The Untold Stories of Neverland: The Complete Box Set

by K. R. Thompson

  “I don’t believe he liked the sound of that, but it is the truth.”

  “I don’t like it either, but I understand,” Tiger Lily said, nodding at the place where Peter had been. “I think his Lost Boys are giving him trouble since your ship arrived.”

  “Oh? Why is that?”

  “The littlest one, Runt, has been coming to our village. He stays near me most of the time. He misses his mother. From what he tells me, Peter goes back to ‘the grown-up star’ and gets anything the boys need that can’t be found on this island. Runt told me that he wants his mother and told Peter so. He thinks Peter is angry with him because he remembers his mother and none of the others do.”

  “I see where that could cause Peter some problems,” Archie nodded. He didn’t think Peter would enjoy giving up his position as leader and role model of his troupe if he were forced to bring parents to Neverland. “I wonder why he doesn’t want us to leave?”

  “Perhaps he is afraid that they will want to go home if they see that you can do it,” Tiger Lily replied, “And if they go, Peter would be all alone.”

  “That makes as much sense as anything else.” Archie sighed. “I only hope he doesn’t take his anger out on the sails again. The men weren’t happy about his last visit. If he tries anything like that again, they’ll be ready to fight.”

  HARPER DUCKED UNDER an outstretched branch. A few hours had gone by and so far he had had no luck whatsoever in finding a pixie. Blue, gold, or even polka-dotted, for that matter. He was getting more frustrated with each moment that passed. No one else had any luck either, from what he could tell. He had bumped into a dozen or more of his crewmates, and none of them had seen so much as a sprinkle of fairy dust.

  I believe Peter was lying when he said there were blue pixies on this cursed island, he thought as he edged around a briar patch. There is probably only one pixie, and that is Miss Bell. He let out a string of curses when one briar caught his forearm and raked along its inner flesh. His tattoo of Mary now had a line of tiny dots crossing her as droplets of blood welled up from the scratch.

  That, naturally, set off an even more elaborate string of cursing. A few moments later, feeling somewhat better that the briar patch had been sufficiently cursed, he calmed down and began searching again. “If I were a pixie, where would I go?” he wondered. He didn’t know much about the tiny fairies, other than Miss Bell’s attraction to shiny objects. In a forest of green, he didn’t see anything there that would capture her attention. Trees and rocks. That was all that was around him. Perhaps, he should work his way back to the ocean. The water sparkled if the sun hit it just right, maybe that would be shiny enough for her liking.

  His stomach grumbled, informing him that he had forgotten to put anything to eat in his pockets for this excursion. His empty belly had him turning around to head back to the boats. With luck, he might find some kind of foodstuffs there, especially if he had the fortune of crossing paths with any of the Indians. If not, he would suffer and wait until sundown.

  All thoughts of hunting for pixies left his mind as he trudged back toward shore, so it came as a surprise when one zipped under his nose and flew in the direction that he was heading. It happened so quickly, that he froze for a couple of seconds before reality sank in.

  “I’ve found a pixie!” he yelled as loudly as he could, running after the trail of golden dust that seemed to be heading toward his own destination. He hoped the others were close by to help capture her, for now that he caught sight of her, he realized that he hadn’t planned on how he was going to catch her.

  She is so fast, what if I can’t keep up? His lungs were on fire as he ran after her, barely jumping in time to avoid tripping over an exposed root. Just when he thought she was out of reach, the pixie slowed and turned, as if making sure that he was following.

  That’s odd, he thought, using his last burst of energy to try to close the gap between them. Then, she veered to the right. He nearly lost his footing trying to make the curve, but he stayed with her.

  I’ve caught up, he thought, as she zipped through a patch of leaves on a low branch ahead of him.

  I’m nearly there.

  ARCHIE HEARD HARPER’S shout and jumped up, running toward the sound of his voice. He had only called out once, so when Archie reached a grove of trees, he stopped, unsure of which way to go.

  “That way.” Tiger Lily’s slender arm came from behind him, pointing to the left. “I’m certain of it.”

