s astonishment, Maybeck remained inside the yellow.

  They passed giant alphabet blocks used in a Toy Story show, pieces of a disassembled castle, jungle vegetation, and a pushcart from Beauty and the Beast. They carefully searched for a possible hiding place for an eight-foot-tall half-breed monster with flaming eyes.

  “Nothing big enough,” Maybeck told Finn in a whisper.

  “Agreed.”

  They passed a ten-foot tower of stacked tables, all fitting together like a puzzle. “But this is cool, right?” Finn said.

  “Totally.”

  “How about inside one of the alphabet blocks?”

  “I guess it’s possible,” Maybeck said, “but he’d be squished.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t care if he’s in torpor. We could try to move them. Test how heavy they are.”

  “Solid.”

  The boys reversed direction just as Philby spoke into Finn’s ear. “Red alert!”

  “Hide!” Finn hissed.

  The two boys slipped behind the alphabet blocks as two stagehands walked past the prop storage, silhouettes against the big screen. Their gait was stiff-legged, like robots or soldiers.

  Maybeck sneezed, causing Finn to jump. One of the stagehands turned.

  Finn spun away and slapped his back to the wood block. Maybeck’s face glowed bluish in the dark; he looked thunderstruck by his mistake.

  “Dust,” he said.

  “Not good,” Finn said.

  * * *

  Willa and Charlene huddled at the bottom of the backstage stairs. Every surface of the hallway was painted black and dimly lit by blue neon to keep stray light from infiltrating backstage.

  Male voices echoed throughout, giving little hint as to their source or direction. To the right, the hallway dead-ended in a T; to the left it ran straight, clear across the area beneath the stage and to the other wing.

  The girls knew from their earlier attempt to find Chernabog that two of the rooms off this corridor accessed substage service rooms, where the elevator lifts from the stage’s three trapdoors were loaded and unloaded. But there were other doors as well. Chernabog could be in hidden on the other side of any of them.

  Twenty feet down the corridor, the sounds became clearer.

  “We are walking toward the voices, Willa,” Charlene hissed.

  “I’ve got that,” Willa said. She tried a door. Locked. She waved the crew member ID card supplied by Wayne. Unlocked. They stepped inside and switched on the light.

  Four green-metal electric panel boxes on the wall, each the size of a washing machine, produced a loud humming. They carried stickers warning of electric shock—the stick figure lying down apparently symbolizing death. Metal conduits crisscrossed the ceiling. The room was small and was absurdly hot. It was not even close to being big enough to hide Chernabog.

  The next door would not open to Willa’s credentials. It was labeled SERVICE BREAKERS—NO ADMITTANCE. They took it at face value.

  A door to their left was familiar to them both as the larger of the two substage service areas. Some of the voices were clearly coming from within this room. Willa shook her head, but Charlene moved the lever anyway; the door opened. Charlene poked her head inside.

  “Oh!” she said, feigning surprise. “Sorry; I’m looking for the washroom.”

  Four guys wearing the all-black uniforms of stagehands, each holding a water bottle, sat on upturned crates.

  “Two doors down,” said a potbellied. “On the right.”

  Charlene took a mental snapshot of the space. The lightbulbs were turned down lower than candlelight, the blue neon painting the room in an otherworldly way. Chernabog’s smashed crate was nowhere to be seen. As before, the space was immaculately clean and tidy—shipshape—despite the dozens of props and pieces of furniture it contained. Every square inch was thoughtfully organized and accounted for. If Chernabog was still in here somewhere, it was far from obvious where he might be hidden.

  “Your entrance isn’t for another twenty.” The man who spoke had sharp, angular features like a mouse’s; narrow-set, suspicious eyes; and the weight of distrust in his voice. He checked a clipboard. “Greenroom’s at the top of the stairs, starboard.”

  “Go easy on her, Dixon,” the heavy guy said.

  “There’s a washroom off the greenroom,” said Dixon. “But you know that.”

  The subtext: What are you doing down here?

  “Got it! Thanks!” Charlene said. She pulled the door shut.

  Willa looked upset. Charlene made a face as if to say: So shoot me, I had to look! They had a mission to fulfill, and Charlene was more a field agent than an analyst; she liked action.

  Not much bigger than a kitchen pantry, the next room smelled of engine oil and was filled with machinery. Again, no room for something Chernabog’s size. This was the trouble for the Keepers: any space identified as backstage and therefore away from guests was filled and utilized; there wasn’t an unused or unoccupied square inch on the ship.

  “Trouble following directions?” A man’s voice.

  They turned to see Dixon, the rodent-faced stagehand, blocking their way.

  “Funny, this doesn’t look like the girls’ room to me,” he said, his voice void of inflection.

  “We…ah…”

  His eyes didn’t seem to focus. He stared past them in a daze. “Best if you come with me, please.” He produced a wooden billy club from out of nowhere and slapped his left palm with it. “We can do this peaceful-like, or not so peaceful.”

