Kingdom Keepers VI (9781423179214) (6 page)

H
AVING SLEPT FEWER THAN
three hours, awakened by Mrs. Philby (who didn't want the boys sleeping in), Finn and Philby sat cross-legged on the stateroom's bed, the Disney journal between them.

The notebook, dating back more than fifty years, had once been part of a private collection in a library kept by the Disney Imagineers at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Florida. Some Disney historians believed the journals had belonged to Walt Disney himself.

Maleficent, the Evil Queen, and Cruella De Vil had been seen stealing the journal, making its return critical to the Kingdom Keepers. Finn had, in fact, gotten it back; he'd kept it locked up in the stateroom's safe.

They thumbed ahead to the author's notes about the creation of Walt Disney's most fearsome villain: Chernabog. It was in among those pages that a beautiful watercolor had been drawn—faded by time, but still striking.

The next page in the journal was left blank except for four doodles, one in each corner, done in pen and ink.

The last of the three pages was no better, holding only the inscription:

“LIFE IS BECAUSE OF THE GODS; WITH THEIR SACRIFICE THEY GAVE US LIFE…. THEY PRODUCE OUR SUSTENANCE…WHICH NOURISHES LIFE.”

The boys spun the journal back and forth between them like a pinwheel.

“What the…?” Finn said.

“There is a good and a bad to this,” Philby said.

“I'll take the good first,” Finn said. “I had about all the bad I can take last night.”

“The good and the bad are the same thing,” Philby said. “Whatever this is, it seems highly unlikely the OTs have figured it out yet.” He cleared his throat. “The bad news is: we have no clue what any of it means either.”

“Way to cheer me up.”

“I do what I can,” Philby said sarcastically. “Whatever it is, whatever it says, it's why they're on board, why Chernabog's on the ship.”

Finn thought back to his secret conversation with Wayne. “We don't know that absolutely, but I suppose it makes sense.”

“It makes tons of sense.” Philby ticked off each point on his fingers. “They've spent months battling for control of Base—still a work in progress; they steal the journal; they board the
Dream
; they smuggle Chernabog onto the ship—no easy task; they bring in OTKs like Luowski. They are trying to
kill
us. They may want to kidnap Charlene, according to Jess. They're taking huge chances. It has to be for huge rewards.”

“Again, with the cheering up,” Finn said.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Try to kill us?”

“We can be very annoying,” Finn said.

Philby smiled. “We can, can't we?”

“But I see what you mean. What happened to this being a game?”

“Exactly. It's as far away from a game as it can
get.”

“It's us,” Finn said. “The fact that we exist at
all. Before, it was the villains against the princesses
and princes, the fairies versus Mickey and Minnie. There was a balance of power. Wayne brought us in
as DHIs to make sure the balance didn't tilt too far toward the villains. But maybe by doing so, it upset things.”

“The balance of power,” Philby said.

“That's what I'm talking about.”

“You're saying
we're
the problem.”

“I'm saying we may have started things going wrong.”

“Escalation. So they've brought in OTKs,” Philby said. “They're attacking the Base. If we win, they lose—”

“Which is probably different from when both sides won and lost, but not all the time.”

“More permanent.”

“Permanent vacation,” Finn said.

“And now that we're winning some of the time, they bring along Chernabog. Though, granted, he's sleeping or in a spell or something. They see a chance for real victory, not the give and take that's been going on after hours in the parks for decades. The only thing is, we're in the way. As long as we're alive…”

“Cheery thought.”

“So their mission has two parts: get rid of us, and bring Chernabog to power.”

“And the journal's part of that,” Finn said.

“This journal's important to them. This journal is why they're on the ship in the first place.”

“We don't know that!”

“Let's assume it,” Philby said. “The kind of detailed planning that went into the Chernabog pickup? This thing's on a whole new level.”

“Agreed.”

