by Zoe Barton
The Lost Boys all became very still. Kyle’s eyes were closed, and he smiled, his blanket bunched up in the crook of his arm like a teddy bear.
“Me, too?” Button asked hopefully from the next hammock over.
So, I kissed Button good night in the same way. And then Prank. And even Dibs, because it didn’t seem fair to leave one Lost Boy out.
From the branch above Dibs’s hammock bed, Tink chimed at me in a sharp way, but none of the Lost Boys were awake enough to translate for me.
“Did you want one too?” I asked, flying forward, but she jumped off the branch and flew into the forest.
Maybe Mom’s good-night kiss speech had offended her more than I thought. Fairies are really touchy.
By the time I looked for him, Peter had already flown up to his house, which I took to mean that he didn’t want a good-night kiss either. But in the doorway, he turned and smiled at me with a half wave.
I climbed into my hammock, rubbing my eyes. I knew one thing about bedtime stories and good-night kisses. They made me miss my own mom a lot more.
Chapter 16.
I Rescue a Mermaid Princess
When I woke up the next morning, I was really confused. The last thing I remembered was a breeze whispering around my hammock, gently rocking me to sleep.
The breeze was stronger when I woke. It smelled salty, like the sea, which was a two-minute flight away from the Tree Home.
Then I heard a soft, questioning chitter and then a high-pitched hushing sound.
Instantly suspicious, I opened my eyes.
The sun sat on the horizon, just beginning to rise. I was in the middle of the ocean, so far away from shore that the trees looked tiny. White and purplish lights lined the edge of my leaf, chiming as quietly as possible. I recognized one of them.
“Tink! What are you doing?” I shouted.
The fairies were so startled that they dropped the leaf. My hammock bed plunged into the water.
An enormous splash came over the edge, soaking my pajama top. I shrieked, but the leaf was seaworthy. My hammock bed stabilized and floated as a swarm of fairies zipped around above my head.
It was easy to tell which one was Tink. She was chittering the loudest.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” I told her sternly. “I was asleep, minding my own business. You were the one caught in the act.”
I don’t think Tink wanted me to point this out, even if it was true. She dived at me, and I felt her tiny fingernails rake across my cheek. Her fairy friends followed her example, clawing at me so hard that I knew that some of them were drawing blood. I wasn’t sure why they didn’t like me, but maybe some of them recognized me from Prank’s fake thunderstorm the day before.
I dived over the side of the leaf into the ocean, just to escape them, and I swam underwater a little way and surfaced at a safe distance from the fairy swarm, shouting, “I’ll tell Peter!”
The fairies—in the process of hurtling toward me—froze in midair.
Tink’s mouth slowly turned up at the corners, and she beamed an evil little smile at me. I knew instantly that she would get to Peter first and feed him some stupid story.
“Wait, Tink! Let’s talk about this!”
But she and the rest of the fairy swarm were already zooming across the waves. In the dim predawn haze, they glittered over the ocean’s surface like dancing Christmas lights.
I tried to launch myself into the air after them. I knew I had to have a lot of fairy dust on me after being carried halfway across Neverland, but I didn’t lift an inch from the sea. Suddenly I remembered. Wet fairy dust didn’t work.
There was no hope for it. I started to swim toward shore, trying not to think about the crocodile that sang Christmas carols or the story that Tink was telling Peter at that very moment. At least it was warm, I told myself. I would dry off pretty fast as soon as I got out of the water.
Then I noticed where Tink and her friends had been taking me. The Jolly Roger sailed along the shore, only a few hundred feet away. I froze, treading water, furious at myself for not seeing it before and furious at Tink for getting me into this situation in the first place. So much for winning over the fairy and becoming friends.
I watched the ship nervously. It wasn’t that I was afraid exactly. But the run-in with the pirates the day before had taught me that Peter and the Lost Boys made pretty good backup.
The ship started to sail on by, and I breathed a sigh of relief. The pirates hadn’t seen me. I was safe.
