“Quick,” the boy said. “This way.”
She followed him down the alleyway, walking backward, holding the torch in front of her even though it didn’t seem like Wolf was following them. At the end of the alley was a storage shed. He opened the door and that was when she saw it—his left hand was no hand at all, but a metal hook.
“No!” she cried, but he reached forward, hooked the collar of her shirt, and dragged her inside the building, bolting the door behind them both.
She crashed to the floor, her knees and hands stinging.
The captain peeked through a crack in the wooden slats of the wall before turning back to her, his lips curling in a dastardly grin. “We meet again.”
“What do you want?” She was still on the ground, looking up at him.
He squatted beside her, dragging his hook along the curve of her cheek. “I want what everyone on this island wants. You.”
“How did you get on the island?” she asked. “I escaped you.”
“With this.” He pulled aside the collar of his coat and revealed a gold chain, her grandmother’s blood ruby dangling on the end.
“What do you mean?”
He sat back, propping his arms on his knees. “The ‘blood of the creator’ extends beyond just the blood that flows through your veins. After you so hastily departed my ship, I found myself in possession of the necklace. And wouldn’t you know, when I put it on, what should appear before me but the very island I sought just a few clicks away, rising out of the mist.”
Wren scooted away from him, pressing her back against the wheel of some large machine.
“But only I could see it, and the ship—sail though we did—could not come any closer. So, I took the dinghy and rowed myself here.”
She lifted her chin a bit, trying to look confident. “Well, you’re here now, then, aren’t you? What do you want with me?”
“I want you to bring the rest of my crew over, and my ship.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “You’re descended from the creator. I’ve a feeling you can do anything, protection spell or no.”
Maybe he was right. Maybe she could do what he asked, but, “Why would I?”
“Because I’ll kill you if you don’t.” But even he looked uncertain as he said it.
“It isn’t me you want.” Her fear was disappearing quickly as she realized she held all the cards, whether he liked it or not. She pushed up onto her knees to be at eye level with him. “It’s Pan, who I assume took your hand, your island, and your girl.”
He scowled at her but she could tell his anger wasn’t for her.
“This is all about revenge. If you kill me, and your crew will never come. You’ll be alone on the island, and when Pan finds you, he’ll take your life, too. Vengeance will never be yours.”
“That is why you have to help me.”
She sat back again. “That’s where you’re wrong. I don’t have to do anything.”
He lunged for her, his hand wrapping around the back of her neck. He opened his mouth to spew more of his threats, but she stopped him.
“But I will make a deal with you.”
This gave him pause. He released her but stayed close. “What kind of deal?”
“Help me free the dreams.”
He laughed, rocking back, and then seemed to remember that they were in hiding when he clamped his lips together and looked back over his shoulder at the door. All remained quiet. “Why would I do that?”
“Once the dreams are returned to your crew, they’ll be able to come back to the island. You won’t need me at all.”
His eyebrows raised in what she supposed would be the only sign he gave her that she could be onto something. “How will we find them?”
“I’ve seen them. They’re in the castle.”
He sneered. “Of course they are. What’s in it for you?”
She held out her hand. “I want my grandmother’s necklace back. And I want to be free to leave the island once it’s done.”
He held up his hands. “I won’t stop you. But I also won’t give you Wendy’s necklace.”
She felt heat rise in her cheeks. “It’s mine.”
“It’s the only way I have to get on and off of Never Island.”
“Not if we’re successful. You’ve betrayed me once. Return it to me as a sign of good faith.”
For a long pause, she didn’t think he would. Then, he reached up behind his neck and unclasped the golden chain, passing it across the shed to her. She put it on and hid it beneath the collar of her tattered purple dress.
“How will we do it?” he asked.
She was getting sleepy. She turned sideways and leaned her head against a sack of some type of grain. It was not a comfortable pillow, but it would do. “I’ll have to find some fairy dust, and then we’ll fly up to the castle at first light. We’ll free your crew’s dreams first, and while the Lost Boys are busy fighting the pirates, we’ll free the rest.”
The captain was nodding. “There’s just one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t fly.”
“Don’t? Or can’t?”
He shrugged. “Both. I’m a man of the sea, not of the sky.”
She tilted her head back, catching a glimpse of the black sky through the slats of the roof. “How can you say that? Doesn’t it call to you?”
“Not as the sea does.”
She looked at him. “They’re not so different, really, are they? Mysterious, dangerous, depthless. If you can swim, you can fly.”
He leaned back, too, relaxing against a pile of wood. “I’ll trust you, Darlington, be it at my peril.”
The smile on her face was genuine. “Don’t worry, Hook. I’ve got you.”
Wren must have drifted off at some point during the night after she and Captain Hook fell silent in the shed, because all of a sudden, she found herself somewhere . . . strange. It was a great manor in the valley, bordered on one side by a lake that reflected the stars so clearly that it was like looking at another sky. She knew where she was in the way that one knows things in dreams, with unbending certainty.
This was Starlake. The only place other than the island that she had ever known her grandmother to call home. And Wren was flying over it.
