by Anna Katmore
With the first rays of warm light gracing my face, it’s clear we’re not walking into another room of the house, but outside again. And more, we seem to enter a totally different place inside the forest. It opens to the sky, no tree tops blocking out the sun here.
There is a tremendous vegetable patch—actually several of them with pebbled paths leading through the greenery. Farther back to the garden, a few tall trees stand like dominant trolls, watching over us. Behind them…it’s dark. Nothing at all to see at either side of the garden. This is a spot of light in the middle of darkness. I whistle through my teeth.
Bre’Shun acknowledges my amazement with a beam of her own and leads me to a stone fireplace, where a black cauldron bears some herbal smelling soup. She stirs it several times, producing funny bubbles that explode on the surface. The color of the soup has me frowning. Because it has no color at all. It’s clear. Clearer than water. Even clearer than air. Suddenly I wonder, how I can even see that it’s liquid. And then the bubbles… I shake my head.
“So you want to know why Neverland doesn’t let you go,” Bre’Shun states like the question was tattooed on my forehead. Obviously, there’s nothing more to say so I lift one eyebrow. Bre mirrors that move, then she smiles. “Would you allow me to cut a strand of your hair?”
If that brings me anyhow closer to Angel, I don’t mind. “Go ahead.”
She produces scissors from a pocket of her dress which I believe is nothing but a big pleat and she uses it to cover her magic from me. With it, she cuts the strand of my blond hair that constantly falls over my left eye. “Now, isn’t that better?”
I give her a disbelieving stare.
Her mouth curls up. Then she holds my hair over the soup until the ends catch fire. Letting go of the thin strand so it trickles into the potion, she says, “Neverland’s gates are closed. Peter Pan sealed them when he decided he wouldn’t grow up.”
“Fantastic. So because of the brat he used to be, I can’t get away?”
“So it seems.”
Frustrated to the bones, I rub my hands over my face. “What can I do to open the gates?”
Blatantly ignoring me, Bre skims some of the soup with a wooden ladle and sniffs the potion, closing her eyes. Next, she takes a tiny sip and swishes the liquid inside her mouth. “Too feminine,” she points out with knitted brows like I should have any clue as to what this means. Then she holds the ladle in front of my mouth. “Spit.”
I know better than to question a fairy and do as I’m told. Bre dips the ladle into the cauldron, stirs a few times and then tastes the soup again, cutting a distracted glance to the sky.
“M-hmm. Much better.” She samples another mouthful. “But know what would make this perfect?” Her tone is meaningful, almost a whisper. “The dirt of a sailor.” Quickly, she reaches for my hand and twists it, inspecting my palm. Her face turns sad in an instant. “Your hands are way too clean, James Hook.”
“Yeah, I actually do wash myself. Sorry.”
Not in the least stung by my sarcasm, she slaps her fist into her open palm. “Too bad.”
Too bad for me, because I won’t get more answers, or too bad for her, because I failed to make this potion taste more of a man?
“Is there a chance to open the gates of Neverland?” I ask to bring her back to my problems and away from hers.
“Of course there is.” She cocks her head, giving me an eerily long once-over. From the vegetable patch beside her, she picks a lettuce leaf next and rubs it hard and fast over my forearm. My skin turns red and starts itching soon, but in expectation of help I hold still. Bre’Shun sniffs the leaf after half a minute, then rubs it some more on my arm, and finally dumps it into the soup. “You have to make Peter break the spell,” she says matter-of-factly and tries a mouthful of the soup once more, obviously pleased about the result. “Or kill him,” she adds then with not the least bit of remorse in her voice, and turns to smile at me. “Your call.”
I suck in a sharp breath. The fairies are a little special and sometimes just don’t act as one would expect them to, but this was hardcore, even for Bre’Shun. “I’m not going to kill my little brother.”
“Why not? You were after his life for most of the time you remember.”
“Yes, but—”
“But what?” She lifts a brow at me.
“Things have changed.”