They passed close enough that I could hear the pirates laughing. “We’ve really got her now!” said a gleeful voice I recognized—Black Patch Pat.
Her? Did he mean Tiger Lily? Or Buttercup?
I spotted a rope hanging from the deck and made my way over to the ship, swimming quietly underwater as much as humanly possible.
The rope whipped through the water like a swimming eel. I grabbed it, and the speed of the ship almost pulled my arm from my shoulder. I hung on, even more determined to see what was going on. After a few false attempts, I pulled myself out of the waves.
I knocked against the side of the boat with a thump so loud that I was sure that someone had heard me. I paused, listening.
“Ask her again.” The voice was as cold and slimy as the rope I was holding. It was Captain Hook. “Ask her again where Pan resides.”
I kept listening as I shinnied up the slippery rope, wishing that the fairy dust would kick in again. I didn’t hear anyone answer, but there was this weird sputtering rasp.
“Cap’n, she still says she doesn’t know,” said another voice—Smee.
“Bring more wood. Stoke the fire,” said Hook. “I must have Pan.”
Soon, I reached the top. My hands curled around the rail of the ship. Slowly, cautiously, I peered over it, ready to dive back into the ocean if anyone looked my way.
A brazier was on the far side of the deck, and all the pirates had crowded around it, too absorbed to notice me. I couldn’t understand why they would need a fire on such a warm morning. Orange flames fingered the grate as Black Patch Pat shoved a few sticks through the bars.
Then I saw her, hanging in a mildewed net, just a few feet above the fire. Buttercup.
Hook leaned toward her, pushing the net lazily so that she began to spin. “Now, my dear mermaid princess, once again, I ask you: where can we find Peter Pan?”
Buttercup looked terrible. Everything about her drooped. She didn’t even raise her head as she rasped a few syllables.
I didn’t think that she said anything, but apparently, Smee understood her. “Still doesn’t know, Cap’n.”
“I bet she does,” said another pirate, one I didn’t recognize. “You can see it all over her scaly little face.”
Buttercup choked on the rising smoke and started to cough, miserable. The ends of her blond curls were singed. Her lips were dry and cracking.
“I have been without my hat for two entire days, Buttercup,” said Hook in his cold voice. “That is two days too long. Lower the net,” he told his pirates.
Noodler let out a little rope. The net dropped. Buttercup squirmed, trying to twist away from the fire, but she couldn’t get away. It was too close. The flames rose, as if trying to reach her.
This was torture! She didn’t look like she was any older than me, but there she was. She rasped out the same noises over and over as loudly as she could, coughing from the smoke and struggling in the net. It must’ve been the mermaids’ language.
It made me even madder to see the pirates just watching her gleefully.
“She still says she doesn’t know,” Smee told Hook.
My heart squeezed. Maybe she didn’t know where the Tree Home was, but she did know where Button did the laundry. She could’ve told Hook, but she didn’t. Buttercup was being very brave, and she was definitely being a good friend.
“You know, Cap’n—I’ve been thinking. She might be telling the truth.”
“Impossible,” said Hook.
�
�Well, you know, Pan and the merfolk, they don’t mix much,” Smee pointed out. “Those mermaids, they have a terrible habit of trying to drown the Lost Boys. The one named Prank, in particular.”
I knew one thing for certain: I had to rescue her. I didn’t know if I could do it alone, but I didn’t have time to go get the Lost Boys. It didn’t look like Buttercup could last much longer.
For a second, the pirate captain looked disappointed. Then he straightened up, glaring at the mermaid slowly drying out over the fire. “She’s the sister of the mermaid queen. She has to know something.”
She made a loud rattling sound, like steam hissing from beneath a pot’s lid.
I thought it was just a scream, but all the pirates became very still.
“Did she say what I think she said?” Black Patch Pat asked Noodler.
“Treasure!” shouted Smee triumphantly, and Hook’s mouth curled under his black mustache.
“Where?” asked the pirate captain.
Buttercup began sputtering something, and Smee listened intently.
I would never be able to rescue her with all the pirates gathered around her. I glanced around for a distraction. The anchor hung over the ship’s rail only a few feet from me. A lever stood beside it.
