Kingdom Keepers VI(104)
Finn started to speak, but at the mention of Wayne his voice broke. He shifted in the seat and was poked by something in his pocket. He reached in and came out with a piece of the broken knife blade that Chernabog had shattered. It had found its way into his pocket as he’d ducked from it. He could suddenly feel the knife sinking into Dillard, the knife he’d held. He stopped the van, rolled down the window and threw up out the window. His hand was back on the gearshift when Willa called out.
“Wait!”
Finn couldn’t think, he couldn’t feel. He wanted to blame it on going all clear so often in the tunnels. He knew better. He pocketed the chip of the blade.
Willa said, “It was the Queen, the Evil Queen who did this.”
“So what?” choked out Charlene.
“The Queen made them drink a potion, like with the apple in Snow White.”
Charlene was with her. “OMG! Snow White. The Evil Queen. The apple.”
“And that means…?” Finn asked.
“The seven dwarfs drive her to the mountaintop. The lightning. She goes over into the… Then the prince… Don’t you see? True love’s—”
“Kiss,” Willa said, finishing it for her.
Charlene looked paralyzed. “Fine for you, but what if it’s not…true?”
“The story, or do you mean—?”
“If it’s not real love?”
“What are you two suggesting?” Finn said, impatient.
Willa addressed Charlene. “I don’t think it has to be forever love, just true love. Real love. Honest love.”
“You think?” Charlene said hopefully.
“No. I know,” Willa said. “True love isn’t reserved for weddings and ceremonies. It’s from the heart. That’s all it has to be. All it ever is.”
Charlene tried to contain the tears streaming down her cheeks. “Well then, we have to try.”
Another nod.
Finn interrupted. “What are you—?”
“Shut up!” Willa called to the front seat.
“Not just any kiss. It has to be—”
“Real.”
“Yes.”
Charlene looked into Maybeck’s face. She saw kindness. Felt warmth. Sorrow. Joy. Laughter. Frustration. Concern. Envy. Light-headed fear at the thought of losing him.
As Willa leaned down toward Philby, Charlene bent and kissed Maybeck.
“THE DOCTOR GAVE YOU something to wake you up,” Uncle Bob said as Luowski’s eyes began tracking the two security men in the room. That included Clayton Freeman.
“We need your cooperation,” Freeman said.
“Where…am…I?” Luowski said.
“Aboard the Disney Dream.”
Clayton Freeman cupped his hand whispered into Bob’s ear. “You see his eyes? I swear they were green when I took him into custody.”
Bob’s astonishment bordered on disbelief.
“You came aboard illegally,” Bob said.
Clayon shook his head, trying to keep Bob from being so stern with the kid who was clearly delirious. “We will be more lenient than the Los Angeles Police Department. We’re taking you off the ship in a matter of minutes.”
The kid looked totally lost. “The witch,” he mumbled, as if remembering something for the first time.
“You are a stowaway. You can go to jail for that,” Bob said.
Freeman stepped closer to the boy on the exam table. He talked to him confidentially. “The witch. What did she say? What did she do to you?”
“Oh…give me a break!” Bob roared, but Freeman quieted his boss with a sharp look.
Luowski said, “I was supposed to get one of them for her. I wouldn’t do it. She…got…me. Instead.”
“Maleficent,” Freeman said.
Uncle Bob was about to burst a blood vessel, he was so mad at Freeman.
Luowski nodded. “Bigger than she thought.”
“What’s bigger?” Freeman asked, leaning in. The boy was speaking so softly that his voice was barely wind from his lips.
“There…are…others,” the boy said.
“Who?”
“Homeless…”
“What? Who?”
“An…army.”
The kid’s eyes rolled in his head and his eyelids fluttered shut.
“What’d he say? What’d he say?” Bob asked.
Freeman looked at his boss, back at the kid, and then to Bob again.
“I think he said there’s going to be a war.”
IN THE BRIGHT SOUTHERN California sunshine, three young people stood at the rail of Vibe’s deck on the Disney Dream—two girls with a boy sandwiched between them. Charlene, Finn, and Willa.
A moveable walkway connected the amidships gangway leading to the terminal, ferrying hundreds of passengers from ship to shore.