The Bridge to Never Land

by Dave Barry

  They reached the third heel mark and turned right, their lungs burning as they sprinted for the finish line. The wolves were coming again, gaining ground fast. Aidan spat out more pieces of candy bar. This seemed to slow the wolves, but not as much as the first time.

  Sarah reached the last heel mark, indicating the small opening through which they’d entered the tunnel complex. She skidded to a stop and shone her light back at the oncoming wolves. She hesitated.

  “Go!” shouted Aidan.

  “But they’ll get you!”

  “Just go!”

  As Sarah dropped to her belly and wiggled into the crawlway, Aidan lit the fourth match and turned to face the wolves. They stopped, but this time the alpha came much closer to the flame than he had before.

  Aidan backed up, his foot finding the opening to the crawlway.

  The match burned lower.

  Aidan knew Sarah was right: by the time he turned and crawled into the hole the wolves would get him.

  He decided his only chance was to throw the golden box at the alpha wolf. Maybe he could injure it enough that the other wolves would attack their leader, giving Aidan time to escape. It didn’t seem likely, but it was all Aidan could think of.

  “I’m through!” Sarah’s muffled voice came from the crawlway. “Aidan? You okay?”

  “A little busy,” he said, holding the very end of the almost-spent match toward the alpha wolf as he reached into the backpack and felt…

  A metal cylinder.

  Sarah’s hair spray.

  “Sarah, come back!” he shouted. “Hurry!”

  For once she didn’t argue; he heard her grunting as she wriggled back through the crawlway toward him. He could see the flicker of her flashlight.

  The match was almost burned out.

  The alpha wolf growled and took a step forward.

  “When you see my feet,” Aidan yelled, “pull!”

  “What?” she called.

  “My feet! Pull my feet. Hard!”

  The match went out. The alpha took another step forward, his dagger teeth gleaming in the wavering beam of Sarah’s flashlight coming from the crawlway entrance. The wolf tensed to lunge forward.

  Aidan lit the fifth match and sent a stream of hair spray across it. A three-foot blowtorch flame shot out at the alpha wolf, which howled in rage and pain as it scrambled backward, its whiskers burned off. The pack was now cowering on the far side of the tunnel. Aidan released another burst of fire, and another, as he dropped to his knees, kicked the backpack behind him, and got onto his belly, using his elbows to crawl backward into the tunnel.

  The match was dwindling.

  He fired another blast. But he held the can too close and it blew out the flame. He could see nothing now, his eyes not yet readjusted to the blackness. But he could hear the wolves snarling and again coming closer.

  “Pull my legs!” he shouted. He fumbled with the sixth—and last—match. He struck it against the cylinder…too hard. The match head broke off. Aidan was holding a useless splinter of wood.

  As his eyes adjusted he saw, by the flicker of Sarah’s flashlight in the cramped tunnel behind him, that the alpha wolf was coming for him. Aidan, on his stomach, felt helpless; the snarling wolf loomed over him.

  “Pull my legs!” he shouted. Where was Sarah? Aidan raised the hair spray can and fired a blast into the wolf’s eyes. The wolf howled and backed off a few feet, blinking furiously. Aidan wriggled backward, now almost fully into the crawlway. He felt Sarah’s hands grip his ankles. Finally. She pulled, but Aidan barely moved.

  “Harder!” he shouted.

  “I know!”

  The furious alpha lunged forward again; Aidan repelled it with another blast to the eyes. But this time the blast ended with a soft pfffft.

  The hair spray can was empty.

  Aidan felt Sarah heave on his ankles. The effort dragged him backward a foot or so. He did his best to help her. But their progress was much too slow. The big wolf was coming again, snarling, its snout probing the tunnel. Its jaws snapped a few inches from Aidan’s face. Aidan threw the hair spray can; the wolf turned his head and the can bounced off his neck, clattering to the tunnel floor.

  The wolf was coming again. Aidan had nothing left to fight with except…

  The razor.