A plan started to form in my mind. Thinking about all the havoc it would cause made me so happy that I started to rise into the air. The fairy dust must have dried out—just in time, too.
I dashed forward and hit the anchor’s lever with all my might.
The anchor whished as it plummeted toward the water and plunked when it plunged, but I didn’t wait around to watch. I rushed around the ship toward my next target.
The anchor caught the ocean floor just as a couple of pirates heard my approach and started to turn my way.
The ship swung. The deck tilted wildly. Pirates flailed and fell. The brazier under the mermaid toppled. Hook fell against the helm and clung to it.
I flew into Noodler as hard as I could. Already unbalanced by the tipping ship, he stumbled and fell. I snatched up the rope that he dropped, the one attached to the net trapping Buttercup.
The force almost yanked me out of the air. “Whoa—you’re heavy,” I said to Buttercup.
The mermaid blinked wide, sea green eyes at me sleepily. I wasn’t sure she recognized me. The smoke must have stupefied her.
“Who’s that? Is there a new Lost Boy?” said a voice behind us. The pirates had noticed me.
“Nah, that’s the Wendy girl,” said Smee. “The one who stole the hat off our dear cap’n’s head.”
“Get her, you dogs!” Hook shouted.
A bunch of pirates scrambled and slipped across the deck toward me.
With one hand, I pushed Buttercup past the side of the ship, over the water. We were still pretty high up, at least thirty feet, but I didn’t have time to cut her free from the net. There wasn’t any more that I could do. “I hope you can still swim,” I told the mermaid, and I let go of the rope.
Buttercup and the net plunged into the ocean below. I zipped out of the pirates’ reach as soon as I could, hovering anxiously over the water still churning from her drop.
“Man overboard!” someone shouted.
“Not man, pea brain. Mermaid,” replied Black Patch Pat, peering over the side. “Mermaid overboard.”
Bubbles and more bubbles rose to the surface, but no Buttercup. I swallowed, wondering if mermaids could drown.
“Salty Sal and Noodler, take off yer boots,” said Smee. “You’re the only ones who can swim. You’re going in after her.”
“No, no, no,” Hook shouted. “Morons, the lot of you! Raise the anchor and right the ship first.”
The ship wobbled a little in the water and steadied, perfectly level. Someone must have gotten to the anchor pretty fast.
I didn’t know how long I had until the pirates started loading their cannons, but I didn’t want to escape to the island before making sure my friend was all right.
“Buttercup!” I shouted, not even sure that sound carried underwater. “Buttercup, please!”
“Much better!” Hook said, practically singing. “Now, Smee, did the mermaid tell you the location of the treasure?”
“Yes, Cap’n. She certainly did, Cap’n.”
“Then we have no reason to go after her. She has already told us everything she knows. Now, Smee, if you’ll tell me the location of that marvelous treasure . . .”
Buttercup surfaced finally. Her lips were cracked and bleeding in two places, but she was smiling.
“You’re okay!” I cried.
She said something to me, I was 100 percent sure. Her lips moved. But it didn’t sound much different from the water gurgling through her webbed fingers.
“Buttercup, I can’t understand you unless you speak my language,” I reminded her.
“Oh,” she said, and in English, I could hear how hoarse she’d become. “Ashley, you saved my life.”
“We’re not out of this yet,” I told her, pointing to the ship.
“Right you are, Cap’n,” we heard Smee say. “All right, men. To Queen Maris’s palace—two minutes’ swim from the fairies’ tree along the coral reef, take a sharp right at the school of angelfish, and then veer left by Jellyfish Canyon—”
Buttercup hung her head, ashamed to have given away the mermaids’ secrets. The water brought out all the green in her blond curls.
“What kind of directions are those, Smee?” growled Hook.
“They’re the ones she gave me, Cap’n,” Smee said, sounding a little unsure.
“Don’t worry. It sounds like your directions might slow them down a little bit,” I told Buttercup. “I think you should still warn the mermaids, though. Especially your sister.”
