Kingdom Keepers the Return Book 3

by Ridley Pearson

  “Nick!” Mattie screamed over the cacophony of the explosions. “Here!” She let go of the rope between her ankles and stretched like an acrobat to reach for him.

  “I’m fine!” the inverted boy shouted. “Race you to the top.”

  “Nick! Take my hand! Now!” Mattie had not wanted to tell him his rope was on fire for fear he’d panic and fall. They had to be thirty or forty feet above the concrete, she reckoned. Any fall would likely be disastrous…if not fatal.

  Nick dropped in three pronounced sequences—a rope stretch, a taut bump, a fall. The first two were warnings. The third was the act itself, the cleaving of the rope by the fire. To Nick it was slow, faster, fastest. He fell.

  Mattie caught his flailing forearm. Nick grabbed hold and together they swung him beneath Mattie and onto her rope. His rope fell away soundlessly, like a squirming snake.

  A fireball erupted, precariously close. Mattie’s shirtsleeve caught fire. She pushed against the wall, carrying Nick with her, and angled to smash the smoldering fabric against the mountain, snuffing it out. Her arm stung.

  “Cripes!” Nick shouted, struggling to adapt to Mattie’s way of climbing and having a devil of a time with it.

  Elevated, Mattie got a brief look at the park. Her heart cramped. The scene was chaos: fires, people running, three rivers of guests retreating from the entrance. Somehow daylight made it all the worse, leaving nothing to the imagination.

  Fireworks continued a near-finale rhythm from several locations: Tom Sawyer Island, where guests were swimming for safety; New Orleans Square appeared to be caught in a human traffic jam; the Castle, aiming its ordnance into the Hub and up the wall at the two climbers; and from somewhere behind Tomorrowland, an area not associated with any fireworks display. Thousands of escaping guests flowed outward, the groups like a person’s middle three fingers extended. Teams of Disney characters battled various small fires while distinct skirmishes broke out around them, the participants too distant to identify.

  Mattie and Nick felt it at once. “It’s going,” Nick shouted from below. Well below. He clung to the rope firmly, but he was making no progress climbing it.

  Mattie watched, terrified, as the strands of her rope split and untwined under the burden of Nick’s added weight. Some small, some large, the breaks only increased.

  “Nick! Bend your knees. Grip the rope with your ankles. Stand up, sliding your hands higher. Repeat!” Mattie moved quickly, inchworming her way steadily higher. She’d crossed the halfway mark, but a good distance remained. She willed herself not to look down or out into the park; the height was beginning to make her woozy.

  “Okay. Better. That’s better!”

  With no slack, Nick’s weight on the rope made Mattie’s ankle-lock impossible. It forced her to squeeze the soles of her feet against the braided rope, nowhere near as safe or functional. She slipped too often and too far, her ascent slowing.

  “Hurry!” she cried.

  Nick caught an angry spark between his sock and shoe. He kicked with his other foot to put it out, but failed to support himself with just his hands. Crying out, he slid like a fireman down a pole, the rope burning his palms, shredding his flesh. He only stopped because the toe of his right shoe hit a bulging seam in the mountain’s gnarly “ice-covered” surface. He wrapped his arms around the tight rope to free his hands.

  “No good!” he hollered.

  Even from a distance, Mattie could see the burns on his hands. He wouldn’t be able to climb; he wouldn’t be able to let himself down. Having stayed to the left of the mountain and away from both the stone arch and the waterfalls for fear of being intercepted by Fairlies—or worse—she guessed the rope didn’t have more than a few minutes left in it.

  “Wrap your arms with the rope and swing!”

  “Wh…at?”

  “We’re going to walk as far that way as we can. When I say so, we push off the wall together.”

  “But won’t we—?”

  “Ready?” Mattie started moving without him. Nick had no choice but to follow and line up with her. They stretched the rope far to the left, the popping and fraying continuing above. Mattie counted down out loud.

  On “three” they pushed off the wall together and soared, swinging far to the right. The tension on the rope was too much. As they reached the apex, Mattie stretched, reaching for the edge of the waterfall. The rope broke from above. She let it go, her fingers grasping for anything to hold on to on the wet, slimy surface. She heard a thunk. Nick! He might have fallen a few feet, or possibly to his death.

