by Susan Adrian
We wait until they’re all gone, all quiet except the drip, and then I monster-walk under the overhang and stand up again. From here I can see the faint light of the other end of the tunnel, and I can go fast. When we come out of the cave it seems lighter, with more stars. I can hear the waterfall above me, the pounding water.
I hear something else, too, from somewhere far out in the deep of the ocean.
Barking.
Scylla gives us food, to give us strength before we sing, but I can’t eat it. The giant blue platter is full of snails—still crawling around, still with their shells on—and kelp, just plucked from the ocean, weighed down with stones. Allora and Jasmina eat hungrily, plucking the snails out of the shells and swallowing them in one gulp.
I pick at the kelp, but it just tastes like raw, wet spinach. It makes me gag. It also makes me aware again that there’s water in my mouth, and I’m swallowing it all the time somehow without drowning. I don’t know how, except that it’s Scylla’s magic.
I set the kelp down on the platter, back under the stone, and see Scylla watching me.
“I will find something for you to eat, land girl,” she says kindly. The eels writhe around her head. “Even if I have to fetch it from the island. I remember, faintly, the taste of fruit.”
“You could bring me up to the island,” I say hopefully, “and I could get food for myself.”
She sighs and leans back, the dogs yelping again. “And I would see you no more, and I still would not have sleep. I am a goddess and a monster, but no fool. I know all the tricks of mortals, and some of the tricks of gods. You would be wise to remember that.”
It would have been too easy, I guess. My stomach growls, but there’s nothing I can do about it now, unless I want to eat live snails or kelp.
I really, really don’t.
As soon as the mermaids are done, Scylla has us line up in a semicircle in front of her. “It is time, at last,” she says, her voice echoing straight into my head. “I am so tired. It is time for you to sing and for me to sleep.” She narrows her eyes and looks at each of us in turn. “The doors are barred; you cannot escape while I slumber. Do not try, or I will be harsh with you.”
I glance at Allora and Jasmina. They both look scared. I don’t know what Scylla would do if she didn’t need us. Flick us away like she did Peter? Or take the breath gift away and watch me drown? That’s what monsters do in stories—and gods, too. Maybe that’s how you feel about people when you’re immortal…that they’re not important enough to worry about. When you’re a monster and everyone who sees you wants to kill you.
“Land girl, you begin,” Scylla says. “The others may join in with you. The song you were singing when I took you, about a lark.”
I feel like I did when I was standing on the rock, worrying that she’d come. That I can’t do this. But I have to.
I take a breath—without really taking a breath—and begin, singing over the dogs.
“Alouette, gentille alouette. Alouette, je te plumerai.”
I do my best, pretending I’m performing in that choir I imagined. Right away two of the dogs, one on each side of her waist, go quiet, heads raised like they’re listening. They look like normal dogs when they’re not barking their heads off. Almost sweet. The others keep barking, and the eels writhe.
Nothing about this is sweet. I shudder, and my voice trembles, but I keep going.
“Je te plumerai la tête…”
The dogs start to close their eyes, their heads drooping. Allora and Jasmina join in with background harmony, since they don’t know the words. And it works! The other four dogs stop barking. All you can hear is the sound of our voices intertwining, echoing in the cave. It’s surprisingly beautiful.
The quiet is amazing, even to me, and I’ve only been around the dogs for a few hours. I can’t imagine what it’s like for Scylla.
She smiles and closes her eyes. I think she’s asleep in seconds. Her face relaxes, and her mouth drops open. Her body falls back against the seat, the tentacles limp. One of the dogs moans, but it doesn’t wake.
I finish the song, and for a moment there’s complete quiet, and peace. Then the dogs start to rouse again, and I realize the truth.
We’re going to have to keep singing. If we stop they’ll wake up again, and so will she.
I was hoping we could escape once she fell asleep. At least try, in spite of her warning.
Jasmina quickly starts a new song, a mermaid song I don’t understand, but now I do the background vocals. The dogs stay asleep, but only as long as all three of us are singing.
She’s definitely not going to let us leave.
A tear slips down my face. I don’t want to live my life in an underground cave singing for a monster. But I have no idea how I’m going to escape. I miss Fergus. And Mom. What if I can’t ever see them again?
Allora reaches out and gently wipes the tear away, with a little shake of her head. I understand, without her saying a word. Crying is not going to help us. We can’t think about how bad our situation is. We’re all in this together, and we’ve got to be strong.
Maybe we can try to escape when she’s in a deeper sleep. Maybe if the dogs sleep for a while, they won’t wake up right away, and we can figure out how to break through the magic barrier, and swim to the surface, and…
For now, the dogs wake up every time we pause. We keep singing, on and on. For hours.
Pixie and I run up the path toward the top of the mountain, as fast as we can in the dark. It feels like I’ll be able to hear better up there.
If it’s barking, it has to be Scylla. And Clover. Maybe I can see where they are.
Next to the waterfall, my heart starts to pound again, my head filling with pressure. It’s too loud. Way too loud. The roaring sound crushes everything else out. I cover my ears like before, but it still doesn’t help. And now I’m alone, except for Pixie, who moves to my shoulder. I don’t know what to do to make it stop, to make it past the falls, but I know I have to keep going.
