Straight On Till Morning

by Liz Braswell

  “Well, I’m having some shadow issues,” Hook admitted with a sigh, sitting down in a comfy red-velvet chair whose hard parts were carved from human femurs and tibias.

  “Shadows, mm? Tricky business. For mortals.”

  “Yes, well, it’s Peter Pan’s shadow. So trickier than most, I would say.”

  “Peter Pan? You’re still chasing after that wretch? Well, well. Some things never change in Never Land.”

  “It is what it is.” Hook crossed one leg over the other and sniffed with great dignity. “But I had this rather brilliant idea that I could use his shadow—currently in my possession—to lead me to him. Like a compass.”

  Mr. Smee nodded eagerly—then frowned, perhaps remembering where the idea had come from originally. Hook was careful not to look at him.

  The witch sucked her tooth, stirring the soup thoughtfully. “Not a compass…There’s problems with enchanting the shadow down so small. For long periods of time. Especially if you don’t plan on staying near the equator. No, a compass won’t work. You need something more human-sized. Like…a Painopticon.”

  “What’s that?” Hook asked eagerly.

  “I think it’s the thing you’re looking for. The engineering of it escapes me. Was mentioned in one of me books over there.”

  The witch gestured to a shelf, which had on it things that made even Hook squirm: moldering jars of foul-smelling ointments, shiny black plants that looked more liquid than fiber, cloches protecting half-fleshed skeletons that could have been human or reptile—and which moved a little when not looked at directly. Also a set of musty black-bound books, some of which had blinking eyeballs set in their covers.

  “Splendid, splendid!” Hook said enthusiastically—concealing his disgust. “How much for the lot?”

  “If you were a good fellow, I’d say free—the chaos and pain released by your attempting to use them would certainly make it worthwhile,” the witch said with a smile that wasn’t entirely unkind. “But since you’re one of us, I have to charge. Let me see.…”

  She waddled back and forth in front of her fire, a giddy, almost childlike look on her face as she tapped her tooth in thought.

  Hook fidgeted.

  Smee whispered, “You don’t think she’ll make us get her more babies, do you, Cap’n?”

  “Even I have my limits,” Hook whispered back.

  The witch whirled around, and both men jumped like boys caught by a teacher.

  “All the rum on your ship!” she declared happily. “Not the grog. The real, pure stuff. Also any cones of sugar. And a silk dressing gown.”

  “Absolutely,” Hook said in relief. “Whatever you like. It is yours.”

  Moreia rubbed her hands together in excitement. Strange oils came off them but disappeared into dust and smoke before hitting the floor. Smee began to inch toward the exit.

  “Oooh, I haven’t had a real drink in years. And there’s spirits like it, too.”

  “And you look like a woman who deserves a nice gown to eat your, er, breakfast in,” Hook said politely.

  The witch cackled. “Oh, the dressing gown is for a bit of a disguise.…There’s a handsome young merman I rather fancy. And who, I might add, could stand to be taught a lesson or two.”

  “Well, I’ll leave you to your projects,” Hook said hastily, standing up.

  The witch rolled her eyes and spat. “Least I’m honest about my issues. Chasing Pan, indeed. Put your anger at lost youth into violence, I say. Go burn some villages or raid one of the other islands. Become a despot. Keep yourself busy.”

  “I’ll just have what you ordered sent up here by a couple of my men. With some extra goodies for you, of course,” Hook said, pushing the door open with his rump and bowing out.

  “Oh, you’re too kind. I’ll have one of my own ‘men’ bring you the books once I get what I want. I don’t suppose I need to tell you there is no way your ship is leaving these waters until you hold up your end of the bargain?”

  “And I don’t need to tell you that my cannons are aimed at your lovely house on the off chance you don’t hold up yours, of course.”

  “Always a pleasure, Hook.” The witch grinned and blew him a kiss.

  “For me as well.” The captain tipped his hat before setting it on his head and closing the door behind him.

  He and Smee stood for a moment in the dismal half-light of the weird island and its foul vapors, breathing deeply in relief.

  “That weren’t pleasant, if you don’t mind me saying so, Cap’n,” Smee eventually said.

