Escape from the Isle of the Lost

by Melissa de la Cruz

  “You’re not holding me anywhere,” said Mal.

  “One word and you’ll drown,” threatened Uma.

  “Say it then!” said Mal. “Do it!”

  Uma backed away as Mal relentlessly pushed forward, slashing and fighting so strongly that she forced Uma to drop her weapon.

  Mal brought her sword under Uma’s chin. “Are we done now?” she growled. But Uma suddenly disappeared, and her image appeared in a golden mirror that materialized on the deck.

  Uma laughed at Mal’s confusion.

  Then Mal was back on the deck of the sunken pirate ship, standing in front of a door with a brass handle.

  “UMA! FACE ME!” Mal demanded, reaching for the handle as the ocean reverberated with Uma’s laughter.

  t was impossible to imagine that Evil Queen’s castle could appear scarier and more foreboding than it already was, but somehow, it had managed to pull off this feat. It loomed above the crag, its dark tower rising to the skies. Evie remembered her lonely childhood spent inside its confines, her only company a mother obsessed with outward appearances. Evie knew every cosmetic trick, every fashion tip, but had been bereft of true support and affection. But this was no time for bad memories or a pity party. Mal was lost under the ocean, trapped by some evil force, and they had to help her.

  The VKs made their way toward the castle, fighting through a row of hedges and vines that surrounded its walls. “Ouch,” said Jay, as he pulled a particularly large barb from his leg.

  “Sorry,” said Evie. “Mom prefers thorns and cuts off the roses.”

  “Of course,” said Carlos. “Why are we here again?”

  “If there’s wicked magic on the Isle, then we need to fight it with similarly strong magic. And there’s no magic stronger than in my mom’s Magic Mirror.”

  “Isn’t it broken?” asked Carlos.

  “The glass is broken, and I have a tiny shard of it in my compact. But the frame still stands, and something tells me the glass was mostly for display. It’s made of magic. And if there’s magic on the Isle, it’ll work.”

  They reached the drawbridge, passed over the moat, and stood in front of the main door. Evie felt in her pockets for the key and realized she’d left it back in her room on Auradon. She hadn’t planned on visiting home.

  “Guys, I have bad news,” she told them. “I didn’t bring the key.”

  “What now?” asked Carlos.

  “Break in? Can’t be that hard,” said Jay with a shrug.

  Evie shook her head. “Mom has massive security on this thing. Remember? This isn’t Auradon. If we pick the lock and open the door without the right key, a steel trap will spring, and we’ll all fall into a basement full of hungry alligators.” It was the Evil Queen’s castle, after all.

  “Okay, so let’s not do that,” Carlos said with a shudder.

  “Mom keeps a spare key in the vultures’ nest, over there,” Evie said, motioning to a ledge high in the air where they could just make out a shadow of a large bird’s nest.

  “Easy enough to climb,” said Jay, starting to find a foothold in the castle walls.

  “No!” screamed Evie, and Jay slid back to the ground.

  “Sorry,” she said. “The vultures will peck you to death. We’ll just have to convince them I’m my mom.”

  Jay picked himself up and dusted off. “How’re we going to do that?”

  Evie smiled. “Makeup.”

  • • •

  Evie knelt at the doorway, set down her purse, and began to remove assorted cosmetics from its depths—a dizzying array of lipstick, foundation, blush, eyeliner, and every conceivable beauty instrument known to humanity. She turned her back to the boys and began the transformation.

  The eyebrows were easy, since she and her mother had the same dark brows. Evie just had to color them in so they looked more menacing. Then she covered her face in a pale powder and darkened her lips to bloodred. As a final touch, she fashioned a black scarf she found in her bag into a black cape.

  When she turned to Jay and Carlos, the two of them staggered back.

  “Whoa!” said Carlos. “You are way too good at that.”

  “Who are you, and what did you do with Evie?” said Jay.

  Evie cackled like her mother and held out an apple she’d packed as a snack. “One bite and all your dreams will come true!” she purred in her best Evil Queen voice.

  “Seriously, stop it!” yelled Carlos.

