She turned it over in her hand. Such a lovely little thing couldn’t hurt, she mused, and it was so pretty. Closing her eyes, she willfully pushed the violent memories of the day away and uncorked the bottle, taking a huge swig without thinking. It was strong, like taking a sip of sweet fire. The honeyed liquid filled her mouth, a sharply pleasant burn traveling down her throat and into her belly. It warmed her from within. Wendy gave a small laugh. She hadn’t expected it to be so . . . good. Without thinking, she took another drink, feeling reckless and buzzy all at once, like a very grown-up girl indeed. A shadow passed overhead, and she looked up to find Peter hovering above her, delicately fingering a lock of her hair.
“Such a pretty color, like a newborn fawn.”
Wendy smiled up at him. “Some may say dirt.”
Peter’s eyes grew serious. “You could never be as plain as dirt. Just look at your face.” He cradled her cheek, and Wendy turned away, a blush creeping over her face as she remembered their passionate kiss in the mist. It seemed now like a hundred years ago, though it had only been that morning. So much had happened since then. The irresponsible thrum in her heart fluttered away as she remembered the two boys who hadn’t returned home with them. Peter landed softly beside her and took her elbow gently with his hands.
“After the feast, I want to take you somewhere. Somewhere special.”
Wendy blushed at the thought, but at the same time, she felt a twinge of betrayal in her chest. But why? She couldn’t think of a single reason why this should make her feel anything but giddy. When she tried to pinpoint the feeling, all she could see were the rapidly turning pages of a book.
“Peter, it’s so odd but . . .” She was about to describe the strange image when the sound of the bell high atop of Pan Island began to ring loudly. Peter’s eyes twinkled, and he leapt into the air, floating backward away from her.
“It’s almost time!” He clapped his hands together, and for a moment, Wendy saw the boy he must have been when he was younger. Dirty, excitable, quick. The boy who looked down on her now was still that boy, only the look in his eyes when he gazed at her—no, there was nothing youthful about the fire in his adoring eyes, the way they swallowed her up in a consuming blaze. Wendy swallowed nervously. Peter pointed up to the alcove above the table, a wooden outcropping that she hadn’t noticed before.
“That’s where the Generals eat. And tonight, where we will drink! You’ll be welcome up there with us.”
“And Michael?” Wendy had finally spied her brother making his way across the Table, no interest whatsoever in the bottles before him as he chased a small mouse that was bolting for its life across the room. Peter’s mouth twitched.
“I’m sorry, Wendy, Michael can’t come. He’s not a General, so you can imagine how that would make the other boys feel. It would be unfair.” Peter waved his hand dismissively in Michael’s direction. “He’ll be fine.”
Michael narrowly missed the mouse, which had darted out of the open door and into the night. Michael collapsed into belly laughs after his breathless chase, resting his hands on his knees.
“Wendy, I think that Mr. Mouse likes me!”
Wendy grinned. “I can see that. He must!” It was then that John pushed rudely past her, on his merry way to the alcove. “John! Excuse you!”
John was snide. “Yes, excuse me, your royal highness.”
“John!”
Her brother spun on Michael. “And don’t be silly, Michael, that mouse doesn’t care about you one way or another.”
“John, why are you being so cruel?” Wendy demanded.
He ignored her reprimand and without another word, leapt into the air with Oxley, both Generals then settling smugly in the alcove overlooking the Table. Wendy pursed her lips in a tight line. Ah, so that’s how they got up there. John gave her a smug shrug from the alcove before turning away. Who was this boy? His change of behavior turned her stomach. Sodding git. She turned to Peter.
“I’ll stay down here with the other boys, I think. Thank you for inviting me.”
Peter gave her a hard smile, the corners of his mouth turning down a smidge, like a pout, which she found herself wanting to kiss off his face. Then she shook her head. The thoughts this boy made her think!
