“Now, you will listen, and you will listen closely, and you will remember everything I tell you as clearly as your own name.”
Greg Luowski had no comeback because he had no thought. What he heard, he knew to be the truth. What he was told to do had to be done. And he would do it. Just like the hyena.
He hated this woman—this fairy—for making him do whatever she wished, and in the same breath he loved her for it.
“I’m listening,” he said.
HAVING SLEPT FEWER THAN three hours, awakened by Mrs. Philby (who didn’t want the boys sleeping in), Finn and Philby sat cross-legged on the stateroom’s bed, the Disney journal between them.
The notebook, dating back more than fifty years, had once been part of a private collection in a library kept by the Disney Imagineers at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida. Some Disney historians believed the journals had belonged to Walt Disney himself.
Maleficent, the Evil Queen, and Cruella De Vil had been seen stealing the journal, making its return critical to the Kingdom Keepers. Finn had, in fact, gotten it back; he’d kept it locked up in the stateroom’s safe.
They thumbed ahead to the author’s notes about the creation of Walt Disney’s most fearsome villain: Chernabog. It was in among those pages that a beautiful watercolor had been drawn—faded by time, but still striking.
The next page in the journal was left blank except for four doodles, one in each corner, done in pen and ink.
The last of the three pages was no better, holding only the inscription:
“LIFE IS BECAUSE OF THE GODS; WITH THEIR SACRIFICE THEY GAVE US LIFE…. THEY PRODUCE OUR SUSTENANCE…WHICH NOURISHES LIFE.”
The boys spun the journal back and forth between them like a pinwheel.
“What the…?” Finn said.
“There is a good and a bad to this,” Philby said.
“I’ll take the good first,” Finn said. “I had about all the bad I can take last night.”
“The good and the bad are the same thing,” Philby said. “Whatever this is, it seems highly unlikely the OTs have figured it out yet.” He cleared his throat. “The bad news is: we have no clue what any of it means either.”
“Way to cheer me up.”
“I do what I can,” Philby said sarcastically. “Whatever it is, whatever it says, it’s why they’re on board, why Chernabog’s on the ship.”
Finn thought back to his secret conversation with Wayne. “We don’t know that absolutely, but I suppose it makes sense.”
“It makes tons of sense.” Philby ticked off each point on his fingers. “They’ve spent months battling for control of Base—still a work in progress; they steal the journal; they board the Dream; they smuggle Chernabog onto the ship—no easy task; they bring in OTKs like Luowski. They are trying to kill us. They may want to kidnap Charlene, according to Jess. They’re taking huge chances. It has to be for huge rewards.”
“Again, with the cheering up,” Finn said.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Try to kill us?”
“We can be very annoying,” Finn said.
Philby smiled. “We can, can’t we?”
“But I see what you mean. What happened to this being a game?”
“Exactly. It’s as far away from a game as it can get.”
“It’s us,” Finn said. “The fact that we exist at all. Before, it was the villains against the princesses and princes, the fairies versus Mickey and Minnie. There was a balance of power. Wayne brought us in as DHIs to make sure the balance didn’t tilt too far toward the villains. But maybe by doing so, it upset things.”
“The balance of power,” Philby said.
“That’s what I’m talking about.”
“You’re saying we’re the problem.”
“I’m saying we may have started things going wrong.”
“Escalation. So they’ve brought in OTKs,” Philby said. “They’re attacking the Base. If we win, they lose—”
“Which is probably different from when both sides won and lost, but not all the time.”
“More permanent.”
“Permanent vacation,” Finn said.
“And now that we’re winning some of the time, they bring along Chernabog. Though, granted, he’s sleeping or in a spell or something. They see a chance for real victory, not the give and take that’s been going on after hours in the parks for decades. The only thing is, we’re in the way. As long as we’re alive…”
“Cheery thought.”
“So their mission has two parts: get rid of us, and bring Chernabog to power.”