Kingdom Keepers the Return Book 3

by Ridley Pearson

  “The sneeze blasts him and Jiminy Cricket out of the whale! That’s us!” Amanda said.

  “Yeah. Oops!”

  Finn grabbed Amanda’s hand. But they made it only a few feet before the fan blades spun up. The first indication was the paperwork—plans, notes, receipts, litter—lifting and heading aloft like frightened birds.

  “I’m real! I’m a real boy!” crowed Pinocchio, the projected image making him into something too believable.

  Next came the wood-handled tools, like screwdrivers, handsaws, and drills. Then, midstep, Amanda and Finn lifted off the ground, suddenly light as feathers. For the tiniest of moments, no more than a fraction of a fraction of a second, they floated unmoving, neither forward nor back. Then the full force of the blast struck them like a boxer’s punch. The wind batted them across the shed, pinning them against the far wall. Finn’s body was held, twisted to the side. Amanda’s pose was more like a five-pointed star.

  It is said that in such threatening moments time slows to a crawl. But the Keepers knew that was a lie; the more apt analysis was the well-worn expression “Time waits for no man.”

  Perception, on the other hand, is another thing altogether. Finn saw the flying contents of the workshop coming at them: every tool, bolt, piece of wire, switch, washer, pencil, fastener, roll of tape, tape measure, magnifying glass, Coke bottle, ball of string, candy wrapper, scrub brush, toothbrush, paint can, oil can, bobby pin, and clip-on bow tie traveled at half speed in exaggerated three dimensions, like rocks in a comet’s tail. Finn found himself able to quickly identify which of the objects would succumb to his particular gravity. Those, without a doubt, were going to hit him. A few others, including a sharp-toothed handsaw and a pane of flat glass, might or might not impale him.

  Amanda understood immediately the degree of her exposure. Finn was slightly twisted; she was not. And now she hung on the wall like a pin-the-tool-on-the-Amanda party game.

  Flattened against her will, she first marveled at the astounding quantity of objects in the workshop. With each in its place or lying on a countertop, the tools had appeared ordered and not all that many in number. With every last object aloft, there barely seemed any air left in the shed for them to fly. She assessed the potential danger, rapidly determining that she might come out of this bruised or broken but alive.

  Finn was another matter.

  Of the several hundred airborne items, it wasn’t the pencil or the sharp shards of tin, the coffee mug or the spinning hacksaw blade that troubled her. It was a wood chisel, a bevel-ended tool that looked like a hefty screwdriver, its short flat blade sharp as a razor. Its trajectory, like an arrow, aligned with the center of Finn’s chest.

  Through a fog of adrenaline, the panic of being pinned to a wall, and the terror induced by a hundred dangerous tools and machine parts hurtling toward her, Amanda focused. She struggled to lift her arms against the wind; it was no use. It took all her concentration to spread the little finger of each hand. Next, the two ring fingers and middle fingers, at which point her hands rolled of their own accord, the backs of her hands slapping the wall. All of this took approximately half a second, though her senses placed it at half a minute.

  Afraid to close her eyelids for fear that the wind would seal them shut, Amanda widened her eyes instead. And she pushed.

  It was one thing to push an object. A clock, a lamp, or a chair had significant surface area to be caught by her powers. Aerodynamic but with enough mass to gain good speed, a chisel traveled like a throwing knife.

  Amanda slowed and then stopped the bigger items. As neutrality was reached between the forces, the winds offset one another. Items reaching this equilibrium fell to the floor, pulled down by gravity. The pencil, some bolts, a screwdriver or two…and still the chisel did not stop.

  It took a deeper reservoir, another level of commitment for Amanda to push hard enough to interfere with the basic properties of physics and aerodynamics: An object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Newton’s first law. She knew this stuff. The plaster behind her hands cracked, indenting and turning the wall to dust. Her head, hips, and heels followed, crushing the wall. She’d made a static snow angel.

  And still the chisel came at Finn.

  Amanda had never used her power to its fullest. She’d come close, but mostly a small release of energy, a burst, was enough. It was even sometimes too much—hurtling furniture, slamming doors, knocking people off their feet. But this small item, a bit of metal and wood, took everything she had. She’d hoped to stop it. She’d have to deflect it instead.

