Kingdom Keepers VII (48 page)

F
INN DOESN’T NEED TO SIGNAL
Violet. From her perch on top of the tall ship, she sees him running in a blur toward the riverboat. He jumps, grabs hold, and clambers onto the deck.

The wheelhouse is empty. Fear clutches Finn with its cold fingers as he follows the wet trail down the ship’s steep ladder into the captain’s quarters.

Empty likewise. But the captain’s clock has been torn from the wall.

It’s about time
.

The wet path stops at a door bearing a brass plaque marked
CREW ONLY
. Finn twists the knob gently and eases the door open.

There’s a small platform with yet another short set of stairs leading down into the riverboat’s engine room, which turns out to be cluttered with pipes, valves, and gauges. Finn descends into the murkiness, letting the pipes pass through his DHI without a whisper.

“Storey?” He doesn’t like that she’s gone ahead without him and Violet, doesn’t like that she created the plan and then didn’t follow it. He feels like a runner at the back of the pack; he’s waited too long to sprint and now Storey’s in the lead, looking over her shoulder, sneering at him.

He sees her. Storey, pressed into a narrow area against the hull, in front of an old built-in chest held shut by a rusted padlock. She says nothing. She seems more shadow and shape than real girl.

“You didn’t wait for us,” Finn says. “That’s not right.”

“The water…” she says, her voice oddly low and guttural. “I thought…But I should have known. What does Dorothy say? ‘There’s no place like home’?”

From the little Finn can see, her neck and limbs are grossly swollen.

During their first meeting on the Disney
Dream
, Storey claimed she was sent by Wayne, something the Keepers’ mentor never confirmed. Finn recalls being at the Castaway Cay stingray station with Storey, and how exceedingly comfortable she seemed around dangerous sea creatures. He sees now where this is headed—her swelling limbs, the way she slipped over the rail onto the riverboat. But he can’t completely face it.

On the cruise, she led Philby and Willa to the
Dream
’s galley where they were attacked. She vanished for three years and reappeared in Ariel’s Undersea Adventure, of all places! How did he allow himself to miss it? He’s fraught with anger, embarrassed by how easily she won him over. He sees himself as small-minded and immature, so easily manipulated. He can’t catch his breath, flush with a fool’s fever.

“Why…?” he gasps, taking a step back. “How?”

“Allergic reaction,” she says. “I forgot it was freshwater.”

“You lied.” He pauses. “You’ve lied constantly.”

It’s no mere allergic reaction, it’s a full-on loss of transfiguration. As she grows, Storey emerges partially out of shadow like a balloon being inflated. Purple, slimy skin, soft and unctuous. Finn faces her in her true form: Ursula.

“Ah…well…yes, there is that,” the sea witch says. “As to why: it has remained locked away for a long time, this treasure. From the first I heard about the powers of the Children of Light, I knew the reason for your existence. I believed you would lead me to this chest inside wood. Of course I was right, I am always right. Besides, you know what they say around here about believing. And I believed in you.”

Distantly, he hears Violet, moving overhead on the deck. The sound is followed closely by a slurping, sucking sound that makes him sick to his stomach. He looks over his shoulder, squinting at the horrid thing emerging from the dark.

He shouts, “Down here! Quick!”

He hears Violet racing down the first set of stairs.

“In here!”

He doesn’t dare look away from Ursula.

“You have got to be kidding me!” Violet says softly. “Where’d she come from?”

The sea witch answers. “That’s a long and involved story, which is why I so appreciated the name of my former host in the first place. But enough, my dears; we haven’t got the time for all that.” She slides forward, a mass of tentacles and suction cups and a whole lot of ugly. “As to that,” she says, “I’m afraid you’ve no time at all.”

Her tentacles move like fast-striking snakes after Finn.

C
HARLENE IS SMILING
in spite of herself, in awe of Wayne’s genius.

The 3-D glasses, used in conjunction with the trinket flashlight’s eerie purplish beam, reveal an Osiris eye hieroglyph engraved on one of the dozens of flat brass keys protruding from the abandoned safe-deposit boxes.

Philby and Willa sweep through the wall, startling her. After hearing about the 3-D glasses and her search for a second key, Philby searches the unlocked safe-deposit boxes. Inside one he finds four more pairs of glasses.

“One for each of us,” he says, “though don’t ask me how that’s possible.”

Together, Charlene and Willa continue the search for a second key. Philby devotes himself to the lockboxes.

“Got it!” he announces.

Charlene hates him for finding it so fast. “How can you be—”

“Certain? Because there’s a stair-step box glyph scratched onto the hinge. You wouldn’t see it unless you were looking for it.”

“Wayne,” Charlene says.

“Or Walt, or an Imagineer. Yes. Whoever’s behind this scavenger hunt.”

Willa wears one of the pairs of glasses while carefully searching among the discarded keys on the carpet. She checks both sides of every key.
Nothing
. She double-checks with Charlene, who turns from the keys on the floor to check those keys remaining in the safe-deposit box doors.
Nothing
.

