Crowns of the Kingdom
Chapter 26: Let's Hear It For the Girls
She wasn't quite sure who—or indeed what—she was, but she was sure that she was. That alone was quite a revelation to a being that until recently had been a non-being. The splendor of consciousness filled her, making everything stand out to her senses so loud and bright and sharp that it was as if it had all been meant for her. And there was a whole world of it.
She wanted to share her new awareness with the rest of her kind. There was no telling what they could be capable of, now that they were armed with the power of existence. So she retraced her steps to the last place where she had seen any of her kind. The terrain was not quite as she remembered it, but it had, after all, been some time, and the important things were the same: the rippling expanse of water and the slender gray trackway arching over and around it.
Some of her kin were up on the trackway. They seemed lost. Instinct took over, and she spread her wings and flew—for the first time—up to greet them.
What passed between them was not speech. It was barely communication. Nonetheless, meaning was transferred, amounting to a message that had irrevocably changed the planet the first time it was expressed, back in some Mesozoic forest.
Let's play…
The grizzled prospector was already making his announcement as Minnie and Daisy bounded up the stairs to the train platform. "Howdy, folks! Please keep your hands and arms inside the train, and remain seated at all times." They ran the full length of the platform and vaulted into the front car. Behind them, Dispirations swarmed up the stairs and into the rearward cars. Minnie pulled back the lap bar, but loosely, so that they could squirm out from under it when the time came. "Now…hang onto your hats and glasses," the prospector continued, "'cause this here's the wildest ride in the wilderness!" The train lurched into motion.
"Here we go," said Daisy uneasily, glancing back to see the Dispirations beginning to crawl forward from car to car. "Hey, is it raining?"
They didn't find out right away, because the train, picking up speed, cruised into the Rainbow Cavern, the first of the ride's many tunnels. The noise of the vehicle increased dramatically in the confined space, and was joined by the shrieks of hundreds of red-eyed bats. Then they reached the base of the first lift, and the train started its slow climb through the forest of stalactites and stalagmites and glowing pools, toward the cascading water at the top.
Chain lifts on roller coasters always seem to take longer than they actually do, because of the anticipation factor. This effect is increased when hostile creatures are taking advantage of the even motion to creep up on you from behind. Daisy looked back again and wished that she hadn't dropped her stick when the two giant Dispirations crashed into each other. Minnie shuddered in the semi-darkness, half-expecting to suddenly be dive-bombed by bats that were no longer made of rubber and suspended from wires.
Then the train reached the top of the lift. It took a few more seconds for its center of gravity to catch up with the front car, and then…
Minnie and Daisy discovered something, that day, about riding Big Thunder Mountain Railroad with a loose lap bar. It made the ride better…in hindsight. It made it absolutely terrifying while they were on it. As roller coasters go, Big Thunder is not particularly intense, but tell that to someone who is being bounced around their seat with every bump and turn. Fortunately, the Dispirations were not using lap bars at all, and each jolt bounced a few of them right out of the train. But those that remained continued to creep up its length, pausing to hold on during the rough bits.
The mine train rose and fell and corkscrewed through the artificial desert landscape, in and out of mine tunnels and naturalistic caves, past rusting abandoned machinery and audio-animatronic animals (or perhaps real ones—they were moving too quickly to say for sure whether they had come to life or not). When it reached the base of the second lift, Minnie and Daisy began to wriggle out from under their lap bar in preparation. The tenacious Dispirations were only a few cars behind them by now, and moving quickly during this long lull in the action. Everything was going according to plan.
The train reached the crest of the lift and began to tip over the winding drop. Minnie and Daisy braced themselves as they stood up on the seat. Ahead of them, the track made a sharp clockwise turn through stacks of mining equipment. On the inside of the curve, a raggedy goat perched on a barrel, chewing on a stick of dynamite and bleating with apprehension as the train approached. The vehicle picked up speed, crushing into the turn. The Dispirations were almost upon them. When Minnie and Daisy's car was exactly parallel to the goat, they stopped bracing themselves against the centrifugal force and leaped with it, catapulting from the train and right through a gap in the sculpted rock formations. A few seconds later, they landed—hard, but not damagingly so—on the ground of Big Thunder Trail, the walkway that loops around the side and back of the mountain and ultimately leads to the westernmost corner of Fantasyland.
