Of course.
Ben smiled. He hadn’t thought about that day in a long time.
He found himself thinking of it still as Lumiere ushered the older dwarf into the conference room.
Grumpy nodded to him and took a seat across from the prince, his short legs swinging like a child’s. “What’s this all about, young man?” He coughed. “I’m not in the mood for any of your tantrums.” He eyed the table uneasily, as if the boy was about to leap upon it, even now. The plate of sugar cookies and the goblet of cider in front of him, he left untouched.
“Thank you for meeting me today,” said Ben. “I thought this might be easier, if it was just the two of us talking. Since everything got a bit—loud—before.”
“Hem,” said Grumpy. “We’ll see about that. You don’t plan to hop on the table again or shout like an animal, do you?”
Ben flushed. “I apologize for my behavior the other day. I was…a fool.”
“You—What?” Grumpy was caught off guard.
Ben shrugged. “I admit it. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I made a mess of everything. And I certainly don’t blame you for not wanting to take me seriously now.”
Grumpy looked at him grumpily, if a little pleasantly surprised. “Go on.”
Ben smiled. It was a start, and he’d take it.
“You see, I called you in because I read all one thousand and one pages of your complaint.”
“Really? All one thousand?” asked Grumpy, sounding impressed in spite of himself.
“And one.” Ben smiled again. He was a fast reader, and a concerned listener, and if he was truly going to be himself, he was going to need to use both talents in his favor to settle this complaint once and for all.
“From what I could gather, it appears what you and your colleagues are demanding is to be heard, and to have a voice in your future. Something more than just a seat at the Council.”
“It’s not that much to ask is it?” asked Grumpy keenly.
“No, it’s not,” Ben acknowledged. “And I think we can come to a simple agreement.”
“What do you propose?”
Ben shuffled the papers. He thought about it, and about how to say it. How had his mother put it? Perspectives and opinions I can’t offer, from lives I haven’t lived.
Ben smiled. “I propose listening to the people who know best.”
Grumpy raised an eyebrow.
Ben consulted his notes. “Let’s start with the mermaids. They should charge a silver coin for every undersea tour. And I’ll talk to Ariel about giving Flounder’s collecting for Ariel a break.”
Grumpy nodded. “Sounds reasonable. Okay.”
“I’ve also set up a college fund for the Dalmatians—all one hundred and one of them will be eligible for financial aid through the Puppy Grant.” Ben pushed a black-and-white-spotted folder that contained all the pertinent forms across the table.
Grumpy accepted it. “Pongo will appreciate that,” said Grumpy. “But what about us miners?”
“Half of everything you mine must still remain the property of the kingdom,” said Ben. He knew his father would settle for no less.
“Half? What about the rest of the diamonds? Where does that go?” asked Grumpy, sounding alarmed.
“The other half will go to a 401D Fund. A retirement fund for dwarfs, to take care of your families and your children. Tell Bashful not to worry.”
“Sounds fair enough.” Grumpy nodded, in spite of himself. “What about the restriction of magic? Just between you and me, those three fairies make a lot of noise.”
“The three good fairies will have to take their complaint up with the Fairy Godmother. I can’t do anything about it myself, I’m afraid. But I’ll get them a meeting with her. That much I can do.”
“And Genie’s request for unlimited travel within the kingdom?” Grumpy frowned. At this point, he looked like he was struggling to find things to still be grumpy about.
“Approved, so long as he clears his itinerary with the palace beforehand.” That was a difficult concession to make, as his father did not want the “blue-skinned-maniac popping up everywhere without notice,” but he had been able to convince King Beast that as long as the subjects were warned about Genie’s arrival, all would be well.
Grumpy folded his arms. “What about the woodland creatures? They’re working their paws and hooves to the bone.”
“I’ve had a team install dishwashers, washer-dryers, and vacuum cleaners in every household. It’s time we realized we’re living in the twenty-first century, don’t you think? Forest woodlands included?”
