The Grown Ups' Crusade

by Audrey Greathouse

  Her shuddering breaths turned to stuttering words. “P-please, T-t-tell Peter th-that…”

  Tiger Lily trailed off, and Gwen encouraged her, “Tell Peter what?”

  “Tell Peter,” Tiger Lily repeated, but to no avail. A weeping smile spread across her face, and she shook her head. Tears came with a sudden sob as she declared, “Don't tell him anything. He never listens.”

  “No, Tiger Lily!” Gwen objected, reaching down to cradle Tiger Lily's head in her hand. “He'll listen! He'll know this is important.”

  She laughed, but tears streamed down her face. “No—don't tell me he's in such… bad shape…” she started wheezing, but continued painfully, “that he'd listen… because something was… important.” She took another deep breath and looked at Gwen as she clasped her hand. “Don't tell me that little boy I loved has grown up that much.”

  Gwen saw Tiger Lily's brown eyes change before she felt her grip slip into nothing. Her spirit and kindness abandoned her eyes, dulling their earthy color without changing it at all. Her heart stood stone still, and her lungs no longer stirred beside it. Nothing moved in Tiger Lily, except for the blood that continued to seep out of her fatal wound.

  As she comprehended that Tiger Lily was gone, that she was alone now, Gwen started crying. She picked up Tiger Lily's arms and crossed them over her chest. It took her a moment before she had the courage to lower Tiger Lily's eyelids over her uninhabited eyes. She expected the gesture to calm her, but it only felt macabre. Gwen hoped she would never have to do it again as long as she lived.

  Tiger Lily's belly rose as if with a breath, as if with life, but real things never recovered in miracles. What magic remained inside of her reached out, and from the bed of her bloody wound a flower stalk pushed up and unfurled its green leaves. Gwen sat beside Tiger Lily, clutching her knees to her chest, and watched as a lily blossomed—as orange as the setting sun, as freckled as the end of summer.

  Gwen wept then, open and loud, for never in Neverland had she felt so much like a child.

  Chapter 26

  Gwen felt the strain of a headache punishing her for her grief. “Pull yourself together,” she ordered, sounding stronger than she felt as she still cried. Talking out loud gave her words a weight she couldn't achieve in her head. “We're still in the middle of a war, and if you don't pull yourself together and start fighting, all this might be for nothing.” She stood up, but her feet felt like trees with shallow roots. How was she supposed to balance, how was she supposed to walk?

  She turned her back on Tiger Lily. She would have plenty of time for sorrow and ceremony after they had won this war. She left the woman looking peaceful on the ground, a tiger lily blooming up out of her bloody belly.

  She could hear mumbled cries for help several yards off, from the black coat she'd pelted down with eggs. He deserved to stay glued to the ground until pirates found him and chained him up for a long, queasy voyage back to reality. He deserved so much worse, Gwen thought, but that would suffice.

  Too harrowed to fly, she tromped through the woods. She needed to tell Peter. She brought the tin can telephone out of her purse. She couldn't give him the news over their tinny communication line, but she would need to find out where he was. The last they had spoken, Peter needed her to survey the nouthern shore. She reoriented herself and headed in the direction of the mermaid's lagoon. She would be able to see everything from the cliff side that led down to the lagoon, so she set off again on a course again for the shore and called Peter.

  “Peter?” Gwen asked the can. “Peter, are you there?”

  She hoped her voice didn't sound as uneasy as it felt.

  “Hello, Gwen!”

  She was taken aback by the chipper voice, the feminine voice… the voice calling her by her actual name. “Rosemary?” she asked. “Where's Peter?”

  “Oh! He'll be real glad you're okay!” Rosemary answered. “He kept yelling your name in this can but nothing happened.” Gwen slapped a hand against her face in shame—she'd completely ignored her satchel and had the can buried in it while crying. “He gave it to me and told me to listen for you,” Rosemary added.

  This didn't answer her question. “But where is Peter, Rosemary? Can you give the can back to him?”

  “Oh no,” her little sister replied. “He said you went to the shore and would report back. You didn't report back, though, so he went there himself.”