The ground was slightly slippery, wet from the drizzle that they could now confirm was falling from the gray sky. Minnie and Daisy lay there for a moment, catching their breath after the turbulent ride they had just endured. "Is the crown okay?" asked Daisy.
Minnie inspected it briefly. "Looks like."
"Well then!" said Daisy, sitting up and patting her feather-do back into order. "That actually worked pretty well. And now we can head straight into Fantasyland and figure out what to do about the guys."
"Maybe not," said Minnie, pointing back along the trail where more Dispirations were creeping out of the scenery.
"This is getting ridiculous!" Daisy opined. "Those things are everywhere!"
"Everywhere except Fantasyland," said Minnie, "and I'd like to keep it that way. Come on!" Gripping the Serpent Crown more tightly with one hand and seizing Daisy's wrist with the other, she crossed the walkway and dragged her friend into the landscaping on the north side.
The space beyond smelled strongly of horses, and faintly of barbecue sauce. The former was because it was close to the stables that housed the trolley horses in their off hours. The latter had to be more time leakage—the area wouldn't be developed into Big Thunder Barbecue for another year. At present, it was all gritty dirt, weeds, and a little sagebrush, splitting the difference between humdrum reality and Frontierland's Wild West mystique.
"Uh, Minnie? Where are we going?" asked Daisy.
"The railroad tracks," was the reply. "We'll lead them around the perimeter and try to lose them in Tomorrowland."
"Greeeaaaat," Daisy groaned, remembering the Martians.
"Unless you've got a better idea," Minnie pointed out.
Daisy looked back and saw several Dispirations in the form of oversized sidewinders rippling their way across the sandy, rain-spotted ground. "Nothing I can come up with in the next fifteen seconds," she confessed.
They had to hop a fence in order to get to the tracks, but that was actually a plus—no snake, even an oversized sidewinder, could follow. They took advantage of that to make some distance, but not so much that the Dispirations wouldn't still follow them rather than turning their attention directly to Fantasyland. Sure enough, in less than a minute, the creatures had changed shape, vaulted the fence, and begun tailing Minnie and Daisy as oversized jackalopes instead…which would have been cute, if not for the fact that even a normal-sized jackrabbit can keep pace with a galloping horse, and the antelope of the American Southwest are not called pronghorns for nothing. The two found themselves targeted by dog-sized, dagger-headed beasts that moved like furry bullet trains.
"Oh, dear," said Daisy. Then she and Minnie turned and ran as fast as their pump-shod feet could carry them. They knew they had no chance of outdistancing the jackalopes in the long term, but they were close to the edge of Frontierland…if they could make it that far, the Dispirations would likely change shape again, and with any luck, the new forms would be slower.
So they ran, and within seconds were passing behind Videopolis, silent during the daylight hours. The next stretch was going to be tricky, for the chase was about to enter Fantasyland, and it was doubly important that Minnie and Daisy stay ahead of the Dispirations without throwing them off entirely, lest they turn their attention to the innocent characters taking refuge nearby.
Actually, it was closer to quintuply important, what with the railroad tracks passing between the two layers of the "it's a small world" façade, mere yards from the kids holed up inside the ride building. Nonetheless, the two plowed straight ahead, glancing back frequently in order to adjust their speed as the Dispirations stumbled, their bodies warping into the new forms. When they stabilized, they were…a pack of wolves, or something similar. But very strange wolves—gleaming white, with bodies that were all straight lines and hard angles, except for the golden pinwheels that adorned the tips of their ears and tails. They looked, in fact, like they had been cobbled together out of pieces of the ride façade, and they moved jerkily, like simple clockwork.
"Boy, these things just get weirder every time we run into them!" said Daisy.
"Less talk, more running," Minnie gasped. By then they were almost past the façade, bearing slightly to the right along the tracks as they curved toward their Tomorrowland leg. Even with their stiff motion, the Dispirations were catching up, and now fatigue was beginning to take its toll on the two women.
