Kingdom Keepers: The Return Book Two: Legacy of Secrets (18 page)

“If it wasn’t here…this place, you know, I would say we’re both sharing the same dream.” Jess’s voice shook. “But I’m seeing it, too.”

The window was framed by white wooden three-inch molding that stretched around the frame. With the light on, something abnormally strange was happening in the left molding. Before their eyes, clear as day, a groove was being cut by an invisible tool. Splinters of wood separated from the molding, floating to the floor like leaves falling from trees.

“Ghosts!” Amanda gasped. “I’ve heard the stories…I never believed them.”

“I know! Or maybe it’s like when the Keepers are in DHI shadow?”

Amanda stepped warily toward the unexplained carving. She swept an arm into the area where a person would need to be standing in order to carve the molding. Nothing.

The splinters of wood and paint continued to separate from the window trim, forming a straight line, perhaps an
I
or a 1. Then, at the top of the
I
, a horizontal line began to form. The carving was going more quickly now; whoever was responsible was getting the hang of it. That top line continued and stopped, much shorter than the long vertical line it was now connected to.

“Okay, so this can’t possibly be happening, right?” Jess allowed fear to color her voice.

“I know, but it is. What’s going on with that first line? Do you see the way it’s changing? It’s almost like it’s been burned or something.”

“Mandy, I—I think it’s…aging.”

The girls stood transfixed. For a moment, neither could speak nor move. Captivated, hypnotized, they watched in awe. It might have been a minute or two. It might have been a half hour. The cuts and grooves grew from a collection of meaningless lines to the letter
F
.

“No, no, no!” Amanda fell to her knees. “I am not seeing this. If this happened a long time ago, why hasn’t it been here all along?”

“Because it’s only happening now back then, I think. Not that I understand it at all.”

When the next line began to form to the right of that first letter and on a sloping angle away from it, she knew what was coming. She looked over at Jess, tears in her eyes.

“It’s him,” Jess whimpered.

More minutes slipped past as a capital
W
took its place alongside the
F
. Quite quickly, two periods were drilled in to punctuate each letter. Below the initials for Finn Whitman, the carving began anew. The strokes were decisive now, strong, short, and deliberate. It took only a matter of minutes—or so it seemed—for the number 5 to appear, followed rapidly by another number 5.

It was Jess’s turn to sink to the floor. The two girls sat side by side, chins resting on their knees, arms wrapped tightly around their bodies.

“It really is him. He’s alive!” Amanda shook, and now the tears fell. Embarrassed, she slobbered through a few attempts at an apology for her foolishness until Jess threw an arm around her shoulder and pulled her in close.

“It’s all right,” she whispered. “It’s okay. There’s no reason to apologize. You were worried for him. So was I! And here he is, or at least his initials, his message.”

Before their eyes, the carved initials and numbers continued to age dramatically, the pale fresh wood turning a dark brown, almost black, the paint chipping along the edges. It was like watching a time-lapse video.

F.W.

+

A.L.

55

“He’s definitely trying to communicate,” Jess said in an astonished voice.

“With me,” Amanda said breathlessly. She couldn’t explain to other people—even Jess—what her connection with Finn meant to her. It was a sense of family, of trust. Of safety. His reaching out like this turned her to mush.

“He had to find the place,” Jess said. “He had to find this room. He had to know it was ours. Do you realize what kind of effort that must have taken? He’s as desperate to hear from us as you were to hear from him. We’ve got to answer.”

“How?”

“We carve him a message back.” Jess rifled through her desk, came up with a pair of scissors, and handed them to Amanda. “Quick, while he’s still there!”

Amanda placed the sharp end of the scissors on the wood, but hesitated.

“What? Come on! Hurry!”

“Think about it, Jess! He’s carving something from the past, okay? It travels all these years forward in time and we see it. That makes sense. But it can’t work the other way round. If I carve this wood for the first time now—time goes forward, not backward. He won’t see it. He can’t. It hasn’t happened yet. It won’t happen for sixty years.”

Jess looked even more disappointed than Amanda felt. “We have to let him know. He’s trying to connect with us.”

“I don’t think we can,” Amanda said, discouraged.

“I don’t accept that!” Jess grabbed the scissors. “We have to try. Wayne, Finn, everyone would want us to try.”

She stabbed into the window trim and began drawing a heart around the lettering. But halfway through, she paused; the blond wood that formed the heart wasn’t aging like the initials had.

“Come on,” Jess said, pushing the scissor blade deeper into the wood.

Amanda stopped her. “It’s all right. He’s alive. We’ll think of something. We know it’s never easy—that it’s always harder than we think.”

Jess dropped the scissors onto the floor. “I hate this.”

“No you don’t. We are way better off than we’ve ever been, Jess. How can you possibly hate anything about this?”

“How can you say that? How can you possibly say that? That’s your boyfriend!”

“And he’s alive. We know where he is. Sort of. Now all we have to do is figure out how to let him know we heard him.”

“You mean get a message to someone sixty years ago.”

“Exactly,” Amanda said, smiling at the improbability of it all.

D
ISNEYLAND COULD BARELY CONTAIN
its euphoric guests. Main Street USA swelled with bodies. Feverish excitement filled the air, its energy heard in the anxious cries of eager children, the joyous laughter, all mixing into the music trumpeted from a brass street band.

Sneaking out of the Opera House, the five Keepers kept their two-dimensional images pressed against walls and moving through shade. They did everything they could to be as inconspicuous as possible. They crossed Town Square and slipped past the fire station and held to the walls all the way down to the restrooms, then timed it just right to walk briskly past Town Hall.

