Crowns of the Kingdom
Chapter 17: Teamwork and Dreamplay
No sooner had Mickey and Daisy emerged from the passage to Merlin's library than they found themselves dodging elephants. There was a moment of scuffling panic, of frantically sidestepping ponderous feet and swinging trunks, before the two were able to put some safe distance between themselves and the oblivious pachyderms, and then to take in the scene that the Fantasyland courtyard had become.
The area had never been so busy—not even on Opening Day, when there had been considerably more people present, but nowhere near as much frenetic activity. To call it "organized chaos" would do justice to neither organization nor chaos. It was more the case that some of the characters swarming the courtyard were engaged in structured endeavors, while others (mostly children) were at loose ends, and still others were floaters, moving from task to task to help out as needed, and keeping the kids out of everyone's way in the meantime. The aggregate effect was of a scaled-up beehive, complete with buzzing, wherein some of the bees were elephants.
Mickey got a better look at just what the elephants were doing. Something—a garrison or a watchtower or something of that nature—was being constructed on the roof of the eastern show building, and the giant creatures were functioning as living dumb-waiters, passing tools, building materials, and occasionally people from ground level to rooftop and back again. They were also, in the brief spans between deliveries, flirting with each other, which is the sort of thing that must be seen to be believed. Three ton animals with curving tusks and tree-trunk legs, giggling and coyly offering one another uprooted rosebushes…but it only stood to reason. The circus performers were all female, Colonel Hathi's troops all male, and the two herds only rarely had the opportunity to interact.
That they were interacting now meant that the search-and-retrieval operation was working. Mickey wondered who had been sent out. Peter Pan was conspicuously absent…
"Mickey," said Daisy sharply, giving him a nudge. "Don't we need to find the others and tell them what Merlin and Professor von Drake told us? I thought you were in a big hurry."
Mickey shot her a peeved glance, but she was right. He began making a circuit of the courtyard, trying to spot Minnie or Donald or even Goofy against the bustling backdrop.
Everywhere he looked were distractions. Someone had started up King Arthur's Carrousel for the amusement of the children, but the only rider at the moment was Skippy the rabbit, and his purpose seemed not to be amusement per se. He (or someone else) had attached a dozen half-inch steel washers dangling on strings to the outer rim of the Carrousel canopy, and the bold little rabbit was snatching valiantly at them as the ride spun, an expression of heroic determination on his youthful face. On the far side of the Carrousel, the Mad Tea Party platform had been co-opted as an intensely challenging swordplay practice arena. Prince Charming and Prince Philip were sparring furiously, scampering over the whirling plates and dodging cup handles as their blades met. On a broad stretch of walkway nearby, Lady Kluck was leading the Princesses in an impromptu lesson in women's self-defense. Across from them, the three Good Fairies were using their magic to make a floating three-dimensional image of Hypatia's original, lobster-like form, which Owl and the Dodo were examining with detached interest, speculating airily about the anatomy and habits of Dispirations. From time to time, someone would notice Mickey and Daisy and acknowledge them with a cheery wave, then go right back to whatever it was that they were doing.
"Well, wouldja look at that?" Mickey observed appreciatively. "Everyone's really stepping up here!"
"It's pretty impressive, all right," Daisy agreed. "I just wish…what are they doing up there, anyway?"
She was referring to the rooftop construction, which Mickey now realized was happening on both sides of the courtyard. It had been less obvious on the western show building because there were no elephants there. What there was instead was a familiar but unexpected person barking imperiously into a megaphone from the safety of the ground outside Snow White's Adventures.
"No, it's still not straight…a little more to the left—not my left, lad, your left! You two in the back, you call that a military fortification? We're dealing with shapeshifting monsters from beyond the limits o' reality as we know it, not a flock of capercaillies!"
Mickey opened his mouth to speak, but Daisy got there first: "Uncle Scrooge!" she exclaimed, flinging herself at the elder duck with semi-familial affection. "You made it!"
