Isle of the Lost (5 page)

“Y-yes,” he said uncertainly, unsure if that was the correct answer even though it was the truthful one.

“Right answer,” Mal said and patted him on the head. “I can’t exactly give a party at my place without my mother yelling at everyone, not to mention the whole flying crockery issue.”

Carlos sighed. Like the rest of the Isle, he knew parties brought out Maleficent’s worst behavior. There was nothing she hated more than people openly having fun.

“And we can’t have it at Jay’s because his dad will just try to hypnotize everyone into being his servants again,” Mal continued.

“Totally,” agreed Jay.

Carlos nodded again, although he wasn’t sure where this was leading.

“Great. Perfect. Party at your house. Tonight.”

Party?
At his house? Did he hear that right?

“Wait, what? Tonight?” He blanched. “I can’t have a party! I mean, you should understand, my mom doesn’t really like it when people come over—and, um, I’ve got a lot of work to do—I have to fluff her furs, iron her undergarments, I mean—” He gulped, embarrassed.

Mal ignored him. “Spread the news. Hell Hall’s having a hell-raiser.” She seemed to warm to the thought. “Get the word out. Activate the twilight bark, or whatever it is you puppies do.”

“Bowwow,” barked Jay with a laugh.

Carlos glared at the two of them, in spite of himself.

“There’s a party?” Evie asked shyly. Carlos had forgotten she was standing right next to him, and he jumped at the sound of her voice.

“Eavesdrop, much?” Mal said, snarling at her although it was obvious Evie couldn’t help it, as she was standing right next to them.

Before Evie could protest, Mal sighed. “Of course there is. The party of the year. A real rager, didn’t you hear?” Mal looked her up and down and shook her head sadly. “Oh, I guess you didn’t hear.” She mock-winced, looking at Carlos conspiratorially. “Everyone’s going to be there.”

“They are?” Carlos looked confused. “But you only just told me to have it—” He quickly got the message. “Everyone,” he agreed.

Evie smiled. “Sounds awesome. I haven’t been to a party in a long, long time.”

Mal raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I’m sorry. This is a very exclusive party, and I’m afraid you didn’t get an invitation.”

With those parting words, Mal went ahead of them into the classroom—she was in their next class too, of course (her EQ was legendary)—and left them to each other.

“Sorry,” Carlos mumbled. “I guess I was wrong, Mal doesn’t just
talk
a big game.”

“Yeah, me too. The party sounds like fun,” Evie said sadly.

“You want to see what I’m making?” he asked, trying to change the subject as they settled into their seats. He took out of his bag a black box, with wires and an antenna poking out from one side—the same contraption he’d been fiddling with earlier. “I made it from some old magician’s stuff.”

“Sure.” Evie smiled. “Hey, is that a power core? It looks like you’re making a battery, right?”

Carlos nodded, impressed. “Yeah.”

“What does it do?”

“Can you keep a secret?” he asked, whispering.

Evie nodded. “I keep them from my mom all the time.”

“I’m trying to poke a hole in the dome.”

“Really? Can you do that? I thought it was invincible.”

“Well, I thought I could maybe try to get a signal with this antenna here. It’s actually an old wand, and I think if I hit the right frequency, we might be able to bring some of the outside world into the dome, and we can watch something other than that hairy old beast king telling us to be good, or that channel that only sells shackles.”

“I sort of like the Auradon channel,” Evie said dreamily. “Especially when they feature the Prince of the Week. They’re so dreamy.”

Carlos snorted.

She looked from the boy to the battery. “Frequency? But how?”

“I’m not sure, but I think if I can break through the dome, we’d be able to pick up Auradon’s radio waves—you know, Internet and wi-fi signals. I’m not exactly sure what the frequency is, but I think that’s how they get all those channels and stuff.”

Evie sighed again. “What I’d give to go to Auradon. I’ve heard that everything is so beautiful there.”