She descended, landing on a balcony where the glass door was open, pale pink curtains flapping in the gentle breeze. There was a swallow’s nest high in the eaves about the door. Pushing the curtains aside, she emerged into a girl’s room—the walls were pink to match the curtains, and the bed covers were white lace. In the bed, a boy lay sleeping, and beside him, a slightly different version of Wren sat on a stool, her eyes red with tears.
The girl looked up at her. “You’ve come at last.”
Wren was frozen in the doorway, taking in the scene and trying to make sense of it.
“Come in.” The girl crooked her finger at Wren. “Let me see you.”
And with the way she said it, Wren knew exactly who it was. “Granny?”
Wren took a few steps toward the bed. The girl who was her grandmother reached up and brushed golden hair away from the sleeping boy’s face. It was recognizable but just barely, pale skin stretched taut over sharp bones, closed eyes sunken deep and dark into his face.
“Is that Pan? What’s going on?”
Granny was staring tenderly at the boy. “He’s very sick. He’s lost his way.”
Wren dropped to her knees across from her grandmother and reached across Pan’s sleeping form, taking the young girl’s hand. “Am I doing the right thing? Are you angry with me for betraying him?”
Her grandmother laughed, the same gentle sound Wren had known when sitting on an old woman’s lap. “I should be asking you if you’re angry with me for what I’ve created.”
Wren chewed on her bottom lip. She couldn’t blame her grandmother for wanting to hang onto her friend and their youth. Wasn’t that the very same thing that Wren had done by fighting off the Dream Thief night afte
r night? “No,” she answered. “Of course not.”
“There is one way to stop him,” Granny said, returning her gaze to Pan and stroking a gentle hand down one cheek. “To make sure he cannot continue to hurt the people of the Frostwater or Astanrog or the Golden Lands.”
“How?” Wren asked.
“Without his dreams, he cannot reach others, just as they cannot reach him.”
Wren understood. She pushed her fingers lightly to Pan’s temple and pinched. When she pulled her hand away, a string of light followed. She shaped the light, pulling and patting, forming a sphere with her hands. When she was done, she cupped it gently and peered inside at a miniature version of a healthy Pan. He looked back at her, his face angry, his eyes black.
They were his dreams.
And now, they were hers.
Chapter 12
The easiest thing would have been to go to Fairyhome and convince one of the fairies there to give her and Hook enough dust to fly up to the castle, but there was always the risk that the little pixies would rat her out to Pan, their Never King. What’s more, she needed more than a little fairy dust if the rest of her plan—the part she hadn’t told Hook—was going to work. And she knew just where to find a substantial stash.
She peered through the crack in the shed’s door. The sun was rising, but just barely, and the world did not seem nearly as dangerous as it had the night before. Hopefully, Wolf and the Lost Boys were somewhere sleeping off the previous night’s adventures, and not at the treehouses. She touched the lump in her skirt pocket, the one that had been there when she woke up, to make sure it was still there. Had Pan realized yet? Had he seen her steal his dreams just as he had done to so many others? Was he angry and looking for her instead?
“So, I just wait here for you like some chump?” Hook grumbled from behind her, startling her from her reverie.
“What else would you do?” she asked. “Go out guns blazing?”
He was quiet at that.
“Don’t go anywhere or our deal is off,” she said over her shoulder.
“I won’t,” he snapped. It was very clear he didn’t think much of her and her commands, but he was at her mercy here, much as she’d been at his on his ship.
She slipped outside the shed, letting the door shut behind her. She heard Hook slide the bolt home. He was safe, for now. She only hoped he had the sense to stay that way.
Slinking through the alley behind the village, she didn’t run into anyone, though it was a near thing outside the bakery, where voices inside told her they were already preparing the day’s bread. She made it into the trees and stayed just far enough off the path that she hoped no one would notice her if they were headed to the village. At the clearing where the bonfire had been, there was now just a pile of charred wood and a group of boys heaped together, snoring like bears. She spied what she thought was Archer’s dark hair and skinny frame, and made sure to keep far from it as she skirted the edge of the clearing. It was a good thing he was there, because it was to his house that she was heading.
The to his house was still down, and she climbed it as quickly as she dared, only closing her eyes once as the ladder swayed precariously. When she made it to the top, she pulled the ladder up in hopes that it would delay any unwanted visitors.
The trunk was just where it had been the day before, gold fairy dust on the latch untouched. She considered searching for a key, but then realized she didn’t have to. Instead, she closed her eyes and dreamed up an iron key that would unlock any lock on Never Island. She snatched it from her dream-mind and fit it into the lock. It turned and the lock clicked open.
She was prepared to see bags upon bags, heavy with fairy dust. What she wasn’t expecting when she heaved open the lid was to be met with the light of dozens of fairies, jingling angrily at her from inside glass jars.
“What in the world?” she gasped, taking a step away from the chest.
The jingling had gone from angry to desperate. The ones on top that she could see had pressed themselves to their glass walls, banging tiny fists and fluttering their translucent wings. She saw that holes were poked in the lids, and some of them had grass and twigs but little else in the small enclosures.
