Pluto nudged between them and leaned into Amanda.
“I think,” Finn said, “he wants you to hold onto his collar.”
Pluto’s tail went wild with excitement.
Amanda reached down and took hold. Pluto lifted his head proudly. His tail shot up like a flagpole.
“This is definitely strange,” Finn said.
* * *
Jess was not a mother. She had never even owned a pet. Like the other Fairlies, she had never met her mother, had no idea if she had living relatives. The closest thing she had to a family member was Amanda, whom she thought of as her sister. In fact, she and Amanda often introduced themselves as sisters. So, as the Kingdom Keepers carried out their plan to cross Amanda over into the Magic Kingdom in hopes of reversing the curse, Jess sat by her sister’s bedside.
A few minutes earlier, she thought she’d witnessed the cross over: Amanda had twitched and shuddered and, more encouragingly, her eyes had begun moving rapidly beneath her closed eyelids.
The other girls in Mrs. Nash’s house were supportive of her effort to keep Amanda’s condition secret. This included their roommate, Jeannie Pucket, who until now had often been a real knucklehead. But Jeannie had come through for Jess, not once but a number of times—holding off the curious Mrs. Nash and buying her unconscious roommate precious time.
It wasn’t going to last much longer, Jess thought. It seemed inevitable that Mrs. Nash would find out. That, in turn, would mean doctors, and a long downward spiral for poor Amanda.
With her diary open to the kiss, a page she had photocopied for Finn, her eyelids drooped and she briefly nodded off. Her diary slipped from her hands, landed on the bed, and fell to the floor. The sound of the book landing shocked her awake, and she looked around the room as if she’d been asleep for hours.
“It’s nothing,” Jeannie said. “You dropped your diary, is all.”
Jeannie leaned down to retrieve it. About to hand it to Jess, she hesitated.
“If you don’t mind,” Jess said, “that’s private.”
Jeannie knew it was private—it was her diary—a source of ongoing tension between the two. Jeannie could allow her curiosity to get the better of her.
“I know. I know.” Still, Jeannie was reluctant to hand it over, her attention fixed on the sketch. Finally, she passed the diary back to Jess. “Have you been there?” she asked. “What’s it like?”
“School?” Jess asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“Winter Park. Where Finn and Amanda go.”
“That’s not Winter Park High,” Jeannie said. “That’s the Lake Buena Vista power plant. I just wrote a paper on it for science class.”
“Science class? Lake what?” Jess said.
Jeannie traced the stair-step profile of the structure in the background of the kiss.
“It’s called the Lake Buena Vista Cogeneration Facility. Hang on. I’ll show you.” Jeannie dug through some papers on her desk, including a bunch of printouts from various Web sites. She singled out three of these and passed them to Jess.
“So?”
Jeannie leaned over Jess’s shoulder, selected the second of the three printouts—a photograph taken at a great distance from the power plant—and traced the stair-stepped roofline of the facility. She then pointed to Jess’s diary and traced the same pattern.
Jess went silent, her eyes dancing between the two images. She knew her dreams often combined locations or activities.
“What exactly does it do?” Jess asked.
“Electricity. It powers Disney World and local businesses.”
“Disney World.” Jess felt light-headed. This was not coincidence.
“Water and sewage treatment, too. Natural gas. Everything. I got an A on my paper,” she announced proudly.
“As in electricity for the Parks?”
“Exactly! Yeah. That’s the Disney part. They wanted to own their own electricity and stuff. You know, so it was more reliable and everything.”
Jess traced the two rooflines again—from the Web site and from her drawing. They weren’t simply similar; they were identical.
“Where exactly is this place?”
“It’s way out on Disney property. As in, the boonies.”
“Disney property? You sure about that?”
“Hello? An A? Did you know that at one point Walt Disney had planned for Epcot to be this futuristic city, with homes all around it? How cool would that have been?”
Jess barely heard her. Her brain was stuck back on Disney generating its own power. She’d drawn a Disney power plant in her diary without knowing it. It had to be hugely significant.
