Crowns of the Kingdom
Chapter 12: Help From Unexpected Quarters
Principally, it resembled a lobster in both size and form, albeit with an extra pair of powerful pincers and a tail that no one would ever want to see on their dinner plate. Its eyes, though, were huge and staring and softly luminescent and not remotely crustacean. It scratched gently at the inside of the bubble as though in a half-hearted escape attempt.
"Where did you say you found it again?" asked Merlin.
"Between the Matterhorn and the Submarine Lagoon," Merryweather repeated patiently.
"Fascinating," the aged wizard said, prodding the bubble with one finger, as one might a fishbowl. "Hello in there, little one."
"Good gracious, Merlin, it's not a pet!" Flora gasped. "It's a servant to Maleficent!"
"I'm certain it can't do any harm as long as it's in there. I trust you ladies' abilities."
The three Good Fairies had encountered the strange creature by a stroke of luck during one of their many retreads of Fantasyland, when they got so turned around that they started veering toward Tomorrowland…and discovered the lobster-thing aimlessly wandering the walkway. That it was connected to Maleficent was unquestionable; they could recognize her handiwork when they saw it. Merryweather had been all set to turn it into stone or snow and end the threat it posed, but the other two had quickly convinced her that there might be more value in capturing it instead. So, together, the three of them had imprisoned it inside a shimmering magic bubble.
It was exactly the sort of development that Mickey would have wanted to hear about right away, but they had no idea how to find or contact him, and they found it a daunting prospect to mind their eerie captive indefinitely while they waited for him to turn up. It was Fauna who had suggested showing it to Merlin, in a rare burst of insight from the normally timid member of the trio.
"What do you make of it, Merlin?" asked Merryweather as the wizard squinted and frowned at the peculiar beast.
"Eh? Don't you know?" he replied absently. "I thought you three were the experts on Maleficent's magic."
"Oh, but she's never used anything like this before!" Fauna emoted.
"So what makes you think she's using it now?" said a grumpy (as usual) Archimedes. "You three took care of it easily enough. I should think Maleficent would employ something a bit more dangerous as her lackey." The creature made a sound, a sort of purring coo that sounded the opposite of threatening.
"Now, now, now, Archimedes," Merlin chided easily. "We don't know what this thing's true purpose is, or whether there are any others. I daresay an army of them would be quite menacing. In any case, if these three lovely ladies say it's to do with Maleficent, then by Jove, it's to do with Maleficent!" The three Good Fairies tittered shyly at the flattery.
"If you say so," Archimedes huffed, turning around on his perch and putting his head under his wing to signal the end of the conversation.
"I shall certainly study this creature further," said Merlin. "You ladies will be returning to your patrol, I presume?"
"Yes, we really should be going," said Flora. "Do let us know what you find out, won't you?"
"Yes, yes, of course. I'll send Archimedes to find you." The ball of feathers on the perch made a loud "Hmph!"
The Good Fairies waddled out of Merlin's library. "Do you really think it's safe, leaving that thing in there?" Merryweather wondered. "All Merlin's books and things are there. What if Maleficent's using it as a spy? If it escapes…"
"I'm sure it will be all right, dear," said Fauna, putting a reassuring hand on Merryweather's shoulder. "Merlin may be just a teensy bit scatterbrained at times, but he really is a very powerful wizard. I'm sure nothing will go wrong."
The atmosphere aboard the Sea Wolf was not funereal. It was far too tense for that.
Minnie had sunk, pale and trembling, into one of the seats lining the cabin and was staring blankly ahead, making no sound even though tears were pouring down her face. One of her hands rested on Pluto's head where he had lain it despondently in her lap. It was entirely possible that she would respond if spoken to, but no one wanted to take the risk just yet. Daisy settled for sitting on an overturned bucket next to her, shoulders held in a conspicuously rigid pose in case Minnie needed one of them to cry on.
"Donald, it's not your fault!" she said for probably the fifth or sixth time. "I watched you do everything you could to save Mickey. And who says you didn't succeed? We have no idea what happened out there between the time you landed in the airlock and the time we realized he had disappeared. Why not hope for the best?"
Donald's only reply was to kick violently at the miscellaneous objects that sat in his path as he stalked restlessly about the submarine. They were a poor substitute for what he really wanted to beat up: himself. His failure to rescue his best friend had left him in a funk of self-loathing. But at least he seemed more reachable in that state than Minnie in her near-catatonia.
"Daisy's right," said Goofy. "You did your best, and now we have to think about what to do next. Wherever Mickey's got to, I'm sure he'd want us to keep goin' with the quest until he can get back together with us."
