Kingdom Keepers the Return Book 3

by Ridley Pearson

  Mulan loaded an arrow into her bow. “Lead the way, Nick. They’ll surrender to me, or they’ll pay dearly.”

  “Can you spare us?” Nick asked.

  “Go!” Mattie said, with the conviction of an army general. Mulan and Nick took off running in the direction of the Ice Cream Parlor.

  “I guess that leaves us as buddies!” said a wide-eyed Mickey, his little front paws worming nervously in front of him.

  “I guess it does,” Mattie said, shoving Mickey aside as a whirring, smoking blast of fireworks nearly engulfed him. The mouse thanked her. She tried not to think about having just saved Mickey Mouse—the Mickey Mouse!—from going up in flames.

  “Best view of the park, Mickey?”

  “Gee whiz!” He rubbed his black, wet nose with both hands and squinted. She’d never seen something so cute. “It’s not Beauty’s castle,” he mumbled to himself. “Not the Small World tower. I know! Tower of Terror!”

  “This side. Disneyland.”

  Back he went to rubbing his nose like it was a crystal ball. “Splash…Thunder…” His eyes popped open, suddenly electric. “I know!” He pointed across the Hub. “The Matterhorn! There’s a deck on top.”

  “Yeah…” Mattie said, heart sinking. “So I’ve heard. A friend of mine was nearly killed up there.”

  “Golly!”

  If there hadn’t been a dozen flaming, streaking, screaming fireworks spinning and exploding all around them, Mattie might have found a moment to hug Mickey.

  “You…are…so…cute!” she cried out. To her surprise, Mickey engulfed her in an enormous hug, nearly choking the wind out of her.

  “Are we climbing the Matterhorn, Mattie? Because if we are, it just so happens I know a route that our guests used to take—years ago!”

  “Climbing?” But no, Mickey was right: if they tried to reach the top through the inside of the attraction, they were likely to encounter Barracks personnel or guards. If they could win the advantage of surprise…“From up there, can a person see the whole park?”

  “From up there,” Mickey said, “a person can see the whole world! From the Indian Teepees to the World of Color.”

  Mattie realized these boundaries defined the only world Mickey knew, the only world he belonged to. She saw the flicker of flame from the burning castle in his shiny eyes and thought his world, this world, was approaching a very sorry end. She couldn’t allow that.

  “Yes, Mickey, we’re going to climb.”

  MAYBECK AND CHARLENE took a few seconds to try to comprehend what they were seeing: a dimly lit room; a growing fire on the far stage; animated dinner tables colliding like clapping hands; folding chairs snapping themselves together like jaws; and a skeletal man onstage, running toward a flaming mannequin.

  There was no time to make sense of it all. Charlene, ever the athlete, took off toward Amanda as Maybeck called out her name. Unable to spot Finn amid the chaos and the rising haze of smoke, he turned his attention to the Traveler. The man was on his knees, stacking sticks with bare hands. When the pile was tall and burning—a pyre—he waved a necklace over it.

  From Maybeck’s right came one of the teen guards, a guy about his size. He looked zoned, zonked, zombiefied.

  Maybeck was not the most academic of the Keepers; like Finn, he preferred to leave that stuff to Willa and Philby. But he was by far the most street savvy, confident, and fearless. You won girls by being funny, or failing that, by stealing them from their boyfriends. And sometimes? You won fights by cheating. He snagged a chair, spun it to increase its speed, and released it—a projectile shooting through space.

  It stopped, midair.

  The guy’s hand was raised, pointed at the chair, palm out. The other arm lifted. Maybeck dove, pulling a table down with him. The table froze in place, too.

  Maybeck rolled to the next level of dinner tables, eyes open and searching for…what?

  The guy “released” the chair, and it fell. He “released” the table; it rolled and overturned. Crawling, Maybeck intentionally pulled a tablecloth off in a cloud of dust; it stopped, as if suddenly frozen.

  Maybeck threw another chair. It lifted. Stopped. Fell. A vase holding dust-encrusted plastic flowers flew up. Froze. Fell.

