Kingdom Keepers IV (9781423152521)

by Pearson, Ridley

  They found themselves in a much bigger tank. Again, a metal ladder ran down below the water’s surface, stretching high above them to a circular catwalk surrounding the tank.

  As Ariel pulled herself up the rungs, Willa watched as her mermaid’s tail changed into a girl’s long, bare legs and bare bottom.

  “I keep these handy just for this transition,” Ariel said once they’d reached a steel catwalk at the top. She had her back to Willa as she slipped on a pair of bikini bottoms that she’d had cleverly wrapped around the back strap of her halter top, hidden by her long hair.

  She led Willa out a heavy metal door and onto another catwalk. Willa nearly screamed as she reached to steady herself. They were a hundred feet above ground, high up on a catwalk balcony surrounding the Park water tower. But Willa, like Philby, was a climber, and had no trouble with the height once she realized where she was. Ms. Cheerleader, Charlene, could do some climbing too, but more of the gymnastic variety. Willa and Philby were the Keepers who did the rope courses and climbing wall as after-school activities. It was where she’d first started liking him.

  “It’s…beautiful,” Willa said.

  “Yes. I love it up here. There’s a lot to be said for being human.”

  “You saved my life.”

  “Mermaids,” Ariel said, interrupting, “have a long-standing tradition of rescuing sailors at sea. It would seem that is about all we’re good for. That, and exciting homesick sailors in the first place.”

  “In my house, you’re known for your singing.”

  “Yes, well…that came later.”

  “What do we do now?” asked Willa.

  “I am not sure. I only know that no one will find us here. No one will see us. I often spend time here—overlooking the Park, watching the guests, playing the occasional prank. Did you know that mermaids like to make practical jokes?”

  “First I’ve heard of it.”

  “Yes, well, how would you feel if shipbuilders were constantly carving sculptures of you on the front of their ships from the waist up? It’s undignified. Such things deserve practical joking.”

  “Can I ask you something?” Willa said.

  “You just did.”

  Willa giggled. “You said you knew of the Keepers.”

  “Of course.”

  “Are there…others who would consider helping us?”

  “I told you: You have many friends here. You might be surprised to discover how many stand with you. Here in the World, and in the Land as well, we lack only a leader. We assume that is why you and the others have come. To lead us.”

  Willa’s head spun. Finn had often talked about Wayne making reference to leadership. She’d always thought of it in terms of the Keepers—never the Disney characters themselves. Willa had never considered that she and the others were there to lead a movement. She doubted Finn or anyone else had, either.

  “My father, King Triton, says a kingdom has room for only one ruler,” Ariel said.

  “Our group is more of a democracy,” Willa said. “But maybe we’re here to help you find a leader. What about Mickey? Isn’t Mickey your leader?”

  Ariel locked into a distant stare. She’d gone somewhere far away. “We can discuss this another time, I think.” Her entire demeanor had changed.

  Willa filed the information away for later. Why had mention of Mickey closed off Ariel?

  Willa said, “Let me ask you this. If you’re here…” she reached over and touched the beautiful girl, “does that mean Ursula’s here, too?”

  “Of course. Everyone’s here. Aren’t they? There are so few you can trust here, believe me.”

  “We need a plan,” Willa mumbled.

  “Or a script. There’s always a script to follow.”

  “Not always, I’m afraid,” Willa said. “This is one of those times. We need to write our own script.”

  Willa looked out on the empty Park. Occasionally she caught movement from a particular direction, but by the time she turned to look in that direction the street would be empty, the Park a ghost town.

  Willa recalled with some dread Judge Frollo’s eagerness to drown her. How the soldiers had appeared so well organized.

  They had been waiting for her to cross over. They had wanted her to describe the sketch Jess had shown her at school. It meant only one thing: someone had told them about Jess showing it to her.

  The spies were real.

  “Something’s going on here,” she allowed to slip out.

  “Oh, there’s a great deal going on, dear girl. We just so seldom see it.”

