Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 2: Disneyland Devolved

Words are false things: having no reality of their own, they merely stand in for reality. That is why they so often fail to measure up to their task of description and codification. People know this intuitively, which is why life's starkest moments evoke no words at all, only raw, visceral reaction to the storm of experience.

Mickey Mouse's cry as Maleficent's unholy maelstrom stole the symbolic crowns from the towers of Sleeping Beauty's Castle, as it devoured them whole, was a wordless cry—purely emotive, every form of psychological suffering distilled into one long ululation. The sound might have broken even the Wicked Fairy's heart, if she had one, had it not been drowned out by her own laughter, swelling as the blister of a burn swells, surging as a tidal bore surges along a black river under the Full Moon, transforming along the way from mocking to maniacally merry.

With the disappearance of the last glint of friendly gold into the grotesque vortex, Maleficent let her arms drop, and the rent in the sky closed like the lid of Pandora's Box slamming shut on Hope. The force of its closing spawned ripples, eddies that curdled the very air like gelatin, so that it prevented movement, distorted light, hindered even the drawing of breath. The world was warping, twisting, splitting at the seams and being darned the wrong way around, swallowing itself and spitting itself out again in an endless Ourobourean cycle.

All the gathered Disney heroes, all Mickey's friends, shuddered and wailed in bewildered terror and woe. At first, that was all it was, so it was bearable. But then the lamentation began to take on a different dimension—deeper, sadder, somehow more ancient. It started among a few of the characters, and then spread, and spread, until more than half of them were holding their heads and moaning something much, much worse than mere loss. There was a pattern to those so affected, but it hovered just outside of understanding.

To see them, to hear them, these courageous ones, warriors and adventurers, reduced to simpering victims, was more than Mickey's heart could withstand. The Castle, after all, was only a structure, however grand its sentimental value. But these were people. His friends…being subjected to a grievous torment the details of which he could not discern.

As he had made to protect the Castle from Maleficent's spell—as desperately, and as uselessly—the mouse that started it all gathered himself to leap to their collective defense. He struggled against the jellified air, against the oppression of Maleficent's magic, lost for any strategy, knowing only that his was the responsibility to thwart the evil—

—Maleficent's howls of mirth rose to a crescendoing shriek—

—and then the world snapped back to normal—

—but the Central Plaza he arrived at was not the same one he had set out for.


On hands and knees at the foot of the Castle drawbridge, Mickey raised his head. His vision was blurry, but he could see that the sky was a clear shade of robin's-egg blue, and feel the gentle summer-morning coolness of the breeze. The discontinuity between now and the devastating then that was the last thing he remembered made him feel as though he were just awakening from a dream…no, a nightmare. The worst nightmare of his life.

Had it been only a horrible vision? He was on the ground—had he blacked out from the stress of organizing the Happiest Homecoming and imagined the whole thing? There was no sign now that Maleficent had ever been present.

Except for a slight sense, so slight that it didn't quite register, not just yet, of wrongness

this is not taking place in your imagination…

"Oh, Mickey!" came a squeal of conflicting emotions. Suddenly, Minnie was taking him into her arms, and Pluto was ramming him urgently with his wet doggy nose, and nothing else in the world mattered, not at all.

Except that it did matter. "Minnie...i-is everyone okay?" He wished he could banish the tremor from his voice.

"I didn't stop to look," she confessed tearfully. "As soon as I could move again, I went straight to you."

That confirmed that the atrocity had, after all, occurred. Dreading what he would see as his vision cleared, he slowly wheeled about on all fours to look back up at the Castle, holding out one last shred of optimism that the horror had not happened, that the gems and hangings, and especially the crowns, would still be there, beaming Disneyland's half-century of success up the length of Main Street.

It was self-cruelty to do so. The marvelous structure was bare—still beautiful in itself, but only a shadow of what it had been mere…minutes…ago? Mickey's recent memories were confused; he couldn't tell whether his thoughts were of things only lately past, or long gone, or years ahead of him. In any case, the Castle was plain. Even the glorious glittering paint job had been stripped from it, leaving the duller pastels that were its normal ensemble.

