“I guess I’ll have to climb it?” said Evie, staring nervously at the forbidding tree. Evie spent her days indoors, learning how to be pretty. She wasn’t really one to climb trees.
The light from the flashlight flickered, growing dimmer by the minute, its batteries fading.
“Hurry, before our light runs out! We’ve still got three more talismans to recover,” said Jay.
“And whatever’s out there is still out there,” said Carlos. In the distance the sound of faint snuffling echoed in the cave. “Hurry before it finds us.”
“All right. I’m going up,” said Evie, shaking slightly as she began to climb the tree trunk. She pulled herself up on the nearest branch and started the long, slow climb to the top, where the fruit was. Twice the thorns pricked her, but she ignored the little nicks on her legs and arms. She had work to do, and she could always get rid of them with concealer later.
Down below, her friends waited anxiously, calling up advice. “Watch that branch—go the other way! Get a toehold on the left and lift yourself up!”
When she finally reached the top of the tree, she was stumped. There were hundreds of apples. All of them poisoned, she knew, but there was only one talisman. Only one Fruit of Venom. Which could it be?
“There are a lot of apples up here!” she called down. “I don’t know which one to pick…they all look alike!”
“You’ll know which one!” called Carlos.
Focus! Evie told herself. Her friends were doing their best to help out, and they had to get out of here soon before that snuffling monster returned. Concentrate on the apples. There were so many of them and they were all so red and juicy.
“Which one?” she wondered aloud, and then she saw it through the highest branches.
One golden apple among all of the red ones.
She clambered up and plucked it from its branch. It was gorgeous, shiny, and perfect. Evie was mesmerized by its beauty. It looked absolutely delicious, and it was practically asking to be eaten, what could it hurt, what if she just took one tiny…
“What are you doing!” Jay yelled from below.
Too late; Evie had already taken a bite of the apple. It was delicious, and for a moment she didn’t regret it. Then her eyelids drooped as she yawned.
“Evie! What’s happening?” asked Mal.
“I feel…sleepy, like the dwarf.” Evie laughed as she sat on the branch she’d been standing on, her head beginning to fog from the poison.
“Don’t! Stay awake!” cried Mal.
“I’ll try!” said Evie. She stood back up, fighting against the urge to sleep. She’d accidentally gobbled a poisoned apple once or twice when she was a kid, so maybe she had some kind of resistance to them. Her mother was always leaving them everywhere.
“I should have known better,” she grumbled, already growing weaker and trying to fight off the sleep that was threatening to overwhelm her. “I’m just going to take a little nap, okay?” she called down.
“No!” Mal cried. “No naps! No resting. Just keep moving!”
“Moving,” said Evie. “Got to keep moving….” She struggled to keep her eyes open, scrunching her face into odd contortions, holding one lid open with a finger, but it fluttered shut. Evie’s knees were wobbling and all she could think of was how nice it would be to lay down her head and take a brief—
“No!” Mal cried, again. Or maybe it was the third time. Evie hadn’t realized that she had sat down once more. I’m in trouble, she thought. Big trouble.
“Get up!” called Carlos.
Jay was getting ready to climb the tree himself, but when he placed his hands on the bark, a force pushed him away and he flew to the ground.
Only Evie could climb the tree. This was her talisman.
“It says here that only by mastering the Fruit of Venom can you counter its poison,” said Carlos, reading from the map. “Evie, don’t give in! Save yourself!”
Save myself, but from what? Evie thought, before everything went black and the poison overcame her.
When she opened her eyes, she was standing in a room not unlike her mother’s bedroom, on a podium in front of a Magic Mirror.
“Where am I?” she asked. “Where are my friends?”
She was alone. Then she realized—she was alone because they had abandoned her and she had no friends. Every insecure, jealous, and poisonous thought filled her mind.
She was standing before the legendary Magic Mirror, and it looked like it had before it was destroyed—whole and full of evil counsel.
“What’s this?” asked Evie.