  Her fingers found an edge, then a slick pipe. But just when she thought she was safe, the pipe tore loose from its anchors, bending and pushing her away. She worked her hands up it quickly as a succession of anchors broke free. At last, she kicked a leg up, caught something with her ankle, and rolled into a pool of tepid water no deeper than a bathtub.

  The pipe had broken off cleanly. She held a section in her hand. She tucked it into her waist for safekeeping as she clambered to the edge—partly because her hand refused to let go, partly because it felt good to hold on to something solid.

  Nick waved up to her, prone and splayed on a ledge. Mattie let out her breath in a whoosh. He’d survived.

  Not one single thing that had happened in the past few minutes was part of her plan. She looked higher, to what remained of the dangling ropes. Dash had tied them off very near the top, easily within reach of a stair step of rocks to reach the lip of the platform hidden there. Nick’s burned rope was longer than hers. She motioned for Nick to get inside the attraction and to meet her up where she was.

  A few minutes later, she saw him walking the stairs along the edge of the Matterhorn track. She waved for him to stop and get down.

  At that moment a firework streaked in through the mouth of the waterfall and ignited, filling the ride’s interior with an enormous, blinding ball of burning white stars. In its coruscating light, Mattie saw a figure way up inside the cone of the mountaintop’s peak. A woman in rags, seashell necklaces and bracelets, with dreadlocks and a tattooed face. She was climbing a metal ladder toward a trapdoor.

  Tia Dalma.

  HUMPHREY KNEW WHEN he was needed. Down, but not out, he stumbled in the direction of Mary Ann just as the Dogcatcher’s left hand slid across his chest toward his heart and his right arm bent at the elbow.

  For a nearly infinitesimal moment, Humphrey allowed himself to see the pavement between him and Mary Ann as coral-blue water, a placid and inviting bit of ocean. He dove, hitting so hard it tore the front of his shirt and ripped up his chest. His elbows and forearms, knees and thighs fared no better.

  Wincing at the pain, he smeared himself across the short distance and latched on to the back of Mary Ann’s right ankle, clamping down like a snapping turtle. He pushed his ability through her, his cheek burning from the effects of contact with the pavement.

  Humphrey saw it all from ground level.

  The Dogcatcher raising his arm.

  The man’s arm starting forward.

  A look of calm confidence and grim superiority filled the Dogcatcher’s face, a kind of smug indifference, like a man about to swat an annoying mosquito.

  Then fog, followed by a sugarlike frost, followed by ice crystals. The icy effect unrolled toward the Dogcatcher like a red carpet.

  Humphrey felt his limbs chill, as if he’d jumped into a winter lake. He couldn’t see Mary Ann, only the Dogcatcher, but the man’s arm never passed its zenith. It stuck straight up, making him look foolish. His expression changed as well, from an arrogant control freak to a stunned and helpless victim. As his face froze, his brow furrowed, his lips pursed.

  With her ability magnified tenfold by Humphrey’s, Mary Ann watched as what should have been a simple freezing turned into a subzero arctic blast. The Dogcatcher wasn’t merely stunned by her blast of cold. He froze solid. Solid ice. Like glass.

  Fragile glass, at that. The man’s right arm snapped off, fell to the pavement, and shattered i
nto a thousand pieces. The loss of the arm threw the chunk of human ice off-balance. Its left leg cracked at the thigh. The knee gave out. Then the Dogcatcher teetered, vibrated through a thousand sudden cracks, and splintered into a pile of crushed ice.

  Behind and below Mary Ann, his hand still holding her ankle, Humphrey felt his lungs freeze. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. And, as his world turned to darkness, couldn’t see.

  “DID YOU SEE THAT?” Mattie couldn’t find her breath, and it had nothing to do with physical exertion. “Did you see her?”

  “Her?”

  “Up there!” She pointed.

  “I hit the deck, as you might remember.”

  “Tia Dalma, climbing a ladder up to the top.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Oh yeah. Positive.”

