Isle of the Lost

by Melissa de la Cruz

  If it still works.

  If I find it.

  If it exists at all.

  As Mal picked up her backpack, she only felt worse. Even dumping an extra spray can into her bag didn’t lift her spirits.

  Maybe Jay was right.

  Maybe this whole quest was too silly to even embark on. She didn’t know where to begin to find her mother’s lost weapon, no matter how powerful it once had been.

  Who was she to think she could find something that had been lost for so long? Maybe she should just forget about it and go back to her usual routine of tagging and shoplifting.

  Besides, it wasn’t as if anything Mal could do would change how her mother saw her. Even if she did succeed in finding the Dragon’s Eye, Mal knew she couldn’t help who her father had been, and in the end that was what Maleficent could never forgive nor forget.

  The one thing Mal herself could never fix.

  So why bother?

  Why try?

  Maybe she should just accept it and move on. That’s what her mother expected from her, anyway.

  To fail. To disappoint. To give up. To give in.

  Just like everyone else in this place.

  Mal pulled open the castle door and set out for school, trying not to think about it.

  Like many nerds before him, Carlos liked school. He wasn’t ashamed to admit it—he would have told as much to anyone who bothered to ask. Since no one did, however, he reviewed the argument himself.

  He liked the structure and the rules of school. He liked the work, too—answering the kinds of questions that had answers, and exploring the ones that didn’t. While there were parts of school that were torture, like when he was forced to run the length of the tombs in gym (why practice fleeing on foot when they lived on an island?) or when he had to work with assigned partners (usually the kind who teased him for not being able to run the length of the tombs in gym), the other parts more than made up for it.

  Those were the good parts—the parts where you actually used your brain—for which Carlos liked to think he was better equipped than the average villain.

  And he was right.

  Because Carlos De Vil’s brain, by way of comparison, was almost as big as Cruella De Vil’s fur-coat closet.

  That’s what Carlos tried to tell himself, anyway, especially when people were making him run the tombs.

  His first class today was Weird Science, one he always looked forward to. It was where he’d originally gotten the idea to put his machine together, from the lesson on radio waves. Carlos was not the only top student in the class—he was tied, in fact, with the closest thing he had to a rival in the whole school: the scrawny, bespectacled Reza.

  Reza was the son of the former Royal Astronomer of Agrabah, who had consulted with Jafar to make sure the stars aligned on more than one nefarious occasion, which was how his family had found their way to the Isle of the Lost with everyone else.

  Weird Science was the class where Carlos always worked the hardest. The presence of Reza, who was every bit as competitive in science lab as he was, only made Carlos work that much harder.

  And as annoying as everyone found Reza to be—he always had to use the very biggest words for everything, whether they were used correctly and whether he was inserting a few extra syllables where they might or might not belong—he was still smart.

  Very smart. Which meant Carlos enjoyed besting him. Just the other week they had been working on a special elixir, and Reza had been annoyed that Carlos had figured out the secret ingredient first.

  Yeah, Reza was almost as smart as he was irritating. Even now he was raising his hand, waving it wildly back and forth.

  Their professor, the powerful sorcerer Yen Sid, ignored him. Yen Sid had been sent to the Isle of the Lost from Auradon by King Beast to teach the villain kids how to live without magic and learn the magic of science instead. Carlos remarked once that it must have been a huge sacrifice for him to give up Auradon, but the crotchety old wizard shrugged and said that he didn’t mind and that he had a responsibility to teach all children, good or bad.

  Yen Sid resumed their lesson by quoting his favorite phrase, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The secretive magician smiled from his lectern, his bald head glowing under the light, and his large, gray beard covering half his chest. He had traded in his sorcerer’s robes for a chemist’s white coat, now that there was no market in magic, and…well, no magic to speak of.

  Reza raised his hand again. Once again, Yen Sid ignored him, and Carlos smiled to himself.

  “Just because there is no magic on the Isle of the Lost does not mean we cannot make our own,” Yen Sid said. “In fact, we can create everything we need for a spell right in this classroom. The answer to our situation is right in front of us. From fireworks to explosions, everything can be made from…science.”