  He took off again with Tiger Lily close behind him, and was rewarded with the brief sight of Harper ducking into the shadows of the trees ahead.

  A few seconds later, he was at the exact spot where Harper had disappeared. The branches above them were arched, giving them a clear view of Harper, who stood facing them—a few yards ahead.

  “Did you catch it?” Archie asked, noticing that Harper’s face held a rather surprised expression. “Did you catch a pixie?”

  Harper opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He took one step toward Archie and fell. A ray of sun came through the trees, glinting off the silver-gilded hilt of a small knife that had been sunk into his back.

  Peter stood in the place where Harper had been a second earlier. He fixed Archie with the darkest look that Archie had ever seen, leaving no doubt that Peter was indeed the death guardian that Harper had warned him of.

  “No one leaves Neverland.” The words came out low and lethal, echoing against the trees before he flew past them and disappeared.

  Dark, red blood pooled around Harper’s body. He had landed with one arm outstretched. Mary smiled up at Archie from her place on his forearm. The smile first brought his tears.

  Then the anger came.

  18

  The Pan

  ARCHIE STARED AT the sail-wrapped body lying before him on the deck. It felt surreal. He kept expecting to see Harper up in the mast, letting out sails or pulling them in. He never imagined that he would see his friend bound in one, lying at his feet, and waiting for a funeral. Tiger Lily had offered to give Harper the honor of burial in her people’s way, but Archie had refused. He would not leave the lad forever on an island that he had wished to escape. While he might not be able to take Harper’s body back to his beloved Mary, he would do his best to give him the tribute he deserved as a pirate.

  Smee stood beside him, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. Archie wondered if he was thinking of his recently finished job of inspecting Harper’s wound and preparing his body for burial. Archie was certain the inspection was more of a cause of curiosity than anything else, for the lad was dead and stitching him up would not bring him back.

  “A clean kill. Upward thrust into the kidney,” Smee had muttered, looking at the wound in Harper’s back, then at the small knife whose blade was crusted in dark blood. “Killed before, the boy has. Best ye take care that he doesn’t do it again.”

  “If anyone dies, it will be Peter,” Archie retorted, crossing his arms over his chest. “Peter is no more a child than I am. He will pay for what he has done.” The feeling of rage was washed away by waves of nausea as he watched Smee put stitches in the lad’s eyes, mouth, and nose, and then laid a shining copper coin on each sewn eyelid. “Is that necessary?”

  “Be quiet and let me work. Ye want the lad delivered safe to the other side, aye?”

  Though he had heard of paying the ferryman, Archie hadn’t been sure why having every orifice on one’s head sewed shut would ensure their safe delivery to the otherworld, but he had done as Smee said and waited for him to finish. At the last, he crossed the lad’s tattooed forearm over his chest, then placed the other arm over for good measure. “So as he can keep the lass close to ’is heart,” Smee said gruffly, wiping at his watering eyes. As Archie watched the old man stare at the lad’s neatly wrapped body, he knew that Smee had done the best that he knew by Harper. Now it was his turn.

  The wind had caught the sails, pulling them farther from Neverland. Beckett was at the wheel, navigating around the icebergs. “Ho
pe yon wee bugger flies over here to tell us we can’t leave again. Feed him to the fishes, I would, for what he did to Harper,” he grumbled.

  Several others chipped in with various threats and suggestions of what they would like to do to the deviant who killed their fellow crewmate.

  He had a family here and didn’t know it. Every man aboard was willing to fight for him. Archie gazed across the clear sea, free of icebergs and out of sight of Neverland.

  “This is the spot.” He nodded to Beckett and gave his orders to release the anchor.

  Once the ship had stilled, he took a deep breath, willing his own spirit to quiet. The effect was catching, as silence enveloped the ship and those who wore hats, took them off in a motion of respect for the dead.

