Power Play (13 page)

They were in a large tank with a ladder and a metal platform. She spotted a sign on the wall that read, voyage of
THE LITTLE MERMAID—BACKSTAGE ENTRANCE
. An arrow pointed to a door. Ariel focused on the door, then eased Willa toward the stairs in the water.

Willa shook her head. “I can’t thank you enough for saving me. But if the soldiers saw us they will come looking. They will start here,” she said, pointing to the sign. “I need to get to Epcot…My friends and I—”

“The Keepers,” Ariel said in a beautiful, lilting voice.

Willa coughed. “You know about us?”

Ariel blinked and smiled at her. “My dear girl,
everyone
knows about you. You are our saviors.”

Our
saviors? What did she mean by that? Willa wondered.
Are there more of you?

“No, no, no. We’re just kids. We’re nobodies, believe me.”

“I’m afraid no one would believe such nonsense,” said Ariel. “We know who you are. We are most grateful for what you are doing. We all—any of us—will do whatever we can to keep the magic. The magic is what feeds us.”

Us!
There it was again!

“It isn’t safe here,” Willa said. “I don’t want to leave you. Please don’t think me rude, but I don’t want to get you in any more trouble than you’re already in.”

“You are shaking,” Ariel said.

“I’m cold.”

“One last swim,” Ariel said. “I know a place. The perfect place. Warm. And I can be with you without concern.”

“I couldn’t ask that. You’ve done enough.”

“It’s okay, dear girl—”

“Willa.”

“Ah! You are the Willow!”

“Will
a
,” she corrected.

“Yes, I know. Of course. And Shirley—”

“Charlene…”

“Of course. I know. You ask nothing. It is after hours. I can go back and forth, tail or legs, as I choose. I am happy to help you. Come, please swim with me.”

“A short distance?”

“I promise.”

Willa didn’t want to use that backstage door. She nodded. Ariel dove. Willa followed and grabbed her hand. Again the water was dark. Ariel’s powerful tail drove them left, right, and up—straight up. Harder and harder the tail pushed. Higher they swam.

Willa didn’t understand how it was possible. When they’d started, they couldn’t have been more than ten or fifteen feet underground, yet now it felt as if they’d climbed fifty feet or more.

Ariel had not fed her any air. Her lungs were bursting as they broke through the surface. She coughed and gasped for air.

They found themselves in a much bigger tank. Again, a metal ladder ran down below the water’s surface, stretching high above them to a circular catwalk surrounding the tank.

As Ariel pulled herself up the rungs, Willa watched as her mermaid’s tail changed into a girl’s long, bare legs and bare bottom.

“I keep these handy just for this transition,” Ariel said once they’d reached a steel catwalk at the top. She had her back to Willa as she slipped on a pair of bikini bottoms that she’d had cleverly wrapped around the back strap of her halter top, hidden by her long hair.

She led Willa out a heavy metal door and onto another catwalk. Willa nearly screamed as she reached to steady herself. They were a hundred feet above ground, high up on a catwalk balcony surrounding the Park water tower. But Willa, like Philby, was a climber, and had no trouble with the height once she realized where she was. Ms. Cheerleader, Charlene, could do some climbing too, but more of the gymnastic variety. Willa and Philby were the Keepers who did the rope courses and climbing wall as after-school activities. It was where she’d first started liking him.

“It’s…beautiful,” Willa said.

“Yes. I love it up here. There’s a lot to be said for being human.”

“You saved my life.”

“Mermaids,” Ariel said, interrupting, “have a long-standing tradition of rescuing sailors at sea. It would seem that is about all we’re good for. That, and exciting homesick sailors in the first place.”

“In my house, you’re known for your singing.”

“Yes, well…that came later.”

“What do we do now?” asked Willa.

“I am not sure. I only know that no one will find us here. No one will see us. I often spend time here—overlooking the Park, watching the guests, playing the occasional prank. Did you know that mermaids like to make practical jokes?”

“First I’ve heard of it.”

“Yes, well, how would you feel if shipbuilders were constantly carving sculptures of you on the front of their ships from the waist up? It’s undignified. Such things deserve practical joking.”

“Can I ask you something?” Willa said.

“You just did.”

Willa giggled. “You said you knew of the Keepers.”

“Of course.”

“Are there…
others
who would consider helping us?”

“I told you: You have many friends here. You might be surprised to discover how many stand with you. Here in the World, and in the Land as well, we lack only a leader. We assume that is why you and the others have come. To lead us.”

Willa’s head spun. Finn had often talked about Wayne making reference to leadership. She’d always thought of it in terms of the Keepers—never the Disney characters themselves. Willa had never considered that she and the others were there to lead a movement. She doubted Finn or anyone else had, either.

“My father, King Triton, says a kingdom has room for only one ruler,” Ariel said.

“Our group is more of a democracy,” Willa said. “But maybe we’re here to help you find a leader. What about Mickey? Isn’t Mickey your leader?”

Ariel locked into a distant stare. She’d gone somewhere far away. “We can discuss this another time, I think.” Her entire demeanor had changed.

Willa filed the information away for later. Why had mention of Mickey closed off Ariel?

Willa said, “Let me ask you this. If you’re here…” she reached over and touched the beautiful girl, “does that mean Ursula’s here, too?”

“Of course. Everyone’s here. Aren’t they? There are so few you can trust here, believe me.”

“We need a plan,” Willa mumbled.

“Or a script. There’s always a script to follow.”

“Not always, I’m afraid,” Willa said. “This is one of those times. We need to write our own script.”