Wendy pulled out a chair from under the table and made herself comfortable, crossing her legs at the ankle as the chair creaked underneath her. Everything on Pan Island was like that: one hard movement away from collapse, an entire world made of breakables. She pulled Michael onto her lap, inhaling her younger brother’s golden hair, a mix of rich ferns, notes of citrus, and a heap of sweaty dirt. He snuggled happily with Wendy for a few blissful moments before scampering away with Thomas. The boys were flooding the room now, their bellies full, the whooping and calling growing ever louder, their jovial boyishness filling the room like a balloon. Shouts rang out as they tore into the bottles, each one feigning some liquor expertise as they ultimately chose the bottle they had laid eyes on when they entered. A fight quickly broke out over a particularly large bottle with black liquid inside of it and a puzzle of crossbones etched into its casing.
“’Tis mine!” cried a chubby Indian boy, a red tunic his only clothes, as he yanked the bottle away from a smaller boy, whose dark chocolate skin and deep-set iris eyes were almost blindingly beautiful.
“No, it’s mine, Eence! Don’t touch it again, or I’ll slit your throat!” Wendy flinched at their harsh words. Punches were thrown as the argument took a serious turn, and soon the two were wrestling on the ground, biting and hitting, throwing dirt in each other’s faces and mouths. The bottle was forgotten as their fight escalated, one boy pushing another into the side of the table, which shuddered and spun with the impact. Hunks of meat and piles of fruits went flying to the filthy ground. Eence was on top of the smaller boy now, his hands covering the boy’s face, pushing him down into the dirt.
“You want it? Well, you can’t have it! Peter said I could have it! He said!”
“No, he didn’t! It’s mine because I touched it first.” Blood was flowing from both their noses, dripping onto the dusty ground, mingling with spilled liquor and bits of food. Wendy looked up toward the alcove, but Peter wasn’t even watching the fight. He and the other Generals were laughing and toasting, Abbott’s arm casually around Peter’s shoulder. John stood awkwardly beside them, swirling a glass of wine in one hand and trying to look as though he fit in perfectly and that drinking wine was something he did nightly. Wendy turned back to the fight and the large circle that had formed around them; Lost Boys were six deep, some sitting on the shoulders of others, one frantically pushing past the bigger boys to see.
“Eence is going to kill him, I think!”
Another boy shook his head. “My bet’s on Ahmeh.”
The boys started chanting, “Kill, kill, kill!” as the cloud of dirt around the boys settled into an uncomfortable stillness. With her heartbeats thundering in her head, Wendy pushed through the boys, who parted upon seeing who moved through them.
“Excuse me, boys, excuse me!” Exasperated, she finally snapped, “Out of my way, PLEASE!” Finally, she had made her way to the front, where the two boys were so covered in blood and dirt that they were now almost indiscernible from each other. The wine bottle they had so coveted had been smashed, its contents soaking into the ground, although one shoeless boy was scraping it into his mouth. Wendy stomped her foot.
“Stop it! I said, stop it!” The two boys kept wrestling, and Wendy finally grabbed the nearest one by the back of his neck, now using a maternal voice that she had heard someone use once upon a time, somewhere.
“I said, stop it! Right now, or you’ll both be sent to bed without your suppers! And I’ll make you say a hundred Hail Marys in front of me before I let you go to sleep!”
All eyes turned to her, and the two boys froze, their arms in choke holds around each other’s necks.
“What’s a Haley Marie?” Eence asked, before the other one punched him squarely in the mouth.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, stop acting like animals! Stand up!”
The two boys rose slowly to their feet. Wendy turned back to look at Peter, who was watching her with amusement, his glass held aloft like a king.
“It’s a Hail Mary, and I don’t think one hundred would even suffice for this lot.” She pointed to the bottle. “Who started this?”
“He did!” the boys answered in unison.
“Of course,” Wendy said. “Neither of you. Well, here is what you are going to do. You are going to pick up these broken pieces of glass and dispose of them. Then you are both going to your hammocks for the night and staying there while you think about what you’ve done. You’ve wasted an entire bottle of wine due to your . . .” her words were coming faster, “irresponsible behavior. Kitoko and Darby gave their lives so that you could have this!” She gestured to the table, now glittering with far fewer bottles than it had before. “And you have wasted it.”
