Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 30: Getting Caught Up

The Matterhorn, that famous peak in the Swiss Alps, rises 14,692 feet above sea level, the better part of three miles. Walt Disney's scale model is 147 feet high, just one percent the size of the original. That was a minor blessing, because it meant that Chernabog was also scaled down somewhat—merely enormous rather than titanic.

But his wings would still have served a ship for sails and he still could have lifted and crushed a horse in his two hands, and in any case, the core of Chernabog's threat has never been his size, but his vast and malevolent power. He is a god, the Black God, and all that is dread and foul dances at his command.

He swiveled atop the mountain, sweeping his gaze over Fantasyland. All the characters on the ground witnessing it averted their eyes, out of an instinctive conviction that direct eye contact with Chernabog would stop their hearts. He located the moon, hanging behind a veil of humidity in the sky over Tomorrowland, and turned his back to it so that he could look down upon his own shadow, extending toward the Fantasyland courtyard. A grin split his gargoyle-like face, visible only as knife-edges of sulfur-colored light from his eyes, reflected on his teeth.

Satisfied for the moment that the demon's attention was not on any of them, Mickey rounded on Jafar, and by extension Ursula and Mim and all the rest of the Villains. "You maniac!" His voice was furious, but he kept the volume low, unwilling to risk attracting Chernabog's notice. "How could you summon him? Do you even know everything he's capable of? No! You don't! No one does! That's why we keep him sealed away in the first place!"

"Well, now we have an opportunity to find out, haven't we?" Jafar said evenly.

"Mickey's right, you are a maniac," said Minnie, balling her hands into fists. "Even Maleficent knows better than to summon things she doesn't fully understand."

"Really?" said Ursula from the canal. She flicked a hand, and a gentle wave rose, carrying her with it, and deposited her neatly on the ground. "You give her an awful lot of credit, considering. I hope you realize she's why we had to do this. She raised the stakes for everyone with this stunt of hers."

"Oh, I'm sure that's it," said Mickey. "You had no choice but to call up the ultimate manifestation of primordial darkness, huh? To maintain your 'evil cred,' is that how it is? Well, I don't call that evil so much as…" He searched briefly for a good word. "…idiotic!"

"I wouldn't expect you to understand—" Ursula began, but she was interrupted.

"Incoming!" Gaston announced, pointing up the Promenade. The rescue party and former captives were approaching at full gallop, in a very real sense fleeing from the mountain. Some of the faster characters were carrying the slower ones. Enough of them had weapons in hand to make the Villains pull together warily. But they weren't interested in another fight.

"It's awful!" said a wide-eyed Jasmine, pointing back in the general direction of the Matterhorn.

"I know," said Mickey. "Just remember: he'll be banished come sunrise."

"Aye, lad," said Scrooge. "The real question is, can we hold out that long? Look again." And he gestured with his cane up the Promenade.

Then Mickey saw it. Chernabog had flung out one arm, sending his shadow stretching, crawling like a live thing from the southern part of Fantasyland. And wherever that blackness fell, be it ground or wall or rooftop or planter hedge, the surface appeared to be boiling and writhing. Things were emerging, hundreds of them, pushing their way through from the other side of…of whatever the surfaces represented at that point in time. Of Chernabog's shadow, perhaps. There were bony claws, and misshapen heads, and tails like rats' or lizards tails, all churning together like a mud puddle full of worms, if the worms were creating themselves out of the mud at the same time.

Chernabog was summoning them—the spirits of the dead, or the demons of Hell.

Or Dispirations.

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, Mickey knew that was what they were. They moved the same way, albeit more hesitantly than the ones he and the others had been fighting. And besides, he reflected with a tinge of bitterness, what else would they be? But there was something else different about them…something he couldn't quite make out at that distance and in the dark.

"Mickey!" Minnie hissed, seizing his arm and pulling him backward. He realized that he had let himself drift forward a few steps, trying to spot what was odd about the Dispirations.

"How very fascinating," said Jafar, moving to stand beside the mouse couple. "What do you suppose he intends to do with them all?"

