Wendy’s voice caught in her throat at the thought of John doing something dangerous, so far from her protection. Her anger made her want to agree with Abbott, but her love for John, even though he never deserved it, won the battle for her tongue.
“John is very smart.”
Abbott’s voice lowered. “A lot of boys here were once very smart. Some of them are now swinging over there.”
He nodded his head toward the hanging skeletons, now whipping back and forth in the wind. He gripped a spear in one hand and stepped out of the trees into the misty sunlight.
“Come on, girl, let’s go. Stay by Kitoko or me. If something happens to you, we will never hear the end of it.” He looked at Peter long and hard before shaking his head. “Honestly, you shouldn’t even be here.”
Following behind Abbott’s filthy boots, Wendy flew up to the mouth of the cave where Peter waited. She tried not to look at the floating body of the dead pirate as she flew over him, his eyes and mouth widened in surprise, a tiny stream of blood trickling out from the corner of his mouth, water filling up the collapsed place where his rib cage had been broken. Up close, he looked no different than any other man. His face was clean underneath his black beard, and surprisingly young. Handsome even. He had not seen the death that came from the sky. He had not seen the boy who had crushed him into the ground like an insect. It was the first dead person Wendy had ever seen, and just for a minute she hoped that death was different in Neverland. That some sort of magic would rise out of his chest and that the man would be given another chance to become good.
The man stayed dead.
Abbott reached over and shut the man’s eyes before pushing Wendy away from the body. Peter sloshed past Wendy with his sword drawn out in front of him.
“Lost Boys . . . forward! And remember, we are here for one thing only—if it won’t make you drunk, don’t carry it out! We’ve got plenty of treasure at home!”
The Lost Boys raised their weapons and began rushing toward the mouth of the hideout. Wendy followed behind them, her tiny dagger tucked underneath her shirt, practically useless, just like she felt. She ducked past the jagged wooden teeth that lined the entrance, wincing when she saw the bloodstains that dulled their sharp edges. The air changed, and she felt a shiver of terror run over her skin.
She was inside the Vault.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
INSIDE THE HIDEOUT, the damp walls oozed with the same dark green condensation that dripped from the eyes, the sappy substance pooling with the river that pulled at their feet. The water was icy around Wendy’s ankles, though her forehead dripped with sweat. It was all quite undignified, this adventure. Inside the open mouth, the rocky cavern narrowed, and a branch of the river poured down a slippery slope that hooked to the right.
“Come on!” Peter whispered, and they followed the hill downward, the river still at their ankles. At the bottom of the wet slope, a slight drop off the rocks led the water and the boys over a small waterfall that splashed onto flat rocks below. After the drop, which they all simply flew over, there was a sharp turn that led to an open archway, the walls decorated with tiny bones that made Wendy think of popcorn strings. Over the doorway, marked with a smear of blood that reminded Wendy deep in her brain of a very old story she had heard once, were the words Turn away, turn away. Peter flew underneath the arch, not even noticing the scrawl. Once through, he dropped to the ground.
“Incredible. Hooky, Hooky, what have we here?” Through the archway, an enormous narrow hallway stretched out before them, so deep that Wendy could barely make out the end of it. Dotting the hallway were roughly a dozen or so doors, each one marked with a hook symbol. They creaked and slammed in the warm, wet wind that rushed down from the mouth of the cave. Some doors were closed tight, others were open and slamming back and forth as the river water ran in and out of the rooms, one small wave playfully chasing another. From somewhere deep in the cave, Wendy could hear the faint mumble and laughter of friendly conversation, from pirates who were not yet aware that Peter Pan and his boys were in their midst.
Wendy counted fourteen doors, the hallway ending with one massive circular iron door that had a large metal wheeled lock as well as a dozen smaller ones that lined all sides of its hinges. Ah, she thought. The Vault. Peter looked at the door hungrily before crouching down and closing his eyes, sniffing the air. His fingers trailed in the water. Then he leapt up, his feet twitching, one hand held aloft for silence.
His whisper was sharp.