  Humans exist within a framework of patterns. A fighter will throw two rights and a left jab. This guy worked right hand, left hand. Maybeck knocked over a table and stood behind it, straining to hoist it while keeping a chair in his left hand.

  He felt the table stop and released it two feet off the floor; it didn’t fall. Almost in the same motion, Maybeck stepped around the table and hurled the chair directly at the guy.

  The moment the chair stopped, Maybeck charged like a football player. The guy had both hands engaged. The surprise attack froze him, and Maybeck took him down hard, hit him across the jaw, and thumped his head onto the floor.

  Suspend that, he thought.

  MULAN ARRIVED ON THE LEGS of a gazelle, neither winded nor sweating. From far behind came Nick, looking frazzled.

  “That was fast,” said Mattie.

  “Empty,” Mulan said. “This place he led us.”

  Grabbing for his knees, winded, Nick tried to speak. He coughed, spit onto the pavement, and finally managed to say something. “Control room…empty.”

  “The sky fire,” said Mulan.

  Nick coughed out, “If the fireworks control room is empty, then how is this happening?”

  Mattie looked up at the face of the Matterhorn. “I think the answer is up there. With her.”

  “Her, who?”

  “In situations like this, there’s only one ‘her.’”

  “Her?” Maybe it was Nick’s heavy breathing, or maybe it was his excitement, but Mattie heard something else in his voice: terror.

  “Philby’s smarter than he looks. Willa, too. The thing is—” Mattie jumped up and over a shrieking firework, its smoking trail fanning out behind it like a gigantic snake. She glanced back; Mickey was well behind. “His father invented the villains, the mortal variety. But it had to involve magic, really dark magic. And after the earthquake, the fire, that battle, the Keepers never could account for—”

  “Tia Dalma,” Nick said, so red-faced Mattie thought he might pass out.

  “How’d you know that?”

  “A Cajun witch doctor. Voodoo, and all that? Black magic? Who else?”

  They ducked behind a popcorn cart and waited while a stream of park guests poured out of Fantasyland. Some of the little kids were humming “It’s a Small World,” but their parents looked terrified.

  “You’re keeping something back,” Mattie said.

  “The Imagineer archives,” Nick said. “A memo between them and Disney animation like five years before Princess and the Frog. They had learned of a Cajun witch doctor related to Tia Dalma. They clearly feared his involvement. Hollingsworth had access to that memo.”

  “How can you know that?” Mattie sharply pulled Nick down to the concrete. A firework streamer zoomed over his head and smashed into the popcorn cart. They brushed hot sparks off their bare arms and Nick smacked Mattie’s hair, which was smoldering.

  “They’re aiming at us!” he panted.

  “Yeah…I kinda got that,” Mattie said.

  Mickey caught up to them both, wheezing. “Gee willikers! What in tarnation is all this fuss about?”

  Another smoking streak aimed for them. Nick and Mattie both pulled Mickey out of the way. But the smoke wasn’t smoke at all. It was Dash.

  “It’s not good,” the boy said calmly, not the least bit out of breath. “But while the rockets are scaring most of the people away, some guests are pitching in and fighting the fires. I saw some hurt people being helped as well. It’s pretty amazing, really. People are being so nice to each other.”

  “The gate?” Mattie asked.

  “It’s bad. Super crowded. Scary.”

  “There’re two Cast Member exits. One’s by the fire-house. There’s another on the entrance side of Town Hall.”
>
  “And another,” said Nick, “just past the Opera House.”

  “You’ll need to divide the guests into three groups,” Mattie explained. “Keep them calm so no one gets trampled.”

  “I can tell them,” Mickey volunteered. “They’ll listen to me, by golly!”

  “Great idea!” said Nick. “Dash, can you get Mickey to the front safely?”

  Mattie whispered in Dash’s ear, “He may need a little help not getting hit by the fireworks.”

  “No problemo!” Dash said. “Leave it me. Your Highness?” he said, motioning in a low bow.

  “Well, I’ll be dashed! What kindness.”

  “Dashed!” Nick barked. The three kids laughed hard, leaving Mickey looking confused.

  A thunderous boom exploded only yards away. All four were blown off their feet. Mickey looked singed on his right side; fear snaking through her, Mattie asked if he was all right.