When I flew toward shore, Buttercup swam just below me, looking unconvinced. “But they’re going to be so angry,” she murmured. I had the feeling that she was worrying about Queen Maris’s reaction the most.
“Well, if I were a mermaid, I wouldn’t be as mad if you gave everybody a chance to prepare themselves.”
Buttercup brightened up considerably. She waved me forward, smiling widely, and I leaned closer, expecting her to whisper something else in my ear.
Then she grabbed me around the shoulders. I stiffened, but it was just a hug. It was wet and smelled like seaweed.
She did gurgle something in my ear. It sounded a lot like the mermaid version of thank you.
As I watched her dive deep into the ocean and swim fast toward Mermaids’ Lagoon, I felt something warm and tingly in my stomach, a new happy thought. Peter had been wrong. I had made friends with a mermaid.
Buttercup outstripped the pirate ship easily, but I saw Hook standing at the prow, watching her with a patient smile on his face. Smee stood beside him, screwing on a new hook, one with two points. Captain Hook was planning a battle. My new friend was in more danger than ever.
Well. He wasn’t going to hurt her. Not if I had anything to do with it.
Chapter 17.
Tink Gets Banished
Kyle noticed me first. As I flew into the clearing next to the Tree Home, he shouted, “The Wendy girl’s back! She came back!”
Button and Prank whooped too, and landing, I looked at them, puzzled.
“Tink’s been saying that you got scared—that you left in the middle of the night,” Button explained.
It took me a second to remember back further than Buttercup’s rescue. “Oh, right—I forgot that Tink would get here first.” I spotted the fairy, sitting on one of the lower branches and glaring at me. She even had a tiny handkerchief raised dramatically to her face, as if blotting tears. I glared back at her, furious that she would go so far just to fake missing me. I had tried to befriend her. “Like she would be upset if I disappeared,” I added, annoyed.
Dibs landed, the feather in Hook’s hat windblown as if he’d been flying all over the island. “No sign of her. I told you she’d—,” he started, both fists on his hips, but then he noticed me. �
�Oh,” he said, and sighed deeply, as if he had been hoping I was gone for good.
“I missed you, too, Dibs,” I said sarcastically, and Dibs rolled his eyes.
“I knew you wouldn’t leave without saying good-bye.” Kyle took my hand and dragged me toward the Tree Home.
Peter stopped pacing the air beside Tink and stared at us. It surprised me when he smiled, relieved. I hadn’t known that he would miss me if I left.
“Where were you?” he asked.
“At sea,” I said. “Tink took me and my leaf on a boating expedition, but listen—”
Peter didn’t listen. He turned furiously to the fairy.
“A boating expedition,” Prank repeated appreciatively. It was the kind of trick that he daydreamed about.
“I knew it,” Button said triumphantly. “She’s done it before, but she hasn’t done it since the original Wendy. She must really not like you.” He said it like a compliment.
The fairy dropped her handkerchief and flew around Peter’s head. From the wailing pitch of her bell-like voice, it sounded like she was pleading her case.
“Tink, you are my friend no longer,” Peter said fiercely.
I thought he was just exaggerating, but Tink took it very seriously. She started making these sharp little rings, like sobs.
“Wow, Peter hasn’t said that since the first Wendy either,” Button said, impressed.
“He must really like you,” Kyle added.
That did feel like a compliment. I started to smile, but then Tink flew at me furiously. Ducking, I said, “That’s very sweet of you, Peter, but I’m not sure it helps—”
Peter swatted at the fairy. “Begone from this place, Tink. I never want to see you again.”
Tink let out a bell-like wail, half heartbroken, half outraged.
In a situation like this, I decided, it was best to just distract Peter. It would take the heat off Tink, and besides, Buttercup was still in danger. “The Jolly Roger is on the move,” I told Peter.
He turned to me, eyes glittering, one hand on his sword hilt. “Hook?”
I nodded. “He wants the mermaids’ treasure. He’s headed for their palace.”
“He can’t be,” said Button.