"Nothing good for our health, I'm sure," said Mickey. "Look, we can hash out our differences later. Right now, the very priority to keep everyone safe…even those of you whose fault this is. Nobody deserves to get caught in the middle of a swarm of Dispirations under the command of Chernabog. Got any ideas for where we can all take shelter until sunrise?"

"Oh, I have ideas, all right," said Jafar, swooping around to face Mickey, "but not, I'm afraid, the sort you're hoping for. You see, these creatures—Dispirations, you call them?—are, as you point out, under Chernabog's command." He leaned over and grinned smugly, mere inches from Mickey's face. "But Chernabog is under our command." He gave Mickey a little shove in the chest with the head of his staff. "So you needn't worry about us. I assure you, we Villains will be just peachy."

"You have no idea what you're saying," Mickey said matter-of-factly. He intended to say more, but was interrupted by a noise of surprise from Peter Pan.

Hovering some seven or eight feet above the ground, the ageless boy was in a position to see more of what was going on than the rest of the crowd. "Look at that!" he cried, pointing.

A number of Dispirations had just finished materializing and pulled themselves free from Chernabog's shadow, leaving pits and scars in the ground and buildings—no, not in the ground and buildings. The gouges appeared as patches of swirling haze, like little windows onto a distant region of space full of faintly glowing nebulae. Mickey realized with a shock of horror that they were nothing less than holes in the fabric of Disneyland's reality. What was visible through the gaps was Inpotentia itself. Just like in Ludwig von Drake's laboratory. Just like looking beyond the sky over Tomorrowland.

"There, ya see that? Ya see that?" Mickey barked at Jafar. "Still think this is such a good idea?"

"You know, Jafar, darling," Cruella said nervously, "it occurs to me he may have a point…"

Mickey neither noticed nor cared whether he got a response from the sorcerer. His mind was racing, putting together the pieces. Merlin and von Drake had warned him that Disneyland's anchor to the real world was weakening, and now Chernabog's presence was apparently straining it to the breaking point—or if not his presence, then what he was doing. He was summoning the Dispirations, and they were breaking through from Inpotentia…which meant they were not coming from elsewhere in the park. That was the difference. These were new Dispirations, taking on solid forms for the first time…and there simply wasn't enough reality left in Disneyland to keep it stable after they ripped across the boundary. He watched one hole flake around the edges and grow slightly larger. Another, in the wall of the Alice in Wonderland show building, sealed itself over…but instead of mock masonry, the gap filled with rough-hewn logs like those that made up the Frontierland gateway.

He became aware that Minnie was clutching his arm again. "What do we do?" she pled. "We're out of time!"

"Not yet," said Mickey. "We're still here, aren't we? We can still win this." He turned to address the Villains as a group and held out his hand. "Give me Triton's crown." When they hesitated, he shouted "Now! We don't have time for this! If too many more Dispirations come through, there won't be a Disneyland for you to take over!"

"And why," said Shere Khan, "should we cooperate with you, instead of, say, restoring the park ourselves? Anyone can return to the last crown to the Castle, can't they? And the one who does—"

"I heard Cruella earlier," Mickey cut in. "But I wouldn't be so sure anyone can do it. For one thing, you would need to have hands. So ask yourself…which of your fellow bad guys would you trust to rule over you? Cruella? Gaston, maybe? Last I saw, he had Triton's crown. How about the rest of you?"

As soon as he saw their faces, he knew he had chosen the right appeal. The Disney Villains are capable of teaming up and working together, but only for a loose definition of "team" and a given value of "together." There wasn't a one of them but intended to take the ultimate glory for her or himself, and wouldn't stand for it to go to another.

The leaders of the pack exchanged meaningful glances. Then Gaston stepped forward, crown in hand, still hesitant about handing it over.

Another roar from Chernabog shattered the air. As one, the characters on the ground looked up to see him make a directing gesture, then over at the massed Dispirations as they leapt into action and began charging up the Small World Promenade. The ground seemed to run like semi-molten wax under their feet, warping into misplaced shapes from elsewhere in the park—fronds of Adventureland plants and fragments of balcony railing from New Orleans Square, outcroppings of Main Street brickwork and abstract sculptures in Tomorrowland chrome.

