It has to be a dream, Harlow told herself. This couldn't be real. She was sitting by the edge of a beautiful lake, on the stone floor of an ancient temple ruin, eating the most luscious strawberry. The forest all around her was lush and green, and the sound of the water rushing at her feet was soothing and peaceful. Even the very air all around her was sweet and fresh.
"Where am I?" she asked aloud, reaching for a plump grape from the gorgeous picnic set before her.
"Why, you've been in Auradon for days now, and this is the Enchanted Lake," answered the boy seated next to her.
She hadn't noticed him until he spoke, but now that she had noticed, she wished she hadn't. The boy was the worst part of all this-whatever this was-tall, with tousled honey-brown hair, and painfully handsome with the kind of smile that melted hearts and made all the girls swoon.
But Harlow wasn't like all the girls, and she was starting to feel panicked, like she was trapped here somehow. In Auradon, of all places. And that it might not be a dream-
"Who are you?" she demanded. "Are you some kind of prince or something?" She looked askance at his fine blue shirt embroidered with a small golden crest.
"You know who I am," the boy said. "I'm your friend."
Harlow was instantly relieved. "Then this is a dream," she said with a crafty smile. "Because I have no friends."
His face fell, but before he could answer, a voice boomed through the peaceful vista, darkening the skies and sending the water raging over the rocks.
"FOOLS! IDIOTS! MORONS!" it thundered. Harlow awoke with a start.
Her father was yelling at his subjects from the basement in the Underworld again. Hades ran the Underworld the way he did everything-with fear and loathing, not to mention a healthy supply of minions. Harlow was used to the shouting, but it made for a seriously rude awakening. Her heart was still pounding from her nightmare as she kicked off the blue satin covers.
What on earth was she doing dreaming of Auradon? What kind of dark magic had sent a handsome prince to speak to her in her sleep?
Harlow shook her head and shuddered, trying to blink away the horrid vision of his dimpled smile, and was comforted by the familiar sound of fearful souls begging Hades to take pity on them. She looked around her room, relieved to find she was right where she should be, in her huge, squeaky, wrought-iron bed with its flames on each bedpost and velvet canopy that sagged so low, it threatened to fall on top of her. It was always gloomy in Harlow's room, just as it was always gray and overcast on the island.
Her father's voice boomed from the basement, and the floor of her bedroom rattled, causing her cerulean-lacquered chest of drawers to suddenly spring open, disgorging its blue contents on the floor.
When Harlow decided on a color scheme, she stuck to it, and she had been drawn to the layers of gothic richness in the blue continuum. It was the color of power and seriousness, moody and dark, while not being as commonplace in popular villainswear as black. Blue was the new black, as far as Harlow was concerned.
She crossed the room past her grand, uneven armoire that prominently displayed all of her freshly shoplifted baubles-trinkets of cut glass and paste, shiny metallic scarves with trailing strands, mismatched gloves and a variety of empty perfume bottles. Pushing the heavy curtains aside, from her window she could see the island in all its dreariness.
Home, freak home.
The Isle of the Lost was not a very large island; some would say it was but a speck or a blight on the landscape, certainly more brown than green, with a collection of tin-roofed and haphazardly constructed shanties and tenements built on top of one another and more or less threatening to collapse at any moment.
Harlow looked at this eyesore of a slum from the most secure building in town, a formerly grand cave with deep tunnels that was now the shabby, run-down, paint-chipped location of the one and only Hades Cave.
It was also the home of some not-so-slightly bad gods.
Harlow changed out of her pajamas, pulling on a blue leather jacket and a pair of leather pants the color of darkness. She carefully put on her fingerless gloves and laced up her battered combat boots. She avoided glancing at the mirror, but if she had, she would have seen a small, pretty girl with an evil glint in her piercing blue eyes and a pale, almost translucent complexion. People always remarked how much she looked like her father, usually just before they ran screaming the other way. Harlow relished their fear, even sought it. She combed her cerulean locks with the back of her hand and picked up her camera, stuffing it into her backpack along with the dagger she always carried with her. This town wasn't going to shred itself, was it? In a perfectly magical world it would, but that wasn't what she was dealing with.