“Have they? Or have you, James Hook?” Her laugh sounds like dripping water in a jungle. She skims some of the cooking potion and pours it into a watering can that’s already half full with water. Picking the can up, she loops her other arm through mine and leads me away from the steaming cauldron.
On our walk through her garden, the small tags on twigs that are stuck into the ground at each vegetable patch catch my attention. Beckon beans. Pleasure berries. Carrots of terror. Apart from having answers to every possible question, the fairy sisters are also known for their crazy potions and wondrous fruits. So here’s where they grow it all.
Bre’Shun walks with me to the back of the light suffused place, where a young tree grows in the shadows of others. It reaches to my belly button and only bears three juicy leaves.
“This is the tree of wishes.” She waters its roots from the can she brought. Instantly, the tiny tree shoots up a couple of feet and then another.
“Sink me, what was that?”
Bre beams. “You have some very healthy spittle, James Hook.”
“I did that?”
“Oh yes.” She brushes my arm. “Trees grow best when they have a man to rule them.”
I don’t understand one word, but I don’t want to either. What intrigues me more is what this tree can do. “Tree of wishes, you said? Is that a random name you gave it, or is there a deeper meaning?”
Putting down the watering can, Bre stems her fists to her slim waist and tilts her head. “What do you think, James? That I take a sip of creativity juice every morning and then give common plants exotic names?”
Obviously, that’s not what she’s doing. At her wry look, I gulp and shake my head.
“This little fellow here will soon carry fruits. With the potion you just helped me to hone, it might happen within the next month…instead of the usual ten years we have to wait on a new tree.” She turns and starts to walk back. “Bring the can,” she tells me over her shoulder. I hurry to follow her and hear more about the tree. “Once the fruits are ripe and a person eats one, they can make a wish. But beware, wishes are tricky. Remona ate a fruit a hundred and ten years ago. She wished she wouldn’t have to work around the house and help me in the garden for a decade.”
“Did she get that wish fulfilled?”
“Oh yes, she did.” Her face scrunches up. “She caught a nasty disease that bound her to bed for the entire time. Good thing she didn’t wish for a century…”
This is totally weird but, heck, so awesome. I’m thinking about the wish I would make if I had the chance to. I sure would word it right, avoiding possible side-effects.
“It won’t help you find Angel,” Bre states dryly, dashing all my hopes in a millisecond. “I told you what you have to do first. And then bring me a rainbow. You shall be able to find her then.”
Taking off my hat, I rake my hand through my hair. “This is impossible. How should I ever catch a rainbow?”
“Nothing is impossible, James Hook. You only have to do it.” Bre’Shun leads me through the high hall in the tiny house to the front again. Before we exit together, I glimpse a fluffy brown rabbit in the corner with hanging ears and a trembling little tail. A fox is lying on the stony windowsill. The tea? I’ll never get used to this place. But it’s always a pleasure to come here and be surprised.
By the gate at the fence, the fairy squeezes my hand as she says goodbye. Another ice-cold shiver zooms through my limbs. I lick my lips that feel cold and numb. They must have turned blue from what I can tell. Slipping my hand out of hers, I turn and start to walk away.
Bre’Shun’s voice follows me. “Make
him break the spell, Jamie, and you are free to go.”
If only it was so simple. I slide a glance over my shoulder. Her gaze is on me, friendly, but intense. Mystical. It raises a bad feeling inside me. “There’s more, isn’t there?” I say in a low voice as I stop.
Bre inclines her head and rubs her arms as if she’s feeling the cold she emits for the first time herself. “Dear boy, there’s always more.”
Peter Pan
SNEAKING THROUGH THE underbrush of the jungle, I place my forefinger to my lips and then signal Loney and Skippy behind me that the enemy is just in front. Loney pulls at the ears of his fox hat in return, showing he understood. Skippy wiggles his own big ears.
The others are merely steps away. If we attack at the right moment, we win this game, and Toby, Sparky, Stan and Tami have to cook us dinner tonight.