She needed fairy dust, but not like this. Kneeling, she began unscrewing jars as quickly as she could. Fairies darted out, not bothering to stop or thank her, and she couldn’t blame them. How long had they been trapped in there? Her grandmother wasn’t wrong—Pan had lost his way. The Dream Thief, the Fairy Stealer. Was that how he kept the other fairies loyal? By threatening them or their families, maybe, with capture? She was certain that the man her grandmother had loved would never have stooped to such levels.
Nearly half the fairies were freed when there was a sound behind her. She stood and spun, a thin sword appearing in her hand out of instinct.
Across the room, Archer stood in the open wall, an arrow nocked in his bow. “What are you doing?”
Wren wiped away tears she had not known she’d cried. “What is this?” she asked instead of answering, gesturing at the trunk. The remaining fairies jingled desperately at her. The unlucky ones who had yet to be freed.
“Pan’s suppliers,” he said.
She knew he could kill her in a heartbeat, just as easily as he’d killed the board that they’d eaten at the feast the night before. But she just squared her shoulders. She would not run, not this time. “And you condone this?”
He took a deep breath, the string going tighter, his arm trembling under its pull. This was it, her last breath—
But he lowered the bow and let the arrow drop to the deck.
“No,” he admitted. “But I’ve been too cowardly to do anything about it.”
“The time for fear is over,” she said, dropping back beside the trunk and pulling out another jar. The yellow-haired pixie in a green leaf dress fluttered her wings uselessly. “Pan wants to use me to return the island to what it was before, but what does that mean to him? Dangerous adventures? Cruel kings and wars and slaves?”
“He’s bored,” Archer said. “And lonely.”
“It’s a punishment he’s brought upon himself.” She unscrewed the jar and the small fairy flew at Archer, shaking her fist angrily, before returning to Wren and surprising her by dropping onto her shoulder and crossing her arms indignantly. “You swore yourself to me, do you remember?”
He hesitated, his eyes on the trunk, before nodding once and slinging his bow over his back. “I’m with you. But we have to be quick about it. Pan and Wolf are out looking for you.”
Her relief was palpable, but she couldn’t linger on it too long. Who knew when Wolf would be back and what he would do, or what he had already told Pan about the night before. Maybe he already knew that Hook was back on the island, and that Wren was planning on stealing back the crown and the life that were rightfully hers.
Together, she and Archer freed the last of the fairies.
“What is the plan?” Archer asked, closing the lid.
She locked it and pocketed her magic key. “To free the dreams.”
He grimaced. “That’s not going to be easy.”
“There’s more.” She bit her lip nervously before continuing. “I’ve teamed up with the pirates. I’m letting them back on the island.”
“What?” Archer sat heavily in the chair beside the table. “Why?”
“Pan is . . . out of control. You must see it.” She thought of her conversation with Queen Naunet. “He cannot be left unchecked. This is the first step to restoring peace to the island.”
He was nodding slowly, coming to terms with the idea.
“And then I’m leaving. And any of the Lost Boys who want to can come with me.” She hoped that he would be one of them, but she didn’t honestly know if any of them would go. “Can you help me?” She almost felt bad asking, knowing that it was a lot. From what little she knew about him, she knew he valued loyalty and honesty. But Pan didn’t exactly seem to exemplify those traits.
He took
a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “Of course.”
She tried to bite back her smile but wasn’t sure she was successful. Instead, she looked to the small fairy on her shoulder. “You’d better get home.”
The fairy made some jingling noises and tapped Wren’s shoulder, crossing her legs and making herself at home. It was obvious she wouldn’t be going anywhere. What an unlikely band they were, but if she stayed with her, it would mean she didn’t have to make an extra trip to Fairyhome to try to convince some other fairy to help.
She conjured some brown pants and a matching tunic to wear, and Archer helped her tie her hair back and stuff it beneath a hat. Being a boy would be the best disguise on an island full of them. They descended the ladder and retraced her steps back to the village. It was busier this time, which was almost better because they blended in. No one glanced at them twice.
They reached the shed and she paused before knocking and looked at Archer and the fairy.
“Neither one of you can panic when you see who’s inside.”
Archer raised his eyebrows at her, clearly skeptical, his hand already going for his bow. “Who is it?”
“An ally.”
She knocked twice and saw Hook’s bright blue eye appear at a crack in the wall. As soon as he opened the door, the three of them barreled inside, closing the door behind them.
“Took you long enough,” Hook spat at her.
“Is that—?” Archer sputtered.
“Why did you bring a Lost Boy and a fairy? This isn’t part of the plan.”
“He’s in on the plan?” Archer’s voice was an octave too high as he pointed a finger at the pirate captain.
Hook drew his sword, the metal singing. “I won’t be betrayed.”
Archer’s bow was in his hand, an arrow nocked and aimed at Hook’s throat.
Wren stepped between them. “Boys.”
The fairy landed on Archer’s arrow, and it drooped under her small weight.
“As unlikely as it may seem,” Wren continued, “we are on the same side in this.”
“You cannot trust a pirate,” Archer insisted.
“He’s going to help us. With as many dreams as there are, we need extra hands.”
Kingdom of Crowns and Glory Page 42