"Aye, lassie," he greeted her. "Donald himself came to my mansion and told me to get over to Fantasyland. It's a pickle we're in, all right, but I'm making myself useful." He paused to shout more instructions at the Dwarfs working on the roof. "I think these fellows have been too long down in their diamond mine. They don't know the first thing about setting up a defensive perimeter."
"How come you know so much about it?" Mickey asked.
"Necessity, my boy, pure necessity. I'd not have held onto my fortune so long if I didna know how to keep it safe, now, would I?"
"You said Donald told you to come here," said Daisy, steering the conversation back on track. "Where is he?"
"I presume he's still making the rounds back in Toontown. It's quite a few people that are left to evacuate, judging by the faces I'm seeing around here."
"How about Minnie and Goofy?" asked Mickey. "And Pluto?"
"I spotted Goofy as I was on my way here, loitering near the Matterhorn. I do believe he's stationed there to brief the newcomers from Tomorrowland as they arrive. If there are any, that is—I have my doubts about that. As for your bonnie lass and faithful hound, I don't know where they are. Of course, I havena been looking for them either."
"Well, thanks anyway," said Mickey. "At least we know where Donald and Goofy are. We'll leave you to your, uh, work." With that, he made a beckoning gesture to Daisy, and the two of them ambled away, continuing their casual circuit of the courtyard.
"So now what?" asked Daisy.
Mickey made a noncommittal shrug. "Obviously, we have to wait for everyone to get back before we can do anything else."
The duck pursed her beak. "How long is that gonna take? We don't even have the faintest idea where Minnie and Pluto are."
"I have a hunch, actually," said Mickey. "I told Minnie and Donald to organize the search-and-retrieval teams, remember? But it looks like Donald assigned himself to one of them. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Minnie and Pluto were part of another."
"Makes sense," Daisy reasoned. "But we still don't know where they are, or how long they'll take to get back. I mean, they could be anywhere in the park, from Tom Sawyer's Island to Carousel Theater."
"Or they might be right behind you," said a welcome voice.
Mickey and Daisy spun around to see Minnie herself, looking a bit tired and disheveled, but still cheerful. Pluto was by her side, in a similar state. There was a broken stalk of green bamboo stuck in his collar.
"Minnie!" Mickey exclaimed, gathering her into a sudden embrace. "Gosh, it's great to see you! You too, boy," he added, knuckle-rubbing Pluto's head.
Minnie giggled. "Oh, Mickey, we haven't been apart that long…this time."
Daisy plucked the bamboo out of Pluto's collar. "Been to Adventureland, have we?"
Minnie nodded. "Pluto and I teamed up with Bagheera to comb the jungle. We got as far as Colonel Hathi's base camp before it got too dark to continue. We'll have to wait for morning to get word to the other jungle animals. I hope you're not too disappointed…I'd forgotten just how spooky Adventureland can be at night. I kept thinking the jungle was going to turn real, or that we'd be attacked by Dispirations or something."
"You did great, Minnie," Mickey reassured her. "More than I expected, to be honest—I didn't think you'd send yourself out to search."
"It seemed the best way to go about it."
"I know what you mean," said Daisy. "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself."
Minnie pulled a face. "I prefer to think of it as proactive leadership. Anyway, what about you two? What did Merlin want?"
"Oh boy, where to start?" Daisy said with a touch of melodrama.
"Not yet, Daisy," said Mickey. "We're still waiting for Donald and Goofy. In the meantime, Minnie, who else is still out doing search-and-retrieval?"
Minnie tapped her chin, thinking. "Donald's got Toontown covered…and I have Peter Pan and Tinkerbell doing a general sweep of Frontierland, and Dumbo and Timothy in Tomorrowland, just in case anyone's over there. Oh, and Perdita and Owl did a once-over of Main Street, but they finished even before I left. I know you said three teams, Mickey, but we had enough volunteers for five, and Donald and I figured that the more there were, the more quickly the search would go."
"I'm not complaining," Mickey chuckled.
"There they are!" Daisy piped up suddenly, pointing toward the far end of the courtyard, where Donald and Goofy were just coming into view. Donald had his three boisterous nephews in tow. "Donald! Over here, sweetie!"