She stared at the mirror. It showed her Mal and Maddy laughing at her, pointing and screeching, and mocking her.
Mal was never my friend, thought Evie. She was only pretending. The minute Mal returned to the island, she forgot about Evie.
The mirror showed another image: Mal, Jay, and Carlos leaving her alone at the Poisoned Lake. They had left the minute she’d climbed the tree. They were laughing at her, and they were going to leave her to that awful grunting creature. She was alone and she would always be alone.
Mal’s mother had exiled her and her mother to the Castle Across the Way. Evie had grown up with only spiderwebs for company. She’d never had friends until the three of them, but maybe she’d never had friends at all.
Maybe it was all a lie. No one liked her. Everyone was only pretending, and now that she knew the truth, she would destroy them all. She would make them hurt, she would make sure they never laughed like that again. She would show them what it meant to be alone, and abandoned, and friendless….
Friendless?
Yen Sid’s words echoed in her mind. Evie, remember that when you believe you are alone in the world, you are far from friendless.
Yen Sid had told her the total opposite of the poisonous thoughts that now filled her brain.
She stared at the mirror and the image of her friends deserting her. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. Maddy had betrayed Mal, but Mal had never betrayed Evie. Carlos and Jay were like her brothers. The three of them would always be there for her.
“You’re wrong!” she cried to the mirror. “My friends are here! They’re waiting down there! Waiting for me!”
She stepped away from the mirror, holding the apple in her hand. “I’m not alone! I am far from friendless! I am surrounded by my friends, and I will return to them!”
The mirror shattered and Evie screamed. Suddenly she was on the ground, looking up at the faces of her friends.
“What happened?” she asked.
“You fell,” said Carlos. “All the way down, and we couldn’t wake you.”
“We thought you were going to go to sleep forever, or at least until we could get Doug to come and wake you up with true love’s kiss.” Mal smirked.
“You okay?” said Jay, helping her up.
Evie nodded, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and tossing back her hair. “I’m awake, at least!” she announced with considerable flair.
“Did you get it?” asked Mal. “The talisman?”
In answer, Evie showed them the golden apple, which was whole once more, but no longer shining. “It totally messed with my head, but I purged the poison from my body and mastered the talisman. Yen Sid was right, we’ve got to be careful with these things…they’re tricky.”
“What did it do?” asked Mal, curious.
Evie shook her head and placed the apple in her handbag. “Let’s just say I knew you guys wouldn’t leave me here alone.”
Mal rolled her eyes. “Well, one more minute and we might have,” she joked. “But then who’s going to make my Auradon Prep prom dress?”
“Hey, guys,” Jay interrupted. “Look at this.” He and Carlos were standing in front of a doorway carved into the tree trunk.
“That wasn’t here before,” said Carlos.
“And look—the lake is draining!” said Evie. The tiny islet began to shake.
“Now that Evie has the Fruit of Venom, this place is self-destruc
ting!” said Mal.
“Do we open it?” said Jay.
“I don’t think we have a choice,” said Mal, looking around as the ground rumbled beneath them. It felt like the whole island was about to crumble.
“Let’s go, that thing is heading over here,” said Carlos, scanning anxiously for any sign of the snuffling beast.
“Open it!” yelled Mal.
Jay threw open the door, and a blazing light shone from the darkness. “It looks like a desert in here!” he told them, stepping inside. Evie and Carlos followed behind.
Mal waited by the entrance, her eyes on the lake, or what was left of it, ready to defend her friends from the mysterious creature in the tunnels.
But the monster never appeared, and so Mal followed her friends through the door in the tree.
The first thing Jay noticed when he stepped through the tree was how hot it was. He had been shivering in the damp cavern, but now he was almost sweating. Instead of a wet cave, he was standing on a golden desert plain.
Evie followed, but as she crossed the threshold, her knees turned to rubber and she stumbled. Jay caught her and helped her through. “Whoa. That poison must still be working.”