She shook her head. “I’m ashamed of both of you.”
Both the boys stared up at her with wide eyes. She waited for the group to laugh or push her aside to continue with their bacchanalian feast, but they didn’t. Their lips quivered, and then they were wrapping themselves around her waist, their hot tears soaking her hips.
“We’re sorry, Wendy! We won’t do it again! Please don’t send us to our hammocks!”
Wendy felt a rush of affection for them both and laid her hands atop their heads, feeling their dirt-laden locks.
“Don’t do it again, boys. I don’t want to hear any more about your fighting. Eence, go get your Lost Brother a drink.”
Eence nodded and scampered off, pulling a green bottle off the table. “C’mon, Ahmeh.” With a grin, they patted each other roughly on the shoulder and slouched off to a dark corner to drink more wine than any boys their age should. The rest of the Lost Boys were swarming around Wendy now, reaching for her.
“Do it again! Tell me about the Mrs. Hale Marie! Will you yell at me? I’ll go to my hammock! Please, Miss Wendy!”
She laughed gaily as Michael buried himself in the folds of her dress, at once needy and possessive of his older sister.
“Not tonight. But be on your best behavior!” The boys nodded and scampered off. She sat back down at the table and continued to sip on her warm rose liquid as the feasting continued. More large oak platters of food were brought up by the Pips, through the center of the table—bright yellow cheeses and buckets of berries, leafy greens and . . . Wendy poked a strange-looking fruit, bright green with a gaping red mouth. The bug wiggled off her plate, and she sat back, repulsed. An older Lost Boy plopped down next to her, effortlessly scooping it into his mouth with one hand.
“You don’t know what you are missing,” he said between sharp crunches. Wendy laughed and dove into the berries, smearing them on a hunk of bread. As the night went on, the boys got more rowdy, the bottles of wine whittling down steadily until there were only about twenty left. Wendy, on the other hand, just sipped her bottle slowly, taking it all in: the Table now full of boys lying around, swinging their bottles in the air, breaking them against the ground and then crying, arguing belligerently with each other one minute only to be best friends the next, wrapping their arms around each other with profound declarations of love. Peter had given a few of them temporary flight before the feast, and they were drifting lazily through the air, bumping into the perfectly round walls of the Table, then drifting downward, reminding Wendy of kites, their pants like tails lazily spinning behind them. Three Lost Boys were lying under the table at her feet, batting her shoes every once in a while as they slurred tearful memories:
“Remember when we raided the Vault? Peter was so brave. He killed a pirate with his feet. I saw it.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“That was today, I think!”
“I heard Peter killed them with a bottle!”
“No, it was his feet!”
“How many pirates were there?”
“A thousand thousands!”
Then a silence.
“I will miss Kitoko.”
Then giggles turned to sobs, and before she could even adjust to the sad sound of little boys crying, they were giggling again, poking each other.
“Your tears are fat!”
“They aren’t even real!”
“Crocodile tears!”
There was a boy quietly throwing up in the corner, and though Wendy longed to comfort him, she also longed to not get vomit on her dress. Besides, he was the first, but he certainly wouldn’t be the last that night. She began passing around some large wooden bowls that she found stacked behind the wall, just so that when the time came, the boys wouldn’t be throwing up willy-nilly all over the place. From the General’s alcove, she could hear Peter laughing hysterically at something Abbott had said, and she heard John and Oxley attempting to sing some form of a pirate song.
“Yo ho ho . . .”
Wendy herself felt dreamy and full, though when she closed her eyes, she had the strangest visions: a finger pointing to the stars, blood, books, a veil blowing in the wind. The smell of rain. Instead, she chose to keep her eyes open, and she kept her eyes on Peter. She watched the way his gray tunic rode up around his arms, showing the tan muscles, his skin the color of ripe honey, the texture of a smooth pebble. She watched the way he laughed easily with the Generals and the way the Lost Boys looked at him with desperation for his approval, which was given often and generously. Peter saw her watching him and gave a friendly wave in her direction; Wendy flushed and raised her hand to wave back. A small, delicate hand wrapped around her own, and Wendy felt a rush of heat gather and pool in her palm, felt its power dripping through her fingers. She turned with a grimace. Tink was standing behind her, her hand wrapped tightly around Wendy’s.