  “Except, science is boring,” said one of the Gastons.

  “And also, what’s that smell?” said the other Gaston, slapping his brother on the head. “Because—you know—beans are the magical fruit.”

  “Shut up,” Carlos hissed. He wanted to listen.

  Reza’s hand shot up again. Me, me, me.

  “I’m talking about the magic of science,” Yen Sid said, ignoring both Gastons and Reza.

  “Excuse me. Excuse me, Professor?” Reza couldn’t contain himself any longer. He was practically squeaking in his seat. Carlos snorted.

  The professor sighed. “What is it, Reza?”

  Reza stood up. “Irregardless, the irrelevancy of my classmates’ simplistical commentation bears no meaningfulness to this experiment, in point of fact.”

  “Thank you, Reza.” Yen Sid understood, as Carlos did, that Reza had just said the Gastons were stupid. Which was news to no one at all.

  Reza cleared his throat.

  “If science is in fact magic, i.e., per se, could one then correspondingly and accordingly posit the postulate that magic is thus, ergo, to wit, also science, quid pro quo, quod erat demonstrandum, Q.E.D.?”

  Yen Sid rolled his eyes. Muffled snorts and snickers came from the rest of the class.

  “Yes, Reza. Science could be described, in fact, as magic. From certain perspectives. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Why don’t you start today’s experiment and find out for yourself—”

  Reza’s hand shot up again. The whole class started to laugh.

  Yen Sid looked at him sternly. “—like your classmate Carlos here, who, instead of wasting time with more talk, is halfway done with the assignment?” He raised an eyebrow at Reza.

  Reza’s face turned red. The class laughed harder.

  Today’s lesson focused on engineering. Carlos’s heart warmed as he bent over his desk and applied himself to the task of learning how to make a robotic broom that swept by itself.

  It was the solution to his earlier problem. With this invention, he would be able to clean Hell Hall in a jiffy. He even had a name for it: the Broomba.

  The Gastons grumbled, but Carlos couldn’t even hear them. Not when he was working. He tightened a screw on the motor of his broom.

  This was the real magic.

  By the end of first period, it wasn’t just Carlos who was happy to be back in school. Evie was glad she had decided to show up as well. For one thing, she didn’t see any sign of Mal; and for another thing, it was empowering to realize that while her mother might never think she was pretty enough, she was certainly pretty enough for her Selfies Seminar, which only a few students from Selfies 101 were allowed to take. As it turned out, she could have taught the class herself.

  “These are amazing!” Mother Gothel gushed as she looked over Evie’s homework. The class had been ordered to produce a series of self-portraits, and Evie had spent the hours before Carlos’s party hard at work on her portfolio, taking pictures of herself. Beauty required effort, didn’t it? Wasn’t that what her mother always said?

  And, since her mother had made her so aware of every
angle and every trick of light and cosmetics, Evie had the best photographs. (Truthfully, this class was nothing; by the time Evie could hold a hairbrush, she had known how to make herself seem ten times more beautiful than she really was.)

  It’s all smoke and mirrors, she thought, wincing at the word mirror. That’s how you get to be the fairest of them all.

  She tried to ignore the other girls in the class, the step-granddaughters especially, who looked daggers at her.

  “It’s as if you spend every second staring at your own reflection!” Mother Gothel marveled. “Now, that is a feat of self-centeredness!”

  Evie smiled. “Why, thank you. I do try.”

  “Your mother must be so proud,” Mother Gothel said, handing back the photos.

  Evie only nodded.

  After bombing on his Evil World History exam, Jay ducked to hide from an evil step-granddaughter, who waved to him coquettishly, making him late for his Enrichment class. He slipped into the shadows behind a statue in the stairwell.

  Crap.

  It wasn’t as if he hadn’t enjoyed dancing with her last night; he liked dancing with her fine, and stealing girls’ hearts was practically a hobby. But it wasn’t as fun as stealing other things, since hearts came with too many strings attached. And it certainly didn’t pay as well.

  Besides, Jay liked his freedom.