  “But if she’s the Grim Reaper like you said, then wouldn’t she leave the heavy lifting to others? Like Maleficent, for instance? Doesn’t that make more sense?”

  “I think we’re about to find out. And just for the record, Nick, when it comes to making sense, there’s not a lot of that going on around here.”

  They crept up the track’s side stairs, slowly and quietly, ever alert. At the highest waterfall opening, they found both ropes within reach.

  “No, not really,” Nick said. He looked vaguely sick.

  “Oh yes. Really. If we try to go through that trapdoor, we’ll be smacked down like Whac-A-Mole. The only way we have much of a chance, and it’s not a great one as is, is taking advantage of the element of surprise. If they don’t see us coming, maybe—just maybe—we get them before they get us.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Whoever’s up there…I need to touch, to come in contact with, whoever’s up there.”

  “Whoever’s up there goes over the side, Mattie. Don’t kid yourself.” Nick suddenly looked much older than his years. “It’s not like there’s going to be a lot of talking going on. This isn’t a negotiation. If whoever, whatever, is powerful enough to be running this junk in the park, then he or she is too much for us. This is a street fight! You don’t play nice in a street fight.”

  “I can use my ability against them. They won’t be expecting it. They won’t have ever experienced anything like it, so they won’t know how to fight it. At the very least, Tia Dalma is up there. I saw her.”

  “And she can turn us into spaghetti.”

  “Not without a curse or conjuring. And those take time. You help me make contact, Nick. I know what I’m doing.”

  With that, Mattie took hold of the burned rope and began to climb. Nick tried to grab ahold of the rope, but dropped it immediately, wincing in pain.

  Reluctantly, Mattie climbed back down to Nick.

  “Then we’ll find another way,” she said, turning to go back into the cave.

  When they turned around, Dash was standing there. Startled, Mattie almost cried out.

  “I thought you might need some help after that last bit,” Dash said. “Another few inches and Nick was a goner. Lucky that ledge is wide.”

  “The park?” Mattie asked.

  “You can hear the fireworks.”

  “Hear?” Nick said. “We nearly ate one!”

  “Chaos,” said Dash. “Losses on both sides.”

  “What kind of losses?” Mattie sounded desperate.

  “Losses, Mattie,” Dash said, hanging his head. “Better to focus on stopping this, I think.”

  “Dash, help us find another way.”

  He vanished.

  He reappeared.

  “You are bizarre,” Mattie said.

  “Thank you!” Dash said. “I can lead Nick. You climb, just in case things don’t work out.”

  “Agreed! See you up there,” she said defiantly, reaching out and hauling herself onto the ice-painted exterior of the Matterhorn peak.

  She discovered a number of handholds and toeholds fashioned into the “rocks” and “ice.” They seemed to have been built into the surface intentionally. Deeply recessed and easy to use, the ladderlike grips let Mattie climb nearly fearlessly. She did not look down, except to ensure the rope tied to her ankle would not snag.

  A moment later, she was crouched just below the lip of the Matterhorn’s hidden deck. Above her, the sunlight bent and shimmered in the air, like oil in water. It took a few seconds to realize the energy the phenomenon represented was traveling from the deck and moving out into the park in three directions: the castle, Frontierland, Tomorrowland.

  Whoever was up here was directing the fireworks and the attack on Disneyland.

  Mattie knew what had happened to Finn up here. He’d nearly died. She knew the power of the magic he’d faced, too, knew it to be far greater than her own ability.

  But Chernabog was dead. Destroyed. Could Tia Dalma have brought back the beast with her black magic? Was such a thing possible? Was it impossible?

  Only one way to find out. She pulled herself up and vaulted the wall, landing atop the deck’s spongy rubber flooring.

  What she saw there nearly caused her to throw up. Again!

  A flowing, evaporating, reforming, grotesque shape of green, purple, and black wavered before her. It looked like a giant, undulating greenish flame, with a head that appeared intermittently. Shoulders. A skirt? A dress? And the head again. Dark horns.

  Only then did Mattie locate the figure in the mountain peak’s harsh shadow.

  Cackling with glee, Tia Dalma stepped out into the bright sunshine. Her lips already moving, the witch doctor reached for something hairy in her chest pocket.