“May I sit?”
Wendy thought that she would rather keep company with a tiger but decided to be polite.
“Of course.”
Tink shrugged and sat beside her. “Quite a sight, isn’t it? All these boys, all this wine. It will be quite the night.”
Wendy stared at Tink as the fairy easily twirled the tip of a wooden fork on her finger, watching the way subtle streaks of liquid gold rippled across her hair when she turned her head.
“Tell me something, Wendy Darling . . .”
Tink reached out and curled one of Wendy’s hairs around her finger. Wendy watched as the stars in Tink’s eyes exploded and shrank, Tink’s cosmic beauty overpowering her own, even now, when Tink was dressed in rags, her wings hidden underneath the brown shroud. Glitter sprinkled the ground at Wendy’s feet.
“Tell me, was it worth it?”
“Was what worth it?”
Tink nodded to the bottles.
Wendy shook her head. “No. No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t worth Kitoko and Darby’s lives for this night of fun.”
Then Tink shook her head. “That’s where you are wrong.” The fairy looked around at all the boys tumbling around them, shrieking and laughing, wine spilling everywhere. Two of them thundered past Tink, stopping to kiss her cheek. She patted them affectionately on their heads, and they scampered off into the tree.
“This life with these boys, without adventures, would crumble like old toast. Bored boys, in a great number, could be very harmful to our way of life. I believe where you come from, they call those wars.”
Wendy stared straight ahead. “You play at war here. Death is death, and I’m not sure I see the difference. Wars are fought for freedom. Kitoko and Darby died for wine.”
“Wars are also fought for treasure. Why am I even talking to you? You couldn’t possibly understand,” Tink snapped before closing her eyes. “Sorry. I am sharp edges.” She took a minute before responding in a much friendlier voice.
“Men where you come from have died for much sillier reasons than wine, I’m sure. Besides, as long as Peter stayed safe, isn’t that all that matters?” Her voice rose when she mentioned Peter’s name, her eyes
drifting up to the Generals’ booth. “He is the sun and the moon and everything in between.” She looked at him longingly before turning her eyes back to Wendy.
“I’m sorry for the way I’ve acted since you arrived. I’m sorry about earlier today.” She twisted up her glittery pink lips. “I knew you still had flight. I would never . . .” She looked down, a hint of sadness trembling her features. “It can be quite lonely, you see, being the only one of your kind left in Neverland.”
Wendy’s fingers traced a small circle on the table, feeling the splintering wood beneath her palm.
“What happened to your kind?” Tink blinked back tears, looking surprised. Wendy waved her hand.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked—you don’t have to tell me.”
Tink regained control of her features and began scratching her head, pulling out leaves from her blond bun.
“I am not used to being asked.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper so that the drunken boys dancing past them in a conga line wouldn’t hear. She choked out her words, her hands splayed on the table.
“I was just a young child when the darkness came. I had been sleeping, nestled deep in the dreams and consciousness of our people. It crept down from the mountain, like a black fog. They welcomed it, but their welcome songs turned to screams.” A sob rose in her throat. “Such a cacophony of sounds, the screaming and the singing. There were blasts of white heat, and a singeing black cold, like a burn. I remember the last sound I heard of my people, their voices lifting together before there was a ripping sound, and then there were wings, shredded wings, falling like snowflakes through the air. Bodies falling to the ground, hitting it hard, staying still. I ran and ran, and I hid in a grove of trees, burying myself in some muddy leaves. I was so young and so terrified. I could hear the darkness roaring after me, tearing the trees apart to find me. Our King, Qaralius of the Great Acorn, appeared above me to fight, attempting to draw the darkness away from the last of his race. He was . . . glorious.”
Wendy Darling Page 23
