“But you live in the forest with the Lost Boys?”
“Yes, in the Neverwood, in my house atop the trees.”
When they left the village, he took her up to what he called Fairyhome. It was more of the same green jungle, but here, tiny lights floated around, jingling nervously in her ear. When she went to swat at one, he caught her hand.
“Don’t,” he said. “Watch.” He held his own hand out, and before long, a yellow light landed in his flat palm. When it finally stopped moving, Wren was able to see that it was a tiny girl with iridescent wings, wrapped in a leaf-dress.
“Is it a fairy?” Wren asked. She had heard of them in her grandmother’s stories, so it made sense that here, on her grandmother’s island, they would be real.
He nodded, smiling at the jingling girl. “I would like to show you as much of the island as I can before you make your decision, but it will be difficult on foot.”
She looked nervously between him and the fairy. “What do you suggest?”
“That we fly.”
Nervous laughter bubbled up in her throat but then she saw that he was serious. “I can’t fly.”
He did laugh, and it was as pleasant a sound as the jingling of the fairy. “Not yet.”
“Can you?”
“Of course. You just need a little fairy dust.”
The small girl in his hand shook her head and a gold powder flew up around her in a puffy cloud.
Wren shook her own head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“But there’s still so much to see. Mermaids. The falls.” He paused as if for effect. “I’ll show you the dreams.”
“The dreams?”
“Yes, where they’re kept.”
If they were kept somewhere, then did that mean they were able to be returned? Were they like homing pigeons, where, if she released them, they would fly back to the heads in which they belonged?
He took her hesitation as something other than what it was. “They’re really quite magnificent.”
The fairy looked at Wren crossly, as if her aversion to flying was a personal affront.
Be brave. “Yes, OK, but you have to help me.”
“I will be with you the entire time,” he promised, taking his glittering hand and waving it over her head so that the fairy dust lightly coated her hair and shoulders.
Wren was discovering more and more that fear was her enemy, more than snotty princes and underhanded pirates. It was fear that held her back, and if she had let it, she never would have known what it was to fly.
Pan kept his promise to her, staying right by her side as she wobbled her way through the first few miles. But now! Now they raced, slicing through clouds and winding through treetops with reckless abandon, the likes of which she had never truly let herself know. Except, perhaps, in her dreams.
“Why did you never let me fly with you in my dreams?” she asked, pulling up beside him as they circled a lagoon, eyes downcast, searching for mermaids in the clear blue water.
“We were too busy fighting one another,” he said, rolling onto his back as if he were lying in bed.
She copied the movement. She’d tied her skirt between her legs to make a sort of trousers, and her hair was bound back in a length of cloth to keep it out of her face. Her mother would be scandalized. “Why couldn’t we have been friends before now?”
“Because I didn’t know who you were. I thought you were a threat.”
She flapped her arms and legs back and forth as if she were swimming. It propelled her faster through the air and he had to kick to keep up. “You were also a threat.”
“I only wanted to keep Never Island safe.”
“From me?”
“Not you in particular, no. Look, there.” He pointed and she glanced down just in time to see a flash of silver fins.
“Was that a mermaid?”
“That or a Never fish.”
She looked sideways at him. “Is there such a thing?”
He smirked at her. “There is if you dream it up.”
Next, they flew inland away from the lagoon, over the Neverwood, and toward a mountain that rose up in the middle of the island, its peak disappearing into the clouds. They wound around and around, rising steadily. The air grew thinner and colder, but Wren kept pace with him.
When they broke through the clouds, Pan pointed at a stone manor set on a cliff. Though its walls and towers were crumbling, she recognized it at once from a painting that hung in her father’s study. It was a nearly exact replica of the estate at Starlake.
“There,” he said.
She followed him down, landing with him in an overgrown courtyard. “What’s here?” she asked as they climbed the stairs.
“Careful,” he said as she took a careless step that sent stones tumbling down. “This is Dreamers Keep, or at least, that’s what I call it now.”
Two stone dragons guarded the entrance, watching stoically on as Pan pushed open one of the heavy wooden doors and guided her inside. She paused in the foyer. The dark blue wallpaper was peeling, and the furniture that remained was covered in a thick layer of dust. It was eerily quiet, but she could feel . . . something.
“Did my grandmother come here?” she asked.
Pan looked back at her, pausing with one hand pressed to a wooden panel on the wall. “She lived here for a time.” He smiled absently. “We called it a Wendy House then.”
When he pushed on the wooden panel, the wall swung open to reveal a dark, stone staircase descending into what seemed to be the mountain itself. Pan pulled a lantern from the wall and lit it before moving forward down the stairs. Wren followed him carefully, a hand braced on the wall to keep her steady as she felt her way down with her feet. The stones were wet, and there was the sound of running water from very nearby.
“What is that?” she asked.
“An underground river,” he explained. “It runs through the mountain and eventually comes out in Mermaid Lagoon.”
