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The sweaty group of anti-heroes cheered.
“Ladies first?” said Jay.
Mal nodded and crawled through the hole. She heard Evie struggling behind, and then the boys. After a few feet, the tunnel widened and they were able to walk upright.
“This better be it,” Mal said. “I really don’t want to be wandering around down here for no reason.”
But as they continued down the tunnel, Mal realized she actually felt perfectly at home. The cave was dark and wet and filled with furry things that skittered at the edge of her vision. Why do caves get such a bad rap anyway? What’s wrong with a few spiderwebs? she wondered just as she stepped into a giant floor-to-ceiling cobweb. She struggled to push through, only to get more caught up in its lacy white stickiness.
“Don’t spiders have anything else to do?” she asked aloud.
Carlos shook h
is head and helped pull the cobwebs away. They continued on, but stopped again when Evie shrieked at a tiny rodent that had made the mistake of crawling halfway up her pant leg.
“Just tell it to get out of the way,” Mal suggested. “Didn’t Evil Queen ever teach you how to deal with mice?”
“No, Mom only cared about whether I knew how to line my eyelids properly,” said Evie, catching her breath as the small creature scampered off into the crevices.
“Oh, I forgot, I brought something from the Junk Shop,” said Jay as he removed a flashlight from his pocket and jiggled the batteries until they came to life. The sudden flood of light illuminated the cavern’s interior—a collection of giant cool-looking spiderwebs, slimy wet puddles, and an unexpected item—a gold poison-heart bracelet glittering on the ground.
Evie picked it up. “It’s my mom’s!” she said excitedly. “They must have been down here! We’re going the right way!”
Walking farther on, they discovered other clues. A long cigarette holder that could only be Cruella’s, and a few coins that could only have fallen from Jafar’s pouch. They kept going, energized by their discoveries, until the flashlight showed a succession of large animal footprints.
“These tracks look too big for crocodiles, right?” Jay asked, inspecting them. “Plus, I think these are paw prints.”
“Way too big,” agreed Mal.
“Great,” said Carlos. “Huge scary monster ahead.”
They went deeper into the cave, moving forward cautiously.
Then, from somewhere in the darkness, a faint sound drifted through the cave, almost like the snuffling of an animal of some kind.
“Stop it, Jay!” said Mal, whirling to face him just as he was about to make that snuffling noise again.
“Couldn’t resist,” said Jay.
He offered Carlos a high five, but Carlos just shook his head. “Not cool, man. Not cool. We need to find the Poisoned Lake,” he said, studying one of the maps from Yen Sid. As far as he could tell, the body of water that surrounded the Toxic Tree with the Fruit of Venom should be the first of the underground lands they would pass. “I wonder how the tree can grow. I mean with all this darkness, how can anything live down here?”
“Maybe it feeds on poison from the lake,” said Evie.
“For that matter, how can there be a lake underneath the ocean?”
“We’re underneath the ocean floor, obviously. Plus, everything is made by magic down here,” Mal said. “Don’t you remember?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” said Carlos as he stared at the tree. “All the books said that the magic creates the ideal location for each talisman. Okay, let’s go this way.”
They followed the path as it led them farther down into the earth, so steep at times that they were almost sliding. The tunnel narrowed and then widened again. Some passages were flooded, and they had to roll up their pants to cross. Eventually, the cavern grew so enormous that they could no longer see the top of the cave. They kept walking until the path split in two directions.
Just then, they heard that strange snuffling sound again. Carlos looked petrified, but Mal slapped a hand on Jay’s mouth in annoyance. “Stop!”
“Okay, okay, it’s hard to resist. It’s boring down here,” Jay said, his voice muffled behind her hand.
“Where to?” Mal asked Carlos.
Carlos looked down at the map. “It doesn’t say.” He studied the two tunnels in front of them. One of the paths was covered with the same large tracks they’d noticed earlier, but the other was clear. “I don’t know.”
