Crowns of the Kingdom
Chapter 16: Walking Through Memories
Nearly all animals sleep, and many dream. What distinguishes human beings from other creatures is that their dreams spill over into their waking lives, where they are more easily remembered and, most importantly, under the dreamers' conscious control. Moreover, humankind has a peculiar obsession with both nocturnal and waking dreams, with analyzing them, interpreting them…and with realizing them. In every human dream is a seed of potential for changing the world, and this potentiality gives all such dreams a measure of power.
That which inspires dreams, then, serves as a nexus of raw possibility. And if the nexus itself is the product of intense dreaming, a positive feedback cycle is created, and the power increases exponentially.
As everyone knows, power corrupts—not inevitably, but predictably enough to make the saying trite. But that is only half the story. Power not only corrupts, it can be corrupted. There is no dream so pure that it cannot have the elements of nightmare introduced. And some dreams, already skirting the line between pleasant flights of fancy and dreadful phantasms, are inherently susceptible to this kind of pollution.
Every good adventure contains a dose of danger. But as the danger increases, it shades into horror, and no one can say for sure where the line is…
And so the Dispirations spread throughout Disneyland, adapting themselves seamlessly to the themed lands and attractions. Soon the jungles of Adventureland were teeming with deadly constrictor snakes, venomous spiders, and other insidious animals. Fantasyland was invaded by malicious goblins and other loathsome creatures of myth and folklore. The pristine wilderness of Frontierland was tainted by the presence of rabid coyotes, demons from Indian legends, and poisonous walking cacti. Tomorrowland again had savage fish swimming the lagoon and rogue robots lurking in its high-tech buildings and highways. In New Orleans Square, a creeping fog populated the avenues and back alleys with eldritch voodoo spirits and hungry alligators.
Not that a casual passer-through would have been aware of any of them. Stealth and cunning were practices that came easily to the Dispirations, which were used to going without notice—it was, after all, the whole reason for their charade of existence. They kept scrupulously to the shadows and the alcoves and the hidden places, gorging themselves on the bounty of the park's creative energy in private, growing stronger by the minute.
Lying in wait.
Merlin, like most practitioners of the magical arts, did not believe in mere coincidence. That was how he knew Professor von Drake and himself had gotten it exactly right.
He had never made a formal study of the subject, but his own experiences had always suggested that valuable insights were primarily a matter of serendipity. One could encourage them through various mental exercises, but ultimately it was very much a matter of chance whether one had the right idea at the right time. This meant, fortunately, that time itself was the best cure for a mental block. Even, perhaps, if the mind in question did not perceive the time passing.
Such was his conjecture, anyway. All he knew for sure was that his efforts at analyzing the precise metaphysical nature of Disneyland's transformation had been proceeding sluggishly until, like a lightning bolt to the corpus callosum, ten years' worth of scholarly inspiration had poured into his brain. And in a virtual instant, everything had come together.
Time. Space. Matter. Energy. Spirit. Magic. Thought… All at once, the connections between them had become clear, and almost without planning to, Merlin had picked up his chalk and drawn an elegantly simple diagram on Blacky.
And then he had glanced across the room, intending to get von Drake's attention, only to see that the eccentric duck had drawn an identical diagram on his giant pad of graph paper.
Ludwig von Drake, like most experts in quantum mechanics, did not believe in mere coincidence either.
The two sages' eyes met. Without a word passing between them, they realized the full significance of their mutual discovery.
"So then," said Merlin after a moment's silence, "we'd better get this information back to Mickey."
"You took the words right out of my beak," said von Drake.
It wasn't a detailed plan. In the opinions of some, this fact made it not much of a plan at all. But Mickey was used to flying by the seat of his distinctive red shorts, and he had learned that the details were always the first thing to go if a plan needed altering, which they usually did.
And in any case, the simplicity of this plan was part of its beauty. Mickey chided himself for not thinking of it sooner, for being so focused on protecting the Disney Family that he had forgotten one very important thing: many of the characters involved were more than capable of protecting themselves, and each other. In his adamant conviction to be responsible for them, he had sold them all short. Well, no more! Disneyland was home to all of them, and they would all have a hand in defending it from Maleficent's spiteful depredations, to the extent that they were able.
Of course, they weren't all currently present to hear him. He would have to fix that before he got all geared up to give a big speech. But collecting the absentees would take time, and he hadn't quite decided how to approach that aspect yet. On the one hand, though they were variously too loyal, too proud, or too stubborn to admit it, he knew the rest of the Sensational Six had to be completely exhausted after everything they had gone through in retrieving the Rocket Crown—they hadn't had the benefit of a nap in Walt's apartment between then and now. The sun was getting low, and it was tempting just to tell everyone to meet back up in the morning, as he had after placing the Mouseketeer Crown. But he was leery of doing nothing for that length of time, of giving Maleficent and her Dispirations a whole night (the most powerful time for Evil) to continue their own insidious plans unopposed.
