One of the black coats' beach landers sat on the pebbled shore, and the sole black coat who'd stayed behind to guard it now stood knee-jeep in the water, his gun drawn and aimed at the mermaids. Gwen didn't bother with the stone steps down the cliff face. Confident in her flying, she dropped the fatal distance down in a controlled and slow descent. Facing the mermaids, the black coat didn't see her land behind him. He continued to shout at the sirens.
“Put your hands up!” he demanded, his gun aimed at Eglantine.
“You heard him, Nepeta,” Eglantine replied. “We've got to put our hands up.”
Both girls lifted their arms out of the water, and sank beneath the surface laughing.
The solider shifted his aim to Cynara. “Hold still. By order of the CAO, you need to comply with my instructions or face termination.”
“What are your instructions?” Cynara asked, her eyes sparkling with interest. Her two sisters surfaced in new positions, closer to the black coat. Their reappearance startled him and he yelped as he fired a poorly aimed shot at Nepeta. It would have missed her, even if she hadn't dodged it and dove underwater.
“We can help you,” Malva told him. “You're looking for heart of the ocean's magic, aren't you? We can show it to you.”
“Come closer,” Nepeta told him as she halfway surfaced.
“We promise we'll take you there if you come with us,” Eglantine cooed. Another two mermaids surfaced in the lagoon. “Isn't that right, Cattleya? Liatris?”
“Of course.”
“Cross our fins and hope to die.”
He took another step toward their promises, and the tide rocked tiny, alluring waves against his knees. “I'm here to help transport the Never Tree back to our research facility. Where is the Never Tree?”
The mermaids erupted into a chorus of aquatic laughter.
“He wants to find the Never Tree!”
“Oh, he doesn't know!”
“What?” the solider insisted. As the mermaids lolled about their lagoon and swam with languid strokes, he could not make up his mind which of them he should put in his gun's sights. None of them seemed threatened. He knew his ammo would kill them, and he thought they understood that, too. He couldn't make sense of why they didn't respect the danger he posed them. He didn't know he was the one in danger. He didn't know not to threaten mermaids.
“The Never Tree? That's nothing,” Nepeta scoffed, running her coral-painted nails through her long strawberry-blond hair. “Not compared to what lies at the heart of the ocean's magic.”
“If you had the heart of the sea,” Liatris suggested, “you could win such favor with your CAO. You could give him so much more than he hopes to gain from a single tree.”
“If you gave it to him,” Eglantine added, splashing happily. “With the heart of the sea, you could displace him. All he has, all he dreams of, could be yours as sure as the stars burn.”
“Come.”
“Swim with us.”
“We promise to take you there.”
Enchanted but wary of the offer, he took another hesitant step into the water. Before he could say anything in response, Nepeta dipped under the water. She'd edged ever closer to him on the tide. The second after she vanished, the black coat screamed and splashed down into the salty water, submerged as soon as Nepeta grabbed him. The other mermaids descended. Malva and Cattleya bolted for the solider and added their fins to the splashing fray. Gwen watched as the frantic thrashing and clouds of air bubbles moved deeper into the water. Not so much as a hand resurfaced as the mermaids retreated from the lagoon, carrying him away to the secret heart of the ocean.
“Look what the catfish dragged to shore,” Eglantine remarked, at last looking at Gwen. “The sea witch's promised week is nearly out—have you come to tell us what's become of our little sister?”
Nepeta, Liatris, and Cynara all approached, clustering back into the shallows beside Eglantine as Gwen neared, but stayed out of their reach. She stood on the shore, still clutching Jay's sketchbook.
“I'm just looking for Peter,” Gwen replied, feeling no obligation to these vicious, beautiful creatures. “If he's not here, I'll be on my way.”
She started to walk away, down the coastline, when Liatris quipped, “He's not on the weastern shore.”
Gwen stopped. “Where is he?”
“What of our sister, landmaid?” Cynara countered.
“Tell us what you know of her, and we'll tell you all we said and saw of Peter,” Eglantine offered.