She had to contact Philby. Now!
* * *
Philby had his hands full. He kept one eye on the clock in his computer’s toolbar. The other eye jumped between the dozen webcam views from the Magic Kingdom’s Security server as he tracked Finn through the Park. His cell phone rested on his lap in vibrate mode, the laptop bridging his thighs. He sat on the toilet—lid closed—of what his mother called the “powder room,” a small, windowless bathroom with a corner sink near the front door of the house. He had the bathroom’s door locked: there would be no unexpected intrusions by Hugo or anyone else tonight. He could not afford to leave the Keepers stranded.
The e-mail from Jess caused him to perspire. He Googled “Lake Buena Vista Cogeneration Facility.” He had a fine memory, so when a photograph of the power plant popped up, he immediately matched the similarities with Jess’s diary sketch. From what he read, the power plant supplied all of Walt Disney World with power. If something happened to the Florida electric grid, Disney’s facility promised an uninterrupted flow of electricity to all of its Parks and hotels.
And computer servers, he thought.
Jess had foreseen its importance in one of her dreams. That the kiss used the power plant as a background did not necessarily connect the two: Jess’s diary pages often mixed images and time lines. But it established its importance—Jess’s track record was well proven.
With the power plant’s direct connection to the Parks, and its location outside the Parks but still on Disney property, the OTs jumping the Disney firewalls suddenly took on tremendous significance.
Control of the power plant meant control of the Parks—the Overtakers’ ultimate goal.
He had no way to reach Finn to update him. But he did have Maybeck and Charlene asleep and on standby to be crossed over.
He brought up his rendering of the router traffic he’d mapped from the DHI server’s log, already chastising himself. There had been several pings to a router out in the middle of nowhere. On Google Maps it just came up as an area of swampland—but now he saw his error: for security reasons, power plant locations were blocked from Internet maps. He’d been looking at the power plant all along, because those pings represented OT DHI traffic.
The OTs had been to the Lake Buena Vista Cogeneration Plant several times in the past week.
At that moment, his DHI traffic alarm sounded and a red message flashed on his screen: +70% BANDWIDTH USAGE.
Philby tried to focus, his breathing rapid, his heartbeat out of rhythm.
They’re there right now!
* * *
Pluto was waiting for them.
“This way!” Finn said, gently steering Amanda while trying to move her more quickly.
“Why are we running?” she asked.
“Visitors,” Finn said, glancing back.
Pluto’s hackles had been up for the past several minutes, and he kept looking behind them, his eyes a knot of concern.
Finn had tried to see whatever it was back there that was bothering Pluto, but only caught a shadow crossing the empty Park path in Frontierland.
“You see that?” he asked Amanda.
There it was again: the flash of translucent eyes from the shadows, like a deer on the side of a highway.
Amanda skidded to a stop, for she’d seen them, too, but for the first time.<
br />
“Another dog?” Finn asked.
Amanda’s blue hologram line faded as she lost a considerable percentage of her DHI to fear. “Not a dog,” she said. “Did you see how high off the ground that was?”
They were walking backward now, still moving in the direction of the Tom’s Landing raft dock, but refusing to take their eyes off the shadows by Country Bear Jamboree, where they’d both seen the pair of eyes.
An animal’s rapid breathing could be heard drawing closer.
Finn whispered, “That has to be a dog! Listen to it.”
“It’s tall. Very tall. Pluto is a Great Dane,” Amanda reminded him. “And there’s another in the movie The Ugly Dachshund.”
“Never seen it.”
“The dog or the movie?” she asked.
They walked faster now, keeping their eyes on the moving shadows while trying not to fall. They heard a wet slurp from what had to be an extremely large tongue. Another flash of eyes.
“Ehh!” Amanda reached for Finn and clutched his arm tightly. He actually appreciated the contact, though not the reason for it.