"No," he whimpered, like a child denied a favorite treat but struggling to behave all the same. He kept waiting for the tears to come, but his eyes were shocked dry.

Flip-flopping footsteps in two different registers heralded the approach of Donald and Goofy behind him. (At least they were still there.) "It gets even worse, Mickey," Donald rasped, heaving off his space helmet. "Look around you."

He did. It was…incomprehensible. "Minnie," he said, his voice nearly a whisper, "where is everyone?"

"I can't even begin to guess," was the reply.

Of all the characters who had assembled in Central Plaza, only a fraction remained! Those comparatively few were looking around them as though collecting their wits and recovering their bearings…but new expressions of dismay bent their features at every glance.

Mickey followed their gazes, up, up, to a spot just above and northeast of the Castle, where there was…nothing. Only the outrageously clear blue sky.

The empty spot, the ghost of a snowy mountain, slammed into his awareness like a derailing roller coaster car. "The Matterhorn…it's gone!"

He leaped to his feet and spun around, eyes flitting from point to point around Central Plaza. Everywhere he looked, comfortable wonders were simply absent. Triton Gardens—gone. The Astro Orbitor—gone…and indeed, the whole of the gateway to Tomorrowland altered almost beyond recognition.

Partners—gone. The statue of himself and Walt Disney, the tribute to the magic they made together, was vanished entirely, leaving Central Plaza looking as empty as a broken heart. Mickey didn't complete the circuit, instead stopped dead facing due south and hung his head in despair. What a dreadful destruction Maleficent had wreaked, excising so many of the park's triumphs as completely as if they had never existed!

Goofy set a heavy hand on his shoulder. "I'm so sorry, Mickey," he said, all trace of comic awkwardness submerged in grief.

"Get everyone to pull themselves together," Mickey said without looking up. "Organize them into teams and send them through the park to find out everything that's missing. I'll be in—"

He was interrupted by a cry of surprise behind him. It was neither positive nor negative, it simply was. He looked back over his shoulder to see nearly every character still present clustered at the Castle archway, their backs to the Plaza. Staring into Fantasyland.

"Guys, what is it?" Mickey asked, frankly curious.

Minnie turned away from the focus of attention just long enough to respond. "Mickey, it's—well—you'd better come look!" Her tone, like the simple cry that had caught his notice, was neither pleased nor displeased. He pattered over to see, and the sea of his friends parted to make way for him.

There was Fantasyland. There was the courtyard where the dark rides presented themselves, and the King Arthur Carrousel. What was strange? Something was strange…

Mickey blinked. And blinked again. The Carrousel was too close, that's what was strange. It was…where it had been in the old days, before it was repositioned to ease traffic bottlenecks at the land's entrance. The rest of the courtyard, too, had reverted to its former look—gone was the quaint European architecture, back in place the classically corny medieval tournament tent fronts for the rides. Just past the Carrousel, Mickey could make out the old, ten-car Dumbo the Flying Elephant ride. It was disturbing in its way, but not horrific by any stretch of the imagination. How did this fit into Maleficent's vicious sorcery? He tried to wrap his brain around the puzzle, and failed.

Old Fantasyland…

Treasured things and people gone…as if they had never existed…never existed…don't exist…yet…

Operating under a strange, fey hunch, Mickey turned back toward Central Plaza, letting his gaze carry all the way up Main Street. Decades-old memories stirred, ruffled their feathers, and found prominent places to perch.

He knew this view. He knew this place.

"Fellas," he said softly, "it's…we've…she…" Words failed him. (Words are false things.)

It was Goofy—witless, wise Goofy—who supplied the needed expression. "It's like we've gone back in time or somethin'!"

"Yeah," Mickey chuckled nervously. "Yeah!" The laughter began coming in earnest, giddy with relief. "Maleficent didn't destroy anything! She just backtracked it!" The horror of the past few minutes collapsed on itself, and peals of mirth rang throughout the infant Central Plaza.

