Archer raised his eyebrows and motioned to the captain’s hook.
“As many as we can get,” Wren amended.
The fairy stood, pointing to herself.
“Yes, yours, too.”
After reaching an uneasy truce, the small group snuck from the shed and toward the mountain in the middle of the island.
Compared to Hook and Archer, Wren felt like an old pro when it came to flying. The boys were unsure and unsteady as they climbed, while Wren and the fairy, whom she’d taken to calling Bell with the pixie’s permission, flew circles around them, teasing and taunting.
“It’s not a fair comparison,” Hook grumbled at her when she told him she’d only been flying for a few days. “You have the blood of the creator.”
“That’s right,” Archer said, finally agreeing with the captain on something.
They reached Dreamers Keep without incident, and thankfully found it abandoned, just as she and Pan had left it. She led them to the dungeons where the dreams were kept, watching their faces for the same awe that she still felt when she saw the thousands of orbs lining the shelves. But it was different for both of them. Hook had kind of a greedy glint to his eye, while Archer looked ashamed.
“This way,” she said, leading them past where she knew the more recent orbs were kept and deeper into the dungeon’s depths.
Their footsteps echoed off the walls, and the sound of rushing water grew louder.
Hook looked down. “Is that—”
“The river? Yes. That’s how we’re going to get the orbs out of here. We won’t have time to break them all, but we can roll them down to the mermaids who will take care of it for us.”
Archer scoffed. “The mermaids won’t help us.”
She paused, looking back at him. “They’ll help me.”
They reached the last cell and she withdrew her magical key. Here, the light from the orbs was not as bright, and she discovered this was in part due to a thick layer of dust covering them all.
She looked back at the boys. “Why don’t you two start uncovering the drains, and Bell and I will find the crews’ dreams.”
When they left and began heaving grates off of the drains to make it easier for the dreams to escape, she began her frantic search for one orb in particular. She had to find it. She had a life to live when all this was over, and it didn’t include being stalked by a pirate she knew to be particularly vengeful.
She and Bell brushed aside layers of dust. There was Two-Toes—she smashed the orb against the stone floor. It shattered, sending the ghastly form of Two-Toes floating through the ceiling. And Mr. Smee, and Longfellow. She smashed each of them, hating how long it was taking.
Then, finally, she paused at the next one. This one was darker than the others, the figure inside a mere shadow. She shook the orb, then tilted it this way and that, until finally the inhabitant came into view. It was a sneering Captain Hook. She pocketed the orb and stepped away.
The fairy was watching her, quiet for once.
“Keep going,” she told Bell.
Together, they swept dozens of orbs off of shelves, smashing any that she recognized as being from Hook’s crew. The others, she kicked toward the grates, letting them drop into the river for the mermaids to deal with.
“That’s all of them,” she told Hook when he and Archer returned, brows sweaty. To Archer, she said, “Why don’t you fly down to the Lost Boys and alert them to the presence of pirates on the island.” And gather the ones who might go with her, she hoped.
“What if they’re not there yet?” he asked, looking uneasily between Wren and the captain.
The captain was the one who answered. “They will be, have no doubt about that. For nearly a decade, they have dreamed of this moment. They will waste no time.”
Archer was clearly uneasy about leaving her alone with him. “If you do anything to betray her . . .” He pointed a finger at Hook.
“He won’t,” she said. “Will you?” Not if she could get to him first.
“You have my word.” He put his hook over his chest.
“The word of a pirate,” Archer mumbled as Bell darted about his head, sprinkling extra fairy dust on his shoulder. “What good is that?”
After Archer left, she and Hook worked to free the rest of the orbs from their cells. Bell wanted desperately to help but was too small to do much, especially when they determined the fastest way was to tip the shelves over. Some of the orbs broke or cracked when they fell, releasing the dreams into the world, but most of them were sturdier. Those rolled down the sloped floor and dropped into the river, where she trusted that Mara, Tal, and the others would be true to their word.