“Meh,” said Grumpy. “I don’t care much for modernity, but I think our furry friends will appreciate it. It’s hard to do dishes by hand, without, you know, hands.”
Ben tried not to laugh.
“As for Mary and the mice, from now on, they will be well compensated with the finest cheese in the kingdom, from the king’s own larders.” Ben let the last paper drop.
“Fair enough.” Grumpy nodded.
“So we have a deal?”
Grumpy put out his hand. “Deal.”
Ben shook it. He was more relieved than he let on. (At least, he hoped he wasn’t letting it on. At this point he was sweating so much, he couldn’t be entirely certain.)
“You know what, young man?” huffed Grumpy with a frown.
Ben steeled himself for a grouchy comment, but none came.
“You’re going to make a good king,” the dwarf said with a smile. “Give your father my best, and send your mother my love.”
“I will,” said Ben, pleased by how well the meeting had turned out. He pushed his own chair back from the ancient table. His work was done, at least for today. But if this is what being king is all about, then maybe it isn’t as hard as I thought.
The dwarf picked up his stocking cap and hopped down from his seat, turning toward the council-room door.
Then he paused.
“You know, son, sometimes you remind me of her.” Queen Belle was much beloved in the kingdom.
Ben smiled. “You know, I really hope I do.”
Grumpy shrugged, pushing open the door. “Not nearly so pretty, though. I’ll tell you that much. And your mother, she would have made sure we had a cream cake or two. And at least a few currants in the cookies.”
Ben laughed as the door slammed shut.
Every moment of this adventure had already proven to be a little more adventurous than Carlos had anticipated.
This revelation might have been a problem for the average man of science who didn’t like to run the tombs and who kept to the labs as much as possible. Sure, Carlos had felt a little seasick on the journey over to the Isle of the Doomed, but he’d been able to hold it down, hadn’t he?
If he looked at it like that, he’d already proven himself to be a better adventurer than anyone could have reasonably expected.
That’s what Carlos told himself, anyway.
Then he told himself that he’d done better than anyone else in Weird Science would have. He actually laughed out loud at the thought of his classroom nemesis in this current situation, which had prompted Jay to shove him and ask if he didn’t think he was taking the whole mad scientist thing a little too literally.
“I’m not crazy,” Carlos reassured his fellow adventurers. Still, willing himself not to yak into the churning sea itself had required more than his share of exhausting determination, and by the time the four of them were back on land and all the way clear of the thorn forest—no worse for wear save for a few scratches and itchy elbows—Carlos was more than glad to find a real path leading up to the dark castle on the hill above them.
Plain old dirt and rock had never looked so good.
Until it began to rain, and the dirt became mud, and the rock became slippery.
At least it wasn’t the sea, Carlos consoled himself. And the odds of a person actually drowning in mud and rocks were incredibly slim.
Besides, his invention was now beeping at
regular intervals, its sensor light flashing more brightly and more quickly with every step that drew them closer to the fortress. “The Dragon’s Eye is definitely up there,” Carlos said excitedly, feeling a scientist’s enthusiasm at a working experiment. “If this thing is right, I’m picking up on some kind of massive surge in electrical energy. If there is a hole in the dome, it’s leaking magic here somehow, different from the Isle of the Lost.”
“Maybe the hole is right above this place,” said Evie.
“Yeah, I can feel it too.” Mal nodded, still moving forward along the path. “Do you guys?” She stopped and looked at them, shielding her eyes from the rain with one hand.
Carlos looked at her in surprise. “Feel what? This?” He held up his box, and it beeped in her face. Mal jumped back, startled, and Jay laughed.
“Whoops,” Carlos said. “See what I mean? The energy is surging.”
Mal looked embarrassed. “I don’t know for sure. Maybe I’m imagining it, but it almost feels like there’s some kind of magnet pulling me up the path.”
“That is so creepy,” Evie said, stopping to wipe sweat off her forehead with the edge of her cape. “Like, it’s your destiny, literally, calling.”