“Abbott, take your boys and search the back six doors, but go no farther. Listen for the pirates. Kitoko—go back outside to the rock and keep an eye out for any returning watches coming in from the jungle, or, God forbid, ships.”
Kitoko nodded at Peter with a gentle smile. Peter raised his eyebrows.
“Keep your eyes on the sea, yeah? If John did his job, we should never see those ships turn our way.”
Peter glanced over at Wendy with a hopeful look laced with expectations. I hope John doesn’t mess up, Wendy thought.
“The rest of you, come with me, and we will check the first six doors. Wendy, you’re with me.” Wendy quietly walked over to Peter’s side. He took her hand, and her heart skipped a beat.
“Are you feeling better?” he whispered, brushing aside a lock of her hair that was plastered against her forehead.
“Fine.”
She wasn’t, but there was no going back. Peter took her hand and they pushed through the water, a cluster of Lost Boys following behind them. They came up to the first door. It was unlocked, and opened with barely a touch from Peter’s hand, water rushing up to push it open before him. The room was seemingly held up by broken logs and dilapidated pieces of drift-wood. Clumsily arranged logs rose up to the ceiling, holding up a waterlogged set of pallets and branches. Across the logs, shaved-down tree branches functioned as shelves. Overflowing from the shelves and every possible surface were empty chests. Oak chests, with gaping mouths and sawdust handprints. Large chests, half the length of the room, marked by a hundred small drawers and petite maroon knobs. A silver chest that had eight different kinds of locks on it and inlaid rubies in the shape of a sun. There were chests shaped like suitcases. Bobbing up and down on the shallow river was an elaborate mirrored chest with a pale green top, the color of the Neverland Sea at sunrise. Red chests the color of blood, their tops wrenched open, seemed to beckon to the curious, and there were chests covered with pink seashells that flickered in the faint light. Wendy stared at the chests, fascinated, her ankles going numb in the river water that caressed around them. Peter turned away from the strange sight with an exasperated sigh.
“Boring. The wine isn’t here. Next room!”
Wendy could have explored the chests for hours, but she followed Peter out of the room and back out into the narrow hallway. The next room had a half door that came down from the ceiling. Peter pushed it up into a narrow opening in the rock. They stepped inside, the Lost Boys at Peter’s heels, the room striking them wide-eyed and silent. This room was much larger than the chest room and was designed for a specific purpose. It was a perfect cylinder on the inside, its white walls smooth and shiny, reminding Wendy of a waterworn pebble. Two dim lanterns flashed their light against the walls, where it crawled and jumped with a hypnotizing shadow that circled around them: the shadow of bars. The walls were scrawled with random words and discombobulated sentences, each written angrily in black soot, everything from the word Pan, written again and again, to a snippet of a John Donne sonnet: Death, be not proud, though some have called thee.
In the very center of the room was a hanging cage. Its shape reminded Wendy of a birdcage, only it was large enough for a full-grown man. Its domed roof was marked by iron locks that snapped over each hinge. At the crown of the roof, a single orange lily bent its head over the cage, its pollen drifting lazily down. The cage was empty, but its impact was haunting all the same; moved by a few gears and pulleys that hung down through a cylindrical opening at the peak of the
room, the cage continually spun clockwise, making Wendy dizzy just watching it. Faster and faster it spun in that one direction until it seemed to slow down before spinning the opposite way, gaining speed again until the pattern repeated.
“What is it for?” she asked.
“Torture.” Peter grinned, his eyes amused as he looked over the room without a hint of fear. “Particularly for someone who flies. It would disorient you, spin your internal axis.” He leaned back and laughed, clutching his belly. “And it’s all for me!” He kicked a splash of water toward the cage, completely unaffected by the jarring sight. He snorted.
“Hook thinks himself so creative with all his pulleys and inventions. As if he could hold Peter Pan. C’mon, the libations we’re looking for aren’t here anyway.”
Wendy continued to watch the cage spin, fascinated by how it continued rotating this way and that, faster and faster, like a spindle. There was a seductive rhythm to it. Peter’s fingers on her elbow finally pulled her out of the trance.
