by Lisa Jensen
“Very wise, Captain,” Piper says approvingly.
I draw a steadying breath. “I pledge by the love I bear for Stella that I’ll not harm the boys—”
“Oh, excellent pledge!” the creature sparkles avidly at me. “The boys pledge their rusty knives, their sour furs; their pledges are worth nothing!”
“I only beg you, your sisters, not to oppose me should I find the opportunity to release her,” I finish.
The imp sobers, alights upon the thole pin, regards me. “Of course not. We are sworn to keep the peace here.”
I peer at her. “Some of your sisters have been derelict in their duty,” I mutter. “I have lost hundreds of men, thousands. Brutally. Savagely.”
She gazes back at me with perfect equanimity. “I too have lost many sisters in our battles, to the iron in your pistols when your men still knew how to use them, to the tiny tearing missiles you call grape. We will fight to the death to protect the innocent. But no fairy will ever use magic against you so long as you offer no harm to the boys.”
The brutal simplicity of it stuns me. How could it have taken me two centuries to understand?
“But how are my men to perceive such subtleties while under constant attack?” I protest.
“If they are under attack, it is already too late,” Piper rejoins. “Your men return here in a state of reclaimed innocence, their dreams pared down to a single longing for lost childhood. But as soon as they make war on the boys, they forfeit their innocence. They understand perfectly well what killing is. They must be guided by a wise leader who understands that their battles can never be won.”
“Eagle Heart,” I murmur.
“The First Tribes were the boy’s enemies once,” Piper agrees.
“But my men will never stand for a truce,” I sigh, even supposing Pan would grant them one. “Battle is the only vestige of manhood they possess.”
“Then they must die.”
“And Pan’s fairy?” I venture. “Does she obey your rules?”
“Kestrel is a rash, strutting, wayward little thing, with no more sense than a flea, and just as irritating. And she is foolish about the boy.” Piper huffs as deep a sigh as her miniscule lungs can emit and flutters up again to look me in the eye. “I may say these things because she is my sister. My blood sister.”
By God’s vitals, I’ve just revealed my intentions to the sister of Pan’s ferocious imp! Have I cost Stella her life?
“But she is a fierce and loyal caregiver who takes her duties very seriously,” Piper goes on. “We are of the Zephyrae clan, Kes and I, as old as the West Wind. We will never dishonor the laws of this place. Offer no harm to the boys, and Kes will not oppose you.”
I grasp one oar and hook up the other. “Then I’d better go.”
The imp flutters up out of the way of this activity, watching me. “Kestrel cannot injure your friend, but she will do as the boy commands,” Piper tells me. “If you find the woman bound by fairy magic, this will break the enchantment: say something to her that stirs the heart. The mortal heart where fairies have no power.”
I nod in gratitude, dip one oar to come about, but the imp continues hovering just above me.
“You cannot mean to go all the way to Indian Beach in this clumsy mortal device,” she scoffs.
“I have no other,” I point out grimly.
“I can get you there faster,” Piper suggests.
My arms convulse with longing. “What must I do?”
“You must trust me, Captain.”
* * *
It’s like dreaming, an effusion of random sensation: tinkling laughter, points of sunlight dancing crazily on the sea, a tang of salt and allspice in the air, a constant, shuddering vibrato, deeper than normal hearing, like a huge swell just before it breaks, or a gust freshening into a gale. Then silence, and the warmth of the sun on my face. Glimmersailing, she called it. And I sit up woozily in my skiff, in the shallows off Indian Beach, the sun scarcely any higher in its vault toward its zenith than it was moments ago when I was speaking to the fairy, Piper.
As my boat drifts in on the tide, I haul off my shirt and make the last of my preparations. The tiny metal buckles burn my fingers, heated like pokers in the intense sunlight, but I unfasten the last of them and shake the apparatus into the bottom with a dull, wet thunk. Pulling on my shirt again, I rummage for my black hat and clamp it on my head, dispelling some of the sun’s sizzling glare.
The white sands of Indian Beach stretch out before me as I glide round the last of the steep gray rocks guarding its entrance. And strung across the shore like sturdy palm trees planted in the wet sand, a dozen braves await me with arrows nocked and tomahawks raised.