They were nearly done. Wren’s back and arms and legs ached from the effort, but she had one more job to do. When Hook had his back turned, checking to make sure that one last shelf was completely cleared, Wren pulled the iron door to the cell shut and turned the key, locking him in.
He looked over his shoulder, saw that he was trapped, and crossed the room in just a few long strides. He wrapped his hands around the iron bars and shook them. They rattled but held.
“What is this?” he bellowed.
Wren took a few steps back to stay out of his reach. “A means to an end,” she explained.
“You’re a lady,” he spat at her. “This is bad form.”
“I was never much of a lady,” she said. “More of a pirate, really.” She took the key and dangled it over the grate that would carry it to the water below.
“No, don’t.”
But it was too late. She let the key slip from her fingers and into the current, where it disappeared from view in a matter of seconds.
“You’ll pay for this,” Hook sneered.
She cocked her head at him. “I don’t think I will, actually.”
“You can’t leave me here.”
“I can.” She took the two orbs from her pocket and held them so that he could see to whom they belonged. Still dreamless and without her grandmother’s necklace, she knew that Hook wouldn’t risk leaving the island without a way to return to it. And Pan, who was stuck here anyway, had no way of reaching anyone through their dreams if he himself didn’t dream. There would be no more banishing of anyone. “You and Pan can work this out between yourselves, I suppose. You’ll have a very long time together, after all.”
With those parting words, she and Bell exited the dungeons and returned to the crumbling courtyard beyond the entrance. She was pleased to find that Hook’s shouts could not be heard from outside the castle.
“A job well done, I’d say,” Wren said to the fairy.
Bell jingled at her, then darted around her, sprinkling her shoulders with fairy dust.
This time, there was no hesitation as Wren leaned forward, spread her arms, and fell off the mountainside. She knew she could fly now, and so she did.
Chapter 13
The Jolly Roger was moored in the marina, and the docks were chaos. Swords clashed, shouts rang out, and there was even the loud bang of a gun discharging every now and then.
“You should go home,” Wren told Bell again. “I’m going to leave the island. Don’t feel obliged to go with me.”
But the fairy was just as stubborn as Wren was, and stayed by her side.
Wren flew over the melee, thinking she wouldn’t have to join in, until a sword caught her in the side and sent her sprawling. She hit the dirt without slowing and skidded to a stop, her hands and face burning from the impact. A hand to her side told her that while the sword had sliced her shirt open, it had only scraped her skin.
Whipping around, ready to defend herself, she saw Two-Toes closing in on her. As ugly and stupid as he was, he looked formidable just now, with a smear of blood across his cheek, his sword in his hand.
“Wait—” she started.
But someone else stopped him for her. A hand grabbed Two-Toes’ arm and pulled him back. Wren recognized the shorter, rounder man to be Mr. Smee.
“Don’t be daft, you,�
�� Mr. Smee said to the other man. “She’s the one brought us here, she did. Don’t you forget it.”
Two-Toes sneered at her, still considering impaling her, before finally turning away and chasing after a boy using a frying pan as a weapon. Mr. Smee went the other way, and when they both had cleared out, she saw who was standing behind them.
Pan.
And judging from the shocked look on his face, he’d heard everything.
“It’s not—”
“You brought them here?” He advanced on her. She saw that his cheeks were flushed and he wore her grandmother’s crown, like he was some king going to war. This was all just some great, exciting game to him.
She scooted away from him, and as she did, one of the orbs slipped from her pocket. She scrambled to pick it up before he saw, but it was no use. His eyes fell on it, and then darted to her.
“What did you do?” His voice was a deadly whisper.
“What I had to do,” she said, returning the orb to her pocket. “You’re lost, Pan.”
“I don’t lose.” He raised his sword and began to lunge for her, but her foot lashed out, connecting with his stomach and maybe something lower than that. He doubled over and the crown slipped off of his head.