"Now, Gaston!" Mickey cried, letting a hint of his desperation enter his voice. Looking like he was sucking on a lemon, the hunter tossed the crown over. Mickey caught it and shouted "Hold them off, all of you!", already starting to bolt for the "it's a small world façade. But he waved for Minnie to follow him, and the rest of the Sensational Six got the idea. As the other characters—including most of the Villains (Jack and Bagheera released their two captives so that the four of them could join in)—spread across the walkway to form a defensive wall, Mickey Mouse and his pals made a second try at their tower maneuver.

It went more quickly this time, because of adrenaline and a sense of urgency that led them to take more risks and care less about the wobbling. It still took a few minutes before the other five were in place and Mickey could start climbing toward the Pixie Crown. A lot can happen in a few minutes.

The Sensational Six, stacked fifteen feet high with their backs braced against the façade for what additional stability it could provide, had a clear view of it.

The Dispirations flowed up the Small World Promenade like a surging tide. They had indeed patterned themselves after Chernabog's usual minions—spectral warriors riding skeletal horses, imps and harpies and semi-anthropomorphic beasts making guttural screeching noises. There were scores of them, a horde of talons and hooves and horns and ghostly blades and gibbering voices, leaving a wake of surreal corruption behind them. One slashed at a Chinese elm planted near Storybookland, severing a branch. It boiled away into nothing before it could hit the ground.

Donald yelped in shock, and Goofy let out a frantic "Gawrsh!"

"Oh, Mickey, please hurry!" said Minnie.

"I've almost got it!" he replied, struggling to keep his balance atop her shoulders. "Just hold it a little longer!" He found the right way to set his feet and touched Triton's crown to the Pixie Crown just as the Dispirations plowed into the defenders.

And just for a brief moment, as the waves of light crashed over him and the others for the fifth and final time, everything was all right.

Then it passed, and Mickey found himself on the ground again, with a solid Pixie Crown in his hands, practically screaming to be placed. Or maybe it was the park itself, begging to be restored. And now, at last, he could do it…if he could only get past the nasty battle that stood between him and the Castle.

"I've got it!" he yelled, running toward the clamor. "Clear a path!"

"You heard the little rodent!" said Jafar. "He has the last crown!" And with that, the sorcerer turned and cast a fireball from his staff right at Mickey. It missed him, but continued burning on the pavement near his feet. Or maybe that was the intention, since the other Villains immediately withdrew from the battle and gathered in a horseshoe around him. It was obvious what they were up to.

"Playtime's over, m'boy," said Captain Hook.

The rest of the Six arrived to back Mickey up. "Traitors!" Donald bawled, striking his favorite fighting stance. "Backstabbers!" Words failed him, and he resorted to outraged squawking.

"Oh, don't act so surprised," said Ursula. "Even the Goof knows the leopard shark doesn't change its spots." Behind her, a covey of Dispirations caught hold of Peter Pan and dragged him down into their midst. Without the Villains opposing them, Chernabog's new minions were winning.

"So you're all one big happy evil family all of a sudden?" said Minnie.

"Of course not," Scar said simply, crouching to spring. The other Villains were also preparing to strike in their various fashions, and Mickey knew he couldn't possibly dodge all of them.

So he did the only thing he could think of. He lobbed the Pixie Crown into the air, over the Villains' heads and toward the battle, and yelled, "Somebody catch it!" The crown rose, tumbling, up to a height of nearly twenty feet. At that point, it was in Mickey's line of sight with Chernabog. And two things happened at once.

The first was that as Chernabog swept one huge hand past a cave in the side of the Matterhorn, a pale, shaggy, roaring figure lunged out, clamped onto the hand, and bit it.

"Harold?" chorused at least three members of the Sensational Six.

The second thing was that something sleek and winged swooped down out of the night and snatched the Pixie crown out of the air.

