They left Dr. Facilier back in his office giving himself a tarot reading, and followed Carlos to the Chem Lab, where they watched him pull various bottles, beakers, and powders off the shelves.
“You’re sure this isn’t magic?” asked Jay skeptically.
“I’m sure. It’s science. Like what humans have to do.” Carlos mixed a few drops of liquid here, a dash of powder here…but then he frowned. “Wait a minute, I can’t find the binder.”
“The what?”
“Reza—he must have stolen it from the lab last week! He hates me. Ugh.” Carlos’s face crumpled. “I’m sorry, Mal. I don’t think I can do it, after all. Not without the thing that puts it all together and sparks the chemical reaction.”
“Reza stole a vial from the lab?” Jay asked.
“He must have,” said Carlos. “It’s not here.”
“This vial, perhaps?” Jay grinned, holding up a small stoppered test tube filled with sparkly liquid that he had shown Mal earlier.
“Where’d you get that?!”
“From Reza’s backpack. Takes one to know one,” said Jay.
Carlos poured a few droplets into his beaker and mixed it all together. A puff a smoke blew out. “Voilà,” he said. “Antidote to invisible ink.” He poured the mixture over the map.
And just like magic, the Isle of the Lost began to form before their eyes, including the hidden and forbidden zones. The Forbidden Fortress appeared, a menacing-looking castle of spiky walls and twisty towers, located on the edge of the island. Right in the middle of Nowhere.
Mal thought Jay’s having the secret vial on hand was a pretty decent stroke of luck, which made her think that maybe they were on to something here. Maybe it was her destiny to find Maleficent’s Dragon’s Eye. “Do you have the compass?” she asked Carlos.
Carlos nodded. The box beeped, as if to agree.
According to the map they would have to walk way past the village right to the edge of the shore, and from there the path would take them to the fortress.
They set off, Carlos in front with Jay, Evie just behind, and Mal holding up the rear. She watched them walk in front of her. She knew Jay would steal the Dragon’s Eye for himself at the first opportunity, that Evie was trying to get on her good side and curry favor, and that Carlos had only joined them to fulfill his curiosity.
But it didn’t matter. Somehow, they all had a common goal. To find the Dragon’s Eye. Better yet, she wasn’t going into Nowhere alone.
Mal had her gang of thieves.
Her very own minions.
And that was progress indeed.
Her evil scheme—the big nasty one—was working.
The path away from the village and toward the shore was smooth at first, but soon became rocky. Mal began to flag. Her feet hurt in her boots, but she soldiered on grimly, now leading the way and following the directions on the map. Behind her she could hear Evie’s light steps, Jay’s stomping ones, and Carlos’s tentative ones.
“Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work we go,” Carlos sang under his breath.
Evie shuddered. “Don’t.”
“What do you have against dwar—Oh, right,” he said. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“So that was your mom, huh?” said Evie.
“Yup, the one and only Cruella De Vil,” Carlos said, bypassing some poison ivy and pointing it out to the rest of the group to avoid. “One-way ticket to crazy town, right?”
“She’s not so bad,” said Evie, who ducked below a low-hanging branch of a creepy oak tree. “At least she doesn’t do this thing that my mom does, where she pretends to be a Magic Mirror telling me I’m far from the fairest of the land.”
Carlos stopped in his tracks, and he and Jay looked at her, shocked. Even Mal turned around to stare at her.
“Really? But you’re gorgeous,” Jay said. “I mean, you’re not my type, sweetheart, but you’ve got to know you’re good-looking.”
“Do you really think so?” she asked.
“Nah, you’re mom’s right—you’re ugly,” Jay teased.
“That sucks that she does that,” said Carlos quietly.
“Whatever,” Evie said nonchalantly. “It’s not like I care.”
“You really mean that?” asked Carlos.
“I mean, it’s not like your mom is any different, right?” Evie pointed out. They were the children of the most evil villains in the world. What did they expect: love, joy, sympathy?
“I guess not.”
“And your dad, Jay? Doesn’t he only care about the shop?”