A sliver of light from one of the few lighted streetlamps played like a knife’s edge across the path, severing the darkness. Through the shaft of light strode a long, hairy creature, rail thin, malnourished and mangy, only a few inches visible at a time, like it was being painted by a tiny flashlight. It had enormous paws and four stick legs, but it was absurdly oversized, had pointed teeth, and a stream of drool that turned their stomachs.
Finn said harshly, “That’s no dog.”
“A wolf,” Amanda said, her voice quavering. “That’s the Big Bad Wolf.”
The thing was as tall as a bicycle, and looked to be about as fast.
“What now?” she asked.
The wolf lumbered out into the light, its back haunches moving fluidly, its ribs showing through the tangle of filthy hair.
A bone-chilling growl from behind them. Pluto, who’d been leading the way, had stopped and was turned toward the challenger.
“No, boy,” Finn said. It was no match.
But Pluto stood his ground as Amanda and Finn backed up past him, putting himself between them and the wolf.
“Come, Pluto!” Amanda whispered harshly.
The dog did not budge, but lowered himself onto his front paws and tucked his tail between his legs. Pluto looked back at Finn with noble eyes.
“He wants us to run,” Finn said.
“You speak dog, do you?”
“Are you strong enough?”
“Are you kidding? Believe me, I’m wide awake.”
“On three,” he said.
“Are you sure about this?”
“No,” Finn said.
* * *
Pluto had lived long enough to be the age of an Egyptian mummy in dog years. In that time, he’d learned a few tricks. Not the kind of tricks like roll over or shake hands, but the kind of tricks to play on other animals pursuing you. Over the years these tricks had been refined to the point that they approached actual skills—pie in the face, tongue in the mousetrap, peanut butter in the dog bowl. They’d been well-documented in all the cartoons.
When faced with the Big Bad Wolf—emphasis on Big and Bad—Pluto had the luxury of seeing it play out as a cartoon. Where others would’ve panicked, he saw an opportunity for entertainment and amusement. In a cartoon, no matter how hard the punishment, the dog always got up to play another day.
It never crossed his small mind that the wolf would actually eat him. In Pluto’s world, a dog could fall out of a tree, or get hit by a bus, and come out of it with nothing more than stars floating around his head and his eyes rolling in their sockets. One quick shake and everything was better.
So it wasn’t a question of fear, it was a question of how to make this really funny, and the more inventive the solution the better.
He spotted it easily: one of those plastic grid fences meant to keep people off sidewalks or out of gardens or away from construction. They used them all the time in the Park. It was currently wrapped around an island of flowers with a sign hanging from it saying a bunch of words he couldn’t read but he was pretty sure ended in “Thank You.” Pluto was no Rhodes scholar.
With the wolf’s confident stride picking up pace, Pluto knew the trick was to get him running. That was when he gave the boy the signal.
For a second, the boy and girl just continued walking backward, which put a glitch in his plan. Humans could be so boneheaded. So he barked.
And that got the kids moving. They took off toward Minnie and the dock like he’d fired a starting gun. That prompted el lobo to spring into action. It bared its teeth, squinted its eyes and charged. That was when Pluto realized this might not be so much fun. He’d never seen an animal move so fast. It was as if the creature had been shot from a catapult. Pluto had badly misjudged the time necessary to pull of his stunt. Wolf seconds were different than dog seconds.
With nothing but four-legged teeth coming at him, Pluto found the end of the mesh fence with his own mouth and bit down hard. He wrestled a stake from the soft dirt and then backed up as fast as he could drag it, dislodging one stake after another. The fence stretched across the path—halfway, three quarters.
The wolf’s confidence or hunger had him running much too fast to come to any kind of graceful stop. Instead, as Pluto stretched the fence and wrapped it around a small tree, the wolf’s paws scratched and clawed at the concrete path but found no traction. He lost his footing, tucked, and rolled, colliding with the fence, which aimed him on an angle toward the water across from Pecos Bill Café. The wolf backpedaled but failed to stop his momentum. He tumbled head over heels into the water.
