Chapter 9

Mal took a deep breath and slowly let it out, she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she tried to look Ben in the eyes while she told her story, but she found it hard.

"So life on the isle. The dome made it gray. I mean I knew day from night, but there were no bright sunny days like there are here. There was no clean water, no good food. It was all the rejects from here. I stole just about everything I ate or drank for most of my life. What I drank most of the time was dark black coffee that was thick as mud. We ate rotten apples, moldy bread and stale crackers. Hardly any sweets, and if they came in they were cracked or stale. Nothing was fresh. Even what was made on the isle tasted awful because of the old ingredients and unclear water. There were no seasons, it was always somewhere in the 70's. The air was stale for lack of a better term, it had an odor about it. I never noticed it until I came here, and we went to the forest. That air was so fresh compared to the isle. Our trees weren't bright green. The only colors that weren't dark and dank, were in the clothing that came over from here, and the odd cans of spray paint I found to use to tag my mother's pictures everywhere. There were no cameras, no phones, no internet. We only got two channels. A shopping channel and the Auradon Network News. I had no tv at all. Mother HATES electronics. No music, unless we made our own. I lived in an old run down castle like building called Bargain Castle. Evie lived on the edge of town in another large castle like home. Evie and I were lucky, we actually had a bedroom. Jay lived in his father's shop. He slept on the floor of the shop on a pile of dirty used rugs. Carlos lived in his mother's closet. The fur one. It had fur coats, but it also had fur traps, and smelled like rotting animals. School went year round because we never went. We had no holidays, we had no days off. We had no birthdays, especially not after the one Evie's mother threw. It was the one and only one to ever happen on the isle. And when she didn't invite me, my mother blew up. That's why Evie and I weren't friends. Evil Queen and Evie were sent into exile by my mother." She looked at him and he was listening closely. The fact that his face showed no expression gave Mal the courage to go on. HE neither showed anger in what his father had done, nor pity for her life.

"Let's sit please." He nods and they sit on the couch in his office. That was the back ground, now was the hard part to admit. "My mother banned Evil Queen and Evie to their castle for life, but after 10 years Evil Queen thought my mother had forgotten. My mother never forgets, she just lets you think that until she either uses it against you, or seeks her revenge." Mal looked at him again, and could see a little confusion in his expression. "Let me backtrack to bring you up to date about how the four of us came to be a gang, we weren't considered friends on the isle. You don't really have friendships there. Of the four of us, I have known Jay since we started school when were 5. Carlos started a few years later. Evie had only been in school a few weeks when her mother threw that birthday party that got them banned for life, Carlos never got to meet Evie. Jay and I were a grade above her because Evil Queen didn't start her in school at 5 like we did, so we didn't run into her. Jay was invited to the party, but Evil Queen invitied every kid on the isle, except me, but we went over that. So to lead us up to coming here to Auradon. Evie had just returned to school, to coming out in public, about two months before you called for us to come over here. So on the night she came back to school I had Carlos throw a party, a party that I was going to use to play an awful trick on Evie, but it didn't really work out the way I wanted it too. I had tricked Evie into Carlos' bedroom, you know, Cruella's closet. Carlos felt awful for her and let her out. Carlos made friends with Evie first, he felt sorry for her. His mother was probably the most physically abusive of the four of them. My mother was neglectful, but she never really hurt me…well not all the time. Not like Carlos." Mal stopped for a minute to regain her thoughts, realizing she was babbling and the story was starting to wander. And this was the part of the story where Mal worried about angering Ben once more, but she promised truth, and he needed to know the whole story.

"Carlos was into electronics. At the party I had him throw at his house, he was showing Evie one of his inventions. He invented it to try and get other channels on the tv. He wasn't trying to do anything to the dome, that was never his intent, but he thinks he broke through dome, if only for a few moments. Ben what I am going to tell you now…its bad. Really bad, we did something awful. My mother spent the entire 20 years she was on the isle looking for a way off. A few nights after the party my mother's familiar, Diablo, came back to life. When they were sent to the isle he was stone. Carlos' machine allowed enough magic in to reanimate Diablo. He flew to see my mother and told her where the Dragon's eye was hidden."
"Hidden?"
"When the villians were sent to the isle, things were done to their magical accessories some kept here in the museum, others sent into exile just the same as the villians were. Evil Queen's mirror was cracked and shrunk, and to torment her, given back to her. The Dragons Eye, my mother's wand for lack of a better term for it, was sent to somewhere on the isle. My mother spent the whole 20 years looking for it. Why, I don't know, it wasn't useful to her without magic. Well that little window Carlos made by accident, let in just enough magic to reanimate Diablo and to allow him to locate my mother. He was left near the Eye, and he saw that it had glowed, if only for a moment. It gained enough magic to put up its protection spell again." Ben looked at her, still listening, but unsure where the story was going or what it had to do with Mal. And how this was so bad.

"I came home from school the day Diablo returned, and my mother was waiting for me. She had tasked me to find the eye. Well it was more like an order. Diablo told her where it was, so she told me. I was left, at not quite 16 years old to go into the forbidden forest and retrieve her staff. If I didn't find it, I wasn't to ever return home again. I convinced Jay to come with me and somehow, Carlos and Evie tagged along. We hiked through the forbidden forest, faced many challenges, but we found the eye. I knew the risks of touching the eye, 100 years of sleeping. I was safe to touch it because I was a fairy, but if anyone else touched it, night-night. Well my mother didn't trust me to trick her or any of the others so she had the crow follow me. And …she was right, I couldn't allow Evie to touch it. When I grabbed it, it knocked me out when I came too, the staff was gone, and no one knew how or where. We walked back to town. I knew my life was over, I had, had it in my hand and lost it."
"But she had it…Jay touched it.." Ben was confused.
"Yes. Diablo had taken it from me. He was ordered to take it from whomever had it. And to tell her who touched it. She was furious at me for not tricking Evie, or any of the others into touching it. My saving grace was being called to Auradon. As for Jay touching it here, my mother was also holding it is the only thing I can think of that kept him safe, that kept him from going off to sleep." She stopped and waited for the anger. The disgust. It was, after all, her fault her mother was able to leave the isle. Without the eye her mother wouldn't have been able to leave the isle.