  Evie giggled and sounded like her normal self. “Okay, fine.” She fluffed up her cape and checked her appearance in her phone’s camera. “I look like Mom, right? Enough to fool those old vultures?”

  “Totally,” said Jay.

  “Could’ve fooled us,” said Carlos.

  • • •

  She began to climb up the castle walls toward the vultures’ nest, lifting herself up inch by inch. When she reached the ledge she smiled sweetly at the hungry birds of prey. Her mother’s favorite pets.

  “Hello, my dearies,” she said in her best mimicry of her mother’s voice. “I seem to have forgotten my keys! Now let me just…” She reached into the nest. The closest vulture lunged, snapping at her fingers.

  Evie frowned. It looked like she would have to channel more of her mother after all. She couldn’t just put on the makeup and expect the vultures to let her have the key. She had to be Evil Queen. The vultures began to shriek and caw at her.

  “SILENCE!” she demanded. “You know the penalty if you fail to give me the key!” She glared at them as her mother would.

  She looked so frightening and so much like her mother at that moment that the vultures squawked and flapped their wings, flying away from her as fast as they could.

  “Sorry, birdies,” Evie whispered as she reached back into the nest and grabbed the key to the front door.

  She slid down, Jay and Carlos giving her a hand as she made it back to the front steps. In a blink, they were finally inside.

  It was the same as it ever was, dark and shadowy and full of cobwebs. They tiptoed past the kitchen. “This place gives me the creeps,” said Carlos. Jay nodded silently.

  “Oh, it’s not that bad,” said Evie. “It’s worse when Mom’s around.”

  They made their way through the dark corridors up to the bedrooms, where Evil Queen kept her legendary Magic Mirror. Evie opened the door, half expecting her mother to scold her for letting in a draft. But it was as empty as expected. Mom never missed a night out with her hags.

  The mirror’s shards clung to the edges of the frame, but when Evie stepped up to it, it was almost as if it were whole again.

  “Magic,” whispered Evie. “I can feel it coming from below, from deep underground, somehow. It’s weak, but it’s working.”

  She gazed into the largest fragment. She noticed she was still wearing her Evil Queen disguise, which might turn out in their favor.

  “Magic Mirror, from the farthest space, through wind and darkness, I summon thee!” she called.

  For a moment the mirror remained foggy and dark, but slowly it began to shift and reveal something else: a face in the mirror. The face of the mirror.

  “What wouldst you know, my queen?” asked the mirror in a deep, sonorous voice that echoed throughout the castle.

  It worked! Evie tried to keep her composure.

  “Magic Mirror on the wall,” she said, addressing the mirror by its full, true name. “Show me the dark fairy named Mal.”

  The clouds swirled once more. Then they parted to reveal deep blue depths. A sunken pirate ship. A great school of fish, swimming in a circle.

  “Where is she?” said Evie, searching every image in the mirror. “SHOW ME MAL!” she commanded.

  Carlos gasped. “Look!”

  Through the bubbles and the murk, they saw their friend walking dazedly on the deck of the ship. Mal was walking toward a door, as if compelled toward it.

  She had a glassy look in her eyes as she reached for the handle.

  “Mal! Stop! Don’t open that door
!” yelled Evie.

  ack in Hades’s cave, Uma had suddenly returned, and was dripping water all over the floor. She was back from her battle with Mal—but the most important part was still to come.

  “Hey! Watch it!” said Hades grumpily.

  “I got her where I want her!” said Uma. “See!” She touched her seashell necklace and pointed toward the broken television, which sprang to life. It showed Mal under the sea, on the deck of a pirate ship, heading to a locked door.

  “She thinks she won, but when she opens that door,” said Uma gleefully, “I’ll appear right in front of her, and then I’ll take the key to our freedom! She’s walking right into my trap!”

  “She is?” asked Hades.

  “Of course she is! I confused her, then spelled her, and now she’s on the verge of letting all of us out!” Uma laughed in glee.

  “How’d you do that?”

  “I’m a sea witch,” said Uma smugly. “I own these waves.”

  “Right!” said Hades, who appeared to finally catch on that their plan was working.