“Wendy?”
“Yes, I’m coming. Sorry.” She shook her head. Foolish girl. Time was of the essence—any moment now, Kitoko could shout down that pirates had returned, or worse, that the ships had somehow been notified. Peter flew past Wendy and the boys, landing in the doorway of the third room.
“In this room, we have—” Peter stopped. Wendy saw his body go rigid and thought that they had finally found what they were looking for, but then Peter turned around, his eyes the darkest shade of navy that Wendy had ever seen. He struggled to control his voice.
“The wine isn’t in here. Check the next room.”
The Lost Boys stared at him until he narrowed his eyes.
“Now!”
Then they all trooped past him, on to the next room.
“This one’s a privy!” one of the Lost Boys whispered, and then they all sloshed down to the next one, giggling as they went, as boys were known to do at the mention of a privy.
“Peter, look at this! Look at all this treasure!”
Peter darted toward the fifth door. Wendy quietly stepped into the third door, the one that had affected Peter so dramatically. She braced herself for the worst—bodies perhaps?—but found herself looking at a strangely familiar sight: instruments. Otherwise a bare room with elegant dark green walls piped with gold crowning, the room was piled high with haphazard stacks of instruments and sheet music, the piles sitting on a raised platform to keep them safe from the river lapping beneath them. In addition to the music, a broken harpsichord leaned up against the wall, its teeth askew. There was a lovely violin with tiny painted angels on the neck that rested on the broken harpsichord. A guitar, two brass horns, and one strange instrument involving animal skins, strings, and a corded bone also filled the space. The walls were adorned with flutes and clarinets and an ancient harp that looked like it once belonged to a lady of leisure. Wendy reached out to strum one of the strings of the harp, her fingers brushing it with a clean pluck. The sound rang out over the sound of the water around her feet, which were becoming quite cold.
A hand closed hard around her own.
Peter’s.
She turned to face him, afraid that he would be angry with her. But the eyes that met hers weren’t navy. They were the bright green that she adored so much, the color of trees and emeralds and life on Pan Island. He smiled gently at her.
“What are you doing in here?”
“I just wanted to see the room. I love music.” She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, you gentle girl,” Peter murmured, his hand caressing her cheek. Wendy felt her heart quicken. “There is nothing to be sorry about.”
Wendy turned and looked again at the instruments.
“Hook must be quite the musician. Strange, isn’t it? A pirate musician.”
Peter’s brow furrowed, but only for a second. “I suppose. But I hear it’s quite hard to be a musician with one hand.” Then he laughed deeply before swiftly pulling Wendy out into the main hallway. Wendy watched as the Lost Boys went from one room to the next. Then it struck her.
“Peter!”
“Yes?”
“We’re wasting our time! I know where the wine will be.”
His eyes widened. “How?”
She laughed to herself. “I thought like John for a moment.”
Peter still looked confused.
“The wine wouldn’t be near the end of the hallway—it’s too cold. It also wouldn’t be near the mouth . . .”
Peter’s eyes widened. “Because it’s too warm!”
“So my guess would be . . .”
“Room seven?” Peter grabbed her hand with a smile, and Wendy flushed, feeling like a conspirator, the thrill of excitement overcoming any lingering doubts she had. So this was adventure. They flew quickly down the long hallway, landing with a splash in front of the seventh door. Peter took a deep breath and pushed against the door. Nothing happened. He shoved again.
“Locked,” he mumbled. “The bastard. Of course he locks up his liquor. Darby!”
A kind Lost Boy who had spoken to Wendy a few times scampered over, carrying a small bag. The sandy-haired lad unfolded several strange metal tools and eyed them closely before picking up one.
“Stand back, boys!” He paused. “And ladies. Lady. You know.”
They complied, and Darby began unfurling several tiny spirals from inside a glass tube. Finally, he selected a razor-thin pipe with a blossoming end that twirled in the dim light of the hideout. With a grin, he inserted the tube into the lock and began turning it.
“He was once a thief,” Peter whispered to Wendy, giving her hand a squeeze.
“I can see that.”
