MRS. WHITMAN PICKED UP FINN, Maybeck, Willa, Dillard, and Charlene from Downtown Disney, where Mulan had dropped them. The conversation in the canoe had gone something like this:
“So,” Finn said, “are you really Mulan, or a Cast Member playing Mulan?”
“Let me ask you something,” the beautiful warrior woman responded. “Who were you running from just now? Cast Members?”
“Ah…yeah…okay. I get it,” Finn said.
Dillard looked confused, but impressed. Maybeck and Willa remained silent, kneeling near the second thwart from the stern. They looked back toward the shore, bewilderment on their faces.
Maybeck said, “No matter how much I think I’m used to what goes on here, it still freaks me out.”
The Chinese warriors navigated the lake, weaving the canoe between the exploding barges of fireworks, the air heavy with the tangy smell of gunpowder.
“By now, the Reflections of Earth team, led by Sam, has seen us,” Mulan explained. “Sam is the Crew Chief. His men have powerboats, and we are forbidden from being out here, so, unless you would like to explain yourself to Park Security, which I have no intention of doing, I would suggest you pick up a paddle and help out.”
That put all conversation on hold. Charlene, Dillard, Finn, Maybeck, and Willa grabbed paddles and began digging into the water with all their strength. The canoe raced silently across the black surface of the lake.
The gigantic globe of the Earth was spreading color across the water.
“If we can make it to the bridge at France before Sam catches us,” Mulan called out, “we can play a trick on him.”
Everyone put their backs into it. The canoe moved smoothly and silently. They left the fiery barges behind.
“We’ll be harder to see over there,” Maybeck said.
Mulan explained, “The light from the barges will blind them. It’ll buy us some time.”
Finn saw a powerboat zooming toward them.
“That would be Sam,” Mulan said.
“Faster!” Finn cried out.
Less than five minutes later, Sam’s Security boat motored beneath the bridge leading to France. On the walkway that was meant to imitate the quay along the river Seine in Paris, there were some boxes, a bicycle, a chest, and an upside-down canoe.
Hiding beneath the inverted canoe, tucked into balls and holding their shins, were two warriors, Mulan, and five kids, with barely an inch of space left over. The motorboat turned, heading back into the lake.
Now, riding in the Whitmans’ car, Finn needed yet another favor from his mom.
“We need to make a stop.”
“Finn…”
“Please.”
“Am I not supposed to ask why?”
“If you ask, I’m going to have to lie, and since I don’t lie to you, it might be better if you don’t ask.”
She huffed. “Dillard, what, if anything, do you have to do with all this?”
“I’m an innocent bystander.”
That cracked up everyone in the car.
“My sense is, Dillard,” Mrs. Whitman said, “that no one in this car, including me, is entirely innocent.” That quieted them down. She said, “Where to?”
Finn gave her the address by intersection. He added, “It might be good if you stopped, like, a half block away.”
“Finn?” she scolded.
“I’m just saying…”
“What have I gotten myself into?” Mrs. Whitman complained.
“We’re trying to save someone, Mrs. Whitman,” Charlene said.
“Someone important to us,” Maybeck said, in a rare moment of genuine concern.
“Someone who needs us,” Willa added.
Mrs. Whitman nodded thoughtfully. “If I were a kid again,” she said, “I would want you all as my friends.” From then on, she didn’t ask any more questions.
Finn and Willa met Jess in back of Mrs. Nash’s house. Maybeck and Dillard staked out the street in case green-eyes were secretly watching the foster home. Charlene stayed by the car, having borrowed Mrs. Whitman’s phone to call Philby to catch him up.
Jess looked tired and unwell as they huddled in the shadow alongside a freestanding garden shed behind Mrs. Nash’s house.
“How is she?” Finn asked.
“Nothing,” she answered in a whisper. “She hasn’t moved. Hasn’t changed one bit.”
