Straight On Till Morning

by Liz Braswell

  “My goodness…”

  Wendy had never seen anything like it. Whatever was happening was fascinating and hypnotic—and deeply unnerving on a very basic level. She felt the touch of terror that all animals experience when they instinctively know something is wrong with the world around them. When the weather goes south.

  There was a giant crack. A moment later Wendy realized it wasn’t the sound of thunder. It was the sound of thousands of gallons of water spilling out of the sky all at once. Giant, hot raindrops hurt as they hit her head and eyes; the percussion of them pounding the river was deafening.

  “We need to get to land!” Wendy cried out, once again grabbing the pole and pushing. Tinker Bell nodded vigorously and started to fly up but quickly realized there was nothing she could do. Each drop was the size of her head; already her wings looked crushed at the tips.

  She hid under the bench.

  Wendy wrestled with the pole, dress and slip plastered against her body by the torrents of rain. Water streamed into her eyes whenever she tried to look up and see where they were going. Eventually she surrendered to the greater power of nature and just pushed as hard as she could, blind, hoping it was toward the eastern shoreline. The wind worked the surface of the river into a rippling frenzy; the boat spun on its hull like a compass, twisting every direction.

  She finally felt the keel of the boat touch soft, sandy bottom. Wendy leapt out. The water was freezing, all thoughts of the desert washed away along with its red dust and sweat. She gritted her teeth and yanked on the boat, dragging it out of the river and as far up the bank as she could manage. It wouldn’t do to leave such a pretty, well-made thing to drift out into the ocean or smash itself to bits on the rocks. And it might come in useful later. Things had a way of doing that in adventure stories.

  Besides, it was the first boat Wendy had ever made.

  “Tink! Come with me!” She held out her left hand. Without a single protest jingle, Tinker Bell zoomed like a well-trained bee out from under the bench and into her friend’s palm. Closing her fingers gently over the fairy, Wendy put her head down and ran into the forest.

  The noise of the rain was considerably louder here. Giant drops hit giant leaves with splats that reverberated like ancient drums. Just breathing was tricky in the constant deluge; Wendy came close to choking several times as she took in gasps of rain along with air.

  Tinker Bell’s glow peeped out of the cracks between Wendy’s fingers.

  Find a trufualuff tree, she jingled moistly. Like at the Lost Boys’ hideout. They’re hollow to their roots.

  Wendy looked for one as best she could, since she didn’t perfectly remember those trees and botany was not her strong suit.

  There were no edges or shadows in the jungle, just a dark, twilighty gray that made shapes and distances difficult to judge. She stumbled to avoid nearly invisible, deep black pools that were home to playful but spiny seven-legged carapaced things that leapt and splashed in high arcs between them. The whole exercise was exhausting.

  Finally, Wendy saw a tree with a comfortingly wide trunk and giant knobby roots. Although she had a fair idea this was their goal, it was confirmed by an intense jingling and shaking of her fairy-holding hand. And there it was, at the base of the trunk: a triangular-shaped hole framed by several intersecting roots. Just wide enough for Wendy to slip through, if she held her breath and twisted herself round like a cork.

  “Go take a look,” she suggested, opening up her hand. Tinker Bell obligingly buzzed out and down into the hole. Fairy glow flickered and bobbled like a candle in a lantern as she zipped around inside the tree. She reappeared at the entrance and nodded vigorously.

  “Great,” Wendy said, a little ironically. “A dry hole under a tree. Even more exciting than seeing a jungle again. What a day.”

  Glad there was no around to see, she awkwardly stuck one foot into the hole, dangling until it touched a hard-ish surface, then squeezed her other foot in place next to it. Spinning slowly with her hands above her head, she ducked down until she disappeared, a genie shrinking into a bottle.

  The little cave wasn’t half as bad as she expected: it was dry, didn’t smell too musty, and didn’t contain any fetid animal refuse. If she pulled her knees up there was even room to sit or curl around herself and sleep if she needed to. Rather than feeling claustrophobic because of the weight of the tree above them, Wendy felt safe under the roots that laced together to make their ceiling.

