فصل 29

CHAPTER 29

FAIRY TREASURES

AS THE WAITING-TIME SIGN HAD PREDICTED, it took them fifty minutes to get to the front of the line for Peter Pan’s Flight. They squeezed into the flying ship and J.D. pressed a button on his watch, which was in stopwatch mode. The safety bar came down; the ship rounded the corner and flew into the nursery, then out over nighttime London. All of them leaned forward as they approached Big Ben.

“It still says 9:07,” said Aidan.

“Fifty seconds to Ben,” said J.D., looking at the glowing dial of his watch. They flew past the moon into Never Land—the volcano, the mermaids, the Indians. In the distance they saw the form of Wendy on the plank.

“Coming up,” said Sarah, softly. They stared intently ahead.

Caw! Caw!

Skull Rock loomed out of the darkness.

“Two minutes, fifteen seconds,” said J.D. Aidan reached his arm toward the bird; it was well out of reach. The ship turned left; the skull disappeared.

J.D. looked up from his watch. “We’re going to have about five seconds, max, near the bird,” he said. “That doesn’t leave us much margin for error.”

“Assuming we even figure out what we’re supposed to do,” said Aidan.

“We’d better figure it out soon,” said J.D. “It’s almost 7:30. We’re under two hours now.”

They exited the ride; it was still light out, but the sun was waning. The Disney crowd, if anything, had grown. It swirled around Aidan, Sarah, and J.D. as they stood by the stroller-parking area outside Peter Pan’s Flight. The waiting-time sign for the ride now showed fifty-five minutes.

“Okay,” said J.D. “It’s two minutes, fifteen seconds to the bird, so to reach it at 9:07, we need to board the ship at 9:04 and forty-five seconds. Assuming the waiting time is still fifty-five minutes, we’d want to get in line at…8:09 p.m. and forty-five seconds.”

“How do you do that in your head?” said Aidan.

“It’s called subtraction,” said J.D. “They used to teach it in school. Anyway, we’d want to give ourselves a cushion, so let’s say we’ll get in line at eight p.m. That gives us a half hour now to figure out the bridge.”

“I don’t think we should stay out here in the open,” said Sarah. “Let’s go into that gift shop.”

“Tinker Bell’s Fairy Treasures?” said Aidan. “Seriously?”

“You have a better idea?” said Sarah.

“Of course not,” said Aidan, reluctantly following Sarah and J.D. into the shop. “I don’t even know how to subtract.”

Agents Gomez and Blight had split up at Cinderella Castle, Gomez going left into Frontierland, Blight straight ahead into Fantasyland. Like Gomez, she was accompanied by a senior security guard listening to dispatch over a radio earpiece.

The code had been transmitted only minutes earlier—“Christopher Robin.” Missing child! A description of both Sarah and Aidan had then been read over the secure radio. Over five thousand Cast Members in the Magic Kingdom heard the alert. On average, a Christopher Robin would result in thirty-seven false alarms—the wrong child matching the description. But despite that number, on any given day, a missing child was found within the first eleven minutes of the issue of such an alert.

So far there had been sixteen reported matches. The security man had relayed these to Blight, but they had all been in other areas of the park, and had all turned out to be false alarms.

Now dispatch was reporting a seventeenth match—this one nearby.

“Copy that, Crow’s Nest,” the security man said into his radio. “This is one-nine, en route to DC. Stand by.” He said to Blight, “This one’s ours.”

“Review in progress, one-nine,” came the dispatcher’s voice. This meant they were reviewing video footage, looking for Sarah’s likeness.

Blight and the guard broke into a jog, quickly reaching the carousel. They spun in circles, trying to separate one face from another in a moving sea of thousands of park guests. One minute passed…two…

The dispatcher reported. “All units, we have a twenty on Christopher Robin. Last seen passing DC headed in the direction of PPF. Units one-seven and one-three converge. All other units, stand by.”

