The Grown Ups' Crusade

by Audrey Greathouse

  THE GROWN-UPS' CRUSADE

  Audrey Greathouse

  Clean Teen Publishing

  Contents

  The Grown-Ups’ Crusade

  Also by Audrey Greathouse

  Copyright

  Content Disclosure

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  CTP Email List

  Bellamy and the Brute

  The Viking’s Chosen

  The Grown-Ups’ Crusade

  By: Audrey Greathouse

  Gwen has returned to Neverland with Peter Pan and the lost children, but this time, the adults are following close behind. The Anomalous Activity Department has plans to finally conquer Neverland by bringing the final battle to the vulnerable island. The children will have to rally fairies, mermaids, and allies from other magical realms to stand a chance against the shadow-casting army of grown-ups heading for them.

  Also by Audrey Greathouse

  Book 1: The Neverland Wars

  Book 2: The Piper’s Price

  Book 3: The Grown-Ups’ Crusade

  THIS book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  NO part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  The Grown-Ups’ Crusade

  Copyright ©2018 Audrey Greathouse

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-63422-283-9

  Cover Design by: Marya Heidel

  Typography by: Courtney Knight

  Editing by: Cynthia Shepp

  * * *

  Cover Art:

  © ashva73 / Fotolia, © Sabphoto / Fotolia, © sudowoodo / Fotolia, © Gizele / Fotolia, © tatianasun / Fotolia, © grandfailure / Fotolia, © natbasil / Fotolia, © trahko / Fotolia

  For more information about our content disclosure,

  please utilize the QR code above with your smart phone or visit us at

  www.CleanTeenPublishing.com.

  To my love, my Zaq—

  The boy I will grow old with

  Chapter 1

  Gwen gathered fruit as fast as she could in the dim of the early morning. Mangos and marionberries, peaches and papayas, star fruit and oranges… she shoved the land fruit into her bag, never breaking pace as she trekked weast across the island. She needed to get to the coast and back before any fairies awoke. The entire fairy population had indulged in joyful revelries the night before, celebrating some amorphous holiday unknown to humans. The dawn would find even the most temperate fairies still lolling in drunken dreams and merry slumber. But dawn had not yet arrived and not everyone slept; stars still speckled the bluing sky and certain inhabitants of Neverland were still speaking with them.

  Tromping over vines and fungi, Gwen bushwhacked her way through the forest-jungle on anxious feet. The mermaids had not been helpful as of late.

  The new mermaids she'd met wouldn't even give her their names. Eglantine and Cynara had been snide at best, and contemptuous at worst. Gwen wouldn't have minded it—she didn't care what mermaids thought of her—but she felt certain they knew what had happened to Lasiandra and refused to tell her. This drowsy morning offered her a chance to tempt them with an overabundance of land fruit without anyone noticing. She would persuade the mermaids to cede their starry secrets and hurry back before any stray fairy or curious child found her out at the incriminating lagoon.

  She reached the wood's end and hurried down the steps carved into the chalky cliff face. She moved so fast, she half-flew toward the slender figures half-submerged in the lagoon.

  Gwen had not seen Lasiandra since the night she escaped with Jay from Lake Agana. In the chaos, she had never retrieved the scale from Lasiandra, and thus lost her ability to call her friend. She hadn't worried about it—until days and weeks passed without sight of her at the lagoon.

  “What business have you with Lasiandra?” Eglantine had demanded last time Gwen visited. “What matter is she to you?”

  “I'm just worried about her,” Gwen had answered, innocent and truthful. The region's entire Anomalous Activity Department had been on duty that night, trying to apprehend lost children and capture whatever magic followed them. Lasiandra's disappearance was ominous, to say the least. A few fairies had not returned from the mission, and there was no question of what fate had befallen them.

  In response, the mermaids had only mocked her, contorting their melodic voices into cackling imitations of her land-dwelling accent, “I'm just worried about her.”

  “Worried about her! Concerned about a mermaid?” Cynara had declared, insulted and amused. “We are not of such a feeble nature as you landmaids. Mermaids have more strength in a single scale than you have in all of your heart. You need not worry for a mermaid, girl. We can take care of ourselves.”

  Gwen had wanted to believe her.