Since the kitchen cupboards were bare as usual, and she didn't even want to think about what Pain and Panic were going to try and cook, Harlow headed to the Slop Shop across the street for her daily breakfast.
When she got to the Slop Shop, she had found her half-sister, Mal sitting at the counter. The girls still weren't really any closer than when they were little, but had a very slight bond over their hatred of King Beast and the people in Auradon. Harlow held up her dagger and Mal held up a can of spray-paint, and they both smirked, already knowing what the other was. thinking.
Harlow studied the choices on the menu-black-like-your-soul coffee; sour-milk latte; crusty barley oatmeal with a choice of mealy apple or mushy banana; and stale, mixed cereal, dry or wet. There were never many options. The food, or scraps, more like it, came from Auradon-whatever wasn't good enough for those snobs got sent over to the island. Isle of the Lost? More like Isle of the Leftovers. Nobody minded too much, though. Cream and sugar, fresh bread, and perfect pieces of fruit made people soft. Her and the other banished villains preferred to be brittle and hard, inside and out.
"What do you want?" a surly goblin asked, demanding their orders. In the past, the disgusting things had been foot soldiers in Maleficent's dark army, ruthlessly dispatched across the land to find a hidden princess; but now their tasks were reduced to serving up coffee as bitter as their hearts, in tall, grande, and venti sizes. The only amusement they had left was to ruthlessly misspell each customer's name, written with marker on the side of each cup. (The joke was on the goblins since hardly anyone could read Goblin; but that never seemed to make any difference.) They kept blaming their imprisonment on the island on their allegiance to Maleficent, and it was common knowledge that they kept petitioning King Beast for amnesty, using their flimsy familial ties to the dwarfs as proof they didn't belong here.
"The usual, and make it snappy," said Mal, drumming her fingers on the counter.
"My usual as well." Harlow said, sharpening her dagger.
"Room for month-old milk?"
"Do I look like I want curds? Give me the strongest, blackest coffee you've got! What is this, Auradon?" Mal said bitterly.
"And if my food isn't the way I like it, consider your soul bye-bye." Harlow said, making her eyes glow. It was like he'd seen her dreams, and the thought made her ill.
The runty creature grunted, wiggling the boil on his nose, and pushed a dark, murky cup toward Mal, and the driest cereal towards Harlow. They grabbed them and ran out the door without paying.
"YOU LITTLE BRATS! I'LL BOIL YOU IN THE COFFEEPOT NEXT TIME!" the goblin shrieked.
Mal cackled. "Not if you can't catch us first!"
The goblins never learned. They had never found Princess Aurora either, but then again, the dimwits had been looking for a baby for eighteen years. No wonder Maleficent was always frustrated. It was so hard to find good help these days.
Mal and Harlow continued on their way, stopping to smirk at the poster of King Beast admonishing the citizens of the island to BE GOOD! BECAUSE IT'S GOOD FOR YOU! with that silly yellow crown on his head and that big grin on his face. It was positively nauseating and more than a little haunting, at least to them. Maybe the Auradon propaganda was getting to Harlow's head, maybe that's why she had dreamt she was frolicking in some sort of enchanted lake last night with some pretentious prince. The thought made her shudder again. Mal took a gulp of her scalding, strong coffee. It tasted like mud. Perfect.
In any event, she had to do something about this blister on the wall. Mal took out her paint cans and sprayed a mustache and goatee on the king's face and crossed out his ridiculous message. Harlow took out her dagger and sliced at the poster until she couldn't anymore. King Beast was the one who had locked them all up on the island, after all. That hypocrite. She had a few messages of her own for him, and they all involved revenge.
This was the Isle of the Lost. Evil lived, breathed, and ruled the island, and King Beast and his sickly sweet billboards cajoling the former villains of the world to do good had no place in it. Who wanted to make lemonade from lemons, when you could make perfectly good lemon grenades?
Next to the now shredded poster, Mal sprayed a thin, black outline of a horned head and a spread cape. Above Maleficent's outline, she scrawled EVIL LIVES! in bright green paint the color of goblin slime.
Not bad. Badder. And that was much better.