“These should help,” Finn said producing the acrobat’s spindle. Willa passed her the weaver’s spindle. “You’ll need to carve off a splinter and prick her finger.”
“I really do not want to do this,” said Jess.
Willa said, “Think of it as giving her a shot. She’s going to wake up. This is all going to be over.”
Jess’s sad eyes said it all: she didn’t believe Willa. She may have wanted to, but she didn’t.
“We’re going to wait here,” Finn said, “for the good news.”
“You can’t stay,” Jess said. “Mrs. Nash is inside. Supposedly I’m putting out the trash,” she said, indicating the bulging plastic bag at her feet. “I can’t do this until later. I’ll e-mail you,” she said to Finn, “depending what works out.”
“You’ll let us know right away?” he asked.
“As soon as I can.”
“We’ll be waiting,” Finn said.
“Yes. I know that.” She thanked them both.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Willa asked, deeply concerned.
“She’s so still, so…”
Dead-looking, Finn thought. He’d carried her. He knew.
“It’ll be over soon,” Finn said. “She’s going to be fine. Reverse the curse.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Jess disposed of the sack of garbage, slipped the two spindles down her pants to hide them, and returned inside.
“She’s bad off,” Willa said.
“Yes. I noticed.”
With everyone back in the car and Mrs. Whitman driving, she dropped Maybeck off first. Once outside the car, he leaned back in and gave Willa a hug.
“You were great tonight.”
“You, too.”
He ran down the driveway and was gone.
Willa was next. She sneaked around the house to slip inside. There was no car in the drive; thankfully, she’d beaten her mother home. Then came Charlene, whose mother waved to Mrs. Whitman from the front door.
“Dillard Cole,” Mrs. Whitman said, “does your mother know where you’ve been?”
“Ah…”
“He’s been over at our house,” Finn said. “Kinda.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Mrs. Whitman.
Finn stopped his friend with a hand on the shoulder. “Dude, you were awesome tonight.” Finn smiled. “Just don’t ever do it again.”
“It was way cool.”
Dillard said good night and headed inside.
“It’s nice you two are connecting again.”
“Mom, don’t get all mushy on me.”
“It’s Amanda,” his mother said to Finn. “You contacted Jess, so it must be Amanda.”
“It is,” Finn said. Long ago, he’d promised never to lie to his parents, and he worked daily to keep that promise. He could, and did, stretch the truth when needed, but he never outright lied.
“You needed something from the Park to help her.”
“Yes.”
“Did you get it?”
“We think so, yes.”
“So you stole something from Epcot.”
“Borrowed.”
“Finn?”
“Borrowed. We will return them. I promise.”
“Them,” his mother said.
She was way too smart. He couldn’t give her this kind of data to work with. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, Mom. We should leave it at that.”
“I believe a lot more than your father believes.”
“I know that.”
“Speaking of which, you let me handle your father when we get home. Go along with whatever I say.”
“Aye, aye,” Finn said.
“And don’t try anything without telling me first. We’re in this together now, Finn, like it or not.”
Not, Finn thought, but didn’t say. “Okay,” he answered.
His mother tried too hard with her explanation. She would never make a spy. Finn’s father gave him the corner-of-the-eye look that typically made Finn feel like running straight to the bathroom. Instead, he shrank off to his room feeling troubled, the sound of the blade coming for his neck still fresh in his ears. What if he’d misjudged his sense of all clear? What if the all clear had expired more quickly?
The simplicity of Jess’s e-mail message compounded Finn’s pain.
It didn’t work. Thanks for trying.
He stared at the computer screen as if by just looking it might change the message.
Neither spindle had worked. What a stupid idea it had been! Finn had been so convinced that reversing the curse would do it.
He convened an emergency video conference. Philby, Willa, and Maybeck were able to attend. Charlene’s mother had turned off the family Wi-Fi for the night, so she followed along on the family’s landline telephone, with random updates from Willa.
Philby said, “I thought one of the spindles would work. I have to tell you, the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.”