But he would have to come to a decision soon. The latest reunion was starting to run out of steam; the gathering was threatening to break up. And that in and of itself helped Mickey work out the next five minutes. If the characters were already getting into a mind to go about their business, making them wait around while their more secretive fellows were collected would only…well, it wouldn't be a very popular move. They would get bored, and annoyed, and restless, when Mickey needed them focused and gung-ho.
He whistled for attention. "I'll make this as quick as I can. Maleficent's escalating things faster than the gang and I can keep up by ourselves. She's recruited an army of creatures from Inpotentia—shapeshifters called Dispirations—and they've been such a threat to us that I hate to think what would happen if they came after any of you, and you were unprepared. So I need all of you to start taking your defense into your own hands. Now it's battle stations."
He paused to let his words sink into their ears. A quiet murmur of alarm arose and spread, but Mickey had been expecting that. He let them get the initial rush out of their collective system, then started speaking again before it could get out of hand. "I know not all of you are fighters, but if we're smart about this, those who are will more than make up for those who aren't."
"I must say, I am looking forward to turning the tables on that blighter Maleficent," said Robin Hood, stepping to the front of the assembly. "What's our strategy, Mickey?"
"I'm leaving that mostly up to you folks," Mickey replied. "You all know your own strengths and limitations better than I do. Just remember: as always, safety is our Number One priority. I don't want anyone so eager to be a hero that they go looking for trouble."
"Aw, he's takin' all the fun out of it," muttered a deep, drawling voice from somewhere in the crowd. Mickey couldn't tell whether it was Baloo, Little John, or Thomas O'Malley speaking—both the voice and the laid-back attitude could have belonged to any of the three.
"In the meantime," Mickey continued, brushing off the not-so-serious complaint, "I need a few of you to travel around the park, find any stragglers, and get them together with the rest of us. I don't want anyone left out…even if they normally prefer to be reclusive. To get it done as quickly and efficiently as possible, let's have three small teams that can move fast and be persuasive if necessary. I think—"
He broke off as something with blunt claws pawed at his legs from behind. Assuming it was Pluto, he turned to gentle scold the dog, only to see that his assailant was much smaller than his beloved pet…and not quite as canine. In fact it was Merlin's tame Dispiration, the little winged fox creature…what was her name? Hydrangea?
"Uh…can I help you?" he asked as a murmur of puzzlement spread among the watching characters. Mickey was suddenly abnormally self-conscious. There was something very awkward about talking casually to a friendly Dispiration—probably the one-and-only friendly one—just after expounding on the inordinate danger posed by Dispirations. That his audience didn't know Hypatia (Aha, that was her name!) was a Dispiration was no comfort—they knew she was something suspiciously unfamiliar, at any rate, and they would find out she was a Dispiration as soon as someone thought to ask one of the Sensational Six.
Hypatia, meanwhile, was tugging at the hem of Mickey's shorts with her teeth and making insistent whining sounds, and he was pretty sure she wasn't merely begging for snacks. "Listen, folks," he addressed the bemused characters. I have to take care of this, and I'm not sure how long it'll take. Minnie and Donald, you two can organize the three search-and-retrieval teams. Daisy, I think you should probably come with me. If this is about what I think it is, we might need your insight."
"Oh, of course!" Daisy replied, flouncing forward.
"Lead the way, Hypatia," said Mickey. The little creature yapped and bounded back toward Fantasyland, fluttering her wings every few steps. Mickey and Daisy followed, as their significant others stepped up to take charge of the gathering.
The noise of the crowd seemed to fade unnaturally quickly as they passed under the archway of Sleeping Beauty's Castle. Mickey glanced over his shoulder—Central Plaza looked slightly faded too, as though there were a light mist covering the area. He paused, blinking, but the hub had gone back to its normal appearance, leaving Mickey to wonder whether he had, perhaps, only imagined the haziness.
"Mickey? Aren't you coming?" said Daisy from about twenty feet ahead of him.
"Whoops! Sorry about that; I got a little distracted," said Mickey, hurrying to catch up.
When they arrived at Merlin's library, the wizard and his scientist colleague had cleared enough floor space to give some kind of presentation. Merlin's animated blackboard stood at one end of the space, along with a second easel holding a jumbo-sized pad of graph paper, and the same image was marked on both: a large circle divided vertically down the middle by an undulating line, with two smaller circles nestled into the waves of the line, one on each side. It looked slightly like a yin-yang, an impression that was enhanced by the double drawing: one in white chalk on the black slate, the other in black ink on white paper. The two scholars themselves were arranging a few hard-seated chairs at the other end of the space.