"Exactly!" agreed Daisy. "I say we take this tub back up to the surface and get the Rocket Crown over to the Castle."
"No!" Donald protested. "We can't move ahead in time without Mickey! What if he gets stuck here in 1965?"
"Well, we should at least get to a point where we can get out of this submarine," Daisy reasoned. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm tired of having wet feet." She gestured around the cabin, which was still ankle-deep in seawater.
"Say, fellas?" said Goofy, glancing nervously out the starboard portholes.
"Well, I say we keep looking for Mickey down here!" Donald argued. "And he left me in charge, so what I say, goes!"
"Uh…" said Goofy.
"Not so fast, buster," said Daisy, rising to her feet and setting her arms akimbo. "You left me in charge, and your exact words were 'until Mickey and I get back.' I see you, but I don't see him, and that means I'm still in charge."
Donald opened his beak to retort, but nothing came out. Daisy's loophole had left him speechless.
"Listen, you two," Goofy broke in. "Can you please hurry up and decide who's in charge so I know who to tell about that?" He pointed emphatically to the ocean outside.
The feuding ducks stopped the dispute cold and ran to see what had him so worked up. The horrible creatures had stopped their purposeless drifting and were gathering in a dense knot some distance away from the Sea Wolf, right at the edge of visibility. It was impossible to tell exactly what they were up to, but the generalities of their behavior had Donald deeply worried.
"Uh-oh…" he murmured.
"What? What's going on?" asked Daisy.
The horde retreated farther, until only the very edge of it could be seen, and then only on and off as the monsters rearranged themselves, changing the overall shape of the mass. From time to time, what could only be described as things—things much too large to belong to an individual one of the creatures—undulated in the murky haze.
"Daisy," Donald said briskly, "after much deliberation, I have decided to follow the course of action you suggest."
"Meaning…what, exactly?" she said.
"Let's get out of here!" was the manic reply. "Full speed ahead! Man the battle stations! Move, everybody!" He scrambled for the operating platform, leaving the others to work out on their own what they should do.
Daisy took a deep breath before speaking her next piece. "Okay, Minnie, time to snap out of it. We've all got work to do."
For an instant, she though Minnie hadn't even heard her. But then the mouse looked up at her with haunted eyes. "Of course," she said in a voice that sounded like it was coming from thousands of miles away. "What do you need me to do?"
"Well, for starters, I need you to perk up a little." Minnie bit her lip and looked away. "Look, I know it's hard for you right now. It's hardly any easier for the rest of us. But we have to have faith in Mickey. You of all people should know by now that he'll always come back to you. No matter what."
Minnie turned back to Daisy, a spark of hope returning to her expression. "Th-that's true," she stammered. "He's even said as much." She breathed deeply, and somewhere between the inhale and the exhale, she transformed, rising to her feet, blinking her tears away, an aura of calmly determined competence displacing the despairing fragility. "All right. What's going on?"
"I'm not entirely sure," Daisy replied, "but something outside has Donald really spooked. He said something about battle stations—"
"And no wonder!" Minnie gasped, pointing at the portholes. The darkness outside was deepening as a swirling black cloud encroached on the beams of the spotlights. As Minnie and Daisy watched in alarm, long, sinewy things began emerging from the gloom. They looked like massive serpents at first, until they came fully into the light and revealed themselves to be immense, sucker-bearing tentacles, unmistakably the appurtenances of Architeuthis, the infamous giant squid.
Drifting forward, the squid reached for the Sea Wolf.
There was a slight sense of discontinuity, followed by full, panicked awareness. Mickey lashed out in mindless desperation at his attackers.
"Whoa, take it easy," said a friendly, vaguely familiar voice. "You've been through a lot, but you're safe now."
Mickey realized that he was flailing at nothing. One outflung hand struck something spongy and rebounded. He forced himself to calm down and take stock of his surroundings. It was so dark that it made no difference at all whether he kept his eyes open or closed, but he got the impression of a cozy, homey space. He was in a reclining position, his head pillowed on what felt like the arm of an overstuffed sofa.
"There, see?" said his mysterious host. "No danger at all."
"Who…wait…Mortimer…?" Mickey guessed, basically at random.
There was a soft chuckle. "Close, but at the same time, way off."
"Then who are you? And…where am I?"
"Just take it slow, Mickey. Everything's fine, but you might find it a little hard to believe if you had to deal with it all at once."