Charlene said, “They were the only two Google hits that make any sense. But remember, in the movie it’s a spindle from a spinning wheel.”
“She’s right,” Philby said. “I’ve been doing some research…”
Surprise, Finn thought.
“…and in the original fairy tale, after the curse is put on the princess, the king forbids anyone from owning a distaff or spindle. The distaff holds the raw fiber; the spindle collects the spun thread. Spinning wheel,” he emphasized. “And when you Google Disney World plus ‘wooden wheel’ you get a single decent lead: the waterwheel on-”
“Tom Sawyer Island,” Finn said.
“You got it. A wooden wheel.”
“I’m not liking this,” Maybeck blurted out. He and Finn had once been attacked on Tom Sawyer Island by Stitch and had been made to swim among alligators.
“The spindle thing was your idea!” Philby protested.
“But this is so totally OT,” Maybeck said. “They put a spell on Amanda and the only solution leads us into a trap. I mean, come on!”
“Relax. We can’t steal a waterwheel,” Finn said.
“No,” Philby said, agreeing. His voice held that know-it-all tone that Finn had come to resent. “But what if we could bring Amanda to it?”
“She’s down for the count,” Maybeck said.
“That’s right,” Philby said. “She’s asleep.”
Maybeck broke the resulting silence. “Are we done?”
Finn answered, “Philby’s saying that if Amanda is asleep then technically he could cross her over.”
“WHAT?” Maybeck exclaimed.
“Why not?” Philby asked. “When we’re asleep we cross over.”
“Is that possible?” Charlene asked. “You’re saying she’d awake as her DHI?”
Philby answered, “It’s possible. I think it’s worth a try. We cross her over, prick her finger with a piece of the waterwheel, and when I Return you all, the Amanda at Mrs. Nash’s wakes up.”
“Let me spell this out for you,” Maybeck groaned. “T-R-A-P.”
Charlene objected. “The OTs couldn’t possibly think we’d cross her over, Terry. Whatever they may have planned, it can’t be this.”
“And remember,” Finn said, “they wanted Jess in that spell, not Amanda. Depending on the green-eyes, they may not even know it’s Amanda who’s down.”
“It doesn’t change it from being a trap,” Maybeck said.
“We owe it to Amanda to try anything we can think of,” Finn proposed.
“But what about the bigger picture?” Maybeck said. “The jailbreak? It’s going down tonight, right? Sally Ringwald basically told us so.”
“So you and Charlene will go to sleep dressed to cross over in case Philby detects network traffic. Does that satisfy you?”
“I don’t like it,” Maybeck said.
“By tomorrow morning,” Finn said, “Mrs. Nash is going to drag Amanda off to the hospital. Maybe even sometime tonight. We know how dangerous that is for her. Philby knows.”
“It only makes things worse, Maybeck,” Philby said. “Much worse.”
“We can’t just sit around talking,” Finn said. “We tried and failed. So what? We’ve got to try everything. A wooden wheel. Who knows? That could be it. I can let Wanda know our plans. She might help.”
“Or she could be the traitor,” Maybeck said. “We’d never suspect someone who’d been arrested, would we?”
“So noted,” Finn said, experiencing a chill. “And if it is a trap, or she’s a traitor, then it’s going to be up to you and Charlene to get us off the island.” He would send Jess an e-mail keeping her in the loop, keeping her hopes up.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Maybeck said.
Finn arrived in front of Cinderella Castle alone, sitting a few feet from the Walt Disney-Mickey Mouse statue at the center of the hub. He waited, and waited, knowing Philby’s next attempt would be to cross over Amanda.
He caught himself holding his breath as a shimmering image of Amanda lying down appeared, and then fizzled and faded as he watched.
“Come on…” he muttered.
The same image reappeared. It grew stronger and more solid, and the blue line formed around it.
Amanda blinked and opened her eyes.
Finn swallowed away a knot in his throat.