  Mickey smiled. “Maybe it’ll burn off some of the gray hair!”

  Mattie said to Dash, “You take care of him.”

  “Don’t you worry about that! Good luck, Mattie, Nick.”

  Dash took Mickey by the hand and the two headed for Main Street.

  “He knows my name!” Nick said excitedly. “Dash Incredible knows my name!”

  “Easy, boy!” Mattie said, shoving him away as yet another charge struck the cart in a shower of smoke and sparks. “A big head is a way to get us both into serious trouble.”

  Nick thanked her, nodding vigorously. “That was close.”

  The stream of guests fleeing Fantasyland had thinned to a few stragglers. It was time to make their move.

  “The fewer targets, the more we’re in trouble,” Mattie said.

  “Yeah, I think I just figured that out.” The number of rocket strikes around them was noticeably increasing. “And you think if we climb the Matterhorn, we’re going to find Tia Dalma up there directing the Air Force?”

  “Tia Dalma?” Mattie said, resisting the impulse to smirk. “Who said anything about Tia Dalma?”

  “We were just talking about her!”

  “Not me,” said Mattie. “That was a conclusion you jumped to. She isn’t the ‘her’ I was talking about.”

  “Then who?” Nick sounded almost angry.

  “Philby said witch doctors don’t actually do things themselves. They do things to people, to animals and trees and plants, he said.”

  “I suppose,” said Nick. “So who could she control? Who would do this kind of thing? You don’t mean Joe, do you? Did Tia Dalma take over Joe Garlington, or Bruce, or some other Imagineer?”

  “No! She’d want someone, something, far more powerful.”

  “What the hello are you talking about?” Nick’s eyes had widened to the size of golf balls, his eyebrows jammed into his hairline. Despite the few burns glowing on his neck and cheeks, he looked about as pale as powdered sugar.

  Mattie pulled him close, and the next firework charge missed. Their time was up. If they were going to scale the Matterhorn, it had to be now.

  “Who would you bring back if you were ordered to destroy Disneyland once and for all?”

  Nick went even whiter.

  CHARLENE PRIED THE JAWS of the chair open, freeing Amanda, who seemed to be in shock, staring blankly at the two tables smashed together before her. Charlene didn’t have time to think about that. She cartwheeled through another pair of approaching tables, turned, and tossed a snapping chair into the middle. The tables banged together, crushing the chair, and teetered.

  The tables fell.

  “They’re like bees!” Charlene called to the recovering Amanda. “One sting and they’re dead.”

  The front of the dining area burned. On the stage, a charred Witch Hazel staggered, off-balance, still stirring an invisible pot with an invisible spoon. At her feet, the Traveler swung his feathery necklace over an oddly green-hued fire. As Charlene and Amanda watched, he glanced offstage.

  The trio of teens emerged from the wings, dragging an adult female mannequin.

  What were they doing? Before she could make sense of it, Charlene spun and karate kicked the nearer of two tables rolling toward her. It wobbled, causing its twin to do the same. Changing course, the pair wheeled away, heading toward the fire.

  A boy her age was busy lifting a fallen projector off the floor and steadying it on a table. He aimed its white beam toward the stage.

  The Traveler pulled a cel from a large case.

  The boy focused the projector’s lens.

  The Traveler was speaking to the three teens. They moved the mannequin and squared its shoulders to the screen.

  All this, Charlene thought, with fire and a battle raging around them.

  Maybeck ran from the opposite side of the room to its center. Only then did Charlene focus on the tables that seemed to be holding Amanda semi-comatose. A pair of fallen tables.

  They lay on the floor, but they didn’t look like the other tables that had closed like hunting traps.

  These two were different.

  Then she saw one of Finn’s running shoes, empty on the floor.

  THIS TIME, WHEN THE WIDE blurry streak raced toward them, Mattie said, “It’s Dash.”

  The boy appeared in front of her and Nick. Moving fast, the group hid among the angular rocks at the edge of the Plaza. Before them rose the imposing summit of the Matterhorn.

  “All set,” Dash reported.