Minnie tripped on a railroad tie and fell, the Serpent Crown flying from her grasp. She shrieked in terror as the Dispirations overtook her, but they sailed right past her: the crown, not she, was their target. Daisy paused for only an instant before charging on ahead in order to reach it ahead of the enemy. She snatched it right out from under the geometric snout of the lead creature, giving it a sharp kick for good measure as she did so, and watched with satisfaction as the beast fell to pieces and then dissolved into the air. Then she started running again, staying barely ahead of the others.
"Keep going! I'll catch up!" Minnie yelled as she got back to her feet.
"I have a better idea!" said Daisy. She suddenly lunged to one side and slowed down, letting the Dispirations hurtle past her. Then she lobbed the crown back at Minnie. "Catch!"
That was the beginning of that day's second game of Keep Away. The Dispirations were wily, but they were bad at adapting to sudden changes, whereas Minnie and Daisy knew each other well enough to coordinate their movements with very little overt communication. They weaved and dodged, darting from one side of the tracks to the other and back, tossing the crown back and forth, changing speed to keep from giving their pursuers a predictable pattern to follow. After another minute or so, they were properly in Tomorrowland, and the monsters underwent another transformation that slowed them down and enabled the women to gain some distance.
The Tomorrowland train station loomed ahead. A whirring sound from behind indicated that the Dispirations had found their new forms, probably something mechanical, but Minnie and Daisy didn't bother looking back. They were too close to the next phase of their strategy.
They reached the station and vaulted the safety barriers separating the tracks from the queue area. As they scrambled down the rain-slick exit walkway toward the expanse of Tomorrowland's main plaza, they heard clangs and thumps from the Dispirations colliding with those same barriers, and stopped just long enough to catch their breath and see whether pursuit was still forthcoming. A handful of small flying saucers hovered a few feet above the ground, bumping repeatedly against the fences and railings as though unable to attain enough altitude to clear them. They were ground-skimmers.
"Let's not get too comfortable," Daisy panted. "There will probably be a train along any minute, and the gates will open."
"Right," said Minnie. "Not to mention…" She trailed off, looking aghast at something over Daisy's shoulder.
"What?"
"That!" Minnie said, pointing. A fresh batch of Dispirations was slinking toward them from the direction of the Magic Eye Theater. Perhaps in anticipation of the 3-D film soon to inhabit the theater, Captain EO, they had adopted forms resembling a variety of alien beings, from hulking to tiny, hairy to slimy, and differing considerably in the number of limbs and sensory organs as well.
"Well, let's not just stand here," Daisy said, pulling Minnie with her as she took off running again, toward the land's entrance. Another group of Dispirations—the robots they both remembered all too well from the Monorail—was visible off to the right, in the area between Tomorrowland Terrace and the Submarine Lagoon, and something had them in a frenzy of activity.
"How do they keep finding us?" Minnie wailed.
"Who knows? Maybe they can sense the crown somehow. Or maybe they're…telepathic? They're forgotten ideas working for Maleficent—they could be capable of almost anything. The real question is, how do we lose them?"
They made a start by slipping into the Premiere Shop and threading their way between the racks of merchandise. Daisy found a display of sports equipment and selected a child-sized bat to replace the stick she had dropped in Frontierland. Then she and Minnie crouched together behind a shelving unit near the middle of the store, waiting.
The aliens slunk into the shop, chittering menacingly in their various voices. Minnie nudged Daisy soundlessly and, with a flick of her head, indicated that they should sneak out the back way, through the exit of the CircleVision theater to which the shop was attached. That, however, meant they would have to cross the open area between the exit and the retail floor, and the Dispirations would surely spot them.
Daisy used her newly acquired weapon to reach around the side of the shelving unit and give a firm shove to a stand of souvenir knick-knacks, which toppled over into a second rack. The ensuing clamor grabbed the aliens' attention long enough for Minnie and Daisy to scamper out of the store without being noticed. Nonetheless, they wasted no time, sprinting up the hallway in defiance of the crowd-flow signs and into the empty CircleVision theater—empty, but by no means dark, not with nine movie screens beaming their images into the round space from all angles. They quickly crossed the theater, then the queue area, and finally exited the building via the entry door, near the Tomorrowland gate.