“Can you hear me?” he said.
She blinked, but did not look in his direction. The spell seemed to still be holding her.
“It’s me,” he said. “We crossed you over into the Magic Kingdom. I think we can help you.”
Her eyes popped open again.
Finn scouted the area for signs of OTs. He felt vulnerable with her apparent inability to move.
“Can you sit up?” he asked, moving over to her and helping to raise her back.
He spotted motion in some shrubs by the ramp up to the castle.
“Don’t move,” he whispered in Amanda’s ear.
He froze. A dog came out of the shrubs. A big dog.
“It’s…Pluto,” he told Amanda. Pluto was no villain. If he’d come to help, it had to be Wanda’s or Wayne’s doing.
Amanda still hadn’t fully come around. Her eyes moved more freely, but she wasn’t speaking.
“Here, boy,” Finn hissed, holding out his hand. Pluto was big, and stronger-looking than Finn would have expected. The dog faced him, sniffing the air. He wagged his tail and sat down.
“We are here to help,” Finn said.
Pluto turned toward the bushes, wagging his tail violently.
“What is it, boy?”
Pluto barked. Just once. But loudly, causing Finn to again jump back. Pluto was trying to warn him of something or someone in the bushes.
“Amanda?” he said softly, without taking his eyes off the bushes.
“I’m here.”
He turned to look. She looked tired, but she was working on smiling.
“I feel a little zoned.”
“I can explain it all at some point. But for now: can you move? We should get away from here.”
Pluto darted over to the bushes, his tail still wagging. Finn tentatively followed, crossing the street and edging closer to the bushes. Pluto’s tail was going like a windshield wiper.
Finn sneaked up and parted the bushes. He couldn’t believe his eyes. “Minnie?” he said in a whisper.
She gave him a sweet, humble look, lowering her head while looking out the tops of her big eyes.
“I’m Finn,” he said. “Over there, that’s Amanda.”
Minnie nodded.
Finn looked around the area. “Mickey?” he asked her.
She lifted her arms and shrugged. She looked crestfallen.
“He’s not here,” Finn said, making it a statement.
She shook her head.
“Not here with you?” he said, thinking aloud, “Or not here in the Magic Kingdom?”
She shrugged for a second time.
“I…” He couldn’t think what to say. He was awestruck. Mickey and Minnie were rock stars. He recalled what Wanda had told him. “Are there more of you?”
Minnie hesitated. Pluto nudged him from behind. He looked back to see Amanda trying to get to her feet.
“Thanks!”
He hurried back to her. Minnie and Pluto followed.
He helped Amanda stand up and held her by the arm. “My friend’s in trouble,” he told the other two. “I, we, need to get onto Tom Sawyer Island.”
Minnie smiled and nodded. She lifted a finger as if to say, “Just a minute!”
Pluto came around and heeled at Finn’s side.
“You’re staying with me,” Finn said. The dog nodded.
Minnie saluted Finn and took off running in the direction of Frontierland.
“I’m guessing,” he said, “you’re staying to protect us.” The dog yipped. “And she’s gone ahead for some reason.” He barked again.
“Are you talking to Pluto?” Amanda asked with a dry voice.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’ve been better. My head weighs a thousand pounds.”
“We need to go,” he said.
“I can manage. Are you going to tell me how I got here?”
“I kissed you,” he said.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “That’s not something I would forget.”
“I promise. I kissed you. It was a spell, intended for Jess.” He walked her off the hub and toward Frontierland, condensing and summarizing her story into as brief an explanation as possible.
Pluto nudged between them and leaned into Amanda.
“I think,” Finn said, “he wants you to hold onto his collar.”
Pluto’s tail went wild with excitement.
Amanda reached down and took hold. Pluto lifted his head proudly. His tail shot up like a flagpole.
“This is definitely strange,” Finn said.
