Crowns of the Kingdom
Chapter 14: All Together Now
It was not the first time Mickey had walked the length of Main Street without another living soul in sight. He had often done so after closing, with the bustle of the day still making itself known in the scent of popcorn lingering on the evening breeze and in the discarded park maps that gathered around the bases of the antique gas lamps. Or else in the twilit hours before the morning shift arrived to prepare for Disneyland's opening, when the air was still and cool and the dew was heavy on the shrubbery, and there was not a sound to break the expectant silence save for the distant twittering of a flock of early-rising sparrows.
Needless to say, he'd never done it in broad daylight. Open or closed, Main Street had never been empty between sunrise and sunset. There were always maintenance workers replacing light bulbs. Or gardeners pruning hedges. Or Imagineers and management types evaluating the present and planning for the future. For the boulevard to be so completely devoid of activity was simply wrong, on a fundamental level—it was meant to be Everytown, not a ghost town!
He might have felt better picking up his pace, the sooner to reach the end of the eerie avenue. But his mind was swamped with thoughts, leaving no brainpower to spare for things like choosing a walking speed. His legs were on autopilot, moving at the friendly amble he usually favored.
Where to go from here? He kept coming up blank. Reuniting with the rest of the Sensational Six was a priority, of course, but he couldn't determine whether it would be more sensible to go looking for them, or to wait at Central Plaza for them to find him. He was taking to heart Oswald's assertion that they could manage without him for a little while, but he still hated to think that they might be in trouble while he twiddled his thumbs. He should at least, he decided, go back to the last place he had seen them—or as near to it as he could manage—and wait, if wait he must, a little closer to the likely site of the action. He bore right as he approached Central Plaza, veering toward the Tomorrowland entrance.
An enormous pile of books and loose papers and vaguely scientific-looking instruments was shuffling toward him on a pair of webbed feet. "Professor von Drake?" Mickey asked.
A book standing, against all odds, upright on the front of the heap swung gently outward like a door turning on a hinge, and Ludwig von Drake stuck his tousled head through the resultant opening. "Oh, there you are, Mickey! I been lookin' all over the place for you! You not gonna believe all the stuff I been findin' out!"
"Any chance it can wait a couple of hours?" asked Mickey, but von Drake was prattling on.
"I thought it was just time and space that was gettin' all twisted around by Maleficent's magical hijinks, but it turns out there's a lot more goin' on! Now, you gonna have to sit down for a while, 'cause this is gonna get technical…" He dropped the items he was carrying and rummaged a slide projector and screen out of the mess, and in a matter of seconds, Mickey found himself sitting on a folding chair while von Drake stabbed at complex diagrams with an academic pointer and strung incomprehensible polysyllables together by the dozen.
"Say, Professor," said Mickey conversationally, "you know who would find all this really fascinating?"
"NO INTERRUPTING THE LECTURER!!!" the duck bellowed, whirling around suddenly and hurling a blackboard eraser with such force that it singed Mickey's head fur as he barely dodged it. "How many times I gotta tell you kids…" He stopped, blinked, and chuckled. "Whoops! Sorry about that there, Mickey; I thought I was back at the university for a second over here. You were saying…?"
"I was saying, you know who would be better to explain all this to than me?"
"No, who?"
"Merlin! I've been having him do research into the magical side of all this in his library. If the two of you put your heads together, you should have this situation completely analyzed in no time!"
Von Drake's face contorted with outrage. "Merlin? Merlin?!" he sneered. "Are you nuts? Putting important research in the hands of that pointy-hatted magical kook? You need a scientific mind for that kind of work!"
Mickey kept studiously silent throughout the rant. Merlin was every bit as scientifically minded as Ludwig von Drake—in some respects more so, in fact—but the Professor had little patience for magic as a rule, since he couldn't further his understanding of it by dissecting it under a microscope. Science thrives on details, on careful, rigidly analytical control…but magic follows nebulous generalities and defies strict categorization.
"Put our heads together," von Drake continued in a disgusted tone. "Absotively not! Under no circumstances will I work with no crazy silly hoity-toity magic wizard sorcerer guy!"