Gwen sighed. For all the dealing humans had done with mermaids, she saw no harm in telling them the truth now. “Lasiandra has made a deal with the Chief Anomalous Officer to deliver his black coats to the Never Tree.”
The mermaids' enchanting demeanors dropped and their eyes narrowed. The others said nothing as Eglantine asked, “In exchange for what?”
“Legs,” Gwen answered. “Humanity.”
“Lies!” Liatras accused. “You are a human and humans lie.”
“Lasiandra does not have such power,” Cynara objected.
Gwen shook her head. “I gave her a sky glass.”
The mermaids howled. Their cacophony of disgust, outrage, and horror formed a noise that could have shattered glass.
“How could you give it to her?” Nepeta cried.
“That little mermaid has betrayed us!” Eglantine announced, slamming her fist against the water.
Gwen didn't care about their indignation. The mermaids were full of atrocities—she had no sympathy for them now. They would swim off to the hidden depths of the ocean and find new seas to play their dangerous games in. Lasiandra's loss, the loss of Neverland, would mean little to them once they had found a few new rocks to sunbathe and equivocate on.
“What about Peter?” she asked.
“Oh what of him!” Liatris huffed. “Our sister has traded us for an existence as pitiful and short as yours!”
“I have told you what happened to Lasiandra,” Gwen reminded her.
In a dismissive and sore mood, Cynara barked, “He came to ask impossible favors of us and ask starry questions he did not want answers to. When we had said our piece, he fled back into the jungle.”
“What? Why?” Gwen asked.
“That he might chance to free the children taken captive by the wil-o-the-wisp in this grown-ups' crusade.”
“What? No, he said we needed to get to the shore! It's dangerous out there.” How could Peter dive back into the jungle? Surely there was another way to help the children entraced away by the wil-o-the-wisp—or else there was no helping them at all. Going back into the jungle now was a suicide mission. Didn't Peter know that?
Liatris and Nepeta had already dipped off into the dark of the cool waves. The mermaids had finished with Gwen. For better or worse, everything ended in this moment. As Cynara and Nepeta dove back under and headed for safer shores, Eglantine shook her head and told her, before disappearing under the glassy surface of the lagoon, “You poor, foolish girl—Peter won't live to see the end of this war.”
Chapter 40
The mermaids lie, the mermaids lie, the mermaids lie…
She could not spare the breath to utter her mantra, but it circled in her head as she flew in breathless fear. If only she could repeat it enough, if only she could force herself to believe it, maybe she would make it so.
But she stood no chance. The magic that kept the mermaids bound to the star's own truth was as powerful as that which bound them to the ocean. Even if such a matter could be swayed by belief, Neverland no longer hosted such miracles. Gwen could hardly keep her flight going, despite what a desperate and certain belief she had in her ability. She had gotten so good at Neverland, and now it diminished around her.
The trees all shrank, their leaves furling back into buds and then dying on their stems. The transformation unfolded gradually, but the deeper she went into the jungle the more life regressed. She passed no exotic birds or glittering bugs. The fairies had evacuated, and an uneven carpet of
fallen branches and brittle leaves littered the forest floor. Overhead, the aviator flew high amid the cloudless sky. The rattling engine of his plane provided a distant and rickety noise that matched Gwen's anxiety.
Her satchel banged against her side as she ran and her knuckles turned white as she clamped down on her little acorn. What was this tiny token for? He had given it to her when she handed over the tin can phone. Did it have any power to communicate with Peter or help her find him? No matter what she tried to imagine it doing, the acorn stayed only an acorn. Yet, she clutched it, because Peter had given it to her.
She had to save Peter. What was he thinking? The mechanics of his simple mind, noble and naïve were just as much a mystery to Gwen as ever. She would have to find him and persuade him to join the other children on the shore. If she could only find him, she would convince him it was his own clever idea to evacuate.
