Kingdom Keepers the Return Book 3

by Ridley Pearson

  “Right” meant a steely determination to outwit security and avoid being seen by Fairlies and Barracks officers, all of whom she knew to be in attendance. She used the backstage Cast Member entrance to get out of the tangle of guests and ran—ran hard. She was no Charlene, but living in the Barracks had trained her to marshal her strength, to summon up every advantage she possessed. She’d learned to run at her fastest, to lift her chin instead of slouching her shoulders, to carry her knees high into her chest and allow her ankles to drive her off the surface.

  She ran past the Indiana Jones show building. Drawing surprised looks from other backstage Cast Members, as well as a few smiles, she pushed on, driven by the sound of the train and the clock running in her head.

  Await the signal. It’ll be given near the top of the hour.

  Mickey’s Soundsational Parade began around 3:00 p.m. With the parade providing distraction for the guests and work for the park’s security team, it was a good time for the Fairlie sabotage. “The top of the hour” was only ten minutes away.

  As Mattie cut through a small parking lot, yet another enormous backstage structure looming to her right, something quick and sharp pierced her heart. Though it was an uncommon feeling, she understood immediately it had to do with the Keepers: Willa, Maybeck, Charlene, and Philby. She pushed herself for a fifth name—wasn’t there a fifth Keeper?—but could not dredge it up. She repeated the four names yet again, unable to think of the fifth.

  Were there only four? Could she get a number like that wrong? Running faster, harder, she tried to bring an image of the fifth Keeper’s face—girl or boy? Latino? Asian? White?—into focus. But there was nothing.

  Angry at herself, frustrated, she sprinted toward the train station, which was now in sight, the train just beginning to move. The sensation of loss propelled her. Her heart held on to the pain, convincing her that something—someone—had been lost. It was as if she’d read a person bearing the weight of a tremendous, unshakable grief.

  Scrambling up an incline, Mattie reached the backstage side of the New Orleans train station, with its wooden platform and station buildings, including a post office. She charged along parallel to the last few departing train cars with their green-and-white awning tops, fire-engine-red siding, and black-and-white-striped railings. A female passenger saw her and waved her finger, admonishing Mattie, telling her that she’d missed the train.

  Mattie caught the final car, took hold of the rail, and, with the platform running out, jumped.

  JOE GARLINGTON POUNDED THE DESK so hard some coffee spurted out the top of his mug onto the papers beneath.

  The desk did not belong to him; the office was not his. He’d been offered it by Kim Irvine, who was in China on a project. Teresa stood before him solemnly, head slightly bowed.

  “What exactly does she have in mind?” he bellowed.

  “I’d prefer not to say, Joe.”

  “You’d what?”

  Teresa said nothing.

  “You think you’re protecting her? From me? Do you understand the idiocy of that? I’m on her side, Teresa! Your side!”

  “She told me to tell you about the Tower. The hostage. That we had to wait for the signal.”

  “She disobeyed me. Do you understand? She directly went against my instructions, instructions that had to do with her safety and ultimately the safety of the four…”

  “Joe?”

  “I…it’s a number thing…Four? I can’t seem to…Never mind. The point is that the teenagers apparently working for Amery Jr. are a threat to this park and its guests. Mattie has been playing a dangerous game.”

  “But I thought you and the Imagineers—”

  “Yes, well, we changed our minds. Putting her undercover was irresponsible and more dangerous than we’d imagined. Now Ezekiel’s missing as well, and you bring me this information, and I’m supposed to wait for some signal you won’t describe? I have a responsibility to act on this information. His life could be in danger!”

  “You have to wait for her signal. It’ll be heard across the park.”

  Joe squirmed in his chair, half stood up. Sat down again.

  She said, “It’s a one-if-by-land, two-if-by-sea kind of thing. That kind of signal. Going after Zeke Hollingsworth early could trigger something bad. Mattie was adamant about that. A different signal maybe? Something more radical? We could backstab her.”

  “I could, you mean?”

  “Joe, I think—I know that Mattie felt strongly about this. She has one chance, maybe the only chance, to make the park safe. To help us rescue Zeke.”

