Authors: Ridley Pearson
“It’s okay,” Finn said, encouraging Charlene forward. “It’s Wanda. She’s expecting us.”
Wanda Alcott greeted them both with hugs, holding on to Finn like she might a nephew. Her gratitude for his bailing her out of jail was written all over her face.
“It’s all arranged,” Wanda said. “They added the extra show. It starts any minute. Better from here on if it’s just us girls.”
Finn nodded.
Charlene knew the plan, but not Wanda’s involvement.
“Should anything go wrong, and Lord knows it can,” Wanda said, “I’ve arranged a way out for you; and for the other two, for that matter. The characters are all on your side,” Wanda said.
“The Cast Members,” Charlene clarified.
“Some of them, too,” Wanda said. “But no, Charlene, I mean the characters. They have been supportive of all of you from the beginning.”
“But, that means…From the
beginning
?” She felt overwhelmed. Their support could change everything.
“My father was reluctant to organize them—quite honestly, not knowing whom to trust. But the dust has settled. Hmm? And there’s every indication now that they’ve come together as a group. It’s tremendous progress, and it’s in large part because of the example you’ve set. For so many years—decades—they’ve been individuals; they’ve enjoyed the flattery of daily attention. Like with movie stars, that creates some interesting personalities—just read the tabloids. But so many of them want the magic to remain in the Parks. Their very existence is at stake. If the Overtakers have their way, they’ll all be wiped out. Gone. Hard to imagine a world like that.”
“I don’t want to imagine a world like that,” Charlene said.
“It’s not just the Overtakers we have to worry about,” Finn said. “There are Security guys who’ve come after us before. It’s not like we can trust just any Disney employee.”
“No. There are definite pockets within various groups to watch out for. The poison has spread.”
“To the Imagineers?” Finn said.
“I spoke with your mother. In any war there is the threat of double agents.”
“And we’re at war?” Charlene said.
“We will be soon. Darkness descends,” Wanda said, looking up into the night sky.
She grabbed Charlene by the hand, nodded to Finn, and led the girl through the Cast Member doorway.
Charlene looked back at Finn through the gloom, her face a mask of worry and concern.
Finn suddenly felt horribly alone.
* * *
Fireworks exploded over the lake.
When Maybeck created a diversion, he did it Maybeck-style: big time. He knocked over a tall urn containing tiki torches. The resulting cacophony was like a stampede of wild horses, the chaos compounded by Maybeck’s intentional fumbling as he tried to rectify the situation. He kicked the torches around in a storm of rattling bamboo, and set the urn rolling toward the checkout desk. The two Cast Members remaining in the store hurried over to help.
Willa, standing alongside a straw basket containing a very real-looking cobra that flicked its tongue at her, grabbed the weaving spindle from the loom on display and pulled hard to break the yarn. But the display was deceptive. The yarn was not really yarn but some kind of unbreakable nylon string. It wasn’t going to break no matter how hard she pulled. So, with the Cast Members laboring to help Maybeck with the spilled tiki torches, Willa began unwrapping the string from the spindle as fast as she could.
Maybeck glanced in Willa’s direction several times, clearly annoyed and frustrated by her taking so much time. Finally, she reached the end of the string and the spindle came loose. She stuffed it into her pocket and nodded slightly when she caught Maybeck looking.
Together with the Cast Members, Maybeck collected the torches and stood them back up in the urn and the urn was moved back into place. Maybeck apologized profusely and slipped out one side of the store as Willa left opposite him. She turned left, toward the brightly exploding sky and the mobs of people watching the spectacle.
A Security guard on a Segway was headed right for her. Then she spotted a second Segway on Maybeck’s side. Willa turned around and walked in the other direction, deeper into Morocco. The stolen spindle felt like it weighed a hundred pounds in her pocket. She thought about tossing it. But if the Security guy was watching her, he’d see.
She glanced over her shoulder. The Security guy had stopped at the store.
She faced forward and found herself looking into the eyes of an old man—a street beggar. There was at once something sad about this poor man, and yet something else vaguely familiar. She stopped abruptly, both afraid and intrigued. Maybeck appeared behind the old man, coming around the far corner. Perhaps the old guy caught the shift in her vision, or maybe he had eyes in the back of his head, but he knew someone was there. He backed up, forming a triangle with them.