Jess was not a mother. She had never even owned a pet. Like the other Fairlies, she had never met her mother, had no idea if she had living relatives. The closest thing she had to a family member was Amanda, whom she thought of as her sister. In fact, she and Amanda often introduced themselves as sisters. So, as the Kingdom Keepers carried out their plan to cross Amanda over into the Magic Kingdom in hopes of reversing the curse, Jess sat by her sister’s bedside.
A few minutes earlier, she thought she’d witnessed the cross over: Amanda had twitched and shuddered and, more encouragingly, her eyes had begun moving rapidly beneath her closed eyelids.
The other girls in Mrs. Nash’s house were supportive of her effort to keep Amanda’s condition secret. This included their roommate, Jeannie Pucket, who until now had often been a real knucklehead. But Jeannie had come through for Jess, not once but a number of times-holding off the curious Mrs. Nash and buying her unconscious roommate precious time.
It wasn’t going to last much longer, Jess thought. It seemed inevitable that Mrs. Nash would find out. That, in turn, would mean doctors, and a long downward spiral for poor Amanda.
With her diary open to the kiss, a page she had photocopied for Finn, her eyelids drooped and she briefly nodded off. Her diary slipped from her hands, landed on the bed, and fell to the floor. The sound of the book landing shocked her awake, and she looked around the room as if she’d been asleep for hours.
“It’s nothing,” Jeannie said. “You dropped your diary, is all.”
Jeannie leaned down to retrieve it. About to hand it to Jess, she hesitated.
“If you don’t mind,” Jess said, “that’s private.”
Jeannie knew it was private-it was her diary-a source of ongoing tension between the two. Jeannie could allow her curiosity to get the better of her.
“I know. I know.” Still, Jeannie was reluctant to hand it over, her attention fixed on the sketch. Finally, she passed the diary back to Jess. “Have you been there?” she asked. “What’s it like?”
“School?” Jess asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“Winter Park. Where Finn and Amanda go.”
“That’s not Winter Park High,” Jeannie said. “That’s the Lake Buena Vista power plant. I just wrote a paper on it for science class.”
“Science class? Lake what?” Jess said.
Jeannie traced the stair-step profile of the structure in the background of the kiss.
“It’s called the Lake Buena Vista Cogeneration Facility. Hang on. I’ll show you.” Jeannie dug through some papers on her desk, including a bunch of printouts from various Web sites. She singled out three of these and passed them to Jess.
“So?”
Jeannie leaned over Jess’s shoulder, selected the second of the three printouts-a photograph taken at a great distance from the power plant-and traced the stair-stepped roofline of the facility. She then pointed to Jess’s diary and traced the same pattern.
Jess went silent, her eyes dancing between the two images. She knew her dreams often combined locations or activities.
“What exactly does it do?” Jess asked.
“Electricity. It powers Disney World and local businesses.”
“Disney World.” Jess felt light-headed. This was not coincidence.
“Water and sewage treatment, too. Natural gas. Everything. I got an A on my paper,” she announced proudly.
“As in electricity for the Parks?”
“Exactly! Yeah. That’s the Disney part. They wanted to own their own electricity and stuff. You know, so it was more reliable and everything.”
Jess traced the two rooflines again-from the Web site and from her drawing. They weren’t simply similar; they were identical.
“Where exactly is this place?”
“It’s way out on Disney property. As in, the boonies.”
“Disney property? You sure about that?”
“Hello? An A? Did you know that at one point Walt Disney had planned for Epcot to be this futuristic city, with homes all around it? How cool would that have been?”
Jess barely heard her. Her brain was stuck back on Disney generating its own power. She’d drawn a Disney power plant in her diary without knowing it. It had to be hugely significant.
She had to contact Philby. Now!
Philby had his hands full. He kept one eye on the clock in his computer’s toolbar. The other eye jumped between the dozen webcam views from the Magic Kingdom’s Security server as he tracked Finn through the Park. His cell phone rested on his lap in vibrate mode, the laptop bridging his thighs. He sat on the toilet-lid closed-of what his mother called the “powder room,” a small, windowless bathroom with a corner sink near the front door of the house. He had the bathroom’s door locked: there would be no unexpected intrusions by Hugo or anyone else tonight. He could not afford to leave the Keepers stranded.
