Kingdom Keepers Boxed Set

by Ridley Pearson

  Maleficent stepped out into the sunlight but jumped back—the heat of the sun’s rays already too much for her.

  Maybeck reached the tower and found the dangling rope and slid down, burning his hands, reached the ground, and took off running without looking back.

  He understood with absolute clarity what was going on: the bat was a spy—Maleficent’s spy—and she’d dispatched the birds and the monkey to make sure she received the bat’s report.

  The bat had followed Finn since Amanda’s. It knew all about them. And now Maleficent knew, too.

  He shuddered with the thought of that as he broke into the jungle and ran for his life.

  THE MOMENT THE PARK gates opened to the public, Finn, Amanda, and Philby entered through the Cast Member entrance, using the IDs that Wayne had provided. Finn and Philby were determined to mix in with the crowds and reach the rendezvous in time to meet up with the others. Famous as DHIs, their faces were known throughout the Disney kingdoms, a fame that threatened—for they were forbidden from attending except on specially approved days. Getting around without being recognized was not going to be easy. They wore baseball caps to hide their faces, and they kept to themselves as much as possible.

  By the time they reached the benches just inside the large gates north of the Rainforest Café, where the Animal Kingdom parade originated, a wet Maybeck and a dirty-faced Willa were waiting. Finn handed out copies of the page from Jez’s diary.

  Quiet at this hour, it was a good place to meet. They gathered around a bench, awaiting Charlene’s grand entrance as DeVine, the ivy-covered chameleon.

  Maybeck told them about being attacked by birds, about losing the bat to a monkey, and about his encounter with Maleficent.

  Willa spoke of her pursuit by a miniature dragon and her discovery in the metal stump of the cryptic message left by Jez.

  “There’s something to be learned from what we both went through,” Willa said, continuing. “We can’t trust any of the animals we see. Maleficent can control them. Whether a flock of birds, or a dragon with wings. We’re no longer in the Animal Kingdom, we’re in Maleficent’s kingdom.”

  “If she went to all this trouble to be here, there’s got to be a good reason.” Finn heard something behind him and glanced over his shoulder into the jungle. He saw nothing. Willa and Maybeck were freaking him out.

  “Maleficent’s weak in the heat. She needs cold to survive. If she’s hanging out here, it’s someplace cold.”

  “But why here?” Finn asked.

  “We need to keep watch on the bat enclosure,” Maybeck proposed.

  “I can go places none of you can,” said a girl’s voice from behind them. Once again Finn looked back into the jungle. Again he saw nothing.

  “Up here,” said the voice.

  He and the others looked up to see a vine-covered leotard, with no face and no arms. It was Charlene, in costume as DeVine, her face painted green and black. The overall effect was disarming: she’d been standing there all along, immediately behind Finn.

  Philby applauded. “Outrageous!” he said.

  “Whoa,” said Maybeck. “You totally blend in.”

  “I can’t believe it!” said an exhilarated Willa. “I’m looking right at you and I almost can’t see you.”

  “I’ll need to leave the area before the real DeVine comes out. But I can go almost anywhere undetected. Even Maleficent isn’t going to see me in this.”

  “Okay, Charlene will watch the bat enclosure,” Finn stated with a feigned authority. He remembered Wayne telling him that he was the group’s chosen leader, though he still wasn’t buying it. But to his surprise, no one argued with him.

  Charlene, blending into her surroundings, waited for some Park guests to pass and then said, “Will someone please hand me the page from the diary?”

  Amanda produced it, stood on the bench, and passed it up to her.

  Charlene studied it. “Monkeys…tigers…a bat…This is enough for now,” she said.

  “It’s possible that everything on that page is significant,” Finn cautioned.

  Catching Philby dozing off, he punched him in the arm. “And NO falling asleep,” he reminded them.

  “I’m exhausted,” Willa said.

  “We cannot sleep!” Finn repeated. “Wayne warned us about that. We’ve got to believe him.”

  Maybeck indicated a food cart. “Cokes all around!”

