Unforeseen - A Kingdom Keepers Novella Read online

  Reaching the apartment, already out of breath, I darted forward to close the door. I paused, hearing voices.

  “They ain’t here.” A voice coming from inside the apartment.

  Beside me, Amanda gasped. “They made it through Escher’s Keep.” No one made it through the maze without being shown the way. At least, until now.

  “But we heard them,” A second voice complained. “They have to be here somewhere.” Our footsteps, I realized. We had been so concerned with getting to the door that we hadn’t stopped to consider the noise we’d made in the process. Now Horace and Jasper, judging by the gruffness of their voice, had heard us. We only had seconds left before they would head in this direction.

  Slowly, but quietly, I worked the door shut, keeping the hinges from shrieking loudly in protest to the movement they were so unaccustomed to, judging by the rust building up. Once in place, we lifted a board Amanda found nearby into the holders on either side of the door, a lock left over from the apartment’s time as Maleficent’s prison. This way the Overtakers would have to break down the door at least, though as I heard them make their way into the room on the other side of the door, I doubted it would hold them back for long.

  Finger to her lips, Amanda signaled to me it was time for us to go. We backed away and turned, running back up the stairs, this time on tiptoe.

  It was strange finding the stone launching area empty and two of the harnesses missing. I wanted to believe Wayne and Stitch had made it out safely, but the temptation was to lean my head out and look down for the two bodies I feared would be flat out on the pavement.

  “Don’t!” Amanda said. “We have to trust!”

  I’d heard people talk about older married couples who could finish each others’ sentences, family members or lovers who knew how to connect with someone unconscious or lost in the wilderness. As a Fairlie, I couldn’t discount any supernatural experience. For several years my closest friends were kids who were capable of unbelievable acts. Feeling heat through walls. Translating over twenty languages while having studied none. Animal whispering. Amanda and I had something different, something closer to the old married couple syndrome. We knew what the other person was thinking practically before she thought it. Her calling me out like this startled me.

  “They’re at the other end of that zip line,” she said, more softly.

  Both of us heard the voices from below. They were louder now, suggesting they might be coming from inside the closet.

  “We have to do this,” I said.

  “That’s the other reason we can’t look down,” Amanda said. She fished the two remaining harnesses off the wall and we stepped into them. It took a moment to understand how to reconnect them, and it was only then we realized there was but one set of pulleys attached to the zip line.

  Our pursuers banged on the closet wall, a sound that grew more violent with each passing second.

  “Well…” Amanda said, hooking into the one pulley set, “at least we know there’s no way for them to follow us.”

  I envied her ability to see the bright side. My two bad experiences with the Overtakers had turned me inward, made me fearful and cautious. In the past few years the Keepers had gone in and out of romances. I had friends, but nothing serious. I wasn’t sure I would trust enough for that. Amanda was different; I trusted her like a twin sister. Looking out a hole in a castle wall at nothing but painful darkness a hundred feet over asphalt, strapping into a few lengths of nylon webbing and some carabiners did not make me feel terribly optimistic.

  Amanda helped me clip into her hardware, and she double-checked that we were both connected metal to metal, not straps, with the pulley device.

  A loud thunk from down the spiral stairs. The scrape of rapid footsteps.

  “Here goes,” she said. “Remember, I’ve done this before.”

  I had my left arm holding Amanda; she had her right wrapped around me. It was like we were standing at the starting line of a three-legged race. Rather clumsily, we made our way to the edge of the open hole in the wall. There we perched, neither of us willing to take the last step.

  “Flags,” I whispered. Something about flags flying on Main Street pulled at me. Sight of them rekindled my dream, but I wasn’t sure why. Like a memory of a memory, it was foggy and indistinct. I knew one thing: I had to go there, and I said so. “We have to get to those flags.”

  “First things first,” Amanda said.

  She pushed me out.