  “Jayyyyyy,” her voice sing-songed down the hall. “Oh, Jayyyyy I think you might have something of my grandmother’s that I need back. I’m very, very angry at you, you bad boy,” she said, not sounding angry at all.

  But Jay wouldn’t come out of his hiding place behind the statue of Evil Dragon Maleficent. The stone monstrosity, commissioned by Maleficent herself, took up more than half the landing between the school’s second and third basement levels, and had become one of Jay’s most reliable hiding spots. Soon his predatory dance date gave up the search.

  “Phew, that was close.” He slid out of hiding and fell into step with Carlos, who frowned at him without looking up from his book as he walked.

  “Closer than all the other times?”.

  “Yeah…no. Not really.” Jay sighed.

  Carlos turned the page, and the two boys headed into Enrichment without saying another word.

  Enrichment was literally about enriching oneself by taking from others. The class studied lock-picking techniques, shoplifting secrets—which meant it was Jay’s favorite class for the obvious reason—being a thief and all—and today’s guest lecturer was none other than the school’s creepy headmaster himself, Dr. Facilier.

  “There are many kinds of thieves,” Dr. Facilier said in his silky whisper. “One can shoplift at the bazaar, or burglarize a home, or steal a rickshaw. But these are, of course, petty exercises. Mere child’s play.”

  Jay wanted to argue. After all, he had Dr. Facilier’s bolo tie in his pocket, didn’t he? What are you calling child’s play, old man?

  “But a true villain has larger ambitions—to steal an identity, a fortune—someone’s entire life! Can someone give me an example of such villainy? Such great enrichment?” The good doctor surveyed the room. “Yes, Carlos?”

  “My mother wanted to steal one hundred and one puppies!” Carlos said, almost in a yelp. “That was large.”

  “Yes, and that was an extravagantly evil dream.” Dr. Facilier smiled, and everyone in the room shuddered at the sight. “Anyone else? Examples?”

  “My mother stole Rapunzel’s magic to keep herself young?” Ginny Gothel offered. “Rapunzel had really…large…hair?”

  “You have a point there. A very good example surely, of enriching oneself through the abuse of others,” Dr. Facilier nodded. He walked over to the blackboard. “Now, I understand that the advanced students among you have your project for Evil Schemes due.”

  A few heads nodded, including Jay’s and Carlos’s.

  “My own evil scheme was the height of enrichment. Does anyone know it?”

  The room was silent. Dr. Facilier looked insulted. He muttered something about “kids these days” and resumed his lecture.

  “For my evil scheme, I had turned Prince Naveen into a frog, and voodoo’d his valet to look like him. My plan was for his valet to marry Charlotte La Bouff, and once he did, I would kill her father and take his fortune. If I had succeeded, I would have stolen a man’s identity and another man’s fortune. A stroke of enrichment!”

  The class clapped. A beaming Dr. Facilier bowed, stiffly and quickly.

  “Except you failed,” Carlos pointed out, when the room was silent again.

  “Yes,” Dr. Facilier brooded, his face falling. “That’s true. I failed. Disastrously, unfortunately, and decidedly. I was a complete and utter failure. I won neither the princess nor the fortune. Hence, the founding of Dragon Hall, where we must learn from our failures and teach the next generation of villains to do what we were not able to do.”

  Harriet Hook raised her hand. “What’s that?”

  “Prepare! Research! Be more evil! Work faster! Think bigger!” Dr. Facilier urged. “So that when the time comes, when the dome falls—and magic is returned to us—and it will be, my children, it will be; evil like us cannot be contained—you will be ready.”

  Jay scribbled on his notepad. Be more evil. Think bigger.

  The Big Score.

  Once again, his thoughts went back to the Dragon’s Eye. It was Maleficent’s scepter, and the quest for its recovery was Mal’s mission. It wasn’t his quest, and it wasn’t his problem.

  But what if it was?

  What if it should be?

  Mal had asked him to help, and he had blown her off. But what if he told her that he would help her? And what if, when they did find it, he stole it right from under her nose? He would be stealing a fortune and her identity as Maleficent’s heir all in one swoop, just like Dr. Facilier.

