Using every ounce of his strength, Finn brought his arm up and threw the sand into the cobra’s eyes. The creature’s eyes squinted shut.
The spell broke.
Finn dove forward, grabbed hold of the staff, and swung it like a baseball bat against the stilt. As it connected, it softened. Rather than break, or make a sound, it wrapped around the stilt, and the cobra’s face was suddenly an inch in front of Finn’s. Finn let go and fell back. The staff tried to unwrap, but Finn saw it coming, grabbed hold a second time, and slammed it against the stilt again, soundlessly, as it turned fluid and coiled around the wood. But this time Finn reached with his left hand and took hold beneath the cobra’s hood, brought his left and right hands together, and, without thinking, tied the snake into a knot. It was a like a pro wrestling move: the Whitman Whip Knot. The cobra struggled to untie itself, but only expended energy unnecessarily. Then, as Finn moved to choke it, the creature took the form of wood again: a wooden staff, wrapped around a post and carved in a granny knot. Finn grabbed some dried seaweed from the sand and draped it over the staff, covering the snake’s dangerous eyes.
Irritated conversation continued overhead. Tia Dalma spoke sonorously and calmly in a lilting rhythm; the man Finn took to be Jafar had a singsong, melodic voice, higher than the woman’s. His muffled words came out rapidly, a man upset.
Finn sat up taller and put an eye to the cracks in the flooring. Pitch black. Under a mat. He moved slat to slat, board to board, until the glimmer of candlelight revealed itself. He could see through the gap and up into the bamboo rafters that supported the cabana’s thatched roof. But it wasn’t only his vision that improved. So did the sound quality.
“…is unacceptable.” Jafar.
“All things given time,” Tia Dalma said. “There is but one cause.”
“Promises were made.”
“Not by me.”
“You know who I mean,” he said.
“The green one does not break such promises.”
“She has not kept them, either.”
“She will.”
“I am owed the lamp. My purpose in joining this journey is the fulfillment of years of effort. Any delays like this—”
“—are necessary or they would not happen. You must trust the one cause.”
“I trust no one. Not my own shadow.”
“We all want what you want, if for different reasons. The ’chive is important to every one of us. Every one. Do not think yourself alone in this endeavor. The ’chive is my destination as well. But unlike you, apparently, it is evident I am willing to do what is asked of me.”
“You conjure this and that. It is very different for you than for me.”
“You must role-play. What is so very difficult?”
“Children! Gooey-eyed, wet-lipped little spoiled brats all begging for an autograph. It is an insult to my dignity.”
“It is not so very difficult, I think. Two weeks, and then the answer to your dreams. How many of us live with such a luxury?”
Silence.
A gruff chuckle. “Perhaps you are right.”
“I am never anything but,” said Tia Dalma, adding a chortle of her own. “If I could lie, even with great difficulty, how much easier my existence. But the one cause does not permit it. This is my curse. This is my legacy. So be it.”
Another long silence. “Go in peace,” he said.
“And you.”
The board creaked. Sand spilled into Finn’s ear. He scurried out from beneath the cabana, tore the seaweed off the cobra staff, crossed the moonbeams, and lay down flat in the shadow of the adjacent hut. His feet faced Tia Dalma’s cabana; his face, toward the ship. If Jafar spotted him, if the man came for him, Finn would have no warning.
He slowed his breathing.
“What have we here?” Jafar said, incredibly close.
At first, Finn was convinced Jafar was speaking to him. Thankfully, he was wrong.
“Got yourself tied all in knots again?” Jafar said, presumably to his staff. “Do you never learn? Must I—? What’s that?”
Finn didn’t hear the staff talking, yet had little doubt there was communication under way. Little doubt about the subject of that discussion.
He rose to his feet, stayed low, and took off running.
“You!” Jafar called out.
Finn ran, cabana to cabana, only visible for the fraction of a second he stepped into and through the patches of moonlight between the huts. He sensed it—or perhaps heard it—before he saw the cobra on his heels. Spinning its large lazy Ss, it sped through the sand step for step with Finn. It darted in front and tried to lasso Finn by the ankle, but the boy saw it coming and jumped, banging his head beneath the final cabana, where the masseuse called out, “Just a moment please!” believing it to be a knock on the door.
Finn could not run any faster—the sand made it a slog. The cobra pulled alongside and tried to catch him by the ankle once again. Finn jumped and it missed him.
He broke through a dining area. A man screamed at the sight of the slithering cobra. Then a woman. Trays of food spilled as people leaped from their picnic tables. Finn was sprinting now, never slowing, but not gaining on the ungainly creature. His legs struck and broke through some ribbon—neon-orange plastic tape.
Then he heard a boy shout, “Heads up!”
A dart flew by Finn’s right ear. He’d broken through a warning fence and was inside a beach-dart competition.
The finned yard dart soared downward past him.
Thunk!
It had hit…
The cobra. Right in the head.
Upon being hit, the snake turned instantly to wood. Frozen. Stopped in its self-defense like a turtle pulling into its shell.
