Still asleep, Walt Disney twisted and turned, his face bathed in sweat from the extreme heat as it seemed to flow over and around him. As the early morning fog crept up from the Amazon, he jerked once more as if trying to bring his hand up in front of his face. Obstructed by the material of his trousers, the sharp movement caused his hand to unconsciously let go of the pendant deep in his pocket. All through the long night, he had kept a tight grip on the gemstone, and, just now with that one jerk, it slipped away into the depths of his pocket. Bereft of the touch of his hand, the intense vision that had been playing through his mind like an epic movie suddenly extinguished. Once the intense images had faded from his thoughts, Walt’s movements calmed, his breathing returned once again to an even pace.
The flames of the fire finally ate through the logs, as all fire does. Once its source of fuel was used up, the heat began to diminish, diverted as it was. The cooler foggy air was allowed to creep back into the surrounding area.
Upon awakening in the damp, misty morning, Walt was greeted with a pounding headache and a few anxious looks from his companions. The pain of his headache worked against the sharp images of his dream last night. Or had it been a vision that he had had back in the clearing? Did he really see what he thought he saw at El Lobo? Was there really a hand that came out of the darkness and tried to give him something? It was probably just one of his friends joking around. Wow, what a dream! he finally decided with an uneasy laugh. Saying nothing to the others, he silently vowed never to touch tequila again. But it was only one, a small drink at that. Unable to come up with any satisfactory answer, he shook his head in frustration.
As he stood next to the cold fire pit, Walt was unaware of the concern of his men as he stared unseeing into the ashes. His dream seemed so real that, try as he might, he couldn’t shake it off. Well, I guess it’s better than seeing pink elephants, he told himself with a small smile as he tried desperately for it all to make sense. Magic Kingdom. Those two words from his vision rolled over in his mind. I like that phrase.
Unconsciously, Walt’s hand went back into the pocket of his rumpled trousers. He gave a silent gasp when his fingers touched the cool metal links of a chain. Glancing around, he could see that the others were now preoccupied with loading their impromptu camp back onto the launch they had commandeered. They seemed even more anxious to get out of the jungle and back to their ship, the Santa Clara, and barely paid attention to what Walt was doing, especially now that he was up and moving. During the night, however, he had been so restless in his sleep, even calling out at one point, that a few of his animators had grown somewhat worried about their boss. Now it seemed obvious he was fine, or so they thought, as they got back to the work of packing. They still had the same thirty miles of the Amazon River to navigate to get back to their ship and wanted to get moving as soon as possible.
When he felt he was unobserved, Walt turned slightly away from the activity of the camp. His grasp closed around the chain and he pulled it partway out of his pocket. When the wavering morning light hit the curves of gold and the glimpse of a brilliant red stone, his heart rate sped up once more. It wasn’t a dream.
Without a word of explanation to the others, he jammed the pendant back in his pocket and hurried to the glade where he had heard that strange voice the night before. Feeling assured now that he was completely alone, Walt carefully removed the pendant. Holding it up this time by the chain, he examined the beautiful object thoroughly, turning it slowly in front of his eyes. It was indeed a heart-shaped red diamond. It had to be a diamond, he figured, since all the colors of the rainbow shot off from every facet. “It was true!” he whispered, amazed. “I did get this last night.”
Ancient, was his next thought as he examined the way the gold was crafted; the patina gave the precious metal the appearance of age—great age. Merlin made this. Could that have possibly been true, too? As the pendant turned, the back of the setting came into view. What he had first thought were simply three circles now showed themselves to be an outline in a shape that was unmistakable to him. Mickey!A red diamond with a Hidden Mickey. With a small smile on his face, the familiarity of the shape allowed Walt to relax after the confusion of the intense vision he had experienced all through the night. Reaching out his hand, his fingers slowly outlined the shape of Mickey’s ears. He needed to know if what he had experienced the day before in this very spot had indeed happened. There was only one way to find out.
His tentative touch moved to the brilliant red heart. Immediately the same emotion he had felt before coursed through him. Aware of it, his hand jerked back and the feeling that ran through his body promptly ceased. “That was how it happened!” he claimed out loud. Eager now to see what was next, he reached out and boldly grabbed the heart. Not fighting it this time, he let the thoughts and pictures flood through his mind.
He soon realized that this new vision precisely followed what he had experienced all through the night. The images of the night and early morning had been too vivid, too fresh for him to forget so soon where they had left off.
Clouds of purple smoke swirled around his mind’s eye and parted, allowing him to see once again the great dragon that had attacked him and his loyal group. Deep purple she was, a purple so dark it was almost black. She now circled the castle to make one more attack. Claws extended at them all, she started to make her descent down Main Street toward his loyal friends. Then, suddenly, something like a long, silvery arrow hurled straight toward her. Up it arced with true precision until it found its target. With an anguished scream filled with terror and frustration, she crashed heavily onto the pavement in front of the group. As she rolled lifelessly onto her back, there it was a long, elaborately-hilted sword that protruded out of her heart, wisps of smoke trailed from her open, now-silent mouth.