"Excellent work, Hypatia!" said Merlin, eliciting a chirrup from the vulpine Dispiration. "You'll get a treat for this. Mickey—oh, and Daisy too, I see—have a seat. You'll be pleased to know that Professor von Drake and myself have cracked the mystery surrounding Disneyland's exact status."
"I figured as much," Mickey grinned. "What's with the two drawings?"
"Extraordinary, isn't it?" said Merlin. "Believe it or not, the Professor and I drew these simultaneously, without consulting one another at all. At least not consciously, though I have wondered if, perhaps, the unique nature of our research allowed for a certain amount of telepathic resonance…but I digress. Professor, if you would join me?"
The two sages moved to the twin displays, wielding academic pointers, and launched their explanation.
"Forgive us for not labeling these diagrams more clearly," said Merlin, gesturing with his pointer at von Drake's drawing, which was the slightly clearer of the two, and less likely to smudge. "The large circle you see here represents, well, everything. This wavy line is the boundary between reality as we know it on the one side, and Inpotentia on the other. The line is wavy rather than straight because reality and Inpotentia interact in many ways, not all of them straightforward by any means. Are you following so far?"
"Seems pretty clear," Daisy agreed. "What are the two smaller circles?"
Professor von Drake broke in, jabbing with his own pointer at the upper of the two circles, which was on the side of the "reality as we know it" side of the diagram. "This," he said dramatically, "is Disneyland as it ought to be and usually is—firmly anchored on the real world side of things, but in close contact with Inpotentia. That's why so many terrifical ideas in entertainment get their start here." He began speaking more quickly, waving the pointer back and forth across the diagram. "But the thing you gotta remember is, before they exist in reality, all ideas half-exist on the other side, in Inpotentia. And as your encounter with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit showed, some ideas go back over there after they been mostly forgotten over here. That means which side of this line an idea sits on depends mostly on its location along the axis of the fourth dimension, which, as everyone knows, is Time. And that's why, when Maleficent started messing with Disneyland's timestream, she was also messing with this boundary over here, between reality and Inpotentia."
"Wait a minute," Mickey half-interrupted, "if the top circle is Disneyland in the real world, but sitting right alongside Inpotentia, does that mean the bottom circle is Disneyland the other way around? Has the park been moved to Inpotentia?"
"Yes and no," said Merlin. "It has been moved, but not in its original form. You see, Inpotentia is not quite real, being made up of everything that is, er, made-up. But Disneyland is a real place. And a truly real thing, by definition, cannot be contained within a realm of intangible ideas. Thus, the process of being transferred across the boundary caused the park to become overlaid with what you might call a spiritual reflection of itself, composed of some of the substance of Inpotentia. Rather like camouflage, actually, or a protective shell. The inner core of reality remains, but is inaccessible—the Disneyland that we can currently see and feel and interact with is, in a sense, an illusion."
Mickey blew, scratching his head as though he could etch the astounding information into his mind. It seemed incredible, but at the same time it made an odd sort of sense…
"How can it be an illusion?" Daisy wondered. "It certainly seems real enough…just like I remember it from the first time it was 1965—I mean, 1975."
"You're closer to the truth than you think, kiddo," said Professor von Drake. "It's not just like you remember it, it's just like everybody remembers it. If this old coot over here wants to call it a 'spiritual reflection,' that's his kooky business, but I would call it more of a composite memory. Over the years, all the millions and millions of people who have visited Disneyland have built up memories of the place, and of course a memory is just an idea about something that happened in the past! And what's the natural habitat of ideas? Inpotentia, that's what! And all those memories cluster together and overlap until you get something that looks hardly any different from the real thing…at least at first."
"That's it!" Mickey exclaimed, leaping out of his chair to the consternation of the other three. "That explains so much! Thanks, you two! Come on, Daisy, let's get back and tell the others!"
"But Mickey, I don't think they're finished!" she protested helplessly as the excited mouse grabbed her hand and hauled her bodily out of her own chair and out of the library. Merlin and von Drake were left blinking in their dusty wake.
"Oh, good heavens," Merlin said in an understated tone. There didn't seem to be anything else to say.
Every double agent eventually runs into a particular dilemma, one that has nothing to do with split loyalties. It is the question of whether, having just acquired some time-sensitive information of vital importance to one's allies, one should take it immediately to them, possibly risking discovery, or stay undercover in the hope of learning yet more of value. (For incomplete knowledge can be worse than no knowledge at all.)
The Queen of Hearts had decided on the first option. Better, she thought, a timely general warning than a more specific one that might arrive too late. The only difficulty lay in maneuvering her way out of the Villains' Lair without being intercepted: a significant challenge, as the Wonderland monarch was not built for stealth. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was against her nature not to crave attention.
