As they traveled along, doors swung open to admit their car into each new scene. Reaching the third scene, Charlene realized she heard no one talking. She looked back and saw there was no one in the car behind them. Rising to her knees, she saw no one in the car behind that one either.

Yet the line out front had been packed.

“Willa…?”

“Over there!” Willa said, pointing out a large, colorful tree drawn onto a panel. She lifted and dropped her 3-D glasses onto her nose in order to make sure—but yes, there was a single letter drawn into the leaves of the tree.

She called out quickly, “It’s an S!”

“S?” Charlene asked, puzzled. “But look behind us!”

Willa was too excited to look back.

“There’s no one behind us,” Charlene announced. “No one in the cars behind us. Why not?”

Willa pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket and scribbled down S. As she did, a drop of water appeared on the paper. Then another. And another.

“Behind us!” Charlene cried urgently.

Willa looked back. She looked up.

More water.

The doors to the next scene popped open and shut. They were in the rain scene. Rain drawn in long lines down the walls. Rain falling from the ceiling.

“Since when is this part of the ride?” Willa complained, stuffing the paper into her pocket.

At that moment, their car stopped moving.

“What’s happening?” Charlene whined. “Why are we stopping?”

The few light raindrops changed into a downpour. At first it seemed funny. But then it wasn’t simply rain, it was a torrent. Buckets. Both girls gasped for breath through a steady stream of water pouring down onto them. It was hard to breathe without coughing.

“This isn’t right!” Willa cried.

Now the water beneath their car began to rise. The car lifted, floating. Charlene lunged forward nervously, nearly capsizing them. She leaned out of the car and pushed against the large doors to the next scene.

“They’re stuck! They won’t open.”

As the water rose at an astonishing rate, the car floated higher and higher. Sparks flew as electrical wires were submerged.

“Stay in the car!” Willa hollered. Light sockets sparked and zapped. “We could be electrocuted!”

The car floated quickly toward the ceiling. Willa understood the worst of it: the higher they rose, the less available the air would be. They would either drown or suffocate.

“Willa…” Charlene moaned.

“I know.”

The car rose higher still.

Sparks flew again as more lights went under.

“We’re in trouble,” Willa said, surprisingly calm.

“Duh!”

“We need a way out.”

“Just now occurred to you, did it?”

The rain fell like a waterfal —the car was now less than three feet from the ceiling. Another foot or two and the car would be pinned with the girls inside it.

Why won’t the doors to the next scene open? Willa thought.

“Sit still,” she warned Charlene.

Studying the large scene doors, Willa stood up in the car. Charlene hollered at her to sit down as the car threatened to tip over.

Willa grabbed the overhead pipes to stabilize the car. She then pulled hand over hand to draw the car closer to the doors. But as the water rose, with so little room, Willa was forced back down into her seat.

No time!

Water streamed down her neck and shoulders as she spotted a sawed-off length of pipe jammed across the top of the large doors, blocking them and holding them shut. The “rain” was nothing more than the emergency sprinkler system gone wild. All this trouble could be easily explained: the sprinklers malfunctioning. Maleficent had done her job well.

Willa pulled on the sawed-off length of pipe but couldn’t budge it. She called for a stunned Charlene to help as the water rose steadily higher.

Together they pulled.

Water spilled over the side of the car, quickly filling it.

Willa chanted, “One—two—”

On 'Three!’ both girls heaved on the pipe, pul ing it free.

The doors blew open. The girls fell back into the car as a few thousand gallons of water rushed into the next scene, and the car rode the leading edge of the wave like a surfboard.

The plume of water spun and turned and twisted its way out toward the ride’s finish, leveling off as it reached the exit. Their car lowered and settled into the track, right where it had started.

The waiting guests stood there drenched head to toe. A lake of water had flooded the pavement outside the attraction.

In all the confusion, the two girls hurried from the car and ran for their lives.

26

Late that afternoon, nearing the dinner hour, the DHIs met in Finn’s guest room in the Virtual Magic Kingdom. This had become something of a routine for them. Lately, Charlene’s and Willa’s characters took the couch while Finn, Maybeck, and Philby stood and moved around the room.

A text bubble appeared above Willa. She told them about nearly being drowned at Winnie the Pooh, and that she had called Philby prior to this meeting and had told him about the S she and Charlene had discovered. It was Philby’s job to make sense of the clues.

Philby’s character explained that he’d run the letters FMEYIR and S through an Internet anagram generator. The program rearranged the letters into every possible combination and then printed up the results.

philitup: there are only two decent possibilities. MY FRIES and YES FIRM. Neither makes much sense.

Finn: So we need more. The last clue mentioned in the fable is “stone.” Any ideas what ride that might be?

philitup: I thought about Tom Sawyer Island. There are rocks over there. But then I realized it has to be Thunder Mountain. I mean, give me a break! Talk about rocks.  That place is all rocks.

Finn: So we’ll start there, at Thunder Mountain—Philby and I.

Mybest: Sounds good to me.

angelface 13: But we’ll all cross over, just as we do every night. Are we supposed to just wait for you?

Finn could just imagine Charlene whining as she typed.

Finn: At some point, we’ll need to get Wayne. He lives above the fire station. By the time Philby and I are off Thunder Mountain, we should have all the letters. We’ll get back together and try to solve the riddle. If we do, if we’re successful, we’ll need Wayne. He should be told what’s going on.

Mybest: I can get over there and give him a heads-up. The girls can keep a lookout from the apartment. It looks right down Main Street. We’ll set up some kind of signal in case they see trouble. That’ll help.

philitup: sounds like a plan.

The five characters formed a huddle in the middle of Finn’s guest room. They all put their hands into the center, like players on a sports team. And then they left the room.

Finn headed downstairs and found his mother bent over the kitchen sink doing dishes.

She asked, “Do you want to help me?”

“Sure.”

Finn bagged and took out the trash. He cleaned the kitty litter. He was about to put some dishes away when his mother reminded him where his hands had just been; so he washed his hands and was putting away some dishes when she said, “We need to talk.”

“Sure.”

“Let’s sit at the table.”

The table? This was bad—very bad.

“I need something explained to me, and I want you to be honest,” she said. The kitchen table grew impossibly long in his mind, as if his mother were a judge way down at the far end.

“Okay,” he said.

“The laundry.”

“Yeah? What about it?”

“I’m your mother, Finn. Each day you come home from school, I look at you, both because I love you and because it’s my job to keep your clothes clean. If your pants are clean, for instance, I say nothing and you can wear them another time. If they’re dirty, I ask you to put them in the laundry.”