  “We know things you don’t, Teresa. About Mattie, about these other kids. I appreciate your concern. I certainly do.”

  “Yes, sir.” Teresa’s change from the informal did not go unnoticed. Joe stared at her long and hard. She said, “Please, sir, she trusts us.”

  GUESTS ABOARD THE DISNEYLAND Railroad grunted and complained as Mattie climbed over them. She reached the aisle and hurried forward, toward the front, where a small fire car separated the passenger cars from the locomotive.

  Mattie practically dove into a seat as she saw the profile of James Corwin, the adult reacher she’d encountered with Zeke. James Calder Corwin, the man whose internal thoughts had shown her the familiar faces of Fairlies being used as park saboteurs.

  She tried to follow Corwin’s line of sight. He’d reached her when they’d made contact. A reacher could easily “force” the conductor to send whatever whistle signal Corwin wanted to send. But why a grown-up and not a Fairlie—unless…Mattie scanned the other passengers, frustrated she could see only the backs of heads.

  Why send a reacher?

  Why an adult like Corwin?

  Then it hit her: Hollingsworth was taking no chances. What if he’d gotten word of the Barracks Fairlies revolt? He’d sent Corwin to make sure it never happened.

  So what was Corwin’s exact role?

  And then Mattie saw it more clearly. How could she have been so dense? Corwin wasn’t there to reach the engineer himself. He wasn’t going to be identified as the guy who crawled up to the locomotive and interrupted the conductor. Let someone else get in trouble for that. Someone like a Fairlie.

  No, he was there to subversively instruct whichever Fairlie was supposed to make the conductor send the signal. Only it would be Hollingsworth’s signal: two shorts and a long. Destroy the park.

  Corwin was there for the same purpose as Mattie—to force a particular outcome.

  It made her realize she and Corwin were both looking for a forcer: a Fairlie whose ability was to cause the target to perform a physical act of the forcer’s choosing.

  Mattie knew only one such Fairlie. She scanned the passengers yet again. A girl named…And there she was: Deajha! A stunning girl of Indian descent with the most beautiful skin and dark lashes, Deajha had won the nickname Deja Vu at the Barracks. She sat in the middle of a three-person row a few rows ahead of Mattie.

  Corwin, bigger and stronger than Mattie, was a practiced reacher, though as an adult, he likely had weakened abilities. Mattie had to decide whether to go after Deajha or Corwin; she couldn’t get to both in time.

  The decision was made for her. Deajha touched the woman next to her on the shoulder. The woman moved her legs somewhat mechanically, allowing Deajha to slip past.

  Corwin stood. He wore a loud Hawaiian shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, the prototypical tourist attire.

  Mattie waited, understanding the effectiveness of the surprise attack. Reachers fared better with touch and eye contact. Mattie needed only to touch her target.

  “So remember: for a safe trip, you need to stay seated, keeping your hands, arms, feet, and legs inside the train. And please, watch your children,” came a recording over the loudspeakers. It was the Disney park voice—not the engineer’s—that was heard on wait lines and buses throughout the park. Mattie spotted a small video monitor mounted close to the train’s engineer; he had initiated the playback of the recording.

&nb
sp; Corwin took a step toward Deajha as Mattie closed in on him from behind.

  The recording played for a second time.

  An angry passenger shouted, “Come on, sit down!”

  Mattie touched the back of the man’s hairy neck. Disgusting! At the same moment, Corwin stopped. His head pivoted, seeking eye contact. But Mattie looked down at her feet and moved with him in order to stay behind him. An awkward ballet.

  The touch was a jolt, the element of surprise hers. In the first few nanoseconds she managed to reach—still a developing ability.

  Two long, two short. Two long, two short. Two long—

  Corwin mentally pushed back against her, like they were in a sword fight. Mattie’s reach extinguished; she pulled her hand away, but Corwin caught her by the arm, maintaining physical contact—something she could ill afford.

  She felt herself about to explain to him the Keepers’ time travel, Joe’s plan, and her own infiltration of the Fairlies. But this was Corwin’s reach, telling her what to do, and she fought it. Her best defense was to read, to clog his effort to shove thoughts into her brain. She read for “colleagues,” causing him to pause his reach and try to block her. That pause was all she needed: a flood of names and faces filled her.