Jay brooded on that. “Yeah, of course. But what else is he supposed to care about?” he asked honestly.
Mal listened to their conversation, finding it oddly soothing to have other people around, for once. She’d never really liked companionship before; but then again, Maleficent had always insisted that they lived apart from the pack—superior, alone, and bent on revenge.
Lonely, Mal thought. I was lonely. And so were they.
Evie, with her beauty-obsessed mother; Carlos, with his screeching harpy of a parent; Jay, the happy-go-lucky thief with a quick wit and dashing smile, who could steal anything in the world except his father’s heart.
The gray fog surrounding the edge of the shore loomed closer. Soon they would have to walk through the mist and enter Nowhere. When they did, would they also become nobody? Mal wondered. She cracked her knuckles. Her knees began to ache.
They trudged on in silence for a while, when a sharp whistle cut through the air. It was from Jay, who had been scouting ahead. Evie took a step and crunched twigs loudly underfoot, while Carlos looked up fearfully.
Mal whistled back.
Jay jogged to where the three of them were huddled together.
“What is it?” Mal hissed.
“I saw something—in the shadow. Hide!” he whispered fiercely, disappearing behind a rock.
Carlos yelped and tried to climb a tree, the bark scratching his knees. Evie screamed softly and dove behind some blackberry bushes.
But Mal froze in place. She couldn’t move, for some reason. At first it was because she felt annoyed to think that any daughter of Maleficent would have to hide from anything. But as the shadow loomed larger and approached, she worried she had made the wrong decision.
The shadow had a pair of large horns and a spiky tail. Was it a dragon? But her mother was the only dragon in these parts, and had lost the ability to transform into one, once the magic-shielding dome had been put in place.
Then there was a moan, a terrible wailing unlike anything they had ever heard.
It was a hellhound, for sure. A creature of myth and legend, a creature of tooth and fang, blood and fur.
Then the creature emitted what could only be called an adorable purr.
“Beelzebub!” Carlos cried from the tree.
The monster emerged from the shadows, and a little black cat with a wicked grin appeared on the path. The shadow had distorted its ears to look like horns and its tail to appear as if it had spikes. But it was just a little kitty.
“You know this foul beast?” asked Mal contemptuously, to hide her embarrassment at having been scared. Her heart was still beating loudly in her chest.
“It’s just my cat,” Carlos said. “I got her when I was little.” He added sheepishly, “She’s one of Lucifer’s litter. She’s my evil sidekick.”
“Oh, cool. I got one too. You know, at my birthday party,” said Evie. “Mine is Othello, a baby parrot—well, not such a baby anymore. Othello’s got quite the mouth on him too. Not sure where he learned all those words.”
“Cool—you got one of Iago’s babies? I got two electric eels—Lagan and Derelict. You know, from Flotsam and Jetsam. They’re huge now. Monsters,” said Jay. “They hardly fit in their aquarium anymore.”
Carlos let the cat rub his cheek. “Go on, Bee. Go back home, stop following us. I’ll be back soon—don’t worry.”
“What’s your evil sidekick?” Evie aske
d, turning to Mal.
Mal colored. She remembered exactly when they had each received their sidekicks—at that fabulous party long ago, to which she had not been invited. “I don’t have one,” she said shortly.
“Oh!” said Evie, and turned away, looking embarrassed.
Don’t worry, thought Mal. You’ll pay soon enough.
Finally they stood face-to-face with the gray fog that circled the island and marked the edge of Nowhere. The mist was so thick, it was impossible to see what lay beyond it. It would have entailed a walk of faith to see what was on the other side. And all their lives, the four had been told to keep away from the fog, to stay back from the edge of the gray.
“Who goes first?” asked Jay.
“Not me,” said Evie.
“Nor me,” said Carlos.
“Duh,” sniffed Mal. “As if either of you would.”
“Mal?” asked Jay. “After you?”
Mal bit her lip. It was, after all, her quest. “Yeah. I’ll go, cowards.” She squared her shoulders and tensed. She stepped into the fog. It was like walking through a cold rain, and she shivered. She reminded herself that there was no magic on the island, and that nothing could hurt her; but even so, the gray darkness was impenetrable, and for a moment she felt like screaming.
