Disney in Shadow (31 page)

Charlene flew from the dragon’s foot like a bug being brushed off a child’s arm. But she held on to the chain, so that instead of being flung to her death, she ended up being swung out and around and coming back down to the floor with a thud, but with the chain now looped around the dragon’s ankle exactly as she’d wanted it. Bruised and aching, she forced herself up on her hands and knees and crawled toward the free end of the chain, where it was hanging over the rung of the nearby safety ladder.

The dragon briefly lost his balance in his attempt to lose the bug. He stepped back to recover, driving his heel down.

Charlene saw it coming and rolled, letting go of the chain. The heel came down with a stomp. Right on top of the chain.

Charlene stood and pulled with everything she had, but the chain would not budge.

The dragon—irritated and bothered—reared back his head, ready to throw a tongue of flame at his target.

She caught something out of the corner of her eye: a small pile of props, including some bows and arrows and four or five spears. They looked like they’d been there forever. But she took hold of one of the spears, tested its strength, and thought back to the one time her track coach had let her try to throw the javelin. She looked up at the dragon, remembering her Language Arts block on Greek mythology.

Achilles.

His mother, Thetis, had dipped him in the river Styx to make him immortal. But since she had held him by one heel to dunk him, this one part of his body had remained dry, and was the only part of him vulnerable to any weapon.

Achilles’ heel.

She ran to the side of the beast’s ankle, searching for the indentation at the back of the ankle—the soft, fleshy part between ankle and tendon.

She reared back the spear, then in an instant coiled down, using every muscle in her abdomen and back to whip her body forward, her arm hesitating and waiting for the sling effect that would draw first her shoulder, then her elbow, wrist, and hand ahead, up, and over her head, so that the spear seemed now to be part of her body.

She let go.

* * *

Finn froze, locked in fear as the vulture moved toward him, pushing him farther back and away from any of the glow-tape
X
s that marked the various trapdoors on the stage floor. If he couldn’t get himself atop one of those
X
s, he was going to fry. Get barbecued. Roasted. Killed. The dragon had been about to flame-throw when he’d suddenly looked away and stumbled.
Charlene,
Finn thought.
At last!
But nothing was going to stop Maleficent. The vulture threw her neck forward, trying to peck Finn’s head off his shoulders. He looked over at the sword inside the glowing cage of laser light.

If only….

“You and me,” Finn said, looking directly into the hideous, drooling eyes. The vulture advanced another step, her pink tongue appearing as its beak opened.

“It’s over.”

He heard the voice but didn’t quite believe it. A trick of his mind, perhaps.
Wishful thinking.
For there was no questioning whose voice it was: Wayne’s.

He looked to his right. High above him on an outcropping of rock stood the old geezer with his khaki pants, his white hair, and his Epcot windbreaker.
Exactly as Jess had envisioned him.

“We’ve lost. It’s over. Surrender is the only option.”

“No!” Finn shouted. “They’ll trap us in the Syndrome. We’ll be there forever.”

“Listen to him!” the vulture croaked out in a grating voice much like Maleficent’s. “He’s trying to help you!”

“No!” Finn said, taking another dangerous step even farther from the series of trapdoors.

“It’s over,” Wayne said, turning and looking down at him. “Save yourself….”

“Finn!”

Finn reeled in the opposite direction toward the voice. Her voice.

Amanda appeared at the edge of the stage. Amanda, who had deserted him. Was she behind this?

Had he allowed himself to be fooled all along? Was she going to try to tell him to listen to Wayne and give up?

“Don’t you dare surrender!” she called out. She lifted her hands palms out and prepared to levitate, as he’d seen her do to Greg Luowski.

The wide-eyed vulture pivoted in Amanda’s direction. Amanda had nearly killed Maleficent at their last meeting; the vulture raised her wings as if defying Amanda to levitate her off the stage. Finn understood her choice of transfiguration then—a bird had nothing to fear from being lifted.

But as Amanda made a waving motion with her hands, it wasn’t the vulture that felt the pulse of energy.

It was the sword. It slid beneath the laser fence, casting sparks as it passed through to safety, and floated across the stage to arrive at Finn’s feet, just as the vulture spun and lunged its beak for Finn’s head.

He clenched his hands around the sword’s grip and hoisted the blade, putting it between him and the vulture’s head, piercing the feathers and the leathery neck so that the vulture shrieked and cried out as thick green blood flowed from her neck.

As the blade withdrew the vulture shrank and contracted, reforming into the green-faced fairy Finn feared more than anything on earth. Maleficent was bleeding green from her neck. She staggered, her bloodshot eyes rolling back white in their sockets. She tried to speak but gurgled and spat and stumbled.

“Kill him!”
she hollered, grasping her wound with both bony hands.