"Well, I don't think it's a laughing matter!" Minnie broke in. "Destroyed or backtracked, we've lost fifty years' worth of progress!"

"I know," Mickey grinned, coming back down from the momentary euphoria. "But at least we know we'll get it all back eventually. And maybe this time we can avoid some of the mistakes that have been made over the years."

"I don't like it," Minnie insisted. "Those mistakes are how we learned. And anyway, can we be sure that we really did go back in time?"

"C'mon, Minnie, what else could it be?" And all around him came the murmurs of assent. It made too much sense to be otherwise.

"A youthening spell," Minnie answered flatly, and Mickey felt the smile shrink off his face, "turning Disneyland—and the Disney Family—into earlier versions of themselves without changing the world's flow of time. In that case, we might very well not get it all back eventually."

There was a moment of stark silence as the gathered characters weighed her words. "Gosh…I-I hadn't thought of that," Mickey stammered.

"Ah, phooey!" Donald interjected (feeling, perhaps, that he wasn't contributing enough to the conversation). "I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't feel any younger!"

It was a semi-nonsensical statement—none of them aged per se, except as required by their stories. "So...what's your point, Donald?" Mickey prompted.

"My point is, I think we've really been sent back in time, like Goofy said!"

"Uh…I did?"

"What makes you think so?" said Minnie. She sounded sweet enough in the asking, but her posture—leaning strongly on one leg, arms akimbo—said otherwise.

"It's like this," Donald explained, speaking slowly to make sure he was understood. "If we've somehow been put back the way we were in 1955, how come we still have all our memories from 2005? Wouldn't our minds get de-aged too? And what about these clothes? Why aren't we in our old clothes?"

It was a valid question, if clumsily phrased. All eyes turned to Mickey. As if he had all the answers. All those scared, bemused eyes… He realized that the discovery of Old Fantasyland had allowed them to recover from the trauma just enough to begin to look for a solution…and they had lit on him, Mickey Mouse, as their best bet. For all of them—as well as for the many who were mislaid—he had to be the hero of the day. At the very least, he had to stand tall and offer the one universal solace: hope.

"Hmmm," he pondered. "If only there was some way to know for sure." He racked his brain, letting his gaze drift upward until he was looking at the Castle turrets again. It still bothered him to see them so plain, when he remembered them so elegantly ornamented. Except…on the large, short tower just left of the archway, something was out of place. Something gleamed gold where no gold had been placed during the Castle's construction, like an absurd stain…the silhouette of a mouse-eared beanie cap in gold, studded with diamonds.

It was a fragment of a crown: the one Mickey thought of as the Mouseketeer crown, symbolizing the first whirlwind decade of Disneyland's existence when the Mouseketeers were the envy of American youth. That was what the crown as a whole stood for. What the small fragment of it remaining represented was…a chance. It was a literal bright spot in the gloom, a sliver of normalcy in the out-of-step world Maleficent had dropped them all into, a crack in the prison wall.

He must have been looking quite flabbergasted, because Minnie asked "What is it, Mickey?"

"Fellas…I think we can rule out anything as straightforward as time travel or the Fountain of Youth."

"Aw nuts," Donald muttered. "How come?"

"Because that wasn't part of the original design!" Mickey announced, pointing so hard at the crown fragment that his feet nearly left the ground. Not everyone spotted it immediately, but he held his strained pose until all the perplexed sounds had turned to cautiously delighted ones.

"But what does it mean?" queried Alice.

"It means," Mickey explained, his eyes still riveted to the shining bauble (was it just his imagination, or was there a trace of glitter in the paint just near it?), "that Maleficent's spell wasn't quite complete." He turned to face his friends. "And as every sorcerer knows, a spell only partly done is much more easily undone!"

"It's quite true," Cinderella's Fairy Godmother confirmed.