Finally, they reached the bottom and passed through a stone archway only to find themselves in some kind of dungeon. The walls were lined with barred cells, and a large grate ran down the middle of the corridor. Through the slats, she could see the rushing water of the river he’d mentioned. She tried to stay off of the grate as she walked, not trusting herself not to fall through.
The feeling she’d had earlier of a presence in the house with her intensified and she found herself glancing back to the doorway to make sure they weren’t followed.
“There’s no one,” Pan said. “It’s the dreams.”
“What do you mean?”
“Here,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her forward. “Let me show you.”
Chapter 6
Pan extinguished the lantern and led her forward, guided by a blue glow that seemed to emanate from the cells that lined the corridor. They stopped at the first one and she saw them—multicolored orbs lined dozens of shelves pushed up against the walls. The insides of each orb seemed to flicker, different colored lights pulsating and constantly changing. They had a presence to them, like they were alive.
Wren pushed past Pan to the next cell, and then the next, finding only more of the same. Her heart ached at the sight of so many stolen dreams.
“Why are they locked away?” she asked.
He came up behind her and stood staring at the dreams in the last cell. “To keep careless boys from wandering in and knocking them loose.”
“What would happen?”
“The dreams would escape back into the world.” He looked down at her. “I thought you’d be pleased.”
She tried to wipe the horror off her face. “I am.” Pleased that he showed her, pleased that he told her there was indeed a way to free the stolen dreams. “I am,” she repeated, trying to sound more convincing this time. “But why did you do it?”
He led her back around, past countless cells full of people’s dreams. “The pirates and the Lost Boys have been at war since your grandmother’s time. When I found a
way to rid the island of them, I took it. At any cost. Without dreams, no one can reach the island.”
“But you left a loophole.”
He paused outside one cell and looked down at her, his eyebrows drawn together. “The blood of the creator. I hoped she would come back,” he said, “so I left her a way to return.”
“And did she?”
He shook his head, his face blue in the dream-light. “No. Not even in death. But I feel like she brought you here somehow, in her stead.”
For some reason, she felt like she should comfort him, so instead she looked away, back at the dreams that he stole, and tried to remember him as the Dream Thief, who had ruined her world. Not as Pan, the boy-king trying to protect his.
“Can I see them?” she asked, a plan formulating in her mind. “Up close?”
His lips pursed at the thought. There was a jingling sound and she noticed for the first time a ring of old-fashioned iron keys dangling from his belt. He was playing with them, bouncing them in his hand as he considered her request.
“You have to be careful,” he said.
“Of course,” she agreed.
A few more seconds passed before he raised the keys and fit one in the lock of the cell behind them. The door groaned open, the sound too loud in the quiet dungeon. He motioned for her to go past and she squeezed through the cell door and into the room.
The light from the orbs flooded the small space, not like firelight, but a steady, white-blue glow. The shelves that held the orbs were taller than she was by nearly twice, reaching the stone ceiling, and each shelf was stuffed with orbs several rows deep.
He had followed her in and was standing at a shelf to the right. “These are the newest acquisitions.”
Wren joined him, her eyes scanning the dream-orbs. Coming closer, she saw that they didn’t just contain shifting colors and lights, but actual images. Actual dreams. She ran her fingers over their tops, expecting them to be soft like drops of water. Instead, they were solid, like balls of glass.
Her fingers stopped on one that felt . . . Different. Familiar, if that made sense. She pinched it between two fingers and lifted it from the shelf.
“Careful,” he murmured.
She leaned very close, so close that her nose nearly touched the ball. Trapped inside, her hands pressed to the glass, there was a familiar girl staring back at her. She had brass-colored hair and Wren’s small nose, and she wore what looked like a pirate’s frock coat, red with gold buttons down the middle.
It was her sister, Jae.
He leaned close beside her, watching the girl in the orb. “Ah,” he said, also realizing who it was.
“When?” She cupped the orb gently in her hands.
“It must have been the night you left the nursery. I was looking for you and found her instead.”
It was her fault. That’s what he was telling her. She had left the nursery, abandoned her sister, and now the girl had been forced to grow up before she was ready. Forced to stop dreaming. The Jae inside the orb moved away from the wall and became just a shadowy shape.
Wren knew what she had to do. They were very close to the door, so she turned toward it. Her foot caught the iron door that was still open, and she stumbled forward, taking two large steps before letting the orb slip from her fingers as if by accident.
“No!” Pan said, but she was between him and the orb as it rolled away.
The middle of the floor was slightly slanted as it drained to the river below, and the orb rolled listlessly toward the grate, ran along the gutter for a second, and then dropped into one of the open squares and was gone to the river below.
“No.” Pan had made his way around her and dropped to his knees just where it had disappeared. “What did you do?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to sound contrite. “It was an accident.”
He sat back on his heels, clearly trying to compose himself so as not to be cross with her. “You see now why they are locked away.”
“Yes,” she said, “I do.”