  A few minutes later they were all loading up on caffeine. “Maybe Maleficent can’t get Jez out of the park until after it closes,” Amanda said, “or maybe the plan is to run all of you around until you tire out. If she can trap you all in the Sleeping Beauty Syndrome, she eliminates the enemy and is free to rule without challenge.”

  “You think she took Jez to bait us?” Willa asked.

  “None of this means anything,” Maybeck said, “until we find Jez. The challenge is to stay awake long enough to find Jez and crash this cloned server—if it even exists. Then maybe we hunt down Maleficent, if we’re still standing. But until we find Jez, none of it matters.”

  “Listen!” Charlene said from high on the stilts.

  The kids turned their attention toward the jungle.

  “Not to me!” Charlene clarified. “To the music.”

  The kids perked up their ears. It was Ashley Tisdale’s “Kiss the Girl,” coming over the Park’s speaker system.

  “Yeah? So?” asked Willa. “Radio Disney plays that all the time.”

  “I know that,” Charlene said. “But me and my family come as often as possible, and I’ve never heard that song in this Park before.”

  The kids listened some more. “You’re right. It’s always Lion King and stuff like that.”

  “It’s Jez,” Amanda stated.

  “What’s Jez?” Finn asked.

  “‘Kiss the Girl’ is Jez’s favorite song,” Amanda said. “She abuses that song on her iPod. If it doesn’t belong in this Park, then it’s her. It’s some kind of message.”

  “I think you’re more tired than the rest of us,” Maybeck said.

  “Which is completely understandable,” Willa chimed in, “given the stress…”

  “Listen…listen!” Amanda demanded, raising a finger to try to shut them up. “Raven-Symoné is going to sing ‘Under the Sea’ next.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Maybeck. “I suppose if your sister can dream the future, you can hear it.”

  “Philby,” Amanda said, “Jez had her iPod with her. Is there some way she could use it over the sound system?”

  “Hijack the sound system?” Philby said, considering the question. “Depends, I suppose. If she stripped a wire from the earbuds and tapped into—”

  But he was cut off by the music changing.

  Raven-Symoné was singing “Under The Sea.”

  All the kids went quiet.

  Some visitors walked past talking about going on Expedition Everest. The parents sounded reluctant to try the ride.

  But it wasn’t the guests that had silenced the kids.

  “Coincidence,” Maybeck said in a whisper. He didn’t sound at all convinced.

  “It’s Jez,” Amanda countered, her voice noticeably brighter.

  “I know for a fact that they never play that song here,” Charlene said from up high. “I believe Amanda. And besides, it’s softer than the regular music—not as loud. It doesn’t sound right.”

  “Which would also explain why Finn and I overheard two maintenance guys talking about sound-system problems,” Philby said.

  Finn’s face brightened. “That’s right!”

  “Then why doesn’t she just send us Morse code, or something?” Maybeck complained.

  “Because she can’t give away what she’s done,” Amanda said, trying to think as Jez would think. “She doesn’t want them figuring it out. So she’s trying to communicate with us, without it being really obvious.”

  “Wait right here,” Philby said, taking off at a run. The kids watched him go.

  They used t
he downtime to review the page taken from Jez’s diary.

  “The animals could symbolize different things,” Willa suggested.

  “Like what?” a skeptical Maybeck questioned. “Listen, I see the drawing of the lightning striking a castle, and even I’ve got to admit it’s pretty coincidental. But the rest of these? They’re animals. So what? She likes animals. It doesn’t mean they mean something.”

  “It doesn’t mean they don’t,” Amanda countered. “You don’t know Jez. They’re clues. Clues we’re supposed to follow.”

  Philby came running toward them.

  As he did, there was suddenly no music at all: a rarity in any of the Disney Parks.

  Then “Under the Sea” began playing again.

  One thing all the kids knew: music never repeated in any of the Parks. Not ever.

  Out of breath, Philby said, “It’s playing on this side of the Park and in Asia. Discovery Island and Africa have different music going.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Maybeck said. “How do we know that isn’t always the case?”

