Disney at Dawn

“It makes sense,” Maybeck agreed.

Fi

“So what do we do now?” he asked.

“We can’t wait for them any longer. Maybe the dreams in Jez’s journal are supposed to help us find her.”

“We need Willa and Philby,” Maybeck said. “There are a lot of drawings to make sense of.”

Fi

The two boys met eyes with horrified expressions.

33

AMANDA PRESSED THE right-hand button on the camera controls, zooming in to get a closer look at Fi

The AnimalCam stations—four in all—were enough like a video game that she had immediately gotten the hang of it: a small screen to her right displayed rows and columns of thumbnail images, each representing a different camera mounted somewhere in the Park. Normally, there were about a dozen vantage points offered, all of them devoted to the wildlife on display in the Park: giraffes, elephants, tigers. Philby had upgraded hers. Scrolling down the thumbnail screen, she had dozens of views available to her—maybe a hundred or more. Selecting a particular camera transferred the view to a much larger television screen mounted at eye level. She could then zoom in and out using the two buttons to the right, or maneuver the camera to look left or right, up or down, using a joystick. It provided her with a virtual tour of every aspect of the Animal Kingdom.

At the moment, she was watching Fi

panda: have not seen either willa or philby on camera

Fi

panda: yes. but have not seen them, park is packed, could be here.

Fi

panda: can do.

Fi

Fi

For a long time the screen flickered, but no message appeared. He couldn’t imagine what Amanda must have been feeling.

Fi

panda: scared 4 jez

Fi

panda: i’ll watch 4 them and i’ll watch u and maybeck too…

The cursor hesitated. She wasn’t done typing.

…but if she escaped, why haven’t we heard from her?

Fi

Fi

Amanda zoomed the camera back and tried to stay with Fi

* * *

Fi

Soon, they reached the tiger-viewing yards, where they stood among the ruins of an Indian temple—the jungle and buildings so authentic that, although he’d never been there, Fi

But before Fi

“Check it out!”

Just Maybeck’s tone of voice told Fi

“Oh…man,” he said, while Maybeck was busy unfolding his copy of the page from Jez’s diary.

The temple’s stone wall held a series of stone carvings, four feet by four feet pictographs showing different scenes. The primitive carvings were beautiful. One showed a person with his or her arms in the air, and an eagle flying overhead. Another had a fruit tree at its center, with birds in the branches and deer surrounding it. A monkey sat at the base of the tree holding a piece of the fruit. There were two others, both depicting a weird-looking guy with a mustache dancing around and doing strange things. But it was the image of the monkey that captured and held Fi

Maybeck pointed to the monkey. “That’s the monkey she drew,” he said. “It wasn’t a live monkey, it was this one.”

“Agreed.”

panda: fi

He quickly texted back to her.

Fi

panda: check out the window, my angle matches the diary exactly.

“The windows,” Fi

He and Maybeck moved toward the crowd.

“I gotta tell you,” Maybeck said, “until now, I wasn’t buying that Jez could dream the future.”

“And now?” Fi

“Yeah, well. A person’s got a right to be wrong.”

34

FINN AND MAYBECK steadily pushed to the front of the throng gathered at the windows overlooking the tiger yards, where a blanket of green grass was interrupted by some trees and rocks. A huge tigress slumbered in the thick shade of a bamboo stand, her back against the tall rock wall that contained her. Jez had sketched both this window and the sculpture reliefs they’d just been studying, meaning this location had played a significant role in her dreams.

But what role? Fi

“It could be she’s hiding in the tiger yards,” Fi

“You see her out there, do you?” Maybeck asked.

“No. But—”

“That’s because she isn’t there.”

“But it makes sense. She wouldn’t exactly be able to move if she was stuck in there. Not with tigers roaming the place.”

“Whitman, look around.”

Fi

“Convinced?” Maybeck said from behind him. He, too, had switched sides.

“But why would she have drawn both the window and the monkey? Can you explain that?” Fi

“She drew a lot of stuff: a dinosaur, the monkey, the window, a bat, some old dude. How are we supposed to know what it all means?”