The Navigator

by Sky, Erin Michelle; Brown, Steven;

  “I’m afraid it isn’t,” Wendy told him, trying her best to look disappointed. “The crocodile was Blackheart’s creation, and Blackheart is at war with you. Therefore, he must be treated as a foreign entity. When a foreign entity establishes a presence elsewhere, it creates a sort of island within the new realm, surrounding itself, and that island is the official territory of the foreign entity no matter where it lies. Like a ship at sea, with the emissary as its captain.”

  Hook flashed Wendy a look that said, You can’t be serious, but she pretended not to see it.

  Peter tapped his fingers on the table. “The crocodile is Blackheart’s emissary,” Peter mused.

  “Precisely,” Wendy agreed. “Which means the ship was stolen directly from Blackheart’s territory. A remarkable feat, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I do!” Peter exclaimed. “I am always quite remarkable.”

  “Therefore,” Wendy finished, “the ship belongs to those who appropriated it from the enemy.”

  “But you stole it,” Peter pointed out, “so now it’s your ship.” He turned to stare at Hook, daring him to disagree.

  “The mission was achieved under Captain Hook’s direction,” Wendy said quickly, “and he has rightfully claimed it for the Kingdom of Britain. The Jolly Roger is his to assign as he wishes.”

  If she happened to agree that it should be her ship, and certainly wanted it to be her ship, she was careful not to say so. The captain outranked her. It was for him to decide.

  “The Jolly Roger belongs to England,” Hook declared, “but for the time being, Vegard will be her captain, if he is willing to accept the responsibility.”

  Vegard raised his eyebrows and darted a glance at Tigerlilja, who frowned at first, then subtly nodded.

  “Agreed,” Vegard said, but Peter wasn’t finished.

  “The Wendy stole the ship,” he insisted. “It belongs to the Wendy!”

  “Miss Darling cannot be the captain,” Hook told Peter evenly, “because she will be flying with you.”

  “Oh, good form!” Peter exclaimed. He turned to grin at Wendy, who was now doing her best not to look disappointed.

  “Can any of your people fly it?” Hook turned to Tigerlilja with the question. After all, the ship still needed a pilot, but the Norsewoman answered him with a look of steel in her eyes.

  “We prefer to fight on the ground. Flying ships are best left to flying men. We will make an exception in this case only because these are dire circumstances.” She might have agreed to the arrangement, but she clearly wasn’t pleased by it.

  “All flying is best left to flying men,” Peter crowed. “We are the best fighters. We’ll shoot all of Blackheart’s ships out of the sky before the battle even begins. All this talk and planning and idling about! It’s so very British.” He leaned toward Hook in a meaningful sort of way. “Boring and unnecessary.”

  Hook’s face darkened as he fought to maintain his composure. His eyes narrowed, and the muscles of his jaw began to twitch.

  “Peter,” Wendy said quickly, “I’m sure you’re right. You don’t need to be part of all this dull planning. They can tell us later what we need to do. Instead, perhaps you’d be kind enough to show me …”

  She drew out the final words, stalling for time, and her eyes fell on the map that still lay open on the table before them: Peter’s unhelpful depiction of Tigerlilja’s camp. But, in fact, there was something on it that had caught her attention from the beginning. Something she would very much like to see.

  Triumphantly, she jabbed her finger down on the map and blurted it out before anyone could stop her.

  “The mermaids!”

  t should be no surprise to anyone that Peter agreed to Wendy’s suggestion. He hated standing around and talking when there were no stories involved, and going to see the mermaids sounded like a lot more fun. He flew off to find Tinker Bell, but by the time Wendy came out onto the deck of The Pegasus with a pack containing rations and two bottles of fresh water, he had already returned.

  “You won’t need that,” Peter declared. “We’re going to fly. Tinker Bell will help.”

  Charming had followed Wendy back from her quarters, and now he jingled ominously, eyeing Tinker Bell with suspicion. But Wendy had her own concerns. Hook still didn’t know she could use innisfay dust to fly, and she wasn’t ready to admit to leaving anything else out of her reports. The thimble had been bad enough. Besides which, she wasn’t keen on any of the crew watching Peter carry her off into the countryside.

