The Grown Ups' Crusade

by Audrey Greathouse

  She shook her head and scoffed at the idea. “If I age an inch, so many more problems will crop up for me. If I went back to growing up, I'd be right back to worrying about my GPA. I'd have to take the SAT, and do my college applications… and then actually go to college, declare a major, earn a degree, and before you know it I'll be stuck in some career. The fun ones don't pay well, the lucrative ones aren't exciting, and the only thing they all have in common is they go on for forty years.” Gwen had held a low opinion of adulthood before she left for Neverland; it had only diminished since then.

  Starkey gave her a thoughtful look. “That's only if you go back to the mainland.”

  “What else would I do? There's Neverland and there's reality. Alternatives aren't exactly abounding.”

  He nodded, but Gwen could tell he disagreed. She waited for the thought that seemed lurking just beyond his dark eyes.

  “You know, Gwendolyn,” he told her, “I think you would make a wonderful pirate.”

  Such a sentiment was the last thing Gwen had expected, and she did not have a response.

  “There are too few women pirates,” Starkey lamented. “Of course the history books have Anne Bonny and Mary Read, and literature has Fanny Campbell… but really, women are worse represented in piracy than the sciences.”

  “I can't imagine why.”

  Starkey ignored her sarcastic tone, and addressed her with continued candor. “Nor can I. There's nothing so liberating, and the sea has a beautiful romance to it. There's a certain freedom in being able to sail in and out of the myths woven around your profession. In all seriousness, Gwen, you've peaked behind the green curtain and seen the wizard running the show. How can you go back to the drudgery of an ordinary life? At the same time, you can't expect that lolling about a tropic island with only children for company could satisfy you. I suspect you've already run into your fair share of conundrums of that nature.”

  An endless series of memories could confirm what Starkey asserted. Gwen remembered all her conversations with Lasiandra, looking for someone with a mature mind. She still felt twinges of social discomfort whenever they visited the redskins, whom the children fondly referred to as savages. All the time she spent wandering the forest on her own, doing chores simply for the peace of it… Gwen never had such introverted tendencies around peers her age.

  “What role have the children relegated you to for when the do-gooders invade?”

  Gwen had to admit, “I don't know that I have one.”

  Starkey smiled at this news, and lost no time in suggesting, “Then you should be here, fighting with us. We could always use another able-bodied crew member. Have you ever loaded a cannon before? It's easier than you might expect.”

  She shook her head. “I appreciate the offer, but it would break Peter's heart.” She couldn't even imagine telling Peter. The last thing he needed was Gwen defecting to piracy. He had taken Twill's departure hard enough.

  Sad and amused, Starkey warned, “Anyone who worries about breaking Peter Pan's heart is liable to get her heart broken by him, sooner or later.”

  “I said he is a friend—I didn't say I don't care about him.”

  “Fair enough,” Starkey acknowledged. Picking up his wine glass once more, Starkey proposed, “To good friends, and the adventures they bring with them.”

  Gwen lifted the glass she had in her fidgeting hands, clinking it against Starkey's. The crystal rang with a single, angelic note that faded away to the same place the gramophone's dreamy chamber music had gone. With only a slight hesitation, Gwen drank the sip of wine Starkey had poured her.

  “The offer stands,” Starkey told her, “if you ever decide there's more to life than playing Swiss Family Robinson with the children.”

  “There's much more to life than that, Mr. Starkey,” Gwen told him. “And I suspect I'll enjoy most of it, someday, without ever resorting to piracy.”

  “Time will tell,” Starkey answered. “Even in Neverland—time always tells.”

  “I think I should get going,” she announced, standing up. “Thank you for the conversation, Mr. Starkey.”

  “Anytime, Gwendolyn,” Starkey said. “If you ever want to talk, you'll know where to find me.”