  Her feet quickened and she tried to unearth the logic driving Peter's decisions—an always impossible task. Did he head out to the beach and abandon the Never Tree because the intelligence information Gwen had failed to provide was that crucial to his strategy?

  Or was he looking for her?

  “I'm heading that way now,” Gwen told her little sister. “If you see Peter again, have him talk to me, and if you get into any trouble, you call me right away, okay?”

  “Yep!” Rosemary chirped.

  She stuffed her can into her purse and put her jellied feet to ambitious use, sprinting through the forest toward the shore. More aware of her busy mind than her surroundings, Gwen didn't see herself tripping until she fell flat on the ground. She got back to her feet in a flash, and looked to see what had sent her flying over her own feet.

  There was nothing on the ground. She kicked around for a second, looking for some nefarious root or troublesome rock lurking beneath the soft bed of grass and ivy vines. She found nothing. Something had tripped her, and it wasn't there anymore. She hadn't heard a sound, not so much as a blade of grass rustling, when it moved. Gwen pulled out her flashlight.

  She stayed put, but slowly spun around. Natural shadows abounded in the jungle. She didn't know how to identify a rogue shadow camouflaged against everything else blocking the afternoon sunlight. Gwen tested her feet to see if she could lift off the ground, but her grief and fear still weighed her down. She would have to fight while grounded. She counted to three in her head to ready herself, and turned on the flashlight. She whipped it around as fast as she could, throwing the light beam onto every inch of shadow she deemed dangerous. In two seconds' time, she outed the devious shadow.

  Nothing else moved in the jungle, only the splotch of darkness that recoiled from the light. Fleeing over the surface of tree trunks, shrub branches, and ground covers, the black coat's shadow could almost outrun the penetrating light, but not quite. Gwen kept it on the shadow, and saw how the flashlight's ray began to eat at the dark of the shadow. Where the light assaulted it, the shadow's hue became grayer—its darkness wounded.

  The shadow only dodged the light until it found an opportunity to go on the offensive again. Running circles around Gwen, darting and zigzagging, it forced her to follow until it made a sudden shift in direction and pounced for her.

  Gwen saw it coming and jumped into the air, but her flight did not catch her. She came back down, and into the shadow's grip. It yanked her off her feet, but Gwen resisted the urge to break her fall. She held tight to her flashlight as she went down, despite the creature's efforts to knock it away. Her head spun, dizzy and hurt, but she turned the beam on the shadow and fried it at close range.

  She watched the shade convulse as she held the light on the center of its chest. Debilitated by the beam, the shadow couldn't escape, and Gwen watched as the light burned a hole through the magical entity. It looked like a normal shadow now—one that disappeared when light shined on it.

  Breaking free, it fled from Gwen as fast and far as it could go. She didn't even need to chase it off with the light beam. It escaped with a hole over its heart, and she almost pitied the little shadow. She wondered if the adults had any means of mending shadows, or if some black coat would go through the rest of his life with a hole in his shadow.

  Her heart pounding from the encounter, Gwen kept it beating fast as she began sprinting for the shore. That diversion had taken more time than she wanted to waste. Where was Peter, and was he as worried about her as she was about him? Had he found and raided one of the aviator's packages for flas
hlights, or would he be susceptible to shadow attacks until Gwen gave him her spare? Fortunately, beating a shadow had given her a sense of confidence and fantastical capacity, so Gwen rode more than an adrenaline rush as she lifted into the air and zipped through the jungle, fast enough to make any fairy proud.

  She hurried along, only stopping when she saw something small and white bounding through the underbrush and heard a heavy-footed black coat in pursuit. Rising into the tree branches, Gwen hid above the officer's line of sight. From her static position in the trees, she identified the the tiny white creature as a simple rabbit—albeit dressed in a tartan waistcoat.

  “Oh dear! Oh dear! I'm late, I'm late!” the rabbit's shrill voice exclaimed. “This is quite the wrong time to be arriving!”

  “Come back here!” the officer barked, failing to catch up with the rabbit. The small animal seemed spring-loaded. “Stop!” He fired several shots at the furry white rabbit, but could not hit such a tiny and fast target.

