Straight On Till Morning

by Liz Braswell

  Tinker Bell considered the wolf, then nodded slowly. She pointed at the Lost Boys and shrugged: What better place for a puppy to stay?

  “All right then, goodbye for now,” Wendy said, dipping down to give Luna a big hug around her neck and shoulders. The wolf licked her all over.

  Then the girl sighed and rose into the air. Tinker Bell followed—a few feet away, of course.

  At least, Wendy thought, we two have just had our first completely neutral conversation: no anger, no recriminations, no insult jingles. It is certainly a step.

  She waved at the Lost Boys. “It was lovely meeting all of you.”

  “See you! Send us a signal as soon as you’ve sorted stuff out with Peter!” Slightly called.

  The Lost Boys leapt and capered and yelled after them. Tootles and the twins broke into a wild twirling circle dance. Skipper gave a shy wave with a half-smile. Cubby howled like a wolf rather than the bear he thought he was. Luna joined in, a great doggy smile on her muzzle.

  It was a charming scene—and Wendy dearly hoped that would not be the last she would see of her beloved wolf.

  Once they were out of the jungle, Tinker Bell chose to hug the curving coast rather than cross the water, which would have been faster. And when Wendy took a detour over the waves to get a closer look at a whale spouting she realized why. The mild breezes that kept her cool on the beach were whipped into much stronger versions of themselves over the ocean. She found herself suddenly pitched out of control by a rogue gust and in danger of being batted out to sea—or of a good dunking.

  “A bit too Icarus there,” she chastised herself, using her arms to somewhat un-prettily flap her way back to land.

  Tinker Bell wisely only skimmed over the shallowest wavelets that encroached on the beach. She dipped a finger into the surface as she went, throwing up a pretty little spray that made rainbows in the golden sunlight. Fish leapt over her wake, flashing silver. Wendy caught her breath at the thoughtless beauty of it all. The fairy didn’t care how others perceived what she did—she just did. Whatever she wanted. The results were often grace and spectacle.

  When Wendy did whatever she wanted, people hated it. Like at parties. Like at Christmas, when she had been so full of the beauty of the season and the festive caroling music that she had made the mistake of enthusiastically telling everyone how a Never Land holiday might be run. Utterly unaware (at first) that not only did the people there not care about the holidays of an imaginary world or its cleverly invented trappings, but also that they were more than a little horrified that these stories came out of the mouth of a sixteen-year-old, and not a child.

  (She had also been unaware at the time that her behavior would become the prime topic of jokes and gossip for the next season.)

  Back in the reality of Never Land, the dark peaks of the Black Dragon Mountains glowered in the far distance, ominous smoke circling them like a scarf. Gray and brown twists of vapor rolled around each other like serpents, the air so thick it had texture and mass. Everything together fooled the eye into thinking there was an actual dragon—the size of a city—slithering through the landscape.

  Maybe after they found Peter Pan and saved Never Land Wendy could explore those mountains and look for real dragons. She wondered how long the fairy dust would last.

  It would, of course, be far more fun with someone else along. Even a foul-tempered fairy.

  The northern side of the Mermaid Lagoon was a rocky, leisurely half-moon with a strip of jungle clinging to its stony spine. Flickering through green shadows were bright birds in orange, green, and yellow flocks. Here the clean, salty slap of the sea air was replaced by a heavy atmosphere of exotic blooms and ancient, earthy decay.

  Tinker Bell headed for a gray ledge studded with palm trees, a hidden platform from which they could survey the water below. She landed silently and then crawled to the edge to peep over the side, keeping her body flat and out of sight from the ground.

  Wendy did her best to emulate the fairy but her long skirt kept tangling in her legs. Frustrated and in a huff, she decided it was safe with no one but a girl fairy around to see her and hiked the dress up between her knees. Ignoring Tink’s eye roll at her awkward maneuvers, she leaned over the lip of the rock for a look.