The e-mail from Jess caused him to perspire. He Googled “Lake Buena Vista Cogeneration Facility.” He had a fine memory, so when a photograph of the power plant popped up, he immediately matched the similarities with Jess’s diary sketch. From what he read, the power plant supplied all of Walt Disney World with power. If something happened to the Florida electric grid, Disney’s facility promised an uninterrupted flow of electricity to all of its Parks and hotels.
And computer servers, he thought.
Jess had foreseen its importance in one of her dreams. That the kiss used the power plant as a background did not necessarily connect the two: Jess’s diary pages often mixed images and time lines. But it established its importance-Jess’s track record was well proven.
With the power plant’s direct connection to the Parks, and its location outside the Parks but still on Disney property, the OTs jumping the Disney firewalls suddenly took on tremendous significance.
Control of the power plant meant control of the Parks-the Overtakers’ ultimate goal.
He had no way to reach Finn to update him. But he did have Maybeck and Charlene asleep and on standby to be crossed over.
He brought up his rendering of the router traffic he’d mapped from the DHI server’s log, already chastising himself. There had been several pings to a router out in the middle of nowhere. On Google Maps it just came up as an area of swampland-but now he saw his error: for security reasons, power plant locations were blocked from Internet maps. He’d been looking at the power plant all along, because those pings represented OT DHI traffic.
The OTs had been to the Lake Buena Vista Cogeneration Plant several times in the past week.
At that moment, his DHI traffic alarm sounded and a red message flashed on his screen: +70% BANDWIDTH USAGE.
Philby tried to focus, his breathing rapid, his heartbeat out of rhythm.
They’re there right now!
Pluto was waiting for them.
“This way!” Finn said, gently steering Amanda while trying to move her more quickly.
“Why are we running?” she asked.
“Visitors,” Finn said, glancing back.
Pluto’s hackles had been up for the past several minutes, and he kept looking behind them, his eyes a knot of concern.
Finn had tried to see whatever it was back there that was bothering Pluto, but only caught a shadow crossing the empty Park path in Frontierland.
“You see that?” he asked Amanda.
There it was again: the flash of translucent eyes from the shadows, like a deer on the side of a highway.
Amanda skidded to a stop, for she’d seen them, too, but for the first time.
“Another dog?” Finn asked.
Amanda’s blue hologram line faded as she lost a considerable percentage of her DHI to fear. “Not a dog,” she said. “Did you see how high off the ground that was?”
They were walking backward now, still moving in the direction of the Tom’s Landing raft dock, but refusing to take their eyes off the shadows by Country Bear Jamboree, where they’d both seen the pair of eyes.
An animal’s rapid breathing could be heard drawing closer.
Finn whispered, “That has to be a dog! Listen to it.”
“It’s tall. Very tall. Pluto is a Great Dane,” Amanda reminded him. “And there’s another in the movie The Ugly Dachshund.”
“Never seen it.”
“The dog or the movie?” she asked.
They walked faster now, keeping their eyes on the moving shadows while trying not to fall. They heard a wet slurp from what had to be an extremely large tongue. Another flash of eyes.
“Ehh!” Amanda reached for Finn and clutched his arm tightly. He actually appreciated the contact, though not the reason for it.
A sliver of light from one of the few lighted streetlamps played like a knife’s edge across the path, severing the darkness. Through the shaft of light strode a long, hairy creature, rail thin, malnourished and mangy, only a few inches visible at a time, like it was being painted by a tiny flashlight. It had enormous paws and four stick legs, but it was absurdly oversized, had pointed teeth, and a stream of drool that turned their stomachs.
Finn said harshly, “That’s no dog.”
