Ridley Pearson - Power Play

Finn suddenly felt horribly alone.

Fireworks exploded over the lake.

When Maybeck created a diversion, he did it Maybeck-style: big time. He knocked over a tall urn containing tiki torches. The resulting cacophony was like a stampede of wild horses, the chaos compounded by Maybeck’s intentional fumbling as he tried to rectify the situation. He kicked the torches around in a storm of rattling bamboo, and set the urn rolling toward the checkout desk. The two Cast Members remaining in the store hurried over to help.

Willa, standing alongside a straw basket containing a very real-looking cobra that flicked its tongue at her, grabbed the weaving spindle from the loom on display and pulled hard to break the yarn. But the display was deceptive. The yarn was not really yarn but some kind of unbreakable nylon string. It wasn’t going to break no matter how hard she pulled. So, with the Cast Members laboring to help Maybeck with the spilled tiki torches, Willa began unwrapping the string from the spindle as fast as she could.

Maybeck glanced in Willa’s direction several times, clearly annoyed and frustrated by her taking so much time. Finally, she reached the end of the string and the spindle came loose. She stuffed it into her pocket and nodded slightly when she caught Maybeck looking.

Together with the Cast Members, Maybeck collected the torches and stood them back up in the urn and the urn was moved back into place. Maybeck apologized profusely and slipped out one side of the store as Willa left opposite him. She turned left, toward the brightly exploding sky and the mobs of people watching the spectacle.

A Security guard on a Segway was headed right for her. Then she spotted a second Segway on Maybeck’s side. Willa turned around and walked in the other direction, deeper into Morocco. The stolen spindle felt like it weighed a hundred pounds in her pocket. She thought about tossing it. But if the Security guy was watching her, he’d see.

She glanced over her shoulder. The Security guy had stopped at the store.

She faced forward and found herself looking into the eyes of an old man-a street beggar. There was at once something sad about this poor man, and yet something else vaguely familiar. She stopped abruptly, both afraid and intrigued. Maybeck appeared behind the old man, coming around the far corner. Perhaps the old guy caught the shift in her vision, or maybe he had eyes in the back of his head, but he knew someone was there. He backed up, forming a triangle with them.

“Should I call the authorities?” he asked in a creaky old voice. “Do you think they might be interested in a missing spindle?”

“But how-?” Willa’s breath caught.

Maybeck stopped. He and Willa exchanged a look of despair.

“Go on your way, old man,” Maybeck said.

“Old man? Do you think so?” As he laughed, the silk veil that hung across his chin billowed like a sail. He paused a moment, looking between them, making sure he had their attention. “I…want…your…magic. I will spare your lives if you give it to me now.”

Willa felt a shortness of breath. There was something about the way he’d said “magic” that cut to her core. She’d never considered herself as possessing any magic, and yet here was this weird old man not only claiming that, but wanting her to hand it over. It was like someone trying to rob you of something you didn’t know you possessed.

“Wait a second! Who are you?” Maybeck stepped back and indicated for Willa to do the same.

“Think you can outrun me, do you? That would be a terrible mistake to make.”

“I can outrun you on one leg, old man,” said Maybeck.

The silk veil dropped, revealing a pointed jaw. The old man’s body stretched and grew taller.

Willa understood why his jaundiced eyes had seemed so familiar. The person who stood before them was not an old man at all. It was Jafar.

Willa’s gasp echoed off the walls.

“Lest you forget what I’m capable of…” Jafar said, and immediately transformed into a cobra-the clothes falling in a pile on the cobblestone street at his feet. The cobra lifted its head and its neck flared.

Maybeck muttered, “Willa, I don’t do snakes.”

No wonder the cobra in the store had looked so real, she realized. “Don’t…move!”

“Not planning on it,” Maybeck said.

The cobra aimed first at Willa, then at Maybeck.

“One leg, huh?” she said.

“Very funny. What now?”

Willa addressed the cobra. “We are willing to listen to your proposal.”

The snake moved with insane swiftness into the leg of the fallen pants, and suddenly Jafar stood before them once more.

“Good decision,” he said.

Each time the fireworks boomed, Willa flinched. Colors flashed on the walls surrounding them, turning their faces blue, red, green, and white in rhythmic pulses.

“Exactly what magic are we talking about?” Maybeck asked.

“The window magic.”

“Windows? Like the software?” Maybeck said.

“I don’t think we’re talking software,” Willa said. “What kind of windows?” she asked Jafar.

“Window magic,” he said. “I wish this also. What the evil one has, I must possess as well.”

“Windows,” Maybeck said, still confused and trying to wrap his head around their situation. For him, Jafar was one of the worst Disney villains out there. He killed people, or tried to; he placed no value on human life. Maybeck assumed he’d just as soon turn into a cobra and bite them dead as let them walk away. So, it came down to convincing him he could get what he wanted without knowing exactly what he wanted.

Beside Maybeck, Willa backed up a step. Jafar seemed in opposition to, or ignorant of, Maleficent’s Overtakers. Both possibilities fascinated her. Was there division in the ranks? Did Jafar command a splinter cell?

Speculation fled as she caught sight of a display carousel in the open doorway to the gift shop immediately behind her.

“What’s up?” Maybeck said softly in her direction.

Jafar seemed to understand he was outnumbered. He looked between them like a fan at a tennis match.

“Hang in there with me,” she said.

“Hanging,” Maybeck said.

Jafar raised his thin, hideous hand and said, “Don’t make me do something I’d rather not.”

But Willa kept moving ever so slowly toward the display carousel and the merchandise it contained: necklaces, fans, hand mirrors, Aladdin turbans, scarves, and more.

Jafar said, “You will give me magic. Only then will I let you leave alive.”

“You are one generous dude,” Maybeck said. “And right now I’m thinking there’s no one we’d rather give our magic to than you. Trouble is, right now, we can’t be giving our magic out in the open. You know? We bring the magic, and next thing you know all those people out there are going to want it. And that’s no good for any of us. You with me?”

Jafar trained his yellow eyes onto Maybeck, stopping him in his tracks.

“You don’t have it, do you?” Jafar sounded crushed and angry. Extremely angry. “I misjudged you. Magic is not something you can leave behind. One either has it or not. And if you don’t have it, you are of no use to me.”

Willa had to hope not only that her current line of thinking was correct, but that she had perfect pitch. She also had to remember back to second grade-which for her had been an unpleasant time, when her two front teeth had been roughly the size of her thumbnails, and her classmates had teased her for being so ugly.

She grabbed hold of a snake-charmer’s flute from the display carousel. In second grade, it had been a recorder flute for the Christmas show. She drew it to her mouth, and played a haunting melody from a faraway land that she’d just heard inside the store.