Crowns of the Kingdom
Chapter 25: Storms on the Horizon
The new day dawned overcast and slightly foggy—a weather pattern that is oddly tpical of Southern California in early summer. Mickey woke up stiff, speckled with dew…and unable to see much beyond the Fantasyland courtyard. It took a moment for his brain to comprehend what his eyes were telling it, and then he suffered an instant of near panic before realizing that that ground was damp, and it was just "June gloom."
He nudged Minnie, who turned over in her ersatz bedroll and mumbled, "Is there any coffee?" before waking up fully. She sat up, blinking, and squinted at the clouded-over sky. "Oh," she said. "I wouldn't have expected that."
"It can't be sunny all the time," Mickey reasoned. "Even here."
The others were now waking up as well, stretching out the kinks in their joints and taking notice of the misty weather with varying levels of surprise.
"I hope this isn't a bad sign," said Daisy.
"Oh, don't start. It's just clouds," said Minnie, not unkindly.
"Are ya gonna give another inspirin' speech to rally the troops?" Goofy asked Mickey.
"You know what? I'm not," was the reply. "I figure they must be pretty rallied as it is. Any more might look like I was trying too hard. Let's just get a move on. With any luck, we'll have the Serpent Crown in place before lunchtime!"
On that encouraging thought, they set out. Mickey and Minnie collaborated to carry Willie's crown between them, keeping it well clear of the ground to avoid any unnecessary loss of needles. The others flanked them, ready to catch the wreath if it tipped too far to one side or the other. In that formation, they skirted the Hub counter-clockwise, heading once again for Adventureland, a strangely cheery group under the gray sky.
Elsewhere in time, space, and reality, spirits were not nearly as high. In fact, they were downright sour for all concerned. The Villains' Meeting Hall was one roiling mass of exasperation at being dragged into another gathering, especially so early in the morning. The ones who had called it absorbed the vibe and became annoyed themselves. And the Queen of Hearts, bound and gagged behind a curtain erected for the purpose of concealing her, was just about petrified. It was a completely alien feeling to her.
Cruella called the grumbling assembly to order.
Captain Hook scowled, tapping his hook against the table with an air of subdued menace. "There had better be a good reason for this, Miss DeVil. We do have lives outside this room, you know."
"Indeed we do," said Cruella with a grin. "In fact, some of us apparently have double lives outside this room. Haven't you noticed who's missing?"
"Cruella," said a sleepy Madam Mim, "lots of us are still missing. The goody-two-shoes haven't sorted everything out yet."
"I still say we should not let them get that far," said Shere Khan.
"Yes, I thought you'd say that," said Cruella. "And because of what Medusa and I discovered last night, I've become rather inclined to agree with you."
The tiger raised an eyebrow and refolded his front paws. "Oh? Do tell."
"Jasper! Horace!" Cruella shouted to her two lackeys, who were lurking unobtrusively to one side of the dais. They obediently hurried up to the curtain and pulled it aside, revealing the trussed form of the Queen of Hearts. There was a gasp from the watching Villains—not so much because they were shocked (although it was a surprising sight), but because no one goes far as a Disney Villain without developing a healthy respect for dramatic timing.
"Medusa and I," Cruella continued, "had a chance encounter last night with Her Pasteboard Highness here, whereupon she dropped some tantalizing hints concerning where her loyalty truly lies. And I tell you this: it's not with us."
"Oh, do get on with it," Shere Khan muttered.
"I was just about to, kitty cat," said Cruella. "Medusa! Tell them what you and your henchman found out!"
Madam Medusa heaved herself out of her seat with a melodramatic sigh and stomped onto the dais, rubbing her temples and muttering something about sunglasses. She put on an artificially bright smile and began speaking.
"Snoops and I applied a little of what you might call 'persuasive technique,' and do you know what we discovered? Ms. Wonderland here…is a mole!"
The reaction from the audience was only slight at best—some whispering and puzzled looks, followed by Drizella Tremaine piping up with "She looks human enough to me!"
"No, no, no, you stupid girl!" Medusa hissed. "A mole! A spy! She's been working for Mickey Mouse and telling him what's going on here!"
"Now, Medusa, there is no call to insult my daughter," said Lady Tremaine coolly. "How long has this been going on?"