  “No…but I wonder,” Hook said, thoughtful. “Maybe what we feel now…that’s how people feel when they deal with pirates. I mean, we’re frightening, too, aren’t we? Killing and looting and looking generally fearsome…Isn’t that why the heroes always come after us?”

  “Never thought about it that way before, Cap’n,” Smee admitted, scratching under his hat. “I guess that’s why you’re the cap’n, Cap’n! Always thinking the deep thoughts and whatnot.”

  “True,” Hook said, nodding. “Too true, Mr. Smee. ’Tis a burden of leadership. You know, I will almost miss her when she’s gone, with the rest of Never Land. Poor old witch. Now let’s back to the ship. I want to get her the rum and be out of here as soon as we can. And I think it’s high time for a bath and a shave.…I always feel unclean after dealing with her.”

  “That’s the thing! One bath and shave coming right up, Cap’n, sir!” Mr. Smee said happily.

  And the two brightly colored pirates descended the steep spiral path, the only red and blue and gold things for miles around. Hook’s feather bobbed jauntily in the air. He even smiled despite the foul breeze.

  Soon he would have the shadow showing the way.…Peter Pan was as good as gone, along with the rest of Never Land.

  Tinker Bell’s glow lit the dark understory of the jungle with a sprightly—if feeble—twinkling. Whatever triumph Wendy had felt upon surviving the mermaids soon dissipated into the dark, moist, enveloping atmosphere.

  She was walking away from creatures she had dreamed of meeting since she was a very little girl.

  “Thank you,” she said aloud, eventually.

  Tinker Bell looked at her.

  “For saving me,” Wendy elaborated.

  Tinker Bell blinked, as if she hadn’t thought about it. Wendy watched expressions flit over her face as quick and transparent as the wings of a dragonfly (or a fairy); there was no need for language. The fairy frowned, obviously recalling details of the previous hour. Then an expression of wonder and an unguarded smile appeared: she did save Wendy, didn’t she? The smile grew into a rosy grin as she remembered her own heroics, a pleased, proud smugness settling over her features.

  Finally she looked up at Wendy—as if just remembering that the person she had saved was still there. And perhaps that person was someone she didn’t want to like.

  She rolled her eyes and shrugged. No big deal.

  “Well, it meant a lot. To me,” Wendy said, refusing to let her companion retreat so easily from the conversation. “I didn’t think…Well, I didn’t think you were going to come back for me. I had thought you left. For good.”

  The fairy flew up toward Wendy’s face, settling inches from her nose. She put her tiny hands on her hips in exasperation.

  “Well, really, how was I supposed to know? You’ve made it quite clear that you don’t have the fondest feelings for me. From the moment we first met. You were boxing me about a bit, remember?” She didn’t mean to overemphasize her statement, but she couldn’t help rubbing her arm where the fairy had pinched her extra viciously.

  The fairy looked thoughtful.

  “Well, you did.”

  Tinker Bell really was like a child, Wendy decided. Her intelligence and wisdom in the moment were certainly advanced and adultlike. But anything that required reflecting on previous moments or her own past behavior, any consideration of intangible elements like consequences or empathy, was as impossible as the close observation of a distant
world. Tinker Bell of earlier in the day was an entirely different creature from afternoon Tinker Bell, alien and divorced from her.

  The fairy looked left and right, as if trying to figure a way out of Wendy’s rather obvious and telling statement. Then she cocked her head, as if remembering something, and opened her mouth, waggling a finger at the human girl.

  “I know, I know! I sold Peter’s shadow. I put all of Never Land in danger. I deserve your ire. Which makes it only more likely that you would abandon me to be drowned by the mermaids—especially if it looked hopeless.” Wendy sighed, feeling the heaviness of the last few days fall solidly on her shoulders. “All I ever wanted was to be friends with a fairy, or a mermaid, and go on an adventure. I didn’t mean for all of this to happen. I don’t know how many times I can apologize, Tinker Bell.

  “Look, I know I said we shouldn’t discuss him anymore.…But really. Ask yourself. Why do you like Peter Pan?”

  The fairy looked up, surprised at the apparent change in conversation.