  Archie had officiated over more funerals than he cared to admit in his brief time as captain, but he had never spoken for one who had been a close friend. He allowed himself a long moment to reflect on the memories he had, from the first day he had met the young man who reminded him of a stuttering squirrel to the fearless one, bent on catching a pixie to return home. Archie smiled as a sudden realization came to him, Harper had never stuttered again once he had whacked Caesar with that oar. That act had given the lad courage.

  May I have the same strength, Archie thought, stepping up to address his crew. It was time.

  “Today we lay to rest a fellow crewman into the briny deep. Jonathan Harper was quick and sure-footed on the rigging and swift to lend a hand to any man in need.” Archie stopped, glancing down at Harper’s still form. “I am proud to call him the truest friend that I have ever known. I was with him the day he had the image of his true love inked upon his arm and I know of his plans to save every coin that he could in hopes to someday marry his love.” Archie felt the ice etch into his words as he spoke. The coldness seeped into his voice. “That will never happen now and she may never know of the love he held for her in his heart.”

  He walked over to a small sea chest that held all of Harper’s belongings. He bent over and flipped the lid open. Hundreds of bright coins filled the chest to the brim, glinting in the afternoon sun, and on the top of the pile of riches, sat a worn and creased picture of a beautiful young woman.

  “Harper will never make it back to her,” Archie said quietly, though he knew they all heard every word. A moment passed as he chose his next words, for he knew as soon as he uttered them, they would change the course of not only his own life but those of all aboard. “For that I will have revenge. Peter will pay for his crime. Who is with me?”

  The answer that met his ears was deafening as the silence disappeared and a hundred pirates yelled their reply, “Aye!”

  A wry smile came to Archie’s lips. His crew looked like a murderous lot, indeed. Teeth bared and rage in their eyes, most of them waving a cutlass or a pistol in the air in addition to their verbal response.

  “Aye,” Archie repeated. The word felt strange upon his lips, but seemed to fit the occasion. He gestured to the sea chest. “The man who brings me the flying boy known as Peter, will have Harper’s gold as his reward.”

  Several appreciative murmurs met his ears, though most seemed content enough to hunt Peter down without the added bonus of treasure. Then, Beckett spoke up behind him. “Will ye be wanting him brought to you alive, Cap’n?”

  Archie turned to Beckett, fixing him with his cold eyes. “You can bring him to me in any manner you wish.”

  Beckett grinned at him. “Aye, dead it is, then.”

  A few moments later, over a dozen men had lifted Harper’s body to the railing, some having only enough room to squeeze in one arm to help the others that crowded in beside them. As Archie watched, they eased him over and the white-wrapped body disappeared into a frothy sea. The only trace of Harper now lay in a sea chest with a crinkled photograph. Archie bent over and picked up the picture and tucked it into his own pocket. If, per chance, one of his men brought Peter to him alive, he wished to have some small part of Harper with him to exact his revenge.

  THEY SPENT EVERY day on the island searching. As if Peter knew they searched for him, he flew in front of them, taunted them, and then would disappear.

  Two men had been shot as their crewmates had been aiming their pistols at Peter and missed him. As luck would have it, neither man’s wound was life-threatening, though it didn’t improve the mood of any of the pirates. Unable to catch the one they wanted, they began capturing the Lost Boys instead.

  Archie drummed his fingers on the map table while eyeing the boy sitting across from him. Patch, the boy with the rabbit ear cap, was regarding him with wary caution.

  An impasse, Archie fought the urge to smile. So far, the boy had only answered his questions with queries of his own.

  “Will you tell me where Peter is?” Archie asked yet again, certain that he had asked this same question a dozen times.

  “Will you tell me why you want him?”

  Archie rolled his eyes and repeated the same answer. “Because he killed one of my men.”

  “Mmph,” the boy shrugged and continued to stare at him.

  The door opened and Beckett appeared. “Beg pardon, sir, but we got two more. Where do you want them?”

  “In the hold with the others,” Archie replied, and Beckett left, shutting the door behind him. Archie caught himself doing a mental headcount. There were six boys down there, plus the stubborn one before him. Perhaps, he was going about this all wrong. So far, he had been asking questions, maybe he should be letting some of his information out, instead.