Darby listened to the door and turned the tube once, twice, and then a hard counterclockwise turn. Something clicked on the other side.
“Now . . .” he whispered.
Peter handed him a single match from the bag. Darby blew on the end of it, struck it on the rock wall, and as soon as the flame sparked, he shoved it inside the glass tube and covered the end with the palm of his hand. At first there was nothing, but then Wendy heard the slightest moan, as if the door itself were crying out. She felt Peter’s arms circle around her waist and was about to object out of mortification when they were both blown silently off their feet, backward into the air. But as soon as the momentum pulled at her, Wendy felt herself stop. She wasn’t falling. She wasn’t slamming into the wall behind her. She was simply floating in the air, Peter behind her. She shook her head and floated back down to the ground, where the water swirled in angry waves, disturbed by the change in pressure. Silently and miraculously, the door had been pulled inside the room. Peter took her hand and led her inside, followed by his small army of boys.
“Beautifully done, Darbs!”
Darby grinned from ear to ear as Lost Boys patted him on the back and shoulder, congratulating him on his talents. Peter ruffled his hair affectionately as he walked past, and the boy practically burst with pride. Once Wendy passed the splintered wood that was once the door, she let a smile play across her face. The seventh room had been a good guess. Like the room with the giant birdcage, this room was also circular in shape, but it was narrow where the other one had been wide, a thin funnel that echoed outward. Naturally carved shelves of rock jutted out from the walls, and Wendy saw that the green condensation that graced the entrance also dripped down the walls here. Light came in from a small hole in the ceiling, barely big enough to fit a bottle through it, and bathed the room in a green, hazy light. And what bottles filled the room! Wendy gasped when her eyes traced up to the ceiling. Bottles of every shape and color surrounded her: blue bottles with naked mermaids carved into the sides, sea-glass bottles with clear liquids that sloshed around inside of them, as if moved by an invisible hand. Several clear bottles with bloodred wine and wooden corks sat on the topmost shelf. There were green bottles marked with tiny pocks that looked like stars. Black bottles with wide yellow stripes and elaborate jeweled tops sat nex
t to tiny bottles that Wendy could fit into her pocket. There were hundreds upon hundreds of bottles, each one beautiful in the blazing vert light. How odd, she thought—this room of vice was somehow a place of tranquility in all the chaos. She cleared her throat.
“Are there so many versions of liquor?” she asked innocently.
Peter laughed. “This is but a small selection, my darling. But there . . .” He pointed to a bottle on the highest shelf, enclosed in a wavy glass case with a small lock on the side. “That is Hook’s vice.”
The bottle was thin, clear, and unremarkable in every way, marked only by an upside-down skull etched into the glass. Liquid the color of pure honey sat perfectly still inside of it, no more than would fill two glasses.
“Rum. The purest of its kind. It’s made on one of the outer islands.”
Peter looked at the boys lingering around, each one touching the bottles with a sort of intoxicated glee at their own success. He shook his head and frowned, his clever eyes darting around the room, calculating, measuring.
“This was almost too easy, wasn’t it, Wendy Darling? Hm. Right.” He clapped his hands once, and the boys silenced themselves. “All right, boys, load up! No one touch the rum!”
Everyone began grabbing liquor bottles and stuffing them into large sacks padded with blankets and clothing. Bottles clanged against each other as the boys shoved them roughly into the bags. The sound of chipping glass filled the air, sharp notes against the lulling sound of the lapping water at their feet.
“Careful!” Peter snapped. “Handle them gently!”
He turned to Wendy with a sigh.
“Boys.”
Grinning, he flew up in the air and began rifling through an overflowing shelf, bottles rolling off the shelf and landing with a splash in the river. He pulled out a bottle and looked at the label.
“Aha! Yes!”
He flew back down to her.
“Lovely Wendy, you carry this one. This bottle can be just for you.”
Wendy looked down at the bottle in his hands as guilt welled up inside of her. They were stealing. This was stealing. It was thrilling and terrible and wonderful all at once. She gave a small shake of her head, and Peter tilted his own toward her.
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