“Well,” said Carlos, “no, not really. If it were literally calling, it would be, you know, calling her.”
Jay laughed.
Evie glared at him. “Okay, fine. Literally pulling like a magnet, only not really, because it’s, you know, destiny. Are you happy now?”
“Literally?” Carlos raised an eyebrow.
Jay laughed again, which made Carlos feel good, though he couldn’t exactly explain why, not even to himself.
“Don’t you guys feel it?” Mal sounded nervous. Nobody said anything, and she sighed, turning back to the muddy path.
They’d only made it up past the next curving switchback in the path when Mal stumbled and fell, sending a slide of rock down the trail behind her.
“Who-ahh,” Mal yelped, her arms flailing. The dark stones were so slick with rain that she couldn’t right herself, only slipping on the rocks again.
Evie caught Mal before she tumbled headfirst down the stony path. Both girls flew backward into Jay, who almost toppled Carlos behind him.
“I got you,” said Evie, helping Mal to regain her balance.
“Yeah, and I got you,” Jay said.
“Which is great for everyone but me,” Carlos said, barely keeping one arm around his device as the other held Jay off him. “The human doorstop.”
“I am definitely in the wrong shoes for this,” Evie said, wincing at the sight of her own feet.
“We need flippers, not shoes. The rain has turned this whole trail into a mud river. Maybe we should all hold hands,” Jay suggested. “We’ll work better if we’re all together.”
“Did you really just say that?” Mal shook her head, sounding disgusted. “Why don’t we just sing songs to cheer each other up and then weave flowers out of the mud and move to Auradon, while we’re at it?”
“Come on, Mal.” Carlos tried not to smile. He knew that Mal, of all of them, had the hardest time with anything more beneficent than Maleficent.
“Do you have a better idea?” Jay looked embarrassed.
“If you wanted to hold my hand, you know, you could have just asked,” teased Evie, as she offered it to Jay, waggling her fingers.
“Well, now,” Jay winked. “You don’t say.”
Evie laughed. “Don’t worry, Jay, you’re cute—but thieves aren’t my style.”
“I wasn’t worried,” said Jay smoothly, grasping her hand in his firm grip. “I just don’t feel like taking a mud bath today.”
“From a physics perspective, it does make sense. If you want to talk about Newton’s second and third laws,” Carlos added, trying to sound reassuring. “You know, momentum and force, and all that.”
“What he said.” Jay nodded, holding out his hand to Mal.
Carlos watched him, wondering if Jay and Evie were flirting, and if that was why Mal seemed mad. No. Mal and Jay bickered like siblings. And Jay and Evie were just trying to cover up the fact that they were scared. Jay had told him earlier that he thought Evie was cute, all right, but he thought of her like he did Mal, which meant he didn’t think of her at all. Carlos thought that if the girls were had been their sisters, Mal would have been their annoying, grumpy sister while Evie would have been the manipulative, pretty one. And if Jay had been his brother, he’d be the kind who was either laughing at you or punching you when he wasn’t busy stealing your stuff.
The longer he thought about it, the more Carlos decided it wasn’t so bad to be an only child, after all.
“Come on, Mal. Just take it. Even Newton agrees,” Jay said, wiggling his fingers at Mal, while still grasping Evie’s hand tightly in his other hand.
Mal gave up with a sigh, grabbing it after only a slight hesitation. Mal then held her hand out to Carlos, who grabbed it as if it were a lifesaver, seeing as he knew his physics better than any of them.
Somewhat awkwardly, and little by little, the four of them pulled and pushed and helped each other slosh their way up the muddy path, sweaty palms and muddy ankles and cold feet and all.
Before long the pathway curved once again, and now the thick rain cloud surrounding it seemed to part on either side of the four adventurers, revealing a sudden and dramatic vista—what appeared to be a long and slender stone bridge, half-shrouded in mist, that jutted out above a chasm in the rock directly in front of them.
