Mal tried not to show her feelings. She’d thought those tags were pretty cool. “Fine! Fine! I’ll go get your scepter!” she agreed, if only to stop her mother from raging.
“Wonderful.” Maleficent touched her heart, or the hole in her chest where it should have been. “When that sword pierced my dragon hide, and I fell off that cliff twenty years ago, I was sure I had died. But they brought me back to suffer a fate worse than death, much worse. But one day, I will have my revenge!”
Mal nodded. She’d heard the spiel so many times, she could chant it in her sleep. Maleficent took her hand, and they chorused, “Revenge on the fools who imprisoned us on this cursed island!”
Maleficent urged Mal closer so that she could whisper a warning in her ear.
“Yes, Mother,” said Mal, to show she understood.
Maleficent grinned. “Now, get out of here and bring it back, so we can be free of this floating prison once and for all!”
Mal trudged up to her room. She’d forgotten to tell her mother about the mean trick she’d pulled on Evie at the party, not that it would have been evil enough for the great Maleficent, either. Nothing was. Why did she even bother?
She climbed out her window and onto the balcony where could see across the entire island and the shining spires of Auradon glimmered in the distance.
A few minutes later, she heard the sound of jiggling trinkets, which meant Jay had dropped by to annoy her or to steal a late-night snack.
“I’m out here,” she called.
“You left before the fun really began,” he said, meaning the party. “We turned the ballroom into a mosh pit and crowd-surfed.” He joined her on the balcony, a bag of smelly cheese curls in his hand.
She shrugged.
“What’s with the rude raven?” he asked, chomping noisily on the snack, his fingers turning a fluorescent shade of orange.
“That’s Diablo. You know, my mom’s old familiar. He’s back.”
Jay stopped chewing. “He’s what?”
“He’s back. He got unfrozen. So now Mom thinks the spell over the island might be unraveling, somehow.”
Jay’s eyes grew wide.
Mal looked away and continued, “That’s not all. Diablo swears the Dragon’s Eye is back too. That he saw it glow back to life. You know, her scepter, her greatest weapon, the one that controls all the forces of evil and darkness, blah blah blah. She wants me to find it, and use it to break the curse over the island.”
Jay let out a loud laugh. “Well, she’s really gone off the cliff into the deep end to take a swim with the killer alligators, then, hasn’t she? That thing is hidden forever and ever, and ever and ever and—”
“Ever?” Mal smirked.
“Exactly.”
Mal turned away, wanting to change the subject. “Do you ever think about what it’s like over there?” she asked, nodding toward Auradon.
Jay scoffed. “Yeah, horrible. Sunny, and happy, and…horrible. I thank my unlucky stars every day that I’m not there.”
“Yeah, I know. But, I mean—you never get sick of this place, like you want a change?” she asked, brooding.
Jay looked at her quizzically.
“Never mind.” Mal didn’t think he would understand. She continued staring into the night. Jay continued munching on his cheese curls and fiddling with some newly stolen costume jewelry.
A memory came flooding back to Mal. She was five years old and was in the marketplace with her mother when a goblin tripped and fell, spilling his basket of fruit everywhere. Without thinking, she had started picking up the fruit, helping the goblin gather it all. One by one, she picked up the apples, dusted them off on her dress, and placed them back in the basket. Suddenly Mal looked up from where she was crouched. The market had gone silent, and everyone, including her mother, who was rotten-apple red and fuming, was staring at her.
“Get up this instant,” her mother had hissed. Maleficent kicked the basket, and the apples all fell out again.
Mal obeyed. When they got back home, her mother locked her in her room to think about what she had done. “If you’re not careful, my girl, you’ll end up just like him—just like your father—weak and powerless. AND PATHETIC!” Maleficent had bellowed through the locked door.
Little Mal had stared into the dingy mirror leaning precariously on her vanity. Fighting back tears, she vowed never to disappoint her mother again.
“We have to find it,” Mal said to Jay as an icy wind whipped up from the sea below and pulled her from her memory. “The Dragon’s Eye. It’s here.”
“Mal, it’s not poss—”
“We have to,” Mal said.
“Eh,” Jay replied shrugging his shoulders and turning toward the window to go back inside. “We’ll see.”
Mal took one last look out at the horizon to the bright, sparkling speck in the distance. She felt a pang in her gut, like longing. But what for, she couldn’t say.
“Miserable,
darling, as
usual, perfectly
wretched.”
—Cruella De Vil,
101 Dalmatians