“Should I call the authorities?” he asked in a creaky old voice. “Do you think they might be interested in a missing spindle?”
“But how—?” Willa’s breath caught.
Maybeck stopped. He and Willa exchanged a look of despair.
“Go on your way, old man,” Maybeck said.
“Old man? Do you think so?” As he laughed, the silk veil that hung across his chin billowed like a sail. He paused a moment, looking between them, making sure he had their attention. “I…want…your…magic. I will spare your lives if you give it to me now.”
Willa felt a shortness of breath. There was something about the way he’d said “magic” that cut to her core. She’d never considered herself as possessing any magic, and yet here was this weird old man not only claiming that, but wanting her to hand it over. It was like someone trying to rob you of something you didn’t know you possessed.
“Wait a second! Who are you?” Maybeck stepped back and indicated for Willa to do the same.
“Think you can outrun me, do you? That would be a terrible mistake to make.”
“I can outrun you on one leg, old man,” said Maybeck.
The silk veil dropped, revealing a pointed jaw. The old man’s body stretched and grew taller.
Willa understood why his jaundiced eyes had seemed so familiar. The person who stood before them was not an old man at all. It was Jafar.
Willa’s gasp echoed off the walls.
“Lest you forget what I’m capable of…” Jafar said, and immediately transformed into a cobra—the clothes falling in a pile on the cobblestone street at his feet. The cobra lifted its head and its neck flared.
Maybeck muttered, “Willa, I don’t do snakes.”
No wonder the cobra in the store had looked so real, she realized. “Don’t…move!”
“Not planning on it,” Maybeck said.
The cobra aimed first at Willa, then at Maybeck.
“One leg, huh?” she said.
“Very funny. What now?”
Willa addressed the cobra. “We are willing to listen to your proposal.”
The snake moved with insane swiftness into the leg of the fallen pants, and suddenly Jafar stood before them once more.
“Good decision,” he said.
Each time the fireworks boomed, Willa flinched. Colors flashed on the walls surrounding them, turning their faces blue, red, green, and white in rhythmic pulses.
“Exactly what magic are we talking about?” Maybeck asked.
“The window magic.”
“Windows? Like the software?” Maybeck said.
“I don’t think we’re talking software,” Willa said. “What kind of windows?” she asked Jafar.
“Window magic,” he said. “I wish this also. What the evil one has, I must possess as well.”
“Windows,” Maybeck said, still confused and trying to wrap his head around their situation. For him, Jafar was one of the worst Disney villains out there. He killed people, or tried to; he placed no value on human life. Maybeck assumed he’d just as soon turn into a cobra and bite them dead as let them walk away. So, it came down to convincing him he could get what he wanted without knowing exactly what he wanted.
Beside Maybeck, Willa backed up a step. Jafar seemed in opposition to, or ignorant of, Maleficent’s Overtakers. Both possibilities fascinated her. Was there division in the ranks? Did Jafar command a splinter cell?
Speculation fled as she caught sight of a display carousel in the open doorway to the gift shop immediately behind her.
“What’s up?” Maybeck said softly in her direction.
Jafar seemed to understand he was outnumbered. He looked between them like a fan at a tennis match.
“Hang in there with me,” she said.
“Hanging,” Maybeck said.
Jafar raised his thin, hideous hand and said, “Don’t make me do something I’d rather not.”
But Willa kept moving ever so slowly toward the display carousel and the merchandise it contained: necklaces, fans, hand mirrors, Aladdin turbans, scarves, and more.
Jafar said, “You
will
give me magic. Only then will I let you leave alive.”
“You are one generous dude,” Maybeck said. “And right now I’m thinking there’s no one we’d rather give our magic to than you. Trouble is, right now, we can’t be giving our magic out in the open. You know? We bring the magic, and next thing you know all those people out there are going to want it. And that’s no good for any of us. You with me?”
Jafar trained his yellow eyes onto Maybeck, stopping him in his tracks.