  Whatever Mattie did next, she wasn’t going to look at that thing. Nor was she going to allow the witch doctor to chant a curse. Mattie began singing at the top of her lungs, singing the only song she could think of:

  It’s a world of laughter, a world of tears.

  It’s a world of hope and a world of fears.

  Mattie would neither look at Tia Dalma nor listen to her. Instead she focused on the ethereal, twisting, genielike green shape at the center of the deck, a woman, who as she turned revealed herself as Maleficent.

  But not like any Maleficent Mattie had ever seen. More like an incomplete Maleficent. Malformed. Unfinished. A Maleficent trapped between two worlds—the world of Tia Dalma and wherever it was that creatures like this one went when their purpose was finished. The place where Finn had sent her: the end of the road; the hole in the ground; the place of devils and pitchforks. There.

  Whatever existed of Maleficent was enough to continue emitting an oily bolt of energy from her open palm. It was no fireball, more like a wave of raw energy, a string without the fibers.

  Mattie thumped her heel on the deck’s spongy surface. She moved toward Maleficent, determined to touch the thing. The shifting image slowly rotated to face her, the dark fairy’s visage appearing and disappearing amid the braided swirl of color. The thing looked more energy than body, more oozing spirit than corporeal reality. Mattie didn’t dare try to make physical contact. She stomped hard for a second time.

  The trapdoor lifted a matter of inches, Nick’s wide eyes peering out cautiously. Mattie was well into the second verse at the top of her lungs.

  Mattie moved another step closer to the phantom, working hard not to look in Tia Dalma’s direction nor stop her own obnoxious singing.

  A blur caught her eye. Dash, circling the deck. Nick stood, his feet straddling the open trapdoor, Tia Dalma a yard or less to his right. He jumped across the trapdoor. Maleficent and Tia Dalma turned toward him.

  The distraction couldn’t have been better. Mattie lunged for the wraith, focusing on her evolving reaching ability. She plunged her hand into the swirling goo of colorful light—

  And flew back, lifted fully off her feet. She smashed into the deck’s low wall and onto her bottom. Her brain felt fried.

  “Mattie!” Nick shouted.

  “Madeline?” Tia Dalma inquired, as if they were long-lost friends. Inwardly, Mattie cursed. Nick should not have mentioned her name.
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  Now the witch doctor turned her full attention to the fallen girl. “Friend of the Children of Light? Sister of the White Witch?” Mattie had never heard Jess described this way—though if it was a reference to her snow-white hair, it seemed somehow appropriate.

  It seemed Tia Dalma had mistaken her, Mattie, for Amanda. Not that they were exactly interchangeable, but still…

  Reaching for a peaceful outcome seemed unlikely. The flamelike Maleficent arched and extended in Nick’s direction. The boy looked about to faint from fright.

  But in turning to Nick, Maleficent lost track of her open palm. A shower of fireworks sprayed overhead, blasting and detonating in explosions of color, sparks, and fire. A “bang ball” narrowly missed Nick and blew up.

  For a moment, the kind of all-encompassing white light that Mattie took to be heaven.

  Black. White. Splashes of shapes. Something green.

  Tia Dalma behind the light.

  Mattie could hear nothing. Her ears filled with a shrill whine, like an injured cat, her head a painful mass of compression.

  Nick somehow managed to remain conscious, tucked into a ball, hands over his painful ears.

  Dash stopped circling and helped Nick to his feet, pulling him away from the pipe spitting sparks of electricity. It ran to a light tree used to illuminate the Matterhorn at night; the blast had disconnected it.

  Tia Dalma jumped back at the sight of Dash materializing. “You! The wee little ghost! Announce yourself. The ether welcomes you!”

  Dash zipped to the opposite side of the deck. Then back, immediately next to Tia Dalma. By Nick again. Tia Dalma did not appreciate or understand him. She didn’t like him, especially when he stood close to her. Waving her hands, she jumped back and attempted to shake a talisman in his direction. But Dash had no direction, no location. He was a whirling dervish. He was some form of spirit Tia Dalma had not seen. He baffled her. Angered her. Won her attention.