Chapter Twenty-eight
SUITE: BRAVERY
1
“You risk much coming to me.”
Eagle Heart’s lodge house is nothing so grand as the palace of the Fairy Queen; it is a simple rectangular structure of hewn logs, reeking of crushed pine and leather. Here the tribespeople gather for feasts, disputes are heard, and the shaman chants his visions; I have seen it in my dream.
“I can’t let them hurt her,” I tell him.
The young chief sits cross-legged on an animal skin thrown over the dirt floor, elbow propped on one knee, fingering his chin, considering me with his cool, impenetrable eyes. “Why do you think I will help you?”
I kneel before him in the dirt, my guard of braves ringed close around me, should I entertain any thought, much less make any motion against their chief. “I helped you once. I did what you asked,” I remind him.
“The danger now is not so great,” he fences.
“I know her life no longer matters to the survival of the Neverland, the Dreaming Place,” I nod. “But you are a just man. And my cause is just.”
He sits back, palms flat against the knees of his buckskin trousers, gazing at me. “What would you have me do?”
“Take me to the boy’s lair.” No sound at all greets this absurd request, although tension crackles like Saint Elmo’s fire among my warrior guards. Nor does it slacken when I slowly, slowly raise my arms, the fingers of my hand spread open, my other shirt cuff still partially draped over the ghastly flesh of my ruined wrist, naked of its customary appendage. “I bear no weapons,” I tell them all. “No harm will come to the boys.” I lift my chin, hazard my last and only trump. “I’ll never again raise arms in malice against the boys or the braves, from this moment on, if you help me get her back.”
* * *
Half of my guard of braves are dispatched back to their watching posts among the cliffs and crevices above the beach. Those remaining have grudgingly culled from their own stores the leathern trousers and moccasins I now wear. I keep on the shell necklace, of course, and sport a long, fringed vest, open down the front, to cover the worst of my scarred torso. One of the silent warriors takes it upon himself to twist my long hair into warrior plaits. He’s just tying off the second with a rawhide thong when Eagle Heart comes to me with a band of beaded leather dripping with fringe. He cinches it below the elbow of my ruined arm, so the long fringe covers my deformity, then steps back to view the effect.
“Your skin glows like Indian Beach,” he sighs. “Stay in the middle and no one will notice.”
The eyes of the whole of the village follow us from behind the flaps of their conical tepees, from around the rumps of their ponies in the corral, from amid the tall stalks of corn in their planting ground, as we parade out of the lodge house with Eagle Heart in the lead. Like the other men, I carry a bow and wear a quiver, although mine is devoid of arrows. We march down to the side of a lake, Moon Lake, as it is called, and take passage in three long, narrow canoes for the lot of us. We follow a meandering channel out of the lake, out of Indian Territory, and down into the dark, woody forests of boy country.
* * *
A young buck spirals up his horned head, freezes, naught but black nostrils in motion, only yards away as we pass by in the underbrush. My companions mov
e like shadows, but my errant slipper scuffs against a green pine bough underfoot, and the creature canters off. No one rebukes me; the hunting will commence while I’m off about my business.
Eagle Heart motions us to a halt, catches my eyes, nods up ahead. It can’t be called a clearing, a stand of ancient trees growing thickly together, as if emerging from a single maze of boulder-sized roots: pines, firs, twisted scrub oaks, higher branches entangled in a cloud of green. Incongruously, amid the jumble of scratching, tearing, thorny boy plants that carpet the wood, exuberant tendrils of jasmine, Pan’s favorite, wind round each trunk in profusion. What midafternoon sunlight slants in through the leafy cover of a thousand surrounding trees shimmers and dances amid these venerable trunks like the miasma above the mermaid lagoon. Even as we watch, two cackling little whelps trailing furry tails and weeds come racketing in between the trunks. One of them pauses like the wary deer we just saw to spy a hunting party of braves so near their hidden lair, and the one behind all but crashes into him. But Eagle Heart raises one hand in salute. And the boys shout back, “How,” or some such boyish nonsense, clamber over the largest of the gnarled roots, and disappear, no doubt down some rabbit-like hatch into an underground burrow.