“There could be more witch soldiers out there. We’ve got to hurry,” Willa reminds them.

Philby squints behind the 3-D glasses. Think! “There’s a number clue we’re missing,” he announces. It’s right in front of us, so what is it?”

“1955,” Willa says. “1971. Those are the most obvious.”

“Try them!” Philby shouts.

He and Willa converge on box 1955. It’s open and empty. So is 1971, the year Disney World opened.

“1901, Walt’s birthday!” Willa says loudly. They hurry, and again the box stands open and empty.

Charlene suggests an address. “Is there one for the gallery? For the park?”

Philby actually jumps off the vault floor. His glasses bounce on his nose. “Thirteen thirteen!” He and Willa run to find it. It’s locked. The glasses reveal a tiny image of a sitting Egyptian priest.

“Dang!” Charlene works a key from the door of an open box. “Tell me this isn’t the master key!” She hands the key to Willa—not Philby—drawing her fingernail along the tag end of the key, which has been altered slightly, cut into a barely recognizable shape. Held up to the beam from one of the keychain flashlights, it resembles the profile of a bearded Egyptian pharaoh.

“To the contrary,” the Professor says. “This is it!”

He places the two keys into the slots on box 1313. It opens. He steps aside and motions Charlene forward. It’s the nicest thing Philby has ever done for her.

Charlene pulls the door open, removes the steel box from inside, and sets it on the carpet. There’s a moment of hesitation. The three Keepers huddle close, as if gathering around the warmth of a small fire.

“Anybody want to do this?” Charlene asks.

“You go ahead,” says Philby.

She opens the box’s hinged lid, revealing an interdepartmental manila envelope with a string-and-button closure, aged to a leathery brown. There are only five signatures in the two dozen available spaces. Four are crossed out, starting with Walt Disney’s. The bottom signature, not crossed out, is Wayne Kresky’s.

“Whoa,” says Philby.

“Seriously,” says Willa.

For a moment, no one dares touch it. Then Charlene reaches in, careful not to fold or crease the envelope. As she moves to unwind the string from the cardboard button, the thin string decomposes in her DHI fingers, and the flap pops open. Charlene peels it back and reaches inside.

“Easy!” Philby warns.

“Rip the envelope,” Willa says. “Tear the envelope away from what’s in there—but don’t hurt Walt’s signature! We’ll want to show the Imagineers.”

“Help me.”

Together, the three Keepers slowly work the envelope apart at its original seams. Inside is a milky-hued glassine envelope, which Professor Philby says reminds him of the waxy-looking papers of the sheets that protected his grandfather’s stamp collection.

But there are no stamps inside. Even without opening the envelope, the contents show through. A dozen torn pieces of a pen-and-ink drawing, its bold black outlines clearly visible through the translucent inner envelope.

Philby coughs and sits back. The girls sit back as well. No one wants to touch this treasure. After a minute or two, they cradle it together and return it to the steel box for protection.

“How are we going to get it out of here?” Charlene asks. “We need to make a hole in the wall, maybe where they sealed this room off from the vault.”

“Stay where you are,” Willa says, standing.

“What are you thinking?” Philby asks. He has several ideas about how to break through the wall, but he doesn’t believe any one of them will work.

Willa grins. “A gift from the Overtakers. The halberd.” She passes into the false wall, and disappears.

“F
INN?”

Violet calls his name from somewhere back by the ship’s ladder. Finn understands the tremor of rising panic in her voice; he can make sense of her shouting over the tumult of splintering wood as timbers yield around him under the pressure from Ursula’s rapidly expanding body. He dances in the inrushing water, trying to avoid her tentacles.

The extreme tip of a slimy black-and-purple appendage wraps around Finn’s all-too-human leg. The upper hull splinters, admitting enough light to see what his ears have already learned from the sea witch’s hideous laugh.

Ursula continues to expand, bursting outward from what was once Storey’s body.

An enemy within.
No common spy or OT agent. The Keepers were thinking too small. Worst of all, his anger at being deceived by her, of having
kissed
her, roils inside him, giving him no chance to all clear.

What Finn faces is not small. He remembers seeing
The
Little Mermaid
and thinking, That’s one big ugly monster. Now, seeing the big ugly in person, terror overcomes him. He’s trapped in the crowded confines of the engine room, with water all around and a long way up a pair of steep ladders to get out.

Ursula tugs with what turns out to be one of many tentacles. Can there only be six, as in the movie? It seems more like eighty. Finn goes down, falling hard, slamming into the hull. Another tentacle finds his waist and twists powerfully around him like an ever-tightening belt. Simultaneously, the tentacle holding his foot drags him closer to Ursula. Two more tentacles tear the chest from the hull. Cold water gushes in.

“Let him go!” shouts Violet.

A tentacle shoots for Violet, but stops abruptly; it’s too short to reach her. Ursula oozes in Violet’s direction, moving her tentacles within range, but Violet disappears, instantly invisible.

“Now, now,” growls Ursula in a devilishly low voice. “Let’s not play games.”