"Are you sure?" said Mickey. "I mean, I can understand if you don't think you can add anything useful to what he's already done, but…"
"Anything useful?" von Drake practically exploded. "Well, what do you think all this is over here?" He gestured emphatically with the pointer at his books and things. "You know what I'm gonna do? I'll tell you what I'm gonna do! I'm gonna march right in there and give that Merlin a piece of my magnificent mind, that's what I'm gonna do! I'll show him what's useful!" And with that, he swept up his paraphernalia and marched off toward Fantasyland, papers escaping from the armload every few steps.
Mickey blew a sigh of relief. Professor von Drake was eccentric as all get-out, but also genuinely brilliant, and with that kind of person, there is always the risk that they will see right through reverse psychology.
Suddenly it occurred to him that the nutty academician wasn't the only one with valuable information concerning the park's crisis. Indecision had his head swinging between Sleeping Beauty Castle and the Tomorrowland gate for a moment before he made up his mind: much as it pained him to leave his nearest and dearest hanging as to his fate after the undersea attack, getting all the pieces of the puzzle together had to come first. He followed the trail of fugitive documents, picking them up as he went in case they were important. Any presentation of the Professor's inevitably included more unnecessary tangents than relevant material, but you never knew which was which just by looking at them.
As he was stooping to collect the last of the dropped papers, he heard approaching voices from the vicinity of the Alice in Wonderland ride. He straightened up and looked in the direction of the sound…and his eyes ran smack into Minnie's.
Minnie felt the ground drop out from under her feet—not because she was falling, but because she was flying. The joy was so sudden and so profound that it was almost indistinguishable from terror, which also shortens the breath and speeds the heart.
She never should have doubted him.
"…Mickey?…" she half-whispered, even though she knew, without testing, that it was really him. It was just one of those things you were supposed to say in a situation like this.
"Hi, Minnie, fellas," Mickey said as though nothing much was wrong. But then, for him it wasn't. Because he hadn't spent the past few hours uncertain as to whether he was even alive. An irritated fury rose in Minnie, but it was mixed with so much relief and elation and humor and sheer love that by the time it came out, it did so in the form of her running across the yards that separated them and flinging herself at Mickey with a laughing sob.
"I was so afraid I'd never see you again!" she wailed.
Mickey chuckled—he chuckled—and said, "Aw, shucks, Minnie. You know I'll always come back to ya. No matter what." He returned her embrace, murmured, "I missed you too," and she hugged him harder and doused him with kisses.
"See, Minnie? I told you," said Daisy.
"Hey, Mickey, save some of that for me!" said Goofy, lumbering forward and encircling both mice in his long arms. Within seconds, Mickey was at the center of a ferociously exuberant group hug, contending with not only more arms than there was room for around his torso, but Donald's knuckles on the crown of his head, Pluto's slobbering tongue on his face, and Goofy's big clumsy feet pretty much everywhere.
"Okay, fellas, settle down," said Mickey after several minutes of this. "I'm glad to see all of you too, but I was on my way to Merlin's library to tell him and Professor von Drake some important stuff I found out about Inpotentia." He stooped to retrieve the papers, which he had dropped when Minnie rushed him. "Of course, you're welcome to come with me…"
"You bet we are!" said Donald. "We're not letting you out of our sight again!"
"We've got things to tell too," Daisy added.
Mickey started, nearly dropping the papers again. "Oh my gosh! The Rocket Crown! Do you have it?"
Minnie's spirits, so quickly raised upon reuniting with Mickey, dropped again just as quickly. "Oh, no…" she moaned. "I think we left it on the Monorail!"
"No we didn't!" said Goofy brightly. "I grabbed it just before we bailed out!" He started patting his pockets. "And then I put it…uh…nope, that's my wallet…well, shucks, I must have it around here somewhere…"
"Maybe it fell out when we landed," Daisy suggested. "Donald and I will go check." She grabbed her boyfriend's hand and unceremoniously hauled him back toward the Matterhorn.