“Um, I guess. If you’re into that kind of thing,” Carlos said. He didn’t care about princes or enchanted lakes or chirping animals or cheerful dwarfs. What he did care about was discovering more of the online world, a safe virtual refuge, where he’d heard you could even find people with whom you could play videogames—that sounded like fun, as he never had anyone to play with.

There
had
to be something more to life than kowtowing to the cool kids, organizing his mother’s fur coats, and hiding from her tantrums.

There
had
to be. Although right now it wasn’t just his mother he had to answer to. If Mal was serious, which it looked like she was, in the next few hours he somehow had to figure out how to throw the party of the year.

M
eanwhile, across the Sea of Serenity, which separated the Isle of the Lost from the rest of the world, lay the USA—the United States of Auradon, a land of peace and enchantment, prosperity and delight, which encompassed all the good kingdoms. To the east lay the colorful domes of the Sultan’s seat, where Aladdin and Jasmine lived, not far from where Mulan and Li Shang guarded the imperial palace. To the north was Charming Castle, owned by Cinderella and her king, next door to “Honeymoon Cottage,” the forty-bedroom palace that Aurora and Phillip called home. And to the south, one could spy the lanterns of Rapunzel and Eugene Fitzherbert’s divine domicile, near the spot on the coast where Ariel and Eric had made their under-and-over-the-sea royal residence at Seaside.

But right in the center was the grandest castle in all of Auradon, with lavish turrets and balconies, its highest towers flying the proud blue-and-gold banner of the good old USA. Inside the magnificent building were many ballrooms, great rooms and state rooms, a formal dining room that could seat hundreds, where everyone was made to feel like a pampered guest, and a wondrous library that held all the books that were ever written.

This was all fitting, of course, because this was Castle Beast, home of King Beast and Queen Belle, the seat of Auradon. Twenty years ago, King Beast united all the fairy-tale lands into one under his crown; and for the past two decades he had ruled over its good citizens with strong and fair judgment, and only occasionally a tiny bit of his beastly temper.

Belle had a calming influence on the hotheaded Beast: she was not just the love of his life but the pacifier of his moods, the voice of reason in a gathering storm, and the mother of his only child.

The jewel in the crown was their handsome son, fifteen-year-old Prince Ben. There had been no fairies at his christening to bestow gifts, perhaps because he did not need any. Ben was as handsome as his father, with his strong brow and chisel-cut cheekbones, but he had his mother’s gentle eyes and keen intellect. He was a golden boy in every way, with a good heart and a winning spirit—captain of the tourney team, friend to all, destined to rule Auradon one day.

In short, he was the very sort of person that the people of the Isle of Lost despised. And, as on the Isle of the Lost, magic was no longer a factor in daily life in Auradon either. King Beast and Queen Belle stressed scholarship above enchantment, exhorting the young people to work hard instead of relying on fairy spells or dragon friends for help. Because Beast was the most powerful figure in all the kingdoms, when he proposed the new work ethic, nobody argued against him. It was indeed a new (once upon a) time for the people of the fabled fairy-tale lands.

But even without magic, life in Auradon was close to perfect. The sun always shone, the birds always chirped, there was never more than a five-minute wait at the DFMV (the Department of Formerly Magical Vehicles); and if everyone wasn’t happy
all
the time (it’s not as if this were
heaven
—get a grip, people), everyone was content.

Except, of course, when they weren’t.

Isn’t that always the way?

The kingdom’s various short or fluffy or furry or minuscule—and sometimes animal—sidekicks were causing problems again. Sidekicks United, they called themselves, and they were far from happy. They were, in a word, disgruntled.

“Well, then, how can we help you today? Let’s see.…” Ben wasn’t talking to anyone but a piece of paper—or a thousand pieces. He stared down at the documents in front of him, tapping them with his pen. His father had asked him to lead the Council meeting that morning, part of the training for becoming king in a few months.