Recollection hit Mickey like a brick to the back of the head. "Oh, no, the submarine!—the Rocket Crown!—and, oh my gosh, Donald! I have to get back! I have to—" He started to push himself up off the apparent sofa, only to have a pair of no-nonsense hands push him back down. Four-fingered and gloved, they reminded him strongly of Minnie's hands…or his own.
"Whoa, not so fast, hero! You're in no shape to be charging back into battle. Give yourself a little recovery break first."
"But I feel fine," Mickey protested. "How long have I been…here, anyway?"
"Not long at all. Notice you're still wet. You might feel fine lying there, but you'd find out different if you jumped up all of a sudden. And I know how your mind works…I should, anyway; it's close enough to mine. You get so caught up taking care of everyone else, you forget to take care of yourself. It's part of the selfless hero package, I guess."
Mickey, more baffled than ever, said nothing.
"I gotta hand it to you, Mickey," the other continued. "You've done real good—real good. I don't think I'd have done as good, if it had been me."
"What are you talking about? The quest?" Mickey asked.
"The quest and everything else! Everything you've accomplished, everything you stand for…I don't think I'd have made it as far."
"Who are you?" Mickey queried again.
Again, that soft, gentle chuckle. "I suppose you're ready to find out. Hang on a second—it's been a while since I've done this. Around here, we don't need light to see."
"Where…" Mickey began, but he trailed off as his surroundings became visible in a slow fade, like an antique television set warming up. It looked like someone's living room or den—the sofa he was lying on, a matching easy chair, a small table at the corner between the two, a modestly sized bookcase, draperies hanging on the walls. The furnishings were stylistically similar to his own preferences for interior decoration…but the walls were strange. He couldn't seem to focus on them.
Then he caught sight of his host, and forgot all about the walls.
For a split second, he thought he was looking at his exact double. But the other fellow wore overalls rather than shorts, and his unshod feet were huge. More profoundly, his ears were not round but long and thin. There were facial differences too, the sum of which was that he was clearly a rabbit…but one who looked remarkably like Mickey Mouse.
If Mickey had not already been lying down, he would have been floored. I know him! There was only one possible identity for his rescuer, if indeed it was possible. Mickey ventured to speak the name aloud.
"Oswald?"
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit made a brief bow. "Got it in one. Well, two." His voice was also similar to Mickey's, but slightly lower in pitch and with a hint of trickster-ish Down East twang.
"But…how—?"
"I know, I know. Raises more questions than it answers, don't it? Obviously, I'm not the original Oswald, or I'd look like a mime. I'm more like…the idea of what Oswald the Lucky Rabbit would have become if Walt Disney never lost the rights to him. But then we wouldn't have you, Mickey, so I'm glad I don't really exist."
"Don't really exist?" Mickey repeated. He propped himself up on his elbows, the better to look around at the room and its indistinct walls. Something about their vagueness, about the way they seemed not to be there when he wasn't looking directly at them, reminded him of something. "Is this…Inpotentia?"
"You're getting pretty good at this guessing game," Oswald grinned, showing off prominent incisors. "Yeah, this is part of Inpotentia—my part of it. How much do you know about it, anyway?"
"Not much," Mickey confessed, easing up into a sitting position on the sofa while Oswald settled into the chair. "I know this is where ideas…live, I guess, before they're realized. Nothing here is really real."
"That's one way of looking at it," said Oswald. "But it might be more accurate to call Inpotentia the sum of everything that might be, but isn't. You won't find the impossible here. You also won't find the actual. But everything else…" He made a pointlessly flourishing gesture. "Sounds pretty simple, don't it?"
Mickey paused before speaking. "Is that a trick question?"
"Kind of. The thing is, it's not just a matter of being real or not. Some ideas are closer to being realized than others. The closest of all are ones like me, who were real for a while until people lost interest and they faded back into obscurity. But that connection to reality remains. That's how I knew you were in trouble." He sat forward, fixing Mickey with an uncharacteristically serious look. "Bad things are afoot, Mickey, and not just in Disneyland. That Maleficent character is weakening the boundary between Inpotentia and the real world. Granted, it's always been a pretty fuzzy distinction where Disneyland and the Disney Family are concerned, but this…" He sat back again, closing his eyes and shaking his head slightly.
"The park is disconnecting from reality," Mickey said, almost to himself. "That's what Professor von Drake told us, and when we tried to see beyond the berm, it was all just swirling colors."
"That's what I'm talking about," said Oswald. "It's because of her meddling. The boundary is crossed every day, every time an idea is developed into something real, but that's the right way. Maleficent is dragging things across the boundary, in both directions, and that sort of thing does damage."
