by Liz Braswell
“Tinker Bell!” she cried. “Help!”
The fairy hovered in the air, watching the commotion thoughtfully.
Or…could it have been…disinterestedly?
Slimy, strong hands grabbed Wendy’s waist and tugged. Down.
But the mermaid didn’t manage to pull her entirely underwater. She had expected the human girl to be as light and lithe as one of them.
So the next mermaid leapt out of the water and landed with her hands on Wendy’s shoulders, trying to push her down from above.
Once again, this mermaid wasn’t strong or heavy enough to do much besides dunk Wendy for a moment. But they were learning. Hands and mouths grabbed at her body and dress, pulling and pushing and trying to drown her with their combined efforts.
“Tinker Bell!” Wendy spluttered.
The fairy, hanging above the lagoon, shook her head slowly.
That was the second to last thing Wendy saw.
The last thing was the fairy flying off, away into the jungle.
Tinker Bell had given up on the human girl and her hopeless situation.
Wendy went under.
Wendy’s thoughts as the water closed above her head were a strange mix of things.
Primarily it was panic and survival, her body thrashing and arms circling, mouth shut tight, trying to keep from breathing in the water that was now all around her.
And obviously her mind touched a bit on her rapidly approaching and inevitable death.
But there was also a surprising amount of disappointment. She and Tinker Bell had finally been starting to make a connection, even if it was just over a common goal. The fairy had even given her pixie dust to fly! And then the little thing had revealed herself to be no better than any of the other heartless members of Never Land—pirates, crystal monsters, murderous mermaids. She was utterly selfish, only concerned with her own problems and adventures.
Wendy couldn’t hold her breath any longer. She opened her mouth and…
The water was suddenly clear of mermaids and the weight holding her down was gone.
She popped to the surface like a child’s toy in the bath, free of all hands, tails, mouths, and other impedimenta.
Coughing and spluttering—as quietly as she could—she sucked down great, painful gulps of air.
No one attacked her.
She kicked to the side of the lagoon, muscles screaming. Whatever had happened, she had to get out of the water before the mermaids returned.
She was almost too weak to pull herself up onto the ledge and scraped the sides of her legs raw while scrambling for a good foothold. Once finally up, her muscles and lungs desperately wanted her to lie there and recover. But Wendy forced herself to roll until she was a good arm’s length away from the water and clear of any sneaky vines.
She took many amazing breaths while looking up at the sky. It was an intense deep blue and the palm fronds were black against the sun. It was bliss just to be alive. Even the little clouds of gnats hovering around her face didn’t bother her. Anyway, they were sort of cute, with what looked like giant red and yellow feathers trailing from their heads and behinds.
Eventually she recovered enough to sit up. Salt water poured indelicately out of her nose and down the back of her throat, burning it even more. Water sloshed in her ears dizzyingly. If she hadn’t known better, with the way her head was aching, she would have thought there was salt water up in her brains, too.
The mermaids were all still there, roiling in the water, lashing their tails and whipping up foam, fighting.
Each other.
“It’s mine!” the purple one cried. She was no longer so queenly or stately upon her boulder throne. She was in the water with the rest of them, wide mouth even wider with toothy glee, holding up what looked like a piece of fruit. Something orangish but elongated like a banana.
“No, it’s mine!”
The red-haired one leapt out of the water like a dolphin and snatched it out of her hands.
Two more mermaids dove after her, and so the roiling rebegan.
Tinker Bell hovered out of harm’s way above the water, shaking her head disgustedly. She had another piece of fruit in her hands, a small reddish thing rather like an oversized cherry.
Now Wendy understood.
Legends told of how mermaids craved fruit because there was nothing like it in the sea. They would trade pearls and gems and long-lost treasures for a single apple, according to old sea chanteys the boys used to sing.
Tinker Bell had managed to distract the mermaids and make them turn on each other just by pelting them with bananas—like a mean child at the zoo.