It was all so different from present-day Disneyland that the Keepers found it difficult to orient themselves. Once through the gateway tunnels beneath the Disney Railroad tracks, they faced two ticket booths.

“This is going to be tricky,” Finn said. They were basically Flat Stanleys that could walk and talk; it would be difficult to stand in line without their lack of three dimensions being noticeable.

Charlene came up with a solution. “We’re going to have to wait for the line to be empty. That’s the only way we stand half a chance.”

“Well,” said Maybeck, “Willa and I should be able to help make that happen.”

A minute later, Maybeck and Willa, dressed in their nearly formal attire, had started directing guests to the second ticket booth. The line in front of the booth nearest Finn, Philby, and Charlene dispersed.

“I don’t mean this the way it’s going to sound,” said Finn, “but a girl is going to have a much better shot at this than either of us.”

“You mean I’m taking full advantage of my charm and beauty,” Charlene said half-teasingly.

“Something like that.” Finn smiled.

“I hereby volunteer.” Charlene could add a few years just by the way she walked and carried herself. Sauntering up to the booth’s open window, she began speaking before she arrived. Doing so put the young Cast Member inside on guard and established it was she, Charlene, who was in charge.

“So,” she said brashly, “I have this problem. A friend of mine gave me this coin that she said was worth a whole bunch in the park, and I don’t know where I’m supposed to spend it.”

“Can I see it?”

In her attempt to project confidence, Charlene had neglected to have the coin at the ready. She figured her projection was probably blushing around now. Luckily, when she blushed, she looked like a ripe strawberry. “Oh, yeah! That would help!” She handed over the unusual coin they had found in Lillian Disney’s purse.

The cast member flipped it over repeatedly, studying both sides.

“Nope.” He passed it back to her. “I’ve never seen one of these before. I have no idea what it is.”

“Never?”

“First time.”

“So…what do I do with it?”

“Make a necklace with it, for all I care. It won’t buy you any of my tickets.”

“You have no idea? Seriously? You can’t think of any place I can spend this inside the park?” Charlene asked.

“It doesn’t work that way. Look, miss, you know how it is. You buy tickets to the various rides from me. I don’t know, maybe Grandma’s Baby Shop or the Emporium will let you use it, but I’ve never seen such a thing. Now, could you maybe ask your friends over there to stop doing that?” He pointed to Willa and Maybeck, who were still moving guests to the other booth. “They really have no right. It’s not only impolite, it could get you all in trouble.”

If she hadn’t been strawberry already, Charlene would have turned purple. “Ah…yeah…sorry about that. I’ll get right on it.”

Now came the tricky part: if she turned sideways, she was going to disappear. Talk about getting into trouble, she thought. She fixed on a solution that might get her away from the booth without being spotted for the odd projection she was: she bowed, placed her hands prayerfully, and nodded as she continued to back away. Seeing this, Finn called off Maybeck and Willa.

The five Keepers met in the shade of a bushy orange tree, and Charlene explained her failed attempt.

“So,” Philby said, “we’ll try Grandma’s Baby Shop first, and then the Emporium.”

Discouragement had a way of spreading through the Keepers like the cold after sunset. You had to throw a blanket over it quickly and warm up before frowns and bad moods could prevail.

“We need to look at this as a victory,” Willa said. “We’ve eliminated the ticket booth. That leaves two more possibilities—which is way better than facing a dead end, right? Come on! The more we eliminate, the better. We’re narrowing this down.”

“Since when are you Miss Sunshine?” Philby asked. The minute the words were out, he regretted them. Over the years, he and Willa had gone in and out of crushing on one another. For him to get on her case now was not impressing Willa one bit. “I mean…look…You’re always sweet and—”

“Forget it!” Willa snapped. “You’re only making things worse.”

Philby looked like she’d slapped him. He opened his mouth to speak, but decided not to risk it. Girls are tricky, he thought.

The visit to Grandma’s Baby Shop changed everything—and Willa’s determined optimism paid off. The store was tiny. Baby clothes hung on the wall, were laid out on tables and in stacks on shelves. They might have been cute and adorable for 1955, but to Finn, they looked more like ugly doll clothes.

He and Willa approached the gray-haired woman behind the counter and showed her the coin. As with the boy in the ticket booth, she told them the coin could not be used to purchase anything. When an unhappy Finn took the coin back, the woman stopped him and asked to see it again. She measured its size and held it in her hand, trying to determine its weight.

“Golly,” she said, “you know what you youngsters have there? I could most certainly be wrong about this, so don’t you hold me to it, but one of my favorite pastimes when I get me a break is to stroll on down to Esmeralda and take a little chance on my fortune-telling.”

“Esmeralda’s still there,” Willa blurted out to Finn.

“Still there?” the woman said. “We’ve only been open two days! Of course she’s there!”

Finn shot Willa a disapproving look; they couldn’t afford such time traveling mistakes. A few more slipups like that, and they’d have half the Cast Members in Disneyland out looking for them.

“Well,” Finn said, lying, “that’s a little disappointing.”

“We hoped it was more valuable than that!” Willa said.

“I hope I’ve helped you all,” the woman said, clucking her tongue.

“More than you know,” Finn said. Taking care to make it look accidental, Willa pushed a baby onesie off the counter in the direction of the Cast Member. In the next instant, she profusely apologized.

The woman bent to pick it up. “Never you mind. Don’t trouble yourself.”

Finn and Willa spun around, so she wouldn’t see them from the side.

The woman heard the door open. She lifted her head above the counter, but the two youngsters were gone.

“You’re welcome,” she said to herself. She had no idea she’d just changed the history of Disneyland forever.