The notion that they might not, after all, be in dire straits swept the assembly like sunlight advancing over a plain at dawn. Mickey raised his hands to restore order before chaos really got underway. "Don't get too excited; we're not out of the woods yet. We still don't know exactly what is going on, or how to fix it. But I—I mean, we—that is to say, Minnie and Donald and Goofy and I—oh, and Pluto too—intend to find out! So, uh, sit tight, relax as best you can, and we'll have all this sorted out before you know it!"

The members of his audience traded uncertain looks. A few tried clapping slowly, one or two raised a half-hearted cheer. He couldn't blame them for being less than hearty about it; so much was still doubtful, and his stumbling speech could hardly have done much to inspired confidence. Mickey met the eyes of his closest compatriots and waved them to follow him up Main Street.

Just before setting off in earnest, he half-turned back to the gathering and chirruped, "See ya all real soon!" He felt tacky saying it, like he was cheapening the solemnity of the situation, but he knew the familiarity of the line would give them comfort.

As the small group trooped northward on the famous thoroughfare, Minnie sidled over to Mickey and muttered, "Boy, Mickey! You sure can lay it on thick when you have to!"

"Well, you just said it yourself," he replied haggardly. "I have to. I don't think they've ever needed me to be strong and on top of things as much as they do now."

"Maybe once or twice before…" she said, sounding oddly distant. Mickey didn't press the issue, having much more immediate matters on his mind.

"Say, Mickey, where are we going?" Donald broke the silence.

"To get my Hat," Mickey replied simply.

"Aren'tcha already wearin' it?" Goofy challenged him.

"Not this hat," said Mickey, sweeping the tall shako from his head. "My Hat."

Comprehension dawned instantly. "Ooohhhhhhhhh…" chorused three voices and a canine rumble.

That, at least, would be in its rightful place. Mickey had kept it stored in the same spot since Main Street's paving stones were first laid.

They had reached Main Street proper, the straight stretch between Town Square and Central Plaza lined on both sides with storefronts, antique gas lamps, and painstakingly accurate clocks, which displayed identical times of 9:48 a.m.

"Is it really that late?" Goofy asked idly, checking against his own watch. (It registered a time of 3:13, and had ever since the battery had run down four days previously, which fact escaped his notice entirely.)

"Gosh, I hadn't noticed," said Mickey, "but you're right. Whatever year this is, we should be open by now—but I haven't seen any guests or Cast Members since Maleficent showed up! Where is everyone?"

"It must be another effect of the spell," Minnie observed. "We'll have to figure it out with everything else."

"It could be an important clue, though," said Mickey. "Everyone keep it in mind. Aha, here we are!"

There was nothing to distinguish it from any other spot along Disneyland's famous thoroughfare. It wasn't the center of anything or the crossroads of anything, or a different color from the ground around it. It was a nice, inconspicuous hiding place—the best way to find it was to already know where it was, and the only way to access its contents was to be the person who owned them. The bronze chest that nestled under the innocent-looking bricks, disguised as a time capsule similar to the one's the park management buried from time to time, would respond to Mickey's touch and no one else's. (The inscription reading "Do Not Open Until July 17, 2055" ensured that no maintenance worker who discovered it by accident would even try to raise the lid.)

Mickey wasn't even sure how the box came to be so particular. The combination lock it was outfitted with was complicated, and aligning the tumblers depended as much on subtle manual technique as on the correct sequence of numbers, but it was not magical in itself. Yet no one other than Mickey Mouse could so much as rotate the dials; they would stick as though rusted to the point of welding fast inside their casings. It was a magic as mysterious as it was beneficial, providing ultimate protection for a treasure beyond price.

The most difficult part of retrieving the chest was shifting the bricks that overlay it. About twenty of them in a patch were mortared to each other, but not to those surrounding them, so that they made a kind of irregular slab. With a crowbar it would have been easy enough, but as it was Mickey had to wedge his fingertips into the seams and heave it aside through sheer brute force, of which he possessed little. Lifting out the chest was easier; though it too was heavy, it had handles.

"Well, I'll be doggoned!" Donald exclaimed. "Mickey, you rascal—so this is where you've been hiding it!"

