The Emerald Circus

by Jane Yolen

  “Silly Peter,” said Lizzy, “it’s signs and ’ines.”

  “I see the signs, all right,” said Peter. “But what do they mean? wendys won’t work. Why, Neverland counts on Wendys working. And I count on it, too. You Wendys are the most important part of what we have made here.”

  “Oh,” said Lizzy, turning to Darla, her face shining with pleasure. “We’re the mostest important . . .”

  Darla sighed heavily. “If you are so important, Lizzy, why can’t he remember your name? If you’re so important, why do you have all the work and none of the fun?”

  “Right!” cried JoAnne suddenly, and immediately burst into her song. It was picked up at once by the other girls. Lizzy, caught up in the music, began to march in time all around the table with her sign. The others, still singing, fell in line behind her. They marched once around the kitchen and then right out into the dining room. Darla was at the rear.

  At first the Lost Boys were stunned at the sight of the girls and their signs. Then they, too, got caught up in the song and began to pound their hands on the table in rhythm.

  Tink flew around and around Wendy’s head, flickering on and off and on angrily, looking for all the world like an electric hair-cutting machine. Peter glared at them all until he suddenly seemed to come to some conclusion. Then he leaped onto the dining room table, threw back his head, and crowed loudly.

  At that everyone went dead silent. Even Tink.

  Peter let the silence prolong itself until it was almost painful. At last he turned and addressed Darla and, through her, all the girls. “What is it you want?” he asked. “What is it you truly want? Because you’d better be careful what you ask for. In Neverland wishes are granted in very strange ways.”

  “It’s not,” Darla said carefully, “what I want. It’s what they want.”

  In a tight voice, Wendy cried out, “They never wanted for anything until she came, Peter. They never needed or asked—”

  “What we want . . .” JoAnne interrupted, “is to be equals.”

  Peter wheeled about on the table and stared down at JoAnne, and she, poor thing, turned gray under his gaze. “No one is asking you,” he said pointedly.

  “We want to be equals!” Lizzy shouted. “To the boys. To Peter!”

  The dam burst again, and the girls began shouting and singing and crying and laughing all together.

  “Equal . . . equal . . . equal . . .”

  Even the boys took it up.

  Tink flickered frantically, then took off up one of the bolt-holes, emerging almost immediately down another, her piercing alarm signal so loud that everyone stopped chanting, except for Lizzy, whose little voice only trailed off after a bit.

  “So,” said Peter, “you want equal share in the fighting? Then here’s your chance.”

  Tink’s light was sputtering with excitement and she whistled nonstop.

  “Tink says Hook’s entire crew is out there, waiting. And, boy! are they angry. You want to fight them? Then go ahead.” He crossed his arms over his chest and turned his face away from the girls. “I won’t stop you.”

  No longer gray but now pink with excitement, JoAnne grabbed up a knife from the nearest Lost Boy. “I’m not afraid!” she said. She headed up one of the bolt-holes.

  Weaponless, Barbara, Pansy, and Betsy followed right after.

  “But that’s not what I meant them to do,” Darla said. “I mean, weren’t we supposed to work out some sort of compromise?”

  Peter turned back slowly and looked at Darla, his face stern and unforgiving. “I’m Peter Pan. I don’t have to compromise in Neverland.” Wendy reached up to help him off the tabletop.

  The other girls had already scattered up the holes, and only Lizzy was left. And Darla.

  “Are you coming to the fight?” Lizzy asked Darla, holding out her hand.

  Darla gulped and nodded. They walked to the bolt-hole hand in hand. Darla wasn’t sure what to expect, but they began rising up as if in some sort of air elevator. Behind them one of the boys was whining to Peter, “But what are we going to do without them?”

  The last thing Darla heard Peter say was, “Don’t worry. There are always more Wendys where they came from.”

  The air outside was crisp and autumny and smelled of apples. There was a full moon, orange and huge. Harvest moon, Darla thought, which was odd since it had been spring in her bedroom.