  “If you want to see Lasiandra,” Eglantine had suggested, suddenly and suspiciously civil, “we'll take you to her. Come into the water, come swim with us, and we'll look for her together in the places where sea dragons sew their treasures and where Atlantian dreams dwell.”

  But Gwen had known better than to accept her offer. Of course, they'd also volunteered to find Lasiandra in exchange for a sky glass, but Gwen couldn't have given them one even if she wanted. She had forfeited her compact mirror to Lasiandra in exchange for Jay's safe return. If the mermaids' confidence in Lasiandra was well placed, certainly the mirror would only solidify her ability to fend for herself, and fulfill her promise to keep Jay safe.

  Gwen whizzed by the steps of the cliff, not even conscious of them. She clung to her bag—a canvass sack from the dress-up chest far larger than her usual satchel. She had stuffed ten pounds fruit or more into the raggedy bag. Gwen had attempted to barter with fruit before, but the offers were never to the mermaids' liking. She had everything this time though. They would have to give her more than scorn in exchange.

  On the pebbly beach, Gwen felt herself sinking into the ground with every uneven step. She approached the lagoon, surprised to see how many mermaids gathered, and what they were doing. At this hour, Gwen could depend on finding one mermaid, maybe two, basking on the rocks by starlight. A slender pink line sat on the horizon like a knife, and the dawn discovered, as Gwen did, half a
dozen mermaids and twice as many water nymphs gathered around the corpse of a sea otter, lying on a tiny tidal island beside the shore. Its blood stained the sand and leaked out into the waves. The nymphs skirted over the water's surface and took gliding leaps over the otter with their flightless, webbed wings while the oldest mermaid dug through the entrails of the dissected otter.

  Mermaids lived a natural life of three-hundred years, but never wrinkled and never weakened. The eldest mermaid's age showed only in her mane of silvery hair, gleaming like starlight.

  Gwen suppressed a shudder as she approached the unnatural mermaid. She had her back to Gwen, so all the girl could see were fingers, long and bony, moving like spiders' legs through the otter's organs like spider legs. Her nails were sharp and untrimmed and she wore land-clothes, scavenged from the corpse of some shipwrecked human.

  “The liver says she is safe, but the spots in the ventricles say she is in the midst of great danger,” the old one muttered, yanking the heart out of the otter to examine it closer.

  “How can someone in great danger be safe?” red-headed Eglantine asked.

  “Mermaids often are. Have faith in your sister. She still has access to water. That she has not returned is a decision of her own, but in response to circumstances others have created.”

  Gwen watched this grim dissection, far too afraid to interrupt but too desperate to leave. She couldn't give up this chance to speak to the mermaids after raiding the island's fruit trees and sneaking off so early.

  The old one's spidery fingers went to the open throat of the otter and plucked out a small organ the color of rotting meat. She held it close to her face as she examined it. “The glands of this sacrifice tells me you are foolish and impatient girls. In a week's time, all will be known to you.”

  “How, Mariana?” another mermaid asked.

  “Look at the earthy color of this thymus. See how the blood crumbles like dirt off it,” the old one replied, holding out the gland out so everyone could see it, even the wee water nymphs. “Land-dwellers are coming, and a land-dweller will bear the news to you.”

  The ancient Mariana turned to face Gwen, as if already aware of her presence. The others followed her gaze and noticed the silent girl standing on the shore. Gwen's face went pale as all six unhappy mermaids stared at her.

  “You!” Cynara shrieked, pointing a menacing finger at her. “You knew! What have you done with Lasiandra?”

  “Nothing,” Gwen answered, uncertain.

  “Our little sister is nowhere to be found in all the thirteen seas, and even the stars have heard nothing from her now!”

  Mariana remained composed. Her face, while smooth, had a gaunt look and appeared wisened with age. Her dark blue eyes disturbed Gwen—they seemed to Gwen as black as the bottom of the ocean would seem to a human drowning in it.

  “You are to blame!” another mermaid cried, her long locks cascading over her shoulders like curly gold. “The stars have told us that much.”

  “Please, no,” Gwen insisted. “How can I help? Tell me what you know and I'll do everything I can to help find her.”

  “How dare you interrupt our ritual with the sea witch. We will answer none of your questions,” Eglantine spat. “Leave us to find our sister, you ugly girl!”

  Mariana didn't let Gwen trouble her. She turned to the others. “You will want to send the water nymphs to scour fresh waters under tight canopies, and search the caves. If the stars cannot see her, the waters she resides in must be obscured.”