  “We’re in danger.”

  “Yes.” It was as if this was old news to Ariel.

  “I need to get to Epcot.” To the Return, she was thinking.

  “But you just got here!” Ariel complained.

  “My friends and I want to help,” Willa reminded. “But we can only help if we’re together. Like a team.”

  “Friends? A team? My friends are a crab and some fish. I’m all alone here,” Ariel said, wistfully.

  “Not anymore you’re not,” said Willa. “You’re part of the team now.”

  WHILE WILLA WAS SITTING with her feet draped over the catwalk surrounding the Disney’s Hollywood Studios water tank, Finn was awake contemplating a text message he’d received from an unidentified sender. It wasn’t that he didn’t receive text messages; of course he did—hundreds a week, maybe more—but this particular message held more interest than most:

  www.thekingdomkeepers.com/key

  Beneath the URL was the title of the book and a page number—a book Finn knew all too well. A book written about him and his friends. Underneath the title of the book, a single letter:

  W

  It was that W that had held his attention for the past hour or so. That letter and all it represented. Philby had been contacted by Wayne at school. He’d sent them on the Kim Possible adventure.

  Now this.

  Wayne was becoming involved again.

  Finn’s first instinct had been to find the book and go to the Web site. That was why the book was sitting open to the right of the keyboard, and why Finn was sitting in the chair in front of his computer. But for the longest time he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He just didn’t completely believe Wayne had sent the text—even though Wayne had given him and the others their phones and therefore would know how to text him. Even though he was eager to connect with Wayne. The problem was this: Wayne never made it simple. Finn couldn’t think of a time that Wayne had given them something easy to solve or easy to do. The method he’d used to contact Philby supported that notion. Why hadn’t he just texted Philby if he thought texting was safe?

  Wayne had a tendency to surprise: arriving uninvited in a chat room or interrupting a Skype session. A straight text seemed so unlike him.

  But that W was like a finger drawing Finn closer to his keyboard. The longer he stared at it, the more tempted he was. Finally, he webbed the fingers of both hands, cracked his knuckles by bending them backward, and placed them upon the keyboard. He typed the address into his browser.

  The page loaded, and he was instructed to hold the particular page of the book up to the computer’s internal video camera. He pushed the laptop back a few inches and hoisted the book. He hit enter. The computer bonged and the screen changed color.

  SUCCESS! the screen declared.

  For a moment there was no change. It was late, and he was tired. All that anticipation had been coursing through his veins for the past hour like caffeine from a soda. With nothing happening, a wave of fatigue overcame him. He felt like a pool toy losing its air, a condition that left him wholly unprepared for what happened next.

  Wayne appeared on top of his desk, just in front of the keyboard. A small hologram of Wayne, no more than four inches tall, impossibly real-looking. Finn waved his hand through the image just to confirm it was what it was.

  “Whoa!” Finn said aloud. “Can you hear me?”

  “Hello, Finn.”

 
It was Wayne’s voice—there was no mistaking the scratchy quality. But, maybe because of the projection or the transmission, the words sounded somewhat artificial, almost glued together, the intonation wrong.

  “What exactly…? Where…? Is that really you? Where are you?”

  “Come down…lower…Finn. Look at…my face. I should see…you…better.”

  Finn had heard Philby talk about augmented reality apps—AR—baseball cards that came to life as holograms on your desk, maps that did the same thing. The Keepers had heard rumors that Disney was considering making Kingdom Keepers playing cards with an AR component, allowing them to appear as 3-D images just as Wayne was now appearing. Some augmented reality could even be animated—a baseball player swinging a bat, a dancer spinning on her toes—but he had never heard of an AR element projecting in real time the way this one was. It was like a 3-D video chat, and Finn found it captivating.

  He backed up his chair and lowered his head as instructed in order to look directly at Wayne’s small face.