  “You’re not going to hit a girl,” Willa said.

  “No, I’m going to hit two girls. If I have to. Your choice.” That same dreadfully calm voice.

  A spell? Willa wondered. The idea was chilling: a thousand crew and Cast Members traveling on the ship, with some of them acting as undercover OTs? She didn’t like those odds.

  Charlene faked a cough to cover her saying, “On three.” Willa nodded.

  Charlene patted her leg once, twice… Her third strike was accompanied by a front handspring and a one-eighty-degree pivot back handspring directly into the face of the zoned-out crewman. He flew off his feet and across the hall without having gotten the club to shoulder height.

  Willa took off down the hall, running
away from the room full of men, heading to port. The sound of the stage’s public-address system played from small speakers. Some kind of scientist was being introduced. She went to speak to Charlene, but she wasn’t there.

  Willa stopped and looked back.

  Charlene had knocked the club from the skinny guy’s hand. She hooked a knee around his neck and leaped to her side, flipping the guy like a beached fish in some kind of MMA move Willa had never seen. Charlene tugged free a length of rope the man had tucked into his belt—rope meant for tying up two girls?—and bound his hands behind his back like she was a policewoman. Lacking a gag, she pulled his shoe and sock off and stuffed his dirty sock into his mouth. She waved for Willa to come help her.

  Willa couldn’t move.

  Charlene gestured a second time, more desperately. Her eyes said, Hurry!

  The man kicked Charlene in the chest, sending her airborne across the room.

  “Uhhf!” Charlene grunted as the wind was knocked out of her.

  The man stood and reared his leg back to kick her while she was down.

  He fell flat onto his face. With his hands tied behind his back, he couldn’t protect himself. He was knocked unconscious. Willa looked down. She held his bare foot in her hand; she had upended him.

  Charlene regained some breath. “Way to go, Willa. Nice move!”

  Willa helped Charlene to her feet. Together, they dragged the unconscious man into the machine room and pulled the door shut.

  Charlene tried to steady her breathing. “Next time, remind me to come as a hologram. For the record, this is way too difficult.”

  Willa laughed. The girls fled down the hall.

  Upstairs, the audience broke into applause.

  * * *

  “Hey,” Finn said, innocently, lowering his voice for the sake of the lecture going on. “We’re looking for the greenroom.”

  “Sure you are,” a clean-cut Joe College–type guy said.

  The two crewmen moved closer to Finn.

  “What are you doing hiding back here?” the second man said. Built like a weightlifter, he was short but solid, with a young face.

  “We…ah…” Maybeck was fast on his feet, but not always with his thinking.

  “We weren’t hiding. We had this bet,” Finn said, “about what letter was on the other side of the bottom block. I said it was an R. My friend here, a B.”

  “We had the same blocks when were kids,” Maybeck said.

  The two guys separated. Neither Finn nor Maybeck liked the look of that. The stocky one moved toward the blocks while Joe College faced them.

  “And what was the letter?” inquired Joe College.

  Finn and Maybeck exchanged slightly panicked looks in the flashing light from the slide show, which was continuing on the big screen above.

  The weightlifter leaned in to look at the back side of the alphabet block.

  Maybeck shook his head ever so slightly, like a pitcher shaking off a catcher’s signal; he didn’t want to make the guess.

  Finn took in the visible letters on the existing stack of blocks.

  “It’s E,” he said.

  He and Maybeck watched as the short guy nodded to his partner.

  Maybeck shot him a look that said, How could you have known that?

  “So. We should be getting to the greenroom,” Finn said.

  Joe didn’t move. He rocked his head back, eyes on the ceiling. “So…what exactly are we going to do with you?”

  Maybeck had had enough. “Look, man, you can join us in the greenroom. That’s where we’re going.”

  “I don’t think so,” Joe said in a menacing voice. “We hear your two girlfriends are poking around downstairs where they don’t belong. What is it you kids are looking for? Witches? Monsters?” His tone was mocking. “Grow up.”

  “Just the letter on the block. Really,” Finn said.

  “Uh-huh. Right. Now, there should be five of you. Where’s the other boy?”

  Finn didn’t like how much Joe knew.

  “Schedule says five of you. Where’s the fifth? Huh? Hiding somewhere? Like you two?”

  “We weren’t hiding,” Finn said defiantly. “I told you, we were—”

  “Yeah. I got that the first time.” He stepped closer. “Must be coincidence, all of you just happening to arrive early.”

  “Don’t trouble your brain,” an annoyed Maybeck said. “You must have a microphone to go plug in or something.”

  Finn scowled at him. Cool it!

  “Stage manager would like to speak to you. Downstairs. We’ll go this way.” Joe College indicated the port side of the stage.

  The strongman remained a few paces behind Maybeck, squeezing the boys between himself and his partner.