All her screams, all her threats, all her demands were over. She had lost her final bid to regain her pendant and destroy Walt and all that he had built. Standing proudly over her dead body, the sword’s owner, Wals, was now surrounded by Walt and their friends to slap him on his back and congratulate him on the success of his death stroke. Here stood Lance and Kimberly, Wolf and Peter and Adam and Beth. The vision shifted and they were now in Walt’s beautiful apartment above Main Street sharing a bottle of champagne. Peter and his wife Catie told them about a new ride that was being developed for Tomorrowland. The vision faded out for a mere moment and Walt saw that he had shifted another thirteen years forward in time to July of the year 2055. A cloud of doves were released over the Main Street train station, followed by colorful Mickey balloons too numerous to count for the one hundredth anniversary celebration….
As Walt’s hand dropped from the stone, the vision immediately extinguished, leaving him feeling sad it was gone but excited at the same time. “How could they know?” Unable to keep silent, he spoke out loud, amazed once again by what he had seen. “How could they know my dream? How could they know I want a park just like that?” The words he had been told about the pendant in the darkness came back to his mind as he stood there staring into the depths of the Amazon jungle. Safeguard and protect it…far more important to you than its face value…it will show you things…about your little magic kingdom…remember this: How you get it is up to you. There was no way he could answer the questions of ‘who was that’ or ‘how could this happen’ at that moment. There was too much for him to consider. He did, however, believe one thing with an absolute finality: This vision, this prelude of his future—however it was that it was given to him—would come true! How you get it is up to you.
Hoping to get at least some kind of an answer to his many questions, Walt placed the mysterious piece of jewelry reverently back into his pocket and turned his attention to the surroundings. The rock formation of the crouching wolf, El Lobo, was more defined but looked decidedly different in the bright sunlight that had finally burned off the river mist. He didn’t pay attention to the rock formation, though. He knew El Lobo itself wouldn’t hold the answer he sought. Stud
ying the ground around the trees from which the heart-shaped pendant had emerged, he looked for footprints, boot prints, tire tracks, anything that made sense. There had to be some explanation of who it was who had given him this wonderful foretaste of his future.
There were no footprints to be found. Retracing his steps, he even walked all the way around the silent rocky figure as he intently stared at the ground. As he figured would happen, he found nothing. Going back to the edge of the jungle, he spotted the never-lit cigarette that had fallen from his fingers. Knowing this was the exact spot on which he had stood, he dropped to his knees. Walt brushed a few stray leaves away from the fallen stick. What he saw made his breath catch in his throat. Slowly standing, he stared down at the visible evidence right in front of his eyes. What he had found in the dust was the unmistakable shape of paw prints. Big canine paw prints that led partway into the jungle and simply vanished.
Not able to take his eyes off the tracks, the memory of the pendant’s vision once again filled his mind and caused his hands to tremble with excitement. He brought up a name out of the future—his future, he reminded himself, a name that occurred come over and over—and a small, knowing smile turned up the corners of his mouth. “Wolf.”
Back onboard the liner Santa Clara, Walt and his group slowly made their way through the Panama Canal as the South American goodwill tour continued. Still being recognized and feted, Walt was literally pulled off the ship in Panama City to attend the premiere of Fantasia.
The last leg of the journey took them up the Eastern Seaboard. Walt and Lillian attended the opening of Dumbo in New York at the Broadway Theatre. The New York Times newspaper favorably reported that they had never knew they could fall in love with a baby elephant. The animated feature-length film, the fourth from the Studio, was a hit.
Once the festivities in New York were over, after being gone for twelve weeks, the small group of nineteen finally boarded an airplane and gratefully headed home to California.
During their long plane flight home, Walt leaned over to give Lillian a kiss on her cheek, telling her he wanted to take a nap. Aware of how worn out and tired he was from the trip, she was glad to hear this. After she gave him a warm smile, Lillian turned back to her magazine. He might be tired, she thought, but she also knew he was now excited about the future. The worry and strain over the strike—the reason for this trip in the first place—had faded. She wasn’t sure when it had happened during the exhausting trip, but she knew her husband had regained a vitality, an eagerness for whatever was about to come. And, she knew with a small smile, that Walt would be sure to fill them all in on it whenever he was ready.
As Walt settled back into his seat of the plane, his arms folded comfortably over his stomach and his eyes closed, a small grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. He wasn’t sure he could actually sleep as the vision of his little magic kingdom played over and over through his mind like the reels of a live-action movie. One by one, he pictured the many faces he had seen. Some of them, of course, he knew from the Studio. The rest of the people who had inhabited this future world of his he knew he had never seen before. As their images paraded past his closed eyes, they were now as familiar to him as if they were members of his own family. Their personalities and quirks fell into place with their names and Walt felt as if he could easily resume a conversation with any one of them.
Hearing a little snort of a laugh as he drifted off, Lillian glanced over at the sound, but it looked to her as if Walt was already asleep. Unaware of his wife’s attention, Walt snuggled deeper into his seat. His thought had been that he’d be disappointed when he went back to the Studio in the next few days and most of those people wouldn’t be there.