  A paradisiacal lagoon lay below them. The water was an unbelievable, unreal turquoise, its surface so still that every feature of the bottom could be admired in magnified detail: colorful pebbles, bright red kelp, fish as pretty and colorful as the jungle birds. A waterfall on the far side fell softly from a height of at least twenty feet. A triple rainbow graced its frothy bottom. Large boulders stuck out of the water at seemingly random intervals, black and sun-warmed and extremely inviting, like they had been placed there on purpose by some ancient giant. And on these were the mermaids.

  Wendy gasped at their beauty.

  Their tails were all colors of the rainbow, somehow managing not to look tawdry or clownish. Deep royal blue, glittery emerald green, coral red, anemone purple. Slick and wet and as beautifully real as the salmon Wendy’s father had once caught on holiday in Scotland. Shining and voluptuously alive.

  The mermaids were rather scandalously naked except for a few who wore carefully placed shells and starfish, although their hair did afford some measure of decorum as it trailed down their torsos. Their locks were long and thick and sinuous and mostly the same shades as their tails. Some had very tightly coiled curls, some had braids. Some had decorated their tresses with limpets and bright hibiscus flowers.

  Their “human” skins were familiar tones: dark brown to pale white, pink and beige and golden and everything in between. Their eyes were also familiar eye colors but strangely clear and flat. Either depthless or extremely shallow depending on how one stared.

  They sang, they brushed their hair, they played in the water. In short, they did everything mythical and magical mermaids were supposed to do, laughing and splashing as they did.

  “Oh!” Wendy whispered. “They’re—” And then she stopped.

  Tinker Bell was giving her a funny look. An unhappy funny look.

  The mermaids were beautiful. Indescribably, perfectly beautiful. They glowed and were radiant and seemed to suck up every ray of sun and sparkle of water; Wendy found she had no interest looking anywhere else.

  Sometimes when he’s down he goes to Mermaid Lagoon. Wasn’t that what Cubby had said?

  Of course, it made sense: just a few moments of watching these mysterious beings made Wendy feel light and happy all over. But…imagine having to compete with them.

  Even if the fairy and Peter Pan weren’t—involved, romantically, this would have been a hard act to follow. What kind of girl, even just a friend, wouldn’t grow jealous of a crowd of the most extraordinary, delightful creatures on the planet? Ones to whom your best friend turned whenever he was down?

  Stupid girls. There are so many…all over Never Land…and you in London.…Skipper had said that. Who knew what other sirens populated this island? Selkies? Fairy princesses? Normal princesses? Pirate queens? Dryads? Naiads?

  Wendy decided to say nothing about the exquisite beauty of the mermaids.

  “Ah, there they are. But I don’t see Peter Pan,” she said instead, narrowing her eyes and casting her gaze to every obvious shadow and cranny.

  Tinker Bell shook her head slowly, thoughtfully.

  “Perhaps we should…” Wendy’s voice trailed off.

  The old Wendy would have stood up and marched on down to find out where he had gone, questioning the pretty mermaids closely.

  The new Wendy, Never Land Wendy, paused.

  She had been held hostage by blackhearted pirates when she had thought she had made a simple deal.

  She had nearly been killed when crossing a harmless-looking clearing.

  And these beautiful, innocent-looking mermaids, in their beautiful lagoon—were they actually what they seemed?

  Were their teeth just a little sharper than those of their human counterparts?

&n
bsp; “Perhaps we should continue to surveil the situation from up here,” Wendy said finally, sitting up straight-backed, her legs crossed. She cupped her hands around her mouth.

  “Hallo down there! Good afternoon!”

  Immediately the mermaids froze. Some dove down into the water. They made esses of their bodies like snakes, keeping their heads above the surface. All fixed her with their large, unblinking wet eyes.

  The one on the largest rock alone stayed where she was. She had tightly braided purple locks and gripped the sides of her gray stone with fingers that now seemed a little more clawlike than human.

  She relaxed when her eyes found Wendy.

  So did all of the other mermaids, as if they all saw her at the same time. As one.