I sing the Lost Boys song under my breath, even though the waterfall smashes all the words.
Left, right, left
We’re off on an adventure
Left, right, left
We’re going to fight a foe!
That helps. Even without the Lost Boys here, I can almost feel them around me, laughing, singing.
I keep pushing on up the slope, watching my feet on the wet ground so I won’t slip. The sound of the waterfall slides away behind me. My legs burn, but I think of Perseus and Odysseus—and Clover—being brave, and I keep going, up and up, Pixie with me. Now that the waterfall is behind us, I can hear the barking again, relentless.
Why can I hear it now, when we couldn’t before? Is Scylla closer? It doesn’t sound as loud as when she was at the surface. More that I can just hear it better. Maybe we were all just too loud, before. Maybe sound carries differently in the night.
It doesn’t matter. I just need to know where it’s coming from. It’s a clue, I know it. Peter says Neverland always gives clues.
I come around the curve at the crest and stop. The view—the world—is magnificent from here. The sea stretches in all directions, still that black, moving mass, but it’s the stars that make me go still. I’ve never seen so many stars, or even half so many stars. Every inch of the sky is filled with clusters and points of light. I can see the Milky Way, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Pegasus. And Perseus! I’ve never seen Perseus in the sky before.
The barking gets quieter. I scan the ocean, to see if I can tell where it’s coming from. Nothing. It gets quieter still. Then it drops off completely, and I want to cry. I didn’t discover anything. It was the clue, and I missed it.
Except there’s something else now, the sound whispering over the water. It’s faint, but I recognize Clover’s voice, and two other voices too, tw
isted together in a high melody. It’s so quiet I lean over, toward the ocean, so I can listen better. The music soars up from the sea and around the stars.
My heart leaps, filling me with pure happiness and relief. Pixie flies around my head wildly. The music gets a little louder, like it’s celebrating with us.
Clover really is alive. So are the other two mermaids. They’re under the waves, but they’re singing for Scylla like we thought, and they’re alive.
And just like that, I know why. The dogs stopped when Clover and the mermaids started singing. That’s why Scylla wanted them. That’s why she kept them. She needs them. They’re singing the dogs to sleep for her. And if we know that, we can surely get them back.
I take out my recorder, hit the red button, and stand very, very still. I don’t know that anyone will be able to hear the singing on the recorder, or understand what it is. But I want to try to capture that sound, all three of them singing together. I have an idea, and it’s a place to start.
I don’t know how long I stand there on the edge of the cliff, listening to Clover sing under the waves like a siren. Long enough for the sky to lighten at the rim of the sea, for the stars to begin to fade.
I give the water—and Clover—one last look, hit Stop, and head back down to the Lost Boys, trotting, Pixie resting on my shoulder. I feel so much better than when I left the house. I understand. I got the clue. And there’s a way to save them, I know it.
I’m not a hero, even in Neverland. I’m still just Fergus. But I am going to get my sister back.
We try to escape when it’s almost morning. First Jasmina slips off, singing still as she goes to the door, throwing her body against the opening. But she cries out with the pain of it, and stops singing, and the dogs stir, grumbling to themselves.
I go next, to look in the other room, Scylla’s private room. It isn’t even barred with magic. Still singing as loud as I can, I check every inch of it, looking for some sort of exit, or trigger, or anything. But there isn’t any window or door, and the room is nearly empty. It has a chair like the one Scylla’s sleeping in now, a table with containers of what looks like paint, some brushes like horsetails…and a pile of bones that look human. All covered with a net to keep them down on the table.
The dogs start to whine and I leave, shaking my head. I check the rest of the walls for secret panels, or anything, but there really is no way out.
Allora doesn’t even try. She just keeps singing in her high, otherworldly voice, on and on and on. Jasmina and I join her again. We sing until we can’t anymore, until our voices are hoarse and we’re drooping, leaning against each other for support.
I think I’m the first to actually stop, my eyes so heavy I have to close them for just a second. It feels so nice, letting the heaviness pull me in….
I snap awake to the sound of the dogs barking. Four of them, then all six start in, as loud as dogs can get.
Scylla’s awake too, sitting up on the chair, staring at us.
I glance at Allora and Jasmina. They look as scared as I feel, shrinking back against the table. Ready to run away, even though we can’t. We failed Scylla. We let the dogs wake up. How is she going to punish us?
She stretches her arms and smiles. “I slept!” She leaps up, swims to the ceiling of the cavern, then back down, zigzagging in the water like Fergus did in the air when he was flying. “I must have slept for hours. For the first time in hundreds…thousands of years. I slept! It worked!” She beams at us, the eels writhing madly. They were asleep too. She frowns, just a little. “You may sleep now. I will go out so you will have peace from the dogs.”
Allora and Jasmina swim to the room they were in when I found them, so I follow. All I want to do is sleep, my body screaming to lie down somewhere. Ideally in my own bed, at home, with Fergus snoring peacefully across the room. Next best would be Grandmother and Grandfather’s house, in the big nursery. Or even my bed with the Lost Boys.
