Kingdom Keepers VII (15 page)

His wing extends, throwing her into the boxes. He pivots, prepared to strike.

“The mortals have magical memory,” she says, crawling away from him. “The metal bricks they hold capture our every movement.”

He clomps toward her. Snorting, he glances back toward the gaping hole. She can feel him contemplating whether or not to confiscate the driver’s phone. She can see that cloven hoof, so close he could stomp the life out of her.

“Better not to be seen just now, don’t you think?” Depending on what the driver does with the video, they could already be in serious trouble. Life is a stage—immortal life a vast stage indeed.

“They can make stories with these bricks. Stories like ours, yours, and mine. We do not need such stories—incorrect ones—poisoning thought prior to the beginning of the End. They will only serve to challenge our position.”

He blinks his strange inner eyelids. She perceives that he understands, though can’t explain to herself how it might be so.

“Best we surprise them.” She knows he understands surprise.

He grunts.

The Evil Queen accepts the small victory showing absolutely no expression.

I
NSIDE THE TOWERING CONFINES
of Stage 6, one boy sits alone, cross-legged in a sea of green. He seems small and insignificant, drowning in all the color.

A tired Finn Whitman glances at his watch for the umpteenth time, shoots a look at Philby in the control room, and shakes his head in disappointment. Adjusting the microphone of his headset, Finn says softly, “You think she can’t fall asleep? The excitement or something?”

“I told you: she crossed over thirty-five minutes ago.”

“Makes no sense.”

“I see her!” It’s Willa’s voice, crackling over the headset. “The back of the Frank—”

“I’ve got her!” says Maybeck over the airwaves. He and Willa can’t see each other, but between them, they’re able to keep watch over the three back lot streets with access to Stage 6.

“Finally!” Finn says, standing.

“Go easy on her, Finn,” Maybeck says. “If she’s late, there’s a reason.”

“The reason being, she’s your girlfriend?” asks Willa.

“Shut…up!” Maybeck says. Three peals of nervous laughter fill the headsets.

Charlene enters the cavernous space. Like Finn, she appears to have shrunk; she looks tiny and insignificant against the enormous soundstage. She gracefully crosses to Finn, excited and with a palpable sense of urgency, rushing her words as she spills out the news of what she has overheard in the conference room. Her report is delivered in broken sentences punctuated by purposeful pauses as she collects her thoughts, trying but failing not to color her tale with emotion. The others hear her breathlessness over Finn’s headset microphone; she sounds like a young child whose closet door pops open of its own accord, awakening her in the middle of a deep sleep.

“Once again,” Finn says, once Charlene has finished.

“‘An enemy within,’” Charlene repeats. “A mission for us, but they don’t trust us, and they fear our power.”

“The OTs murdered some guy?” Finn’s hopeful tone begs her to correct him, to tell him he’s heard her wrong.

“She’s nodding,” Finn tells the others via the headset. “She’s nodding and she’s scared.”

“Took his head off,” Charlene gasps.

“So it’s come to this,” Finn says, his voice full of unmistakable desperation and profound disappointment. “First Dill. Now some complete stranger.”

“Don’t go there,” Willa says through the headset. “Tia Dalma tricked you, Finn. You can’t go on blaming yourself. It wasn’t your fault. It’s—”

“They’re
murderers
,” Finn says bitterly. “They’ve killed two people, maybe more. For all we know, they’ll kill us without a second thought.”

Philby’s voice: “‘An enemy within.’”

“I caught that the first time,” Maybeck says. “That’s trash talk, and we all know it.”

Finn says, “A secret midnight meeting to talk about a
rumor
? I don’t think so. If they’re going to that kind of trouble, they must have evidence. Right or wrong, they think it’s at least a strong possibility.”

Collective silence floods the airwaves. In the silence, sparks of spitting static echo like fireworks.

“We can talk about this later,” Philby says. “I’ve got to get the bugs out of v1.6. If we’re facing murderers, we need every advantage we can get. Besides, I’ve got a surprise for you all.” He pauses. “Maybeck?”

“Here.”

“Get your butt over to the Legends statue. Make sure no one sees you. Bring back our guests.”

“Guests?” Finn says.

“That’s my surprise,” says Philby.

* * *

“Well, what are you waiting for? Go say hi!” Jess says, nudging Amanda.

A flood of emotions ripples through Amanda: the rush of crossing over as a DHI; of vanishing from her bed in Mrs. Nash’s house in Florida and appearing in Walt Disney Studios in California; the idea of helping the Keepers take down the Overtakers; and more than anything, seeing Finn for the first time since the prom. They are magically within reach
of one another.
³⁰

The group, standing scattered around the green-screen stage, waits awkwardly, sensing the moment between Finn and Amanda.

Finn can’t read her, has no idea what she’s feeling. Is she happy to see him? Angry because of his ditching her at the prom? He resists an urge to hug her; doesn’t know how she’ll react; can’t risk it.

After several tense seconds of staring, Finn rubs the back of his neck, trying to disperse his nervous tension. He can feel the eyes of each of the other Keepers on him; his stomach twists into knots, and he can’t make himself talk. He is so pleased to see Amanda, but he doesn’t know how to express himself. First, he tries a grin. Seeing disappointment on her face, he summons a burst of courage and steps in for a kiss. On the cheek.
³¹

Maybeck, who has returned to his lookout, groans and says over the headphones, “I heard that.”

