Artifacts

by Pete Catalano

  “Ouch!” I said, cringing. I could feel the initial explosion and the aftershocks rattling the cartoon window frames of the house. “That must have really hurt.”

  With the pirates dazed, the Grumpkins headed back to the house. The moment they hit the porch, they dove through the window like Crunch had done. It was a good thing Crunch had painted the window frame because the second Grumpkin was so big it had to stretch, nearly to the breaking point, before letting him slip through.

  “Crunch, I don’t see any of your mind-blowing, spine-tingling, terror-producing booby traps stopping any pirates out there,” I said, looking from one side of the clearing to the other. “Did your magic brush run out of paint, or is it working on some kind of a delayed reaction?”

  Crunch giggled to himself. “Great work takes a little bit of time,” Crunch said, “and it’s going to be awesome!”

  As the pirates regrouped with Hook, several of them went running off into the woods. “They must be going after Butt-Kiss,” I said.

  “If we can make it back to the forest, we’ll be back within the familiar and be able to defeat them like we have so many times in Neverland,” Skylights said. “But it’s a long way from here to the forest.”

  “Hey, Jax,” Korie said, looking out the window. “The pirates weren’t going into the forest to get Butt-Kiss.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked, running up behind her.

  Korie pointed out the window to where they were rolling out half a dozen cannons they must have dragged off Hook’s ship.

  “Such lousy timing,” I said, wishing they had waited until we had gotten out of the house.

  At first giggling loudly, Crunch finally sighed. “Are you crazy? Their timing is perfect.”

  I looked at Crunch like he was nuts. “They’re going to blow us to smithereens.”

  Crunch countered, standing up and raising a defiant fist into the air, “Not if we smithereens them first.”

  In moments, a blood-curdling roar burst from somewhere out in the clearing. Running to the windows, we waited to see what had made the noise … and what it would do next.

  The pirates abandoned their cannons, gathering into a circle with their backs to each other and their swords drawn.

  “Keep your eye on the boulders,” Crunch said, staring at several large boulders strewn throughout the clearing.

  One by one the boulders started moving, rocking, shaking, and quaking. The ground beneath them rumbled, the ripples from the movement racing through the clearing as the ground rose up in a wave.

  “Oh. My. Gosh!” Korie said.

  The boulders soared into the air on thick stalks until they reached nearly thirty feet high.

  “It’s clobbering time!” Crunch shouted excitedly, waiting for the show.

  As the boulders swung easily through the air, the pirates realized what was about to happen. Before they could react, the monstrous sledgehammers crashed down on the cannons, smashing the barrels and crushing the wheels into the earth.

  With the pirates reeling, trying to battle the monsters and save any of the weapons, we ran out of the house. The moment the pen was freed from the confines of the house, the maze disappeared and the forest once again loomed ahead.

  As we slipped into the safety of the trees, there was the sound of gunpowder exploding in the distance, and several metal balls whizzed over our heads. The trees splintered around us.

  “Why didn’t you stop and paint any of their guns?” Mouth yelled at Crunch like it was going to help. “That way they’d be shooting bubbles or even water balloons at us by now.”

  “Leave him alone,” Tank said.

  “We need to get back up into the trees,” Skylights said. “It’s the only place we’ll be safe and have at least a bit of an advantage.”

  “Yeah. That’s easier said than done,” Crunch said sarcastically.

  Grifter laughed. “I guess all that means is that you haven’t tried it the Lost Boys way.”

  Skylights laughed. “Grumpkins!”

  The Grumpkins each went to grab one of Crunch’s arms, but he put up his hands to stop them. “Thanks, boys,” he said, “but I’ve got this.”

  Crunch pulled out Walt Disney’s brush and held it high like a sword poised for battle. Stepping up to the closest tree, he began painting steps on each side.

  One by one, he climbed.

  Crunch kept painting until he was able to step away from the side of the tree and onto the bridges. Moments later, the steps floated away. “Hey, Mouth. There’re your bubbles.”