He locked the cell door with maybe a little more force than was necessary. Then she watched him tuck the key ring back into a pocket he wore at his belt, and smiled quietly to herself as he led her back up the stairs and into the sky.
They dined that night with the Lost Boys, and a stranger meal she had never known. The boys sat around a sawed off trunk of a Never tree just beneath their treetop dwellings, and ate a hodgepodge of a stew put together by Toots. It was a far cry from the formal dinners she and her family shared every night, prepared by a chef that her father had employed for nearly Wren’s entire life.
Archer, who had somehow finagled a seat beside her while Pan and Wolf conversed about who-knew-what, leaned over and whispered to her, “It’s always an adventure when it’s Toots’ turn to cook.”
Wren scooped a piece of raw mushroom out of hers and dropped it surreptitiously to the ground, where it would be better food for the squirrels, if there were squirrels on the island. “Why do they call him Toots?”
He scrunched up his nose. “You don’t really want to know.”
She snickered behind her spoon. “I grew up with a half-dozen brothers. I think I can guess.”
“It’s awful. No one wants to room with him.”
Her eyes drifted up to the houses that hung over them. “Which one is yours?”
He pointed to one on the far end, away from the creek and set high away from the others. “I need a good vantage point.”
“For what?”
“To protect the camp.”
She took another tentative spoonful of the stew into her mouth and thought about what he said. If Toots was named after what he did, then that meant Archer was an archer, she supposed. She glanced to Wolf at Pan’s right side and wondered how he had gotten his name.
“Protect it from what?”
He pushed his empty bowl away and leaned back in his chair, crossing his hands over his stomach. “There are lots of threats on the island, though it’s not nearly as fun as it was before the pirates were banished. But there are still beasts and the like.”
“Are there squirrels?” she asked, dropping another indistinguishable vegetable to the ground.
He looked at her sideways. “What?”
“Nothing, never mind,” she said, turning her attention to Pan, who was pushing to his feet at the head of the table and raising a fancy flute, the kind her parents used to drink sparkling wine.
“I would propose a toast,” he announced, his eyes finding her in the group. “To Wren.” He was the only one with a glass of its sort, but it didn’t stop the other boys from holding aloft their tankards and wooden cups. “Though she comes from a world without dreams, she has made my dream a reality, for I have yearned for the company of a Darlington woman for many years. Well, now she is here, and we can only hope that she will stay here for a long time yet to come.”
Hesitantly, Wren raised her own chipped ceramic mug. “Thank you, Pan.”
“To Wren,” he said again.
“To Wren,” the boys repeated. They all leaned forward, clinking cups. Archer knocked his tankard against hers and took a long swig of whatever was inside. Hers had black coffee to sober her up. No more ale for her, not for as long as she lived.
Pan watched them, still standing. When they’d quieted, he stepped out from around the table and held his arm out to her. “Shall we continue our tour?”
Shall she? That was the question, wasn’t it? Did she dare stay on the island and try to make a life for herself here? But how could she live alongside the man who had stolen dreams from an entire world? Maybe hers was a different path. Maybe she hadn’t ended up here to live under the rule of the Never King, but for another purpose—to rebel against him.
She took Pan’s arm and walked into the trees with him, down a dirt path lined with lit torches. There were some sparkling lights in the dark underbrush, almost like glow worms but not quite.
“Fairies,” Pan said, seeing her studying t
he bushes as they walked past.
“Here? They don’t stay in Fairyhome?”
He smirked at her. “They are free to roam the island as we all are, especially now that we are free of pirates.”
“And stealing their dreams kept them, and everyone else, away?”
He nodded.
“How does that work?” she asked. “How does stealing dreams keep the island safe?”
“The only way to the island is through your dreams. Without dreams . . .” He shrugged. “No one can find us.”
“So, not safe, then. But isolated.”
He turned to her. “Is that not the same thing?”
Was it? She didn’t think so. The Frostwater survived because it traded with Astanrog, and Astanrog offered military protection to the smaller nation. And that was just one example of many in the mainland.
Instead of answering, she tugged him along the path. He let her until they reached the trunk of a tree larger than any she had ever seen. If she were to lay against it, her arms would not even span one side of it. In its lowest branches, which were still dozens of feet into the air, was a house. There was no ladder, no rope leading up to it.
Pan had leaned back and was looking up at its underside. “And this . . . This is my home.”
“But how do you get up there?”
He raised one eyebrow. “How indeed?” He opened a small pouch at his belt, dipped his fingers in, and then tossed a gold powder up into the air. It came down on their hands, and within moments, her feet began to leave the ground.
She laughed, still not accustomed to the feeling or even the idea of flying. She flapped her arms to get her balance as she rose.
Pan was much more graceful as he ascended beside her and then began to circle her dizzyingly. “You like this? Flying?”
“Of course,” she said, pushing away from the tree and zooming upward.
He grabbed her ankle and pulled her back.
She giggled, pressing her skirt down around her legs.
Kingdom of Crowns and Glory Page 38