She swings three tentacles in Violet’s direction, one of which bends noticeably as it makes contact with the invisible girl. Ursula doesn’t manage to grab her, but the resulting bang of metal pipes tells Finn that Violet can’t be feeling great.

Water courses through the hull as Ursula’s expanding size continues to splinter the wood. The sea witch wraps a coiled tentacle around the wooden chest, holding it tight.

“We are smaller in number, you see,” she says to Finn. Her many tentacles continue, apparently without her notice, to pull down pipes, searching for Violet. It’s as if her tentacles are part antennae and she’s able to see by touch. “Not smaller in ambition or determination. You children were out to destroy them, which was fine with us. But you offered something else—intelligence. A quality frightfully lacking in most of us villains, I’m sorry to say. Ariel has it to spare. I’ve always hated that about her. Eric, too. Smart
and
good-looking.”

She squeezes Finn playfully. He can’t breathe. He chokes out the words, “Typhoon Lagoon?”

“Yes. My last attempt to stop you. Discretion is the better part of valor, as you humans say. Why fight when you can join?”

“The girl? The real Storey. Did you kill her?”

“That thing?” Ursula shifts to the side. An unconscious Storey Ming floats face up in the rising bilge water. “I borrowed her. It hardly matters. You will all die here. The hidden Mickey will give my small band the power it needs to defeat the rebels. Those…show-offs will be finished soon enough.”

Rebels?
Ursula is not with the Overtakers, Finn realizes. This insight provokes myriad questions he wants answered—
needs
answered
.
He recalls Maleficent once telling him, “I am but a humble servant to she who lives within. My powers are so small and insignificant.” Had she meant Ursula? he wonders.

The last thing he sees before being sucked underwater is Violet reappearing behind Ursula. She has found a section of pipe and is holding it in a way that reminds him of Prince Eric ramming Ursula with the prow of the shipwreck he commanded.

From the moment his head goes under, Finn knows he’s not going to free himself from Ursula’s hold. He focuses on obtaining all clear—it’s his only way out. But with air leaking from his nose and mouth, and his eyesight blurred by oily water, there’s no dark vacuum, no pinprick of light.

He’s beginning to faint. In his delirium, he remembers Storey’s complaint about her allergy to fresh water. But the truth was, she—Ursula—is at home in water and failed to realize it would change her back to her real form.

The sea witch’s grip on Finn briefly loosens; he imagines Violet has stabbed the purple octopus. But the respite comes unexpectedly; by the time Finn can react, Ursula has retightened her hold, which doesn’t bode well for him or Violet.

Another remembered voice bubbles to the surface. Finn tells himself it’s not Wayne’s. Wayne is dead. Dead people don’t speak to the living—except maybe in the Haunted Mansion. For that matter, it doesn’t sound like Wayne either, though it has a low, powerful, paternal timbre. Without thinking or planning, with a spontaneity that doesn’t come naturally to Finn, he repeats what he hears.

The words unlock a memory from years before. Expelling the last vestiges of stale air in his lungs, Finn speaks in bubble talk: “Starfish wise, starfish cries”—the coded command King Triton gave him to summon help from the mer-people. In his oxygen-starved delirium, Finn expects Ariel’s father to burst through the ship’s hull, skewer Ursula with his trident, and drag her down to the depths.

Nothing happens. No climatic explosion, no loosening of Ursula’s hold on Finn. With one more squeeze, the sea witch pops Finn’s eyes open, practically right out of his hologram head—allowing Finn to see his sword below him, its hilt toward him in the oily water. Somehow Triton has managed to show Finn his sword—just out of reach.

Finn flutter-kicks like a swimmer, but he can’t stretch far enough to grab hold. He fights Ursula, pulling on her suction cups, trying to tear them from her tentacles.

Above the rising water’s surface, Violet disappears and reappears in Ursula’s blind spot. Violet lunges with the pipe, stabbing Ursula in the back of the neck.

Below the water, a tentacle spasms.

Finn takes hold of his sword, curls forward, and slices off the end piece of a tentacle. Black ink clouds the water. He’s free!

With visions of the Brave Little Tailor from Fantasmic! filling his head, Finn explodes out of the water. As Ursula strangles Violet with two tentacles simultaneously, he stabs the sea witch in the center of her chest and lets go of the sword, leaving it plunged two feet deep inside her.

Ursula reels, tips to one side, and demolishes what’s left of the hull as she sinks from view, still clutching the wooden chest.

The riverboat floods, rolls, and begins to sink.

Finn swims for the unconscious Storey, grabbing the violently coughing Violet by the arm as he passes. A girl in each hand, he swims for the gaping hole in the hull, their only chance to escape this underwater coffin.

He’s not strong enough.

What Finn takes to be a shift in the current turns out to be Storey Ming swimming both him and Violet toward the jagged hole. She pulls them at incredible speed. Before Finn can blink, they’re out and headed up to the surface, where they break free and gasp for air.

“State breaststroke champion!” Storey says, giving him an enormous grin as the three tread water. “My senior year in high school.” She wipes her eyes. “I’m Storey, by the way. Who are you?”