  “On the whole, a very acceptable, ah, hole,” Wendy said approvingly. “If I were a rabbit I should very much like to live in a place like this, permanently.”

  We’re just here until the rain stops. Then we have to go find Peter, Tinker Bell jingled, a little anxiously.

  “And save the world, don’t forget. We have no idea where the pirates are, or exactly what they intend to do. And the First said that time was running out.” Wendy sighed and put her hand out without thinking to comfort the little fairy.

  Without thinking, the little fairy climbed up onto it.

  “I can’t even tell how much time has passed since we first entered the Land of the First. Do you have any idea?”

  Tinker Bell looked thoughtful, then shrugged and shook her head, jingling meaninglessly.

  “I wonder if time passes differently there. Like in fairy tales. No disrespect,” she added quickly. “Was the time we spent there like centuries out here? As if we were asleep, or under a fairy spell having the time of our lives, while time passed out here? No…that doesn’t feel right. I think it’s the reverse. And that makes more Never Land sense, really: time passing slower for the dwellers in the infinite beginnings of the world. Oh, I do like the sound of that, don’t you? I just came up with it. ‘Dwellers in the infinite beginnings of the world.’ I should write that down.”

  She went to take out her journal before remembering that her parents still had it. Worse than that: she realized that her bag was gone. When had she lost it? When the mermaids tried to drown her? When she slept in the air on the way to the First? Clambering around the rocks in the desert? The river journey? She couldn’t even remember the last time she had seen it.

  “Well, I suppose the pirates’ gold buttons and thimbles will not become useful later in the story, as originally suggested,” she said sadly. “Nothing in Never Land seems to stick around for very long. I must remember when packing up for my next adventure to choose a bigger, sturdier satchel. A solid waxed canvas one, maybe, that goes over my shoulders with tight straps, like a soldier’s.”

  Tinker Bell pouted sympathetically but distractedly, still watching the rain.

  “We’ll fly as soon as it calms down a bit,” Wendy promised. Glumly, she watched her friend’s shadow squeeze droplets out of her wings—and the emptiness of the space on the wall where Wendy’s own shadow should have been. She sighed and tried to think happier thoughts.

  “This is a bit like a tiny version of the Lost Boys’ hideout, isn’t it? I really liked their home, actually—it could just do with a bit of a woman’s touch.”

  Tinker Bell turned away from the rain and nodded vigorously. Like it was a subject she had thought about often.

  “I used to dream of being a sort of a den mother to the Lost Boys, you know. Keeping the house neat, maybe sewing a rug and curtains, mending their rather disreputable clothes…Being useful and loved and happy, and surrounded by a passel of adoring children. But children grow up…or at least, they’re supposed to. In my world, like my brothers. And I think I’ve tried all that anyway and I’m a bit done.”

  It was funny…she had finally come to Never Land—but for entirely different reasons now. Not because she was a girl who wanted to take care of others and find a place for herself; because she was a human who wanted adventure and quests and a reason for getting up in the morning and a purpose in life. To escape the role and future others wanted for her.

  Could her life in London have been different in such a way that she wouldn’t want to flee to Never Land? She wasn
’t as brave and strong-willed as those women who went to deepest Africa and the outback of Australia, leaving their families and taunting their detractors.

  (Also, she didn’t have the money. The world opened up for everyone, girls especially, if there was money. Most of those adventurers were heiresses. Wendy basically ran the Darling household and knew firsthand the cost of clinging to respectable middle class. There was no money for jaunts to the Outer Hebrides, much less Africa.)

  So what would make Wendy happy? That she could do—in London?

  Tinker Bell was looking at her curiously. Time apparently passed outside Wendy’s head even as ideas and feelings ran around for what seemed like forever inside it. Like time in the realm of the First and Never Land.

  “Sorry, lost in my thoughts. Don’t want to be a mother for the Lost Boys anymore, basically. But it would be fun to redecorate their hideout. Like your lovely little apartment. Oh, I just adored it!”

  Tinker Bell smiled prettily, no modesty or self-deprecation at all.