  I DON’T REMEMBER MUCH beyond my screaming. If we were trying to keep a low profile, I had just done away with that. Mandy and I moved incredibly fast—twice as fast as the system was designed for, putting the zip in zip line. The pulley shrieked; my voice rose like a siren; the wind whipped my face to where my lips pulled back exposing my teeth and I imagined I looked something like a small, frightened horse or pony. We clung to each other so tightly my ribs felt bruised, my breath short.

  And here’s the thing: it went on forever. I was no longer going to believe anyone describing a car accident as happening in slo-mo. There was nothing slow about this ride, except that it was slow to end. My eyes were watering to where I was blind. When I thought the zip line should be ending, we were in fact still gaining speed. If the pulley cried any louder I’d be deaf. It sounded like it was about to melt under our combined weight and send us to our deaths like being pushed out of an airplane. That was the problem: the sensation wasn’t one of zipping so much as falling. Only after what felt like five minutes did the pulley announce resistance as the pitch it sang began to lower down the musical scale. A slight sensation of slowing was followed by my eyes clearing.

  Wayne, and a big blue alien, were positioned to brake us on arrival. I squinted and screamed once more.

  The zip line’s landing zone was cushioned with blue gymnastic pads. Wayne and Stitch attempted to tackle us in flight. Wayne was knocked off his feet. Stitch ended up hanging onto me and crashing with us into the final stack of pads. No one was hurt. Amanda and I were caught up in nervous laughter. We’d taken the last of the harnesses, so there was no way to follow us down the line, even if the Overtakers had had the nerve.

  WE SETTLED INTO THE ICE CREAM PARLOR, and Wayne told us to choose anything we’d like. Amanda and I pigged out on cookie dough scoops and cups of hot chocolate. For a few precious minutes, things seemed ordinary again. I’d just caught my breath and calmed my nerves when a light knock sounded, and Wayne opened the door to admit a shockingly good-looking boy, who looked a few years older than Amanda and me. He had coppery brown hair, alluring gray eyes, and a bright smile. He wore Cast Member khakis and a black windbreaker emblazoned with the Imagineers logo.

  “Amanda, Jess, meet Jason,” Wayne said. “He’s one of our up-and-coming young Imagineers, on loan to us from...”

  “UCLA.” Jason’s voice was as rich as a cello.

  “I’m afraid I’m just too...seasoned,” Wayne said apologetically, “to continue these shenanigans. Jason will provide me with a much needed respite. Perhaps I can join you all later.”

  “Hey,” Jason said, greeting us. There was a permanent flash of blushing red in his cheeks, as if he’d just run inside from the bitter cold.

  Amanda and I nodded. I would have said something, but I was afraid my voice would crack.

  Wayne filled him in about my attraction to the flags on the roof almost directly above us. Jason nodded thoughtfully, repeatedly making eye contact with me, which I found distracting. He’d clearly been briefed on our Fairlie powers as he seemed to be taking Wayne quite seriously.

  Amanda caught the way I was looking at Jason, and she pursed her lips to contain a smile.

  “Stop!” I whispered.

  “No comment,” she said.

  But we both knew this was the land of magic.

  JASON, WHO HAD TO BE AT LEAST SIX-FEET-TWO, led us backstage of Main Street USA and up a series of staircases, inside and out. To my surprise, the buildings on each side of Main Street are contained beneath a sin
gle gigantic roof. Stitch, who’d been waiting for us outside, held the stairway door open so it wouldn’t lock behind us as Jason, Amanda, and I crossed to the corner nearest Cinderella’s Castle.

  “Look carefully,” Jason said. “They’re not always easy to see.”

  Amanda and I needed no more instruction. As we closed in on the short flagpole, we began our search for a Hidden Mickey. Jason searched the short wall that rose from the flat roof while Mandy and I studied the flagpole itself. I expected to find a slight change in paint color, or maybe how the rope that hoisted the flag was coiled. Amanda stood away a few feet taking in the area. Between the three of us we had to find something.

  “Maybe I’m wrong. I’m not always right, you know?” I said loudly enough for both to hear.