"As far as we can tell, since the start of Maleficent's little foray into mass back-stabbing," said Cruella. "And that, my not-quite-friends, is why our dear Lord Tiger's takeover plan is looking more attractive by the minute. We already knew about that witch's willingness to defy the Arrangement in order to pursue her little revenge project, and now we find out that Mickey Mouse—Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes himself!—is using our own people against us!"
"Preemptively, no less!" Madam Medusa put in. "Ugh, how I despise mice!"
"The point we are driving at, darlings," Cruella continued without missing a beat, "is that we clearly cannot rely upon Mickey to avenge us properly…not when he has already decided that we are the enemy as much as she. And if he suspects us of some sort of group plot…well, it wouldn't be very polite to disappoint him now, would it?"
There was an immediate stir. "Dang it all, she's right!" crowed the Sheriff of Nottingham above the din. "Maleficent may have messed us up good, but at least she ain't still messin' with us! We've been lookin' at this the wrong way up!"
"So we're agreed, then?" said Cruella. "No more bickering and dilly-dallying trying to figure out whom we are against. We know whom we are for—ourselves!—and that's enough for us; am I right?" There was a clamor of agreement.
"Permit me," said Shere Khan, slinking forward to share the dais with Cruella. "It was originally my idea after all."
Cruella was too intimidated to protest. She wasn't used to dealing with the entirety of a large exotic animal—just its pelt, usually—and the tiger outmassed her, a skinny woman, by a factor of about four. "I counsel patience," he continued. "Let Mickey Mouse and his friends take things just a bit farther before we make our move."
"What on Earth for?" wondered Captain Hook.
"Why, Captain…for reinforcements, of course. We in this room are a mighty force, but not as mighty as we should be. If we are to succeed in our aims, our strike will need to be swift and powerful, and some of our key players are still missing. I think it wisest to wait for their return."
"That's not a bad idea," said Cruella, who had always gotten along well with Ursula. "Besides, it will give us time to figure out how to what to do with her." She flicked the ash from her cigarette onto the head of the Queen of Hearts, who cringed and hoped fervently that her pencil-bird had figured out something was wrong.
As the Sensational Six tramped once more into Adventureland, the cloud cover seemed to grow fittingly heavier, and patches of jungle mist curled around the trees, making the leaves drip.
"Okay, now I'm a little worried," said Minnie, remembering New Orleans Square. The murky conditions seemed like the perfect environment for lurking Dispirations. (In fact, some of the fog, she realized, might even be Dispirations.)
"Don't worry, sweetie," said Mickey. "We don't have far to go, and we're all together."
"Where are we going, Mickey?" asked Donald.
"Someplace extremely logical," said Mickey.
They proceeded down the winding main walkway of the area to a spot between the Jungle Cruise bullpen and the Disneydendron, where elaborate landscaping and foliage prevented guests from straying off the path onto the northernmost bend of the Jungle Cruise riverbank. Only Cast Members and maintenance workers were supposed to go there…for now.
Mickey let his side of the wreath-crown sag. "This is gonna be tricky," he observed. "We'll have to tip it up on edge and ease it through that gap. We'll probably lose some needles."
The gap in question was a space between two twisting tree trunks, itself far from straight and nowhere near uniform in width. "Tricky" didn't cover it—it took several minutes of careful lifting and shifting and rotating and pushing and pulling before the crown landed on the other side of the trees, and it did indeed drop quite a few needles in the process. Then the Sensational Six had to climb through themselves.
They barely recognized the terrain beyond the contrived barrier. Off to their left could be heard the gentle lapping of the Jungle Cruise river, out of sight past another layer of hothouse-grown tropical trees. To their right was the Swiss Family Treehouse, with New Orleans Square beyond it. The intervening space should have been relatively clear so that park employees could move freely, with only a few scrubby plants for show. Instead, it was a forest almost as tangled as the one surrounding King Louie's domain.
Nor was that the only similarity. As they moved farther away from the public part of Adventureland, eyes peeled for the flash of gold and ruby, they kept spotting various-sized broken fragments of tan stone, bearing the marks of human workmanship and unsettlingly familiar. No one said it, but they were all thinking it: Those shouldn't be here yet.
Hidden by mist and leaves, the Dispirations massed…
Finally they came to a place where the ground was literally half-covered with the stones, in the form of cracked pavers and shattered pillars, mostly overgrown with moss and lichens and weedy grass. Despite this obscuring factors, it was apparent that the carvings on the stones followed a definite cobra motif…and that the vine-cloaked hillock at the far end of the space was actually a mound of rubble: a collapsed masonry building, with more toppled snake sculptures peeking out from under the greenery. There was no doubt but that the pathetic ruin was all that remained of the Temple of the Forbidden Eye…a full decade before it had even been built.