  Ahead she saw the other girls. And the pirates. Or at least she saw their silhouettes. It obviously hadn’t been much of a fight. The smallest of the girls—Martha, Nina, and Heidi—were already captured and riding atop their captors’ shoulders. The others, with the exception of JoAnne, were being carried off fireman-style. JoAnne still had her knife and she was standing off one of the largest of the men; she got in one good swipe before being disarmed, and lifted up.

  Darla was just digesting this when Lizzy was pulled from her.

  “Up you go, little darlin’,” came a deep voice.

  Lizzy screamed. “Wendy! Wendy!”

  Darla had no time to answer her before she, too, was gathered up in enormous arms and carted off.

  In less time than it takes to tell of it, they were through the woods and over a shingle, dumped into boats, and rowed out to the pirate ship. There they were hauled up by ropes and—except for Betsy, who struggled so hard she landed in the water and had to be fished out, wrung out, and then hauled up again—it was a silent and well-practiced operation.

  The girls stood in a huddle on the well-lit deck and awaited their fate. Darla was glad no one said anything. She felt awful. She hadn’t meant them to come to this. Peter had been right. Wishes in Neverland were dangerous.

  “Here come the captains,” said one of the pirates. It was the first thing anyone had said since the capture.

  He must mean captain, singular, thought Darla. But when she heard footsteps nearing them and dared to look up, there were, indeed, two figures coming forward. One was an old man about her grandfather’s age, his white hair in two braids, a three-cornered hat on his head. She looked for the infamous hook but he had two regular hands, though the right one was clutching a pen.

  The other captain was . . . a woman.

  “Welcome to Hook’s ship,” the woman said. “I’m Mrs. Hook. Also known as Mother Jane. Also known as Pirate Lil. Also called The Pirate Queen. We’ve been hoping we could get you away from Peter for a very long time.” She shook hands with each of the girls and gave Lizzy a hug.

  “I need to get to the doctor, ma’am,” said one of the pirates. “That little girl. . . ,” he pointed to JoAnne, “. . . gave me quite a slice.”

  JoAnne blanched and shrank back into herself.

  But Captain Hook only laughed. It was a hearty laugh, full of good humor. “Good for her. You’re getting careless in your old age, Smee,” he said. “Stitches will remind you to stay alert. Peter would have got your throat, and even here on the boat that could take a long while to heal.”

  “Now,” said Mrs. Hook, “it’s time for a good meal. Pizza, I think. With plenty of veggies on top. Peppers, mushrooms, carrots, onions. But no anchovies. I have never understood why anyone wants a hairy fish on top of pizza.”

  “What’s pizza?” asked Lizzy.

  “Ah . . . something you will love, my dear,” answered Mrs. Hook. “Things never do change in Peter’s Neverland, but up here on Hook’s ship we move with the times.”

  “Who will do the dishes after?” asked Betsy cautiously.

  The crew rustled behind them.

  “I’m on dishes this week,” said one, a burly, ugly man with a black eye patch.

  “And I,” said another. She was as big as the ugly man, but attractive in a rough sort of way.

  “There’s a duty roster on the wall by the galley,” explained Mrs. Hook. “That’s ship talk for the kitchen. You’ll get used to it. We all take turns. A pirate ship is a very democratic place.”

  “What’s demo-rat-ic?” asked Lizzy.

  They all laughed.
“You will have a long time to learn,” said Mrs. Hook. “Time moves more swiftly here than in the stuffy confines of a Neverland tree. But not so swiftly as out in the world. Now let’s have that pizza, a hot bath, and a bedtime story, and then tomorrow we’ll try and answer your questions.”

  The girls cheered, JoAnne loudest of them all.

  “I am hungry,” Lizzy added, as if that were all the answer Mrs. Hook needed.

  “But I’m not,” Darla said. “And I don’t want to stay here. Not in Neverland or on Hook’s ship. I want to go home.”

  Captain Hook came over and put his right hand under her chin. Gently he lifted her face into the light. “Father beat you?” he asked.

  “Never,” Darla said.

  “Mother desert you?” he asked.

  “Fat chance,” said Darla.

  “Starving? Miserable? Alone?”

  “No. And no. And no.”