Pluto turned and ran, seeing clearly there was only one thing scarier than the Big Bad Wolf, and that was a big, MAD wolf.
* * *
Minnie waved Finn toward the raft that serviced Tom Sawyer Island. He and Amanda had just heard a violent splash, turning in time to see a violently angry wolf swimming violently for shore. Pluto bounded toward them at full speed, the panicked look in his eyes needing no translation.
The two kids wound through the empty waiting line for the raft ride. Amanda shrieked and slid to an abrupt stop; Finn crashed into her from behind.
An unconscious pirate lay at his feet. He was gnarly looking, with a scrub beard, a pockmarked face, and bent nose. A bandana worn as a skullcap hid most of a particularly nasty bump. Finn looked between the fallen pirate and Minnie, who stood on the edge of the raft, a shore line in one hand, the other tucked behind her back.
“Minnie?” Finn said.
She hung her head and pulled her hand from behind her back, revealing a large wooden pin, part of the raft.
“She did this?” Amanda asked Finn.
“I’d say she charmed him.”
“Thank you, Minnie,” Amanda said.
Minnie blushed, and slowly a smile overtook her. She looked devilish as she waved them onto the raft invitingly.
Finn reached to catch Amanda by the arm. “Wait!”
Amanda turned.
“The question that needs to be asked,” Finn said rushing his words, one eye on the wolf swimming for shore perhaps fifty yards away, “is why is a pirate guarding the raft to Tom Sawyer Island? He’s a long way from home, over in Adventureland, and what’s so important about this raft?”
Minnie waved at them more frantically—the Big Bad Wolf was climbing up the shore. Now shaking the water off.
“Overtakers?” Amanda said.
“We know the pirates belong. There’s no question about that. So why guard the island? The same island where Stitch attacked Maybeck and me. It doesn’t make sense. This island’s of no importance. It isn’t even that popular an attraction.”
“Because the Queen knew you might figure out the waterwheel’s importance?” she said.
Finn nodded. “Makes sense to me. He’s here to stop us, or to catch us, or both. And the only problem with that is—”
&nbs
p; “He won’t be the only one.”
“Bingo,” he said.
Minnie was jumping up and down and pointing to the wolf, who was now back on the path in the distance, lumbering toward them, his pink tongue swaying from his teeth.
“So we’ll need to be careful,” Amanda said.
Pluto jumped onto the raft as they climbed aboard. Minnie tossed the line to shore, stepped behind the wheel, and skippered the raft across the small waterway. The wolf reached the loading dock, but too late, stretching toward the raft now just out of reach. Minnie, behind the wheel, reminded Finn of Mickey in a very old black-and-white cartoon he couldn’t remember the name of. It might have been the first animated cartoon Walt Disney had ever drawn.
“Where is Mickey, I wonder,” he said to Amanda.
“I don’t think she wants to hear it,” Amanda said.
“No. But it’s troubling.”
“Everything about this place is troubling.”
She reached down and placed her faintly outlined DHI hand atop his, and he felt it, his own outline dulled somewhat by the sense of excitement and terror her reaching out to him represented.
“I like you a lot, Finn.”
“Same here.”
“You like you a lot, too?” she said. And they both laughed. “Thank you for everything you’re doing for me.”
“I got you into this in the first place,” he said, guiltily.
“I’m a big girl,” she said. “No complaints.” She rubbed the back of his hand with her fingers.
The raft bumped to shore. Pluto jumped off. Minnie hopped onto the dock and expertly secured the raft to it with a line. She extended a hand and helped Amanda off the raft. Finn jumped down.
“We shouldn’t be long,” he said, eyeing the waterwheel that was only a matter of yards away.
Minnie saluted.
“We might need a quick escape, so maybe you could wait for us here?” he proposed. He didn’t want to get Minnie in any more trouble.
Her big black eyes tracked across the water to the Big Bad Wolf, still lurching from the dock and looking to be considering the swim.
“One thing at a time,” Finn said.
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