“Oh, well done,” Wendy tried to say aloud. It came out a rasping whisper. She coughed and more water came out—along with a thin trickle of blood. Nothing serious, she decided, being a practical girl not prone to flights of panic or hypochondria. It wasn’t tuberculosis or cancer; it was just the result of her throat being scraped raw. But the taste and feel of it combined with the salt water threatened her already turbulent stomach.
Despite the whisper, Tinker Bell, with her fairy ears, had heard what she had said, or at least caught the tone of it. Her eyes widened in surprise.
“That was very clever. Very, very clever,” Wendy said, her voice slowly gaining volume. “Good show.”
Tinker Bell—blushed?—and gave a timid smile.
The purple-haired mermaid below took the distraction as an opportunity: she leapt high in the air to snatch at the cherry thing the fairy held.
Tinker Bell buzzed straight up out of reach, dropping the fruit as ballast as she went.
The mermaid caught it and laughed with glee.
Wendy glared daggers at the sea creatures as she wrung out her dripping, tangled, sodden hair.
These were the majestic beings she had imagined brushing it?
“You’re quite literally the worst,” she growled. “The. Worst.”
The purple mermaid took a salacious bite out of the cherry and grinned at her wickedly.
The rest of the mermaids calmed down, the last of the fruit having been torn into several pieces and devoured by the lucky—or most vicious—ones.
“We were just having a little fun,” the pink-haired mermaid said with a pout.
“Fun. That’s all,” the green-haired one said, floating on her back.
“We were only trying to drown you,” the red-haired one added innocently.
“As I said,” Wendy said flatly. “The worst.”
Tinker Bell flew over to her, careful to avoid the reaching hands of the mermaids. She blanched when she saw the raw skin and sheets of blood on the human girl’s legs. Wendy grimaced and ripped off a wide strip of hem from her already bedraggled skirt and carefully dabbed at the wounds. The salt water was, if not sterile, then at least safer than anything coming out of the jungle. Once her legs were clean, she tore the makeshift bandage in two, wrapped one around each leg, and tied them neatly.
“We came here to get your help in finding your friend, you know,” she said when she was done. “And saving your land. We know where Peter Pan’s shadow is and came here looking for him so we could get it back. And also—”
But it didn’t matter that their entire world was being threatened by psychotic pirates; the mermaids only heard or cared about one thing.
“Peter Pan?”
They paused whatever they were doing at his name, bobbing in the water like floats on a fishing line.
“Why didn’t you say you were here for Peter Pan?” one of them asked.
“I DID!” Wendy barked angrily, so unlike herself that Tinker Bell blew a couple feet away in surprise. “You were too busy trying to lure me into the water to listen. You horrible, murdering fishwives!”
“We didn’t know it was about Peter Pan.…”
They began to dreamily glide and drift through the water.
“We know he lost his shadow.…”
“He hasn’t been the same without it.…”
“So sad, our Peter!”
“We’ll help him get it back.…”
“And then he’ll be happy again!”
Wendy gritted her teeth, trying to control her temper.
“All right. You can start by telling us where Peter is. We were told he came here.”
“He did!” the red-haired mermaid said, as serious as any toddler telling an actual truth. “He always comes here when he’s sad.”
“We cheer him up.”
“We…make him happy again.”
Tinker Bell grew red in the face, literally red, literally glowing, and her wispy brows became thunderheads.
“All right, yes, good, whatever,” Wendy said quickly. She didn’t want to hear any more, either, honestly. What a little harem he had here in Never Land! “When was that?”
“He came when the first moon was a tiny sickle,” the green-haired one said thoughtfully, putting a fetching finger to her lip, deep in thought.
“An ickle-sickle,” the red-haired one giggled.
“And he left just two mornings later!”
“No time at all with us, this time,” one pouted.
“So boring…”
“So sad…”
“All right. Please stop. Tinker Bell, how long ago was that? I’m afraid I’m quite unfamiliar with the phases of the moon here. Moons, I suppose.” For all she knew, time ran backward, or made no sense at all.