As the furious arguing in the meeting hall began to give way to intense plotting, the Queen slowly sidled around the table, hoping the other villains were too absorbed in their discussion to notice the scraping of her chair against the stone floor. If she could manage to get herself parallel to the exit, it would be much easier for her to slip away without detection.
Her foot bumped against something under the table. It was Prince John, still curled into the fetal position and sucking away at his thumb, as he had been since shortly after he burst shrieking into the meeting hall. Ironically, it had been that pathetic display of running in panicked circles and moaning for his mother that had spurred the Villains into the frenzy of debate that was only just now settling down into some semblance of cooperation.
"I still say we should remain uninvolved entirely," Lady Tremaine was saying. "My daughters and I shall have no part of any scheme to oppose either Mickey Mouse or Maleficent."
"With all due ressspect, Madam," moaned Kaa the python, recently returned from his sojourn in Inpotentia, "you would not sssay that if you had ssspent even one sssecond ssstuck in that unssspeakable sssituation."
"You're too polite, scaly," grumped Madam Mim. "I think we all know the real reason Ms. Snooty here doesn't want to get involved."
"Do tell," Lady Tremaine said pointedly. It was the last part of the discussion the Queen of Hearts heard, because by that time, she had managed to slip out of the meeting hall and was hustling down the torchlit corridor outside.
So intent was she on fleeing the Lair that she completely failed to notice that she was being followed…not that she would have anyway. Her pursuers were as built for stealth as she wasn't. But they were also short of attention span, and long before she reached the foyer, they tired of the sport and decided to reveal themselves.
"Going somewhere, Your Majesty is?" said a pair of high, soft, slightly sibilant voices, differing in pitch by a minor fifth but otherwise identical.
The Queen of Hearts was so surprised that she literally jumped out of her shoes, leaving the prim red pumps empty on the floor until she crashed back down into them in a flurry of velvet skirts and wired petticoats. She recovered her composure as quickly as possible and immediately rounded on the twin Siamese cats grinning at her out of the dark space between the reach of two adjacent torches, bellowing like the Villain she technically was.
"CATS! Oh, so it's you two, is it? How dare you sneak up on me like that! I'll see your heads roll for it!"
Still grinning, completely unperturbed by her outburst, Si and Am sauntered forward out of the shadow, moving in eerie synchrony as they affectionately rubbed their hips and shoulders against the outlying regions of her gown. "What business is it of yours what I wish to do with my time, anyway?" the Queen continued huffily.
"What is meaning, 'business?'" asked one of the cats in the none-too-subtle Thai accent the two of them affected.
"Is seeming strange that Queen of Hearts would leave meeting," the other one continued.
"Villains maybe deciding very important things…" said the first.
"…but Queen not staying to hear."
"We wondering: why not?" they said in unison. The spooky dissonance created by the pitch interval between their voices reverberated across the stones of the hallway.
Shaking off intense feelings of being creeped out, the Queen of Hearts drew herself up to her full height and puffed herself out to her full girth, nearly filling the narrow corridor. "We have better things to do with our time then sit around listening to petty bickering," she said languidly, fanning herself with her heart-shaped scepter. "Whatever they decide in there, I'm sure it will be mentioned in the next issue of Villain's Week." She whirled around and began stomping down the hall once again, muttering "Cats," under her breath. She maintained her belligerent posture even after turning the next corner, in case Si and Am were still following her.
They weren't. They were strolling back toward the meeting hall, side-by-side in perfect tandem, wearing identical expressions of self-satisfaction. They considered mischief its own reward.
That the conspirators would probably be willing to pay them a handsome quantity of milk and sardines for the tidbit of knowledge they had just acquired…that was merely a bonus.
Worlds away (figuratively, but perhaps not figuratively enough), under the jewel-green canopy of the Adventureland jungle, another Villain-by-default was making himself comfortable in a hammock woven of palm leaves. Something was vaguely troubling him, like a nightmare that he couldn't quite remember. But under-ripe bananas before bedtime would do that. He folded his long, hairy arms behind his head and made a token attempt at dozing off.
Not five minutes later, he raised one hand and snapped his leathery fingers. "Music," he commanded brusquely.
The monkeys dutifully began singing: a slow tune, more like lounge music than jazz, but more suitable as a lullaby than the normal upbeat rhythms. One or two of them seemed a trifle off-key, but reprimanding them, King Louie decided, could wait until after his nap.
To Be Continued…
A/N: Three and a half months. I know. My soul is black with shame. I prostrate myself at my readers' collective feet and beg for forgiveness.
As a trivial consolation, I am opening up a Suggestion Box regarding this fanfic. The basic plot right up until the end is already determined, but there's plenty of room to fiddle with the details. What characters and attractions would you like to see showcased? If I can make it work with my overall vision (she said with that breed of arrogance peculiar to artists), I'm more than happy to Give My Public What It Wants.
Karalora