  Uma plopped down on the couch and leaned back. “All she has to do is open that door.”

  Hades squinted at the screen. “What door?”

  “That door!” said Uma, pointing to the door on the pirate ship, annoyed that she had to explain it again. “She opens that door and I pop out!”

  “Really?” Hades asked, not quite convinced. “But you’re here.”

  “When she opens the door, I’ll be there! Sheesh, you’re so slow. I think you spent too much time in the Underworld,” said Uma.

  “So you pop over there, and then what happens?”

  “I grab the key to our freedom!” screeched Uma. “Click—open and out!” She glanced sideways at him. “What’s wrong? You don’t seem excited to leave.”

  “Oh, I am! I really am!” he said. But there was something else in his voice that Uma couldn’t quite place.

  Then Hades’s face broke into a malicious grin. “Wait till I surprise my brother Zeus. He won’t see me coming!”

  “And I’ll have my pirates back!” said Uma. She jumped off the couch and knelt by the television screen, her face inches from Mal’s pixelated one.

  “Come on, Mal!” she said.

  “Mal, do it!” said Hades, joining her.

  “MAL! OPEN IT! OPEN THAT DOOR!” they chorused.

  hrough the mirror, Mal’s friends watched in horror as she reached for the door handle.

  “NO!!!” Carlos screamed, just as loudly as Evie. “MAL! DON’T OPEN IT!!!” He was sure they didn’t want to know what was behind that door. And he was even more certain that Uma was behind this…whatever this was. Maybe Uma was even literally behind it. He wouldn’t put it past her.

  “We need to stop her!” yelled Jay.

  “The mirror!” said Evie. She ran up to its frame and thrust an arm into it, bracing herself for a shattering of glass. Carlos sucked in his breath, and Jay lunged for Evie to pull her back. But her arm disappeared beyond the glass. Carlos could feel the water as it splashed out from the frame, cool and wet against his skin.

  “Hold on, Mal! We’re coming to get you!” Carlos said, as Evie climbed into the mirror and half of her body disappeared through it.

  “Evie! Be careful!” said Jay, right behind her.

  “Mal!” Evie cried as Mal reached out toward the handle of the door. “Don’t open it!”

  But Mal didn’t hear. She just kept walking closer and closer to the door, and finally she pushed it open.

  Now Uma stood in the doorway, cackling. She had a gleeful look on her face. “Give it to me!” she ordered, reaching for Mal’s pockets.

  Uma was fast, but Evie was even faster. She shoved her entire body through the mirror, through time and space. She became a force in the water that pushed Mal away from Uma as hard as she could.

  All of a sudden, Mal shot back up to the surface, away from Uma, out of danger.

  Uma screamed in anger and turned around, just as Evie’s entire body fell through the mirror and appeared underwater, on the deck of the ship. Uma’s face darkened. She extended a tentacle, grabbed Evie’s wrist, and began to pull her into the abyss.

  “Help!” cried Evie.

  Carlos lunged into the mirror, grabbed Evie’s legs, and started pulling her back, so that she was halfway in and halfway out of the mirror. Jay grabbed Carlos and pulled both of his friends backward, trying to drag them back into the castle and out of the water.

  Uma was strong, but they were stronger.

  Together the three of them pulled with all their might.

  They pulled so hard that they went tumbling backward, out of the mirror, landing with a splash on the floor of Evil Queen’s castle.

  “Mal!” yelled Evie, jumping to her feet. “She got away!”

  “We did it!” Carlos shouted. Jay whooped.

  Evie cheered and then glanced around the room. They were covered in seaweed. “Are you guys all right?”

  Carlos nodded, trying to catch his breath. “I think so.”

  “Yeah, I’m good,” said Jay, getting up from the puddle.

  “Um, guys, what just happened?” said Carlos.

  “The door…” started Evie, but then her eyes began to glaze over. Suddenly Carlos felt his memory slipping away. He blinked, confused, and touched his soaking-wet hair. What had Evie been about to say to them? And why were they all dripping with water?

  “Yeah, what are we doing here?” asked Jay. “Where are we?”