"Yup," Mickey agreed simply, carefully setting the combination—it was more like playing an advanced tune on an exotic musical instrument than anything else—and flipping open the lid when a soft click from inside the mechanism signaled his success.

Even the bright morning daylight could not camouflage the soft gold-white glow suffusing the mirrored interior of the chest. The object that Mickey withdrew from its resting place, draped in an aura of quiet power, was a thing of legend, the most coveted magical artifact in his collection as well as the most famous piece of headgear in the Disney canon…the Sorcerer's Hat!

To the untrained, unappreciative eye, the physicality of it didn't match the atmosphere of mysticism. The simple cone, rolled up at the edge to make a cushy brim, had once been a deep indigo, splashed with silvery stars and crescent moons. It had slightly faded over time to a shade more like dark cornflower; as well, the fabric had frayed a very little bit in places, so that a few stray threads poked out here and there. It didn't look like a talisman of great power…but it would be a rare person indeed who had so little magical sensitivity that he or she could not discern its mightiness on some unconscious level at least.

And what was the Hat's power? Not, as so many assumed, a totipotent spellcasting ability that was transferred to the wearer. It was much more subtle and wonderful, and had everything to do with its conical shape. Everyone knows that witches' and wizards' hats are always conical, and hardly anyone ever wonders why. It is for the same reason that megaphones and funnels are conical—the hollow tapered shape collects and projects and directs that which travels through it. In the case of a magician's hat, what travels through it—in both directions—is raw magical energy, the stuff of change. Everyone has a latent ability to tap into the transformative force. Only a very few ever learn how to use it at will. A conical hat is an excellent vessel for making the transition. Even accomplished sorcerers, such as Mickey Mouse, benefit from the use of such a conduit, just as even the most experienced chemist still uses funnels.

"What are you planning to do, Mickey?" asked Minnie.

"I'm going to find Maleficent," he explained grimly. "And then I'm gonna make her tell us how to fix this. She's not so tough when facing someone who refuses to be bullied, and she won't take me by surprise a second time." He chuckled. "But I need someplace just a little darker and more private than Main Street at ten in the morning."

"How about the Opera House?" Donald suggested, thumbing over his shoulder at the elegant white building that stood on the east side of Town Square.

"Perfect! Thanks, Donald," Mickey agreed. He took a moment to replace the chest in the ground and cover it with the brick slab, and then the five of them set off for the Opera House.

The Main Street Opera House is often overlooked by casual Disneyland guests, perhaps because its recessed location makes it inconspicuous compared to the other attractions and shops on the boulevard. It should be better known than it is, because for forty years, it hosted probably the most famous technological invention ever created for a theme park: the audio-animatronic figure of Abraham Lincoln (or rather several of them, each more lifelike than the last). At one time, it had been the official headquarters of something possibly even more famous: the Mickey Mouse Club.

At the very beginning, it wasn't an attraction at all, except in the sense of being a sight to see. Only the façade was accessible to guests; the interior of the building consisted of the Disneyland Mill, where all the park's artistic woodwork was produced. Even this was scarcely evident, however, as Mickey and his friends entered the warehouse-like space. No half-finished projects cluttered the workbenches, the rasps and chisels all hung clean in the tool racks, and even the floor was swept free of sawdust. And there was not an artisan in sight. The building was fully lit in accordance with normal working hours, but apart from them it was eerily empty of life.

Mickey sat down on a low pile of pine boards. "Dim the lights, would you, Goofy?" he requested. After a small amount of fumbling with switches and minor electrical shocks, the lanky dog managed to reduce the ambient light to about the level of candlelight. Perfect. Now for the hard part.

Focusing all his attention on the essence of Maleficent—her mien of dark, serpentine elegance, her extraordinary power…the utter corruption in her soul, from whence she drew her name—Mickey carefully lowered the Sorcerer's Hat onto his head, while his friends watched with baited breath. He pricked up his metaphysical ears, "listening" for Maleficent's presence, wherever it was…

And with a tremendous rushing, falling sensation, he slipped into a nightmare.

To Be Continued…