Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 5: The View From Above

The important thing, she knew, was to maintain her own sense of identity. And to avoid the Oubliettes, but that went without saying.

Of course, it was easier decided than achieved. It wasn't just that the sensory deprivation was distracting. Fluidity of thought was built into the very fabric of the realm; it practically was it. Unrecorded ideas are subject to any amount of change, and she had been reduced to just such a thing—an idea, a potentiality, her existence dependent on the minds of those still in the real world. If they forgot her, her own will would be all that stood between her and the Oubliettes…a will that could not help but be fragile, in that ephemeral void of shifting thought.

As it was, it was all she could do to keep focused on herself.

She wondered how many of the others had already been lost, wiped out, removed even from the screen of possibility. Not that she cared. Nor would she ever know, since anything swallowed by an Oubliette was erased from all memory, irretrievable. She would not miss what she had entirely forgotten was ever there.

But in all likelihood, they were all safe…as safe as they could be, anyway. That mouse was far too sentimental to let himself forget anyone, and his will was admittedly strong. It was not a foolproof protection—the active thoughts, not the passive, of those in the manifested world were what provided the only sure bulwarks against the Oubliettes. If one of the dread vortices were to come along while no living mind was consciously thinking of her, she would be vulnerable.

Fortunately for her, people rarely forget those who grievously wrong them.

The most important thing was to maintain her own sense of identity. I am Maleficent. I am the Mistress of All Evil. Now I am the scourge of the Disney Family, the one who ripped them apart, friend from friend. They will never forget such a horror as I have wrought.

Because my past is memorable, my future is assured.


It was said of Walt Disney that he would rather spend five hundred dollars on something at Disneyland that the public would see, than fifty cents on something they wouldn't. This was largely true. In the earliest years of the park, before the diorama attraction was installed, the interior of Sleeping Beauty's Castle was…a mess. Unfinished, dreadfully dusty, naked support beams everywhere, with rickety scaffolding left over from construction affording the maintenance workers their only access to the upper towers and balconies.

When Mickey carefully pushed open the door leading in from outside and let the bold light of day fall upon the grunge, the reaction of the Fab Five was unanimous:

"Yuck!"

Pluto sniffed gingerly at the floor and promptly sneezed on a snoutful of dust. He growled softly—apart from the dry odor of old dirt and the cloying scent of poorly ventilated paint, he smelled cat.

"Easy, boy," Mickey said with a gentle tug on Pluto's collar.

The five of them made their way in with cautious footsteps and wrinkled noses. Donald ran a finger over a disorganized work bench and grimaced as his white feathers came away blackish-brown. "Disgusting," he muttered.

Minnie stared up at the top of the scaffolding, hazy in the gloom of the unlit building. "I don't know about this, Mickey," she said tensely. "That doesn't look very safe at all."

"Aw, c'mon, Minnie," Mickey said warmly. "You're not gonna chicken out, are you?"

"Chicken out, no," was the reply. "Logically and rationally decide against this? Now, that I might do."

"I'm sure you'll be fine. It can't be as unstable as it looks."

"What makes you say that, Mickey?" asked Goofy.

"Because nothing could actually be as unstable as that looks. Besides, Minnie, you volunteered."

She chuckled nervously. "I did, didn't I? Anyone care to remind me why I had such a lapse of judgment?"

"Because you're the lightest and the most agile one of us," Mickey explained.

"…which wouldn't matter if this were safe!"

"You also have the best head for heights. Which is funny," Mickey continued, raising his voice, "because you'd think the bird would."

Donald jumped to alertness from where he had been disapproving of the state of the floor. "Oh, ha, ha, ha," he sneered. "Very funny, wise guy."

Minnie giggled, relaxing slightly. "Well, here goes nothing," she said, gripping the scaffolding with both hands and putting one foot on the lowest crossbar. It creaked ominously, and a few pinches of grime pattered down from the joints, but the structure held steady. Blowing with relief, Minnie began climbing.