The two groups met just past the Carrousel, near the entrance to Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Donald sent the boys off to play, and the rest of them moved off to the (relatively) quiet interior of the Fantasyland Theater across the way, to bring each other all up to speed.
The first thing the Sensational Six noticed about the theater was that it was, oddly enough, operating as per normal, playing "The Band Concert," Mickey's first full-color short subject, to an audience of none.
"Wow, this sure takes me back," Daisy remarked. "I'd almost forgotten what it looked like in here."
"Ha," said Donald wryly. "We're here because Maleficent literally 'took us back.'"
They selected seats and got down to business. (It felt awkward to be talking out loud in a cinema, even an otherwise empty one.) "First of all," said Mickey to the antique strains of the William Tell Overture, "you guys did a great job with the search-and-retrieval mission. I know some of our friends are still out there, but they should be able to hold out until morning. The ones we would need to worry about, the vulnerable ones, all seem to be present and accounted for. Did you spot any Dispirations while you were out?"
There was a little chorus of no's. Minnie furrowed her brow. "I think I might have heard them, though, out in the jungle. I definitely heard something I didn't quite recognize, but it was hard to tell what it was over the ambiance recordings. It sounded like…whispering? Maybe it was just my imagination."
"I'm not so sure the two are mutually exclusive," Daisy pointed out. "Not after what we learned from Merlin and Professor von Drake."
"Oh, yeah!" said Goofy. "What'd they say?"
Mickey got serious. "You might find this hard to believe, but if you think about it, it actually explains a lot. As it turns out, Disneyland itself has been moved, in its entirety, to Inpotentia—" He held up his hands to forestall protests. "—and, in order to blend in, has been wrapped up in an imaginary version of itself—a spiritual reflection, Merlin called it—made of the composite memories of everyone who's ever visited it. And that version of Disneyland—not the real one—is where we are now."
Donald leaped to his feet and spun about to face the rest of them. "What? How did that happen?" he spluttered, risking total unintelligibility. Behind him on the screen, a freak tornado bore down upon the concert band.
"Believe me, sugar-beak," said Daisy. "It doesn't make any more sense with the explanation they gave us than it does without. I think we just have to accept it and move on."
"But when I heard that was the case," Mickey continued, "I realized that it did a lot to explain all the strange things we've been noticing about the park. If this version of Disneyland is made of people's memories, then things they don't remember very strongly, or at all, won't be here. That's why we haven't seen any Cast Members or wild animals—because that's not what people really remember about this place. They remember the rides and the themed settings."
"Not to mention," Daisy put in, "how long does the average Cast Member work here? A year or two, tops? Maybe just for a summer? Doing what, four to eight hours a day, five days a week? But the rides are more-or-less permanent, and they're in the same place all the time. Everyone sees them. You're right, Mickey: it does explain a lot!"
"Hey!" interjected Goofy. "It also explains how come the rides and things keep turnin' real! 'Cause that's how people see 'em when they're here! When you're a kid ridin' Pirates of the Caribbean, you might know the boat's on a track and the fire's made of cellophane, but that's not what you're thinkin' while you're there. Instead, you're thinkin': Wow, pirates!"
"Exactly," said Mickey. "Or remember when Professor von Drake tried to show us what was outside the park? We couldn't see it at first…because the sky was in the way."
"The sky over Disneyland is part of people's memories," Minnie deduced. "The weather's almost always so nice here—it makes an impression, especially on people who've traveled from out-of-state. But you can't even see the surrounding city from inside the berm, so when we tried to look at it, we saw what was really out there." She shifted in her seat, her eyes taking on a faraway look. "So that's what Inpotentia looks like. It's beautiful, in a way, with all those colors…it's hard to believe something as horrible as the Dispirations could come from something so lovely."
"I can believe it," said Mickey. "All ideas come from Inpotentia, good and bad."
"The Dispirations aren't all bad, either," said Daisy. "The little one Merlin is keeping is friendly. Cute, too. I'm still trying to figure that one out, but there you have it."