  With all her mental concentration, Mattie reached one final time—two long, two short—and broke his grip on her. She shoved him, before her reach had time to dissipate.

  Corwin stumbled forward and into Deajha, not the sneaky attack he’d planned. Deajha didn’t appreciate the contact, or the interruption. Nervous and irritable, she placed her hand on Corwin, who immediately sat down atop a fellow passenger. Complaining, the passenger squirmed into the middle part of the bench seat.

  Deajha recognized Mattie. She raised her hands, to keep Mattie at bay.

  The train’s recorded message, asking passengers to stay seated, played for a third time.

  Deajha scrambled out onto the fire car. Guests murmured disapprovingly. The engineer glanced back, clearly not knowing what to do.

  Corwin fought the lingering effects of Deajha’s force while also getting a look at Mattie. He finally made eye contact and offered an ugly snarl.

  Ahead of them, the engineer straight-armed Deajha as she climbed into the cockpit, his other hand reaching for the walkie-talkie microphone. By trying to block her, he played into what she wanted: contact.

  He dropped the radio mic. It danced on its coiled cord. His jaw trembled as his arm rose overhead to the whistle. He pulled: one long, a second long; one short…a second short. He waited, Deajha now the one maintaining contact with him. He repeated the same signal.

  Mattie would never know if she, Corwin, or Deajha herself made that signal go out across the park. She would never know what the Fairlies might have done regardless of the signal. Perhaps they’d intended to revolt against the Barracks from the moment Humphrey stood up and explained things.

  In any case, that’s exactly what they did.

  “FINN!” AMANDA FROZE as she witnessed the two tables converging on Finn and Hollingsworth. Distracted, her attention slipped and a chair bit her on the leg, like a snapping turtle, and held on.

  Amanda cried out and fell, still fighting to maintain eye contact with Finn. The tables smashed together. She stumbled, losing consciousness. Black-purple shapes invaded the edges of her sight. As a curtain pulled across her vision, her hearing, her breathing, shutting out the horror of what she’d witnessed, she reimagined Finn’s face. Grinning? At her? Unafraid? Proud, even?

  She hated him. Felt betrayed by him. Abandoned by him just as she’d been abandoned by so many before him. Anger fogged what little thought remained. The pain in her leg couldn’t compare to what she felt in her chest. Maybe her heart had stopped. Maybe she was dying along with him.

  Then, a faint spark of what remained of her consciousness flickered like a candle when a door opens and closes too quickly. She hated him. She loathed him.

  She loved him.

  THE MOMENT THE ENGINEER released the train whistle’s pull chain, he yanked the brake. Passengers screamed. The train slowed; a prerecorded warning alerted travelers to stay in their seats; the conductor knocked Deajha to the side.

  Mattie was among the first to disembark, jumping from the car’s lowest step onto a steep hill of soft grass, tumbling and rolling to the bottom. She ran toward the Haunted Mansion, trying to get her bearings: Rivers of America straight ahead. With the Central Plaza as her immediate destination, she suddenly felt miles away instead of only a few hundred yards.

  Her sense of distance resulted from two unexpected situations. First, the relative emptiness of New Orleans Square, given the draw of the impending Soundsational Parade. It made sense to her that distances might stretch out if she battled crowds, but the effect was quite the opposite; seeing all that empty pavement increased the distance tenfold. Second, the sound effects, or more precisely, what Mattie first took to be sound effects. She’d tolerated thunder and lightning as a kid, but in more recent years, when she’d often been homeless, she’d come to be terrified of big and small booms—booms and gunshots, as she’d come to think of them—on the streets of Baltimore. She cowered with every pop.

  Not bombs.

  Not gunshots.

  Fireworks.

  In the daytime.

  Not right! Not at all.

  While some of the incendiaries raced into a blue sky, exploding and whistling, expanding into unseen chrysanthemums and invisible starbursts, other shells had been purposely aimed at Sleeping Beauty Castle, ricocheting off the walls and glancing out into Central Plaza. Some, Mattie saw with a burst of horror, had set parts of the castle ablaze.