“We need the others,” Philby said, pointing to the journal. “We're better at figuring out stuff like this when it's all of us. The sooner we crack the code, the better chance we have of stopping them.”

A
T BREAKFAST
, the cafeteria-style food stations in the Cabanas restaurant teemed with hungry passengers. The Keepers' quest for privacy put them at a corner table, where they spoke in soft voices.

“We couldn't risk bringing the actual journal,” Philby said, “but we photocopied the important
pages.”

He passed them around—the painting of the stone steps, the coin-sized designs, the line of text:

“LIFE IS BECAUSE OF THE GODS; WITH THEIR SACRIFICE THEY GAVE US LIFE…. THEY PRODUCE OUR SUSTENANCE…WHICH NOURISHES LIFE.”

“We don't know if the OTs have solved it or not,” he said. “Regardless, we have to figure out if it means anything. Whatever's going on with Chernabog must be connected to the journal.”

“Can I mention something bizarre?” Charlene said. No one answered, but she continued anyway. “Philby asked me to photograph the hyena Maybeck and Finn found.” She cringed. “Which, I'm happy to say, was gone by the time I got there. But anyway, I'm heading up the jogging path and I'm practically speared by a
hummingbird
!”

“That's not possible,” Philby said. “They can't survive at sea. They're land birds.”

“But I saw it.”

“You're sure it was a hummingbird?” Willa asked.

“One hundred percent.”

“So we have a monster that doesn't belong on board,” Finn said. “And a species of bird that has no business being here.”

“Can we talk about this later?” Philby said, pushing back his hair impatiently. “This meeting is about the journal.”

Charlene shrugged, put off but unwilling to start a fight.

“When we work together, we're good at this kind
of thing. The Stonecutter's Quill. ‘Under the Sea'
in AK.”

“Maybe Jess's dream about caves has something to do with these stairs,” Willa said, nudging the drawing. “I mean, they're stone. They look old. Maybe we should copy the actual journal and e-mail it to her.”

“Too dangerous,” Philby said. “The journal has to be locked up. We can't risk losing it a second time.”

Willa passed the sheets to Storey Ming.

“Pictographs,” Storey said. “Not Egyptian. I've studied those in art class.”

“Interesting,” Philby said.

“Not really,” Maybeck quipped.

Philby ignored him, always the best tactic in the face of Maybeck's cynicism. “Caribbean?”

“The Mayans were highly civilized,” Willa said. “They had a written language, a lot of which still hasn't been translated.”

The others stared at her. Even Philby.

“What? I suppose none of you gets National Geographic Channel?”

“I get it,” Maybeck said, “but I don't watch it!”

“What if we combine the Jess cave thing,” Charlene said, “with the steps and the symbols?”

“There are famous caves on Aruba,” Storey said. “One of the
Dream
excursions goes there.”

“Our next port of call. As in, tomorrow morning. So maybe the symbols are in one of the caves,” Finn said. “Maybe we still have time to figure this out!”

“Yeah, and maybe they lead to buried treasure, too.” A jaded Maybeck wasn't buying any of it. But when he picked up the page with the symbols, his tone changed. “Hey, is this how they look? I mean, arranged like
this?”

“Yes. As close as we could get it,” Philby said.

“Then there's something missing. See? The blank space between the four corners? It's like they were framing something.” The artist in Maybeck was adamant. “But whatever was there isn't there now.”

“More interesting,” Philby said, as if about to vote on it.

“The OTs have it,” Charlene said. “Whatever it is!”

“We don't know that,” Philby said. “Maybe they do, maybe they don't.”

“We need to figure out what the glyphs mean,” Storey said.

“The computers on Deck Two,” Willa said. “We can search the Web.”

“A good place to start.”

“Trouble is,” Storey said, “there are something like ten thousand characters in the Mayan language.”

“My nana presses flowers,” Charlene said, pointing at the page with the symbols. “The thing in the middle of the frame? It could have been a pressed leaf or a flower or something like that.”