  “Oh my ears and whiskers—this is not good!”

  Gwen stayed perched on her bough and watched as they both passed underneath her, neither catching sight of her.

  The white rabbit dodged several more bullets, competently avoiding trouble, despite the black coat's persistence.

  “Freeze!” the solider yelled.

  With a deep shudder, the rabbit declared, “Mackerels and mercy, it's cold!” but kept running. The officer was not amused, and continued to waste his ammo chasing a rabbit that could not be caught.

  Once they had passed, Gwen dove out of the tree and resumed her course, nearly to the shore. Soon enough she saw the glow of yellow sand peaking through the jungle. Her course had been off only slightly. She did not arrive at the cliffside, but further nouth. She passed the last of the trees and felt as soft dirt transitioned into gritty, loose sand under her feet. Climbing over fallen trees and ancient driftwood that had washed up to the forest's edge in long ago monsoons, Gwen scanned the shoreline to make sense of where she was along it. This side of the island had ample landing places, and a naval raft on the shore proved that at least some of the soldiers and shadows in the jungle had come from this beach.

  In the distance, she saw one of the two smaller ships in battle with the Grammarian. The pirate ship, smaller than adult's naval forces, still held its ground with mighty capability. Starkey knew Neverland's waters and tides better than any do-gooder adult could, and what his ship lacked in size it compensated for with swiftness and cannons. The adults' other small ship, half-submerged in the sea, was already as good as sunk.

  A cannon exploded, its boom dizzying even from half a mile away. Gwen saw no sign of Peter anywhere along the beach, but the coastline here wove and wound in such a way that she couldn't see a thousand feet further nouth. She wished she had emerged on the cliffside and gotten a better view, but did not dwell on this thought.

  Forming a revised plan as she began to fly along the rocky shore, she decided she would run the length of the serpentine beach for a few minutes before she called Rosemary again. If Peter wasn't on the beach, she had to assume he would return to the Never Tree with whatever information his reconnaissance mission had provided. She flew where the rocks made running impractical, but as the sharp, hard shore gave way to wet sand she started running. Her flight felt shakier every moment that passed without sight of Peter. As she ran the length of the beach searching for him, something else entered her sight.

  Someone was lying in the water.

  Afraid for the wave-battered body, Gwen ran faster and tried to determine whether it was a shipwrecked adult or or tuckered out child. She couldn't tell if it was a friend or enemy. As she neared, she realized the body was not face down in the sand, but propped up on its elbows, keeping its face out of the water that lapped at the rest of it. As soon as Gwen realized the half-surfaced body was conscious and alive she called out, “Hey! Are you okay?”

  With a sudden, almost frightened jerk, the mermaid lifted her head higher and threw her long hair out of her face. Panting and barely supported on her arms, she laid in the water, stripped of her breath, maybe even stripped of her strength. Gwen stopped and stared, too overcome to believe her eyes.

  Her wet, blond locks streaming with water, Lasiandra saw her and called out, “Gwen?”

  Chapter 27

  “Lasiandra!” Gwen called back. She started running toward the water. She felt a terror gripping her, like at any moment the tides would change and sweep exhausted Lasiandra away. It had been so long since she'd seen her friend, and they had parted under such anxious circumstances, but Lasiandra wasn't going anywhere now. Propping herself up in the shallow water, she tried to catch her breath. Her tail didn't even have the energy to flex and splash up.

  Gwen stopped in her tracks. Lasiandra was not smiling. The haunting sensation that Lasiandra would be swept away transformed into a more nebulous fear. Gwen didn't know what she feared, but she sensed something was very wrong.

  “What happened to you? Are you alright?” she called.

  “I'm fine,” Lasiandra replied, “just a little winded. It was a long swim here.”

  “Did you and Jay make it out of the lake alright?”

  “Yes, but of course,” Lasiandra answered, water still dripping from her hair. “He's fine. I promised you I'd keep him safe and get him home, Gwen.”

  Lasiandra was as good as her word. This had always been true, but everything Starkey had said about mermaids twisted in Gwen's mind and filled her thoughts with wordless worries.