  With nearly all her strength, she managed to rotate both wrists in unison. She launched a pulse of energy. It wasn’t enough.

  A pencil she’d missed stabbed Finn in the thigh; Amanda watched in slow motion as it pierced his pants and dug into his leg. Watched, as Finn’s face contorted and he tried to cry out, but the oncoming wind filled his mouth, billowed his cheeks, and choked him.

  Finn’s injury was the trigger. Amanda’s final reserve of energy fled from her out-turned hands like a demonic spirit, a wave of pent-up anger and unbridled resolve. Not only did the chisel alter its course, it jerked away as if it was on a tight string. So did each and every other airborne item. All the flying debris responded as if to a shock wave, lurching three feet counterclockwise.

  Amanda had nothing left, not an ounce of strength.

  The reversed debris slowed as it neared the powerful fan, but did not stop completely. For a moment, it was almost as if one side of the workshop remained in the hurricane, while the other hit a physical limbo. Then the lead objects on the counterclockwise side slipped past the halfway mark and whipped into motion, caught by the force of the fan. Everything in the room began spinning, slowly, almost reluctantly at first, but soon the spinning motion became more ferocious. It evolved from tropical storm to hurricane to twister.

  Finn inched to his right, Amanda along with him. Again he tried to speak; again the wind forbade him. The two were pulled violently from the wall and hurled into the tornado of debris. Every item from pushpin to chair was captured in the counterclockwise stew. The mass rotated slowly at first, perhaps at the speed of a vinyl album. Then it accelerated to the speed of a washing machine on spin cycle.

  As Finn and Amanda completed their third revolution, buttons began tearing from their clothes. Finn’s pants button popped free; his zipper strained; the buttons on Amanda’s shirt exploded randomly until they were all gone, exposing the T-shirt beneath. Desperately, she took hold of a large wooden spool, using it to advance her through the mass of swirling objects. Only when she reached out to take Finn’s unsuspecting hand did she let go. He turned his head, startled by the contact.

  “Won’t…survive!” he managed to cough out.

  She shook her head, tears streaming. “I’m…sorry.”

  “Saved…me!”

  “Started…this.”

  Finn, a Weather Channel devotee (the only channel he and his father could agree on), had seen so many stunning videos of Midwestern and Texas twisters, had watched a mile-wide funnel cloud lift a barn, cattle, and trees into its vortex while phone poles, lawn mowers, and car doors flew from its outer extreme.

  “Door!” he managed to scream. It sounded closer to a whisper given the roar. “Spin you!”

  Revolution number seven, speed forty-five miles per hour, face distorted. Finn used every muscle in his body to spin as violently as he could, whipping Amanda around him like an orbiting moon. Smart enough to understand his plan without explanation, she stretched for the workshop’s doorknob. Too high. Missed.

  Revolution number eight. Another miss. Revolution number nine. Speed fifty-seven miles per hour, hard to breathe, nearly impossible to see. Amanda caught the doorknob. She and Finn formed a line of stretching arms, their bodies strung from the doorknob like a kite tail.

  “Can’t…turn…it!” she cried.

  Finn flexed, pulled, and ma
naged to hook elbows with her. Debris collided with their bodies, pounding him, striking and cutting them both. “Hold…tight!”

  They met eyes. Magically. Only a moment’s worth, but a connection. An all-or-nothing exchange, an implicit understanding that Finn was counting on her and she, him.

  Then Finn sucked their elbows into his side and spun a pirouette like a figure skater or ballerina, his body parallel to the floor.

  The doorknob rotated. The door’s latch released; the phenomenal wind found an outlet, and the door blew away from the structure at sixty-three miles per hour, taking the two teens with it.

  Amanda let go of the door, but not of Finn. To-gether, they flew. With the dissipating wind behind them, they soared aloft like Wendy and Peter Pan, hand in hand, hair streaming away from their faces, their bodies soaring over the contour of the earth below.

  Finn spotted a possible landing and hunched forward to propel them downward. Amanda resisted, though only for an instant.

  Together, they crashed and splashed into the waters of the Jungle Cruise, their landing softened by a light push from Amanda.