Mickey sighed. "Bailed out of the Monorail, huh? Sounds like you guys have been up to some crazy stuff without me."
"It's a long story," said Minnie. "I should probably save it for the library, since we're going there anyway."
There was a pause, during which Mickey stroked Pluto's head and Goofy, in his search for the Rocket Crown that he still hadn't ruled out being on his person, resorted to removing his shoes and peering into them.
"Mickey, did you really tell Merlin and Ludwig von Drake to work together? You know they don't get along."
"Desperate times, Minnie," Mickey said airily.
Donald and Daisy returned at that point, Daisy waving the crown and beaming. "Got it! It was on top of the awning where Goofy landed." How the petite duck had been able to reach that high was evident in the irritated scowl on Donald's face…and the imprint of a high-heeled pump on his forehead.
"That's a relief," said Minnie. "It's a good thing you found it before those little robots did."
"Little robots?" Mickey repeated.
"You'll find out soon enough," said Minnie. "Let's go."
The entrance to Merlin's library was located in the Fantasyland courtyard, appropriately in the vicinity of King Arthur's Carrousel. Where the library itself was located, Mickey had no idea, because getting there involved traveling under the pavement, down a straight hallway with no detectable grade, and then arriving at a largish, book-filled room with a picture window that overlooked rolling pastureland from a height of about four stories. In addition to the obvious books and scrolls, the library contained alchemical equipment that saw almost constant use, occult items from around the world that were never used (at least by Merlin), and a small pot-bellied stove whose primary function was heating water for tea.
When the Sensational Six got there, it also contained a ferocious row, the Battle of the Century between Magic and Science. At first, Mickey couldn't make out the words, but after listening for a moment, he realized that there were no words, not if you accepted that the purpose of words was to convey ideas. In the few minutes between Professor von Drake's arrival and that of the Six, the argument had started, escalated, and degenerated into something that was no longer even a pretense of honest communication. The two smartest, wisest, most educated members of the Disney Family were hurling insults at each other. They sounded like kindergarteners who had somehow gotten hold of a thesaurus.
"Mountebank!"
"Automaton!"
"Fluff-brained fairy-tale freak!"
"Conceited, cantankerous, collegiate crumbwit! Ha! That's four alliterative terms in a row, sir!"
Thus went the battle between Magic and Science. On his perch in one corner of the room, Common Sense sighed more deeply and rolled his eyes more severely with every exchange. Mickey got the distinct impression that Archimedes had already tried to talk the two scholars out of their spat, and given up.
"Oh, Uncle Ludwig," Donald muttered.
There was something else alive in the library. Pluto, performing a routine sniff of the premises, suddenly took alarm and retreated to a safe position behind Mickey's legs. A moment later, the thing he had discovered scampered out of its hiding place and sauntered over to investigate the newcomers, making a cooing noise.
The creature was cat-sized and approximately fox-shaped, with dark blue-grey fur covering most of its body. Its front legs, though, were scaly. And it had wings. It looked a bit like one of the less ugly sorts of gargoyles, or like something that might eventually result if a grey fox and a blue miniature dragon fell in love. It glanced up at Mickey with pale, friendly eyes and cooed again, then reared up on its hind paws, and suddenly the image was overwhelmingly of a mishmash monster from a heraldic shield. But cute.
"Well, hi there, little fella," said Mickey, patting the animal on the head. "Where did you come from?" Pluto whined uncertainly.
Near-silence fell in the library as the feuding sages took notice of the new arrivals and realized in whose presence they had been bickering. "Oh, good heavens," Merlin breathed.
"There, you see?" said Archimedes, flying over to a table near the door. "I told you you'd end up making fools of yourselves."
"I am dreadfully sorry you, er, had to see that," said Merlin. "And I'm certain Professor von Drake agrees with me on that point, at least." Von Drake nodded vigorously, so profoundly chagrinned that he was, for once, speechless.
"Who's this little guy, Merlin?" asked Daisy. "He's awful cute."
"Oh, I see you've met Hypatia," the wizard replied. "Actually, Daisy, he is, in fact, a she—at least all, er, readily observable aspects point in that direction."