  “I’d rather walk for a bit,” she told him. “If that’s all right with you. Neverland is very beautiful. I’d like to savor it.”

  “It’s more beautiful from the air if you ask me,” Peter told her, “but suit yourself.”

  He watched impatiently as she picked up the pack, slung it across her back, and then clambered over the stern, letting herself down to the ground hand over hand, a few painstaking inches at a time.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to help you?” he asked when she was about halfway down. He stood in midair with his feet spread apart and his arms crossed over his chest, descending slowly so as to remain at eye level with her.

  “I’m sure, yes,” she told him, although she wished the subterfuge weren’t necessary. It would have been much easier to fly. The pack was heavy, and the drop below was farther than she would have liked. But at least the chilly night air was keeping her hands from sweating.

  “All right, then,” he said, shrugging a little.

  Charming hovered on her other side, jingling occasionally in small, worried fits until she finally made it safely to the ground.

  “There we are!” Wendy said cheerfully. “All right, then. Which way are we going?”

  “This way,” Peter said, and he landed lightly on the ground to walk beside her.

  They headed off in a different direction than they had taken to visit Tigerlilja’s village, so Wendy had never seen this side of the clearing before. But, in truth, it looked very much like the rest of the valley. The twilight grasses and wildflowers spread out before her without any particular path to define the way, but Peter seemed to know where he was going.

  At long last, they entered the edge of the forest, well out of sight of the ships. Wendy sighed and dropped her pack in relief. “We can fly now,” she announced. She turned to Tinker Bell, but the tiny innisfay crossed her arms, jingled angrily, and flew away.

  “Why … what did I say?” Wendy asked.

  “You said, ‘We can fly now,’” Peter told her.

  “Yes, thank you, Peter,” Wendy replied with just the smallest hint of a smile. “That is what I said. But what I meant was: What did I do to make Tinker Bell angry?”

  “Oh. She thinks you’re rude.”

  “Rude?” Wendy asked, astonished.

  “That’s what she said before she flew off. She said you’re rude and always tell people what to do. First, we can’t fly. Then, we can. All on your say-so.” He leaned toward her with an uncharacteristically serious look on his face. “Is what she said,” he reminded her. “I don’t mind it at all.”

  “Oh,” Wendy said, feeling embarrassed. She supposed she did sound that way, or at the very least could sound that way, now that she thought about it. “I’m sorry,” she told him.

  “Don’t be,” he said quietly. “Like I said, I don’t mind. I like it that you know what you want.”

  But, in that moment, with Peter leaning toward her in such a gentle and earnest way, Wendy didn’t know what she wanted at all. He was so handsome, but at the same time so strange. And, in any event, it would be highly improper to kiss him out here in the forest, with only Charming as a chaperone.

  What on earth was she thinking? It would be improper to kiss him anywhere.

  Wendy blushed, but then Charming interrupted her thoughts by jingling in her ear, saving her from any further embarrassment.

  “What did he say?” Wendy asked.

  “He said he’d be happy to provide the inn
isfay dust, if you’d still like to fly.”

  “Oh!” she exclaimed. “Oh, yes, please! Thank you, Charming!”

  Charming bowed in midair, smiled, and then flew up over her head in a tiny, rising spiral, leaving a trail of shimmering innisfay dust behind to settle onto her head and shoulders.

  “Excellent,” Peter told him. “That should be enough.” He gazed down into Wendy’s eyes. “Did it work?” he asked her.

  For the first time since Hertfordshire, Wendy lifted herself an inch off the ground, smiled broadly, and then soared into the sky.

  They flew over the same fields they had seen when they first arrived in Neverland, and Wendy dove with a laugh, racing low across the squares of silver and amethyst and crimson, delighted to see them up close. The sparkling silver field turned out to be filled with flowers—flowers that looked exactly like tiny metal bells growing on vines along the ground.