  “If I had a flat of my own, I’d set up a little house for you when you visited, a bit like your place now,” Wendy said dreamily, wrapping her arms around her knees. “There’s a fancy toy store downtown with the most cunning little furniture for dolls.…Tufted sofas and real Persian rugs the size of my hand. They even have tiny pewter dishes and the loveliest little porcelain claw-foot bathtub with a real miniature India-rubber stopper!”

  Tinker Bell’s eyes widened farther with each item listed.

  “I’ve never much played with dolls, but I always loved looking in the window of that shop. I could make tiny beeswax candles with cotton thread wicks to put in the tiny silver candelabra they sell—they’re almost like jewelry, they’re so tiny and sparkling and delicate! Imagine if they really worked. Well, I don’t suppose you need a candle at night when you’re getting ready for bed—you carry yours around with you all the time.”

  Tinker Bell looked around at her glow and smiled smugly.

  “Well, anyway, I’d have everything else all set up for you. You will come visit? When this is all over? And I return home?”

  Despite the newfound (though mild) desire to return to London, the idea of the end of her adventure came down on Wendy hard, as solid as the dreaded end of a perfect summer day—or eventual end of life itself. She looked down at her ragged, dripping dress in wonder. She had been kidnapped, beaten around, almost drowned, nearly trapped in a desert for all eternity…and yet the thought of it all being over was terrifying.

  The thought of never seeing Tinker Bell again…after they finally began to get to know each other…

  The little fairy was frowning, but not angrily. It seemed like she was considering a thought that was so new and alien to her that she automatically distrusted it.

  Me and Peter, you mean? Us come visit you? Come inside?

  “You needn’t bring Peter, if it makes you uncomfortable. It’s funny, I came all the way to Never Land and haven’t even actually met the boy yet. And I’ve still had lots of adventures. But it could just be…you, you know. I would miss you so terribly. You could take an afternoon. We could have tea, like my mother does with ladies she likes. I confess I’ve never liked the idea of tea out with anyone besides Mother before. Because I don’t have any close friends—and because it’s really a little silly. Flower plates and talk of the weather and only one lump of sugar. I’m supposedly a young woman and I still think tea tastes awful without at least two…but I have to put on a good show for the boys. Act like an adult, you know, set an example.”

  Tinker Bell was nodding, obviously a little perplexed as Wendy chattered on, too nervous about her heartfelt admission to do anything besides babble about inconsequential things afterwards. Belittling and dismissing her own deep feelings. As always.

  The little fairy put a hand on her thumb and patted it.

  I think I would like that. But we’ll see.

  “All right, plans for the future, better to concentrate on the now, eh?” Wendy said, shaking her head free of silly thoughts of fairies coming to a London bedsit to visit an aging spinster. “Let’s keep an eye on the rain, and leave the moment it lets up.”

  And the drops fell, and time passed, the two girls from different worlds sat in companionable silence.

  The sun shone its absolute hardest. The sky it sailed in was a pure balmy blue, empty but for the occasional harmless puffy cloud and the impressive but subtextually unimportant albatross.

  (This was Never Land. It was a giant white bird, distinguished from the smaller white birds—seagulls—only by size and call.)

  The sea below stretched far and smooth in every direction, green as a precious gem. In London someone would point out how one can see the earth’s curvature at sea after only twelve miles, but this was Never Land and nobody cared. The horizon did curve gently, and little wispy clouds would flock to it at sunrise and sunset for a perfect viewing. That was what geometry and distances were for in Never Land.

  A jolly pirate ship flew over the waves. Its sails puffed out like a giant wind child was blowing on them. Its skull-and-crossbones flag snapped merrily in the wind.

  The whole scene practically screamed adventure and shenanigans, as in Never Land it should.

  But something was wrong.

  The crew on the deck was neither swabbing reluctantly nor singing lustily. There were no sea chanteys being belted out or harmonicas or pipes being played. No one was avasting, or something-ing the mainsail, or trying to figure out how to spell fo’c’sle. They sat or stood uncomfortably, resting on their mops, unable to play mumbly-pegs, mindlessly hauling rope, end over end beyond its seeming use.