About five feet later, the scaffolding began to rock and groan. Minnie groaned also, clinging rigidly to her perch.

"It's okay, Minnie," Mickey said to her. "It's not as bad as it seems."

"That's easy for you to say," she retorted. "You don't know how bad it seems from up here! Are you sure this is the best way to do this?

"It's the only way to do it," Mickey said. "Without the Matterhorn, the top of the Castle is the only decent vantage point for looking at the whole park at once. If any of the crowns are in the open, you should be able to spot them. It can't hurt to try."

"It can if I break my neck in the process," Minnie said wryly to herself. But she breathed deeply and continued.

Approximately halfway to the top—four yards from the floor—was a wooden platform about the size of a desktop. It looked sturdy, so Minnie let it take her weight as she pulled herself up over the edge—and found herself looking into a pair of huge yellow-green eyes.

Ordinarily, a surprise like that might have sent her into a brief, girlish panic. But she could only be afraid of one thing at a time, and the threat of falling was occupying her attention at the moment. So it didn't even occur to her to be startled until after she had realized that the eyes belonged to a cat, one of the feral ones that took up residence inside the Castle soon after it was built.

"Oops," she said kindly. "I didn't mean to intrude."

The cat, for its part, had not achieved its lofty station in life by bothering over small details. It made a soft sound of mild displeasure and moved to the opposite end of the platform, from where it gazed balefully at Minnie as she continued to climb.

From that point on, the scaffolding became much narrower—more like a ladder. Minnie knew she was entering the slender tallest tower of the Castle. A little arch of daylight above her indicated the location of the tiny window that led out onto a narrow embattlement circling the tower. The small space was claustrophobia-inducing, but on another level it was reassuring that no matter how much the scaffolding creaked and rattled, it could only sway a couple of feet in any direction.

Up and up, and it began to seem to Minnie that the climb was taking longer than it should. Is this haunted room actually stretching? she thought ironically. At least she wasn't having to do it in the princess gown—their first stop on the quest had been home, to change out of their decorative clothes into more typical, and therefore more comfortable, outfits. It did make Minnie wish, however, that she had acclimated herself over the years to lower heels.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, she reached up and touched solid plaster instead of rusty steel or splintering wood. Heaving a huge sigh of relief, Minnie pulled herself up and crawled out the undersized window into the daylight.

Main Street looked very different from that elevation! So many of its atmospheric illusions depended on the viewer being at ground level, not least among them the forced perspective that made the quaint buildings look taller than they were. With the scaled-down upper floors at eye level, the structures looked not so much quaint as awkwardly proportioned.

But that wasn't what Minnie was there to look at. She stopped marveling at the view and began inching slowly around the tower, scanning the ground, the rooftops, everything in sight for traces of golden gleam. From time to time something caught her eye, but it always turned out to be a bit of gilt decoration that belonged there. After making a full circuit, she realized that she couldn't see anything out of the ordinary…but there were a few areas of the park that were still beyond her line of sight.

"Hey, Minnie!" Mickey's voice floated up out of the interior of the Castle. "Is everything okay up there?"

"Just fine!" she called back. "But I need to get a little bit higher!"

"Well, be careful!" Mickey admonished her.

Minnie turned her attention to the tower itself, which extended a good few yards yet above her current position. There was another embattlement almost within fingertip reach—if she could get that high, it would be an easy climb to the blue-tiled, conical roof of the turret.

She wasn't worried. Climbing dusty, decrepit scaffolding in the dark was difficult and nerve-wracking. Climbing a clean, sturdy, brightly colored castle tower in broad daylight was a different animal entirely. As if it were part of her daily routine, Minnie stepped up to the edge of the crenellated balcony, raised her arms, bent her knees, and leaped

…and caught the edge of the upper embattlement. She hung for a moment, adjusting her grip, before pulling herself up onto the thin ledge. There was very little room to stand, but she wasn't planning on staying long. The top of the tower had a few "windows," chinks little more than a foot square, that made perfect handholds and footholds. In very short order, she was on the sharply slanting turret roof itself, and then at the tip-top of the cone, steadying herself with the gold-plated spire.