  She wanted to pick them, but she didn’t know anything about them and was afraid she might hurt the vine. Instead, she hovered for a moment to brush one with her fingertip, surprised to discover it wasn’t metallic at all. It didn’t ring, and it felt like any other flower, if perhaps a bit smoother than most.

  “Why, they’re only flowers!” she exclaimed.

  “What did you think they were?” Peter asked her.

  “Bells,” she admitted.

  “That’s what they’re called,” he told her. “Bell flowers.” He picked several and clustered them together into a bouquet, then handed them to her with a bow.

  “Oh! Thank you!” she exclaimed. “How lovely!” Even up close, they still sparkled with a silver sheen.

  They flew onward, although Wendy had no idea in which direction, since the sun in Neverland was no help at all. Rather than heading toward the center of what Wendy now thought of as “farm country,” they skirted the edge, passing a wide vista of red rock spires and plateaus that eventually gave way to a thick jungle canopy woven through with a fine white mist.

  Here, they turned, passing over the trees to the lively sounds of birds and frogs and monkeys calling out to their own kind in an oddly melodious chorus, and then a rainbow appeared in the sky overhead.

  “A rainbow!” Wendy cried. “I’ve never seen one before!”

  “Then how did you know what it was?” Peter asked. Wendy had stopped in wonder when she saw it, and he came back to hover beside her.

  “I’ve read about them,” she said, her voice sounding almost breathless. “There’s no mistaking it, is there? Once you’ve seen one, I mean.”

  Peter didn’t answer her, and eventually her eyes broke away from the view to find him. He was watching her so closely, so adoringly, that she thought he might kiss her after all. She should have turned away, she supposed, but she didn’t want to. There are some moments that are completed by a kiss—moments that a single kiss can make into a star, shining so brightly in your memory that you can find it there like the North Star in the sky for all the rest of your life.

  As it turned out, this was not one of those moments. But it was something—or at least the beginning of something—because she saw something in his face change. Something she had never seen before.

  “Wendy,” he said, “be careful around the mermaids. They can be dangerous, and I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you. We have so many adventures left ahead of us. I want you to be there for all of them.”

  Then he smiled and darted away, the same Peter she had always known, laughing and flying loop-the-loops in the sky as though nothing had happened.

  And, for a moment, Wendy started to doubt whether anything had happened. Perhaps she had only imagined that they had shared a moment, as one does sometimes when one would like very much to kiss a person but that person, sadly, doesn’t want to kiss one back. Then again, he had called her by her name. Not the Wendy. Just Wendy. He never did that. Surely, it meant something. Didn’t it?

  Just then, a tiny flash caught the corner of Wendy’s eye, and she turned toward it to discover Tinker Bell, who had returned just in time to witness the whole thing. She had transformed into a dragon again, and her tiny scales were glowing such a fierce and terrible red that Wendy almost expected them to catch fire and set the entire innisfay ablaze.

  So Wendy knew for certain that something important had happened. She just didn’t know what it was.

  hey flew for what felt like hours, over plains and forests and great spires of rock, each new place feeling slightly different than the last, and yet all of it filled with the rich, green scent of Neverland. Early on, they saw a herd of winged horses grazing in a clearing. Wendy wanted to see them up close, but when she dove toward them, they startled and lifted into the air like a flock of birds, darting away.

  Later, Peter stopped to play a game of chase among the trees with a pack of small foxlike creatures. They had jet-black fur, with long, tufted ears and huge bushy tails, and they raced merrily after Peter with tiny yips of excitement until he laughed and flopped onto the ground. Then they piled on top him with a chorus of happy chirps and warbles and immediately fell fast asleep.

  Wendy couldn’t help herself. She reached down and gently picked up one of the smallest. It opened its eyes at the movement but seemed satisfied with its new situation, nestling into Wendy’s arms and closing its eyes again.

  “It’s precious!” Wendy said quietly. “And so soft!”

  “Mmmm may mmm maym mammem,” Peter said. Or, at least, he said something that sounded very much like this from beneath a snoring pile of fur.