As luck would have it, however, the Dispirations were just re-emerging from the Premiere Shop at the same moment, and there was no preventing them from seeing Minnie and Daisy at once. They immediately gave chase again, and some of them were sleek and long-legged and quite fast. With only the length of the building between them and their pursuers, Minnie and Daisy cut across the Tomorrowland entrance and darted into the building opposite.
This was the second time they had entered that building over the course of the quest. The first time, it had been the Hall of Chemistry. Now, it was something much more impressive, dramatic, and (given the situation) potentially dangerous. The last of the great educational attractions…Adventure Thru Inner Space. The possibility that the ride would turn real and they would actually be shrunk small enough to visit the interior of an electron shell nagged at Minnie and Daisy as they hustled down the zigzagging indoor queue toward the load area, where an endless chain of blue Atommobiles (identical to the Haunted Mansion's Doom Buggies but for the color) moved along the track toward the wide end of the Mighty Microscope. But there was no time for hesitation; the Dispirations were already spilling through the door and leaping over the guardrails that separated each segment of the queue from the next. Daisy paused to clobber the first couple with her bat, and then followed Minnie, catching up just as the mouse scrambled into an Atommobile.
The narrator was already speaking as they settled into their seat, Daisy still brandishing the bat. Slowly but inexorably, the vehicle cruised into the Mighty Microscope, while the droning voice-over described the tantalizing experience about to take place. The two women tensed as visibility faded to nothing in the interior of the microscope and the word "MAGNIFICATION" echoed all around them. There was a lurch, then a rushing sensation, and suddenly the air was freezing cold. The Atommobile was flying on its own power somehow, buffeted on a powerful wind, and swirling all about were snowflakes, dozens of them, slightly luminous in the darkness…and as large as Minnie's head, ears and all. And they were getting larger. Relatively speaking.
"This is gonna get interesting," Daisy remarked, possibly in a bid for the Understatement of the Year Award.
As the Atommobile shrank, the wind on which it rode became more turbulent, and the snowflakes more perilous to encounter. Minnie and Daisy found that they could steer the vehicle to an extent by shifting their weight, but even so there were a few crunching collisions that spattered them with fragments of ice.
Before long, the Atommobile was smaller than a single snowflake…then smaller than a single point of one. Strangely enough, the force of the wind was lessened at that scale, as the flakes themselves shielded the vehicle. Minnie and Daisy found themselves gliding through an ever-shifting forest of prismatic sculptures wrought in the purest frozen crystal. The only sounds were their own gasps of wonder and trepidation, and a very faint hum from whatever was powering the vehicle.
Now they were moving over the surface of one of the snowflakes. Relative to them, it was the size of a major-league baseball field, a ridged plain of ice spreading out around them, the edges extending away and the ridges growing even as they watched. The wind was no longer perceptible at all; they were being carried along with the film of still air that clung to the flake as it moved. If they looked up, they could see more snowflakes, as huge, bluish-white blurs dancing in the far distance…but for all intents and purposes, the one they were traveling over might as well have been a lone asteroid in the depths of space.
That was when the Dispirations showed up again. They had to be Dispirations, because such things were never part of the ride. A whining buzz gradually intruded on the magnificent near-silence of the miniature world, growing louder, until a number of decidedly odd-looking machines zipped alongside the Atommobile from behind. They seemed to be part metal and part plastic, and comprised almost entirely of multi-jointed mechanical arms of various shapes and sizes. At first they were about the size of pet rabbits, relative to Minnie and Daisy, but it quickly became evident that they were not shrinking along with the Atommobile. They were closer to collie-sized when a squadron of three dove at the vehicle, tentacular limbs posed to attack.
"What are they?" Minnie squealed, clutching the Serpent Crown closer to her body to protect it.
Daisy brought her bat into play again, fending the things off with three loose-shouldered swings. "I think they're whatchamacallits," she said. "Nano-something. Nano-machines. Nanites!"
"Don't those try to take things apart?"