“Nice!” said Maybeck. “That makes so much sense.”

No one commented on the fact that lately Maybeck liked anything Charlene said.

“But wait a second!” he continued, his frustration revealing itself as a tightening of his fists and lips. “Are we insane? How could some journal entry written in Florida fifty years ago have anything to do with a Caribbean cruise that wasn't even around back then?”

“It doesn't,” Philby said. “It can't. Obviously. So it has to do with something else, something Walt Disney and his animators were working on:
Fantasia
. Chernabog.”

Mention of the monster sobered the group.

“He's half Minotaur, half bat god,” Finn said. Wayne's words echoed in his ears, and he shivered. “The most evil villain Walt Disney ever created. There are descriptions of him being the ‘embodiment' of evil.”

“The Minotaur was no picnic,” Willa said.

Again, the group turned to her.

“History Channel,” she said. “What? I watch a lot of TV! In Greek mythology—and I'm not talking Percy Jackson—the Minotaur ate people.”

“Lovely.” Maybeck pretended not to be interested, but he clearly was.

“He was horrible and did horrible things. You know how stuff found in one culture is often found in others?” Willa's eyes were wide. “Let's assume the old Imagineers found references to a Minotaur-like demon, like a Caribbean Bigfoot. You know? Including some lore, some pictographs or whatever, that supposedly told you—”

“How to wake it up,” Philby said.

“Not good.” Charlene sounded panicked.

Maybeck moaned.

“That would interest the Overtakers,” Storey Ming said. She used the term with familiarity, Finn noted.

“See?” Philby said. “We're much better at this when we do it together. I think we're getting somewhere.”

“Charlene's hummingbird!” Willa said suddenly, sitting up straighter.

“The Animal Channel, I suppose?” said Maybeck.

“Yes, as a matter of fact. Torpor.” Willa spotted several blank expressions and sighed. “You
guys
are such duds. Wayne explained it to Finn, who told us all about it. Anyone remember?” She waited. Sighed again. “Hummingbirds have this insane metabolism. Like drinking-six-lattes-an-hour kind of thing. So they don't actually sleep; they enter a state called torpor. It's like hibernating, but for a matter of minutes or an hour. Some bats use torpor as well.”

“Bats. As in bat gods,” Philby said.

“Tia Dalma,” Willa said.

It was like just the two of them in the room now.

“A witch doctor.”

“They smuggled some hummingbirds onto the ship so she can practice her magic. She puts the birds into torpor. She wakes them up. One of them escapes—”

“—and tries to spear me,” Charlene said.

“Whoa!” Finn said.

“No kidding.” Maybeck was suddenly a convert. “This is making way too much sense.”

“They're missing something,” Philby said, “or they'd have taken Chernabog out of torpor and taken over the ship already.”

“Something from a cave,” Finn said.

“Something the glyphs describe,” Storey added.

A tattooed arm reached over Finn's shoulder and dropped a folded piece of paper on the table.

Finn spun around, trying to see whoever it was, but Cabanas was mobbed. Dozens of people were milling around the food and drink stations. Another dozen stood with trays, looking for open tables.

He searched for an arm with a tattoo—a thin arm, a girl's arm, he thought. In his random search, he caught a flash of red-streaked hair.

Her again?
A girl with similar hair had helped them in the past few days, showing up exactly when needed. Philby would discount the coincidence, but Finn had little doubt it was the same girl. Had to be!

“Did anyone get a look at her?” Finn asked.

“Who?” Maybeck asked.

“No one?”

Blank looks.

Finn unfolded the note and read:

k'an pet ch'en

Instead of reading it aloud—he had no idea of its significance, and with the OTs, you could never be too careful—Finn passed it around. It moved hand to hand across the table.

“So? What's that about?” Maybeck said, breaking the unbearable silence.

“We have friends working for us,” Storey proposed.

“Or enemies trying to trick us,” Finn said.