"Okay, this makes no sense at all," said Daisy. "It's one thing when Space Mountain starts showing up a little early, but how does something like this happen?"
"Can temples get ruined in reverse?" wondered Goofy, scratching his head.
Mickey and Minnie eased the wreath-crown to the ground. "Well, whatever it means," said Mickey, "the Serpent Crown should be around here somewhere."
The Dispirations crouched in their hiding places, as patient as cats on the hunt…
"Knowing our luck, it's probably in there," Donald groused, jerking a thumb at the fallen, vine-covered, and completely inaccessible temple.
"Aw, c'mon, Donald, our luck ain't been that bad," said Goofy. "Asides, didn't Maleficent say it was possible to get to all the crowns? There wouldn't be much point in lookin' for 'em otherwise!"
"Well, we're sure not to find it if we just stand around talking," said Minnie. She began poking around, pulling creepers away from stones. The others followed suit, fanning out over the area.
The Dispirations tensed to spring…
"Over here!" called Daisy. She had gone right to the crumbled shell of the temple itself, and was now peering through the tough, woody vines that draped over it. "I think I see it! There's a little alcove here…"
The others hurried over, and between elbow grease and Pluto's fortuitous discovery of a stout stick that could be used as a lever, they soon had a large enough patch of vines removed to expose the niche. It was recessed so far that they soon realized it was actually a horizontal shaft, about eighteen inches square, leading to a chamber inside the temple, where the Serpent Crown was visible, resting on a plinth. The gold and rubies glittered in flickering orange light from an unseen source.
"Is there a lit torch in there?" said Minnie. "That makes even less sense than before! Who could have lit it? I don't like this one bit!"
"Like it or not, I'm going in," said Mickey. "I think I can crawl through that easily enough."
"With Willie's crown?" Donald pointed out.
Mickey smacked himself between the eyes.
"Maybe we should go back and find Elliot," Daisy suggested. "I bet he could pull out some of these stones and make a wide enough entrance."
"No, I think I have a better idea," said Minnie. "Someone help me bring Willie's crown over here."
Once the giant wreath was moved, Minnie plunged her hands into it and began fiddling with the greenery. She broke something (much to the surprise of the others) and twisted something else, and then began unreeling fir branches and holly leaves like cable from a spool. "I thought so," she said. "It's constructed from a wrapped garland."
"Um…Minnie?" said Daisy. "You just destroyed it."
"Mickey can put it back together once he gets inside. And this is the only way he'll be able to get it through that little space. Come here, sweetie."
She took down her bow and used the ribbon to tie one end of the garland to Mickey's ankle. "This way," she explained, "you'll have your hands free to crawl…on the way in, at least. And if you run into any trouble before you collect the Serpent Crown, we can haul you back."
"I don't know about this," said Donald. "The last time we did something like this, the trouble came after he collected the crown."
"What choice do we have?" Mickey pointed out. "It's in there and we're out here."
He clambered into the shaft and started crawling. He had to lie almost flat and shimmy along on his stomach, which made for slow going. But the tunnel was only about eight feet long, and after a couple of minutes he reached the end and dropped lightly to the floor.
The chamber was small, at most ten feet across, with only the shaft to serve as an entrance or exit. The plinth supporting the Serpent Crown stood in the exact center, illuminated by flaming coals contained in two brass braziers mounted on the flanking walls. The firelight danced over the surface of the crown, making the ruby eye symbols flash and creating an eerie illusion of movement in the rearing snakes.
Forgetting himself for a split second, Mickey reached out to take the crown, realizing mid-grab that it wasn't going to work. Sure enough, his hands passed right through it, and the evergreen garland tied to his ankle began to vibrate, just as the Queen of Hearts' crown had on Tom Sawyer Island.
"Mickey?" Minnie's voice echoed up the shaft. "Is everything okay in there?"
"Just fine!" he called back, pulling the rest of the garland in after him. Then he untied it from his ankle, stuck the ribbon in his pocket, and figured—why not?—that as it was already vibrating, that meant the Serpent Crown recognized it as a crown even in its unraveled state. So he simply touched one end of the chain to the crown.