The wind was a little stronger than on the ground, but Minnie felt in no danger. It gave her a wholly pleasant thrill to be standing there, at the very pinnacle of Disneyland, some 75 feet up. It was oddly peaceful, with all the ground sounds (mostly the shouts and laughs of the oblivious characters cavorting in Fantasyland) filtered by distance into a quiet murmur that blended with the soft whistling of the breeze, punctuated by the occasional caw of a crow.

From so high up, she could really see everything. The whole of the park, from the farthest backwoods pocket of Frontierland to the easternmost corner of Tomorrowland, lay open to her gaze. How barren it all looked! Whole tracts of space were undeveloped, grassy, practically wild. The planted trees were fewer, and smaller, than she remembered them from 2005. Scarcely any of the really memorable attractions had been built—no Pirates of the Caribbean, no Space Mountain, no "it's a small world."

"Disneyland will never be complete," Walt had said, thereby giving his labor of love infinite room to grow. But there is a difference between merely not being finished, and actively being unfinished…and in 1955, the park was a blatant example of the latter. Especially looked at with the advantage of hindsight.

Somewhere in Frontierland, something gleamed gold.

With a start, Minnie remembered why she was up there in the first place, what she was supposed to be looking for. Disneyland was incomplete, all right—and it would stay that way unless they found those five crowns! Minnie searched Frontierland until she saw it again: a tiny yellow flash from the far end of Tom Sawyer's Island, where a chance gap in the pine foliage allowed a sunbeam to reach the ground. It shone like a lighthouse beacon, a guide to safety.

On the other hand, it could be a fragment of amber glass from a beer bottle, dropped there by a passing magpie.

No, it wouldn't do to be pessimistic. Minnie decided to believe that the little glint was one of the crowns. It was the only lead they had so far.

Suddenly overtaken with a sense of urgency to report the news, she put safety at the bottom of her list of priorities. Minnie let herself skid down the turret roof and drop, almost without impediment, to the lower embattlement.

"Mickey!" she squealed into the tower. "MICKEY!"

He probably shouted a reply, but by then she was already inside, propelling herself down the scaffolding so that it rattled like a bag of gravel poured down a garbage disposal.

It was this lack of care that resulted in her falling, though not as directly as one would assume.

The cat she had passed on the way up abruptly found its chosen perch shuddering and clattering in the most unsettling way. Digging its claws into the wooden platform for traction, it yowled and hissed, but to no avail. The scaffolding went on being noisy and unstable. Disgusted, the cat decided to take its chances jumping down to the floor to look for a new roost. The spot where it landed was unexpectedly warm and pliable.

This was because it was Pluto's back.

After the initial yelp of pinpricked surprise, Pluto exploded with rage. With much barking and growling and gnashing of teeth, he turned on the cat. The two of them began tearing around the enclosed space.

"No, Pluto! Stop it!" Mickey yelled ineffectually as dog chased cat around and between the scaffolding supports, unsteadying it even more.

"What's going on down there?" Minnie wailed, scarcely audible over the combined racket.

Finally the cat, figuring that even a shaky platform was a better prospect than being mauled, leapt to climb back up the structure. It reckoned without Pluto's persistence—the snarling canine sprang right up after it without regard for the fact that he had neither sharp claws nor opposable thumbs nor any other biological climbing equipment.

That, at last, was too much for the abused scaffolding to take. With a cacophonous chorus of squeals and crunches, it gave way, struts bending, timbers splitting, screws popping out to ping off the walls, until the whole thing lay on the floor in a heap of dust and splinters and K-joints and severely contused Fab Five.

There was a long pause, punctuated by the wobbly clangs of some tardy bit of metal debris.

"Is everyone okay?" Mickey's voice asked from somewhere near the middle of the pile.

There was a shorter pause. Then came Minnie's voice, slow and tense. "That had better be Pluto's paw on my tush."