"I still don't trust it," said Donald. "It seems awfully convenient that the one Dispiration anyone manages to capture turns out to be the nice one."
"Maybe," Mickey said pensively. "But that's getting off the subject. My point is, we have to be careful not to take what we see at face value. Not only are we trapped in the past, but the part we can see isn't even the real past. Maleficent's spell has more layers than even she intended, and I just hope she hasn't caught on yet to what all she's done."
Minnie frowned. "I just hope her ignorance doesn't mean she was wrong about how to break the spell. What if we find and replace all the crowns, and that still doesn't do it?"
"We'll worry about that when and if it happens," said Mickey resolutely. "For now, let's stay focused on finding them. It seems to be working as advertised so far."
"Speaking of working," said Daisy, "whose idea was it to have the characters turn the Fantasyland courtyard into a—a military base?"
There was a brief pause. "Uh…theirs, I think," Goofy volunteered.
"Wasn't it yours, Mickey?" said Minnie. "Maybe not directly, but you did tell them to devise a strategy for themselves. Apparently, this is what they devised."
"Well, appropriate delegation is nine-tenths of successful leadership," Mickey grinned as though reciting from somewhere. The truth was that he had just made that statistic up on the spur of the moment. But confident delivery is, after all, nine-tenths of credibility.
"So now what?" asked Donald.
Mickey heaved a huge sigh and slumped dramatically in his seat. "To be honest," he replied, "I wouldn't mind calling it a day. After everything I've been through today, I must be running on borrowed energy by now, and I'd hate to see what the interest rates'll be like if I don't start making payments soon." The words felt strange in his mouth—extended metaphors weren't his usual style. "Now that we've got a secure base of operations, I don't mind—" He broke off, noticing that Pluto had suddenly perked up and was gazing toward the door, both ears cocked to listen and a faintly worried expression on his doggy face. "What is it, boy?"
"He must hear something outside," said Minnie.
The rest of them listened, but the cartoon had gotten to its noisy grand finale and they could hear nothing out of the ordinary over the energetic music of the disrupted orchestra. Pluto started to whine softly. "Come on," said Donald wearily, hopping up and striding up the aisle toward the exit. The others followed, uneasy about what they might find.
They emerged into the scene of a mostly one-sided but nonetheless extremely belligerent row. It involved the newly arrived Queen of Hearts, which accounted neatly for both the belligerence and the one-sidedness, as she berated the duly apologetic Princes for…something about the Mad Tea Party, judging by her furious gestures. She was nearly incoherent with livid rage, and it was impossible to tell from her ranting alone just what the nature of her complaint was. Getting her attention in order to solicit an explanation proved to be only slightly more possible. After several abortive attempts to interject, Mickey finally stuck two fingers into his mouth and emitted a whistle of glass-shattering, New-York-City-rush-hour-taxicab-hailing proportions.
The Queen of Hearts whirled around in a flurry of red and black velvet. "Why, Mickey Mouse!" she exclaimed, instantly metamorphosing from red-faced lunatic to properly cordial monarch. "Just the gentleman I was hoping to see!" She smoothed her hair from its anger-fueled disorder back into a prim bun.
"What seems to be the problem here?" asked Mickey in his very best "traffic cop" tone (which wasn't, as a matter of fact, particularly good—his high falsetto voice inherently lacked gravitas).
The Queen puffed up. "These…men," she said, leveling a finger at the flustered Princes, "are using the Mad Tea Party attraction for purposes other than those for which it was intended. As supreme ruler of Wonderland, only I have the authority to sanction such a thing. Someone's head will roll for this indignity!"
"Get a grip, Your Majesty!" Mickey barked. "No one's head is going to roll anywhere! They were just making sure they're in shape to fight Maleficent's minions…as you'd know if you'd been around for the past few hours!" He suddenly realized that he was drawing dismayed stares from the gathering crowd and forced himself, by closing his eyes and breathing deeply a few times, to calm down. He realized something. "Where have you been, anyway? And what did you want to see me about?"