  Twill rolled over in his sleep. Locked in his dreams, he didn't seem to notice his own motion. Gwen said goodnight to her former teacher, and showed herself out. She avoided running into any of the Grammarian's crew and took to the air. She flew back to the grove so she could crawl into the underground home and into bed. By the time she did, her exhaustion felt so absolute that she fell asleep within a minute. Her bed seemed to bob, and even in her dreams she felt the comforting, lullaby-like rocking of a boat in tranquil waters.

  Chapter 13

  Considering how little time she spent in bed, Gwen woke up the following morning surprisingly ready for the day. Not long into the morning, while the booby-trap team divvied up the day's work, smoke began to drift up from the distant plains of the island. Gwen didn't pay attention to the children's bickering about the comparative merits of snares and trap pits, but she noticed the grey rings rising against the blue sky and dispersing like dark clouds after a storm. She pointed it out to Newt, who recognized the redskin smoke signals and found Blink in order to make sense of the message.

  She stared at the plumes of smoke for a solid minute before telling Gwen, “They want you.”

  “Me?”

  Blink pointed, “the squiggly circle is flower and the fast little ones mean river. Lily on Fast Water. That's what Old Willow calls you, isn't it?”

  She could not argue, only marvel at Blink's perceptive abilities. In another life, Gwen assumed the little girl would have grown into a bookworm, quiet and buried in every interesting detail she could find printed.

  Jam and a few other girls wanted to paint her face before she left, but Gwen declined their offer. If she would meet the elder tribe members alone, she wanted to forgo the awkward dress-up ritual that enchanted the children. She even rejected Dillweed's company, knowing his fairy dust was better spent helping the children. She took off on her own, but when she saw Rosemary moping around the blackberry brambles, she invited her little sister along. The two sisters trekked together, following the smoke to the redskin camp.

  It surprised Gwen that Rosemary didn't know what her melancholy stemmed from. She didn't even seem to have the self-awareness to understand that she nursed a sore spot in her heart. She insisted she was happy to have a nemesis, and she even brightened up when she talked about all the great, adventurous, brave fights she planned to have with Twill. She felt excited, but also missed her friend. Gwen realized young Rosemary didn't understand the sensation of conflicting emotions. She didn't comprehend how she could have two contradictory feelings at the same time, and so long as she lived in Neverland, she probably never would.

  As they neared the redskin camp, Gwen found a long, leafy branch and brushed it ahead of her like a push-broom. She knew from past experience it was prudent to check for net triggers and spring traps whenever she visited. No mantraps snatched them up, so she and Rosemary passed into the plains undisturbed. She discarded the branch as she approached the fire pit. A stone-haired woman kneeled by it, manipulating the smoke with a sooty blanket.

  “Ah, here she is.” Old Willow said to the fire. Setting the blanket aside, she rose to her feet. It took her a moment to stand up.

  Rosemary raised her hand in greeting and yelled “How!” at the sweet old medicine woman.

  Gwen waved. “Good morning, Old Willow.”

  “That it is.” The aged woman looked to the horizon from which the sun had risen. She kept a dispassionate expression as she observed the immaculate blue of the sky. Gwen didn't interrupt, and she put a hand on Rosemary's shoulder to still her little sister. In time, Old Willow's attention returned to the girls. “The fairies have carried word of impending war-making. They say there are white men coming to ravage our forests and take our lands.”

  For all the unsettling paral
lels she could draw between the redskins and actual Native Americans, Gwen found this similarity eerie and unplanned.

  “We're going to fight 'em off!” Rosemary declared, her voice loaded with triumph, as if she'd already won the war.

  “Much courage lives in those that follow Brave Peter,” Old Willow acknowledged. “The redskins wish to help you defend our home.”

  “We will be grateful to Running Fox and Storm Sounds,” Gwen told her. Their assistance signified support, but it would have little practical effect. The lost children hadn't communicated with the redskins about the impending battle. Everyone knew the tribe had dwindled to almost non-existence.

  “Come,” Old Willow beckoned, grabbing her cane from where she'd propped it beside the wood pile. “Walk with me a ways.”