  He still had the razor. As the wolf lunged forward Aidan tore open the cardboard envelope and, ducking to avoid the wolf’s snapping jaws, lashed out desperately with the razor, once, twice. He felt something scrape his hand. He heard a deafening high-pitched yelp. He couldn’t see anything. Another tug from Sarah moved him back another foot. In a flicker of the flashlight beam he caught a glimpse of his hand: blood. He thought the wolf had bitten him. Then he heard more yelping, and looked ahead to see the source of the blood—the wolf’s snout was spurting dark liquid. The razor had found its target. The alpha wolf was now contending both with its own wound and the wolves behind it, excited by the scent of new blood.

  Taking advantage of these distractions, Aidan and Sarah managed to wriggle backward the remaining few yards to the metal door. They scrambled out and Aidan yanked the door shut just as the alpha reached it. The wolf slammed into the door once, then again, but in the process he only closed it tighter. The tunnel rang with his muffled howls of pain and rage.

  Sarah, shoving the backpack ahead of her, crawled into the last exit tunnel; Aidan was on her heels. In less than a minute they were standing outside the massive boulder outcropping. The dark woods, which two hours earlier had seemed so scary to Aidan, now looked safe and welcoming.

  For a moment they stood still, exhausted, gasping for breath. Aidan found that he could not stop himself from trembling as he remembered the sight of the wolf’s snapping jaws, just inches from his face.

  Sarah held up the backpack.

  “There!” she said. “That wasn’t so hard!”

  Despite himself, Aidan laughed.

  “Remind me,” he said, “when I get some strength back, to kill you.”

  It was Sarah’s turn to laugh. Then, opening the backpack, she said, “I wonder what we almost got eaten for.” She pulled out the heavy golden box and turned it over in her hands. Its smooth surface gleamed in the waning glow of Aidan’s flashlight. There were no apparent latches or hinges.

  “I wonder how you open it,” she said.

  “We can figure that out later,” said Aidan. “The batteries are low. We gotta get out of these woods and back to Bath before Mom and Dad wake up.”

  For once Sarah didn’t argue. She put the box back into the backpack as Aidan activated his phone GPS. In a few minutes they were trudging back through the woods toward their bikes and the road. They spoke little. But as the excitement of their triumph began to wear off, the same sobering words drifted through both of their minds, over and over:

  Use it wrong, and death to thee.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE TOWER

  AIDAN AND SARAH GOT VERY LITTLE REST that night; it was almost dawn by the time they sneaked back into the bed-and-breakfast and collapsed into their beds. They spent the next day sleepwalking through the busy schedule their father had set up, which included yet another bike ride around Bath, followed by a trip to an antique dealer, followed by a museum tour. Finally, when they could hardly keep their eyes open, they boarded a train for the trip back to London, falling asleep moments after they found their seats.

  Through it all, even in slumber, Sarah never let go of the backpack, despite the heavy weight and awkward bulk of the golden box. Both she and Aidan were eager to find out more about their prize, but they had no time away from their parents until they reached their London hotel that evening. Declaring, truthfully, that they were very tired, they headed for their room immediately after dinner.

  There, at last, they had the chance to examine the box.

  They were pretty sure it was made of gold, and quite a lot of it; the box felt dense and inflexible. There seemed to be no way to open it, and no place where it would o
pen—not even the tiniest crack or seam. They tapped and prodded the box, pushed and pulled every side in every direction, but there was no hint of movement. At one point Aidan even stood on the box. It was like standing on a rock.

  “Maybe,” he said, “it’s just a big square piece of gold. I bet it’s worth a lot of money. We could sell it and each keep half.”

  “No way,” said Sarah. “First of all, we’re not selling it, not after all we did to get it. Second of all, it’s not just a piece of gold.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “If it was gold, Magill could have just put it in a bank or something. But he didn’t. He went to a lot of trouble to hide it and to make sure only certain persons could find it.”

  “Not us, though.”

  “No, he wasn’t thinking of us. But he was thinking of somebody in particular, and he warned them to use it wisely or die. He wouldn’t say that about plain old gold.”