  “From what I hear, you’re right more often than wrong,” Jason said. “I’ll take those odds.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted his support. It made me feel...vulnerable. Amanda and I went back to our search, but Jason turned and, as I followed his sight to Stitch, and Stitch’s pointed paw up into the sky, I spun a full pirouette.

  Flying low over the Plaza, headed for Main Street, two buzzards flapped wing to wing.

  “Hang on!” Jason whispered.

  The warning caused Amanda to lift her head.

  I stood still as ordered. The buzzards drew closer. Bigger and uglier now. I thought I recognized them from one of the attractions, which meant they weren’t Florida buzzards but Disney buzzards. Overtaker buzzards.

  The three of us were frozen in place as the two birds suddenly veered and dove for us, talons outstretched. Jason ducked. Amanda put the flagpole between her and the closest bird, but took a scratch to the head. I squatted, my attacker’s ugly black nails missing by mere inches.

  “I’ll handle them,” Amanda shouted. “Stay down!” Even small head wounds bleed badly. Amanda’s was no exception. She finally noticed the warm sensation above her ear, put her hand there and let out a shriek. She dabbed it again. “I’m good!” She had a Starbucks napkin on it.

  “You can’t push a bird!” I cried. “They’ll only be shoved higher in the sky.”

  “You have a better suggestion?” she called back.

  “Stitch!” Jason hollered, summoning the alien. “Attack!”

  The blue creature streaked across the roof and sprang into the air as one of the buzzards dove for me.

  I collapsed to the roof and tucked into a ball, expecting to be raked by talons.

  From somewhere overhead came a spray of feathers. I hid from them, but as I dared to look out, I saw Stitch licking his feather-encrusted lips.

  The second buzzard was in dive-bomber mode when he saw his comrade consumed. He fixed his wings, throwing his talons forward to brake himself, but Stitch raked his chest with a paw. It was like peeling bark off a tree. The bird was bare chested and missing most of its feathers there, doing a decent imitation of a Thanksgiving turkey. It tumbled across the roof, ran on its feet awkwardly and, with Stitch pursuing, leapt off the edge, found flight and took off in the direction of Space Mountain.

  As I uncoiled, I realized I’d run away from the flagpole when under attack. I was now fifteen feet from it, my eyes facing a black wire stapled to the roof. While Amanda celebrated Stitch’s accomplishments by hugging him and the two of them jumping in unison, I came to my knees and then stood. The black wire was a part of a coil—a perfect circle of what looked like television cable. A single strand connected this to another circle carefully stapled to keep it away from a small drain. I was just about to step away when my head snapped back to study the pattern of the wire. It was too carefully stapled into two congruent circles six inches apart. I took another few seconds before I could see the rusting drain as Mickey’s head and the wires as his ears, but once I did it was unmistakable.

  “Got it!” I announced, winning Jason’s attention. I wasn’t going to wait for instructions and I wasn’t going to give any more Overtakers the chance to prevent us from our mission. Jason nodded at me as if he understood my thinking. I didn’t have to say a word; I just stepped onto the drain and closed my eyes.

  The dark of my eyelids filled with a jagged shape, like the end of a broken stick, that grew in size as it moved toward me. To the right danced a pair of figures while two more to the left fell through space, tumbling in uncontrolled cartwheels. A ladder, or a track, or boxcars—maybe a section of a spreadsheet, or frames of a film—superimposed itself and then snapped in two. There was smoke or steam in a well-formed cloud now covering the two who had fallen. A sudden explosion. Lightning? I blinked involuntarily and with it, lost the image.

  So different than any of my dreams, I’d experienced these waking visions only a handful of times. Where the dreams would be scenes with characters and actions, what I’d just seen was nothing of the sort. It had been more like an animation of a photograph, a hallucination. As I blinked once more, I saw again the uneven shape at the end of the broken stick.

  Focusing, I identified it as the silhouette of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. The match between the two was unmistakably similar.

  Jason and Amanda stood slightly behind me on either shoulder, Stitch behind them.

  “What is it?” Jason asked, his voice somewhere below a whisper. It sounded like music at that volume. For a moment, I couldn’t think.