As was tradition, the firstborn child of the royal household would take the throne of Auradon at sixteen years of age. Beast and Belle were ready to retire. They were looking forward to long vacation cruises, early-bird dinners, and playing golf (Beast), bingo (Belle), and generally taking it easy. Besides, Belle had a stack of unread bedside reading so high, it threatened to topple over on a huffy Mrs. Potts when she came to take away the breakfast tray every morning.

The complaint wasn’t the only thing on his mind. Ben had woken up that morning from a bit of a nightmare. Or it felt like a nightmare—and it certainly looked like one. In the dream, he was walking around a strange village full of shabbily dressed, miserable people who ate rotten fruit and drank black coffee. No cream. No sugar. No coffee cake to dip in it. The horror! And he had fallen into some kind of ditch, but someone had helped him out.

A beautiful, purple-haired girl who looked nothing like anyone in Auradon…

“Thank you,” he said gratefully. “And who are you?”

But she’d disappeared before he could catch her name.

He went back to the papers in his hand and tried to forget about her.

Ben studied the Sidekicks United complaint—the first of its kind—and his heart beat a little faster at the thought of having to talk to all these people and convince them that there was no need for this level of discontent.

He sighed, until a familiar voice interrupted his reverie.

“Be careful about the sidekicks, son. Sooner or later they steal the spotlight.”

Ben looked up, surprised to see his father standing in the doorway. King Beast looked like he always did, as smiling and happy and fulfilled as on his billboards. All over Auradon, they read
Good job being good! Keep it up! King Beast roars his approval!

His father motioned to the stack of papers on Ben’s desk. “Looks like you’re working hard.”

Ben wiped his eyes. “Yeah.”

King Beast clapped his paw of a hand on his son’s shoulder. “That’s my boy. So what is it that they want, exactly?”

Ben scratched behind his ear with his pen. “It seems they’re a bit upset, as they do all the work around here and are hardly compensated for their efforts. If you think about it from their perspective, they have a point.”

“Mmm.” King Beast nodded. “Everyone gets a voice in Auradon. Although you can’t let too many voices drown out reason, of course. That’s what it means to be kingly,” he said, perhaps a little more forcefully than was necessary.

“If you keep raising
your
voice, my darling, you’re going to crack all the china, and Mrs. Potts will never allow you either a cup of warm milk or a warm bath again.” Ben’s mother, the goodly Queen Belle, arrived in the room and slipped her hand under her husband’s muscled arm (yet another Beastly quality the king still seemed to possess—the strength of a wild creature in the form of a mere man). She was as beautiful as the day she had come upon Beast’s castle, and resplendent in a pretty yellow dress. If there were laugh lines around her eyes now, no one seemed to notice; and if anything, they only served to make her look more appealing.

The second he saw his mother, Ben found himself more at ease. He shy and quiet, his mother gentle and understanding, Ben and Belle had always been two like peas in a castle-garden pod—always preferring to have their noses in books rather than affairs of the state.

“But half the castle staff has signed this petition—see, there’s Lumiere’s scrawl, and Cogsworth’s,” Ben said, his forehead wrinkling. Injustice of any kind was upsetting to think about, and it bothered him that the very people on whom his family depended to keep their lives in running order believed that they had cause for complaint.

“Lumiere and Cogsworth will sign anything anyone asks them to sign. Last week they signed a petition to declare every day a holiday,” his father said, amused.

Ben had to laugh. King Beast had a point. The fussy Frenchman and the jolly Brit would agree to anything so they could get back to their work. Chip Potts, who was known to make a little mischief around the castle, had probably put them up to it.

“That’s the ticket. Listen to your people, but assert your right to rule. Lead with a gentle heart and a firm hand. That’s the way to be a king!”

King Beast extended his own fist, and Ben just stared at it. He gazed down at his own hand, which looked like a small child’s in comparison to his father’s.

Beast pulled Ben up by the arm, closing his hand around his son’s. “There. Strong. Powerful. Kingly.”