  “So what do you think it is?”

  Sarah hesitated, then said, “Starstuff.”

  Aidan snorted. “Fairy dust?”

  Sarah’s face reddened. “It’s not ‘fairy dust,’” she said. “It’s much more than that.”

  Aidan shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I don’t believe that stuff is real.”

  “Do you believe this is real?” said Sarah, tapping the golden box.

  “Of course.”

  “Do you believe Magill’s paper was real?”

  “Well, yeah, but…”

  “Do you believe those were real wolves?”

  Aidan shuddered. “Definitely.”

  “So why can’t you believe starstuff is real?”

  “Because that’s magic, Sarah.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “And it’s real.”

  “You think there’s magic in this box.”

  “I do.”

  Aidan stared at the box for a bit. “Okay,” he said. “Say there is starstuff in there. So what? We can’t get it out.”

  “There has to be a way,” said Sarah. “Magill went to all that trouble to leave directions for finding the box—the paper in the desk, the lines in the floor under the eagle, the longitude and latitude…He wouldn’t have done all that if there was no way to open the box once you found it.”

  “So why didn’t he leave instructions for opening the box?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Sarah. “Magill didn’t expect regular people like us to find the box. He left the map for certain people—people who wouldn’t need instructions to open the box.”

  “You mean Starcatchers.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’re stuck,” said Aidan. “Because we’re not Starcatchers.”

  “Right. But maybe we can figure out how they would do it.”

  “How?”

  “Okay, what made them different from regular people?”

  “They talked to porpoises?”

  Sarah waved her hand impatiently. “Yes, but what else?”

  “They flew, sometimes.”

  “Right! And how did they fly?”

  “They touched starstuff.”

  “Right again! And where did they get the starstuff?”

  Aidan frowned. “I don’t remember.”

  Sarah pointed at her throat.

  “Oh yeah,” said Aidan. “They wore whaddyacallems. Around their necks.”

  “Lockets,” said Sarah. “They wore gold lockets, with a little bit of starstuff inside, for emergencies.”

  “So what does that have to do with the box?”

  “Maybe,” said Sarah, “the starstuff in their lockets would somehow let them open the box. It makes sense. That way, only a Starcatcher could get whatever’s inside.”

  Aidan pondered that for a moment, then said, “Okay, so if you’re right, the only way we can open the box is if we have some starstuff. But the only starstuff we have is inside the box, which we can’t open.”

  “Right.”

  “So we’re stuck.”

  “Unless,” said Sarah, “we get some more starstuff.”

  “Are you serious? It was almost impossible to get this starstuff, which for the record we don’t even know for sure is starstuff. How in the world are we going to find more?”

  Sarah was staring at the box. “I don’t know,” she said. “But we’re so close. It’s right here. There has to be some way we can open it.”

  “Well,” said Aidan, yawning, “you keep working on that. I’m going to bed.”

  In five minutes he was fast asleep and snoring. Sarah remained doggedly awake, sitting cross-legged on her bed staring at the box, forcing her tired brain to think but getting nowhere. The minutes ticked slowly by. Sarah dozed off, still sitting, her head slumped forward.

  A gentle tapping sound snapped her awake. Sarah grabbed the golden box and shoved it into a dresser drawer, then went to the door and looked through the security peephole. Seeing her father, she opened the door.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said.

  “Just checking on you two sleepyheads,” said Tom.

  “We’re fine,” she said, whispering. “Aidan’s asleep.”

  “Oh, sorry,” whispered Tom. “Listen, I was thinking that tomorrow we might go on a tour to—”

  “Dad, do we have to talk about this now? I’m really tired.”

  “Okay,” said Tom. He handed Sarah a brochure. “But take a look at this. It would be a shame for us to come all the way here and not visit the Tower of London.”

