Wendy raised her eyebrows and shook her head, following at a much safer height.
They landed on a large, flat rock that jutted out of the center of the lagoon, just large enough for perhaps three or four people to lie down next to each other. Almost immediately, several mermaid women swam up to it, resting their arms on the edge to smile up at Peter while their tails wove slowly back and forth through the water below. Every one of them was stunningly beautiful, with hair that dried the moment it left the water, bouncing in long, perfect ringlets.
“Hello,” Peter said to them all.
“Hello, Peter!” they all replied, and they laughed together in voices so melodious that their laughter almost sounded like a song.
“Come swim with us,” the closest said, and she reached toward him gracefully with an elegant, sensuous hand.
“No, thank you,” Peter said easily. If the mermaid was trying to charm him, he did not seem affected by it at all. “I only came to introduce you to the Wendy.”
Two of them refused even to look at Wendy, despite the introduction. The third, the closest, who had just spoken, turned to Wendy and hissed at her, baring her teeth. The moment she did, the others followed suit, and a ripple ran over their bodies from their heads to their hips.
Their skin, which had reflected the same hue as Peter’s, turned varying shades of blue, from the blonde woman, whose skin was now the turquoise of the Caribbean, to the brunette, who was now the steel gray of a storm-heavy sea. Their hair changed into long, green braids, and their teeth revealed fangs. The sudden transformation made their hissing all the more frightening, and Wendy took a cautious step back.
“Stop that at once,” Peter scolded them. In a flash, another ripple ran through them, and they looked just as they had before.
“We’re sorry, Peter,” the merwoman in front of him said with a sultry smile.
“Yes, we’re sorry,” the other two echoed, batting their eyes at him shyly.
Peter ignored them, rising into the air and glancing about as though searching for something. The three merwomen all glared at Wendy with narrowed eyes and delicate, pouting lips, then slipped back into the water and swam away. As Wendy looked around at the cove, she noticed two mermen drawing closer. Although the women had been wearing some sort of delicate netting, the men wore nothing at all. Their bare, perfect chests glowed in the light of the rising sun, and even though Wendy knew their appearance was only an illusion, she found herself feeling drawn to them nonetheless.
“Hello, the Wendy,” one of them said, and his voice sounded like sweet honey dripping fresh from the comb.
“Why, hello,” she replied, but the words were hardly out of her mouth before Peter had landed again, brandishing one of the two swords he always carried.
“Get back, fish!” Peter yelled. “The Wendy is not yours to take!”
The merman snarled, but he swam away, followed by the other.
“Gwendolyn!” Peter called out. “Gwendolyn!”
This, apparently, was the merwoman he had been looking for. She made no attempt to disguise herself, swimming toward them wearing blue skin and dark green braids. As she crossed her arms on the rock to rest, looking up at Peter, Wendy could see a delicate arc of light spots that crossed the bridge of her nose and continued onto her cheekbones. Wendy didn’t know whether they were freckles or tattoos of some significance, but she thought they were very beautiful.
“Gwendolyn,” Peter said, “this is the Wendy. She is my friend, and my navigator, and she wanted to meet you.”
“The Wendy,” Gwendolyn said, turning toward her. “Ah. Peter has told us stories about you. You’re very brave to come here.”
“Why … thank you,” Wendy said in reply. “It’s very nice to meet you.” She wasn’t sure whether Gwendolyn had meant she was brave to come to Neverland or brave to come to the cove of the merpeople, but the comment made her feel more nervous than she had before.
“A brave woman like you,” Gwendolyn told her, “could be friends with a merwoman, I think. Would you like to be friends?”
“I …” Wendy trailed off and looked for Peter, but he had already flown off over the water, playing some game that involved tossing shells back and forth through the air with the merpeople. “Is it dangerous to be friends with merpeople?” Wendy asked.
The merwoman laughed. “Sometimes,” she admitted. “But some people do it. Perhaps even our parents were friends. Perhaps it’s our destiny.” She tilted her head, staring at Wendy thoughtfully.