Finn saw this but did not slow for an instant. He hurdled the opposing dart toss boundary onto the open beach, spraying sand behind him, out of breath and desperate to put distance between himself and whatever that thing was that lay behind.
* * *
“Welcome,” said Philby.
Willa opened her heavy eyelids. Philby looked back at her with a mixture of relief and concern, and she realized she must look a mess. But there was something else to his look, something that warmed her and confused her and made her feel lightheaded, made her heart flutter and her head slightly dizzy. She blinked to make it go away—or was it to test if it was for real?—and when she opened her eyes again there was Professor Philby up to his usual stuff.
They left the crew break room together and said little until arriving outside the Vibe; everyone was at the beach. It was the first time they could speak openly.
“Where’s Charlene?”
“Waiting for you.”
Philby’s forehead knitted. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“We got seriously lost, okay? Thought we could find our way back, but failed. We expected you to try to return us and, if that failed, to try to cross us over. Thankfully, you’re predictable. I curled up under a bush and took a nap…believe me, it wasn’t hard. We’re both super tired…Charlene is standing guard.”
It took Philby a moment to process her reasoning. “Predictable?” he said. “You think?” He hated being predictable, especially to a girl. It sounded like the last stop on the train before boring.
“You’ll get over it.”
“I am over it,” he stated somewhat cruelly. “And where are you?”
She had warned herself about getting too close to him. “That’s the thing…we’re lost. We don’t know where we are. But we think we’re somewhere basically southeast. On a trail in the middle of nowhere. I thought, maybe with 2.0 I could try to return with a flare or something.”
“Never happen,” he said. “It’s one thing to cross over with something in your pocket; that has proved pretty stable in beta. But to pick something up and return with it?”
“We haven’t tried it.”
“It’s not going to happen. This is a projection system. It’s not teleportation.”
“Then we’re stuck out there.”
“Not necessarily,” Philby said. “You may not be able to signal us, but we could signal you.”
Her eyes flared excitedly. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Or she tried to—her hologram lips were absorbed by Philby, and he felt nothing. “You’re brilliant! That’s what I love about you! You think of everything!”
Love? he thought. Should he try for a kiss?
He said, “We can head out there with flashlights and whistles. You hear a whistle or see a flashlight, you move toward it.”
“Deal,” she said.
“The main thing is for you to stay where you are. If you start moving around it’ll be too many variables.”
“I get it.”
“We’ll work from the southeast across to the west side of the island. As long as you’re patient, we’ll find you.”
“Before the ship sails,” she reminded.
“I understand.”
“I don’t think you do.”
He looked at her curiously. Love? He was stuck on that one.
She said, “We…that is…Charlie and I overheard the girls we were following talking to someone. As much as I want you to find us—and I really want you to find us!—they were talking about a box. An airplane. About blocking the Pargos with a palm tree!”
“Slow down!” It wasn’t like Willa to lose her cool. Of all the Keepers, he and she were the most alike: analytical, patient. To see her come slightly unglued made him uncomfortable.
Willa explained what they’d heard while eaves-dropping in the mangroves. The bits and pieces: a plane landing, a tree blocking paths, a box, a delivery to the ship. Combined, it seemed to tell a story, but not one that Philby could easily interpret. A delivery for sure, and a well-planned one. But why such a secret? He couldn’t be certain the Overtakers were involved. Maybe it was a prank by Cast Members—although the expense of it all seemed to suggest otherwise. Did Maleficent have such resources available to her? He’d never considered her having a reach beyond the Kingdom and into the real world—the world of chartering airplanes and delivering goods. If true, the reach of the Overtakers far exceeded anything the Keepers had dreamed of.
“Earth to Philby,” Willa said.
“Is this legit?”
“It’s what we heard.”
“You’re right: we need to focus on it then.”
“And not us,” she said.
“Of course, you too. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“But Finn and Maybeck already have assignments. You can’t be in two places at once.”
“No.”
He checked his phone for the time. He’d heard nothing from either Finn or Maybeck. It bothered him.
“Maybe you won’t have to wait for us to find you. The fireworks will be starting soon,” he said.
“Oh, joy,” Willa said sarcastically. “I can hardly wait.”
“I will take the runway,” he said. “There’s an old plane there I can hide in.”
“But you’re backup for the boys,” she said.
“They haven’t asked for any help. If they do, then there’s that. But we can’t leave the runway unwatched. Not after what you overheard.”
“Okay.” She sounded crushed.
“I’m not abandoning you,” he said.
“Of course not.”
“Are you listening to anything I’m saying?” Philby’s shortcoming was his intolerance of other people’s dimwittedness. His mind worked so fast and so clear that he had no capacity for muddled thought.
“Yes!” She crossed the arms of her hologram.
“The…fireworks…will be…starting…soon,” he repeated.
“You don’t have to be rude.”
“I’m not being rude, I’m being deliberate. I know I have to remind some of the others twice, Willa. But not you.”
“Fireworks…” she muttered to herself, upset both with him and herself. “Being staged from…”
“Now you’re getting it!”
“The beach? The ship?”
“The latter.”