“We’ve got confirmation,” the guard told Agent Blight. “Your colleague is on his way.”

“That was fast,” said Blight.

“This is Disney,” said the guard.

“Where to?”

“Straight ahead.”

The two hurried to Peter Pan’s Flight. They walked the length of the arcade, studying each face in the long line. They then observed the loading and unloading area, waiting until a group they watched enter the ride came out the exit. They watched each ship intently but saw no sign of the runaways.

“Nothing,” Blight said. “What’s next?”

“Small World,” said the guard, leading her across the concourse. Their attention was focused ahead, on the crowd surging into the hugely popular ride. Neither even glanced at another building close by, though they passed within fifteen yards of it: Tinker Bell’s Fairy Treasures.

Sarah, J.D., and Aidan huddled in a corner of the gift shop, next to a display of Tinker Bell jewelry. They kept their voices low to avoid being overheard by the steady flow of souvenir shoppers grazing around them.

J.D. glanced at his watch. “We have twenty-six minutes to get back in line,” he said.

“No pressure or anything,” said Aidan.

“Okay,” said Sarah, “to feed the bird, we have to get star-stuff to it, but we can’t reach it from the ship. Could maybe one of us jump out of the ship?”

“I’m not sure, but I think it’s too high up,” said J.D. “You might not be able to reach the bird from the floor even if you managed to jump out without breaking your ankles.”

“Could we throw some starstuff at the bird?” said Aidan.

“Hmm,” said Sarah. “I’ve only handled a little, but I don’t see how you could throw it. It doesn’t seem to have any, I dunno, weight to it. It seems to just…flow, almost like it has its own mind.”

J.D. said, “But you can transport it. You’ve been transporting it, in the gold box.” Sarah’s glance fell on the Tinker Bell jewelry. Suddenly, her eyes went wide.

“The locket!” she exclaimed.

One of the shop clerks looked over and said, “Can I help you with some jewelry?”

“No, sorry,” said Sarah. Lowering her voice again, she said, “We use the locket Pete’s wife gave us!”

“Of course,” said J.D., pulling the locket out of his pocket. “Why didn’t I think of that? That’s why he put the message in there!”

“Along with a little starstuff,” said Sarah. “He was showing us how to use it!”

“What are we talking about?” said Aidan.

Sarah rolled her eyes. “We’re going to put some starstuff in Pete’s locket and throw it to the bird,” she said. “It’s your idea, moron.”

“It is?” said Aidan.

J.D. was looking at his watch. “Okay,” he said, “we have to be in line in twenty minutes. I need to find a pay phone so I can get the exact time and set my watch to it. I’ll go alone so we’re not all together. You guys stay out of sight. Meet me at the line in fifteen minutes, okay?”

“When do we put the starstuff into the locket?” said Sarah.

J.D. frowned. “Not here, obviously. I guess we’ll have to do it when we’re in the line. Aidan and I can huddle around you—do you think you could pour some in quickly?”

“I guess I’ll have to,” said Sarah.

“Okay,” said J.D. “Meet you at the line in fifteen. We’re going to have one chance at this, and that’s it.” Then he was out the door, disappearing into the crowd.

They perched atop the wrought-iron work mounted on the peak of the Haunted Mansion—a decoration with the dual purpose of keeping birds off the roof. They also perched on the stone cap of every gable and the edge of every gutter—hundreds of ravens, in regimented lines. Not a beak turned, not an eye flinched, not a wing stirred.

“Look, Daddy!” a girl cried out from the waiting line. “Look at all the black birds!”

“Amazingly real-looking, aren’t they, sweetheart?”

“But they are real, Daddy.”

“Of course they are!”

“I don’t like them, Daddy.”

“Why not?”

“I can feel them.”

“Here, hold my hand.”

She reached for his hand but kept her worried eyes on the birds.

The father grinned, marveling at Disney’s attention to detail.