  Strange symbols and runes carved on the cane seemed to shift and dance against the polished wood grain. Old Willow walked with a limp and Gwen worried for the old woman. Tomorrow the black coats would arrive—would anywhere on the island give Old Willow a safe place to hide?

  Following Old Willow, they started down a wide dirt path that cut clean through the woods. Gwen found it odd. For all the times she had visited the redskins, she had never seen this trail before. She hadn't even noticed it when she emerged from the woods a moment ago!

  “I have told you many stories of my people,” Old Willow said, breaking the silence as the girls matched her slow, uneven pace. “Some more than once. Brave Peter has heard the stories over and over again—to him, they are always new. There is one story we have never told.”

  “What is it?” Rosemary asked with eager curiosity. Gwen, however, suspected Old Willow had reasons for withholding it.

  “It is the story of where the red man comes from,” Old Willow answered, before launching into the sacred story. “Once, with nothing yet formed, only darkness existed. It was darkness without shape, darkness without time. Nothing else was present, until a part of the darkness got curious.”

  “Which part?” Rosemary asked, skipping in circles around Old Willow since she could not channel her energy into running down the trail. “Does darkness even have parts?”

  “It is hard to say,” Old Willow acknowledged. “But this part that grew curious… it was just as black, but it moved and flew through all the rest of the dark searching for something besides darkness. This was Raven, and if you have ever met him, you know what a conniving and clever bird he is. He had even more craftiness in his bones at the beginning of being, for he was not just cunning but young, too. The darkness bored him, and he decided to search for something interesting in it. So Raven stole the world out of the darkness.”

  “What!” Rosemary objected. Her skipping stopped. “How?”

  Old Willow hobbled ahead a few steps as she answered, “By pulling something out of nothing.”

  “That's impossible!” The girl had very adamant feelings about this story, which Gwen found hypocritical, considering how many impossible things Rosemary accepted every day in Neverland.

  “Which is a testament to Raven's craftiness. He can steal such a wonderful thing as the world, even when there is nowhere to steal it from,” Old Willow assured her. “But worlds are made and unmade all the time. When Raven stole it, the world was not as interesting as it is now. It, too, was only a little bit of dirt.”

  Gwen was already thinking about dirt. In particular, how dirty her feet were getting. The path started to dissolve into a goopy mess of mud. The muck squished underneath Gwen's toes, and her footsteps made a wet and sticky noise with every step.

  “Raven suspected something more hid in the dirt and began pecking it. When he found a rock, he became convinced it was something like a nut, and a treasure of some unknown nature rested within the stone's shell. Raven, despite his cleverness, can sometimes be very witless. What he had found was a rock and only a rock. In his attempts to crack it open, he only hurt himself. His beak slipped while he pecked, and struck his own wing, which began to bleed. He hopped around in a furry, cursing the rock as he bled over the dirt.

  “His blood wet the ground, and so the dirt grew so thick and red, becoming clay. Once he stopped bleeding and saw what he had created, he began to play with it. With his little claws, he started to etch shapes in the clay and mold small clumps into statues. When Sun emerged from the darkness, he put his warmth on the clay creatures Raven had made, and baked them into men. When Raven whispered a story to them, they came to life.”

  Gwen considered the myth, and decided the raven story made for a better tale than the stork bringing babies.

  “And that's where redskins come from?” Rosemary asked.

  The path came to an abrupt end. A curtain of vines and a fallen tree blocked it off. “Yes,” Old Willow answered. She stepped over the fallen log and pushed the vines away, her hand caked with dried dirt almost the same color as her skin. “This is where they come from.”

  The girls followed—Rosemary's quick steps and curiosity more unabashed than Gwen's.

  A tingle passed down Gwen's spine, and she knew she had once again stumbled into an enchanted place, special even within the framework of Neverland. Just as in Old Willow's story, the wet ground was as red as a raven's blood in dirt. The thick clay made for strange terrain and an inanimate crowd stood in it.

  A tribe of life-size statues, like earthy terracotta warriors, stood in lines. Two dozen different sculpted men and women stood, their unshaped feet still melded in the red clay.