"I can imagine," Mickey reasoned. "But didn't you do the same thing—drag me across—when you rescued me?"
"You complaining about being rescued?"
"Of course not!"
"Didn't think so. Anyway, it's not like I had time to figure out anything else. And if not for Maleficent messing around with the natural order of things, you wouldn't have needed rescuing in the first place, so I don't figure I did wrong."
"As long as we're on the subject…thank you," said Mickey.
"Don't mention it," Oswald said with a friendly gesture of dismissal. "The world needs Mickey Mouse—more than usual, at the moment."
Silence fell. After a moment, Oswald spoke up. "You all right?"
"I think so," Mickey replied, looking at his hands where they rested in his lap. "You were right; it's a lot to take in all at once." He looked up abruptly. "Oswald…what were those creatures that attacked us? They're from here, aren't they? From Inpotentia."
Oswald made a solemn nod. "Dispirations. On the totem pole of possibility, they're so low they're practically underground—ideas that were forgotten by their own creators before they even had a chance to become anything more. Their own fear of disappearing entirely is the only thing that keeps them going…or was. Apparently, Maleficent figured out how to take them across the boundary and give them some reality of their own. Earned their undying loyalty, I imagine."
"Gosh," Mickey breathed, flabbergasted. "There were thousands of those things! If those were just the ones that look like sea creatures, I hate to think how many there are altogether!"
"Now, don't jump to any conclusions," warned Oswald. "The forms they had when they attacked you didn't really belong to them." He snorted derisively. "They should be so lucky! Dispirations don't normally look like anything—remember, they're only a hair away from total non-existence. I'm guessing Maleficent sent them after you and gave them bodies fit for the job. Since you were underwater at the time, well, do the math. Not that there aren't a lot more of the things, of course."
Mickey nodded slowly, understanding why Maleficent had chosen such hollow things as her servants. An empty vessel can be filled with anything you want. At the same time, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of sympathy for the Dispirations, even though they were arrayed dangerously against him. There was nothing to them but their desperate yearning to exist; he couldn't even imagine what that must be like except to surmise that it redefined anguish.
"I think I've given you enough to think about," said Oswald. "You ready to go back?"
"You bet I am!" Mickey confirmed. "The others must be worried sick about me by now!"
"They'll have to wait a little longer, I'm afraid. You're still not completely recovered, on top of which you didn't sleep enough last night. I'll drop you off somewhere safe and comfy so you can catch a nap."
Catch a nap…it sounded so anti-climactic. "How do you know how much I slept last night?" Mickey asked suspiciously.
"There's not much you can hide from me, Mickey," said Oswald. "We're too much alike. All I have to do is ask myself what I'd do in your big yellow shoes. So promise me you'll get some decent rest before you go back to the hero stuff, okay?"
"But I can't just leave my friends hanging like that!"
"You don't give 'em enough credit. They can manage without you for a little while longer. Is it a promise?" He held out his right hand expectantly.
Mickey smiled warmly and met the hand with his own. "It's a promise." They shook. Instead of letting go, Oswald pulled Mickey to his feet.
"You may notice a slight sense of disorientation," he said mischievously. Then he raised his other hand and twisted it in a peculiar motion, and Mickey had the extraordinary sensation of moving at right angles to all three dimensions of space. Then he fell a short distance onto something soft and springy. He had time for a few impressions of soft lighting, rose-colored fabric, and a faint scent of old cigarette smoke before exhaustion and trauma caught up with him all at once and he dropped off to sleep.
"Donald, hurry!" Daisy squealed, unable to tear her eyes away from the horrific approach of the giant squid. "Get this thing moving! And find that repellent charge while you're at it!"
"I'm working on it!" came Donald's petulant response.
The leaf-shaped end of one tentacle slapped the side of the submarine, suckers the size of golf balls adhering to the glass of the portholes like some grotesque parody of a car-window decoration. As if on cue, the Sea Wolf's engines grumbled to life and the submarine began moving. Inertia kept the squid's huge body in place, and the relatively thin tentacle couldn't take the strain. It was forced to let go.
"Gawrsh, that was close!" Goofy sighed, flopping down into a seat with relief. The sub picked up speed rapidly.
"Don't look now, but I think it's going to be close again!" Daisy fretted, looking over the sonar screen. They were moving at nearly full speed, but a blip that could only be the squid—for it was fully as large as the submarine itself—was gaining on them by leaps and bounds.
"Take us up, Donald!" Minnie shrilled.
"I said I'm working on it!" Donald snapped.