  “Actually, we’re going to meet the girls. Wouldn’t want them to worry,” Finn said.

  “Boys,” Philby said into Finn’s and Maybeck’s ears, “I can throw a breaker, killing the lights but not the presentation. Emergency lights will kick in. You might get a second or two.”

  “We’ll make sure the girls join you. Trust me.” Joe had a hungry glint to his eye.

  “Yes!” Maybeck said, a little loudly given the presentation taking place a matter of yards away. Finn saw his hand on his radio; Maybeck was signaling Philby.

  The backstage went black.

  Maybeck attacked the strongman, diving blindly into his legs and knocking him down. He drove an elbow into the back of the man’s neck, stunning his spine and briefly paralyzing him.

  Finn had kept his eye on Joe, knowing it would be dark by the time he attacked. He shoved the guy, hoping to knock him down.

  The emergency lights flashed, went dark, and came on again for good. As the sterile white light strobed like something on a dance floor, Finn saw Joe College halfway across the backstage area, just getting to his feet.

  Had he done that? he wondered. In years past, when the other guys on the baseball team hit triples, Finn could only manage singles. He was fast and agile, but he wasn’t exactly muscleman material.

  Had the guy taken off in the dark, slipped, and fallen? If so, why the look he was giving Finn—one of both anger and…respect?

  Joe charged. Finn’s knees went to rubber. But as the lights flickered off and then on for good, Finn balled his fists and connected on an upswing with Joe’s chin. Joe looked like he’d hit a patch of ice.

  “Sorry,” Finn said, forgetting himself for a moment.

  He stared at his own hands. Did I do that?

  Willa and Charlene appeared from the right, running frantically.

  Maybeck lay faceup on the stage floor where he’d dived. Finn offered him a hand, and with one arm lifted Maybeck onto his feet. Reminded of his explosive swimming, Finn wondered what was going on. A spell?

  “Quickly,” he said.

  Maybeck looked dazed.

  “I’m okay,” Finn said, thinking that was the source of his friend’s bewilderment.

  “Piñata,” Maybeck said in a harsh whisper.

  Just the one word: piñata.

  * * *

  The four Keepers passed behind the projection screen. The reversed image showed what the speaker called a “ceremonial arch.”

  “Carved into the stones of the arch you can see pictographs and glyphs. These are an example of the ancient Mayan language, which is not dissimilar to glyphs found in Aruban caves. Historians and archeologists speculate that there was much trade and cross- cultural exchange within the Caribbean during the Mayan and Aztec dynasties.”

  Finn led the team around to the far side, aware that their opponents would be fast on their heels. As they hurried, a close-up of one of the pictographs appeared on the screen, now fifteen feet high.

  “This is janaab, the Mayan symbol for ‘flower,’” he said.

  “Seriously? That’s number four!” Willa cried. As a group they arrived at stage left. “That’s the Mayan character I couldn’t find: flower! So it’s gold, island, cave, flower.”

  Charlene said
, “Gold island, flower cave.”

  Her rearrangement of the words made it a kind of game; a game the boys weren’t interested in. Their attention was fixed on the backstage area, where Philby had restored the blue light.

  The two zoned-out stagehands were up and moving.

  “Island cave, gold flower.”

  Both girls gasped and repeated the words in unison, voices rising in excitement: “Island cave, gold flower!”

  * * *

  Dixon appeared at the top of the stairs, blocking the stage-door exit. The other two, Joe College and the weightlifter, approached from backstage.

  “We’re talking OT sandwich,” Maybeck said. “And we’re the PB-and-J.”

  The two stagehands closed fast. Joe walked with an angry limp.

  “Not good,” Finn said.

  “Grab hands,” Willa said, “and get ready to smile.”

  “What?” Maybeck said, incredulously. But before he could protest, Willa took his hand and led the Keepers out onto the stage—the one place the stagehands could not follow.

  A wild cheer arose from the audience. The speaker wasn’t sure how to handle their early entrance.

  Behind them, the stagehands divided; the weightlifter crossed backstage, reappearing on the opposite side, trapping them.

  They were a Kingdom Keeper short—no Philby—but the audience didn’t seem to care. Many were on their feet, giving the group a standing ovation.

  Maybeck spoke to Finn through a fake smile. “Like a piñata.”

  Finn had no idea what he meant. “You must have hit your head pretty hard. You’re talking nonsense.”

  “I’m telling you: a piñata.”

  The audience stomped and cheered. The stage floor vibrated. Christian crossed toward them, waving to the crowd.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, your very own Kingdom Keepers!”

  Another loud cheer from the audience.

  Finn glanced back to see the janaab image. Island cave. Gold flower. Island gold, cave flower? While he waved to the audience, his mind worked through the various combinations and tried to throw a piñata into the mix. He couldn’t make sense of any of it.

  Christian did a nice job of covering for their early entrance. The lecturer looked dazed. Didn’t know where he was.