“Oh, I doubt that very much,” Wendy told her. “I don’t even know who my parents are.”
“Well, if you don’t know who they are,” Gwendolyn replied, “then it’s even more possible, isn’t it? Not knowing makes almost anything possible.”
Wendy was so surprised by this idea that she said nothing at all. Gwendolyn watched her for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders and swam away. A subtle splash drew Wendy’s attention behind her, and she realized with a start that the merman who had spoken to her had snuck up behind her while she was talking to Gwendolyn. He reached out his hand, and Wendy tried to step away from him, but something was pressing against her back, trying to push her toward the edge.
“What? No!” Wendy cried out, and then an explosion of jingling bells broke out just behind her. The pressure disappeared and she backed away in a panic. She saw Charming chasing Tinker Bell off toward the shore, but in her haste to retreat from the merman she tripped on the slick rock. She twisted as she fell, and she managed to catch herself on her hands, only to end up face to face with the other merman on the other side of the rock.
He grinned and reached for her, but Wendy scrambled back to the center of the stone.
“Fly,” she heard Peter shout.
“What?” She leaped to her feet and drew her own sword, pointing it first toward the one and then toward the other.
The first merman began to raise himself up onto the rock. She thrust her sword at him, but he dodged to the side, faster than she would have thought possible.
“Fly!” Peter yelled again.
“Oh!” Wendy exclaimed. In her panic, she had reacted on instinct and had forgotten all about the innisfay dust. The merman’s hand darted toward her ankle, but it closed around empty air, just missing her as she leaped into the sky.
endy flew back to the cliff, landed next to the sitting rock man (which somehow made her feel safer, although she couldn’t have said why), and exhaled a huge breath, letting it puff out her cheeks in relief. Peter followed and landed beside her.
“Oh, good form!” he told her. “That was a brilliant escape! Out of his clutches at the last possible moment! I couldn’t have done it better myself!”
“But I wasn’t trying to escape so narrowly,” Wendy protested. “That’s just how it happened.” In fact, now that she was safe, it was embarrassing how close she had come to being caught. She had forgotten she could fly!
“Wendy,” he told her gently, “there’s no need to be modest. There’s nothing wrong with knowing what you’re good at.”
He was being sincere again and looking at her with such an air of fondness and admiration mixed together—over something she didn’t deserve any admiration for at all—that Wendy didn’t know what to say. She took a small step away from him, trying to gather her thoughts.
“Yes, well, we should be getting back,” she told him.
“There’s no hurry,” he said, smiling at her. “They still have to fix the Jolly Roger.”
“With everyone working together, it will be done before we know it. We’ve been gone long enough.”
Peter looked sorry to have to go, but, of course, only for a moment. Then he burst into a wide grin and waved his sword through the air. “And then we’ll have our battle!” he crowed. “We’ll defeat the nefarious Blackheart once and for all! What is it, Wendy? What’s wrong?” As quickly as that, he was tender again, watching her with an air of quiet concern.
She was frightened, was the truth
of it. The last time they had fought in a real battle, Nicholas had died. She had abandoned Michael to try to save Nicholas, and Michael was lucky to be alive. The wonders of Neverland had distracted her, at least for a little while, but just now, when she forgot she could fly and had almost been caught by the merman, it brought all her fears and doubts churning to the surface again.
What if someone else got shot and she couldn’t save them? What if she made a mistake and someone died? Michael or John or Charlie or Thomas or even Hook?
Or Peter.
She couldn’t think about that. She just couldn’t.
“Show me the dragon!” she blurted out.
“Snaggleclaw?” he asked her.
“Yes, Snaggleclaw. I’d like to meet him.” It was the first thing that came to her. The dragon was very near the ships, so she wouldn’t feel guilty about staying away any longer. But, at the same time, going to see the dragon wasn’t the same thing as going back, so she could put off thinking about everything that lay ahead just a bit longer.