  Carlos and Evie stared back at him with matching blank expressions. “I have absolutely no idea,” said Carlos. He felt like he had just woken up from an extremely vivid dream.

  “Something with…the Magic Mirror, maybe?” Evie guessed, since they were standing right in front of it.

  Carlos stared at the Magic Mirror. It was dark and broken. And it felt like he had been looking into it. Had he imagined that he had seen something there? But that couldn’t be right—the mirror needed magic to work.

  “We’re in my home. But why?” Evie continued.

  “We were looking for Mal? I think?” Carlos said, his forehead scrunching.

  “Did we find her?” asked Evie.

  “I hope so,” said Jay.

  “We’ve got bigger problems, boys,” said Evie, as they heard the front door creak open. “We need to get out of here. My mom’s home!”

  he more Celia stared at the cracks in the cave wall, the more she was certain they weren’t just fissures in the stone. There was a rip in the fabric of their world—this was a broken seam, spilling magic into the tunnels underneath the Isle of the Lost. Uma and Hades must have been counting on this tiny bit of magic to take Mal and her friends by surprise. If only Dizzy were here, Celia thought despairingly. She could help her figure out what to do.

  Celia traced the spiderweb of cracks along the cave wall. There were so many of them, and it looked like they were spreading. What could she do? How could she fix a spell? She was nothing but a two-bit hustler, making up fortunes for people silly enough to pay for them. She couldn’t help Mal and her friends.

  She shuffled and reshuffled her cards out of habit. Then she realized—if there really was magic down here, she could use it. She sat down on the cold cave floor, cutting and shuffling her cards. She would read her own fortune, to guide her hand and find a solution. For once, her tricks might actually work.

  How do I fix the cracks? she asked the cards as she shuffled them again and again, her hands shaking from nerves.

  Celia placed three cards in front of her.

  The first card was the Magician. Her past.

  The next was the Queen of Wands. Her present.

  The third was the Hermit. Her future.

  What did it mean? The Magician was her past. A strong presence—her father, she thought. The great manipulator, a true magician. The second card represented who she was: the Queen of Wands, a sorceress in her own right. Someone dependable. A person others could count on. The third was t
he Hermit—an inward-looking card, one that represented a person’s inner life.

  Then she realized: It meant the ability to fix this rested within her. She didn’t need anyone’s help. She had the power all along.

  Celia was her father’s daughter. Dr. Facilier wasn’t just the headmaster of Dragon Hall—he was a powerful witch doctor who had friends on the other side, including one particular friend who was very close indeed. She knew what she had to do.

  A spell to fix a spell.

  She called on her shadow, the creature that lived in her. Her shadow peeled herself away from Celia and turned to her. “What is your command, mistress?”

  “Seal the spaces in between; weave the fabric of the barrier’s spell back to its rightful strength; and where there is light, let darkness rule,” Celia ordered. “Cast yourself wide and dark and deep.”

  Her shadow nodded, and then leaped onto the wall. It grew until it covered the cave in darkness, and one by one, every thread of light in the cave blinked out.

  Celia held her cards. They did not tremble, nor did they call. The magic was snuffed out like a candle, by a shadow.

  Celia felt herself gasp with relief, and she hugged her cards to her chest. Then, just as quickly, she brushed herself off and stood, pulling herself back together. After that, I better get picked to go to Auradon Prep, Celia said to herself as she worked her way back through the tunnel. Imagine what I could do with real magic at my fingertips!

  ike a curtain closing on a stage, everything suddenly disappeared—the bubbles, the pirate ship, the door—at the same time that an invisible force pushed Mal away and sent her flying off to safety.

  “Face it, Uma, I’ll always be stronger than you!” said Mal as the waves carried her away.

  She could hear Uma’s cry of rage from deep below echoing in the waves. “You, strong enough? In your dreams!!!” screamed Uma.

  Mal shut her eyes.

  When she opened them, she was standing at the pier again, and it was as if she had never fallen into the water. Her memory was fading as well. She fought to hold on to fragments of images—the school of fish that had surrounded her, Uma’s face laughing in all the bubbles, the pirate ship, a mirror, and that strangely compelling door.