  “He’s going to be terrible to live with if we can’t get that brush,” Korie said.

  “Wait until we get to camp,” I laughed.

  “He cannot bring that brush to camp!”

  “We just have to wait until this is over,” I told her.

  Forgetting all about not being able to get up into the trees earlier in the day, Crunch started egging us on.

  “Hey, Mouth,” Crunch yelled, his hands cupped over his mouth while hanging off the edge of the bridge by his feet, “can you hear me all the way down there?”

  “Yeah, I can hear you,” Mouth grunted.

  Crunch laughed. “You should use all that hot air inside you to float up to the bridge.”

  “You’re pretty brave from thirty feet up,” Mouth said. “If I had a way up there …”

  The Grumpkins swept Mouth off his feet and took him into the trees to Crunch.

  Skylights, Touch, and Grifter scrambled up behind them.

  Now it was just Tank, Korie, and me still on the ground.

  Skylights dropped a couple of ropes over the side of the bridge and leaned over to watch what we were going to do.

  Tank grabbed onto the first rope. “So. I’ll see you up there?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded, “but do me a favor and at least make it look a little tough to do.”

  As Tank started to climb, he smiled at us and grunted all the way up. He still didn’t use his feet, of course, but he at least made it sound like it was tough to do.

  Korie smiled. “He’s being a good sport about it.”

  I had to agree with her. “Yeah, you can always count on him.”

  “You want to go up first?” Korie asked.

  “Nah,” I said. “You go first. This way, I can catch you if you fall.”

  Korie countered. “I think I’ll watch you dangle from that rope for a while.”

  “They’ll be no dangling today,” I said confidently, grabbing the rope, edging closer to the tree, and then climbing up the side. It was the longest, most painful walk I’ve ever taken … with a big smile on my face.

  “You’re almost there,” Korie yelled. “Keep going!”

  I waved, and then turned back to look at how crazy far away the bridge still was.

  And to make matters worse, my audience was gone. Apparently, I took so long Tank, Mouth, and Crunch weren’t having any fun watching me anymore so they went off to find something better. “Oh, kill me now,” I mumbled, my muscles burning as I continued to move.

  “Hurry up,” Korie yelled. “I want to—”

  “You want to what?” I asked, not hearing the end of what Korie had to say. I craned my head to try to look at her upside down. “You want to what?”

  The only thing I saw was Korie being carried off into the forest by Butt-Kiss, who I’m guessing had finally realized he wasn’t in his undies and had remained hidden there the entire time.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Help!” I yelled, calling for somebody, anybody, who could get me off this rope and back down onto the ground so I could go after Korie.

  “What are you doing?” Mouth said, hanging over the side of the bridge to see me spinning and twirling upside down. “You have to practice a ton more if you want to get into the circus!”

  “Pull me up or lower me down,” I yelled, trapped and not able to move. “Butt-Kiss was here and left. He took Korie with him.�
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  “Wait, wait,” Mouth yelled. I finally sensed the urgency in his voice. “I’ll be right back.”

  Mouth disappeared

  Looking up I saw Crunch peeking out over the rail at me. “Whatcha doing?” he asked, waving. “Is it fun? Can I do it? How’d you get down there?”

  “Crunch, find somebody to help get me untangled from this rope!” I shouted.

  “Grumpkins!” was all I heard as he disappeared.

  In moments, both Grumpkins peeked over the rail. Seeing me upside down, swirling around in a circle and unable to move, they grabbed the end of the rope. After swinging me two or three times one way and then the other, they pulled hard and I flew upward through the air in a great, smooth arc until they were able to grab me and pull me in.

  “Man, you don’t know your own strength,” I said, happy I was alive.

  “They know exactly how strong they are,” Skylights said. “Either one could have pulled you straight up with one hand at any time, but they wanted to have a little fun.”

  The Grumpkins snickered behind him.

  “Korie’s gone,” I said.