"Hey!" Mickey gaped. But a third thing was already happening, seizing his attention: urgent voices were becoming audible over the sounds of the fighting on the ground, which was subsiding slightly, and the bellows of the two monsters on the mountaintop. In the next instant, the owners of the voices appeared, rounding the Motorboat Lagoon at speed. It was Merlin and Professor von Drake, and they were flying…or something. Actually, it looked more like they were sitting on an invisible giant beach ball that was bouncing along the walkway. As they got closer, what they were shouting became intelligible—something about finding someone—but Mickey was barely listening, because he was distracted by the sight of what was approaching behind them.

It was the second onrushing horde he'd seen in the span of twenty minutes. But this one was larger than the one under Chernabog's command, and it was much more diverse. He saw birds. And bats. And plenty of other kinds of animals, not all of them entirely plausible. And gleaming machines—robots? About there, he gave up on trying to classify them.

"It's quite all right!" Merlin was saying. "They're friendly!"

The Villains saw them too. "To whom?" Cruella wondered.

The invisible beach ball made a really big bounce, carrying its two passengers right over the skirmish, and also over the Villains, and landed between then and the Sensational Six with a ground-shaking whump. Then there was a popping sound, and the Villains found themselves facing roughly two tons of lunk-jawed, rather annoyed dragon.

"Elliot!" Mickey said.

The two intellectuals were sitting on his back, although the quickly hopped off so that he could menace the evildoers free of distractions.

"We found the poor guy—" von Drake began, but there was no more time for conversation. The new crowd of creatures was joining the battle.

Almost at once, the tide turned back. Chernabog's Dispirations were already losing focus as their master devoted his attention to the sudden assault from Harold, and now they were under assault from the newcomers, who outnumbered them three to one. A few of them near the edge of the melee managed to flee, but the others were swarmed. It was strange—instead of fighting the demons, exactly, the creatures were simply immobilizing them, and then the one so afflicted would dissolve, its substance flowing into its attackers and making them larger.

"Fellas," Mickey said quietly, fascinated, "what are they? Where did you find them?"

"All over the park," said Merlin. "They are, in fact, the Dispirations. We were just as surprised as you to learn of their reformed ways. We can only assume that Hypatia is responsible."

"Hypatia!" Daisy exclaimed. "Did you ever find her?"

"We certainly did," said Merlin, "but—"

There was a catastrophic cracking sound from somewhere in the park, and the ground began to shake. All around them, slowly but with a dreadful aura of inevitability, fissures began to open up in the ground, the structures, the trees, even the air itself, each one a gruesome wound in the park, bleeding its essence into the formlessness of Inpotentia. The gathered characters cried out in fear and tried to cluster together for security, uselessly, for what could would forming a huddle do against the dissolution of the very world around them?

"It's just as I feared!" von Drake wailed. "The space-time instabilities are reaching critical levels! You've got to hurry, Mickey!"

"Right!" he said. Then he remembered. "But the Pixie Crown…something stole it!" He flung up his hands in frustration, only to be startled when something landed around his right wrist. Of course it was the Pixie Crown, and while he was still marveling at its return, a lovely creature somersaulted down from above and dropped lightly to the ground in front of him. It was a winged wolf, longer and taller than a normal wolf but also slimmer, so that it probably weighed less. Its fur was silvery blue, the feathers of its great wings and birdlike forelegs every possible shade of gray-blue and gray-violet.

"Nonsense; she didn't steal it," said Merlin. "As we approached, we distinctly heard you plead for someone to catch it. She's developed quite a solicitous personality to go with her attractive new form."

"Oh, my," said Minnie. "It's Hypatia!"

Behind them, there was a horrible groaning noise as the "it's a small world" façade began to warp and uproot itself. The very land it was sitting on was tearing free from the park and disintegrating. Around the whole perimeter of Disneyland, bits were flying off and vanishing through the fissures.

"We're almost outa time!" Mickey said. "Hypatia, can you give me a ride to the Castle?"

"Can you take two?" said Minnie, firmly seizing Mickey's free hand.

Hypatia nodded and made a musical sound. She spread her wings and crouched so that the two mice could climb aboard her back, then sprang into the air. Mickey and Minnie gasped as the ground dropped away beneath them and the crumbling scenery of Fantasyland streaked by.