  Sarah sighed—not another tour—and said, “Good night, Dad.” She closed the door gently and walked back to retrieve the golden box. She set the brochure down on the dresser and was about to open the drawer when three boldfaced words on the brochure cover caught her eye. She picked up the brochure and whispered the words: The Crown Jewels.

  Quickly she turned and went back to her bed. Four books were stacked on the bedside table. She selected the bottom one and began paging through it. When she found what she was looking for, she read it, then read it again. Then she leaned over her sleeping brother’s form and shook his shoulder.

  “Aidan, wake up!”

  “Go away,” he mumbled.

  “This is important,” she said, still shaking him.

  Reluctantly, he rolled over and opened his eyes, blinking. “You got the box open?”

  “No, but I think maybe I know how we can.”

  Aidan was awake now. “How?” he said, sitting up.

  “Read this,” she said, handing him the book and pointing to a paragraph near the top of page 340.

  As Mrs. Bumbrake climbed back up the stairs, Patrick said, “Lord Aster’s words support the legend—that the sword was made from a strange metal rock that fell from the sky.”

  “Strange in what way?” said Neville.

  “For one thing, it sometimes glows,” said Patrick.

  “It’s starstuff!” said Peter.

  “Not exactly,” said Wendy. “A large lump of pure starstuff would kill whoever came near it. Grandfather Aster said the sword was made from metal that was infused with starstuff.”

  “What does that mean?” said Peter.

  “It means the metal has some starstuff in it,” said Wendy.

  Aidan stopped reading and looked up at Sarah. “What sword is this talking about?” he said. “I never read this book.”

  “It’s Peter and the Sword of Mercy,” said Sarah. “It’s what the whole book is about.”

  Aidan looked at the book cover. “Okay,” he said, “so…what?”

  “So it’s a real sword,” said Sarah. “It’s part of the Crown Jewels. It’s here, Aidan. In London. In the Tower. And according to this”—she tapped the book—“it has starstuff in it.”

  Aidan nodded, getting it now. “So you think we could use it to open the box.”

  “Exactly!”

  “Right. We’ll go to the Tower of London and say, ‘Hey, you mind if we borrow a Crown Jewel for a minute? We need it to unlock our fairy dust.’ Y
eah, there’s no flaws in that plan.”

  Sarah took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. “Just for once,” she said, “could you try not to be such an idiot?”

  “I’m not the one who wants to steal a Crown Jewel.”

  “I’m not saying we should steal it.”

  “Then how do we use it to open the box?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Ah.”

  “Listen. Maybe you don’t have to touch the box with starstuff. Maybe the box just has to be near starstuff.”

  “Okay, how do we get the box near this sword?”

  “We go see the Crown Jewels, and we carry the box in the backpack, and we get it as close to the sword as we can.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then we see what happens.”

  Aidan shook his head. “Sarah, there’s gonna be a lot of guards and stuff there.”

  “So what? We’re not stealing anything. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “I don’t know,” said Aidan. “All I know is, the last time you had an idea, we almost got eaten by wolves.”

  “But we didn’t, did we?”

  “That’s your argument? That we didn’t get eaten?”

  “Come on, Aidan. We have to try.”

  Aidan groaned, lay back down in bed, put his hands over his tired eyes, and asked the ceiling, “Why couldn’t I have a normal sister?”

  In the morning, Tom was thrilled to learn that his children not only wanted to tour the Tower, but wanted to do so as soon as possible. The family left the hotel right after breakfast, and shortly after ten a.m. emerged from the Tower Hill tube station, the walls and turrets of the Tower complex looming ahead of them. After waiting in line for tickets, they made their way across the moat and soon were inside the massive outer wall.

  Tom was in heaven, stopping every few feet to lecture on points of interest. He had just finished discussing Traitor’s Gate and was turning his attention to the Bloody Tower when Sarah, who was wearing the backpack, said, “Where are the Crown Jewels?”

  “They’re in the Jewel House,” said Tom. “We’ll get there soon enough.”

  Sarah was about to argue when she caught sight of two large black birds perched above them on a high wall. She frowned. “Are those the ravens?” she said.