Willa looked out on the empty Park. Occasionally she caught movement from a particular direction, but by the time she turned to look in that direction the street would be empty, the Park a ghost town.

Willa recalled with some dread Judge Frollo’s eagerness to drown her. How the soldiers had appeared so well organized.

They had been waiting for her to cross over. They had wanted her to describe the sketch Jess had shown her at school. It meant only one thing: someone had told them about Jess showing it to her.

The spies were real.

“Something’s going on here,” she allowed to slip out.

“Oh, there’s a great deal going on, dear girl. We just so seldom see it.”

“We’re in danger.”

“Yes.” It was as if this was old news to Ariel.

“I need to get to Epcot.” To the Return, she was thinking.

“But you just got here!” Ariel complained.

“My friends and I want to help,” Willa reminded. “But we can only help if we’re together. Like a team.”

“Friends? A team? My friends are a crab and some fish. I’m all alone here,” Ariel said, wistfully.

“Not anymore you’re not,” said Willa. “You’re part of the team now.”

W
HILE WILLA WAS SITTING
with her feet draped over the catwalk surrounding the Disney’s Hollywood Studios water tank, Finn was awake contemplating a text message he’d received from an unidentified sender. It wasn’t that he didn’t receive text messages; of course he did—hundreds a week, maybe more—but this particular message held more interest than most:

www.thekingdomkeepers.com/key

Beneath the URL was the title of the book and a page number—a book Finn knew all too well. A book written about him and his friends. Underneath the title of the book, a single letter:

W

It was that
W
that had held his attention for the past hour or so. That letter and all it represented. Philby had been contacted by Wayne at school. He’d sent them on the Kim Possible adventure.

Now this.

Wayne was becoming involved again.

Finn’s first instinct had been to find the book and go to the Web site. That was why the book was sitting open to the right of the keyboard, and why Finn was sitting in the chair in front of his computer. But for the longest time he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He just didn’t completely believe Wayne had sent the text—even though Wayne had given him and the others their phones and therefore would know how to text him. Even though he was eager to connect with Wayne. The problem was this: Wayne never made it simple. Finn couldn’t think of a time that Wayne had given them something easy to solve or easy to do. The method he’d used to contact Philby supported that notion. Why hadn’t he just texted Philby if he thought texting was safe?

Wayne had a tendency to surprise: arriving uninvited in a chat room or interrupting a Skype session. A straight text seemed so unlike him.

But that
W
was like a finger drawing Finn closer to his keyboard. The longer he stared at it, the more tempted he was. Finally, he webbed the fingers of both hands, cracked his knuckles by bending them backward, and placed them upon the keyboard. He typed the address into his browser.

The page loaded, and he was instructed to hold the particular page of the book up to the computer’s internal video camera. He pushed the laptop back a few inches and hoisted the book. He hit enter. The computer
bonged
and the screen changed color.

SUCCESS!
the screen declared.

For a moment there was no change. It was late, and he was tired. All that anticipation had been coursing through his veins for the past hour like caffeine from a soda. With nothing happening, a wave of fatigue overcame him. He felt like a pool toy losing its air, a condition that left him wholly unprepared for what happened next.

Wayne appeared on top of his desk, just in front of the keyboard. A small hologram of Wayne, no more than four inches tall, impossibly real-looking. Finn waved his hand through the image just to confirm it was what it was.

“Whoa!” Finn said aloud. “Can you hear me?”

“Hello, Finn.”

It was Wayne’s voice—there was no mistaking the scratchy quality. But, maybe because of the projection or the transmission, the words sounded somewhat artificial, almost glued together, the intonation wrong.

“What exactly…? Where…? Is that really you? Where are you?”

“Come down…lower…Finn. Look at…my face. I should see…you…better.”

Finn had heard Philby talk about augmented reality apps—AR—baseball cards that came to life as holograms on your desk, maps that did the same thing. The Keepers had heard rumors that Disney was considering making Kingdom Keepers playing cards with an AR component, allowing them to appear as 3-D images just as Wayne was now appearing. Some augmented reality could even be animated—a baseball player swinging a bat, a dancer spinning on her toes—but he had never heard of an AR element projecting in real time the way this one was. It was like a 3-D video chat, and Finn found it captivating.

He backed up his chair and lowered his head as instructed in order to look directly at Wayne’s small face.

Somewhere in the far reaches of Finn’s mind, a warning light went off. The choppiness of Wayne’s voice could be a transmission problem, as he suspect-ed—but why would the hologram be so clear and the audio be so choppy? That didn’t make sense. The audio sounded edited—words cut and pasted into sentences.

As he lowered himself toward Wayne’s small face, Finn simultaneously cleared his thoughts and pictured a dark tunnel with a pinprick of light showing far, far in the distance. He allowed that light to grow closer, allowed himself to sink not only toward the desk, but into a peaceful, blissful state.
All clear
.

“That is…better,” said the hologram.

Then, as Finn looked at Wayne, the face transformed, no longer a man with white hair, but suddenly the stern face of a beautiful woman. The Evil Queen’s mouth was already moving, her voice both haunting and musical.

“As soft as a whisper

No one will tell

The curse, reversed

Seen by the sister

When kissing Jezebel”

Finn’s fingers and toes tingled. With the mention of kissing Jezebel—the name Jess had gone by a few years earlier—he panicked, and he slipped out of
all clear
. The Evil Queen repeated her message:

“As soft as a whisper

No one will tell…”

Finn was caught in a state of partial
all clear
, a dangerous place—mentally alert but with tingling toes and fingers. Part mortal, he was real enough to be wounded, yet enough
all clear
to believe he was safe.