It took Hypatia less than a minute to cross the distance to Sleeping Beauty Castle, but she balked on the final approach. The upper turrets were surrounded by a network of gaping, undulating rifts, and flying anywhere near them would have been suicidal. Instead, the winged wolf touched down in the forward part of the Fantasyland courtyard, near the door to the Castle's interior.

"Thanks," said Mickey. "You did plenty. Take care of yourself." Clutching the Pixie Crown to his chest, he flung open the door and dashed in, with Minnie right by his side.

Then they had the steps to climb—a much harder task than normal, because the Castle was shaking like the revenge of San Andreas, and the space inside it was warping, making the stairwells steeper, or maybe it was their legs that were being made shorter, and they couldn't use the walls to steady themselves because there were fissures developing even indoors, growing along the stones as though chasing the pair. The constant skewing of perspective made them feel queasy.

Finally, they made it out onto the main parapet, and everything stabilized. The four crowns already placed were glowing, bathing the front of the Castle in bold colors, holding off the decay with the strength of the history they represented. It was a welcome sight indeed, for the rest of the park—what they could see of it—was so far gone by this point that it was almost unrecognizable. Only a few islands of normality were left amid a sea of mishmashed textures, yawning chasms, and warped structures, all of it illuminated by what used to be the sky and was now the kaleidoscopic fog of Inpotentia. But the crowns were still real, and that meant the decades they stood for were also real, had really happened. Disneyland might be a rapidly failing construct of mere memories, but at least they weren't false memories. Mickey took from that what comfort he could.

He brought out the Pixie Crown, and it began to shine like the others, a shade of gold so bright and fierce that the two mice had to shut their eyes against it. But that was all right, because Mickey didn't need to see in order to know where to throw it—he knew the layout of the Castle by heart. Anyway, it felt almost like the crown was straining to leap out of his hands and fly to the turret of its own accord.

So he let it.


The first four time jumps had felt like moving at tremendous speed in a perfectly straight line. This one, however, felt like being trapped inside a clothes dryer that had been picked up by a tornado that was being run through a particle accelerator. And when Mickey opened his eyes a crack to watch the transformation, all he saw was a tumultuous whirl of colored sparks like the embers of fireworks. It was dizzying, but beautiful, and he opened his eyes all the way and nudged Minnie so that she would watch too.

They were still standing on the parapet of Sleeping Beauty Castle, but instead of being at the center of Disneyland—even a distorted and collapsing Disneyland—it was at the eye of a hurricane of light and shadow. All five crowns were in place on their respective turrets and glowing, with little bits of the glow constantly shooting off and joining the cyclone.

For the first minute or so, it was just chaos. Then like-colored sparks began joining up into trails, which began drawing together into swatches, which began cohering into solid forms. If you could take a picture postcard, turn all the colors to water, spin it so that the picture blurred into a spiral-patterned mess, and then reverse this process, it would approximate what the two mice witnessed as Disneyland was restored. Strings of light coiled themselves into all the beloved landmarks, from the Main Street train station to the hills behind Toontown, from Splash Mountain to Space Mountain. Fountains of light erupted from the freshly set ground and froze into the shapes of trees. An azure comet arced overhead, its tail spreading like ink in water to paint a clear sky. At that point, it all became so dazzling that they could no longer watch everything, so they flung themselves into each other's arms and stayed that way until the brilliance finally subsided.

The first sound they heard was a shrill, warbling bird call. Mickey and Minnie opened their eyes and stared, awestruck, at the perfectly ordinary starling perched on the parapet railing. The next sound they heard was a voice from the ground in front of the Castle: "Hey, we're back!"

Hercules's voice.

The crowns were in place, winking in the morning light. The gold and blue banners hung in elegantly draping folds from the walls and turrets. The giant gems caught the sun and threw spangles of every conceivable color onto nearby surfaces. Last but not least, Mickey noted with immense satisfaction as he and Minnie walked to the edge of the parapet and waved down in triumph at all the friends who had joined the Disney Family in the last ten years, the blue and gold, mouse-eared "50" plaque hung in its proper place over the Castle archway, just above Walt's coat of arms.