"I'm pretty sure that's the idea," Daisy said grimly. The nanites were like panthers compared to them now, and well on their way to horses. "We'll just have to avoid them until we're too small to be worth bothering with. Steer, would you?"
Minnie tucked the crown down by her feet, gripped the bar on the front of the Atommobile, and began leaning hard from side to side, causing the vehicle to swerve back and forth. The Dispirations had become elephantine in comparison, and correspondingly clumsy, but avoiding the hooks and claws at the ends of their python-like appendages was no picnic.
"This is worse than the submarine!" Minnie declared, ducking as a pair of pincers swiped at her head, scraping out a few tufts of fur.
"It's also worse than the Monorail!" Daisy said as she bashed a tentacle against the side of the Atommobile.
"Hold on tight!" said Minnie, leaning sharply forward so that the vehicle dove into a trench that had opened up in the surface of the snowflake. In reality it must have been an infinitesimal groove, but from their perspective it was practically a canyon. The nanites were too large and awkward to follow, although a few of their snapping limbs made a last-ditch attempt.
Daisy slumped back in the seat. "Nice driving," she said.
"Nice swinging," Minnie offered back. "Now what?"
"I guess we ride it out," said Daisy. "I think the Dispirations will have to get their own Atommobile if they want to follow us any farther."
They hugged the trench wall, watching the opposite one drift away and the bottom drop as they continued to shrink. If they hadn't known the whole structure was part of a snowflake, they would have sworn it was too straight and smooth to be natural. Eventually, the texture of the ice roughened. Strangely angular pores became visible, revealing the whole thing to be not a solid surface but a three-dimensional honeycomb lattice. Smaller yet, and the lattice proved to be composed of fuzzy, quivering globules—water molecules—arrayed in geometrically perfect order as far as the eye could see. The Atommobile made a banked turn into the endless network of molecules.
"How can we see all this?" wondered Minnie. "We're way smaller than a wave of light by now."
"Well, it wouldn't have been a very interesting ride if the lights had been off for most of it," said Daisy. "Don't you think they look like your boyfriend? I've always thought so."
Minnie thought they looked more like motorcycle stunt cages at this point, with little lights zipping along the wire mesh. Actually, of course, the lights were electrons, and they were about to become a major concern as the Atommobile plunged toward the wall of an enormous oxygen atom. (That made Minnie wonder how, on top of everything else, they were breathing, but she decided not to think about it.) In the next instant, the vehicle was passing through the shell, and the world was a hurricane of negatively charged particles whipping past at impossible speeds. Even though they knew it was coming and were (reasonably) certain they wouldn't be harmed, it was pretty alarming.
But they didn't actually scream until they were through the barrage and inside the atom, with the electrons whirling overhead like stars in the heavens and the glowing nucleus pulsing off to one side…and suddenly the ride voice-over cut back in, with the typically melodramatic narrator rhapsodizing loudly, and right in their ears via the speakers, about the magnificence of the sight. As soon as they realized the truth of the situation, they laughed and exchanged a high-five. Then it was just a matter of waiting for the ride to end, peeking cautiously out into Tomorrowland to make sure no Dispirations were waiting for them, and finally hustling toward the Plaza Hub before any decided to show up after all.
"You know who rules?" said Daisy as they stepped outside, where the sun was just beginning to burn through the cloud cover. "We do, that's who! If you're looking for a damsel in distress, you might as well just move on, because you won't find one here!"
Minnie threw her free arm (the other was holding the Serpent Crown) around Daisy in a spirit of sorority. "Let's go figure out what to do about our dudes in distress," she said.
The Fantasyland courtyard was the emptiest they'd seen it since the adventure began. With most of the combat-ready characters out in various parts of the park, and most of the others taking shelter in "it's a small world," only a skeleton crew, as it were, had stayed on hand to make sure the courtyard defenses stayed secure. The three Good Fairies hovered overhead, watching for signals from other flyers in other areas, while at ground level, Uncle Scrooge and Lady Kluck were engaged in animated conversation. About what, Minnie and Daisy couldn't tell, because only about 40 percent of it was in intelligible English, with the rest being a mixture of broadly accented English and Scots Gaelic. They didn't even notice the two women approaching.