  “Is it because he’s different from everyone you would normally spend time with? Is it because he leads you on great adventures? Is it because he draws you out of your pretty, delicate little bedroom and you get to battle pirates with him and do great things?”

  Tinker Bell gave a tiny nod.

  “I liked Peter—the idea of Peter—for the exact same reasons. I always dreamed of going on great adventures, of battling pirates, of exploring caves and finding treasures. Because there are no adventures or pirates in London. Not for girls, anyway. All of the stories I read are about boys and men. Oh, there are a few, rare female explorers…but I am not one of them. I need a little help to get going, do you know what I mean? I don’t seem to be able to escape my own bedroom in London without someone giving me a bit of a push. Peter Pan would come and save me from all that dreariness.

  “Had I known about you, and how you already had a…relationship with Peter, a strong and—perhaps rightfully—jealous one, I would have been much more careful. But I would still want a Peter Pan. I would still want adventure. But I would in no way have put myself between you and the Peter. Your Peter.”

  Tinker Bell frowned as she slowly processed these words.

  “Really. You needn’t have hated me,” Wendy said with a wan smile. “You could have just said something like…‘Back off, woman! The fair lad is mine!’ And then we would have shaken on it. Or whatever it is dumb men do when they come to some dumb manly agreement.”

  The fairy’s mouth tugged to the side in a snarky smile. She knew exactly what Wendy was talking about, the ridiculous gestures of a gender prone to extroversion.

  “And then maybe you could have eventually introduced me to some fairy prince.…” Wendy said lightly, with a smile. “Just like my mother is always trying to get girls to introduce me to their brothers or cousins or whatever.”

  At this Tinker Bell frowned and made a little gagging motion, sticking her finger on her tongue.

  “No, I suppose there’s a reason you spend time with Peter and the Lost Boys, and not males of the fey kind,” Wendy said, laughing. “Perhaps they are as boring to you as London boys are to me. Anyway, without Peter—or you—I had to find my way here myself. I didn’t understand the cost or consequences. I’m getting my adventure finally, even if it’s not exactly the one I wanted. I just wish—I really, really wish—we could travel together more as friends. I’m not your enemy, Tinker Bell. If I had known about you, I would have been your greatest fan.”

  Tinker Bell was silent. For once her face and body were unreadable, an enigma.

  “Anyway, we should probably get going,” Wendy finished, a little lamely. She already felt like she had pulled a real Wendy, talking too much, revealing too much, feeling too much. All in the open.

  But Tinker Bell still seemed frozen in thought. Almost as if once Wendy had got her thinking about things she had never considered before she couldn’t easily give them up, like a cat worrying a toy.

  “You should probably lead,” Wendy added politely, “Since I have no idea where we are going.”

  The fairy tipped her head back and took the human in, as if really looking at her for the first time. She paused for a moment in what appeared to be a new thought, judging by the spark in her eyes.

  “What is it?” Wendy asked.

  Tinker Bell opened her mouth. Widely. Very widely. Wider than it seemed should have been possible for such a tiny creature. Wendy couldn’t help noticing familiar, almost mermaid-ish rows of sharp, perfectly white teeth. Was every resident of Never Land equipped with such weapons? Such mouths? How dangerous was this place?

  “I don’t know what you…”

  Tinker Bell closed her mouth, then opened it again widely and pointed at Wendy.

  “You want me to… ?” Wendy asked, opening her own mouth—but not quite as wide as Tinker Bell had. She was a little self-conscious. Mother and Father had always told her to chew with her mouth closed, of course, and ladies didn’t yawn or speak while eating, at least not without hiding behind a properly gloved set of fingers.

  But she opened up a little wider, seeing the fairy’s growing impatience and fearing her retribution.

  “Ike ish?” she asked.

  In answer, the fairy shook her wings and spun—hurling a stream of fairy dust directly onto Wendy’s tongue.

  What Wendy felt was a spray of something that could only be described as golden. Light, effervescent, slightly dry. Fizzy, like the horrible mineral waters Mother sometimes made Father take to aid his digestion. But not with the terrible metallic taste. For the brief moment she could taste anything at all, it was sweet—or no, maybe sour like lemons. No, not that, either—more like sparks from a fire.