"We did it," Minnie said softly.

"Yeah. We did," Mickey agreed. Then the heady reality of it caught up with him, and he burst into exultant laughter and literally jumped for joy. "We really did it! We won, Minnie!"

"You crazy mouse," she said, pulling him into another hug. "I knew we would. How could we not, when we were following you?"

"Aw, shucks."

By then, the other characters who had been left back in Fantasyland and Toontown were streaming through the archway below them, and the cheering was beginning in earnest. Mickey couldn't even recall the last time he had been so magnificently happy. They had saved Disneyland and all their friends and everything was right again. And if he looked up Main Street, he could just barely make out the edge of the crowd of guests gathering to visit the park for the 50th Anniversary Celebration. The Happiest Homecoming on Earth? Yes, yes it was.

Which is why it almost didn't register in his consciousness when a sliver of darkness in the air twisted open and suddenly Maleficent was there on the parapet with them. "Well done indeed, little mouse," she said calmly. "Once again, the hero is victorious."


Mickey's elation slammed into a brick wall. Not now!

As she had before, Minnie interposed herself between Maleficent and Mickey, spreading her arms and lowering her head slightly, like a goose defending its young from a predator. "Oh, no you don't! We won! We beat everything you threw at us, and even a few things that someone else did! You've lost, Maleficent," she said. "Just suck it up and leave Mickey alone already!"

Maleficent blinked. "As you wish, Miss Mouse," she said evenly. Then, before either of the two mice had the chance to get properly alarmed at such suspiciously quick acquiescence, she made an abrupt diagonal sweep of her right arm. The glow emanating from the orb of the staff flicked forward, expanding, and enveloped Minnie, sealing her inside a globe of magical force.

Mute with shock, all Mickey and Minnie could do was hammer against the barrier from their respective sides, just long enough to realize the futility of it. Then Maleficent moved again, holding her staff aloft, and the sphere launched skyward, well out of Mickey's reach and still rising, until a swirling phenomenon, neither clouds nor wind, opened over the Castle like an evil eye, casting harsh ultraviolet light onto a horrified Mickey, and swallowed it up without a trace. The vortex closed up after it, but a hint of it remained as a discolored blot on the sky, bleeding wisps of black light into the surrounding air.

"There, that should do it," Maleficent said with calm satisfaction, like someone finishing up a knotty household chore. She met Mickey's eyes for a brief moment, answering his stricken gaze with a smirk of triumph. Then, without another word, she was gone. Mickey was left alone on the Castle parapet, staring aghast at the high-up spot where Minnie had disappeared.

The silence was absolute. Mickey was dimly aware that there was a crowd on the ground behind him, probably only a hair less appalled than he, but the sheer horror was numbing his mind, and was staggering back against the parapet railing, and he was tipping off-balance and falling…

The response was immediate. Pegasus zipped up to catch him, and the Good Fairies conjured up cushions and glasses of water, whatever they thought he might need, and Donald and Goofy and Pluto all drew in close to him, just for the closeness. For moral support.

"No," Mickey was saying in a voice as timorous as the squeak of a normal, tiny mouse. "No, no, no, Minnie, no." Suddenly, he sat bolt upright, glaring at the remnant of the vortex that had engulfed his girlfriend. "No! Minnie!"

"Whoa, whoa, take it easy!" Donald said.

Mickey shook his head slowly, brows tightening with fierce resolve. "I have to follow," he said quietly. In the hush of the gathering, it carried like a public-address announcement. "I have to get up there and go after Minnie."

No one was about to question whether it was the right thing to do, or even whether it would be possible. Mickey would find a way. But Daisy said what they were all thinking. "Surely that's what Maleficent wants. It's a trap."