Then she was on the other side.
Still whole.
Not disintegrated.
Not nothing.
She exhaled. “It’s fine,” she called. “Get over here!”
“If she says so,” muttered Jay. Evie followed, then Carlos.
Finally the four of them were on the other side of the fog, standing at the edge of Nowhere.
“Whoa,” said Carlos.
They all looked down. They were standing literally at the water’s edge. One more step, and they would have fallen off the rocky piece of land that was the Isle of the Lost and into the deep sea below, to become an alligator’s dinner.
“Holy Lucifer, what the heck are we supposed to do now?” Mal asked.
“I don’t know, but this thing won’t shut up,” Carlos said. It was true. The compass in his box was beeping wildly now, and the closer Carlos stepped toward the strip of rocky, foggy beach, the faster it beeped. “It’s over there. It has to be,” he said, pointing to the sea.
“Well, I forgot my swimsuit and I don’t really enjoy being eaten by reptiles, so it’s all on you guys,” Jay said, backing away from the water.
“It can’t be in the water,” Mal said, yanking out the map from her pocket. She gasped. “Guys. Come here.” They all gathered around Mal. “Look! There’s more!” More ink had appeared, and this time, they saw that the fortress wasn’t technically on the Isle of the Lost at all but was located on its own island, or rather its own piece of floating rock, which just so happened to be named the Isle of the Doomed.
“Well, that’s cheery,” Carlos said.
“And just how are we supposed to get over there?” Evie asked.
Mal studied the map and pointed to a spot labeled GOBLIN WHARF.
“We’ll hitch a ride from one of our friendly neighborhood goblins to row us over, of course,” Mal said, pushing past them and starting up the muddy beach toward the docks where the goblins unloaded the Auradon barges.
“There’s no such thing as a friendly goblin,” Carlos sighed, but like the rest of them, he followed behind Mal.
They arrived quickly at the busy port. Mostly because the alligators had taken to snapping at them from the shallow water by the beach, and they’d sprinted, screaming, toward the dock.
The wharf was bustling with activity. Goblins pushed their way past the foursome, emptying cargo from the big Auradon ships that were allowed in and out of the magic dome. They placed the rotting and rotten goods onto the splintering wooden boardwalk and jumped on and off each other’s makeshift rafts and boats. They hooted and hollered in their Goblin tongue, tossing bags of scraps and leftovers—clothing, food, cosmetics, electronics, everything the people on Auradon didn’t want anymore or had no use for, onto teetering rickshaws to sell at the market.
“We’ll need to pay for passage,” Mal said. “They’re not going to take us over there for free.”
The four of them emptied their pockets to pool enough of a sum of trinkets and food to pay their way across to the Isle of the Doomed. It took some haggling—Jay did most of the talking as he spoke a bit of Goblin from having worked at the shop—but they finally secured a spot on a scrap boat. That is, a boat that collected anything and everything that fell off the Auradon Dumpsters. It was a scavenger of scavengers, the lowest of the bottom feeders.
As it turned out, a goblin’s boat was not constructed to hold four teenage villains. The floating wooden box creaked and groaned as Mal and the others boarded.
“If I die,” Jay said darkly, “you still can’t have any of my stuff.”
“We’ll be fine,” Evie said. But she seemed to say it more for her own benefit than anyone else’s.
The goblin snickered and started the ancient, rusty motor, and off they went into the thick fog.
It was odd to see the Isle of the Lost from the water. It almost looked…pretty, Mal thought. The forest was lush and green around the edges of the island, and the rocky beach jutted out dramatically into a rolling blanket of navy-blue water. In the distance, she could see Bargain Castle. From far away, it seemed to be gleaming in the fading sunlight.
“Funny how different things look from far away, huh?” Evie said, following Mal’s gaze back toward Isle of the Lost.
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Mal said, turning her back on Evie. That same ache was settling in her gut again, and she didn’t like it. She didn’t like it one bit.