The Wonderland monarch, basking in the onlookers' attention, fanned herself extravagantly with her scepter. "Cruella De Vil and Madam Mim called a general Villainmeet. Of course I attended—it would have been far too suspicious if I hadn't."
"Fair enough," Mickey agreed, nodding. He knew about the Villainmeets—occasional gatherings of as many of the Disney Villains as could reasonably be expected to make it, with the stated purpose of putting evil heads together for some composite mischief against the good guys, but an actual purpose more along the lines of a litmus test for villainy. If you didn't show up (and didn't have a very good excuse), you weren't a real Disney Villain, and come the next issue of Villains' Week (their in-house newsletter), your credibility would be shot.
True cooperation was not an option for people as fractious by nature as the Villains. Snobbery, on the other hand, was right up their alley.
"They were hoping to get us all riled up against Maleficent—to make us the instruments of their revenge, as it were," the Queen of Hearts continued. "I didn't say anything about my thoughts on the matter, of course. But they weren't making much headway until you moved time forward again and a whole new lot of Villains were freed from that Inpotentia place. When they arrived at the meeting, I thought Cruella and Mim would get some support for sure, but…" She trailed off, looking uncomfortable.
"But what?" Mickey prompted.
"We don't know whether we should," the Queen said, turning up her nose. "We are still a Villain, after all."
Mickey's voice took on an edge of warning. "Your Majesty…"
"Oh, all right," she huffed. "But if my reputation suffers, I am holding you personally responsible! It all started when that overgrown cat Shere Khan got his bright idea…"
"If I may interject," the crafty tiger said, not very loudly but with an air of such absolute confidence that the rest of them could not help but quiet down to listen, "why are we treating this as an either/or proposition? Surely we have options beyond the mere two currently under discussion. I for one think both of them ill become us."
"You've got a lot of nerve for a walking fur coat, darling," said Cruella. "Explain yourself."
"It seems to me," said Shere Khan, getting up from his reclining position to stalk about the room, meeting the various Villainmeet attendees' eyes one by one, "that as a group, we have been far too lazy of late. Maleficent's scheme may have been carried out with a despicable lack of professional courtesy, but she has the right idea. We all get together every so often and talk about putting Mickey Mouse and his pack of do-gooders in their place, but she was the first one of us in years to bother doing anything toward that end."
He leapt onto the closest table—occupied by the Tremaine family—and dug his razor-sharp claws into the wood, eliciting little squeaks of fright from the girls. "Who are we?" he challenged the gathering with a hint of predatory snarl in his voice. "Are we so cowed by our past defeats that we will simply lie back and let others write the story from now on? Was it not our desires and ambitions that moved the stories in the first place?" He resumed his usual smooth, unruffled tone. "Fight back against Maleficent if you wish, or—" He chuckled and fixed his golden gaze on Lady Tremaine. "—stay out of the fray altogether, like a timid little prey animal. It's no concern of mine either way. But I intend to take the initiative. To take advantage of the current crisis."
"Oh, just spill it already," Madam Mim sneered. "What do you have in mind?"
"A takeover," Shere Khan said, leaving his teeth bared so that the candlelight glinted off his dagger-like canines. "We have before us an unprecedented opportunity. Mickey and his virtuous lackeys will have their hands full dealing with Maleficent. They won't be expecting any trouble from us, because everyone knows Villains can't cooperate for any length of time. As long as we don't make absolute buffoons of ourselves—" He shot Kaa a withering glare. "—the park can be ours inside of a day. And after that…well, I'll just leave that up to you, shall I?" He sauntered back down to the floor with a great groaning of wood—the table wasn't really designed to support 500 pounds of jungle cat.
"A very pretty speech, to be sure," said Lady Tremaine, brushing a few splinters from her sleeves. "But I'll not be baited with aspersions cast on my courage or any other aspect of my character. And I do not see what my daughters and I stand to gain from a reckless grab for power with little or no thought given to such matters as how it will be shared once obtained."