“You don’t have it, do you?” Jafar sounded crushed and angry. Extremely angry. “I misjudged you. Magic is not something you can leave behind. One either has it or not. And if you don’t have it, you are of no use to me.”
Willa had to hope not only that her current line of thinking was correct, but that she had perfect pitch. She also had to remember back to second grade—which for her had been an unpleasant time, when her two front teeth had been roughly the size of her thumbnails, and her classmates had teased her for being so ugly.
She grabbed hold of a snake-charmer’s flute from the display carousel. In second grade, it had been a recorder flute for the Christmas show. She drew it to her mouth, and played a haunting melody from a faraway land that she’d just heard inside the store.
Within the first few notes of the snake-charming melody, Jafar slapped his ugly hands over his large ears and backed away from her, already beginning to sink to the ground, shrinking away like a snake inside a wicker basket.
Maybeck looked on in amazement. “How did you—?”
“Shut up! Get ready to run.”
“I do not need to get ready. I am so out of here.”
“Come over behind me.”
Maybeck slid over behind Willa and, with her continuing to play the melody, the two backed away from the recoiling Jafar.
She dropped the flute.
They turned and ran.
* * *
Finn stood in the front row of the crowd of the hundred or so people surrounding a roped-off area designated for the Chinese acrobats. Fireworks tore holes in the sky, as a coach and a group of twelve girls and eight boys appeared in gymnastics uniforms. The crowd broke into applause.
The girls were mostly all tiny and young, wearing light blue leotards, all with basically the same bob-and-straight-bangs haircut. The somewhat older Chinese boys formed a line behind, hands clasped behind their backs, flexing their arm muscles, and awaiting their turn. It took a moment for Finn to recognize the third-to-last girl in line as Charlene. She wore a wig that matched the other girls’. With the addition of some eye makeup and blush, she blended in surprisingly well. But just seeing her there made Finn think how stupid a plan this was. There had to have been a better way than this to get the spindle. But there was no turning back now.
The coach—a strong looking older guy with a bald head—clapped his hands twice and the show began. Finn looked away, not wanting to see what a fool Charlene was about to make of herself. Despite her claim that she’d seen the routine “enough times to know it by heart,” Finn knew that seeing it and being able to
do
it were two different things. With his eyes averted and squeezed shut, he cowered from what he expected was going to be a collective gasp as Charlene missed a move and crashed. The show opened with tumbling acts that defied belief: diving through hoops, two girls at a time. Somersaults. Human pyramids.
No collective gasp. Finn squinted one eye open, surprised to see Charlene flying through a hoop and landing in a somersault. The crowd cheered.
Not only did she know the routines, but she executed them flawlessly. Flying bodies, camera flashes, and a cheering crowd occupied the next several minutes.
A roar erupted celebrating a standing pyramid—four girls across on the bottom row, Charlene one of them.
All at once, Finn felt a hand on his right shoulder—a very hard hand. Then another on his left shoulder. He was in the grasp of two mean-looking warriors—Huns—with severe brows and narrow eyes. They wore ancient, decorative armor and were incredibly intimidating to look at.
The spectators around Finn stepped back and took pictures.
Finn glanced toward Charlene, who was no longer in the pyramid. The girls had stood to the side: it was the boys’ turn. More applause.
The two guards hauled Finn out of the crowd, as video and digital cameras captured it all.
There was no messing with these guys; their grip unrelenting as they marched him toward a circular building that looked like a giant hat.
Finn said, “I’m actually more interested in the acrobats than a private tour.”
They said nothing. He wasn’t even sure they spoke English. They tossed him through an open door and then turned their backs, blocking him from leaving.
He was standing in a vast, circular room, the air still. Chinese lute music played. A haze filled the air, streaked by flickering light from projectors. Film footage of Chinese landscapes played on the 360-degree screen. Finn looked for any marked exit signs, and saw only the one being guarded by the two men behind him.
He heard footsteps in spite of the loud music. A cold shiver passed through him as Shan-Yu from
Mulan
stepped out of the haze.
Leader of the Huns, a barbarian warlord, Shan-Yu’s shoulders were wide, his head large, and his expression fierce. He wore a thin, wispy mustache on an otherwise brutal face.