“A wolf,” Amanda said, her voice quavering. “That’s the Big Bad Wolf.”
The thing was as tall as a bicycle, and looked to be about as fast.
“What now?” she asked.
The wolf lumbered out into the light, its back haunches moving fluidly, its ribs showing through the tangle of filthy hair.
A bone-chilling growl from behind them. Pluto, who’d been leading the way, had stopped and was turned toward the challenger.
“No, boy,” Finn said. It was no match.
But Pluto stood his ground as Amanda and Finn backed up past him, putting himself between them and the wolf.
“Come, Pluto!” Amanda whispered harshly.
The dog did not budge, but lowered himself onto his front paws and tucked his tail between his legs. Pluto looked back at Finn with noble eyes.
“He wants us to run,” Finn said.
“You speak dog, do you?”
“Are you strong enough?”
“Are you kidding? Believe me, I’m wide awake.”
“On three,” he said.
“Are you sure about this?”
“No,” Finn said.
Pluto had lived long enough to be the age of an Egyptian mummy in dog years. In that time, he’d learned a few tricks. Not the kind of tricks like roll over or shake hands, but the kind of tricks to play on other animals pursuing you. Over the years these tricks had been refined to the point that they approached actual skills-pie in the face, tongue in the mousetrap, peanut butter in the dog bowl. They’d been well-documented in all the cartoons.
When faced with the Big Bad Wolf-emphasis on Big and Bad-Pluto had the luxury of seeing it play out as a cartoon. Where others would’ve panicked, he saw an opportunity for entertainment and amusement. In a cartoon, no matter how hard the punishment, the dog always got up to play another day.
It never crossed his small mind that the wolf would actually eat him. In Pluto’s world, a dog could fall out of a tree, or get hit by a bus, and come out of it with nothing more than stars floating around his head and his eyes rolling in their sockets. One quick shake and everything was better.
So it wasn’t a question of fear, it was a question of how to make this really funny, and the more inventive the solution the better.
He spotted it easily: one of those plastic grid fences meant to keep people off sidewalks or out of gardens or away from construction. They used them all the time in the Park. It was currently wrapped around an island of flowers with a sign hanging from it saying a bunch of words he couldn’t read but he was pretty sure ended in “Thank You.” Pluto was no Rhodes scholar.
With the wolf’s confident stride picking up pace, Pluto knew the trick was to get him running. That was when he gave the boy the signal.
For a second, the boy and girl just continued walking backward, which put a glitch in his plan. Humans could be so boneheaded. So he barked.
And that got the kids moving. They took off toward Minnie and the dock like he’d fired a starting gun. That prompted el lobo to spring into action. It bared its teeth, squinted its eyes and charged. That was when Pluto realized this might not be so much fun. He’d never seen an animal move so fast. It was as if the creature had been shot from a catapult. Pluto had badly misjudged the time necessary to pull of his stunt. Wolf seconds were different than dog seconds.
With nothing but four-legged teeth coming at him, Pluto found the end of the mesh fence with his own mouth and bit down hard. He wrestled a stake from the soft dirt and then backed up as fast as he could drag it, dislodging one stake after another. The fence stretched across the path-halfway, three quarters.
The wolf’s confidence or hunger had him running much too fast to come to any kind of graceful stop. Instead, as Pluto stretched the fence and wrapped it around a small tree, the wolf’s paws scratched and clawed at the concrete path but found no traction. He lost his footing, tucked, and rolled, colliding with the fence, which aimed him on an angle toward the water across from Pecos Bill Café. The wolf backpedaled but failed to stop his momentum. He tumbled head over heels into the water.
Pluto turned and ran, seeing clearly there was only one thing scarier than the Big Bad Wolf, and that was a big, MAD wolf.
Minnie waved Finn toward the raft that serviced Tom Sawyer Island. He and Amanda had just heard a violent splash, turning in time to see a violently angry wolf swimming violently for shore. Pluto bounded toward them at full speed, the panicked look in his eyes needing no translation.