  And what if, by chance, it still worked?

  His father would finally have his Big Score. Jay would have his Evil Scheme. Between the two of them, they’d find a way off the Isle of Lost, Leftover, and Forgotten.

  They didn’t belong there anymore, did they?

  Jay smiled. He would enrich himself, all right. All the way to becoming the Master of Darkness.

  By lunchtime, the rest of the school was still talking about last night’s epic howler at Hell Hall, but Mal had no interest. The party was the past; she’d moved on.

  She had bigger things to worry about now. All she could think about was how her mother wanted the Dragon’s Eye back. And how Maleficent wouldn’t see her as anything other than her father’s daughter—in other words, a pathetic, soft human—until Mal could prove her wrong.

  Mal kept reliving last night’s conversation over and over, so that she missed her first few classes and sleepwalked through the rest. She arrived for her one-on-one after-school seminar with Lady Tremaine still feeling anxious and out of sorts.

  “Hi, Professor Tremaine, you wanted to see me about my year-long evil scheme?” she asked, knocking on the open door to the faculty tombs.

  Lady Tremaine looked up from her desk with a thin smile. “Yes, come in and shut the door, please.” A full thermos of curdled wine sat on the desk in front of her, which didn’t bode well. Lady Tremaine only drank sour wine when she was in a sour mood.

  Mal knew she was in trouble, but she did as told and sat across from her teacher. “So what’s up?

  Lady Tremaine snorted. “‘What’s up’ is this…sad excuse for a year-long evil scheme. A grudge against one girl? Party tricks? Pranks? This is beneath you, Mal. I expected more from you. You’re my best student.” She reached for her wine and sipped it, making an appropriately disgusted face.

  You expected more? You and everyone else on this island, Mal thought sullenly. Get in line.

  “What’s wrong with my evil scheme?” she asked.

  “It’s just not evil enough,” sniffed Lady Tremaine.

  Mal sighed.

  Lady Tremaine glared. “I need you to really put your da
rk heart and foul soul into it. Come up with a truly wicked scheme. One that will bring you to the depths of depravity and heights of wicked greatness of which I know you’re capable.”

  Mal kicked the desk and frowned. She’d thought her evil scheme was pretty wicked. “Like what? And how do you know what wicked greatness I’m capable of, anyway?”

  “You are Mal, daughter of Maleficent! Who doesn’t know that?” Lady Tremaine shook her head.

  You’d be surprised, Mal thought.

  Lady Tremaine continued to sip her wine. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something, dear. You are your mother’s daughter, after all. I expect something truly horrid and legendary for your evil scheme. Something that will go down in history,” Lady Tremaine said, returning Mal’s paper to her. “I’ll give you a minute to brainstorm, if that helps.”

  Mal looked down at the proposal she’d originally written. At first, she bristled at the criticism. She didn’t want to hear it.

  What was wrong with this? It was evil, pure evil. And it was bad, wasn’t it? Taking down a princess—that wasn’t exactly a nice thing to do. She was going to make Evie pay, wasn’t she?

  And a vendetta, that was a time-honored evil scheme, wasn’t it?

  Classic villainy? What was wrong with that?

  Mal wanted to crumple the paper in her hand. She didn’t have time for this. She had other things on her mind…her mother and the Dragon’s Eye, for one, that stupid cursed scepter…

  Hey, wait a minute….

  What did my mother say about the Dragon’s Eye?

  Whoever touches the scepter will be cursed to fall asleep for a thousand years.

  Maleficent had only cursed Aurora’s kingdom to fall asleep for a hundred years after Sleeping Beauty had pricked her finger on a spinning wheel. This curse put the victim to sleep for a thousand.

  That was like, ten times more evil, unless her math was off. Anyway, much more evil. Plus or minus a few zeroes.

  Maybe she should embark on this quest, after all.

  And if somehow, along the way, she made it happen that Evie was the one who would touch the Dragon’s Eye…

  Well, that would be the nastiest, wickedest plan the Isle would ever witness! A two-for-one! No, a triple play—