Bit by bit, they managed to extricate themselves from the rubble and survey the personal damage, which consisted of quite a lot of scrapes and bruises, plus two or three large and throbbing cranial lumps. The cat was nowhere to be seen, and was presumed to have escaped scot-free. Once it was determined that everyone was basically all right, Mickey asked Minnie what she had been able to see.

"I think I saw one of the crowns!" she announced joyfully. "On Tom Sawyer's Island. I saw a flash of gold, at least."

"Well, then, what are we waiting for?" Mickey crowed. "To Frontierland!"

"No," Minnie said pointedly. "To the shower. Then to Frontierland."

"Right," Mickey chuckled.


Tinkerbell was troubled. It was only a very small trouble, but she was only a very small pixie, so it filled her and made her very troubled indeed. Creatures of Neverland, who are meant to be happy and carefree, do not handle such feelings well.

What was troubling her was nothing she could put her tiny, well-formed finger on. Things simply…felt out of place. She kept being vaguely surprised by what she saw as she flitted about the Fantasyland courtyard, as if she were expecting to see something else, but she had no idea what that might be. Her acrobatic reflexes were a little off-kilter, and she sometimes had the impression of being either boxed in or dangerously exposed…when she was neither.

It was as puzzling as it was disturbing, and Tinkerbell wanted to tell someone about it, but who? The only person who could reliably understand her speech was Peter Pan, and he never took anything seriously. The best she could hope for from him was a shrug and maybe a "Huh, that's weird. I wonder what it means," immediately after which he would drop it and go back to flying loop-the-loops above his attraction façade, and expect her to join in. If she brought it up again, he might laugh and say, "Are you still on about that, Tink?" or he might have forgotten all about it. Either way, she would get nowhere with Peter.

She tried to put it out of her mind. Perhaps, she reasoned, she was just having an off day. Even fairies occasionally had them.

Fairies…fairies…something about fairies…

The Blue Fairy would be able to understand her, if she were around; fairy communication transcended all barriers of language or custom. But without a permanent "home" in the form of an attraction, the characters from Pinocchio tended to be rather…peripatetic, and only the really central figures—Pinocchio himself and Jiminy Cricket—could usually be found at all. The same went for the characters from Cinderella—while the popular princess and her Prince Charming could often be seen dancing in the courtyard, as they were now, the Fairy Godmother was less accessible.

Tinkerbell cursed her luck at being the only Disney fairy so far not relegated to a secondary role. She paused in her contemplative flight to glance at Sleeping Beauty's Castle. Now there was a story with fairies to spare; she hoped the film, when it was complete, would introduce some fairies with more staying power as memorable characters to the Disney Family.

In the meantime, all she could do was flit, and frolic, and be troubled. And wonder why she couldn't stop thinking about crowns…


Five characters stood before the entrance to Frontierland, taken a little aback. The breeze that blew out through the log palisade gateway and ruffled the authentic antique flag on its pole was warm and dry and tinged with a tantalizing mélange of thematic odors—dust and straw and pine needles and sun-beaten leather and unfinished wood and, most beguiling of all, the pervasive, musky tang of horses.

This was to be expected. In the early days, the guests had been more adventurous (and less litigious!), and Frontierland could afford to be a fairly authentic vision of the Wild West, with unpaved ground and live animals and other unpredictable elements. However…

"It seems stronger than I remember it," said Donald. He wrinkled his beak. "A lot stronger."

"It seems that way to me too," Minnie agreed, "but I think we just aren't used to it anymore."

"It's psychological," said Mickey. "The wind today is hot and dry, like in the desert. It enhances the illusion of an Old West town."

"Ain't we goin' in?" Goofy wondered. "Why're we all just standin' here? Call me goofy, but it doesn't seem like a very good way of gettin' that crown."

"Right!" Mickey said, sticking out his chest. "C'mon, gang!"

And the five of them, collectively far more apprehensive than they ought to have been, strode forward through the gateway.

Ultimately, they found much more in Frontierland than they had even known they were looking for.

To Be Continued…