  Hook turned to his wife and shrugged. She shrugged back, then asked, “Ever think that the world was unfair, child?”

  “Who hasn’t?” asked Darla, and Mrs. Hook smiled.

  “Thinking it and meaning it are two very different things,” Mrs. Hook said at last. “I expect you must have been awfully convincing to have landed at Peter’s door. Never mind, have pizza with us, and then you can go. I want to hear the latest from outside, anyway. You never know what we might find useful. Pizza was the last really useful thing we learned from one of the girls we snagged before Peter found her. And that—I can tell you—has been a major success.”

  “Can’t I go home with Darla?” Lizzy asked.

  Mrs. Hook knelt down till she and Lizzy were face-to-face. “I am afraid that would make for an awful lot of awkward questions,” she said.

  Lizzy’s blue eyes filled up with tears.

  “My mom is a lawyer,” Darla put in quickly. “Awkward questions are her specialty.”

  The pizza was great, with a crust that was thin and delicious. And when Darla awoke to the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall and the sound of the maple branch scritch-scratching against the clapboard siding, the taste of the pizza was still in her mouth. She felt a lump at her feet, raised herself up, and saw Lizzy fast asleep under the covers at the foot of the bed.

  “I sure hope Mom is as good as I think she is,” Darla whispered. Because there was no going back on this one—fair, unfair, or anywhere in between.

  Tough Alice

  The pig fell down the rabbit-hole, turning snout over tail and squealing as it went. By the third level it had begun to change. Wonderland was like that, one minute pig, the next pork loin.

  It passed Alice on the fourth level, for contrary to the law of physics, she was falling much more slowly than the pig. Being quite hungry, she reached out for it. But no sooner had she set her teeth into its well-done flesh than it changed back into a live pig. Its squeals startled her and she dropped it, which made her use a word her mother had never even heard, much less understood. Wonderland’s denizens had done much for Alice’s education, not all of it good.

  “I promise I’ll be a vegetarian if only I land safely,” Alice said, crossing her fingers as she fell. At that very moment she hit bottom, landing awkwardly on top of the pig.

  “Od-say off-ay!” the pig swore, swatting at her with his hard trotter. Luckily he missed and ran right off toward a copse of trees, calling for his mum.

  “The same to you,” Alice shouted after him. She didn’t know what he’d said but guessed it was in Pig Latin. “You shouldn’t complain, you know. After all, you’re still whole!” Then she added softly, “And I can’t complain, either. If you’d been a pork loin, I wouldn’t have had such a soft landing.” She had found over the years of regular visits that it was always best to praise Wonderland aloud for its bounty, however bizarre that bounty might be. You didn’t want to have Wonderland mad at you. There were things like . . . the Jabberwock, for instance.

  The very moment she thought the word, she heard the beast roar behind her. That was another problem with Wonderland. Think about something, and it appeared. Or don’t think about something, Alice reminded herself, and it still might appear. The Jabberwock was her own personal Wonderland demon. It always arrived sometime during her visit, and someone—her chosen champion—had to fight it, which often signaled an end to her time there.

  “Not so soon,” Alice wailed in the general direction of the roar. “I haven’t had much of a visit yet!” The Jabberwock sounded close, so Alice sighed and raced after the pig into the woods.

  The woods had a filter of green and yellow leaves overhead, as lacy as one of her mother’s parasols. It really would have been quite lovely if Alice hadn’t been in such a hurry. But it was best not to linger anywhere in Wonderland before the Jabberwock was dispatched. Tarrying simply invited disaster.

  She passed the Caterpillar’s toadstool. It was as big as her uncle Martin, and as tall and pasty white, but it was empty. A sign by the stalk said gone fishing. Alice wondered idly if the Caterpillar fished with worms, then shook her head. Worms would be too much like using his own family for bait. Though she had some relatives for whom that might not be a bad idea. Her cousin Albert, for example, who liked to stick frogs down the back of her dress.

  Behind her the Jabberwock roared again.

  “Bother!” said Alice, and began to zigzag through the trees.

  “Haste . . .” came a voice from above her, “makes wastrels.”