  All too soon it was gone, down her throat or up her nose or dissipated into her flesh and brain.

  A wave crashed through her body starting in her sinuses. She was frozen all over, and then sweating and shuddering, but in the next moment felt like herself again.

  “What was—thank you—why did you—”

  Tinker Bell jingled.

  Can you understand me?

  “Yes, of course, but what did you just…Wait, what?”

  Just like that, like nothing at all, everything the fairy said made sense. Like it had always made sense when taken all together: her jingles, her wing flutters, her eye movements…The human girl just hadn’t been able to understand it before.

  “Your…dust,” Wendy said slowly. “Somehow it allows me to understand you. The way everyone else can.”

  Tinker Bell shrugged and did a slow spiral in the air, apparently now bored with the conversation. She zoomed up to a palm leaf to examine a bug there: something like the unicorn beetles but with an iridescent rainbow mane that fluttered in the breeze. She jingled quietly and nuzzled it.

  “Well, this will make things a lot easier,” Wendy said happily. Did the dust allow her to understand just Tinker Bell, or all fairies? What about all the creatures of Never Land? How long would it last? Did it change other parts of her? Was it poisonous? If she had been doused with fairy dust to fly, and imbibed fairy dust to hear fairy language, how much more of her was there to infuse with the substance? Would she become—she secretly hoped—fairy herself?

  Magical translating dust aside, she also understood without anyone saying it that despite this apparent change in their relationship status, the fairy would still not stand for the usual Wendy-barrage of questions. They might be on better terms now, but they weren’t bosom companions.

  Not yet, at least.

  “All right then,” Wendy said, patting her dress down and dusting herself off—as best she could—while ordering in her head a careful list of questions she would dole out, slowly, over the course of her time with the fairy. “Where do we find these First?”

  Tinker Bell shrugged.

  “Oh,” Wendy said, perplexed. “But—when they said that thing, about him going to see the First, you looked like you knew of them. You looked, if you don’t m
ind me saying so, worried.”

  I am worried.

  “About what? Are they dangerous?”

  Tinker Bell swayed this way and that on a whisper-soft breeze so faint she might have summoned it with her own wings.

  The First are…the first. The first inhabitants of Never Land. The first spirits of the place. Ancient. They were here before mermaids and pirates and fairies and the dreams of men. They are Never Land. Whatever Never Land was when it was born. We are all…a result of them, and you.

  Wendy frowned, considering this. The history of Never Land had never occurred to her as a discrete idea before. Never Land was Never Land, a place of infinite happiness and adventure, where anything you could imagine was possible. Did theories like geology, the true age of the Earth, and Mr. Darwin’s evolution hold for imaginary lands?

  “Where do fairies come from?” she asked, thinking it was the simplest entry into a complicated subject.

  The first laugh of a baby. A special baby. So they say. Tinker Bell smiled wryly. We are here, we appear, sometimes there are more of us. I awoke under a leaf, curled up like a drop of dew, complete. Tinker Bell!

  But…also we come the usual way.

  She made a face.

  “But there is a connection between you and the imagination, the minds of human beings,” Wendy hazarded.

  I guess so.

  “When I tell a story about Never Land to my brothers, am I making it up? Or am I just repeating something, which my inner mind already knows—a story that has already actually happened, in Never Land?”

  Who knows? I don’t.

  Who cares? I don’t.

  “But we’re talking about the nature of your existence! Your world’s existence. Doesn’t that make you wonder at all?”

  I am. You are. Everything else is talk. Tinker Bell jingled, a little impatiently. What’s important is getting Peter’s shadow back and figuring out how Captain Hook plans to destroy Never Land.

  “No, no, of course, you’re right,” Wendy said—but a little distractedly. She did not really agree. Details mattered to her. Which hand of Hook’s Peter actually cut off, for instance. How many masts the Jolly Roger had. The precise workings of an entire world, the rules by which it existed…Well, besides soothing her constantly tumbling mind, knowledge was power. The more she knew about Never Land, the safer she was—and the more successful their quest would be. “But—just—what do they look like? The First, I mean?”