  Together, they bobbed to the surface, no longer holding hands.

  Together, they paddled and turned, watching as a Disneyland workshop exploded into a nighttime tornado, a cloud of debris lifting the shop’s roof forty feet into the air and the whole of it—tools, mannequins, litter, splintered wood—sinking equally fast. The vortex left the pavement strewn with junk. A few odd pieces splashed alongside Amanda and Finn, causing both to raise their arms as shields.

  They swam to the edge of the river, climbed out muddy, their eyes wide.

  And then they did something completely unexpected: they laughed.

  MULAN PUSHED THE green button and hurried to join Kristoff and Nick, who were waiting at the bottom of the elevator shaft.

  Thick steel cables whined against pulleys. The elevator floor, as large as a two-car garage, fell toward them, growing in size. Technically, it wasn’t falling but being pulled faster than gravity itself. The three standing directly beneath suffered a moment of silent apprehension. If Nick was wrong about how the attraction operated, they were about to get squashed like bugs.

  Kristoff reached overhead, like he could stop it and save the others. As if.

  “You’re safe,” Kristoff told Nick.

  Nick didn’t feel safe.

  “Or is it you I should help?” Kristoff asked Mulan.

  “Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll see you up there!” Mulan was crouched on her toes, ready to spring forward.

  The elevator stopped abruptly, raced up, and was sucked down again, stopped. The pattern was random and unpredictable. To the three immediately beneath, it looked like the head of a hammer dropping on them.

  “I…do…not…like…this!” Mulan hissed.

  The car braked, stopping mere feet overhead. With perfect timing, Kristoff took hold of one pipe, and Mulan hooked a leg over another, coiling around it like a snake. Nick entwined his fingers around a third pipe and locked his grip.

  “Hold on,” Kristoff said.

  With a tremendous jolt, the car lifted, flying up at an absurd speed. Nick’s fingers, wrapped around the metal bar, went white. Then the random movement of the attraction began: the car braked, dropped, rose, braked, rose, and fell toward the bottom of the shaft.

  Nick lost hold of the pipe with one hand. He swiped for the bar but missed. Mulan reached down and caught him just in time, locking their forearms.

  “Hang on!” she shouted, swinging the boy. “Legs!”

  With the pit rushing toward him as the car fell, Nick bent his knees and tucked into a ball. The car braked and stopped only feet above the concrete. Nick felt Kristoff wrap an arm around him and pull.

  “Let go!” Mulan chided Kristoff.

  “Give him to me!” Kristoff argued. “I’ve got him.”

  The two played tug-of-war with Nick, Mulan not letting go of his arm. Then, as fast as it had fallen, the car shot back up the shaft at supernatural speed.

  Nick’s arm strained. His shoulder felt like it was pulling out of its socket. Kristoff’s tight hold squeezed all the wind out of him; he couldn’t breathe. The elevator car plunged downward as Mulan and Kristoff continued to wrestle over Nick. Now they held him with a view down the shaft. The hurricane-force wind flapped their clothes and stood the hair up on their heads.

  “Look out!” Mulan shouted.

  The other drops had been child’s play. Whatever the car was doing now, it seemed to be doing it on its own. It raced for the pit, the concrete coming at them at lightning speed. Nick saw where this was going. He elbowed Kristoff in the ribs and punched Mulan on the arm. As they released him, he swung up and hooked his legs, making himself flat against the pipes.

  The collision didn’t go well for Kristoff. The burly mountain man had little time to react. He made a smart move: letting go completely, dropping to the bottom of the pit, and lying flat as the car screeched to a stop. Mulan entwined herself into the pipes like Nick. The car blasted off the bottom. Nick’s stomach lurched.

  “No…no!” Kristoff, flat on his back, called out, seeing Nick’s open mouth.

  Nick spit up—or down, to be more accurate—the foul mess splashing onto Kristoff like water from a burst water balloon.

  The car raced up five stories in less than two seconds and glided to a merciful stop. Kristoff, the size of a bug at the bottom of the shaft, scraped the slop off his face and chest, flinging it to the ground.