The dragon roared, throwing himself forward. Just as the flame released from his gaping mouth, he too screamed painfully and lurched to the side, yanking his leg into the air and revealing some kind of stick stuck through his heel. He fell to that side, awkwardly off-balance. His neck bent and twisted, and the flame shot high, missing Finn entirely.

All seven trapdoors opened at once.

It was not Finn who fell through to safety. It was Maleficent.

She vanished.

Finn fell back to the stage, recoiling from the dragon’s fire only to see Wayne engulfed by the coil of blue-and-orange flame. It hit him like a blast from a flamethrower—a narrow torrent of roaring fire like a stream of water shot from a hose.

And Wayne was gone.

The dragon teetered and, unable to set down his wounded foot, hopped once to hold himself upright, and then went over backward, off the mountaintop. A length of thick chain flailed like a whip behind him.

Finn heard a tremendous crash of bone and trees and jungle. And there was Charlene, rising from behind where the beast had stood, and practically throwing herself over the rail to track his fall.

Amanda ran across the stage, leaping over two open trapdoors, and slid to Finn’s side.

“Are you all right?” she cried, throwing her arms around him.

Finn dropped the sword and hugged her back. “You saved my life,” he said.

“You saved us all,” she whispered back to him.

A
FTER THEIR RENDEZVOUS
at the Studios’ Soundstage B, and a lot of excited discussion of what had just happened, a distraught Wanda listened as Finn vented his frustration over losing the fob and held up her father’s cluttered key chain.

“Use these if you like,” she said, wiping away her tears. “I’m sure that one of them opens the gift shop at Epcot. And probably another, the Lost and Found.”

“I think he wanted to save us,” Finn said. “He meant to help us. He was a good man—”

“A great man,” added Philby.

“The best,” said Willa.

Wanda nodded solemnly. “I know he wouldn’t want me crying over him,” she said. “But I’m going to miss him so much. If it’s all right with you, I’ll drop you all at Epcot, but then I need to go home. I need to be alone.”

Charlene and Amanda embraced her, and then Willa joined them and the boys, and for a moment there was a knot in everyone’s throat and a tear on everyone’s cheek, with Wanda in the middle sobbing and moaning and Finn thinking his heart might break for good. He saw in his mind’s eye flashes of Wayne sitting on a bench, climbing Escher’s Keep, driving a golf cart through an empty Magic Kingdom, of his face flickering on Finn’s computer screen. Of the sparkle in the old guy’s eyes and the calm in his voice as he faced danger after danger. Memories that would not soon fade.

“He taught us—” Finn said into the group.

“He loved these parks,” said Philby.

“We’re all going to miss him,” said Maybeck.

“—about ourselves as much as about the parks,” Finn added. “I’m a different person because of him.”

“We all are,” said Jess.

Finn didn’t know how long they stayed like that, locked in a group hug, reflecting on everything Wayne had done, but it was not a short amount of time. Maybeck told a story. Philby recalled his and Wayne’s voyage as avatars into the heart of the Imagineering computer system. Jess allowed how Wayne had saved her from captivity. Eventually they broke it up. They packed themselves into Wanda’s car, sitting on laps and jammed into every free inch of space, and she drove them back to Epcot.

Wanda apologized as if she owed them something more, and then drove off down an empty access road as the sun rose above the green treetops. They sneaked back onto the property just as the first Cast Members were arriving to open the attractions. Finn got inside the gift shop courtesy of Wayne’s keys, and opened the Lost and Found with another.

There, on the shelf, was the fob. And next to it, a yellowed and faded Disney sweatshirt that Finn recognized at once as belonging to Wayne. It was something Wanda would want as a keepsake. It had probably been left behind when Wayne had been held captive in Wonders. Finn carried it with him and took his time returning carefully to the Nemo lounge.

He walked in displaying the fob. “Ta-da!” he trumpeted. “We can return now.”

“No we can’t!” Philby faced a flat-screen monitor in the far corner of the lounge.

Maybeck groaned. “He’s been replaying the show,” he whispered to Finn. “He took this thumb drive from the control booth. Reliving it all. Truth is, he’s not doing so good. He thinks maybe docs are messing with his real self. Like maybe they’re medicating him. And I’ve got to say: he’s acting like it.”

“We can’t go,” Philby said.

Willa said to Finn, “Can I see that?”

Finn passed her the sweatshirt. She pulled in the other girls. “What does that smell like to you?” The girls all sniffed at it. Finn left them, crossing to Philby.

“We’ve got to return, Philby. I’ve got the fob.”

“‘Beware your friends and know your enemies,’” Philby said, quoting Wayne.

“We’re all tired. It’s been a long night,” Finn said.

“Wayne was the traitor,” Philby said.

He silenced the room. But it went beyond that. An unspoken anger filled the air with tension.

“He was warning us about
himself
, not one of us,” Philby said. “Since when would Wayne ever—and I mean:
ever
—tell us to surrender?”