There was one phrase that kept going through his mind, one that would become something like a mantra for him: How you get it is up to you. Exact details in the vision would not match up, he realized, but the possibilities…oh, the possibilities were thrilling!
How you get it is up to you. Yes, he would realize his dream of a magic kingdom. It was up to him. Right then he didn’t know exactly how he would get this vision to come true. It was going to take a lot of work. But, that never stopped me before, he told himself. Hmmpf, they had said that Snow White would never happen. Showed them. All it takes is belief…and the right people. A lot of the right people. He thought of the men talking quietly amongst themselves or else asleep on the plane around him. And, he smiled, I know how to get the right people.
He thought about the Hidden Mickey treasure search that had started the vision. I like that. That’s a great idea. And the Guardians? He gave another silent chuckle. Well, there might not be so much to guard right now… But, when my little park does get up and running, it might be a good idea to have a certain group who’s watching my back.
Then his mind turned to another part of the vision, one that made him pause. He pictured the iron chamber deep beneath his magical kingdom and what it had represented. No, that part won’t come true, he promised himself. Whatever else might come, that will not.
Walt finally did drift off to sleep. It was a peaceful sleep—one of the first since this goodwill tour of South America began twelve weeks earlier. It was the sleep of a man who had finally been given the answers to all of his many questions.
-THE END-
The story continues with a new generation of clue solvers, in...
Before you begin reading the next exciting set of books, starting with Hidden Mickey Adventures 1: Peter and the Wolf, I wanted to give you this Epilogue Outtake. A novel will undergo many changes before it becomes an actual printed book. As the author, I get ideas that will suddenly pop into my mind as I am writing. Some of the ideas work for the finished product, some need to be written down and set aside for a later novel, and some don’t work out at all in the way I first imagined. The ideas may be good, but, in the end, they just don’t feel right for what I wanted to convey. What I am including here in this bonus is the first Epilogue I penned for Hidden Mickey 4: Wolf! Happily Ever After? At the time, I thought it would be interesting to see the people who Walt had seen in his vision with the pendant, in a different light. As in all of our dreams, we see people we know, usually in different situations than what they are in normally. Here, in this version of the Epilogue, I had Walt’s ‘dream people’ as they might have been either at work in the Studio or at Disneyland.In the end, though, I didn’t feel it was quite the right ending, which is why the Epilogue changed to what you just read. I wanted to make sure that you, as the reader, understood that everything you read to this point was all a vision from the pendant, and Walt was still in the jungle in 1940. All the exciting events and all that we know about the Disney Company is still to come, still in Walt’s fertile imagination and itching to get out! So sit back and enjoy this bonus outtake for what it is!
Nancy Temple Rodrigue
September, 1960
“His fever broke!” The sound of relief was obvious in his voice as the doctor made his announcement. The faces of the family who had been anxiously waiting in the small apartment with him mirrored his own.
She believed him, but Walt’s long-time nurse, Hazel, came over to feel Walt’s forehead for her own benefit. A smile played across her lips, the first one in two days. “I think he’s just sleeping now. That’s good.” Letting out a pent-up sigh, she rubbed her sore neck. She went over to hug Lillian and give her some extra encouragement. “Perhaps we can all go home now and get some rest. It looks like he’s out of danger.”
Doctor Houser put his stethoscope back into his worn, black briefcase and nodded his head. “That’s a good idea. You all go ahead. I’ll stay a little longer.” He looked back at his sleeping patient and saw the worry lines that had covered Walt’s brow had relaxed. His restless agitation had also ceased. As the door clicked shut behind the women, the doctor turned to the silent, watchful security guard who also hadn’t left the apartment above the Fire Station in two days. The relieved look on Doctor Houser’s face turned into one o
f disapproval. “We should have taken him to the hospital, Wolf.”
Wolf just grunted. “You know he hates those places. He was never left alone and you had everything here that was needed, just like the hospital would have had.” They had had this argument before.
His lips a firm line, arms folded in front of his chest, the doctor stared at his sleeping boss and friend. “Well, I just want it on record that I disagree with you, but now it appears it worked out all right.” He gave a small snort as he went to the window and glanced at the view of Main Street. “Well, he won’t get any rest with the two of us hovering over him and arguing. Why don’t we go get a bite to eat at the Carnation Ice Cream Parlor? You’re buying.” He threw that in as a parting shot to show he still felt some animosity toward the security guard, but he did plan to, eventually, drop it.
Wolf took one last look at his boss and saw how his high color had faded and that he even snored a little as he slept. “All right. That’s sounds good.” At least the doctor hadn’t suggested that they eat at the Golden Horseshoe Review. He wasn’t in the mood to be squirted by Pecos Bill’s water guns. Wally always seemed to spot him whenever he was in the audience and his aim was impeccable.
As the two men gathered up what they needed to take with them, the doctor reached over and clicked on the old-fashioned, pale green light that had always stood in the front window that overlooked Main Street. The message had now been sent.
Wolf! Happily Ever After? Page 28