  Philby explained, “From what I know, the system is designed to be able to move sound around the Park. The parades require that the music follow the floats. It’s a sophisticated, computer-controlled sound system. I’ve never read anything about one half of the Park being sent one kind of music, and the other half another.”

  “That confirms it’s Jez,” Amanda said excitedly. “She just repeated ‘Under the Sea.’ We know that song doesn’t belong here, and on her iPod it follows ‘Kiss the Girl.’ Pretty obvious she wants someone to hear it. Maybe us. Maybe someone to try to fix it, someone to go looking for the problem.”

  “Or maybe,” said Willa, “the song itself is significant. Ariel. Or Ursula—”

  “I hate Ursula,” Charlene tossed out.

  “Or it has to do with where they’re keeping her,” Amanda continued. “Or it fits into her dreams in some way.”

  “We’ve got to take it seriously,” Willa pleaded, looking at Finn, knowing the decision would somehow be his to make.

  Finn felt all eyes fall on him. He stifled a yawn. Every minute was precious. His head was clouded and heavy.

  “Let’s run down everything to do with The Little Mermaid,” Finn said.

  Maybeck groaned. “Isn’t that wasting time? The bat is real. That monkey is real. The dragon was real. Let’s follow things we can actually see.”

  “How do we know that?” Charlene asked from atop her stilts.

  “Ariel’s Grotto,” Willa said. “Magic Kingdom.”

  “We split up,” Finn said, pulling out a pencil and writing on the back of the photocopy of the diary page. “Maybeck will try to locate the animals and images sketched in the diary. The rest of us will look for anything to do with ‘Under the Sea’ and The Little Mermaid.”

  “I don’t know if this counts,” Philby said, “but when you stand in line for Nemo, over at Epcot, the ocean is painted above you. You’re literally under the sea.”

  “I like it,” Finn said. He wrote it down.

  “The same thing’s true at Hollywood Studios,” Willa said. “On the Voyage of the Little Mermaid, you stand under the sea while waiting.”

  “Okay…Okay…” Maybeck said, finally going along. “I don’t know if this counts, but there’s this poster my little sister loves. Always points it out. It’s by the Mickey’s PhilharMagic line. I’m pretty sure it’s says something like ‘A Must Sea,’ spelled S-E-A.”

  “That definitely counts,” Finn said, writing this down as well. “Anything else anyone can think of?”

  One by one, the others either shook their heads or shrugged.

  “It’s a lot. And they’re spread all over the place.”

  “It’s a waste of time,” Maybeck cautioned. “It’s just a song.”

  “You have your assignment,” Finn said. “Philby will stay and try to figure out the Park’s sound system. Get on to VMK if you can and find Wayne.” He explained how to use the Disney vacation kiosk in Camp Minnie-Mickey. “Maybe he can help.” He turned to Amanda. “You will keep watch for Jez using the Animal Cam at the Conservation Station. Willa will take Ariel’s Grotto and Mickey’s PhilharMagic—both in Magic Kingdom. I’ll take Nemo and the Voyage of the Little Mermaid. Maybeck, you stay and keep after the monkey and bat. Follow the clues in the diary, working with Charlene. Any problems?”

  To his surprise, no one complained or tried to change the assignments. Maybe he actually was the leader.

  “All of us have to study this page from the diary. We each have a copy. We need to write down where we’ve seen any of these animals, or images of these animals. This building she drew…this dude wearing a turban. And I’ll call Rob, since his name keeps coming up.”

  He met eyes—tired eyes—with Maybeck, and saw Maybeck’s frustration and impatience.

  “I’m open to suggestions,” Finn offered.

  A silence hung heavily in the air.

  It was broken by the music beginning again. “Under the Sea.” Playing now for the third time in a row.

  “Two hours,” Maybeck said. “We meet back here.” “Agreed,” Finn said.

  The kids scattered.

  LIKE THE OTHERS, Willa had put her Animal Kingdom Cast Member costume on over her regular clothes. She’d slipped out of the AK costume and had tucked it into a bush outside the gates of the Magic Kingdom. Using the ID Wayne had given her, she was admitted through the CAST MEMBER ONLY line.