I'm getting pretty good at this, he mused as the waves of light began washing over him.
A few minutes later, Mickey re-emerged from the shaft, struggling awkwardly with the Serpent Crown in his hands. Donald took it from him, and Minnie helped him down from the mouth of the tunnel, whereupon he took it right back. It wasn't that he was selfish or that he didn't trust Donald…he just felt that the responsibility to keep it safe was primarily his.
"Now," he said, "let's get back to the Castle before—"
The Dispirations attacked.
A dark, sleek shape launched itself out of the trees nearby, knocking Mickey flat on his back and sending the Serpent Crown tumbling from his grip. Before the others could react, they found themselves surrounded by four more of the things, which were monstrous as only Dispirations could be. They resembled hairless panthers, but somewhat larger and with more sharply defined muscles…and the fangs and hoods of giant cobras.
Minnie screamed. Daisy avoided it only by seizing Donald's arm and digging her fingernails into it until he screamed. Pluto tried to whimper and growl at the same time, while Goofy settled for just the whimpering.
The one that had knocked Mickey down was still pinning him, most of its weight on its front paws, which were planted on his upper chest. He squirmed under the pressure, barely able to breathe, all of his strength occupied with pushing the Dispiration's head back, keeping those venomous jaws away from his face. It took a heroic effort just for him to croak out to the others: "Get the crown!"
It had rolled several yards away from the lot of them, and Mickey's cry brought the attention of all to it…including the Dispirations. In the split second that the catlike creatures' vigilance faltered, Donald darted between the nearest two of them, escaping the circle, and began a mad dash for the Serpent Crown.
Both of them gave chase, leaving the rest of their kin without the numbers necessary to corral the Sensational Six, and a free-for-all broke out. The one crouched over Mickey, apparently the leader, raised its head to hiss with displeasure at its comrades' rashness, giving the mouse just the break he needed to flail about, find a rock with one hand, and smack his attacker in the face with it. That, in turn, put the monster off-balance just long enough for Mickey to squirm out from under its paws. Able to breathe easy again, he joined the developing melee.
Donald had reached the Serpent Crown just a step ahead of the pursuing Dispirations, and wisely elected to throw it to Daisy. She, however, grew flustered when the enemy focused on her, and dropped it. In their eagerness to take it for themselves, two of the creatures colliding each other, kicking the crown and sending it skittering away in another direction entirely. Pluto, fleeing from a third, ran across it and snapped it up on the spur of the moment, only to find his path blocked as the Dispirations regrouped ahead of him. Panicking as they hemmed him in, he flicked his head and flung the crown straight up in the air. That was the state of things when Mickey escaped from the lead Dispiration.
He sized up the situation in an instant. Nobody on his side was in a good position to catch the crown when it came back down, but Goofy was between him and the spot where it would probably land. "Goofy! Launch me!" he commanded, taking off at a dead run while his erstwhile captor was still recovering its wits. Then it was like the Mark Twain all over again as Goofy, with unusual presence of mind, clasped his hands together for Mickey to step into and then heaved him skyward. The top of Mickey's arc intersected beautifully with the top of the Serpent Crown's arc, and he seized it and then tucked into a somersault so that he would land rolling.
Even as he hit the ground, he heard the Dispirations coming up fast behind him, and he was pretty sure he couldn't outrun them. So he feinted, turning sharply to one side while throwing the crown to the other and hoping one of his friends would be there to catch it.
As it happened, Minnie and Daisy went for it simultaneously. They had better luck than the two Dispirations who had tried the same thing a moment before, and caught it together instead of knocking heads.
"Girls, run!" Donald shouted at them. They suddenly realized that not only were they in possession of the crown, but they were right at the edge of the fracas, with nothing preventing them from fleeing back to Adventureland proper with their prize.
"But—" Minnie started to protest.
"You heard him! Let's get out of here!" said Daisy, yanking on Minnie's arm as she started to run.
"But we can't just—" Minnie began again.
"They'll be fine as soon as those things realize we've got the crown," Daisy pointed out. "Let's not waste this chance to get a head start!"
So the two of them dashed off into the jungle. Less than a minute later, they heard a terrible sound behind them: a keening cry, part leopard's roar, part reptile hiss, and part nothing that they had ever heard before. "What's that?" Minnie wondered, her stride faltering.
"Nothing good! Keep going!"