Mal could only be sure they’d arrived at the Isle of the Doomed because the engine had stopped. They still couldn’t see five feet in front of them. Mal scrambled blindly out of the boat and onto the rocky beach, followed quickly by the rest of the team. The goblin quickly sped off.
The fog lifted slightly as they made their way through the brush. Soon they were standing in front of a gate covered with a painful-looking bristly forest of thorns. And beyond the gate, high on a craggy mountaintop, stood a large black castle, a ruined, forbidding wreck silhouetted against the night sky.
The thorns around the gate grew thick and twisted, so sharp, they would stab or scrape anyone who dared come near. Worse, the thorns were covered with deadly poisonous spiders; and the whole place had a toxic and sinister air.
They stood, paralyzed, unable and unwilling to figure out what to do next, while the black box in Carlos’s hands kept beeping incessantly. If it was indeed communicating with the Dragon’s Eye, it was clear that the scepter was somewhere behind the thorny gates.
Mal scrunched up her face, frustrated.
It was Jay who broke the silence.
He handed Mal and Evie each a silver dagger, and Carlos some bug spray. He himself hauled a red-handled machete.
“You carry an ax in your pocket?” asked Carlos.
“Who doesn’t?” Jay said with a smile. “When you steal enough things from all over the place, I find that you always arrive prepared.”
Mal had to admit that Jay’s loot came in handy right then.
Jay hacked a path with his machete, and the others followed close behind. Mal slashed at a branch of thorns with her silver dagger, and the branch withered and shrank from her knife. Evie did the same on the other side, and Carlos sprayed a hairy tarantula with his spray, so that it fell off a branch, dead.
It would be hard work, but they were used to it by now. Deeper they went into the dark forest, making their way to the castle above.
Just be yourself, there are other ways to show strength than your father’s kind. Ben’s mother’s words rang in Ben’s ears as he sat down to meet with Grumpy, who had been elected to represent the dwarfs and sidekicks in their petitions.
Great. Wonderful. Just perfect. A one-on-one with Grumpy.
Ben shook his head. He suspecte
d anyone else would have been a better person to negotiate with than the crabby old dwarf.
Last time they’d met, the infamous dwarf had been insulted by a sugar cookie.
These talks were doomed.
Ben wished that people would stop telling him to be himself. It sounded like such simple advice—and maybe it would have been, if he had had any idea who himself was.
But who was he?
Prince Ben, son of King Beast, heir to the throne of the great kingdom of Auradon?
He was certainly nothing like his father, who knew how to enforce his rule without forcing it on his subjects. Ben cringed to recall how he had stood on the table and yelled.
That wasn’t who he was.
He was Prince Ben, son of King Beast and Queen Belle, heir to the throne of the great kingdom of Auradon.
And if, like his father, he was meant to inherit the throne—then it would be on his own terms, as his mother’s son and not just as his father’s heir.
Because, like his mother, Ben was quiet and gentle and loved nothing better than to disappear into a great, thick book. His childhood hadn’t been about hunting or sword-fighting or besting someone else on the field.
It had been spent in a library.
He shared his mother’s love of reading, and he always had. Ben’s fondest memories were of sitting next to Queen Belle at the hearth of her magnificent library’s enormous fireplace, reading by her side. He’d be digging into a pile of books dragged from the lower shelves, while hers were always taken from the very highest. It was paradise.
Once, when his father had discovered they had spent the entire day hiding in the library and scolded them for skipping out on a royal luncheon banquet “for the sake of a story,” his mother had mounted a passionate defense.
“But these aren’t just stories,” she’d said. “They’re whole kingdoms. They’re worlds. They’re perspectives and opinions you can’t offer, from lives you haven’t lived. They’re more valuable than any gold coin, and more important than any state luncheon. I should hope you, as king, would know that!”
King Beast’s eyes had twinkled, and he had lifted Queen Belle into his powerful arms with one easy motion. “And, as you’re my queen, I should hope you would know how much I love you for that!” Then he’d gathered up his young son, and the three of them had made a late lunch of cream cakes in the garden.
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