She nodded. “I’ll be fine in a minute.”
Carlos followed, blinking at the unexpected light, with Mal bringing up the rear. When they were all through, the door slammed with a bang and vanished. Carlos unrolled a new map. “This must be the Haunted Desert,” he said. “It says the Cobra’s Cave is somewhere in the Dunes of Sorrow.”
Jay looked around. There wasn’t much to see, just a whole lot of desert, and wave after wave of sand dunes. “This must be my territory. It looks a little like what my dad always told me about Agrabah. Although something tells me we won’t find any magic lamps, friendly genies, or flying carpets here.”
“Too bad. I’d take any of those over that weird pink thing we just avoided,” said Mal.
“Any chance the talisman is made of sand?” asked Evie as she scooped up a handful, letting the grains shift and fall between her fingers. “Since that’s all there is here.”
“Of course it’s not made of sand,” said Jay.
The wind blew across the dunes, howling like a coyote. But underneath its screech was another sound: a deep, slithering hum.
“There!” said Jay, pointing to a wrinkle in the sand. “It’s moving.” The wrinkle headed toward them, and the four of them jumped away as it passed directly underneath their feet.
“Maybe your talisman is made of sand,” said Mal.
“It’s not made of sand,” repeated Jay, exasperated now.
“That’s all I see here,” said Mal, refusing to let go of the joke.
“Weren’t you listening? Oh, wait, I forgot, you weren’t because you were too busy running after Mad Maddy and getting yourself thrown off a bridge,” said Jay. “Yen Sid said it was a Golden Cobra.”
He watched the movement in the sand as it slithered away—hold on…slithered? Before he could explain to his friends, Jay ran after the wriggling line. There was only one thing it could be, and when the line popped out of the dunes, he saw the Golden Cobra rear its ugly head.
The snake hissed, showing its forked tongue. It was the same golden color as the apple Evie had picked earlier.
“I think he’s found his talisman,” said Carlos as they ran to keep up with Jay, who was chasing the snake.
Jay was fast, but the snake was faster. It slithered across the sand, its golden scales shimmering in the light, while Jay kept stumbling and sinking in the dunes. Jay might be the best runner on the tourney field, but the desert definitely wasn’t the ideal location for chasing an evil creature.
The cobra crested a ridge and Jay tried to follow, but when he reached the top, the snake was nowhere to be found.
“Great, it’s gone,” said Mal, who, along with Evie and Carlos, had been stumbling along after Jay. “What does the map say?”
“It says the Golden Cobra has a cave,” said Carlos. “We could check that out, but it doesn’t really say where it is.”
“Some map,” said Mal, crossing her arms across her chest.
They scanned the desert landscape, looking for any sign of the cobra, but it seemed to have disappeared completely. The heat wasn’t helping either, and when the wind picked up, it blew sand at them, clouding their vision and biting their skin like little flies.
“We shouldn’t have left for the Catacombs before the maps were done,” said Mal, crumpling the piece of paper in frustration.
“We didn’t have a choice,” said Carlos. “And remember, we’ve got to find the talismans before our parents do.”
“My parent is a lizard trapped in a glass-covered pedestal,” said Mal.
“Maybe,” said Carlos. “Or your parent is a purple dragon that’s been plaguing Camelot.”
“Guys, stop fighting, it’s not helping with my poison headache,” said Evie as she massaged her temples.
Mal and Carlos apologized, and the four of them continued to look for any sign of the elusive cobra.
“One good thing about that toxic tree,” said Evie. “At least it stayed still.”
“There!” Jay yelped. “I see it! I think that’s a cave!” He pointed to what looked like a pile of stones in between two dunes in the distance. He ran down the ridge, his friends following behind.
They stood in front of the rocks, which were stacked together tightly. But a small gap between two of the larger ones looked like it could be an opening into a cavern.
“Wonderful, a cave within a cave,” said Evie.
“I didn’t create this world,” said Jay. “You guys coming?”