"Of course it's a trap," said Mickey, getting to his feet in a rather wobbly fashion. "That's why I'm going up there alone—and I don't want any argument from anyone. None of you are to go anywhere near that thing, understood?" He shook his head, realizing how he sounded. "Wait…I didn't mean it like that. It's not that I don't appreciate everything you've done up until now. And it's not that I don't trust you to take care of yourselves. But whatever the trap is that Maleficent's setting, she's setting it for me." Tears began to prick at his eyes, and he spoke faster. "You all saw what she did to Minnie. She could have done it to me instead, but she didn't. She wants a—a showdown, and she won't stand for anyone else interfering. So I've got to do this alone."

No one else spoke. The silence was pregnant with anticipation. "But," Mickey said, forcing a brave smile in defiance of the tears that were starting to spill over, "I wouldn't say no to whatever help you can give me before I go."

"Of course!" said Goofy. "Anything you need, pal!"

"Just say the words," said the Genie. "Within canonically established limits, of course."

"That's the problem," said Mickey. "I don't know what I need. I don't know what will work in Inpotentia."

"Sure you do," said Daisy. "Ideas will work. That's the whole point of the place, right?"

"Let's think about this logically," said Merlin. "Maleficent would hardly arrange a confrontation in a place where her magic was ineffective. It stands to reason that anything you bring with you should operate more-or-less normally."

"Come on," said Donald. "Let's go get your Hat."

"No," said Mickey. "I'm too wound up—I wouldn't be able to get the box open."

"Well, maybe we can find a substitute," said the Fairy Godmother. "I know!" She waved her wand, and a sparkling point of light zipped up Main Street and returned levitating a hat from the Mad Hatter shop—not the popular velour mockup of the Sorcerer's Hat, but a gold-colored mouse ears beanie. A length of thread was busily stitching Mickey's name on the back even as it floated up and settled onto his head.

"Okay…I don't mean to complain, but this feels really stupid," he said. Far too small for him, the hat perched on his cranium like an overturned teacup, and the shiny gold ears were pressing awkwardly against his real ears.

"It's your ultimate test and you've no time to rest," the Godmother chanted, waggling her wand over Mickey's clumsily adorned head, "so let this help you come shining through." He felt the tingle of transformation beginning, and closed his eyes. "Just a quaint little seed for the magic you need… Bibbity, bobbity, boo!"

There was a soft explosion of light, followed by little appreciative noises from the characters. Mickey opened his eyes and was unsurprised to find that his trademark red shorts had been transformed into the droopy robe and knotted sash that comprised his Sorcerer's Apprentice costume. Something very like the Sorcerer's Hat was on his head, but when he reached up to touch it, it didn't feel quite solid. "It's not quite the same as the real one, of course," said the Fairy Godmother, "but perhaps in a realm that's all to do with imagination, it'll be enough."

"I sure hope so," said Mickey. "That leaves just one thing. Tinkerbell?" The pixie zipped up front and center. "I meant it when I said I didn't want anyone else to take a risk by going near where the portal was, and that means…well, you know the drill."

Tink nodded, rubbed her tiny hands together to generate sufficient pixie dust, and began dousing Mickey with the sparkling powder."

"Say…you need any help coming up with a happy thought?" asked Peter Pan.

"No, I think I can manage, but thanks." We won…Disneyland is back to normal…this is just a—a loose end that needs tying up. It would have to do. Mickey lifted off the ground and began rising slowly toward the dark patch of sky. "In fact, thanks to all of you. For everything. For bein' here." His ascent accelerated, and he looked up in order to aim himself more precisely toward his goal. Once he was within a dozen feet of it, he glanced down to see everyone waving. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called "Don't worry! I—we'll be back soon!"

Then the portal yawned again, as though it were expecting him, and Mickey Mouse willingly coasted into the nebulous expanse of Inpotentia.

To Be Continued...


A/N: Wow, that went fast! It's been what, about two weeks since my last update? It helped that I had about a page of it written already. Some of you might have recognized the "sneak preview" I offered a while back as an apology for a long delay between updates, as well as proof that I had the basic plot all planned out almost from the beginning of the project. I have the first bit of the next chapter pre-written also, so with any luck the next update isn't far off. We'll see! In any case, we're in the home stretch now—just a couple more chapters to go!

—Karalora