  “Don’t be afraid!” Wendy called. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Oh, that’s nice,” the—leader?—said. Her tail began to swish behind her on the rock, the tip of her fin just touching the water, flipping it so little droplets spit into the air. The other mermaids began slowly moving again as well, treading water or beating their tails. They kept their faces halfway below the surface, however, noses firmly beneath. It was more than a little disturbing. While Wendy knew logically that mermaids could breathe underwater, it seemed very unnatural to hold themselves that way. No bubbles burbled up.

  “Humans are always trying to catch us,” the purple one said, pouting. “Nasty piratesss…”

  “I’m not a pirate!” Wendy said quickly. “I’ve just escaped from being their prisoner, in fact.”

  “Nasty piratesss,” another one said, pink-haired, kicking herself above the water for a moment so she could speak, her tail working and sliding.

  A little surprising, because serpents can’t speak, of course, Wendy thought.

  Then she wondered what had suddenly made her think of serpents.

  “Humans want to steal from us. A lock of our beautiful hair…” a red-haired one growled. Her locks weren’t merely ginger; they were a flaming, tomato, poppy red. Red as a ladybug or the lips of some inappropriately dressed woman.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” Wendy promised. “Though your hair is beautiful. It’s the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen.”

  Tinker Bell rolled her eyes. But the mermaids rolled in the water, smiling and—hissing? They seemed to like what she had said quite a bit.

  “We can’t see you very well,” the purple one called out. “We can’t see your hair. Our eyes don’t work very well above water. Come down so we can see you.”

  “Yess,” a green-haired beauty begged. “So we can see your hair.”

  “So we can comb it,” another said.

  “So we can brush it,” a third said.

  The mermaids swam back and forth in the lagoon, pleading and making dizzying patterns. They were beautiful and plaintive and hypnotizing to watch.

  Wendy’s heart tugged with a terrible pain. Such a scene had only existed in her wildest, most secret fantasies, ones she hadn’t even told her brothers about: How she would make friends with a beautiful mermaid and the two would comb each other’s hair, and laugh and sing. And maybe the mermaid would make fun of her voice, for Wendy could manage simple hymns and popular songs all right, but she was no siren. And then they would trade combs; Wendy would give the mermaid the silver-handled brush the Darlings had given her for Christmas one year, and the mermaid would give her an ivory comb, or maybe one made from a fish skeleton with tiny white translucent teeth. And they would forever remain friends, and even if they were far apart, they would think of each other every time they brushed their hair.

  Wendy wanted nothing more than to lean over and plunge into the water below, to sit on a rock and have them do her hair in proper mermaid style. Long and down and flowing, with a flower or sea star for decoration.

  But their enticements were a little overmuch, their teeth a little sharp.

  “Oh, I would dearly love to, after I’ve asked a few questions,” Wendy said apologetically.

  “What?” the leader called out, putting a hand to her ear. “I’m afraid I can’t hear you.”

  “I said I have a few questions!”

  The mermaid was silent—all of them were silent. They stared at her without blinking. It was like she had reached a dead end in a game.

  Wendy groaned inwardly.

  “I will come down to talk to you,” she said, regretting every word. “But not to the water’s edge. I’m afraid of falling in, you see. I’m not a terribly good swimmer.”

  She thought it was a good story. But Tinker Bell shook her head and slapped a hand over her face.

  There was another ledge just a little bit below the one they sat on that still seemed a safe distance from the water. Wendy clambered down to it as neatly as she could, trying not to further tear her already ruined dress. Never Land was not easy on one’s clothes. Perhaps that’s why the little fairy’s skirt was all ragged at the hem. If Wendy wasn’t careful, she’d wind up in animal skins and purloined gear like the Lost Boys…or, heavens forfend, as naked as the mermaids!

  Tinker Bell was wary, taking a long, lingering moment before drifting in a lazy spiral down to where Wendy now stood four or five feet above the water. She crossed her arms, upset that they had given in even this much.

  But the mermaids leapt and played in joy at this development, swimming up close to and almost under Wendy—and then away again on their backs, like otters.

  “What are you wearing?”