Tinker Bell cocked her head, thinking, then jingled four times.
“Four days ago? That’s bad news,” Wendy said grimly. “He could be anywhere by now. Did he mention at all where he was going?”
“Yes,” the purple-haired one said grandly, trying to regain her original poise. “He said he was going to petition…the First.”
At this, everything became silent. The mermaids stopped chattering and bobbing. The jungle noises faded into the background. Tinker Bell shuddered. Even the waterfall seemed subdued.
“All right, then, that’s something,” Wendy said, trying to sound bright despite the apparent dire connotations of the mermaid’s words. “And where do we find ‘the First’?”
“Hopefully,” one mermaid said as she turned a lazy barrel roll, “you don’t. And they never find you.”
“Helpful. As always.” Wendy stood up to wring out the rest of her skirts. “Thank you for the information. And who knows? If it turns out to be useful, I may not direct the pirates to your lagoon after we’ve dealt with them.”
“Oh! You’re so mean!” the pink-haired mermaid cried in dismay.
“Really? Are you kidding me?” Wendy demanded.
She felt a tiny tap on her hand.
Tinker Bell squeezed her finger and shook her head. It’s not worth it.
Wendy realized the little fairy was right. If Tinker Bell, who had just as much—if not more—reason to hate these mermaids than Wendy, could walk away, well, so could she.
“Good day,” she growled with as much dignity as she could muster. Feeling her dress drip-drop in tatters and streams behind her, her legs scandalously bare but for the bandages that now wrapped them, Wendy marched into the jungle unsure of the direction she was going except that it was away from the mermaids. Beside her was someone who might not be her friend yet, but who at least didn’t seem to want to kill her.
Which was beginning to seem like a very rare thing indeed in Never Land.
“I thought you said my idea was a good one,” Mr. Smee said doubtfully from behind Hook. “I thought you was going to use the shadow like a sextant or compass or whatnot to find Peter.”
The captain stood ramrod straight at the wheel, his lower jaw jutted out. That was one thing you could certainly say about Captain Hook—when he was moved by a plan (his own) or an emotion (his own) or a crazy idea suggested by another member of the crew (somehow reinterpreted as his own), his bravery and clarity of purpose surpassed those of the finest storybook hero. His antics might not have made a lot of sense to an outside observer, but he carried them through with the enthusiasm and fearlessness of a toddler who didn’t know any better.
Right now the outside observers were his own crew, who pretended to do their tasks while visibly unnerved by the sea changes going on around them. Most gave up and just twiddled their thumbs or daggers, trying to listen in on the captain’s plans.
“Yes, but the bloody thing’s a shadow,” Hook said with great disdain. “I can’t put a gold needle in its mouth and align it with north, now can I? I need someone else’s expertise on the matter. Outside direction on how to filter its essence into compass form.”
“Yes, Cap’n, I see that, but…” Smee swallowed. “Madam Moreia?”
“I don’t see anyone here with a better idea,” Hook said with a sniff. “I don’t like the idea too much meself…but there’s times a villain has got to rely on a little help from his people. His community, as it were. Exchange some trade secrets. My expertise is piracy, not black magic. Moreia is conjured out of the darkest fears stupid little children have of old women and their unknown habits. She’ll help. Out of professional courtesy, if nothing else.”
“Unknown habits?” Zane protested, overhearing. “Everyone normal’s got a granny. Smacks of ageism, don’t it?”
“Not if it’s specifically the unknown habits,” Major Thomas suggested. “For years I didn’t know that the foul-smelling cack me nanna smeared on her rump every morning was anti-wrinkle cream. Thought it was oils decocted from the placentae of unborn babes. So she could fly or sommat.”
“What was the recipe?” the Duke asked, trying to sound casual.
“Oh, shut up, you lot. I said stupid children, didn’t I?” Hook roared. “Who knows why they fear their old neighbors and not rabid dogs or Staphylococcus aureus or stepping out in front of oncoming carriages? Now SHUT UP and let me remember the passage over Soulsucker Reef!”