She knocked the hat she’d been wearing off her own head. Her hair tumbled down her back as she placed the crown where it truly belonged. Looking down at him, she said, “You did this time.”
Wolf had caught wind of the king’s predicament with her and was coming after her, teeth bared, a monster even in his human form. Wren turned away from Pan and shoved past dueling pairs, ducking to narrowly miss the swing of a sword, until her feet finally hit the wooden planks of the dock. The Jolly Roger bobbed in the water close to the inlet. Bell was already there, flying in frantic circles to add more fairy dust to Wren’s shoulders.
Wolf was at her heels, close enough that she could hear the hard pants of his breathing.
She pumped her arms faster, her legs burning, her lungs close to exploding. She hit the last board and leapt, her arms and legs pinwheeling in the air for a moment. She felt the brush of fingers on the back of her heel, and then Wolf was pulling her back. Bell tugged on the shoulder of Wren’s shirt, but it was no use. Strain against him though she might, he was too strong. She looked back, and he shot her a fanged grin.
Then, suddenly, his face went slack and his hand slid from her foot. He reached over his shoulder, and then spun, and Wren saw it, just before he toppled over into the water—the familiar gray fletching of an arrow protruding from between his shoulder blades. Still floating just above the water, which was swirling red with Wolf’s blood now, she searched the crowd for him.
Archer was on a nearby roof, his bow still in his hand, his mouth set in a grim line. And behind him, she counted about a dozen heads of other boys.
“Go get them,” she ordered Bell.
The fairy sped away, and Wren turned her attention to the ship. She didn’t know much about sailing—or anything, really—but she figured she could dream something up at least long enough to get her back to the mainland.
She reached the deck only moments before Archer, Bell, and the others. She glanced nervously back at the melee, and saw that someone was pulling Wolf’s body from the water. Whether he was alive or not, she couldn’t tell. And not far from that, Pan stood, stoic and watching.
“Why isn’t he after us?” she asked herself more than anyone.
But Archer took it upon himself to answer. “Well, could be any number of things, but my guess is this.” He dangled a brown pouch in front of her face.
Wren snatched it and peeked inside. It was the pouch of fairy dust that Pan usually wore.
“He’s grounded,” she said, relief bubbling up in a small laugh. Without this, and without the fairies on his side, his flying days just might be over. She guessed his next stop would be Dreamers Keep to inspect the dungeons, but it would be quite a trek up the mountain on foot.
A quick exploration of the deck revealed an older man on board, snoozing against a cask of what she guessed was ale. Archer kicked his foot, rousing him. The man barely blinked at the sight of the arrow in his face.
“What’s this, then?” he asked.
“This is a mutiny,” Wren answered.
The man stood, brushing his hands on the front of his shorts and offering one out to her. “Well, I’ve no particular loyalty one way or the other. Name’s Jolly. Welcome aboard.”
She looked at it, then up at his face. “Can you sail this thing, Jolly?”
He held up one finger. “First lesson in sailing, be respectful of your ship. She is not ‘a thing.’ She is a ‘she.’” He ran a hand down a gleaming rail. “And yes, I can sail her, and I can teach you how. It will be difficult but at least doable since she’s already rigged, but we’ll need to hire a crew at the nearest port.”
“Fine.” She looked around at her motley crew, at the expectant faces of all the boys who had followed her into the unknown. “Let’s go.”
With some hard work and a bit of dream magic, the ship got underway fairly quickly, leaving the chaos behind on the island. As night fell, she left Bell and Jolly at the helm and disappeared into the captain’s quarters. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to feel returning to that room—fear, maybe, or anger—but it was neither of those things. It was uncertainty, and excitement.
She tossed Hook’s clothes out of a chest she found. Then, she wrapped Pan’s and Hook’s dream-orbs in old, ragged shirts and tucked them away for safekeeping, along with the pouch of fairy dust.