“Hold on, we need to be careful,” said Mal. “Evie was almost poisoned back at the tree and who knows what that snake will do.”
“Fine,” said Jay.
“Let’s go in, but we all stay together,” said Mal. “Agreed?”
The others nodded, and they entered the cave. Jay was in the lead, his boots sliding on the sandy floor. He pulled the flashlight out of his pocket and hit the switch, but nothing happened. He tapped it again, and it glowed faintly, illuminating the path before them. A few minutes later, they heard that odd howling noise they’d heard when they first entered the desert.
“Do you think the cobra can make that noise?” Evie whispered.
“I don’t know, but I don’t really want to find out,” Carlos whispered back.
“It’s called the Haunted Desert,” said Mal. “What do you think it is?”
“Ghosts don’t scare me,” Jay said as they kept walking into the darkness with only the sputtering flashlight to light their way. “Hauntings aren’t a big deal.”
“Oh yeah, what would you know about that?” asked Carlos, trying to get his torchlight zapp to work, but his phone was dead. There had been no time to charge it back on the Isle of the Lost.
“A ghost might try to scare you by rattling his chains or slamming a door shut, but there’s nothing to be afraid of. They’re basically made of air,” said Jay, still following the faint sound of rattling.
“Why do I get the feeling,” said Carlos, “that someone is trying to convince himself of something?”
“Because someone is totally scared but won’t admit it,” said Mal, sneaking behind Jay and yelling in his ear. “Boo!”
Jay jumped. “Okay, so I might be little freaked out. But it takes a real man to admit his fears.”
“Oh, really,” said Mal with a laugh. “It seems to me that just a moment ago you were telling us that ghosts were nothing to worry about.”
“So what? Ghosts are the worst, okay? I just wish we could leave this cave already,” Jay said.
The howling grew even louder. Carlos plugged his ears and Evie did the same. “Maybe the ghost is deaf?” Mal said. “Why else would it be shrieking at the top of its lungs?”
Jay sighed. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.” He started to walk faster, but stopped when they reached a sharp corner where the passage was
a bit wider. The wind whistled through it, howling and screeching.
“So it’s not a ghost after all,” said Jay. “It’s just the wind flying around these corners. I guess it’s like a big flute that plays a note each time the wind blows through.”
“Look at Jay, getting poetic on us,” said Evie as she, Carlos, and Mal tried to follow Jay into the next passage. But the same force that had pushed Jay away from the tree earlier was acting against them now.
“Wait!” said Mal. “We can’t get any farther.”
Jay turned around to see his three friends standing at the corner. “I’ll meet you back outside. Don’t worry about me, I’ve got this cobra.”
“Okay,” said Mal, scowling. “I guess we don’t really have a choice.”
“Remember what Yen Sid said,” advised Evie.
“Good luck, man,” said Carlos.
Jay promised he would see them soon, and then turned to face the empty tunnel on his own. It wound deeper and deeper into the earth, and the flashlight finally gave out, leaving him in darkness. The howling wind was still kind of scary, but he reminded himself that there was nothing supernatural about it.
At last, he saw a sliver of light at the end of the tunnel, and when he reached it, he discovered it was the entrance to a hidden chamber.
And not just any chamber, but one piled high with gold and treasure. A mountain of shimmering coins reached to the ceiling, so bright it cast its own light around the cavern. Jay had seen such treasure only once before, when he was in the Cave of Wonders in the Forbidden Fortress.
“This isn’t real,” he said.
Oh, but it issssss, a voice hissed in the middle of all that gold, and Jay looked up to see the Golden Cobra, with its magnificent hood raised around its face, slowly unraveling from a basket. All this is real, and it could be yours.
“How?” asked Jay, staring straight into the red eyes of the snake.
I will be your servant, the cobra told him. I serve the master of the sand.
Jay was transfixed.
You see that curtain behind you?
Jay turned to see a rich, shining tapestry hanging over the passage he had just come through.