  She stopped at a pay phone and called her mother. This was critical, because shed sneaked out in the early hours of the morning before, saying she’d gone to Mass. She did this on her own periodically—something her mother found “dear”—so she knew it wouldn’t raise a suspicion. Her mother was no longer a churchgoer, not since her father’s accident, so the only excuse she had to make now concerned what she was doing with her morning.

  “I’m at Disney World,” she told her mother, settling for the truth. For all she knew, the pay phone’s caller ID had already given her away.

  “But you’re not allowed. They’ll pull our pass if they catch you.”

  “It’s important.”

  “What could be that important?”

  “I’m doing it for a friend.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Research.”

  “You’re not tangled up with those other kids again, are you?”

  “They’re my friends, Mom.”

  “They got you into a lot of trouble last time.”

  “I’ll be home…later. I’ll call if it’s going to be after dark.”

  “It is not going to be after dark, young lady. I want you home by five.”

  “I can’t promise that.”

  “You can, and you will. I’m still your mother, and if I say five, then it’s five. And remember: stay away from the Magic Kingdom. If they make us give that money back…”

  “They won’t, Mom. I’ll call. I love you, Mom.” She hung up. Her mother hadn’t been herself since the accident. In some ways the two of them were closer; in other ways they’d kind of traded roles: Willa felt more like the parent. She wondered why certain things happened in life—happened to some people but not others. Why had she become a DHI? How very different her life would be had she never auditioned for the part. Now she was caught up in something few would believe; she didn’t even believe it herself some of the time. Rescuing a girl who could dream the future? It sounded so stupid. And yet…

  She kept her head down on the way to Ariel’s Grotto. If she was spotted, she’d be mobbed by autograph seekers. If busted by Security, they would throw her out and take action. She hoped the little bit of makeup she had on would help disguise her. She promised herself to keep a low profile and get this over with as quickly as possible.

  She charged a princess wig and Disney hat onto her credit card. A khaki-colored baseball cap, it was a little large for her head, but it held down the red wig and hid her face well. She walked briskly and tu
rned off Main Street as soon as possible, cutting in along the Monster’s, Inc. Laugh Floor and looping around toward the grotto. Not a single glance in her direction. The disguise was working.

  She stopped at the tentlike structure bearing the name ARIEL’S GROTTO and studied the marquee. It held just the two words with an image of Ariel between them. Some fake flags flew.

  If she remembered correctly from the night before, the Ariel parade float was adorned with colorful sculptures of Sebastian, Scuttle, Triton, and Ursula. Did Jez’s musical clue have anything to do with the parade?

  After a long wait in line, she stood inside the grotto, where girls lined up to meet Ariel and have their pictures taken with her. She was posed inside a giant clam shell.

  “Under the Sea,” Willa was thinking, searching for a possible connection to Jez’s disappearance. The song played repeatedly inside the grotto. With it, she felt a tangible connection to the missing Jez.

  Something in here is important to Jez.…

  She made herself believe this, having no idea whether or not it was true.

  She was now third in line, behind mothers with their daughters lined up to get their photos taken. Behind Ariel, large colorful starfish clung to the aquamarine wall, and next to her was a small wooden chest.

  Nothing here seemed of interest save for the chest, the possible contents of which intrigued her. What was in the chest? It looked to be nothing more than a prop—something for young girls to lean against while getting their photos taken. But oh, how Willa wanted a look inside.

  She stepped forward, now second in line.

  A girl and her mother got their picture taken. The Cast Member playing Ariel was beautiful. She spoke politely to both the mother and daughter, then glanced ahead to Willa.

  She motioned Willa forward.

  “I think we have something in common,” she said softly. She’d seen past the wig and hair, recognizing Willa.

  “Don’t tell,” Willa pleaded. “Please?”

  “No way!” Then louder, for others to hear. “Would you like your picture taken?”

  “I forgot my camera.”