  All eyes were directed to the front of the ship, where the reader’s should be, too.

  The prow of the Jolly Roger, a ship well-known to fans of Never Land awake or asleep, was decorated with a giant skull, as on its flag. But its famous figurehead was eclipsed now by a newer, more intricate, and far more terrifying decoration: a giant cage of golden wire and evil pointy bits that was suspended precariously over the water.

  Captive inside was a squirming splotch of blackness that didn’t quite resolve into focus. It deformed and swelled and shrank and stretched but somehow never managed to ooze out of the wickedly sharp pincers that held it in place. Four of them, sharper than Sleeping Beauty’s spindle, were set around the thing at points of the compass. Each dug deeply into the material of Peter Pan’s shadow. Four more were set in points indicating places only known to Captain Hook, Mr. Smee, and perhaps the shadow itself.

  Its skin rippled around the barbs like a horse’s flesh when a fly lands on a sore.

  The shadow hunkered down, trying to become as small as it would be underfoot at noon on the equator; to virtually disappear, and thereby free itself of the points. But somehow it remained stuck. Long, thin, sickly strands of shadow ran from the barbs back to its center, refusing to snap free. The shade would vibrate for a few moments—like a hideous spider prevaricating in the middle of its web—before reforming itself and trying something new.

  But for long periods in between it would give up and resolve itself into a version of Peter Pan, albeit a horribly distorted one. In terrible irony it put its arms out as if it were Peter: flying free, banking and turning on the wind.

  Pulleys and wires under the cage attached to the pincers would then twist and squeak and groan, almost in ridicule of the normal creak of a ship’s ropes and rigging. These wires ran through guides and eventually connected to the captain’s wheel. When the shadow banked, so did the ship.

  That the shadow was in unspeakable amounts of pain wasn’t even a question. Sometimes its shrieks actually bordered on the audible. No pirate slept through the night comfortably even with bellies full of purloined grog and bits of cloth stuffed into ears and kerchiefs wrapped around weary heads. Even when the cries couldn’t be heard, its torment could be felt thrumming throughout the ship.

  The crew, already an unhealthy lot, looked even sicker than usual.<
br />
  “Smooth sailing today,” the Duke observed reluctantly, afraid—like all of them—to break the streak.

  “Ain’t right,” Djareth mumbled.

  “Go talk to ’im, go talk again,” Screaming Byron told Zane.

  The tall, skinny pirate spat in response to this, but without conviction.

  “Go on then,” Ziggy pushed. “You drew the short straw. You have to.”

  “Likely as kill me as reason with me,” Zane sighed. “But better to be dead than caught in this misery forever.”

  He sauntered over to the captain’s quarters and knocked. An irritated voice growled from within.

  “Mr. Smee, could you get that?”

  “SMEE! Where the deuce did you get to?”

  “Dash it all, do I have to do everything meself.…”

  “COME IN!” the captain finally roared.

  Zane swallowed and took a last look back at the crew. They all gave him unconvincing grins and thumbs-up. He sighed and opened the door. He would rather have done many things, including face a fleet of sharks with just a bowie knife, rather than enter the dark, unwholesome hold of his captain.

  Hook looked as resplendent as ever in the ridiculous red frock coat that Zane sorely coveted. But his face was an unhealthy pink, glowing and perspiring from something unnatural—certainly nothing wholesome and clean like working the masts, counting loot, or cutting a throat.

  “Begging your pardon, Cap’n,” Zane began, trying to remain polite—something he wasn’t much used to.

  “Ah! Alodon. You would appreciate this, out of the whole crew. I’ve come up with some tweaks to the Painopticon that not only enhance its effectiveness, but also add some very stylish flourishes.”

  Zane licked his dry lips and leaned over the table where Hook gestured. Apparently the captain had been scribbling away with a beautiful swan’s feather pen on a sheet of parchment, his fury and passion betrayed by the untidy spots of ink all over his sketch. None of it made any sort of sense except for the flourishes Hook had described, which were drawn as neatly and intricately as an architect’s diagram.