I chew a handful of clover, spit it in my hand and form a lump of it, which I shove into the reed blowtube—the only weapon allowed in this game. Gliding up a tree, I land hunkering on a massive branch. If I can surprise them from above, victory is under our belt. Without a sound, I crawl forward on the branch then reach out to flatten a nest of leaves in my way.
Bad mistake.
Behind the leaves, I find a sneering pixie with sparkling green eyes and pointy ears sticking out of her golden locks. She has a blowpipe at her mouth and, fluttering excitedly with her gossamer wings, she spits a lump of slimy greens dead center at my forehead.
“Oh no! Shot through the skull!” Dropping my weapon, I fake death and plummet ten feet to the ground, where a nest of ivy breaks my fall. Tameeka and the guys come out of their hidings and start howling and dancing around me like Indians around a bonfire. My team stands aside, making disappointed faces.
Great. Now I have to catch a boar that we can skin and roast over the fire tonight. The glowing orange sun stands low already. Better hurry.
Wrestling free from the ivy tendrils, I glide up and shout back to the Lost Boys, “Start the fire! I shall be back in an hour.”
Neverland is silent beneath me. There’s no rustling, no cries, nothing that gives away the hideout of dinner. My stomach rumbles. Hunting hungry is no fun. Sinking until only a couple of meters are between the tops of the trees and me, I glide to the borders of the jungle. Wild boars are known to come out at twilight and gather at the bottom of the volcano, but the only boar I find there is Hook. And his first, second, and third mate.
With a grin on my face, I land next to them, stealing my brother’s hat as I keep pace with him. “Where are we going?”
James pulls the hat off my head and shoves me hard against my shoulder, growling. I tip sideways. “Nice seeing you too,” I reply.
“If you want to hang out with pirates, get your own hat. Ever touch mine again and I’ll cut off your hand.” Now he turns to me and smiles. “We’re going to the volcano.”
“Yeah, I figured that from your determined stride. What’s up? Have you talked to fairies today?”
“Yes, to one of them.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said, bring me a fucking rainbow.”
“Oh.” I scratch my head. “That’s bitter.”
“You wouldn’t know where by any luck…” Giving me a sidelong glance he shakes his head and mumbles, “No, you wouldn’t.”
“Know how to catch a rainbow?” I ask. He’s right. I have no freaking idea. “What does she need one for anyway?”
James shrugs and starts to climb the steeper part of the volcano side. The men and I follow him. “She didn’t say. Only wants me to bring her one or, as it seems, I won’t see Angel again.”
A feeling of pity for him creeps over me. Considering the torn look on his face, there must be a tough battle going on inside him. Not bothered with climbing, I fly to the top and wait for the pirates to join me there. James wears a strange expression when he faces me again, even more so does Smee. I wonder what they’ve been talking about on the climb. I get the feeling I missed something important. Should this worry me? I grin at Hook’s face. Nah…
“Great. You made it, Captain,” I cheer for him and the crew. “Only took you half an hour.”
“Shut up and rather help me find a way to capture one of those bloody rainbows.”
Neverland is tinted in sunset gold, our shadows expanded to a foreboding length. Obviously, Hook missed that little fact. I frown at him. “Not that I would know how exactly to do that, but aren’t you forgetting something?”
“Like what?”
I shrug and roll my eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe that the show of rainbows won’t start until midnight? Which means you still have to wait—let me see…” To mock him I pull our father’s pocket watch from my breast pocket and push the tiny button that makes it snap open. “Yep. We can have a powwow for five more hours.”
James’ eyes start to glint. I’ve seen this look of his before. Slowly pushing the watch closed, I lower my chin and take a deliberated step back. “What are you up to?”
His expression changes fast. A smile appears. Not one that looks inviting, but the sudden greed is gone. “Don’t be stupid, Peter. I’m not going to steal that watch from you.”
“No?” I relax a little. “That’s good then.”
“I want you to throw it into the volcano.”
“What?” I don’t know what happened to him in the fairy forest today, but it certainly tampered with his mind. “Why should I do that?”
James heaves a long sigh and drags his hands over his face. “Because it’s the only way to open the gates of Neverland.”