  Somewhere in the far reaches of Finn’s mind, a warning light went off. The choppiness of Wayne’s voice could be a transmission problem, as he suspect-ed—but why would the hologram be so clear and the audio be so choppy? That didn’t make sense. The audio sounded edited—words cut and pasted into sentences.

  As he lowered himself toward Wayne’s small face, Finn simultaneously cleared his thoughts and pictured a dark tunnel with a pinprick of light showing far, far in the distance. He allowed that light to grow closer, allowed himself to sink not only toward the desk, but into a peaceful, blissful state. All clear.

  “That is…better,” said the hologram.

  Then, as Finn looked at Wayne, the face transformed, no longer a man with white hair, but suddenly the stern face of a beautiful woman. The Evil Queen’s mouth was already moving, her voice both haunting and musical.

  “As soft as a whisper

  No one will tell

  The curse, reversed

  Seen by the sister

  When kissing Jezebel”

  Finn’s fingers and toes tingled. With the mention of kissing Jezebel—the name Jess had gone by a few years earlier—he panicked, and he slipped out of all clear. The Evil Queen repeated her message:

  “As soft as a whisper

  No one will tell…”

  Finn was caught in a state of partial all clear, a dangerous place—mentally alert but with tingling toes and fingers. Part mortal, he was real enough to be wounded, yet enough all clear to believe he was safe.

  In this interim state, he managed to reach forward, move the mouse, and click the “back” button on his browser. The computer screen showed an Algebra 2 Web page he’d been using for homework.

  The Evil Queen hologram sparkled and vanished. Finn sat back into his chair feeling…different.

  The page-forward button on the browser flashed as if he’d clicked it with the mouse, which he had not. Thekingdomkeepers.com page reloaded. The Evil Queen hologram reappeared.

  Someone was controlling his computer.

  The Queen began reciting the verse again. Finn pulled the power plug on his computer, but the laptop, being battery-powered, continued to run. He shut the lid, and the computer went to sleep.

  He focused at that space in front of his keyboard where the Evil Queen had stood. No matter how he fought against it, he could hear her.

  “As soft as a whisper

  No one will tell

  The curse, reversed

  Seen by the sister

  When kissing Jezebel”

  Kissing Jess? He spat on the floor before he knew what he was doing. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Jess, of course he did. But not in that way.

  Why Jess? Why would the Evil Queen want him to do that? Was it simply a matter of making Amanda jealous—dividing the “sisters”? What would that accomplish?

  He would have to reboot his computer in safe mode and run a virus check. There was work to do before he could attempt a chat session or e-mail. He put the machine to work, searching for the backdoor or bug that had allowed it to be controlled remotely. He knew he should have probably allowed Philby to look at the machine first, should have given Philby a chance to trace the infection back to whoever had caused it, but he had no desire to share the stupid verse with anyone. Just the mention of it could have the desired effect: anger, jealousy, confusion. He had to think this through.

  He relived the incident, convincing himself he’d been all clear at the time the verse had been recited. Nothing to worry about. If it was a spell, it had not reached him. It didn’t occur to him for even a split second that such denial might be part of the spell, that by not doing anything, he was already doing something.

  * * *

  Stone stair-steps. At least they looked like stone stair-steps leading up to a box. Or possibly a door? Jess moved slowly, like she was trying to walk through Jell-O.

  Finn was there. Practical Finn. Organized Finn. Amanda’s Finn. Jess preferred boys like Kaden Keller, more on the unpredictable side. More wild. But Amanda was crushing—no doubt about it. And Jess liked Finn a lot, so she was happy for Amanda.

  So why, she wondered, was she just standing there as Finn walked up to her with that look in his eye—a look any girl knew. A look that said he was going to kiss her. And why, she wondered, was she going to allow it to happen when she knew how it would hurt Amanda? He took her by the shoulders, closed his eyes, and pressed his lips to hers. And he stayed there like that. A real kiss that flooded through her like a sugar rush, lips to toes. By the time she awoke and began to sketch in her diary, she knew full well it had been only a dream. But with her dreams came a connection between now and then, between here and there, the present and the future. Only later could she ever make full sense of such a dream—a day, a week, a month. Adults had labeled it a power; Amanda called it a blessing; Jess often thought of it as a curse.