  “Patch, I wish to tell you of my plans,” he began as he tipped his chair backwards on two legs, leaning back to the wall to prop his booted feet on the table. “You see, my men and I wish to leave this island and Peter doesn’t want us to go, so I need to talk to him and explain the situation.” It was a lie, a large one. Ever since Harper’s funeral, leaving the island had been the last thing on their minds. A few had even made the comment that they had seen pixies, but none of them had made any moves to capture them. Even Boggs had refrained from making another batch of his never-right in hopes of capturing a flying boy instead. And as far as explaining went, Archie’s only explanation would be to Peter, and it would come at the fine point of his rapier. He struggled to keep the neutral expression on his face as Patch shifted on his chair.

  “I don’t know where Peter is,” the boy admitted. “None of us do.”

  “Then where do you meet him? Surely you have a certain place that you can find him,” Archie insisted. His men had been searching Neverland for days and kept finding hidden coves and new inlets around the beach each day, as well as niches in trees that were large enough for them to crawl into and explore, and they hadn’t even gotten to the caverns in the north. For an island, it was large and mysterious.

  “No, we just wait. He always finds us. We don’t find him.”

  Deciding this line of questioning was useless, Archie excused himself and left the boy sitting at the table and went up to the deck to get a breath of fresh air. The evening sun had cooled, and the boats were coming in from the island. Frowning, he noticed several empty seats in the first boat.

  “There be six o’ our men missing,” Boggs announced as soon as the boat was tied to the ship. “No idea where they be. Never heard any shots, be like they just disappeared.”

  “Lovely,” Archie grumbled, staring across the railing to the island that seemed more cursed with every second that passed. “No sign of them anywhere. You are certain?” He reached over the railing to give Boggs a hand up and over the railing.

  “Aye, they are gone,” Boggs grunted, heaving his round torso over the side of the ship and doing a quick, sideways two-step to keep his footing. Then he added, in what Archie guessed to be his most dire and disastrous tone, “They be vanished.”

  As if in answer to Boggs’s statement a lone voice yelled out from the island, “Ahoy!” It was just loud enough that it startled Boggs into tripping. He landed on the deck with a loud thump. Archie twisted a
round to look back out to the island, avoiding Boggs, who seemed to be sprawled in every conceivable direction. Noticing the spyglass tucked in Boggs’s belt, he bent and snagged it, then jumped out of the way, pressing the glass to his eye.

  On the white-sanded beach, stood one of the “vanished” pirates, waving his hands in the air in an attempt to be noticed.

  “Boggs, take the boat back out and get him. It’s Dougherty.”

  “Ach, leave it to Dougherty to be the one I gotta go save,” Boggs mumbled irritably as he crawled back over the railing. “I should’ve blacked more than his eyes.”

  Five more bodies followed Boggs to help row and Archie watched as they set back out to shore. Once the missing pirate had been collected, they rowed back. Archie set to helping pull each man up. He noticed that Dougherty was the last to come up and that the man didn’t seem anxious to be on the ship again.

  A man with pinched features and a generally mousey look, Archie couldn’t decide whether it was Ben Dougherty’s usual appearance, or if the strange expression upon his face was a product of fear. It also didn’t help that the bruises around his eyes had gone to the greenish stage of healing, giving him the look of a man gone seasick.

  The man stood before him, looking squeamish. His eyes darted everywhere but to Archie’s face.

  “Well, man, let’s have it. Where have you been and what has happened?” Archie demanded, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “The boy Peter caught meself and five more, then tied us up. He sent me free to give you a message,” Dougherty’s voice came out in a near squeak. “He says he wants his men free, else he starts killing ours, one by one.”

  “Oh, will he now?” Archie’s voice dropped octaves and came out in a whisper.

  “A-aye,” Dougherty stammered. “He w-wants ’em back by nightfall.”

  Archie glanced up into the evening sky. The sun sat on the horizon. Within a couple of hours, night would come—and with it, more dead sailors, unless he worked quickly.