  “Take it off this moment!”

  “You can’t swim in that!”

  “I do not plan on swimming anytime soon. As I mentioned before, I cannot swim very well,” Wendy said primly. “And anyway I…we…came here with rather urgent business.…”

  “Bah!” The blue-haired mermaid stuck out her lip and splashed water with the tip of her tail so expertly that it hit Wendy squarely in the face.

  The mermaids laughed and tittered and dove and flipped.

  “Here’s to business,” another one said, hitting her tail even harder on the water. This time Wendy managed to cover her face, but it was a much larger volume of water, drenching her head and her hair. It was a hot day and the water was cool, so it wasn’t the most unpleasant thing at first. But the jungle air at the edge of the lagoon was close and her dress stuck to her in clumps now, not likely to dry anytime in the near future.

  Her shadow seemed outraged; she shook herself from top to bottom and wrung herself out like a towel, throwing little shadow droplets everywhere.

  Tinker Bell peeped out from a large monstera leaf she had managed to duck behind. Her eyes widened in wonder at the giant, salty droplets that ran down her green shield, but then she noticed the sopping wet human girl. She giggled, pointing.

  “All right, all right,” Wendy said gamely, trying to keep her smile. Her shadow straightened herself out and set herself back in place behind Wendy—but very behind Wendy, keeping her as a sort of bulwark against more splashes of shadow water. “Very funny. But really, I’m here for a rather serious quest. You see, Peter Pan has…”

  “Peter Pan!” the red-haired one sighed, flipping herself onto her back and swimming dreamily across the lagoon.

  “That Peter Pan…” A green-haired one whistled.

  “What do you know of Peter Pan?” the purple-haired one still on the rock asked, eyes narrowing.

  The pink-haired one swam up close to Wendy, near the bottom of her ledge, listening intently.

  “Well, he and I have some things to…sort out,” Wendy stammered. She didn’t want to admit that she was responsible for his shadow now being in the hands of pirates—whom the mermaids obviously feared and hated. And they didn’t seem to have a great attention span. It would be difficult to make it all the way to the end, when she explained how she was trying to make reparations for what she had done.

  The pink-haired one grinned strangely up at her.

  “Yes?” Wendy asked politely.

  But the mermaid just fixed her with giant caram
el eyes and held up a vine draped over her hands.

  “I don’t understand,” Wendy said. “What—”

  Suddenly, the mermaid yanked. The vine snapped taut; the other end clung to a tree that was behind Wendy. She was thrown headfirst into the water.

  Not the best swimmer even in calm situations, Wendy panicked, throwing her arms over her face as if expecting another splash. She hit the lagoon in the worst sort of tangled position, mouth open as she tried to cry out.

  Salt water immediately ran down her throat and up her nose. She coughed and choked and sneezed, flailing her arms around and trying desperately to right herself. Her dress swirled and caught around her legs and waist, tangling her limbs utterly and weighing her down.

  Her toes touched the bottom.

  This shocked her into thinking again, and she kicked off it toward the surface.

  “HELP!” Wendy called out as soon as her mouth was out of the water—instead of breathing, which might have been a better call.

  A mermaid took this opportunity to grab her hair and yank her head back.

  Wendy’s lower half flipped up as her torso bent backward underwater, forcing a river’s worth of water up her nose.

  She coughed and floundered. Opening her eyes underwater didn’t cause any extreme discomfort, although what she saw did: the sinuous forms of mermaids cutting back and forth through the current, quick as knives.

  She tried to paddle to the surface, old lessons finally kicking in. She pushed her legs hard, hoping to connect with one of the glittering, slick bodies.

  Her left foot did, and it was just enough to propel her to the surface.

  She didn’t waste her chance this time; she sucked in a deep breath of air.

  The mermaids leapt and porpoised around her, their grins hard and white. Their mouths seemed a little wider than they should have been, their teeth even sharper.

  One of John’s random facts popped into her consciousness: how some sharks had four rows of teeth, one inside the other, to more quickly disembowel their prey.