But she was alone in her impassive state. All around her, the other Villains in attendance were beginning to mutter among themselves. Even Anastasia and Drizella, despite their mother's presumption to speak for them, were exchanging sinister whispers. Shere Khan's rhetoric had definitely made an impression.
Shortly after that, the Queen of Hearts made up her mind to leave the Villainmeet while everyone was still too distracted to notice her.
Mickey's mouth was a hard, straight line as the Queen of Hearts finished her story. "He didn't appear to have many supporters by the time I left, but there's no telling how many he eventually swayed to his side. I never knew he was such a gifted orator!"
"This is bad news, Mickey," Donald fretted. "It's been tough enough just fighting Maleficent and the Dispirations. What are we gonna do about this?"
Mickey exhaled heavily. "We'll play it by ear," he said, "take things as they come. We don't know that anyone will really go for Shere Khan's idea, and even if they do, Villains usually can't work together for very long before the infighting kicks in. For now, our plate's full enough. But good job playing mole for our side, Your Majesty. In fact, that's your official job from now on. But it would raise too many suspicions if you kept sneaking out of meetings, so we'll work out some kind of communication system in the morning."
"We shan't disappoint you, Mickey," the Queen of Hearts vowed.
"In the morning?" Minnie repeated. "Does that mean…?"
"Yup," Mickey confirmed. He jumped up onto a nearby bench and cupped his mouth with his hands. "Important announcement, folks! If you have a job you're doing that can't wait, go ahead and finish it. Other than that, we're calling it a day and getting some well-deserved rest! I want everyone to stay in and around the Fantasyland courtyard for now. We'll do what we can to make sure there's enough crash space for everyone.
"With that said, I…" He paused, searching for words. "I'm so proud of the way all of you have come through, turning the courtyard into our safe haven and making sure your ready for what may well lie ahead. I never would have come up with half the ideas I've seen here this evening. Great work, everyone!"
He was met with exuberant applause and cheers. "Gosh," he stammered with a shy smile, averting his eyes. They met Minnie's, and found there an expression of pure love, pride, and unconditional support. From there he went on to meet the eyes of the others in turn, and the sense of solidarity and determination was almost a tangible thing.
We can do this, Mickey realized, not with any sort of mental thunderclap but more as an acknowledgement of something he had known all along. No matter what happens along the way, we'll manage to set everything right.
As the last, deep orange sliver of daylight faded from the western sky, nighttime—only the second one since the beginning of the adventure—settled on Disneyland like a velvet cloak. And throughout the Fantasyland courtyard, stretched out on benches and curled up in ride vehicles, using coats and curtains in place of blankets, the members of the Disney Family slept.
Not all of them, of course. Some were on watch. Peter Pan, still bursting with youthful energy even after his full evening of search-and-retrieval, casually flew to and fro over the area, his eyes eagerly darting back and forth as he scanned for potential enemies. The Seven Dwarf (except, of course, for Sleepy, who was asleep) patrolled the rooftops, putting their craftsmanship to the test and making a few ad hoc alterations when they thought they could get away with the noise. Scat Cat and his band, who were nocturnal anyway, investigated all the nooks and crannies for signs of Dispiration activity. Scrappers in the best alley cat tradition, they were almost disappointed not to find anything.
But the great majority slept, and many dreamt…
Mickey, slumped comfortably in a seat in the Fantasyland Theater, found himself perched on a ball—no, not a ball, a circle—that was rolling along the hills and valleys of a sine wave, like some kind of abstracted roller coaster. Below the undulating line was solidity; above him and to all sides was the swirling, multi-hued emptiness of Inpotentia. The circle was accelerating steadily, bringing a more acute sense of weightlessness with every crest, until it leapt free of its "track" and careened off into the color-spangled haze, with Mickey still on-board…and what he was clinging to so fiercely was a turret of Sleeping Beauty's Castle—
—then he was landing in springy softness: a plush theater seat. He was in the Main Street Opera House, and the lights were dimming. The curtains drew aside, and the masterfully made audio-animatronic figure of Abraham Lincoln rose to speak. But it wasn't the sixteenth President's face under the stovepipe hat, but Walt Disney's.