Not long after that, they began to hear the pursuit behind them. It sounded like a lot more than five things. Daisy slowed down just enough to snatch a broken branch off the ground, figuring it would make a decent weapon in the pinch they were almost certainly about to be in. In the next moment, the first of the enemies exploded out of the foliage behind them. Without missing a beat or bothering to look at it too closely, Daisy spun on her heel and clobbered it in the face, then continued running.
"Don't do that!" Minnie scolded her when she caught up. "I thought it got you!"
"Just the opposite, actually," Daisy said. "It wasn't one of those panther-things, though. I think that noise we heard earlier was to call out the troops."
By that time, they were almost back to the Adventureland walkway…but the Dispirations were overtaking them. There were definitely more than five of them, and none of them were familiar. Daisy managed to keep the path ahead clear by flailing left and right with her improvised cudgel, while Minnie clutched the Serpent Crown close to her chest to keep from dropping it. At every turn, they were faced with new threats, from savage birds of prey to giant spiders to mobile Venus flytraps with leaf-jaws the size of serving platters. But of the panther-like monsters that had ambushed them, there was no sign at all.
"This is bad!" Minnie said. "The guys—"
"Escape now, talk later!" Daisy snarled, walloping a Dispiration.
They made it to the edge of the jungle and squeezed between the trees, emerging onto the walkway. The Dispirations seemed to have fallen back for the time being.
"We have to find a safe place to stash this and go back for the guys!" said Minnie. "The panther-things didn't chase us after all—they must still be—"
"Whoa, whoa, back up," said Daisy. "Here's why I think that's a bad idea. Number one: I don't think we can beat those things in a fight. We barely managed to get the better of them in a game of Keep Away, and I really doubt my having picked up a stick in the meantime is going to make a difference. And number two: what safe place? Our best bet would be to take it to Fantasyland…and as long as we're doing that, we might as well put it on the Castle and move ahead to 1995."
"How can you even suggest that?" Minnie gaped. "Remember what happened to you when all this started? And you just wound up spending the night in a locked tool shed! Think about where the guys will wind up! Dispirations will be the least of their worries!"
"Minnie, you're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"Have a little faith in your man, will ya? The Temple of Mara is bad news all right, but at least it's bad news the guys are familiar with. They'll be able to hold out until we can send someone to rescue them."
Minnie thought about protesting some more, but decided against it. "Okay, how about this? Since it looks like we're going that way anyway, let's get back to the Fantasyland courtyard and ask some of the other characters for advice. Then if they think we should go back for the guys, we can leave the crown with them, and if they think we should put it on the Castle first, we can do that."
"It's a deal," said Daisy. "Now let's get moving before our ugly 'friends' come after us again."
They took off at a jog, and made it about halfway to the Adventureland gate when a broad patch of heat-shimmer on the pavement suddenly erupted, solidifying into a huge form. Legs like iron pillars took shape, and a barrel-shaped body the size of a minivan. The creature that emerged looked like someone's nightmare of an elephant: a huge black beast with fearsome serrated tusks, tatter-edged ears, and heavy claws in place of the stubby nails that should have been present. It raised its trunk—which was tipped with a bony club like the tail of an armored dinosaur—and let out a bellowing trumpet loud enough to blast the leaves off the nearby trees.
Minnie and Daisy weren't stupid. By the time the Dispiration roared, they were already running back the way they had come. As it thundered into motion behind them, they reached the River Belle Terrace restaurant, on the three-way border between Adventureland, New Orleans Square, and Frontierland.
"This way!" said Daisy, pulling Minnie along as she swerved around the restaurant. "We'll go out the Frontierland gate!"
But as they came up alongside the Golden Horseshoe, with the evil elephant closing the distance, another giant Dispiration congealed out of the air between them and the gate. This one looked like a conglomeration of prickly pear cactus, writhing and folding itself into animal shapes: a rattlesnake, a scorpion, a buzzard.
"Holy shindig!" Daisy shrieked.
It was too late to backtrack; the elephant had already rounded the corner. In a matter of seconds, they would be crushed between two massive creatures, one of which was covered with needle-like spines.
"Follow my lead!" said Minnie, wheeling about to run back toward the elephant. Daisy went along with her, cringing all the way. When they were on the verge of colliding with it, they turned around again and ran toward the cactus-monster, which was beginning to slither their way. They repeated this until mere feet separated the two Dispirations, and then leaped to one side, allowing the creatures to crash into each other.