  I pointed down, stepping off the Hidden Mickey.

  “That’s a familiar shape,” Jason muttered.

  “Oh my goodness,” Amanda said. “The drain’s the head!”

  “And?” Jason asked me hopefully.

  “Wayne was right.” I collected myself, trying to calm down, still not trusting my imagination or wanting the role of team scout. “The minute I touched it, I saw smoke. Falling. An explosion.” I hesitated. “Lightning.”

  I didn’t tell them the rest; I couldn’t convince myself if I’d “seen” it or was making it up. The waking dreams were so wildly different than my sleeping dreams. I pulled out a piece of paper and sketched out a bolt of lightning. As I did, I heard Jason speak.

  There is the sound of a crane roaring nearby. Voices shout instructions. The approaching storm flashes and cracks. A mechanical whine is interrupted by a ripple of the fire that continues to pour from rents in the earth.

  Lightning strikes the ground not a quarter mile away with an explosive sound, like TNT detonating. A cheer rises from the OT workers. A light rain begins to fall. Small drops that quickly approach the size of acorns.

  I looked up from my sketch. “Who are you? How are you able to do that, explain everything that’s running through my head so perfectly?”

  Turning around to confront him, I was faced with Jason’s inquisitive expression. Stitch was picking a feather from his teeth with a pointed nail. Over my opposite shoulder Amanda’s gaze was fixed on Big Thunder Mountain in the distance.

  I knew immediately it wasn’t Jason’s voice I’d heard, that it hadn’t been him describing the scene to me. Though I was tempted to ask if anyone else had heard the ominous words, I kept my mouth shut, embarrassed and self-conscious.

  I turned back to my drawing adding a piece of a crane, raindrops, the smoke of an explosion. Only then, with the added detail, did I feel as I did when I came out of a dream at night, my hand eager for something to draw with.

  I’d seen the future.

  AMANDA NEEDED TIME TO REST. While she lay down on a bench, Jason and I sat together nearby. For a few precious minutes, I saw the wonder of the park and felt its magic again. There was something special here, something pure.

  In the initial silence, I felt my heart race. I didn’t want to reveal how eager I was for conversation. I was free of Mrs. Nash’s house, briefly free of Mandy and the Keepers and the obsessive life we’d all been leading for too long now.

  “Are you always so intense?” he asked.

  For a fraction of a second I took him seriously. Heat flooding my cheeks, I looked down at my running shoes wishing I was wearing anything but running shoes.<
br />
  “And obnoxious,” I said.

  He laughed, a deep throated, guttural sound.

  “You and your sister...you’re brave. Unusual. Interesting.”

  “She’s not actually my sister. People just seem to see us that way.”

  “Oh.”

  “Not that it matters.”

  “OK.”

  “You like being an Imagineer?”

  “Tonight I do.”

  That shut me up. I tried to swallow but I had dry mouth. “Me, too. Not the Imagineer part.”

  He contained a smile. It made his eyes seem all the brighter.

  “So, if you touch my hand, do you see my future?”

  I exhaled audibly and looked out into a crepe paper, Creamsicle sky.

  “You get that a lot, don’t you?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Sorry.”

  “No big. And no, I don’t get it a lot because basically no one knows what my deal is. I’m the quiet girl. That’s all.”

  “But are you? Quiet?”

  “I can be. Sometimes. I like to have fun.”

  “Is this fun?”

  “For me, yeah.”

  “Me, too,” he said.

  “I don’t hold hands on the first date,” I said, locking my eyes with his.

  His eyes laughed. He said, “No, I imagine that could be scary for you.” He hesitated. “Is it weird?”

  “Having dreams that can come true? What do you think?”

  “I think I’d be afraid to go to sleep.”

  “That’d explain the rings under my eyes.”

  He leaned in close, so close he stole the air from all around us because I couldn’t catch my breath; I didn’t know whether to move closer or stay still.

  “I don’t see any,” he said.

  “No?”

  “No makeup, either, which is nice.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if it wasn’t pitch black out.”