“A beacon to follow!” she crowed.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I’ll send Charlie to help Finn, and I’ll meet you in the old plane on the runway.” She added, “Providing everything works out.”
“Everything will work out. I’m going to return you now. Where did you say you went to sleep?”
“Under a bush. I told you: Charlie’s watching out for me. Keeping me safe. Once you return me I’ll use the fireworks to find our way back. I’ll send her to Finn. I’ll meet you at the plane.”
“You’re going to be okay,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, her eyes sparkling surreally in the hologram.
* * *
The spit kept the hinges from squeaking. The maintenance shed door came open behind Maybeck’s steady insistence. Open a crack to where he could get a better look at Luowski from the back. Luowski’s attention appeared welded to the watch he wore on his wrist, a digital watch that lit up when its buttons were pushed. Luowski was pushing them a lot, so that every twenty seconds or so a flare of greenish light pulsed inside the small structure, throwing an exaggerated shadow of the boy into the rafters.
The interior looked like the engine room of a nuclear submarine. Tanks, pipes, tubes. Electric boxes. Gauges and meters. Racks of car batteries all wired together. Philby would have recognized it as the control hub for the island’s solar power, irrigation, and pest control; as the communications shack where the island’s wireless radio and telephone systems were managed. The island’s Cast Members referred to the small shed as “the vault,” not for its security but its contents. Without this closet of a shed, the island would be back in the Stone Age, just a spit of sand and marsh twenty nautical miles off the Bahamas.
Maybeck saw only the boy and a lot of stuff. He didn’t really care what any of it did. It did something or it wouldn’t have been built. And Greg Luowski didn’t belong here any more than he did, meaning nothing good could come of Luowski’s being here. In the mind of Terry Maybeck, that translated to a simple deduction: Luowski had to be removed.
But the Kingdom Keepers had learned something about the Overtakers—and Maybeck considered Luowski an OT whether correct or not—which was: it is often better to study your enemy than battle your enemy. A battle had a winner and a loser, which was all fine and good if you happened to be the winner. But spying and gathering intelligence was a one-way door: the person spying gained everything and lost nothing; the person being spied upon lost everything and gained nothing.
So Maybeck resisted the temptation to sneak up behind Luowski and plant a headlock on him. Instead, he kept his eye and ear to the crack of the open door, summoned patience, and focused his concentration in order to remember every little move Luowski made and exactly when he made it—since the boy couldn’t take his own eyes off his watch.
Three minutes later, at exactly nine thirty, Luowski slipped on a pair of headphones—which perhaps explained why he didn’t hear what happened next.
“Hey! You!” A woman’s voice from behind Maybeck.
Maybeck rolled out of the way of the open door so Luowski wouldn’t see him if he turned around. The woman was thirty feet away and closing.
“Me?” Maybeck’s face and body language said, proclaiming his innocence before actually opening his mouth.
“What are you doing?” the woman asked.
The sun had set; the area was dark. Maybeck crossed toward the woman, trying to keep her away from Luowski. He thought it weird that at this moment he was attempting to defend the despised Greg Luowski, but that was the thing about the Overtakers—they turned everything upside down.
“Someone left it open and unlocked,” he said.
Behind him, he heard Luowski say, “Roger, King Air, Tango-Charlie-four-five-two-two. This is Sandbar. Come around to vector thirty—”
The sound cut off as Maybeck eased the door closed and hooked
the padlock through the hasp, but did not lock it. He hoped she wouldn’t come close enough to see it remained unlocked.
“And you are?” the woman said.
“Off the ship,” Maybeck replied, blocking her view of the door. He summoned the one piece of important information he could think of. “I was with Tim. The propane tank we found on the CO2 line—did you hear about it?”
She softened. “Oh! That was you?”
“Yeah. Me and Tim. We’ve been walking lines all day.”
“That was freaky.”
“Very strange,” he said. “So an unlocked shed…” He pointed. “Just didn’t want to take any chances.”
“Especially since the CO2 control is in there,” she said.
“Uh…” Maybeck should have figured that out—all the valves and tanks and meters he’d seen. Luowski. “Right.”
“I’ve got to go. See ya!”
“See ya.”
She took off.
Maybeck heard the first mortar launch, a deep, concussive sound that signaled the start of the fireworks. It came from the direction of the ship. A moment later, the sky exploded.
He hesitated, unsure if he should confront Luowski. The kid had been talking on the radio like an air traffic controller. The propane tank had been discovered connected to a line that ran near the island’s private runway. Tim had said the old runway was now only used in emergencies or in special situations by Disney.
More fireworks detonated overhead, briefly lighting up the island like it was the middle of the morning.
Maybeck took out his Wave Phone and sent a text to the four others:
plane landing on runway during firewrks = OTs
Finn or Philby would have to deal with that. He had his own hands full with stopping Luowski from doing whatever he was about to do.
He slipped the padlock out of the hasp and opened the shed door.
* * *
Where is everybody? Finn thought. He was out of breath, still recovering from his escape from Jafar. He was about to text the others when the fireworks began. A moment later, he received Maybeck’s text—a warning about the island’s runway.
Kingdom Keepers V Page 25