As dense as the vegetation is here, as trackless the ground, still I’d have surely found this place in my many forays into the wood, over time, had it not been magicked from my view. Yet it shows itself to Eagle Heart like a constant lover. He regards me now, eyes like black steel, waiting. And I emerge from the knot of braves to stand beside the young chief.
He stretches the point of his bow to where the boys disappeared, and I nod in return. Then he points his bow in the opposite direction, toward an outcropping of rock shaded by leafy undergrowth, down which a little jet of water burbles into a tiny pool in a circle of smaller stones. A spring. I nod again and the chief slides his bow back over his shoulder, points toward the tree trunks, points to himself, shakes his head. He will come no farther, cannot be seen escorting me into their lair. He stretches out one hand, and I shrug the empty quiver and bow off my shoulder, hand them to him. My last weapons. He moves his head in the direction he and his braves will be waiting, should I find what I seek.
I touch my fingers to my heart, to my mouth, open my hand to him, the only gesture of their silent language I’ve learned in their village today. Thank you.
They melt back into the forest as silently as falling leaves, and I take a few steps nearer the thicket of tree trunks. Beneath the frenzy of birdsong and the grumbling of distant beasts, the riotous laughter of boys hooting at some unseen game echoes up from below. Sweating from more than the hot sun and thick, jasmine-sweet air so far from the breeze off the bay, I turn and pick my way over to the spring pattering into its little pool of rock. I am only steps away when something comes rustling out of the forest straight for me. Another boy. We freeze for an instant, staring at each other. I will my complexion to darken, my hair to blacken, my withered stump to disappear under its fringe. Slowly, I raise my hand. The boy nods, mumbles some greeting, makes as if to scamper off, but swivels his head round to me again, peering with all his might, frowning, nervous fingers worrying the snakeskin he sports round his middle. I’ve seen this particular whelp before, yesterday, on the rail of the Rouge. From no more distance than separates us now. And with a mottled cry of alarm not yet formed into words, the boy races off to the tree trunk portal and dives in.
2
My shaking fingers can scarcely grapple the shell away from my slick chest, but I shove it to my lips and blow as I lean over the spring. I can’t say if it makes any sound at all, or I am too frantic to hear aught but my own rasping breath, but I blow a second time. Noises of alarm are beginning to pop up like toadstools from beneath the trees, but as I follow the path of the boys toward the gnarled root, a softer sound whispers past me in the air, a low, beguiling melody. The sirens’ lullabies begin to fill the forest like the sunlight itself, and I peep over the root down into the dark shaft, forcing myself to wait until I hear no more shouting, no more voices of any kind.
A gelid, tomblike aroma of dust and damp earth assails me as I climb down the dark shaft, out of the light. A length of knotted rope guides me down the tilting shaft, and I slide feet-first into an open chamber. Gaining my bearings, I stand cautiously; the top of my head just grazes the earthen ceiling. Two or three stubby candles, blazing heroically under glass here and there, provide the only illumination, and blinking away the musty gloom, I find myself in a kind of common room. A rickety sort of wooden table stands at the far end, with a few random objects strewn upon it: a ball, some rocks, feathers and shells, the mummified paw of some small forest creature, boys’ treasures or gaming pieces. On the other side of the shaft through which I entered, rough shelves have been dug out of the hard earthen wall, on which are stowed a jumbled disarray of sticks, clubs, wooden bats, broken arrow shafts, piles of bladed weapons, one or two still edged and bright, but most ruined by age or rust or neglect. The grand arsenal of my enemy.
Little heaps of fur litter the dirt floor in the shadows. These must be the cub’s nests they make for themselves, I think, until I peer at one nearest the faint, flickering light and realize it’s an inert boy, the snakeskin boy lolling stuporously in the dirt at my feet. I prod him gently with my moccasin, but he doesn’t stir, merely snorts and groans and rolls over on his other side. I straighten up as far as I may, gaze again round the chamber, begin to recognize the wheezing and snoring of other sleeping boys.