  Alice stopped and looked up. The Cheshire Cat’s grin hung like a demented quarter moon between two limbs of an elm tree.

  “Haste,” continued the grin, “is a terrible thing to waste.”

  “That’s really not quite right . . .” Alice began, but the grin went on without pausing:

  “Haste is waste control. Haste is wasted on the young. Haste is . . .”

  “You are in a loop,” said Alice, and not waiting to hear another roar from the Jabberwock, she ran on. Sunlight pleated down through the trees, wider and wider. Ahead a clearing beckoned. Alice could not help being drawn toward it.

  In the center of the clearing a tea party was going on. Hatter to Dormouse to Hare, the conversation was thrown around the long oak table like some erratic ball in a game without rules. The Hatter was saying that teapots made bad pets and the Dormouse that teapots were big pests and the Hare that teapots held big tempests.

  Alice knew that if she stopped for tea—chamomile would be nice, with a couple of wholemeal biscuits—the Jabberwock would . . .

  ROAR!

  . . . would be on her in a Wonderland moment. And she hadn’t yet found a champion for the fight. So she raced past the tea table, waving her hand.

  The tea-party trio did not even stop arguing long enough to call out her name. Alice knew from long experience that Wonderland friends were hardly the kind to send postcards or to remember your birthday, but she had thought they might at least wave back. After all the times she had poured for them, and brought them cakes from the Duchess’s pantry! The last trip to Wonderland, she’d even come down the rabbit-hole with her pockets stuffed full of fruit scones because the Dormouse had never tried them with currants. He had spent the entire party after that making jokes about currant affairs, and the Hare had been laughing the whole time. “Hare-sterically,” according to the Hatter. We’d had a simply wonderful time, Alice thought. It made her a bit cranky that the three ignored her now, but she didn’t stop to yell at them or complain. The Jabberwock’s roars were too close for that.

  Directly across the clearing was a path. On some of her visits the path was there; on others it was twenty feet to the left or right. She raced toward it, hoping the White Knight would be waiting. He was the best of her champions, no matter that he was a bit old and feeble. At least he was always trying. Quite trying, she thought suddenly.

  She’d even settle for the Tweedle twins, though they fought one another as much as they fought the Jabberwock. Dee and Dum were their names, but—she thought a bit acidly—perhaps Dumb and Dumb
er more accurately described them.

  And then there was the Beamish Boy. She didn’t much like him at all, though he was the acknowledged Wonderland Ace. Renowned in song and story for beating the Jabberwock, he was too much of a bully for Alice’s tastes. And he always insisted on taking the Jabberwock’s head off with him. Even for Wonderland, that was a messy business.

  Of course, this time, with the beast having gotten such an early start, Alice thought miserably, she might need them all. She had hoped for more time before the monster arrived on the scene. Wonderland was usually so much more fun than a vacation at Bath or Baden-Baden, the one being her mother’s favorite holiday spot, the other her grandmother’s.

  But when she got to the path, it was empty. There was no sign of the White Knight or the Tweedles or even the Beamish Boy, who—now that she thought of it—reminded her awfully of Cousin Albert.

  And suddenly the Jabberwock’s roars were close enough to shake the trees. Green and gold leaves fell around her like rain.

  Alice bit her lip. Wonderland might be only a make-believe place, a dreamscape, or a dream escape. But even in a made-up land, there were real dangers. She’d been hurt twice just falling down the rabbit-hole: a twisted ankle one time, a scratched knee another. And once she had pricked her finger on a thorn in the talking flower garden hard enough to draw blood. How the roses had laughed at that!

  However, the Jabberwock presented a different kind of danger altogether. He was a horrible creature, nightmarish, with enormous shark-toothed jaws, claws like gaffing hooks, and a tail that could swat her like a fly. There was no doubt in her mind that the Jabberwock could actually kill her if he wished, even in this imaginary land. He had killed off two of her champions on other visits—a Jack of Clubs and the Dodo—and had to be dispatched by the Beamish Boy. She’d never seen either of the champions again.

  The thought alone frightened her, and that was when she started to cry.