  Running Fox and Storm Sounds each fastidiously shaped a statue, building another inanimate clay brother. A massive, gnarled maple thrived in the center of this clay pit, and in its shade, Chief Dark Sun scraped eyebrows onto a statue and thumbed eyes onto its face.

  Gwen could not articulate her awe; Rosemary could. “Oh my gosh this is so cool!”

  Rosemary proceeded to talk and smile enough for everyone present. She raced among the statues, trying to pinpoint the subtle differences in height, shape, and features that made each unique.

  “You've made an army,” Gwen remarked, amazed.

  “We have been working ever since young Blink sent word of the invaders,” Old Willow answered.

  Dark Sun left his finished sculpture and approached Gwen. “Lily on Fast Waters,” he greeted her. “Thank you for coming. We have need of your skills.”

  His words almost frightened her. She always had to remember that his inexpressiveness was not coldness, only custom. The heavy flesh of his wrinkling face concealed a loving spirit, as colorful—Gwen suspected—as his vibrant headdress of phoenix and Never Bird feathers.

  “What skills?” she couldn't imagine how she could help.

  Rosemary laughed and danced around, delighted with the novelty of so many huge clay sculptures around her, and oblivious to Gwen's conversation on the other side of the clay pit.

  “The skills that brought you to our land,” Dark Sun announced. “You are a storyteller, yes?”

  “We have made the Braves who will help defend Neverland,” Old Willow said, “but they still need to be brought to life.” Crafted out of red earth, baked by the sun, these men were made just as in the creation myth. “Life always starts with a story,” Old Willow told her. “You can make a man, but he does not have a spirit until he has a story.”

  “I don't know any redskin stories,” Gwen said, “except for the ones you've told me.”

  Rosemary started to wander back, and heard as Old Willow explained, “I have told you all of our stories. If we are to have more redskins, we must have more stories, and those stories must come from the same place they always have.”

  Gwen shook her head, and Dark Sun put a strong, gentle hand on her shoulder. He could be nothing but reassuring, even at his most inexpressive. “They come from you, Lily on Fast Waters. They come from the awe of children and the misremembered stories of your world.”

  Once again, Gwen had to confront the reality that the redskins weren't real. They were a product, two hundred years in the making, of exaggerated accou
nts of the new world, colorful cowboy-and-Indian Western movies, and everything in between. Of course they depended on others for their stories. They weren't a culture, just a fantasy based on one.

  “I—I don't think I can,” she admitted. She didn't even feel equipped to tell her own stories anymore. Starkey had pointed it out, and now she knew it. She didn't know how anything ended anymore, and she didn't know how to build a story. How could she dream up anything useful to the redskins?

  “Oh, oh, oh!” Rosemary exclaimed, too excited for words. “Can I tell I tell some stories?”

  She looked to everyone for an answer, but Gwen deferred to Chief Dark Sun. “Of course. Do you have stories for these redskins?”

  “Yes!” Rosemary declared. “I have stories.” She lost no time in telling them. “This is Growling Bear,” she told them, pointing to a large man with a misshapen nose. “He got lost in a cave once and a bear found him so he had to growl so loud it scared it away. And the cave helped him, because it made his growl echo!”

  Rosemary ran to the next statue, a gaunt woman. “This is Burning Bird because one time she found a bird that had been on fire and nursed it back to health, like the squirrel we found, Gwen, that ran away when it got better.”

  Gwen had forgotten about the sick squirrel they'd kept in a padded box for a week, one long ago spring. In reality, the squirrel had died, but hadn't told Rosemary and she still didn't know. There were a lot of things Rosemary didn't know, and right now that worked to her advantage. She had no preconceptions and no hesitations.

  “And this is Pouncing Panther!”

  A shifting noise startled Gwen, and she looked over to see Growling Bear's arm reaching up for his face. The strong hand smeared away the clay facade and revealed sharp brown eyes blinking open. His other arm twisted up, struggling to animate, but then smudged more clay off his face. Underneath, a dirty but fleshy person came to life.