  “What!” Tank waded through Mouth, Crunch, and the Lost Boys. “What happened?”

  “We all thought it was pretty funny when Butt-Kiss thought he was in his undies and ran into the forest,” I explained. “But while the hammers were smashing the cannons and leveling the pirates … I forgot that I never saw him come back out. He waited until I was dangling in the air to grab Korie and drag her back into the forest.”

  “We’ve got to do something,” Mouth said.

  “We’ve got to go after her!” I shouted.

  “Let’s not be too hasty,” Mouth said. “What do we think Korie would want?”

  “She’d want Butt-Kiss not to throw her over his shoulder and carry her through the forest to the pirates’ hideout, you dope,” Crunch said.

  “How many pirates were there before we left?” I asked.

  “There had to be a thousand,” Mouth said.

  I stared at him for a second. “Anybody else?”

  “There were a couple of dozen pirates,” Tank said, “plus Hook and Butt-Kiss. As far as I know, Smee and Jerkin are still in the suitcases.”

  “And how many are there of us?” I asked.

  Skylights started counting us off. “Four middle schoolers …”

  “We need a cooler name,” Crunch said. “Which movie would you go see?” Crunch put his hands up, framing the words on a marquis. “lost boys” or “middle schoolers?”

  “I’d go see the movie about Crunch getting pounded if we don’t get going after Korie and stop getting sidetracked,” I growled.

  “That’s it!” Crunch shouted. “The Pirate Pounders!”

  “Okay then,” Skylights continued. “We have four Pirate Pounders, five Lost Boys …”

  “Six,” Tootles piped up.

  “Four Pirate Pounders,” Skylights said, “four Lost Boys, and two Grumpkins.”

  “The Grumpkins make up for, like, six of us each, so now there’re twenty of us,” I said.

  “We need more,” Grifter said.

  “We need Peter,” Touch added.

  Grifter laughed. “All we really need is Tick-Tock.”

  “Crunch!” I yelled.

  “Waaaaay ahead of you,” Crunch said, putting the finishing touches on a cartoon clock. It was so big, round, and colorful I thought it would float away. It hopped along the rope bridge to the beat of each tick of the second hand.

  “That’ll stop Hook … or at least confuse him. Eventually, we’ll need more than that.”

  “We’ll need more Lost Boys,” Skylights said.

  “But how do we …” I felt the edge of the box containing Jacob Grimm’s pen peeking out of my pocket. “Crunch, do you still have that list we used to write Tootles’s name on?”

  Crunch searched through his pockets, and found the crinkled, crumpled, tattered piece of paper we used earlier. “You only need a small, clean piece to write down a name or two. See,” he pointed to the back of the paper, “you could fit at least, like, five on there.”

  “Well, we may need a little more room than that.” I tried to smooth out the paper so I’d have room to write. “Ink bottle!” I called out.

  “Ink bottle,” they repeated, the bottle passing from hand to hand until it got to me.

  “Give me your hands,” I said to Crunch.

  He put them up like he was praying and then opened them up so I could place the long, thin, wooden box on top of them. I popped the latch slowly and opened up the box. The quill pen was still there, right where I had left it.

  Slipping out the quill, I opened the vial, dipped the pen, and held it just above the paper.

  “We need to slow Butt-Kiss down,” I said. “Give me a good description of him.”

  “Braggart,” Skylights said.

  “Dope,” Mouth added.

  “Slimeball.” Crunch giggled.

  “Blowhard,” Grifter said.

  “How about we rewrite his part of his fairy tale to help us out,” I said, putting the pen to paper. “Butkus was strong and handsome … with snowshoes instead of feet.”

  Everybody roared, and the moment I finished writing, we heard a scream from somewhere deep in the forest. “I guess it worked. That should slow them down. What else?”

  “We need numbers,” Skylights said. “Far more than we have here with us now.”

  I thought for a minute, trying to remember everything I’d ever read or heard about Peter Pan, Hook, and the Lost Boys.