But even that thought seemed deluded with unwarranted optimism. This was the boy who thought to die would be an awfully big adventure. He knew what he was doing, he just couldn't conceive of the consequences. Gwen could see the hypocritical wrinkles in her logic as she dove into the jungle to save Peter with her own suicide mision, but the stars had promised her return home. She could afford to throw her youth away in an act of moderate martyrdom; it was already gone. She would go home without a fight—if only she knew that Peter was safe, and still out there.
The jungle canopy no longer gave the jungle shade. None of the browning trees stretched more than a single story high. Palm fronds dropped as branches cracked and shattered against the ground. In the thinning jungle, the light carried so much farther.
The will-o-the-wisp's color fluctuated, moving through a spectrum of magnetic purples, tempting blues, and guiling greens. Everywhere she looked she saw another dancing light, all but laughing at her from the sidelines of her path. She kept her eyes on her feet, not daring to let the lights distract her.
The will-o-the-wisp seemed to flourish where everything else rotted, as if it fed off the magical decay. The creature had grown stronger since Gwen last caught sight of it. She could not avoid it, and even as she skirted by, it chased after her and took shape.
“Eh barra! Ye uh big ane, in't you? ”
Gwen lifted her eyes off her feet to meet the voice, but she could not sense where it came from any better than she could determine Puck when he wanted to make a fool out of her.
“Whit ye gawn?”
“Who's there?” Gwen yelled back. From the way the voice flickered like a flame, she already knew.
Stopped in the collapsing wilderness, she turned around full circle, searching for any shape or sight to pin the voice to. Even the little will-o-the-wisp flames had vanished, though, and she continued to turn, searching the distance, until she turned around and met him face-to-face.
The boy stood inches from her, and had snuck up to her like light moved. He seemed made of embers, his skin smoldering under an aura as blue as a gas flame.
“Ye's uh curious ane, in't you, lassie?” he asked, his mouth moving like a shadow puppet, and light bleeding past his crooked teeth as if he had a candle for a tongue. “'Ell, sum caw me Will o' the Wisp, an' sum caw me Jack o' the Lantern.” The apparition leaned in yet an inch closer and whispered, “But tem that noe me dan't call me nawthing at all.”
Gwen ran, now too afraid to fly, and only the fiery, ghost-like laughter followed her, nipping at her confidence as she bolted still deeper into the woods.
“Peter!” she screamed. “Peter, where are you?” She had no doubt her voice would carry—what could impede it on this shrinking island?
She ran and screamed his name, calling for him and refusing to spare a second's thought on the temptation to follow the will-o-the-wisp's beautiful lights—the last magical thing left on the island.
She couldn't let Peter die here—but if the stars had decided it and the mermaids proclaimed it, what could she do? She could not accept that she had no power. She might not have had a plan, but she would summon some power, she would do something to shape and help whatever had to happen in Neverland's final hour.
The aviator overhead no longer flew circles above the island. Through the receding, thinning tree branches, Gwen could see the thick, cloudy trail his plane left against the blue sky. The letters formed slowly: first an F, then an O, an L after that…
“PETER!” Gwen yelled.
She threw herself through the jungle, and snagged her foot under the protruding root of a blackened tree. The root snapped, but only after it tripped her and sent her tumbling down the incline.
Covering her face and screaming as she toppled, Gwen's head spun even as she came to a crumpled stop at the bottom of the hill. She pushed herself up and tried to establish a functional relationship with gravity. Covered in scrapes and scratches, she was grateful the fall hadn't actually hurt her. Looking up, she realized she had stumbled out of the jungle altogether.
The grass yellowed by the second, but Gwen recognized the meadow. Limp lilacs fell at the feet of their bushes, and cornflowers faded until their pale blue turned white. As she had stumbled onto the Never Tree when in need of great magic, she found the meadow again in a moment of great distress. At least, that was how Gwen felt as she got to her feet and saw Peter emerge from the jungle on the other side.
“Peter!” she yelled, her voice cracking in this final cry.
He had already seen her. He came running, and Gwen got to her feet to run to him.