  She knew some piece of the dream would happen, but not when, or why, or how it might change things. Upon seeing her sketches, the Keepers often looked for answers she didn’t have. She could see the future; she couldn’t interpret it.

  But the kiss lingered on her lips. It had felt real—incredibly real.

  She adjusted her pillow and continued to draw. She started with the background first—the five uneven steps seen in profile, rising to a landing. She loved the sound of the pencil lead scratching the paper; she felt no fatigue. She enjoyed these visions. They no longer came as often as they once had. As a child, she’d had several a week. She’d seen a flood, a car crash, a fire. She’d made the newspaper with the prediction of the fire. That was when the doctors had started hooking up wires to her, when the military men had begun asking questions. When she’d been taken from her original foster parents and moved in with the Fairlies.

  Before she and Amanda ran away.

  The visions came much less frequently now, a secret only Amanda knew. Sometimes in groups—three or four in a week and then none for months. Sometimes a piece of a dream, but not enough to stick with her, not enough to draw. Being in the Parks, hanging with the Keepers, seemed to increase their frequency and intensity.

  She drew the scene of the kiss as best she could, her artistic abilities having improved over time. She not only caught the angle of their heads correctly, but the profile of the boy really looked like Finn, and though the girl was less obvious, she knew it was her.

  It was one dream she would never allow to happen, would never do this to Amanda. Had no interest herself. If Finn wanted it, too bad. Not ever!

  She heard Amanda stir in the overhead bunk, so she switched off the small light, and covered the drawing with her hand in case Amanda leaned over, curious. But Amanda only rolled over. Jess switched the light on and finished drawing the kiss.

  She studied the girl’s face more carefully. She couldn’t be absolutely sure it was her. But she knew what she’d felt. She knew what was going to happen.

  * * *

  “Please,” Charl
ene said, appealing to her mother over the breakfast table. “It’s no big secret that I like him.” Her mother’s one soft spot was her daughter’s love life. There were times that Charlene felt as if her mother was trying to be her same age again, which was so random it pained her to even consider it. But the fact was, her mother had been a high school cheerleader, had been pretty, and, according to her, chased by all the boys, and she seemed to want all that for Charlene as well.

  “You don’t want to be the one doing the pursuing,” her mother cautioned. She advised Charlene about her interest in certain boys as if she were coaching a chess match.

  “I’d just be visiting Winter Park for a day.”

  “That’s his school.”

  “Ah…yeah.”

  “Which will be seen as you pursuing him.”

  “I have friends there, too, Mom. Do I want to hang with him at lunch? Yes. Of course. But it’s not like I’m going to follow him down the halls or something. It’s one day.” She and Amanda had plans, but she couldn’t go there. Her mother understood boys. Charlene knew which buttons to push. “I can spend time with my friends after school. I never get a chance to see them anymore.” With graduation from middle school, some kids had gone to different high schools because of redistricting. Her mother knew the situation; they’d talked about it often enough.

  “I know, I know,” her mother said.

  Charlene heard the change in tone; she’d won.

  “All we have to do is have you sign me in at the office. It’ll take two seconds.”

  “And you’ll call or text me when school’s out?”

  “Promise.”

  Her mother smiled. “You must like him a lot.”

  “You have no idea,” Charlene said.

  * * *

  As the buzzer sounded leading into the lunch period, Charlene, wearing her visitor tag, waited by the water fountains in the west hall, as arranged in a hasty meeting with Amanda earlier. She peeled off the tag and stuck it inside her shirt so it would remain sticky but not be seen. She pulled out the section of panty hose from the pocket of her jean shorts and kept it scrunched in her hand. Her heart was beating the way it did before a gymnastics competition.