“Why, that’s a fantastic idea!” Peter exclaimed, grinning again. “I’d like very much for you to meet him. And I think he’d like to meet you, too.”
But it was a long flight back to the mountains.
Wendy tried to lose herself in the wondrous views, and sometimes she did. But returning from an adventure always feels different than embarking upon it, and Wendy was not just returning to the comfort of her own bed and her books and her friends and Nana. Instead, she was returning to something she had come to dread, and there was a trembling sickness in her gut that she couldn’t quite shake, no matter how hard she tried.
When they reached the farmland, the tears she had been fighting threatened to spill over. She reached up with one hand to wipe them away before they could fall, and suddenly Peter was there by her side, taking her other hand in his and smiling at her tenderly.
She gripped his hand tightly, feeling the warmth and the strength of it in her own, and the sickness that had lodged itself in her gut finally fell away. She closed her eyes and breathed in and out, and although she still didn’t know what would happen, her heart eased, remembering she was not alone.
They found Snaggleclaw draped across the same ridge he had been lying on when they left. The air as they approached him was cold but not as bitter as Wendy had expected, given the thin layer of snow on the ground.
“Does he ever move?” Wendy asked, but then she remembered who she was asking. “I mean, I know he moves, obviously. But does he ever … well, does he ever fly?”
“From time to time,” Peter told her. “He’s very old, even for a dragon. He sleeps a lot. But he’s an excellent watch-dragon. He always knows when people come and go.”
As though to prove it, Snaggleclaw opened one eye and focused intently on Peter, then slowly shut it again.
“See?” Peter said, laughing. “Hey, wake up, old man. I want you to meet someone.”
The dragon opened its eye again, focused this time on Wendy, and snorted. A small puff of smoke trailed in thin wisps up into the sky. Peter laughed.
“She’s a friend,” he said. “You’ll like her.”
The dragon’s eye rolled first toward Peter, then back to Wendy. A ripple of small, shifting movements ran through its body, and it lifted its head, tilting it to the side and exposing its chin.
“He wants you to scratch him,” Peter said. “He likes you.”
“Truly?” Wendy asked. She was used to animals liking her. They always had. But somehow a dragon seemed like a different thing altogether, especially since it could clearly eat her in one bite.
“Truly,” Peter said with a laugh. He landed next to the dragon’s head and began scratching it roughly along the jaw line with both hands. The dragon groaned and snorted in obvious contentment, making Wendy chuckle. She lowered herself to the ridge and stood beside Peter, watching as his fingers disappeared beneath the saucer-sized scales that lined the dragon’s jaw.
“Scratch him underneath?” she asked.
“He can’t feel it on top of his scales,” Peter told her. “But the skin beneath itches sometimes. Especially when he’s shedding.”
“He sheds?” Wendy asked, incredulous.
“Just a few scales at a time,” Peter explained. “Old ones fall off and new ones come in underneath.”
The dragon kept inching its head forward, trying to get Peter to scratch farther back, so Wendy reached her hands between two scales about a foot behind the ones Peter was working on. The skin beneath was surprisingly warm. And … soft?
“He has fur underneath!” Wendy exclaimed.
“Just a little,” Peter agreed. “It helps him stay warm up here.”
“Why, that’s amazing!” She scratched between the next two, and then the next, moving backward systematically. And then, between the sixth and seventh scales, the bottom one came away in her hands.
“Oh, no!” she cried. “I’m sorry!”
But the dragon didn’t look angry. Far from it. He sighed in relief and laid his head back down on the rock.
“Don’t be sorry,” Peter said, laughing. “That’s what he wanted. You must have found the one that was bothering him. I told you, he sheds.”
Wendy looked down at the dragon scale in her hands. It felt lighter than she would have expected, but it looked like stone—mostly gray with hints of white along one edge.
“I … may I keep it?” she asked shyly.
Peter laughed again. “Well, he doesn’t want it back. He’s glad to be rid of it! Look.”