  Nick climbed hand-over-hand across the pipes toward a maintenance cage recessed into the wall, Mulan behind him, scurrying like a squirrel on electrical wire.

  “Now what?” she said, breathing hard, studying the tight confines of the maintenance cage. The elevator car fell away with a whoosh.

  “Now we find the Fairlies,” Nick said.

  ONCE OUT OF THE CAGE, a short hallway led Nick and Mulan into a longer corridor, its floor covered with debris. The overhead ceiling was riddled with gaping holes as if hit by…

  “Sky fire did this,” Mulan said.

  “Lightning,” Nick whispered, nodding, “and an earthquake or two.” Faint music and voices flowed down through an overhead hole. “I think we’re on the wrong floor.”

  “I suggest we find out.” Mulan effortlessly slipped the bow off her back, allowing it to run down her arm and into her hand.

  “That was cool,” Nick said, flashing her a wide smile. “But remember, I’m going alone. You’re backup. Please, follow the plan. If I’m in trouble, Dillard will help. And Dash should be around here as well.”

  “The villains are full of witchcraft and trickery,” Mulan warned. “They can shape-shift, throw curses, cast spells. You must take care.”

  “Actually, these are more like human villains,” Nick said, “young kids with weird powers. But no sorcery.”

  “I understand little of what you say,” Mulan said. “But I will do as you ask.”

  And with that, she hoisted Nick, who scrambled through a burned hole and up a level.

  Nick was working with what Mattie had told him about where she thought her room was. He’d made it only a few feet before he spotted Dillard, coming from behind on his hands and knees.

  A movie was showing in the break room, Dillard explained in whispers. Nick told him about Mulan waiting a floor below.

  Then the two boys inched forward. Nick tested the door and found it locked. “Your turn,” he told Dillard.

  Dillard stuck his hologram head through, then disappeared inside. A moment later, Nick heard the boy shouting.

  Dillard reappeared. “She’s sleeping, and I can’t wake her.”

  “She hasn’t returned,” Dillard said. “Something’s messed up. As long as she’s a hologram down there with the characters, she can’t wake up here.”

  Nick looked around.

  “If we wait,” Dillard said, “the movie’s going to end and there are going to be Fairlies everywhere.”

  “I need somet
hing to pry open the door,” Nick said.

  “Dash!” Dillard called. A blur shot toward them, and there stood the small boy.

  “You rang?”

  “Something to pry open this door. Quickly!”

  “I understand ‘quickly.’”

  “One-thousand one, one-thousand two,” Dillard counted. “One—”

  Dash zoomed to a stop, a tire iron in hand. “Sorry…it was two blocks away.”

  “Fast enough,” said Dillard, “though I was getting worried.”

  Nick pried open the door. The door jamb splintered. The door swung open.

  Dillard said, “I sure can’t carry her.”

  “I can try.” Nick was noticeably smaller than Mattie. He scooped up her lifeless form, her head and feet dangling awkwardly from his arms. “I don’t know about this.”

  “Come on!” Dash yanked open the door.

  THE MINUTE THEY STEPPED into the hallway, a Barracks Fairlie cried out from behind them, “Hey! You two!”

  Nick found the strength to run. Dillard found the courage to face the Fairlie. “It’s a medical thing!” he yelped, trying for the distraction. “We could use some help!”

  The Fairlie tried to push Dillard away, but his hands swiped through the hologram and he fell off-balance. “Transparency,” Dillard said. “My ability.”

  Showing off, he offered the Fairlie a hand, surprising the Fairlie when they again failed to make contact. All the while, Nick continued running down the hall.

  “I don’t know you,” the Fairlie countered.

  “You guys actually think you’re the only group inside the park?” Dillard laughed artificially. Nick was close to the big hole in the floor. The Fairlie caught him looking.

  “ESCAPE!” the Fairlie shouted.

  Kids came piling out of the movie room. Nick felt his legs go out from under him—and he was still far short of the hole in the floor. He’d been pushed by a Fairlie.

  Mattie’s lifeless form crashed onto him. But in the next second, one of the Fairlie boys grabbed for his leg, from which an arrow protruded. A girl shrieked as a second arrow pierced her arm. And Mulan appeared from the shadows at the end of the hall.