“It’s beautiful,” Evie said, shivering. “In a really terrifying way.”
“It’s just a bridge,” Carlos said, holding up his box. “But we definitely have to cross it. Look—” The light was flashing so brightly and so quickly now that he covered the sensor with one hand.
“Duh,” Jay said.
“It’s not just a bridge,” Mal said, in a low voice, staring at the gray shape in front of her. “It’s her bridge. Maleficent’s bridge. And it’s pulling me. I have to cross it. It wants me to get to the other side.”
“It’s not the bridge I’m worried about,” Carlos said, looking into the distance. “Look!”
Beyond the bridge and mist, a black castle rose from a pillar of stone. The bridge was the only way to reach the castle, as sheer cliffs surrounded the black fortress on all other sides.
But the castle itself was so forbidding, it didn’t exactly look like a place that wanted to be reached.
“That’s it,” Mal breathed. “That has to be the Forbidden Fortress.” The darkest place on their dark isle—Maleficent’s old lair, and ancestral home.
“Sweet,” Jay said. “That’s one sick shack.”
Evie studied it from behind him, still shivering. “And I thought our castle was drafty.”
“I can’t believe that we actually found it.” Carlos stared from his box to the castle. “And I can’t believe it was so close to the island all along.”
Mal’s eyes were dark, and her expression was impossible to read. She looked almost stunned, Carlos thought. “I guess that explains the rain. The Forbidden Fortress hides itself in a shroud of fog and mist. It’s like a moat, I guess.”
Carlos examined the air around him. “Of course it is. A defensive mechanism, built into the atmosphere itself.”
“I’m sure my mother designed it to keep everyone she didn’t want out.”
She didn’t say the rest, so Jay said it for her. “Which meant, you know, everyone.”
Carlos found it hard to look away from the black tower on the hill. No wonder the citizens of the Isle of the Lost were told to keep away. Here was concrete proof of villainy, of the power of darkness and infamy.
Malefient’s darkness.
It wasn’t just any evil. What loomed in front of them was the most powerful and most storied darkness in the kingdom.
Carlos suddenly felt it—the magnetic pull Mal had tried to describe. He could feel it thrumming in the air, in the very stones beneath his feet. Even if magi
c was no longer a factor, there was power here, and history.
“Feel that?” Carlos held his vibrating hand up into the air.
“I can too,” Evie said, picking up a rock from the mud. It rattled in her fingers as she held it. “Destiny,” she announced dramatically.
Jay pointed at the lightning that crackled in air above the black turrets. “Me too. I guess it’s time.”
Mal didn’t say a word. She only stared.
“Hold on, now. We’re not in any rush,” Carlos said. “We need to do this right, or—” He didn’t finish the sentence. He just shrugged.
Then he caught Mal’s gaze and knew she felt the same way.
“Look,” Jay said, yanking back an armful of overgrown vines that covered the stony steps leading up to the main ramp of the bridge. He tossed them to the side.
“What are those horrible, ugly creatures?” Evie made a face. “No, thanks. I’ll stay on this side of those things.”
Because now that the vines were gone, they could see that the entire bridge appeared to be guarded by ancient stony gargoyles. The winged gryphons glared down at them from where they perched, flanking the bridge on either side.
“Lovely,” Jay said.
Carlos stared. It wasn’t only Mal who could see her mother’s hand in every stone around them. The carved creatures sneered in exactly the same way Maleficent did, their teeth pointed, their mouths cruel.
Mal looked at them, frozen.
Then Carlos realized it was because she was paralyzed by fear. “Mal?”
She didn’t answer.
She can’t do this alone, Carlos thought. None of us can.
It’s no different from pulling each other through the mud. It’s just physics, if you think about it. It’s science.
But then Carlos tried not to think about it, because his heart was pounding so loudly, he thought the others would hear it. He began to recite the periodic table of the elements in his head to calm himself down. Atomic numbers and electrons were always somewhat comforting in times of stress, he’d found.
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