This room is dark, with round stone walls, like Scylla’s room. There are no openings except the door that’s hung with seaweed. The room doesn’t have any beds, of course. That wouldn’t work under the ocean, with wet sheets. Instead there are three…nests. Round piles of soft leaves and plants, with some thick branches supporting them and holding everything together, like bird nests. The insides are lined with mounds of moss. It does look soft, at least.
“When did she make these?” I ask.
No one answers. Allora goes straight over to one and lies down, curled up in the bottom like a ball. She tugs a band of kelp from the side, pulls it over her waist, and pokes the end through a stick on the other side, like a seat belt.
I look at Jasmina, who laughs. “Otherwise you’d float right out of it. Here, get in. I’ll fix you up.”
I lie in the nest, and she pulls the strap of kelp over me, like a mother buckling a baby into a car seat. “Good rest,” she whispers. “Happy thoughts.”
It makes me miss Mom, even though she hasn’t put me to bed for a long time. I smile drowsily at Jasmina. “Happy thoughts,” I say.
It is surprisingly comfortable, once I snuggle in. I close my eyes. The last thing I hear is the dogs, fading away as Scylla leaves.
* * *
—
I wake to Allora poking me in the arm. It feels like I’ve only been asleep for a few minutes. “Go away,” I murmur. “I’m not ready to get up.” I squirm from the finger, back into sleep.
“Wake!” Allora whispers. “She did not bar our door, and she is still gone. We’re going to try to escape.”
I try to sit up, forgetting the seat belt, and fall back again. Without comment, Allora flicks the kelp off the stick and holds out a hand to pull me up. I don’t take it, rubbing my eyes. I drift up slowly anyway.
“But what if we can’t get out, and she finds out we tried?” I ask. I remember her saying “I ate men whole,” and I shudder. I remember the panic of not being able to breathe. I remember the bones.
Allora shrugs her shoulders. “We must take that risk. It may be our only opportunity. Otherwise we could be trapped here for years.” She stretches her hand out again. “Come, we must go.”
I let her pull me away from the comfy nest. Jasmina is by the doorway, holding the kelp curtain open. “Hurry!” she says. “She could return at any moment.”
I swim through the curtain, out into the large central room. I wonder why Scylla didn’t bar the room. Did she forget? Was she so happy with her sleep that she thought we didn’t need it? Or is it a test?
If it’s a test, we’re going to fail. But they’re right: we have to try. If we can make it, and we swim all the way up to the island, I’m going to get as far inland as I can. I need to make sure she can’t pull me down again. Though it’s not as easy for the mermaids, of course. We’ll need to figure that out once we’re back up there.
But first we need to get out.
Allora swims to the front door but bounces right back, with a grimace. “She did not forget this one,” she says.
We look at each other, not yet ready to give up and go back to our little room. I try it, reaching out my hand. The magic jolt is painful, like brushing your fingers on a hot stove. I cradle my hand. “What now?”
That’s the only exit. We know that. The rest of this place is solid rock. Unless we can figure out a way to break the magic, we can’t escape.
“What if we try it together?” Allora says quietly.
We look at each other. We have nothing to lose by trying. We link arms, and try to swim, sideways, through the door.
We bounce back, stung by the magic, separated. It doesn’t work.
Jasmina lifts her head sharply. “Dogs.”
Allora gasps. “She’s coming. Back to the room, now.”
I don’t hear anything, but we go, as fast as we can. Through the curtain, back into the nests. I hear the dogs no
w, louder and louder. I forget the strap and start to float up just as I hear Scylla come in the house. She’ll be in here any minute. I grab the sticks, yank myself down, and fling the strap across myself, stabbing the kelp over the stick and closing my eyes just in time.
The kelp curtain is yanked aside. My eyes are still scrunched tight, but I hear the dogs yelping, and feel Scylla’s presence. It smells like wet dog.
I hold my breath as though I had breath to hold.
“My little songbirds have been out of their nests,” she says quietly. None of us move. None of us breathe. How does she know? Did touching the magic signal her, like an alarm? “There is no escape from me. You will be here always. Always and forever. You should accept that.”
There’s a long pause, all of us silent.
“You will learn your lesson,” she says at last. “And you will not try to leave me again.” My heart thumps. Even though her voice is soft, there’s a hard bitterness underneath. I know she means it. “Sleep well, my songbirds.”
She pulls the kelp curtain closed, and it’s utterly, utterly dark.
I think we just made everything worse.
The Lost Boys think the recorder is magic.
I forgot they’ve never seen any technology before. No TVs, no cell phones, not even any radios. Ever. Peter said they don’t have many visitors who don’t show up as Lost Boys (or Girls). The last visitor was many years ago, when they fought the bear. Peter’s probably seen some technology in people’s houses when he goes to London—though he doesn’t admit it—but none of the others have left this island since they came here.
What would that be like, to only know the lagoons and mountaintop and the house under the ground? To never watch a movie, or even read a book? Never go to school? I don’t know if I feel sorry for them or envy them. Or both.
They huddle around me, whispering like I have a magic wand in my hand, when I haven’t even done anything yet.