All around them the foliage continued to wither away as the once magical Neverland became a desolate desert. The aviator still buzzed overhead writing another L, an O, a W, but flight was hardly possible without a plane as Neverland dissolved into an oppressive environment. As she ran to Peter, she forgot her surroundings and felt transported to a day long since passed.
She remembered dashing across this meadow, returning from the mermaid's lagoon and feeling lost as the reality storm blew in that first newsprint bombing. Peter had come looking for her. Peter had led her to safety.
Now here she was again, trying to outrun a far worse storm, and still out of control. It felt like a fairytale. The only difference was that this time Peter couldn't help anything. They ran into each other with such force, they almost fell over when they flung themselves together. Embracing as the ground dried and the grass died beneath their feet, Gwen wondered what happened to fairytale worlds when their stories stopped being told.
Worlds were made and unmade all the time.
She followed Peter's eyes as he looked up and saw the aviator's sky-written message: FOLLOW ME.
“Their boat won't be able to keep pace with the aviator and children in flight,” Peter announced, trying to reassure Gwen, or himself, or both. “He's made enough passes over this ocean. He knows where we can take the Never Tree. As soon as it's planted, it'll start hiding itself again.”
“Then we need to go now,” Gwen told him. She didn't dare mention what fate the stars had alloted her. She knew if she wanted any hope of helping Peter escape his destiny, she could not waste time trying to fight her own. She would go as far as she could with him, and do what it took to keep preserve his youth and all that it stood for. “We need to get off the island now.”
Peter needed to say nothing to agree. If he had entertained grand hopes of saving anything else on this island, those goals crumbled in the face of this pressing crisis. He took her hand and started to run. They didn't get far.
“Look out!” Gwen shouted, a moment before the shadow grabbed Peter. He wrestled ins its grip, but only managed to knock himself off balance and fall to the grass. Gwen's frightened hands shook as she reached into her satchel for her flashlight. She pulled it out and put the beam on Peter's attacker, but before she could discourage its assault, another shadow grabbed her. She fought its hold on her and tried to turn the flashlight onto it, but another shadow sprung onto her and the combined force of the attack shoved her to the ground.
She writhed under the shadow's hold,
furious that she could not lift the weightless thing off her. It pinned her down as well as a live person would have. She heard Peter straining under the constraint of the other shadow, and watched as the third slipped off and fled the meadow, like a scout returning to its commander.
“Peter,” she wheezed, “are you okay?”
“I'm okay, are you?”
“I—don't know.”
“Do you still have your flashlight?”
“No.” The shadow had pried it out of her hand once it got her on the ground.
“It's okay. We'll figure something out.”
Gwen managed to crank her head to look at Peter when she heard him exerting himself against the shadow. He forced it off his arm, but only for a second. In that second, he reached out and grabbed Gwen's hand. He held tight to it, and did not let go.
Lying in the meadow together, they watched as the aviator's message began to dissolve into the blue of the sky, and listened as his plane finally took off for a distant place that held the promise of magic and sanctuary, paradise and youth. Under the dark blanket of the shadows' shade, they stayed quiet. From time to time, they squeezed each other's hands. It was all they could do.
They were still hand in hand when the scout shadow returned with black coats to take Peter and Gwen into custody.
Chapter 41
Gwen sat facing the concrete wall of her unpainted cell. She rolled her acorn in her hand. The Anomalous Activity officers had confiscated much as either evidence or contraband—her phone, the sketchpad, the tin can phone, and her emergency stash of pixie dust—but everything else they had deemed unimportant and left with her. Of course, they didn't find everything. Some things were good at hiding.
They had found and ignored the acorn. It wasn't magical in the least. It never had been. It had only been a token, a symbol, of something great and wonderful Peter wanted to give her. All its magic lived in the what it meant... and now, that was all the magic that Gwen had. Fidgeting with the tiny nut gave her comfort. She took it out and played with it in her restless hands whenever she started to worry about Peter. She had not seen him in eight days.
The Grown Ups' Crusade Page 24