"How long have you had her?" asked Mickey.
"I don't recall exactly, but let's call it…oh, four and a half hours. The Good Fairies found her wandering about and brought her to me for study. All I have been able to ascertain so far, however, is that she's a very talented shapeshifter. She wasn't half so charming as this when they brought her here; looked rather like some sort of abyssal crustacean."
"A deep-sea lobster," Archimedes translated.
"Yes, thank you, Archimedes."
"Wait a minute," Minnie interjected. "Did you just say that four hours ago, this—she—Hypatia—looked like a lobster?"
"Four and a half hours ago, actually, but yes. As I recall, Archimedes was a bit skeptical about what use such a creature could be to Maleficent. That was before she started changing shape, you see."
"She's a Dispiration!" Mickey announced.
"A what?" von Drake scoffed from the background, where he was setting up his slide projector. "Now who's making up words to confuse everybody over there?"
"A Dispiration," Mickey repeated more calmly. "That's what I came here to tell you. Maleficent is using them as her servants, and there are a lot more where this one came from." He shuddered, driving down memories of slashing claws and lashing tentacles. "They attacked me…I was lucky to get away. You shouldn't let her run loose in here!"
Merlin shrugged. "She's been perfectly well behaved ever since she arrived. I was beginning to think the Good Fairies were wrong after all about her being under Maleficent's control."
The Sensational Six exchanged doubtful looks, unsure how to respond to that. "It must be a trick" came to mind, but it rang false in consideration of Merlin's wisdom and perceptiveness. It was Goofy who came up with: "But why would a servant of Maleficent's suddenly come across all friendly-like?"
"Now that I can't say," said Merlin. "I can only speculate that she's taken a liking to me for some reason…and to all of you, it seems. But why don't you have some seats and tell, er, Professor von Drake and myself more about these Dispirations? I'll put on some tea. Blacky, take notes." As the Six settled into various hard-backed chairs, a broad easel-mounted chalkboard leaning against the wall sprang to attention, several pieces of chalk leaping off the tray and hovering in midair, poised to write.
"I guess I'll start," said Mickey, and he cleared his throat and began recounting what had happened to him since his undersea ordeal. At first, he stumbled over his words, distracted by the sight of the chalk sticks wagging about with no visible means of support—to say nothing of the frequent gasps of astonishment from his audience—but he soon got used to both. Von Drake was taking notes also, scribbling furiously on two clipboards at a time and running a tape recorder.
"Most fascinating!" Merlin said when Mickey had finished. "To think that Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is still in some sense a force to be reckoned with."
"I can't believe you actually went to Inpotentia and didn't hate it," said Daisy.
"It's an unpredictable place…or whatever it is," said Mickey. "Well, it's you guys' turn. What happened to you after we got separated?"
They told the story piecemeal, different members of the group chiming in with tidbits as things came up. Mickey listened with disturbed fascination to his friends' description of the sea of swirling colors that held sway outside the park, dissolving anything that drifted too far out into it. He cringed at their account of the methodical persistence with which the robotic Dispirations attacked them, so unlike the savagery that had typified them when they were sea creatures—no wonder Pluto was so wary of Merlin's little fox-dragon, for all its apparent affability. He must have smelled out what she was right away.
"Excellent, excellent. I must thank you all," said Merlin as the recap came to a close. "This information shall be most helpful in analyzing the situation—what say you, Professor?"
Von Drake chortled merrily. "Helpful? It's better than helpful, you crazy old conjurer—it proves my theory is correct!" He whooped with excitement and began digging through his pile of books and scientific instruments. "Just you kids stick around while I crunch a few numbers, and I'll have a minutely detailed and completely accurate theoretical model for you, and then we can—" Something on his person buzzed, and he broke off and removed a small timepiece from his pocket. "Oh, would you look at that? It's lunchtime." Changing gears instantaneously, the Professor sat down on a handy stack of tomes, whipped out a hero sandwich, and began chewing away without another word, leaving the Sensational Six feeling somewhere between bowled over and brushed aside.