Already, the dragon had fallen asleep and appeared to be snoring.
“Thank you,” Wendy said.
“No need to thank me,” Peter said. “It wasn’t ever mine, and he didn’t want it anyway.”
“No, I mean, thank you for this. For today. For bringing me to meet him. I … I’ve never seen a dragon before.” It seemed rather obvious that she had never seen a dragon before, but she couldn’t think of any other way to express how special it felt to meet one.
“Well, there aren’t many left to see,” Peter admitted. “But at least he’s not the last. I try to find them before they’re the very last one. So they won’t get lonely.”
“And so they won’t be gone forever,” Wendy realized.
A glaze washed over Peter’s face, like a cloud scudding across the moon, but then he grinned. “I’m glad you’re here, the Wendy,” he told her.
“Thank you, Peter,” she said with a smile. “I’m glad I am, too.”
hey retrieved Wendy’s pack before returning to the ship, but she was almost sorry they did. Climbing the rope to The Pegasus was not easy now that the innisfay dust had worn off, and the pack only made things worse. Had Wendy thought of it, she might have asked Peter to drop the bag off for her, even if she climbed up herself. Unfortunately, she had not thought of it, so she struggled her way up bit by bit, using the system of knots to stand on, one after another, until she finally arrived at the top.
By the time she reached her quarters, she would have been more than happy to drop her pack next to her sea trunk and fall right to sleep, but she did not have that luxury. Gentleman Starkey was waiting for her.
“The captain would like to see you, Miss Darling,” he told her politely.
“Of course, he would,” she replied, speaking mostly to herself.
“I’m sorry, miss?”
“Nothing, Mr. Starkey. Nothing at all. Let me set down my bag, and I shall report to him at once.”
She opened the door to do just that, only to be greeted by an obviously anxious Nana.
“Oh, Nana,” Wendy said as she scratched the dog behind her ears, “I’m so sorry. I left you here for hours, didn’t I?” She turned to Starkey, who was waiting patiently in the passageway. “Mr. Starkey, would you be so kind as to take Nana out for a walk? I’ll report to the captain immediately.”
“Aye, miss,” Starkey said at once. “I’d be glad to.”
Had Starkey known what was going
on in the captain’s quarters at that very moment, he would have been more than glad to do it. In fact, he would have been downright grateful.
Wendy arrived to the muffled sounds of shouting. She knocked on the door twice and finally opened it herself, only to see Hook and Tigerlilja squared off across the map table, each of them trying to out-glare the other.
“It’s about trust,” Tigerlilja shouted at Hook. “If you intend to insert your precious ‘English presence’ on my ship, then Vegard will serve as a Norse presence within your ground forces.”
“She isn’t your ship!” Hook reminded her loudly. “She’s the king’s ship, which is why one of the king’s men needs to be aboard. And Vegard can’t be on the ground because he is her captain. At least temporarily.”
“Lest we forget,” Tigerlilja said, grunting in disgust.
“What’s this?” Wendy asked, looking from one to the other.
“She doesn’t want Mr. Abbot on the Jolly Roger,” Hook informed Wendy, “even though it’s a perfectly reasonable request.” He said the last bit while staring pointedly at Tigerlilja, but she did not look intimidated in the slightest.
“And I said I was happy to have Mr. Abbot aboard as long as Vegard is included in the group that will be capturing Blackheart,” she responded.
“Or killing him,” Hook muttered.
“At last, we agree on something,” Tigerlilja exclaimed.
“I thought it was decided that Vegard would captain the Jolly Roger,” Wendy said, careful not to point out who had done the deciding.
“It was decided,” Hook agreed.
“No, you decided,” Tigerlilja shot back. “I had the decency to wait until we were not in front of your men to discuss the matter. There’s no reason why I can’t captain my own ship. Excuse me,” she said, holding up a hand before Hook could reply, “your ship crewed by my people.”
“There is a reason,” Hook growled.
The Navigator Page 23