“I was outgunned,” Finn said. “If Amanda hadn’t—”

“I’m not talking about you. Or me. Or
any of us
. I’m talking about
Wayne
,” Philby said. “Why would Wayne ever tell us to surrender? Answer: he wouldn’t.” Professor Philby had returned. “That was totally not him. No way. Not ever.”

“We all
saw
him, dude,” Maybeck said.

“And we saw Maleficent vanish through a trapdoor and the dragon fall from the top of the stage.”

“I saw the dragon getting tied up,” Charlene said. “He was hurt, but he wasn’t dead. And Maleficent transformed back into that vulture thing and was being rushed to the veterinarian clinic at AK. That’s what all the sirens were about.”

“Should have let her die, if you ask me,” Maybeck said.

“Forget about them for a minute,” Philby said. “Being a DHI has taught us all that we can’t always trust what we see. Right? I mean…look at us! Are we real?”

“You need some sleep, man,” Maybeck said. “We all do. We’ve got to hit the button and return. As in: now.”

“Shadows,” Philby said.

“You’re tripping, dude,” Maybeck said.

Philby worked a keyboard that slid out from a cabinet beneath the flat screen. The thumb drive’s red light blinked from the computer box behind the keyboard.

“Check it out,” he said. He backed up the video footage of the battle on stage. “Willa!” he said. “There’s a kitchen back there. Find me a match please.”

“Dude!” Maybeck said. “You are way over-baked.”

“We hear him out,” Willa said. “When is Philby ever wrong?”

“When his real self is being medicated by doctors,” Maybeck answered.

“Let him talk.” Willa headed off toward the lounge kitchen in search of a match.

“What do you notice about the vulture?” Philby asked.

“Ugly?” Charlene said.

“Big?” Maybeck said.

“Scary,” said Finn.

Philby pointed to the screen. “Shadows. All the stage lights make the thing cast about a dozen shadows going out from her feet like a star.”

“Okay….” said Amanda, stepping closer.

“And Finn?”

“Basically the same thing,” said Jess. “Lots of shadows.”

“And the dragon,” volunteered Charlene. “Not as many, but that one shadow is really dark.”

“He’s closer to those top lights,” Philby said. “Different pattern, but strong shadows nonetheless.”

“And this interests us because?” said Maybeck sarcastically.

Willa arrived with a book of matches. “I found these,” she said.

“Excellent!” said Philby. “Put your finger here, please.”

Willa hesitated. “You’re not going to burn me, are you?”

“A little trust please?” Philby said. “Stand your index finger on end.”

Willa stood her finger alongside the keyboard.

Philby struck and lit a match and moved it closer to Willa’s holographic finger. “Don’t move,” he said.

“Please don’t burn me,” she said.

“What do you see?” Philby asked Finn.

“A nervous finger.”

“
Behind
the finger,” Philby said.

“A shadow,” Amanda answered.

“Gold star,” said Philby, raising the burning match to his lips and blowing it out.

“I repeat,” Maybeck said. “This interests us—”

“Because of this,” Philby said.

He played the video forward. There was no sound. The dragon reared back, opened his mouth, and then fell as Charlene speared his heel. The column of fire erupted from his open mouth and Wayne was incinerated.

Every one of the kids looked away from the screen just before Wayne burned. “I cannot look at that!” Finn said. “Do not ask me to look at that.”

“And maybe that was the point,” Philby said. “That none of us would have the stomach to study it. But you’ve got to look at it.”

All of them took deep breaths at nearly the same instant. Philby played it again.

“No way…. ” muttered Willa.

“What?” said Maybeck. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“I can’t do this,” said Jess.

“One more time,” said Philby. “Please. Just look. Not at Wayne, but behind him.” He ran the segment one more time.

“I don’t believe it,” whispered Finn.

“How is that possible?” said Charlene.

Maybeck spoke. “It’s
not
possible. It’s some kind of trick of light. A bad angle by the camera.”

“Lighting’s fine,” said Philby. “Angle is fine. But it
is
a trick of light. You’re right about that.”

“But there’s no shadow,” said Willa. “All that flame—all that light—”

“Finn,” Philby said. “I want you to go all-clear. And I want you to put your finger down here, right where Willa did.”

Finn considered arguing, but he was too tired to do it. Instead, he closed his eyes and summoned the dark tunnel and the pinprick of light. He heard the sound of a match being struck and several of his friends gasping. He looked down.

His finger cast no shadow.

“It wasn’t Wayne,” Philby said. “It was a DHI of Wayne.”

“‘A deception of the worst kind,’” Jess said, quoting Wayne’s Mission: Space video message.

“They tried to use a DHI of Wayne to trick you into surrendering,” Philby said. “Wayne knew they modeled him for a DHI. He tried to warn us not to believe him. Not to believe the Wayne we saw.”

“He’s still alive!” Finn said, and a cheer went up among them.