  As Mattie reached the Hub, she saw hundreds of guests fleeing smoking streamers as they skittered along the pavement, and blinding pulses of white phosphorus. She recoiled; the percussive explosions were intended to be hundreds of feet up in the air. At first enchanted, even diehard park guests backed up, turned, and walked briskly away, trying their best to obey the rule of no running.

  In that moment, Mattie believed the Fairlie leaders had pulled a trick on her and Joe by reversing the meaning of the train whistle. None of what she was witnessing—including more fireworks going off behind her from Tom Sawyer Island—could possibly be part of a plan to attack the Barracks personnel. No, it had to mean she’d gotten it wrong; she’d forced the engineer to sound the full-attack alarm, exactly what she’d tried to prevent. The thought that she might be personally responsible for triggering an attack on Disneyland infused her with guilt, remorse, and unbridled anger. She could not, would not, allow her legacy to be “The Girl Who Destroyed the Park.”

  A group approached her at a full run, a group she recognized, a group she’d been expecting. If it hadn’t been for the danger and chaos of the misfired fireworks, Disneyland guests would have swarmed this group, surrounded them so eagerly that they’d have prevented them from moving. Dash was in the lead, followed by Nick Perkins, Mulan, Kristoff, Pocahontas, Tiger Lily, Anna, and a dozen other characters. At the back of the pack, huffing and struggling to keep up with the rest of them, came the Minnie and Mickey she’d met in A Bug’s World, with their pronounced noses, matted brown fur, and beady eyes.

  “What the heck?” shouted Nick, dodging a smoking ball that zigged and zagged and zigged again, nearly hitting his running shoe.

  Mattie blurted out that she’d messed up, obviously sending the wrong code.

  “Dash! Tell her!” said Nick.

  “I ran the park. Nick told me to. It’s bad in Tomorrowland—more fireworks. Toontown. Tom Sawyer Island. The two entrance tunnels are blocked by parade floats, trapping us all in here.”

  “That would be the schedule details they wanted,” Mattie muttered.

  “Who?” Mulan asked.

  “Never mind. It’s no help to us now.”

  “But Madeline,” Mickey said. He spoke calmly, even though he was winded. “Minnie and I witnessed more than one grown-up being held down by Cast Members.”<
br />
  It took Mattie a second to process what Mickey had said. “Were the Cast Members teenagers?”

  “Yes,” said Anna.

  “And did you recognize the grown-ups? Were they Imagineers? Disney people you’ve seen around the parks?”

  “Now that you mention it, no,” answered Anna. “They were all men. All dressed up in suits. Not familiar at all.”

  “It wasn’t me!” Mattie said ebulliently.

  “Say again?” said Kristoff.

  “I sent the right signal! Those teens you all saw were Fairlies!” Her mind sped up, as it often did when reading a person. “The Barracks—or worse, someone much more powerful—must have been planning the fireworks attack all along! They must have had a plan to disrupt the entrance, too!”

  Having no idea where such things came from, Mattie heard herself barking orders to the real characters of Disneyland! Her, a runaway Fairlie, a pretty much friendless girl fighting for a cause that belonged to a bunch of missing time travelers. More surprising yet: the characters listened! Obeyed! Groups of five or six peeled off from the whole, running toward Tomorrowland or Toontown or Town Square.

  The group diminished until it was just Mattie, Nick, Mulan, and…Mickey Mouse. Mattie felt the mouse’s celebrity in a way that made her self-conscious and suddenly unsure. She wanted Mickey making the plans, but that clearly wasn’t how he saw it.

  “The tunnel,” Mickey said. “That is,” he continued bashfully, “if you think that might be a good idea.”

  “Tunnel?” Mulan asked.

  “It’s a transportation tunnel,” Nick explained. “A road that connects the two parks backstage.”

  “If we don’t stop the spies from the Barracks, they’ll destroy the park and blame it on the Fairlies.”

  “I can shut down the pyrotechnics,” Nick said, winning puzzled looks from Mulan and Mickey. “The fireworks!”

  “Ah!” Mickey said.

  “They must have commandeered the control room to have this much going on. We need to win it back. I can’t do that alone.”