  Wendy laughed. “I can’t understand you at all,” she told him.

  Peter sat up, making several of the creatures roll off him. They woke, stretched, then scolded him in clicking chatters, already trying to climb back on.

  “I said, ‘They make a great blanket,’” he told her, and Wendy laughed again.

  She wished they had time to stay and explore every new place they found, but she was already getting concerned about how far they had flown.

  “Is it very much farther to the mermaids?” she asked Peter as they rose back up into the sky.

  “No,” he told her, and then he pointed. “Look.”

  Ahead, some few miles in the distance, she realized she could see the ocean. It had been hidden from view as they were flying low through the trees, but now it spread out before her, an eternal promise of possibility.

  They flew to it at once, heading for a long line of towering cliffs that held back the sea. Peter led her toward a spot where two huge rocky arms jutted out into the water, circling wide and almost closing at the farthest point to form a protected cove. Even though the sun had been high above them throughout most of their journey, it was only just rising here, cresting the distant horizon in a breathtaking display.

  Wendy could already see the mermaids. Several were swimming through the water, and others were sunning themselves on large rocks that jutted above the calm surface. She could hardly wait to see them up close, but Peter landed on the high cliff instead, waving her down to join him next to a gigantic pile of boulders that she now saw formed a rough statue of a man sitting in a pose of quiet contemplation, staring forever out to sea.

  “Why, how marvelous!” Wendy exclaimed, distracted for a moment by this latest discovery. She flew around to get in front of it, where she could see it better, and then she swore it moved.

  At first she could hardly tell. The change was so subtle that she thought it might be a trick of the light. But a few moments later, the statue’s lips did seem to be smiling a bit more. She continued to watch, mesmerized, and within a minute or so it seemed to be laughing, its head now tilted back just a bit and its mouth open in a wide grin.

  “How is it doing that?” Wendy asked Peter.

  “Doing what?” he wanted to know.

  “Smiling!” she exclaimed, pointing to the statue.

  “The same way you do,” he said. He flew around the statue, studying it, and then landed on the cliff again and sat down, adopting the same pos
e. “Like this.” He grinned, matching the statue’s expression exactly.

  “But … it’s alive?” she asked, incredulous.

  “Of course,” Peter told her, standing up again to address her. “They all are.”

  Wendy glanced along the cliff line and realized that what she had first overlooked as natural irregularities in the rock were, in fact, more statues. Only she was beginning to understand they were not statues at all. Some were sitting, and some were lying on the rocks, apparently napping. One, about thirty yards away, seemed to be in the agonizingly slow process of raising its hand to wave at them in greeting.

  “My goodness! Can they speak?” She reached out a hand to touch the nearest one, then thought better of it, as she wasn’t sure how to ask its permission to do so.

  “They can, but it takes an entire afternoon just to get through the opening pleasantries,” Peter said. “You’ll have to set aside at least a month if you’re going to ask them anything they need to think about.”

  Wendy had no idea what she would ask them, but she resolved then and there to ponder it in case she ever had the opportunity.

  “Did you still want to see the mermaids?” Peter asked her.

  “Oh, yes!” she exclaimed, turning her attention back to him at once. “Very much!”

  “All right, then,” he agreed. “But, first, I have to tell you something. Something very important.” His face fell into an expression so uncharacteristically grave that Wendy couldn’t help but feel a little nervous.

  “I’m listening,” she promised.

  “You must never go into the water with any of the mermaids. Never ever. No matter what they say or do. They’ll try very hard to persuade you, so you have to be strong. Stay on the rocks. Only the rocks are safe.”

  “All right,” Wendy said. A slight motion caught her eye, and she turned to discover that the giant statue was now staring in her general direction, its mouth set in a grim line. “I promise,” she added.

  “Good,” Peter said solemnly. “Then, let’s go!” Immediately, any sign of concern vanished from his face, and he leaped off the cliff, falling into a swan dive but then arcing out of it at the last moment to skim just above the water’s surface, racing toward the middle of the lagoon.