“And that you know from the fairy, right?”
“Right. So would you please just do it?”
“No!” It belonged to my father. I’m not going to toss it into the liquid core of the island. “Are you crazy?”
“One would think so for even giving you an option,” he mumbles.
I don’t understand, but the eerie way his second and third mate come to flank me all of a sudden gives me the creeps and I decide it’s time to leave Hook alone in his fight for a rainbow. There’s a boar that needs to be slain and skinned before it gets dark anyway.
Turning away, I lift into the air, but after only a couple feet, something winds around my ankles and pulls me hard back to the ground. I land on my knees. Smee, that rat’s ass must have slung a rope around my legs when I didn’t pay attention. The other end is tightly wrapped around his fists.
An instant later, the pirate with mermaid tattoos on both his forearms, who’s called Fin Flannigan by the other filthy pirates, grabs my shoulders and holds me in place.
“Peter. Please,” Hook says with insistence. “It’s essential that you throw the watch into the volcano.”
“So? And what if I refuse?” I wrest myself free from Fin and shove him away. As I turn around, I hear the click of a trigger and look into the mouth of James Hook’s pistol. My throat goes dry.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Peter,” he pleads behind his outstretched arm. Then his gaze turns cold under his black hat and he growls, “But I will. You hold the key to Neverland’s doors. I want to leave and find Angel, but I can’t until you’re destroying the watch. Now throw that piece of shit into the volcano or I swear I’m going to toss your dead body over the edge with it.”
There’s no chance he’s joking about this, and I wonder how much more time he will give me. Five seconds before he shoots? Maybe ten? Reluctantly I lift my hand with the pocket watch and stare at it for a tight moment. My teeth clenched and my muscles taught, I then toss it to the side, into the hole in the earth that is Neverland’s middle.
Golden sparks shoot out of the volcano, just enough to assure the watch is forever lost.
When I look up, Hook has lowered the gun. “I’m sorry, Peter,” he whispers. It sounds like he doesn’t only mean threatening me with the pistol. There’s more. But I’d be damned to stay and question him about it. I’m done with my brother. And after the strangely good time we had together recently, I w
ant to slap myself, because deep inside his betrayal hurts.
Pulling my knife from under my belt, I bend low and slice through the rope around my ankles. No one stops me. As I straighten again, James takes a step toward me.
“Go to hell, Hook,” I tell him in a low voice.
I never thought to see the hurt look on his face again that he had when Angel was leaving Neverland, but how he looks at me now comes close. I don’t care. Spitting at the ground before his feet, I glide up and fly away.
Zooming over the lowlands and afterward over the jungle, I break out in a sweat of rage and wrath. My molars crunch as they grind against each other. The sweating is getting harder, my vision blurs. What the heck, this has nothing to do with the angry storm brewing inside me. I slow down, rub my thumb and forefinger across my eyes and kneed the spot between them. When I try to focus again, there are black dots in my vision grow wider.
My throat is tight and dry. It starts to hurt. The pain spreads deeper. My limbs feel numb all of a sudden, my back hurts and breathing troubles me like I’m gasping for air under water.
Everything feels wrong and rubbery. Twisting in the sky, I try to make out where the tree house is. I need to go home. And fast.
My chest stings as I cough on a careful descent. I have no idea where I am. Gliding too low over the tree tops, I feel the brushes of twigs and leaves against my stomach. Nausea rises from my gut, bringing with it a sour taste of bile. “Tami?” I call in a slight panic. She’s the only one who can find me up here. But wherever I am, I must be too far away from home still, because there’s no reply.
Dismissing my usual carefree speed, I almost crawl through the air now. The smells of the jungle sting my nose. They literally bite their way up my nostrils. My teeth ache like I took a punch to the jaw.
What the hell is happening to me? “Tameeka? Loney! Stan!” My voice breaks. Sinking lower, I can finally make out the highest tree in this area. Home. It’s just a few hundred feet away. Fighting for air as much as for each meter, I try to yell for the Lost Boys again. All that comes out is a terrible croak.