  Mattie nearly said That was fast, but bit her lips.

  “What Mickey says, people do. He’s getting them organized. I can go back if you want?”

  “No!” Mattie said, a little too sharply. “That is, we need you to do something else for us.”

  “It’s about the ropes,” Nick said, impressing Mattie, as they hadn’t discussed any of this. “In order to climb the Matterhorn, we need two ropes dropped from that opening there.”

  He pointed three-quarters of the way up the mountain’s face, to where the tracks briefly ran outside the attraction.

  “The problem is,” Mattie continued, “that the ropes, if they’re still in there, will be near the very top. So we need you to get them without being seen, bring them down to where Nick just said, tie them off, and toss them out.”

  “Why is that a problem?” Dash asked.

  “There are probably bad Fairlies inside. We can count on that. Maybe a few Cast Members working for them, too. If they figure out we’re climbing—”

  “They’ll cut the ropes,” Nick said. “And, splat.”

  “That would be us, the splat part,” Mattie said. Her face was pale and drawn.

  “So if I don’t do this right, I get you killed?” Dash said. He blinked innocently, suddenly looking overwhelmed. He was just a boy, Mattie thought.

  “Something like that,” Nick said. “But you can’t blame yourself if something happens. No one’s forcing us to do this.”

  Dash appeared both heartbroken and deeply concerned. “Maybe there’s another way?”

  “Without the ropes, there’s no way up,” Nick said.

  “What if I just go up and do whatever it is you’re trying to do?” Dash said. “They’ll never see me, you know? They won’t know what hit them!”

  “This particular…person…will know,” Mattie said. “What she can’t see herself, her pet raven will tell her. And if neither of them knows what’s going on, there’s a voodoo witch doctor who’s part of it, too.”

  “So you’re saying we’re kinda the underdogs.”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” Nick said.

  “And you can’t go invisible, or whatever it is you do?” Dash asked Mattie.

  “DHI? Not without going to sleep, and there’s no time for that.”

  “Plus, it’s a little noisy,” said Nick. For a moment, the heaviness hanging over them dispersed into nervous laughter.

  “Okay. Hang tight.” The smear of supersonic movement that was Dash left only a contrail of oily shimmer hanging in the air. It moved, riverlike, betwee
n Mattie and Nick and the entrance to the Matterhorn.

  The bombardment of fireworks aimed toward ground instead of sky continued unabated, an all-out attack. The explosions grew in volume, brightness, and destruction. More than a few fires raged in and around Central Plaza. Mattie celebrated the various Disney characters battling those flames; they could count on the likes of Mulan and Anna to maintain order and help Humphrey and the others overcome the grown-ups from the Barracks. She wanted in on that fight, badly, but it was not to be.

  The first rope uncoiled and cascaded down the side of the Matterhorn.

  “That’s one,” Nick said. “Are you sure you’re up for this?” He sounded afraid, which Mattie took to be a good thing.

  “As to that,” she said warily, “I don’t think we have any choice.”

  The second rope tumbled down the side of the towering mountain.

  A ROOM FILLED WITH ROLLING tables and snapping chairs greeted Jess and Willa upon arriving at the hotel dining theater.

  Two fires blazed—one onstage, where the Traveler stood alongside a female mannequin; the other, larger and more frightening, consumed a front table in a hot, sparking conflagration. With smoke rising to the ceiling in a noxious cloud, a foglike haze, and a combination of incongruent sounds, the picture before the two girls resembled Hades.

  Jess and Willa watched as a white frame of light, centered on the equally white-painted mannequin, changed to something—or someone—completely unexpected.

  Maleficent.

  Just as quickly, Willa’s incomparable mind sought solutions. Her friends were under attack. Something calculating and depraved was occurring onstage.

  Three teens encircled Maleficent as the Traveler hoisted an animation acetate and, lips moving silently, held it over the small fire. It lit, a tiny tower of flame. He let go.

  “This is it,” a transfixed Jess muttered. “This is the moment I saw. This is where it starts.”

  “Or not,” said Willa. “Where’s Finn?”

  “No idea. But Willa, it’s Maleficent! You understand?”