  “Come over here and give me a hand,” she instructed.

  “What's going on? Where have you been?”

  “I can explain everything,” Lasiandra said. “Come over, Gwen. We haven't much time.”

  She wanted Gwen to give her a hand—with what? They didn't have much time, but time for what?

  “Do you still have the skyglass?” Gwen asked.

  “No,” Lasiandra answered. “It has done its work, and I know what I need of the stars' backward secrets. We're all going to have what we want now: you, me, Jay… all of us. Come over and help me!”

  Still, Gwen hesitated. She might not have trusted immature Peter or callous Piper, but she had trusted Mr. Starkey as much as a teenager could trust an adult. Even he had warned her against the mermaids.

  Lasiandra saw her reluctance, but her urgent expression did not leave room for her look hurt. “Gwen, for the stars' sake, come here. I'm not going to hurt you.”

  Mermaids never lied. She saw no choice but to rush to her friend.

  She ran over, and as she looked down at her friend she saw a satisfaction in her eyes that she did not recognize. She approached, charging into the shallow waters on her bare and sandy feet. Gwen started to form another question, but before she could, Lasiandra reached out. Not for her hand, but for her ankle.

  With a sudden jerk, Lasiandra grabbed her foot and pulled her down. Screaming as she toppled over, Gwen smashed into the surf, hurting herself as she crashed down.

  A mouthful of bitter saltwater tasted as bad as the ocean water felt against her open and aghast eyes. She reached out, groping in the dark silence of the water for Lasiandra. She could feel the sand beneath her, but it shifted and swayed with the tide. Gwen flailed in the water as she attempted to get back to her feet, or at least get her face back to air.

  She surfaced, spitting the water—but not its taste—out of her mouth. Blinking back the burn of the saltwater in her eyes, she looked up and saw Lasiandra standing over her, the sun's shine blurring into the glow of her light hair.

  “I'm sorry, Gwen,” Lasiandra told her. “You have no idea what you've set in motion and I don't have time to explain it.”

  On legs as tall as her her tail had been long, Lasiandra stood over her and looked down at Gwen in the sandy surf as she had so often looked down at her. She took a step away, as if she had been walking away from things her whole life.

  “Where are you going?” Gwen demanded.

  She looked
back. “To the Never Tree, Gwen. That's what we're here for. It's part of the deal. One last thing for them, before you and I get everything we want.”

  Lasiandra walked away while Gwen wrestled her abject horror. Storming and splashing to her feet Gwen realized all at once what had happened. “You!” she shouted. “You brought them here?” The adults hadn't devised a way to navigate to Neverland without one of its native inhabitants leading them. They had never needed to.

  Lasiandra stopped. Turning back to face Gwen, she gave her a weak smile. “I have made you promises, Gwen, and I stand by them all. The stars and I are going to give you everything you want, my friend, and manifest those hazy desires you have not yet realized and named in your own heart.” She spoke with confidence, yet had an apologetic melancholy in her expression, as if she know she was hurting Gwen and took no pleasure in it.

  “I don't want this!” Gwen screamed. “How could you think I want you to destroy Neverland?”

  She looked so collected, like a model in the sunlight. She stood triumphant in a short, dark diving suit as her wet hair curled past her shoulders. Gwen, disheveled and emotionally destroyed, felt hideously small in her sodden dress and frazzled hair.

  “You don't know what you want,” Lasiandra told her. It was true, Gwen knew, but irrelevant. “You never know what you want. I've never understood that about you.” Lasiandra threw a gestured to herself and to the sky. “I know what you want. The stars know what you want. How can you not see what sits in your own heart?”

  “I would never sacrifice Neverland!” she yelled.

  “No—of course not,” Lasiandra agreed. “Who could expect you to pay a price for a desire you didn't even understand? That's why I'm here. I love you, Gwen, and I will do what it takes to give you what you want.

  She felt violated. How could someone else purport to know her when she didn't even know herself? But that was Lasiandra's point. If Gwen couldn't make sense of herself from the inside, someone else—maybe anyone else—would have the perspective needed to understand and decipher the mechanics of her soul.