Minnie cleared her throat politely, to absolutely no effect.
"Hey, Uncle Scrooge!" Daisy hollered. That did it.
"Ah, well, hello there, lassie!" he said. "How's the, er, quest going?"
"Well, there's good news and bad news," said Daisy. "The good news is—"
"—we've got the next crown," said Minnie, holding it out for Scrooge and Kluck to see. "The bad news is that the guys are stuck in the jungle, probably surrounded by Dispirations, and as soon as we place this thing, they'll probably wind up trapped in the Temple of Mara."
"So the question is," Daisy cut back in, "should we place it now, or try to rescue the guys first?"
"Place it now," said Lady Kluck without an instant's hesitation. "Every second you wait to do that is another second our friends spend in that ghastly gray place. That's worse than anything your lads might face from heathen temples or shapeshifting monsters. You know this to be true."
"Oh…" Minnie said, downcast. "I didn't think about that."
"Buck up, girl," said Scrooge, gently tapping her shoulder with his cane. "The lads themselves will probably be better off this way. Think about it: some of the folks we're about to get back were made for adventure. You'll have all the help you could possibly hope for in mounting a rescue mission."
"Eh? Eh?" Daisy cajoled, giving her best friend meaningful elbow-nudges.
"Daisy, I get it," said Minnie, pushing the other away with a hint of irritation. "It's not like I'm going to welch on our agreement. Thanks for the advice, both of you. Come on, Daisy." She set off at a brisk, purposeful walk toward the entrance to Sleeping Beauty Castle. Daisy had to trot to keep up.
"Shouldn't we call everyone back to the Hub for this?" she asked as they started climbing stairs.
"No, it would take too long," was the terse reply.
When they burst out onto the parapet, Minnie looked around frantically for a moment, trying to remember which was the right turret. Daisy pointed her to it—a broad, solid-looking one somewhat off-center from the central mass of the Castle. Minnie held up the Serpent Crown, took a deep breath, and tossed it…and like the others before it, it traced a smooth arc in the air and landed square on the spire. If it had been a carnival game, Minnie would have won the giant stuffed bunny.
She and Daisy grabbed at each other for balance as Disneyland, once again, rocketed forward through time. A burst of synth-enhanced pop music heralded the arrival of Captain EO in the southern tip of Tomorrowland, not visible from their angle but certainly audible. It was followed almost immediately by a heavy brass fanfare as Adventure Thru Inner Space trembled, turned itself inside-out one wall section at a time, and became Star Tours—the park's first foray into licensing a non-Disney franchise and dressing it up with Disney magic.
The next transformation site was at the diametrically opposite end of the park, the entrance to Bear Country. The entire landscape dipped and swelled around the rocky hill that was rising out of the ground, sprouting fountains of water from its slopes and a jagged tree stump from its summit. When it had reached its full height, huge-thorned briars grew in sinister-looking tangles at its base. It was Splash Mountain, and a wooden sign nearby indicated that the area which it towered over was no longer Bear Country, but Critter Country.
The activity moved to the southern tip of Tom Sawyer Island, where an old-fashioned cider mill sprang up from the rocks, to serve as the backdrop for a show so spectacular and innovative that a new word had to be coined to describe it: Fantasmic! Minnie frowned, remembering how Maleficent had taunted Mickey with the script for the show before casting her spell. Mickey… She found herself silently willing the transformation to hurry up even as it entered the home stretch. A saddle of land at the northern border of the park sank under the railroad tracks, forming a tunnel into Toontown so that human guests could finally hobnob with the Toons. And finally, the moment Minnie had been anticipating with no small amount of dread: the emergence of the Temple of Mara from the jungles of Adventureland. She tried to watch for it, but from her vantage point there were too many trees and buildings, so that all she could see was a glimpse of tan stonework and a puff of smoke that dissipated as the metamorphosis wound down.
"Whew!" said Daisy. "That was even better than the last one! It's too bad we can't make a ride out of it, huh?" She moved to the parapet railing and peeked down at the Castle drawbridge area. "I take it back—it's a good thing we didn't call everyone back. I don't think there'd be room for them all."