Amanda awkwardly glances away as fast as possible. Throughout her time as a Fairlie, she has struggled to remain independent. She’s only given her full trust to Jess, and only then after a long, testing friendship. She feels she can trust Finn; they have an undeniable connection. But their pasts are so different. Is it possible they are more than the closest of friends? After all this time, can she still be unsure?
Sometimes
life is about learning to surf the waves you can’t stop.
She can’t recall who told her this, but it seemed important at the time. Should she heed the advice now?

“Hey!” Finn’s voice breaks apart her thoughts. This is it.
³²

She finally allows her face to break into a giant, lovely smile. He grins back with that same sweetness she always sees in him. She knows she’s supposed to say something, but a lump catches in her throat. Memories flood her: the prom, the cruise. Tears spring up in her eyes.

“You okay?” Finn asks.

Butterflies swarm in her stomach. She hears fireworks in her head. She wants to hug him, to burst into honest tears and tell him how much she has missed him.
³³

“Doing great,” she says, lying.

Philby exits the control room and enters the stage area. After confirming that Willa and Maybeck can hear him over their headsets, he addresses Jess.

“Tell them what you told me in your e-mail.”

“Another dream,” she says, reaching into her pocket with a rueful smile. “The more things change—hey, guys?”

She attempts to hand Finn a folded piece of paper, but his fingers pass through its projected light, and it sticks to Jess’ hand like flypaper, a part of her hologram. She and Amanda are less experienced as DHIs; Jess seems uncomfortable with her present state of immateriality.

Philby eyes the sheet of paper, still impossible to disassociate from Jess’s DHI. “There’s an interesting bug. The fob has never had that problem.” For a brief flash, he sounds like Professor Philby. “I can work on that as well. We need to get started.”

“Hold on a second!” Finn says, a little too loudly.

Jess holds up the unfolded sheet of sketch paper for all to see. It shimmers, framed by a thin blue line. Like so many renditions of her dream visions, this is a collage of images and words, some faint, some bold. They mix and combine on the page in a sprawl of abstract confusion. Her visions are more foretelling than fortune-telling; they often lack specifics or misread entire parts of a message. Jess is no Rembrandt, but she’s capable of telling stories with images. She’s a good enough illustrator to capture her recollections of her dreams and depict them boldly.

Then again, sometimes Jess’s dreams are nothing more than night-bound fantasies, fears, and hopes taking flight in an overactive imagination; sometimes her dreams probe deeply into a crystal ball, defying all understanding of time’s hold on human consciousness. Only Einstein might be able to explain Jess’s supernatural ability to see around the curve of the present into the blur of the future.

But she has repeated this feat too many times for the Keepers to consider it mere luck or diagnose it as the result of some chemical or hormonal imbalance. Her vision makes her more than special; it makes her unique, important. She is a lens through which the Keepers can anticipate the ambushes of the Overtakers.

The collage is busy and requires thorough study, for which none of the Keepers presently has time. It contains, among other images, a ski lift gondola; the bolded words
If Cars, Ice
; a long climbing flight of stairs reminiscent of what the Imagineers have dubbed “Escher’s Keep” in the Cinderella Castle; the horns of a monster that all recognize as Chernabog; a doll; and the Mexican temple where Dillard died at Finn’s hand. In the center of this confusion is a magic lantern—an ancient oil lamp—puffing a series of translucent steam clouds from its curved spout. It’s beautifully shaded and realistic. Among the clouds of steam float words
A
wry snake is the key
, partially obscured by shading
.
Shoe prints and cat paw prints wind confusingly like a net around and across the other images.

“What does it mean?” Finn asks.

“In my dream, the lantern was important. I saw you, Finn, out of breath and facing it. You rubbed it and—”

“I rubbed it?” Finn says.

“And then disappeared,” says Amanda anxiously.

“Yeah,” Jess says to her sister, as if continuing an argument, “but maybe I awoke then, before I could see what happened.”

“You did not awake. You saw a snake.”

“But it could have been a different dream.”

“You were scared. You woke up scared. You told me that. Finn was in trouble.”

“Finn is
always
in trouble in your dreams, Jess,” Willa says.

“Not
always
,” Jess replies disagreeably.

“In a large percentage of them then.”

“Explain the words,” the Professor says. “The ‘Cars’ thing, the snake thing.”

“Cars Land,” Willa says into the headsets. “California Adventure. Ice? Maybe the mountains in the scenery?”

Finn repeats her words for the sake of Amanda and Jess, who don’t have headsets. Heads bob. Only Philby ever beats Willa to such instant analysis. It’s a competition between them.

“The snake,” Jess says timidly. “It’s true what Amanda said: I did have a nightmare involving this humongous snake and Finn. But the words…I don’t know. I draw what I see. You know? That’s where the words—those exact words—belong on the page. I know that sounds stupid—”

“It doesn’t.” The Professor is the final arbiter of what is and is not considered stupid. He has passed judgment. “The brain’s subconscious functions cannot—”

Maybeck makes a loud snoring sound over the headset. Charlene covers her smile. Philby reddens, highlighting his ginger complexion, but recovers quickly.

“Any explanation for the articles and the verb being less important? Only ‘wry,’ ‘snake,’ and ‘key’ are shaded.”

“You’re killing me here, Philby,” says Maybeck.

Jess levels sympathetic eyes on Philby as she shakes her head. “I draw what I see.”

“Why so urgent?” Philby asks. “Your text—” He pauses, then explains to the others, “Jess texted me, saying that they needed to cross over, needed to see us tonight.”

“Actually, I asked you first what color shirt Finn was wearing,” Jess says.