Professor Philby said, “Deceit typically involves
subtlety. Dropping a note on a table is not terribly subtle.”

“So let's be positive,” said the cheerleader, “and figure out what we do with everything.” Charlene cleared her throat. “I saw the hummingbird on Deck Four forward. The hyena was killed up there, too.”

“Interesting,” Maybeck said.

Charlene smiled widely.

Willa said, “Storey and I can Google the pictographs and the words on the mystery note.”

Finn lowered his voice. “The thing is, if she's leaving us a clue, she's got to be on our side. So why not just talk to us?”

Maybeck said, “Because we're radioactive, Whitman. We're nothing but trouble. She wants to help, but not get involved.”

“But if she's helping us, then Wayne sent her.”

“Most likely,” Philby said. His face tightened. “Which is odd.”

“Odd that we weren't told,” Finn said. “Maybe she's part of the 2.0 upgrade. Maybe it isn't rumor.”

“Maybe she was a hologram,” Willa said, silencing the group.

The rumor about 2.0, begun by Finn's making assumptions about things said by Storey Ming, was that the Keepers might be facing early retirement. It seemed possible that, unbeknown to them, Wayne and the Imagineers were testing out the beta phase of 2.0 before fixing bugs and installing it onto a new set of DHIs—bigger, faster, stronger.

“That's hardly critical thinking, Willa,” cautioned Philby. “There's nowhere near enough empirical evidence to bring us to any kind of conclusion. It's pure speculation. Speculation can be dangerous.”

Willa looked crushed. He'd blurted it out in typical Philby fashion; now he looked as if he wished he could take it back.

“Whatever,” Finn said. “We need to make plans to spy on the OTs.”

“Say, what?” Charlene said.

“We have to follow them,” Maybeck said. “We have to know what they're doing. Same with the OTKs. If they leave the ship in Aruba, we need to leave the ship. If they stay on board, we stay on board.”

“How can we follow them if we don't know where they are in the first place?” Charlene said.

Philby said, “I have access to all the shipboard
camera feeds now. We're not without assets.”

“Speak English,” said Willa, irritated.

“Let's assume Jess's sketch of the cave is accurate,” Maybeck said. “We know there are caves on Aruba. In her dream, there were women in the cave. Women—as in witches and dark fairies, maybe.”

“Maybe,”
Philby said, emphasizing the word. “We don't know any of this to be fact.”

“Shut up a minute. Let's assume it's fact. Okay? If so, we need to know what they're doing in that cave. Right?” Maybeck answered himself: “Right. So… Thanks to Philby's cameras, we can cover a lot of the ship. The problem is getting off the ship at the exact same time as the OTKs, so we don't lose them.”

“Forward following,” Philby said.

“Say, what?”

“Now you're just talking nonsense,” Willa said, her irritation showing again.

Group meetings had gotten way too complicated, Finn thought. Clearing his throat, he waded in, determined to break the tension.

“Willa, Philby's saying that we don't need to follow the OTs
off
the ship. There are probably only a couple
of caves this could be. We can narrow it down using Jess's drawing. Then we let them come to
us
for a change, by getting to whatever cave it is
ahead of time.
They
walk into
our
trap.”

“Nice,” Maybeck said.

“We'll have to check out the island tourist information for caves. I'll bet one will match up pretty closely with Jess's drawing.”

“I can do that,” Storey said. “Being a Cast Member, I can get a look at all the excursion stuff.”

“It could be at one of the other stops,” Philby reminded them.

“Aruba is known for its caves,” Storey said. “Not so sure about Costa Rica and Mexico.”

Philby took in the faces staring at him. “Fine. Charlene and Maybeck will get off early and,
providing Storey's found a match, go to the cave and hide. I will use my hack of the shipboard security
cameras to keep an eye on the various gangways
off the ship. If I see Luowski or any OTs leaving,
Willa and Finn will follow them.” He added, “I should be able to get us all walkie-talkies.”