The heavens turned murky and thin. In patches between strangely resinous clouds, the sky was black with cold, un-glittering stars—despite its being late afternoon. A wind picked up, so hideous and unclean that even the most wretched pirates shuddered and held their noses against the foul stench. Polluted thoughts came with it, and not the usual familiar nightmares of witchery like ravens and cats and curses; these were presages of end-times: battlefields crawling with things no longer quite human, the dead and decaying in piles on the ground to every horizon, the wrenching howl of the last person alive.
Far too quickly for some on board, a rocky island emerged out of the mist. Hook muttered port port, starboard a bit, keep it steady to himself, his eyes as cold and unblinking as the alien stars above.
There was a dock on the otherwise empty island. Despite the crew’s desperate pleas to weigh anchor farther out, their captain refused.
“You, none of you, would still be here when I was done,” was all he would say, without his usual bluster and speechifying. The truth was enough to silence the men.
Ever so carefully, Hook piloted the ship in. Strange apparitions appeared on the dock. Their mouths dripped to the planks and they flickered in and out of view at irregular intervals…but they caught the ropes thrown down and tied them neatly to solid-seeming cleats. Soon, for better or worse, the boat was fastened tightly and in no danger of drifting off.
Captain Hook seemed almost jolly as he put on his hat and adjusted his mustache. “You’re with me, Smee.”
“I was really hoping you wouldn’t say that,” the other pirate murmured sadly, pulling his own cap down over his ears.
The captain grabbed a jaunty walking stick and sauntered down the gangplank. “I don’t think I need to tell you fellows no shore leave here, today,” he called over his shoulder.
The island wasn’t much more than a single rocky promontory rising up out of the sea like the longest claw of a dying antediluvian beast. On the tip of that claw was Madam Moreia’s hut.
“What kind of witch lives on an island?” Smee muttered as they left the dock and clambered up the narrow path that spiraled around the island (allowing the witch several perfect
views of approaching visitors). “Shouldn’t she be in a nice snug little house in the woods somewhere, luring children in with candy and then eating them?”
“This is the oldest kind of witch, Mr. Smee. If you had any education at all, you would know all about the Greeks and their very, very scary witches.”
“Guess I’m glad I never got a proper education, then,” the other pirate said, looking around woefully.
At the top of the promontory they walked across a precarious bridge to the hut: a gnarled mess of driftwood, strange black vines, and what looked like seaweed or possibly human flesh stretched taut for a roof.
Hook took off his hat and rapped.
“Madam Moreia? It’s Hook! Come to visit!”
The door opened of its own accord after a suitably spooky pause.
The inside of the hut was of course much larger than the outside, but so dark and cramped and filled with indistinguishable things that the effect was much less grand than it could have been. A primitive fire burned coals on the floor without a ring or anything around to contain it.
Tending the cauldron suspended above the flames was a bent-over old woman. Her skin was thick with grease and soot. Great ropy locks of hair were mounded on her head until they practically doubled her height. When she turned to fix a pair of milky eyes on her guests, Smee’s heart almost stopped.
“Ah, Hook! Such a long time!” she cried, surprisingly merry. “How’s my favorite handsome pirate captain?”
“Very well, Moreia, very well,” Hook said politely, leaning over and submitting himself to a kiss on the cheek that left a gray lip print.
“You want something, don’t you,” she said with a sigh. “You never just come to visit. Ah, well, what’s to be expected among the evil? Polite behavior? Niceties?” She cackled and slurped from the ladle she held. “I’m just cooking up a nice bowl of baby bits. Care for a bowl?”
“None for me, thank you,” Hook said, trying to sound regretful. “Maybe Mr. Smee would.”
“Who? Oh.” The witch looked up and made a big deal of winking at the first mate, although not quite in the right direction. Perhaps because of her cataracts. “What do you want, then? May as well get right down to business, eh?”
