Kingdom Keepers(26)

Finn hurried his mother to drive faster on the way back home.

She looked at him funny when he told her he was going to be late to bed.

It was like something from Star Trek, or Power Rangers, Finn thought. He was standing at Central Plaza, a circle of grass and sidewalks in front of the castle. Over the next several minutes, one by one, the other four DHIs appeared. Charlene first, lying on the grass to his left, wearing her nightgown. She stretched her arms as if waking up. Philby was next—his red hair electric as a DHI. He came hurrying in from Tomorrowland. Willa showed up on the road to Finn’s right. She also wore pajamas—shorts and a matching T-shirt.

Maybeck came walking up Main Street alongside Wayne, who drove a Disney golf cart.

“Well, well,” Wayne said. “The gang’s all here.” He climbed out of the cart and made a point of saying hello to Willa, whom he’d only met once before.

A loud crashing noise came from somewhere in Tomorrowland. Cheering followed this.

“Something wild’s going on over there,” Finn said, pointing.

A concerned Wayne said quickly, “Follow me! And not a word until I say.”

They followed Wayne and his cart up the ramp that led into the enormous castle. Finn noted that the DHIs glowed and shimmered once inside the shadow of the castle arches.

“Memorize all this carefully!” Wayne called back to the DHIs.

He led them through a gift shop and into a storage room, then through a heavy medieval-style door that he unlocked with a large key, and down a nondescript hall, through another door, and into a vast, cavernous space.

Finn stopped. Staircases led in every direction, interconnecting in impossible ways, some upside down. A variety of oddly shaped doors of all sizes faced him at every level. Each corridor and staircase connected to the next in the most unlikely, impossible ways. All interlocked. It was a giant puzzle that somehow all fit together. And yet it made no sense: inverted stairs?

“We call this Escher’s Keep. Walt admired M. C. Escher’s work,” Wayne said, climbing a staircase.

“Who’s Escher?” Finn asked.

“Do your homework,” Wayne admonished. “The keep was built as part of an Alice in Wonderland attraction. But it never opened.”

“Why not?”

“Walt decided to keep it for himself.”

Finn reached the top of some steep stairs, out of breath. He continued down a darkened hall and looked up to see Wayne standing upside down on a landing a few yards ahead.

Wayne said, “Don’t be fooled. You’re fine. But a single misstep and you’ll end up in a slide that will dump you into the moat. So stay to the left, and only step on the blue tiles, never the white or the red. Pass it along to the others.”

Finn repeated the weird instructions in a whisper. A moment later he stood with Wayne. To the others, now arriving, both Wayne and Finn appeared to be standing upside down.

He heard Maybeck say, “Okay! This is way cool.”

Wayne said, “This is a good place to come if you’re ever in trouble or trying to hide. Without a guide to show the way, no one makes it up the first time. Memorize it carefully. The castle has several secret entrances. I’ll show you if we have time. Once in here, you’re safe.”

It isn’t safe, Finn remembered Charlene saying. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go any farther.

Wayne continued, “The other place you should be safe is if you follow the tracks out of the Frontierland train station toward the Indian Encampment. There are some teepees out there that aren’t programmed for DHI projection.”

“Safe from what?” Finn asked.

“Ah!” Wayne said, ignoring Finn’s question. “Here come the others. Follow me! Memorize!” he reminded. “The next two staircases are fakes.”

Finn was stunned by how incredibly real each of the many staircases appeared. The first staircase turned out to be nothing but paint on a wall. Wayne led him to the real staircase and together they climbed it.

Finn looked back, carefully committing the route to memory. He called ahead to Wayne. “If I’m half hologram, half human, as you said, how can I touch anything? Shouldn’t I only half touch it?”

“Have you studied Einstein, Finn?” Finn didn’t want to sound dumb, so he didn’t answer. “It’s time you did. There’s more space between atoms than there are atoms. And yet atoms hold together somehow and form what we think of as a solid. We can touch, smell, taste. It all comes down to what you believe. What you think you can do.”

The only thing Finn knew about Einstein had to do with bagels. He stuck to more practical matters. “How will we ever get back down?”