"Are you sure you have everything you need, Mickey?" Walt asked Mickey. "It's very important that you have everything you need."
Mickey tried to reply, to ask for clarification, but in this dream he was mute. The curtains gently swung closed again—they had changed from their normal delft blue shade to vivid green, patterned with enormous leaves and live bamboo stalks—and then the foliage was all around him, and he was in the Adventureland jungle, listening to the cacophonous calls of monkeys…
On the floor not far from Mickey, snoring away in a jerry-rigged bedroll, Goofy was also dreaming. He would not remember come morning that he had dreamt at all, but for now he tossed and mumbled, and at one point said softly, "I sure do miss you, Maxie…" But no one was awake to hear.
In the Darling children's bedroom, resting in a heap of more conventional, less lively plush animals, Winnie the Pooh dreamed of honey, as he usually did.
Somewhere else entirely, Maleficent, like Peter Pan and the Dwarfs, was not asleep. She rarely slept as it was, but on this occasion, she was actually sleepless, a thousand troublesome thoughts pressing on her mind like great jagged stones.
She had sent the Dispirations out into the park, on very nonspecific orders, and that put them out of her direct control, and that made her just the slightest bit uneasy. She had had issues with incompetent minions before, and although the Dispirations were far firmer of purpose than any hog-faced goon, there was always that little bit of uncertainty.
Maleficent despised uncertainty in herself, even as she reveled in the uncertainty of others.
Then there was still the matter of Madam Mim's casual intrusion into the lair. It should never have been possible—Maleficent's preference for privacy and secrecy drove her to protect her stronghold with the best barrier enchantments she could create, and her power far outstripped that of the madcap sorceress.
Mostly, though, what kept the Wicked Fairy wakeful was the roiling intensity of her own evil. She had formulated her scheme out of a general hatred for Mickey Mouse and all that was good and pure about Disneyland, and her animosity had only increased as his diligence and goodwill undid her curse. More than anything else, she wanted not to be defeated in this. She wanted Mickey Mouse to feel the mighty fullness of her wrath, to suffer for the decades of her humiliation.
She wanted to destroy him.
To Be Continued…
A/N: Fun Fact: Mickey's Toontown, the land, opened in 1993. According to Disneyland folklore, however, Walt and Mickey had the area built in the 1930's for the Toons to live in, and Mickey actually suggested Anaheim as the location for Disneyland so it would be right next door to his neighborhood. 1993, in this version of events, was just the year the Toons decided to open up their town to human visitors.
Anyway, sorry about the delay. I had hoped to get this chapter out before the end of August, but work suddenly got crazy for the couple of weeks surrounding Labor Day Weekend. At least I didn't leave you hanging quite as long as last time, eh what? Another thing that I think has slowed me down these past few chapters is that the pacing of the story has swung away from action toward dialogue. Writing comes more naturally to me when I can really visualize a scene, and you can't exactly visualize dialogue. I think there have been at least three times this chapter where I scrapped several paragraphs and took a different tack with a sequence…all in the interest of quality storytelling, of course. Starting next chapter, there will be more action again—or at least lush description—and the words will come much easier. If no one minds my dropping some eyebrow-waggling hints, several important attractions made their debut in the decade of 1965-1975, and their inhabitants need to be alerted to the ongoing crisis.
On another note, it's been some time since I've seen The Jungle Book, so I hope I got Shere Khan just right in the flashback (I wasn't about to hold off on this chapter until the re-release of the movie in October). I consider him an under-regarded villain—he displayed a masterful blend of cool arrogance and predatory savagery nearly 30 years before Scar made the scene, and he kept it up when nearly everyone around him was giving in to comedy. Plus, his motivation for villainy is so delightfully straightforward—he hates humans and wants to eat Mowgli.
As a bonus for this chapter, I have drawn a simple portrait of Hypatia, including a description of the origins of her name and visual design. The link is on my profile page.
—Karalora