Merlin was a little flustered himself. "I suppose we could all do with a short break," he said.
"Not me," Mickey averred. "I just came off a long one. Come to think of it, I should get the Rocket Crown over to the Castle A.S.A.P."
"I'll come with you," said Minnie. "I agree with Donald about not letting you out of our sight."
Mickey chuckled. "Sounds fair. How about the rest of you?"
"I don't know about the rest of you, but I definitely want to see this," said Daisy. "As you may recall, I missed it the first time."
"We'll all go!" Goofy said brightly. "We're a team, ain't we?"
"I just hope jumping ahead in time ten years doesn't interfere with your research," said Mickey.
"If it does, we shall certainly adapt," Merlin assured him, escorting them to the exit. "And speaking of adaptation, I urge you not to worry about Hypatia. Even if she was a servant of Maleficent's at one point, she doesn't appear to be any longer. I have seen no evidence that she retains any evil tendencies at all."
"You'd better be right, you crazy old codger," Donald muttered.
For the event itself, they actually were two "teams." Daisy wanted to watch the placement of the Rocket Crown from the ground, where she could stand back far enough not to have to crane her neck, and she possessively insisted Donald stand there with her. Goofy gave up on trooping up to the Castle roof the first time he tripped over his feet in the confined space of the walk-through attraction and bounced down half a flight of stairs.
That left Mickey, Minnie, and Pluto to make the trek past the dioramas telling the story of Sleeping Beauty. At one point, Pluto paused to snort scornfully at a miniature figure of Maleficent threatening King Stefan's court. As they ascended, Mickey's pace slowed.
"You're not getting tired, are you?" Minnie ribbed him. "I thought you said you just came off a long break."
Mickey stopped altogether and sat down on the stairs. "It's not that," he said distantly. "It's…I didn't mention this before, but…I saw Walt again."
Minnie sobered instantly. "Oh. I see." She sat beside her boyfriend. Pluto made a supportive gesture of his own, lying down and resting his chin on Mickey's shoes.
"He looked so old," Mickey continued. "And it made me realize that, after this, he'll be gone again, and…maybe we should wait, spend some more time with him first, before we move ahead to 1975."
"Part of me wants to say that's a good idea," said Minnie, "but most of me knows better. If Professor von Drake is right about Disneyland disconnecting from reality—and I don't doubt it after riding the Monorail outside and seeing that outside isn't even there—then we have to stop it while we can. Otherwise, we're playing right into Maleficent's hands."
"I know," said Mickey with a sigh. "That doesn't mean I have to like it. Thanks for listening."
She leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "You're welcome."
They continued up the stairs and finally emerged on the main balcony of the Castle, between the two towers flanking the drawbridge. To their right, the Mouseketeer Crown sparkled reassuringly. In Central Plaza below, Daisy hollered and waved. Minnie waved back.
Mickey turned to face the tallest tower, around which the Rocket Crown belonged, and sized it up, extending his thumb and squinting along his arm. He brought out the crown and turned it over in his hands, carefully planning the force and angle of his toss. The sensation of urgency, of years demanding to be freed, though less intense than it had been in the Mouseketeer Crown, was still present, and distracting. But at the same time, it was encouraging. As before, the crown suddenly seemed to grow feather-light, and Mickey released it, and it rose up through the air in a steep parabolic arc and settled over the spire.
To Be Continued…
A/N: Once again, I must offer a sincere apology for the lateness of this update. I blame all the usual suspects: writer's block, distractions from other writing projects, the general busy-ness of life. To make matters worse, I don't even like this chapter all that much. But we got the reunion scene out of it, at least, and I can console myself with the fact that there's lots of fun stuff coming up in the next few chapters. If things go as planned, you can expect more humor and light-heartedness to balance out the gut-wrenching drama I've been perpetrating in these past few chapters. The second half of the 1960's saw the debut of some of the most famous—and infamous—rides ever to be installed at Disneyland, and I intend to play around with them.
Again, thanks for your patience while I slowly ground this chapter out. I will make every effort to make the next update quicker, I promise.
—Karalora