As my eyes adjust, I notice dark blotches that must be small tunnels in the dirt walls, leading away from the main room. I choose the biggest one, across the room from the entry that brought me here, and peek inside into a dark passage. A pale, greenish light beckons from the other end, and I creep through the tunnel to emerge into another chamber, smaller than the common room, but more elaborate—higher ceiling, a real lantern hanging on a peg in the wall, a thick carpet of green, red and yellow leaves over the dirt floor. A sturdy little carved bedstead, plumped with mountains of eiderdown stands in the corner. And slumped across it, legs sprawling on the leafy floor, head and shoulders still draped over the bed, lies Pan.
His wicked short sword has fallen on the leaves beside him, as if he were arrested in the act of stuffing it into his belt. His Pan pipes have dropped on the bed. He resembles nothing so much as one of my own slaughtered men, but for a thin string of drool leaking out of his open mouth onto the bedclothes. This is the fiend I’ve fought so bitterly for so long? This ridiculous child?
A little open chest of more carefully honed weapons stands at the foot of his bed. And at the far end of the room, in the shadows farthest from the light, looms a tall figure dressed in white.
Stella.
She appears to stand upright, although her feet scarcely touch the ground. Do I only imagine she seems to sway slightly in place? She does not speak, and as I grab the lantern and move toward her, raising the light to her face, I see her eyes are closed, her expression utterly serene. Please, no, by all the gods and devils of this place, not murdered! Hung up like some ghastly trophy?
“Stella!” I hiss as I draw near. Her mouth works a little, and she sighs, and I shudder with relief. Still an arm span away, I sense a kind of sizzling energy around her, detect a faintly sulfurous fairy odor. Odd glints of green and purple shimmer briefly in and out of the light, like cobwebs in the sun. I set down the lantern, reach longingly toward her, but a tingling of burning pinpricks assails my hand, and I withdraw it. Am I a coward, afraid of a little pain? But if she is under fairy magic, what greater harm might befall her if I attempt to remove her? What if she is charmed to die at the first show of force?
True love’s kiss will not break this charm, could she even feel it within this veil of sorcery. But she heard my voice. What did Piper tell me? Choose words that will stir the heart. Praying I have not already lost the power to move her heart, I lean as close as I might, position my mouth near her ear, quell the tremor in my voice.
“Please forgive me, my Stella Rose,” I whisper. “We’re on this journey together.”
Her brow furrows slightly, her lips begin to part, the voice that issues out is soft and faint. “Run away, James.”
Stung by this rebuke, I back away as the shimmering gauze of light that encloses her fizzes angrily. I can no longer speak to her heart. I’ve lost her love. I can’t save her. Then her dark eyes open, glinting green; she blinks at me in both wonder and agitation.
“Run away, James!” she says more urgently, color flushing slowly into her cheeks. “Oh, James, oh, no, why are you here? It’s too dangerous, you must get away!”
And the very air around her seems to short and sputter, like dampened fuses. Her legs buckle as her feet touch ground, but I lunge in to catch her, draw her out of her cocoon of witchcraft with only the faintest peppering of heat against my skin.
She clutches at my elbows, fighting for her bearings, gaining her feet. “You must go now!” she insists.
“Not without you, Parrish.”
“But if he catches you—”
“Look.” I stoop for the lantern, turn her gently round and shine the circle of light across the room, where Pan still sprawls athwart the bed.
“Oh my God,” she gasps. “He’s not … you haven’t…”
“He’s sleeping,” I assure her. “They’re all sleeping. Can you not hear the loreleis?”
She pauses, listens; the lush, distant crooning continues. And beneath it, we both detect another noise, quite nearby, a low, mournful refrain in counterpoint to the loreleis’ serenity, a stark and chilling outpouring of misery. Hastily, now, I steer Stella toward the doorway that opens on the tunnel, lantern aloft, glancing all round for the source of the weird sound. When we spy it, hairs prick up along the back of my neck.
Pan is sobbing in his sleep. It’s not the gulping hysteria of a cross, thwarted child, but a steady, low-pitched keening of loss. Water leaks out beneath his eyelids while his boyish mouth disgorges a deep, haunting chord of anguish as old as time. It’s the most unnerving thing I have ever heard or beheld in the Neverland.