Minnie didn't have to look to know what she meant. The decade they had just restored had been a very productive one for the Animation Department, with the release of not only several highly acclaimed feature films, but a handful of popular television series as well. And all the characters that had thereby been added to the Disney Family were beginning to celebrate their liberation from Inpotentia with a tumultuous blend of voices. There was also a certain amount of splashing—that would be Ariel and her fellow aquatics in the Castle moat.
Minnie suddenly felt a bit weak-kneed at the thought of facing them all. She had been so fixated on the idea of rescuing Mickey (and the others) that she hadn't given a single thought as to how she was going to fill his big yellow shoes in the explanation, pep talk, and leadership department.
"Minnie? You okay?"
"What am I going to say to them all? They'll be expecting Mickey…"
"You'll think of something," Daisy said. "Or I could do it!"
"No, that's okay!" Minnie said hastily. "Well, let's get this over with." And with that, she trudged back inside the Castle and started down the stairs, steeling herself for the role of a lifetime.
As soon as the world stopped spinning, Mickey carefully raised himself to his hands and knees. After a trip like that, he half-expected to find himself in the Land of Oz. But the smell of damp stone with a hint of sulfur and bat guano, and—once the ringing in his ears settled down—the distant sound of slow drumbeats, told him that he was pretty much where he had expected to end up, sooner or later: the Temple of the Forbidden Eye.
Pluto was nosing his face and whimpering. "It's okay, pal," Mickey said, rolling over onto one hip so that he could scratch the dog's ears. "I'm all right. But that was some ride, huh? Wasn't it, fellas?"
There was no reply. Not even a groan.
"Uh, fellas…?" said Mickey, actually looking around for the first time.
He and Pluto were in a forgotten, half-ruined side corridor of the temple, illuminated only by dim ambient light filtering in from elsewhere. Mickey didn't recognize it. Little heaps of rubble, some of it containing what looked uncomfortably like human bones, were scattered about the small space. Of Donald and Goofy there was absolutely no sign.
"N-now, just take it easy, Pluto," he said, pulling his loyal pet closer. But really he was talking to himself.
To Be Continued…
A/N: Because of the content of this chapter, I hereby offer this Public Service Announcement: Kids, do not ever try to escape your lap restraint on a roller coaster. Ever! You adults probably shouldn't do it either. In fact, on any amusement park ride, just stay seated and keep all your body parts within the confines of the ride vehicle, like they tell you to.
Anyhoo, this was a fun chapter to write. I enjoyed developing the dynamic between Minnie and Daisy. The way I see it, Minnie is the smarter of the two, especially when it comes to advance planning, but Daisy has more pluck when the heat is on. It feels awkward to refer to the two of them as "women" in the narrative, inasmuch as they are not human, but I couldn't think of anything better. "Girls" is unpleasantly condescending (the chapter title notwithstanding) and "ladies" feels forced.
And now it's confession time: I have no excuse for the Adventure Thru Inner Space segment other than pure nostalgic self-indulgence. Most of you are probably too young to remember that ride, which closed in 1985, but it was one of my favorites when I was little. I'm pretty sure it taught me the word "electrons." I wanted to give it a piece of the spotlight while I still had the chance. You can find out more about it by visiting atommobiles dot com. (The truly obsessive among you may have spotted a couple of tributes to Star Tours—the ride that replaced ATIS in 1987—in the sequence. Just my take on an Imagineering tradition.)
On a completely different note, I was thinking about the Dispirations the other day, and it occurred to me that while they are immediately reminiscent of the Heartless from Kingdom Hearts, they also have certain things in common with the "small gods" from the Discworld novel of the same name. For those who have never read it, the small gods are invisible entities that dwell in the desert, far from human habitation. They were all once mighty deities with thousands of worshippers, but the civilizations that worshipped them are long gone, and without anyone to pray to them, they have dwindled down to nearly nothing. They are pretty well insane with their craving to have worshippers again and will do anything within their almost nonexistent power to get a mortal's attention. I just thought that was an interesting parallel, since I have acknowledged in the past that Terry Pratchett is one of my writing influences (in fact, some of his style crept into this chapter).
—Karalora