There was one question nagging at her now, though: What now? She was a queen without a king, a pirate captain without a crew, a bird without wings. She was a dreamer and a creator. A daughter and a sister and a friend. Where would that take her next? Would she be able to resist the call of the sky and the island?
She stood in front of the large picture window and looked out at the whitecaps. She had no idea what she was doing, but she wasn’t going to let anyone get in her way. A salty breeze crept through some crack in the ship’s wooden hull. The cold air tickled Wren’s skin as if beckoning her. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
“Soon,” she whispered to it, and it retreated back into the night, satisfied to know that she would follow.
Epilogue
At first, when the dreams returned, Jae Darlington thought it was a fluke.
Her sister, Wren, had left, and had taken her dreams and any possibility of happiness with her. But they continued, night after night, with no sign of the golden-haired boy who had stolen them in the first place. She had not told anyone, keeping the secret safely guarded just in case, but then it began to happen to others, and suddenly everyone was talking about it. Imagination and stories brightened their world again, and even though Wren was gone, Jae could feel her presence in this, at least.
Now, five years had passed, and she woke on the morning of her wedding with a fresh dream behind her eyelids. She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to hold onto it, but it vanished, skittish and shy in the light of day.
“Today’s the big day,” Nana sing-songed as she slid open the curtains, letting in the early morning sunlight.
Jae groaned. Astanrog was, without a doubt, the brightest place she had ever been. There was no escape from the way the sun reflected off the snow-covered ground and rooftops. She longed for cloudy days on the coast of the Frostwater, but those were now a part of her past.
She had left her parents’ home a year before, and come to live as a ward with the Panilovich family.
“Security,” the old king had said, with his deep voice and thick, rolling accent. He was afraid she would run away just as Wren had done.
He was wrong, though. Jae never ran from anything.
Her sense of duty and loyalty were the only reasons she was still here. It certainly wasn’t for love of Prince Nikov Panilovich. Her betrothed was haughty, spoiled, and entitled—basically her complete opposite. He was supposed to marry W
ren, but her sister had left and the duty had fallen to Jae.
They had gotten to know each other over the last year, and neither of them had fallen in love. But in a life of politics, love wasn’t even taken into consideration when making a match. Astanrog wanted the Frostwater’s money, and this was the only way to appease the tyrant king without waging war.
Jae ate breakfast in bed, and then bathed in her own private washroom. As she lounged in a warm bath, she marveled at the fact that these were the kinds of perks she’d grown used to living in the palace. And afterward, she had a whole retinue of women attending her—brushing out her hair, dressing her in the elaborate, lace and floral wedding gown, applying her makeup. Sometimes, Jae felt more like a doll than a person, no more than a pretty face.
When she was nearly ready, her mother came to see her. Mrs. Darlington was one of those effortless, romantic women. She was always put together—in attitude and appearance. Jae could only aspire to be like her someday. She came in now with a handkerchief balled up in her hand, her eyes glassy with tears.
“My girl, my darling jaybird.” She scooped her daughter up in a hug, bestowing on her the childhood nickname she had not heard in years.
“Mama,” Jae said, relaxing into her arms, feeling like a child in the nursery again if only for a moment.
“Looking at you,” Mrs. Darlington said, “I believe dreams really can come true.”
It struck Jae then, that this was not her dream, but it would make a lot of other people happy, and so she would go through with it. Duty and loyalty, she reminded herself. And private washrooms.
The wedding was in the palace courtyard under the open sky. The snow had been cleared, but it was still unbearably cold. Goosebumps ran up and down Jae’s arms as she hefted her cascading bouquet of white snowflowers. She stood alone at the head of the aisle, having chosen to walk alone into her new life. It seemed a mile long, and at the end of it, the prince stood watching her, unsmiling in his suit. The iron crown that sat on his golden head looked like it weighed a ton. Soon, she would have to bear the weight of one, too.
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