The sub shuddered and lurched to one side as the squid caught up and immediately wound five or six monstrously powerful tentacles around the hull. There was a groaning of buckling steel, almost immediately drowned out by the blaring of several alarms, and the cabin was bathed in unnerving red light. Goofy yelped in fright at the sight of an eye the size of a basketball, peering in through a porthole. The eye moved off, and a moment later, a hideous beak, large enough to bite a man right in half, snapped and gouged at the glass.
"Man the torpedoes!" Goofy hollered. The metal of the Sea Wolf's armored hull squealed again under the fantastic pressure, and several rivets popped out of their seams. But no leaks…yet.
"Aha!" Donald crowed from the operator's platform. "I've got an even better idea! Take this, octopus boy!"
He flicked a row of switches, and almost at once, a sizzling sound arose from every part of the submarine's shell. Minnie, standing too close to the wall, received a light shock as a thread of electricity leaped free from its channel.
The squid's grip loosened, and the noise of warping metal ceased, but the colossal mollusk remained wrapped around the submarine and continued hammering at the porthole with its fearsome beak. "Better give it more power, Donald!" Daisy called over the persistent hollering of the alarms.
"You got it, toots!" he replied, seeming almost to enjoy himself as he raised the voltage. And maybe he was; there had to be some satisfaction in taking his anger out on a wholly deserving target.
The sizzling noise increased, accompanied by cracks, thunderclaps in miniature, as more sparks lanced from the walls, attracted to the interior of the cabin by the salt water flooding the floor. The passengers scurried for any refuge they could find from the flying charges. Still the giant squid did not release the Sea Wolf, though it let out enough slack to put some distance between the main mass of its body and the electrified hull.
"It's still not enough!" Minnie worried. "But if Donald turns it up any higher, we'll get fried in here!"
"Maybe not," said Daisy. "Goofy, when you were looking for the diving suit, did you see anything like an inflatable raft?"
"I think so—yipe!" Goofy answered, jumping as a flare of electricity stung his backside.
"Great! Grab it and blow it up! We'll use it as insulation!"
Goofy sloshed through the sodden cabin to the increasingly chaotic heap of equipment and found the compact cube of folded rubber sheeting. "Got it!" he announced, giving the ripcord a yank. With a resounding POP, the raft expanded, propelling Goofy backward into the wall, where he suffered quite a jolt from the current coursing through the submarine's shell. Meanwhile, the squid was acclimating to the voltage and moving in close again.
Minnie, Daisy, and Pluto climbed into the inflated raft, which occupied most of the width of the cabin, and clustered as close to the center as they could. After a moment, Goofy recovered enough to join them, much singed and frizzled.
"Donald!" Daisy called out. "Crank up the juice as high as it'll go and step on the gas!"
"Aye, aye!" Donald responded eagerly, turning the repellent field up to maximum power, all in one go. The passengers in the raft gasped, startled, and crouched as low as they could while bolts of electricity arced overhead. It had the desired effect, though—the severe and abrupt increase in power was more than the squid could take, and it dropped the sub like a hot potato, its tentacles curling in pain. Donald gunned the engines, and the Sea Wolf sped away and upward toward the freedom and safety of the surface.
After a moment, the squid recovered and began to follow, but its pursuit was sluggish, as though it were reluctant to risk another bad shock. It lagged behind as the submarine rose up through clearer and brighter water and finally emerged into the air with a great rocking motion and an accompanying splash.
Almost at once, the numerous alarms quieted and the interior lighting returned to normal. The Sea Wolf's forward motion was slow and absolutely steady. And the cabin had returned to being a small and simple seating area, with no sign that it had ever been part of a functioning submarine. The raft and all other marine paraphernalia had vanished, and the only water on the floor was a thin sheen of chlorine-scented dampness.
And if all that didn't clinch it, the view out the portholes on both sides was of an animatronic sea serpent with a very silly expression.
"Hey, we're back!" Goofy observed.
"Wonderful!" Daisy exulted. "Let's get out of this tin can!"
Without even bothering to exit the artificial cave, Donald brought the Sea Wolf to a stop and opened the hatch so they could all climb out into the fresh—and, more importantly, dry—air. Pluto carried the Rocket Crown, gripping it gingerly in his teeth. Then it was a simple matter to get onto a maintenance catwalk and follow it to a door leading out of the cave.
"I don't miss this ride anymore," Minnie sighed as she stepped back onto the solid ground of Tomorrowland.
"So what now?" asked Daisy.
"Now," said Donald, "we look for Mickey. Anyone got a problem with that?"
No one did.
To Be Continued…
