“I like the parks the way they are.”
“Of course you do! You’re brainwashed. I don’t blame you, boy.”
“I want my mother back!”
“Little boy wants his mommy?”
“Don’t mess with me.”
“You are older. Bigger now than when we first met. But still foolish. Hmm? Mess with you? I can do anything to you I wish.”
Put into this same situation, Philby would be considering ways to defeat her. Charlene would be debating the proper combat. Willa would want to outthink her. Maybeck would step up to challenge her.
Finn wished he had the sword from Maelstrom, knowing it possessed great power, possibly enough to defeat this fairy. Certainly enough to threaten her. But its exact location had been unknown for some time.
Was that Wayne’s doing as well?
She had all the weapons; he had only the untested beta version of DHI 2.0 with which to battle back. If the Imagineers wanted their software upgrade field-tested, here was their chance.
As he moved between cabanas, he heard the lapping of the small waves in between the rhythmic booming of the fireworks. He led her into the open, away from the cabanas and toward the edge of the ocean.
“It is said all life came from the oceans,” Maleficent preached. “So to the ocean you shall return, young man.”
“He not only created characters,” Finn said to her. “He created roles. Characters are confined to those roles. You are not obeying yours. What happens to those who do not obey?”
“Do not twist my words.”
“Your words or his words? Can a character be smarter or wiser or more important than the one who created her? Can she put words into her mouth or thoughts into her head that he doesn’t want her to speak or think?” He sensed she’d paused, as if actually considering what he’d said. He wondered: if he could not defeat her with weapons that he so sorely lacked, might it be possible to defeat her with words?
She reared back her arm as if to throw something. In her open palm, a sphere of fire the size of a softball appeared. Her cape opened with the effort, and there in the ball’s sputtering light, tucked into her belt, he saw the leatherbound journal stolen from the library.
She threw the fireball. Finn leaned slightly right and it hurled past, hissing as it landed in the ocean water.
Another whispered past his ear as Finn leaned left.
She had another ball of fire in hand, but let it fall to the sand next to her. It sputtered and died.
“You resist the change that is coming,” she said. “This will be your undoing. I don’t expect you to join us. I would never trust you, nor you me. Stop challenging me, take your friends with you, and you’ll have your mother back. Good as new.”
His head felt as if it might burst. She was working to upset him, to put him off his guard.
“What if we…you and I…are nothing more than someone’s game? Players in a game?” He’d been thinking about this recently, but had not shared the idea with anyone. Not even Philby. It struck him as ironic that Maleficent would hear it first. “You are a character. Your words and actions are designed by others. Walt Disney. The animators. Now the Imagineers. And it was the Imagineers who created me—as a DHI, giving you someone to battle. Isn’t that just a little bit convenient?”
He could see his words affect her in the slumping of her shoulders and a glowering in her eyes.
“Nonsense…” she uttered, but her words lacked conviction.
“How do you think I feel? They’re using us both.”
He was knee-deep in the surf before her own toes contacted the water and she realized his location. She waded in deeper as he’d known she would.
“Stay where you are!” she hollered.
Finn lowered his chin below the surface and spoke softly. “Starfish wise, starfish cries.”
Maleficent made a sweeping motion with her arm. The water around Finn illuminated in wire-thin bars of light forming a perfect octagon, fully encircling him.
He’d seen such a fence before—in the dungeon below Pirates—and had made the mistake of attempting to breach it. The shock had thrown him back. Finn fought to stay stock-still in the undulating surf, unsure what the energy beam might do to his DHI when standing waist-deep in seawater.
From all along the line where the breaking waves reached hungrily for the sand, a white foam arose like boiling water. Maleficent, proud of her accomplishment of confining Finn, and focusing her considerable energies into the electronic fence that surrounded him, took no notice of events at her feet.
Finn, however, witnessed the result of uttering King Triton’s code. A small, pale claw appeared through the foam. Then another. Crabs. Not just hundreds, but thousands of them. Tens of thousands. All converging on Maleficent in the colorful pulses of light from the fireworks.