The two kids wound through the empty waiting line for the raft ride. Amanda shrieked and slid to an abrupt stop; Finn crashed into her from behind.
An unconscious pirate lay at his feet. He was gnarly looking, with a scrub beard, a pockmarked face, and bent nose. A bandana worn as a skullcap hid most of a particularly nasty bump. Finn looked between the fallen pirate and Minnie, who stood on the edge of the raft, a shore line in one hand, the other tucked behind her back.
“Minnie?” Finn said.
She hung her head and pulled her hand from behind her back, revealing a large wooden pin, part of the raft.
“She did this?” Amanda asked Finn.
“I’d say she charmed him.”
“Thank you, Minnie,” Amanda said.
Minnie blushed, and slowly a smile overtook her. She looked devilish as she waved them onto the raft invitingly.
Finn reached to catch Amanda by the arm. “Wait!”
Amanda turned.
“The question that needs to be asked,” Finn said rushing his words, one eye on the wolf swimming for shore perhaps fifty yards away, “is why is a pirate guarding the raft to Tom Sawyer Island? He’s a long way from home, over in Adventureland, and what’s so important about this raft?”
Minnie waved at them more frantically-the Big Bad Wolf was climbing up the shore. Now shaking the water off.
“Overtakers?” Amanda said.
“We know the pirates belong. There’s no question about that. So why guard the island? The same island where Stitch attacked Maybeck and me. It doesn’t make sense. This island’s of no importance. It isn’t even that popular an attraction.”
“Because the Queen knew you might figure out the waterwheel’s importance?” she said.
Finn nodded. “Makes sense to me. He’s here to stop us, or to catch us, or both. And the only problem with that is-”
“He won’t be the only one.”
“Bingo,” he said.
Minnie was jumping up and down and pointing to the wolf, who was now back on the path in the distance, lumbering toward them, his pink tongue swaying from his teeth.
“So we’ll need to be careful,” Amanda said.
Pluto jumped onto the raft as they climbed aboard. Minnie tossed the line to shore, stepped behind the wheel, and skippered the raft across the small waterway. The wolf reached the loading dock, but too late, stretching toward the raft now just out of reach. Minnie, behind the wheel, reminded Finn of Mickey in a very old black-and-white cartoon he couldn’t remember the name of. It might have been the first animated cartoon Walt Disney had ever drawn.
“Where is Mickey, I wonder,” he said to Amanda.
“I don’t think she wants to hear it,” Amanda said.
“No. But it’s troubling.”
“Everything about this place is troubling.”
She reached down and placed her faintly outlined DHI hand atop his, and he felt it, his own outline dulled somewhat by the sense of excitement and terror her reaching out to him represented.
“I like you a lot, Finn.”
“Same here.”
“You like you a lot, too?” she said. And they both laughed. “Thank you for everything you’re doing for me.”
“I got you into this in the first place,” he said, guiltily.
“I’m a big girl,” she said. “No complaints.” She rubbed the back of his hand with her fingers.
The raft bumped to shore. Pluto jumped off. Minnie hopped onto the dock and expertly secured the raft to it with a line. She extended a hand and helped Amanda off the raft. Finn jumped down.
“We shouldn’t be long,” he said, eyeing the waterwheel that was only a matter of yards away.
Minnie saluted.
“We might need a quick escape, so maybe you could wait for us here?” he proposed. He didn’t want to get Minnie in any more trouble.
Her big black eyes tracked across the water to the Big Bad Wolf, still lurching from the dock and looking to be considering the swim.
“One thing at a time,” Finn said.
Minnie nodded.
Finn, Amanda, and Pluto headed up the path, turning toward the waterwheel at Harper’s Mill.
“This feels too easy,” Finn said, fearing a trap.
Amanda squeezed his hand, and he looked down to realize he was not pure DHI. But he was not about to let go to fix it.