"Come on!" said Minnie, pulling Daisy to her feet. The Dispirations had shattered upon impact, and the main Frontierland walkway was littered with blobs of shadow and mist and heat-shimmer, many of them already running back together or just consolidating into new forms as they were. If Minnie and Daisy tried to continue out the Frontierland gate, they would end up wading through a sea of enemies that didn't even have to actively fight them to hurt them.
"If we hurry," said Daisy as they edged around the recovering creatures, "we can get far enough ahead of them to go out the back way, through Fantasyland."
"I don't think that's going to be an option!" said Minnie, pointing with her free hand toward the Rivers of America, where ominous ripples were forming in the water. So instead they hugged the boundary of the Casa Mexicana restaurant and, as soon as they had a beeline available, darted into the queue for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. As they threaded their way along the winding, rock-lined path, Dispirations began trickling in after them—outsized Gila monsters and tarantulas, grotesque bullfrogs from the river, living dust devils.
"I hope that wasn't a big mistake," said Daisy.
"Here's the plan," said Minnie. "We catch the next train, and then when it gets to the part of the track overlooking Big Thunder Trail, we un-catch it."
"Jump out of a moving train?" Daisy said skeptically.
"We jumped out of the Monorail," Minnie pointed out. "You're the one who didn't want to go back for the guys…are you with me in this or not?"
Daisy sighed deeply, but her smile was pure, genuine camaraderie. "Totally, Minnie."
Much to Mickey's surprise, the panther-cobras had not harmed them. After the girls had left, the balance of numbers had shifted in the monsters' favor, affording them a quick win. But they had stopped at tackling the four characters and holding them down, keeping their claws sheathed and their mouths open no more than necessary to snarl a warning every time their charges tried to move. Being in prolonged contact with the Dispirations was no picnic, of course, but after a minute or so, it was possible to tune out the worst of the sensory assault. The leader of the five beasts paced about the area, visiting each captor-captive pair in turn and hissing softly as if with smug satisfaction. They seemed to be waiting for something.
After a few minutes, something arrived, accompanied by a chill breeze and a brief dimming of the ambient light. A scalloped black skirt hem drifted into Mickey's severely curtailed field of vision, and the tip of a staff stabbed the ground in front of his nose. "Well done, my servants," said Maleficent. "It seems those two did, after all, know what they were talking about."
"You're wasting your time," said Mickey. "We don't have the crown."
"Obviously," said Maleficent sharply. "If you did, my minions would not be so gentle with you. As things stand, however, I find it more prudent to keep you safe pending the eventual return of your lovely compatriots."
"Your holding us hostage," Mickey deduced. "It won't work, you know. Minnie and Daisy are too smart to fall for it. They'll take the crown straight to the Castle."
"Oh, my dear mouse, I sincerely hope they do," said Maleficent, bending down so that she could look him in the eye. "It will save me so much trouble if I can simply leave you to your fate rather than having to work out a way to dispose of you myself. Surely you must have realized where you are."
"Yeah…but I fail to see what that has to do with anything. If you're expecting us to just roll over and let the bugs and snakes get us, well, won't you be disappointed."
Maleficent straightened up again. "On the contrary, I expect you to fight to the last. It wouldn't be nearly as satisfying otherwise. But I think perhaps your self-confidence is running away with you. After all, when all's said and done, you're not really a hero, are you? You are, in point of fact, an entertainer—one, might I add, who specializes in distinctly non-heroic roles. You are in over your head, little mouse, and have been since all this began. You simply have yet to notice."
"And you," Mickey said quietly, "don't know me as well as you think you do."
Either Maleficent didn't hear him, or she ignored him. She raised her arms—Mickey heard the swoosh of her sleeves—and began chanting something under her breath. A light drizzle began to fall.
To Be Continued…
A/N: Happy New Year, readers! What better way to kick off 2009 than with a new chapter of "Crowns?" Or consider it a late Christmas present, if you prefer. Either way, it's great to be back in good writing form—here's hoping it lasts! And now for the actual notes:
"June gloom" is a real phenomenon here in SoCal. Due to the quirks of our local climate, it is not unusual for May and June to average cooler than December and January. Weird, huh? What hemisphere is this again?
Bonus points to anyone who caught the shout-out to a special Disneyland entertainment event of the 1980's. If you need a hint, it appears late in the chapter.
—Karalora