  Suddenly, I had it.

  Dipping the pen into the ink once more, I wrote two more words. “Lost Boys.”

  There was a rumble and a roar. The trees shook and the ground quaked as thunder rolled through the forest.

  “What did you do?” Mouth asked.

  “I asked for help,” I said. “I wrote the Lost Boys into our story.”

  “But they’re already here,” Crunch said.

  “Not just our Lost Boys,” I smiled. “All the Lost Boys.”

  “And there are hundreds of them,” Skylights said. “Countless boys have fallen out of their strollers and been swept to Neverland only to be returned years later. They all consider themselves Lost Boys, Jax. If that’s who you asked for, they will all arrive, all shapes, sizes, and ages, and from every walk of life.”

  The bridges behind us shook as dozens of feet scrambled across them. The ground filled with men and boys and all ages in between. As they milled around, it seemed as if some of them remembered others from Neverland a very long time ago. They laughed and talked as happy and as free as they did then.

  “Welcome, boys,” Skylights called down and their faces all turned upward to follow his voice. “We’ve called you together for one last great adventure.”

  The grumbles and roars started again.

  “And what do we get?” one of the boys shouted.

  Skylights paused for a moment. “One last battle … with Hook.”

  One man, at least in his eighties, his face beaming, shouted back up to Skylights. “I’ve waited my whole life for one last battle with Hook!”

  The cheers went up and drowned out every noise in the forest. I could feel the excitement filling the air with the mention of Hook. Some had faced him and some hadn’t. I sensed those that hadn’t wondered if they would be able to defeat him if they had been given their chance.

  Today was their day.

  “Well, there will be Hook!” Skylights shouted.

  The cheers continued.

  “And there will be pirates!”

  The cheers became louder.

  “And a new enemy.” Skylights paused for the proper reaction. “An enemy who claims to be … the greatest hunter of all.”

  There was an explosion of voices.

  “Boys, they’ve taken someone near and dear to us much the way they did when they carried Tiger Lily off to Sk
ull Rock,” Skylights said. “Grifter, Touch, the Grumpkins, and I are willing to give our lives for her safe return … and we are hoping you’re willing to do the same.”

  A roar went up from the Lost Boys, battle cries that had been waiting years to be heard.

  I slipped out Jacob Grimm’s pen one more time, and as the boys’ voices rose through the forest, I wrote two more words on the paper next to their name. “Lost Boys … Can Fly.”

  As Skylights kept yelling out to the Lost Boys, stirring them up and cheering them on, I saw him lift off the ground.

  “Jax, wh-wh-what’s going on?” Skylights stuttered, holding onto the railing for dear life.

  I laughed. “You and the other Boys can fly,” I said. “It’s no longer reserved for just Peter Pan. It’ll be easier to battle Hook and the pirates … and far easier to get away if needed.”

  Skylights let go of the railing and began to float up. He was followed closely by Grifter and Touch, who seemed much more comfortable and willing. As the Grumpkins rose off the bridge, they grabbed onto each other and refused to let go. They twisted, turned, and tumbled through the air until they got the hang of it.

  “Lost Boys,” Skylights called. “Follow me!”

  With that, the Lost Boys in the forest took to the air.

  Some were nervous and flew no more than two feet off the ground while others looked like they had been doing it all their lives as they soared through the trees.

  They swirled around the bridges and the tree houses, and in moments, they were gone. Their sounds of laughter and delight could be heard throughout the forest. I’m sure it was a sound that struck fear into the hearts of the pirates.

  As we stood there, the two Grumpkins came flying back and landed on the bridge. “We’ve come back to bring you along,” the one said. “By the time you climb down and run along the forest floor, the battle will be over.”

  “Who’d like to go first?” the other asked.

  Mouth could barely contain himself and he leaped from a standing position right onto the Grumpkin’s shoulders. “Go with him?” I said to Tank. “We’ll be right behind you.”