  The water nymphs gurgled in confirmation, skipping away on the surface of the water like pond skaters.

  “The rest of you best make the necessary preparations. You have but a week, if the otter's kidneys are truthful to the dawn.” The mermaids dissolved into muted discussion amongst themselves, and Mariana turned to Gwen. “I do not surface often enough that the stars should talk to me, but I hear the morning star speaks of a land girl with great power over what is to come.”

  “The morning star?” Gwen echoed. “That's Venus?” So flustered, she struggled to recall what little astronomy Lasiandra had taught her during their stargazing sessions.

  “One and the same, in the sky and in all the stories your myriad cultures tell,” the old sea witch replied. “If you are the girl of whom the morning star speaks… you best prepare to fly a very long ways away.”

  “Fly? To where?” Gwen called, but Mariana dipped into the water and splashed off, her tail black and fanned like lace. The other mermaids began swimming off in different directions. Gwen tried to call them back, but those who gave her heed only hurled insults at her.

  “Eglantine, wait!” Gwen pleaded as the last mermaid swam off.

  “Go, Gwendolyn,” Eglantine shooed her. “And don't come back until you can tell us where Lasiandra is.”

  “But I need your help to do that.”

  “You need nothing—and you will have it, too.”

  Exasperated, Gwen pulled the bag off her shoulder and showed the ripe contents to Eglantine. Berries and oranges rolled onto the sand. “I brought fruit! Please, I just need to know what you know about Lasiandra!”

  Eglantine ran a hand through her voluminous red curls and huffed, “You cannot buy our sisters' secrets from us with land fruit.”

  Gwen's heart sank. “Just one question, Eglantine, and I'll give you the whole bag. Not even about Lasiandra. One question.”

  Eglantine crossed her arms and waited.

  Gwen approached the water and pushed the bag of fruit into the waves where it floated unsteadily toward Eglantine as she asked, “How long have I been in Neverland?”

  Eglantine grabbed the handles of the fruit bag. “You foolish girl,” she replied. “What does it matter if it has been five years or five hundred?”

  She dove underwater, drawing the bag of fruit with her, and did not resurface.

  Chapter 2

  Gwen returned to the grove much slower than she had left it, and with none of the anxious optimism she'd had on her way to the lagoon. Light crept in only through the crevices of the forest, and Gwen trudged along shielded from the pale pink of the morning. Faint glowing fairies stirred awake and lumbered through the air on groggy wings, none of them knowing, suspecting, or caring where Gwen had been.

  Eglantine meant to upset her, wanted her to doubt herself. Gwen couldn't have possibly been in Neverland five hundred years—Eglantine and Cynara would have died by now if she had lost that many years to this impossible world. She had not lived here five years, either. She could not have let that long pass unnoticed. Eglantine wanted to upset her. She couldn't trust the mermaids on a good day, let alone on days they hated her. She didn't need to give another thought to Eglantine's hyperbolic question. Mermaids, unable to lie, always gave people questions instead of answers when they wanted to hide the truth.

  She took her time wandering home—for this was her home now—and it didn't surprise her to find the morning in full swing. A standard and wild ruckus had blossomed as soon as the lost children had woken.

  Mint was teaching Jam and Blink how to fold saris, using small blankets from the linen basket. Scout, unaware that the day was only agreeably warm, attempted to fry an egg on a rock. Goose turned cartwheels while Cat pressed flowers, and Oat fussed because his friendship bracelets never came out as well as Yam's. Pin had finished her cootie catcher, and soberly informed Tin that the tiny paper prophet had doomed him to a future full of elephant farts.

  Inch, the only girl who could match Spurt's hyperactivity, ran all over the grove with him as part of a game they'd invented, called Who Can Pick Up The Most Leaves. Newt and Sal had teamed up with Fish for a diminutive game of capture the flag against Dash, Clay, and Squall. Wax and Dew were fast at work in a noble but doomed effort to make their own bows and arrows—they hoped to launch a surprise attack against the redskins before dinner.

  Peach, Pear, and Plum—the three girls convinced they were long lost sisters, despite ethnic differences that would suggest otherwise—were
in the middle of an extended game of double dutch, joyfully chanting to the rhythm of Pear's skips while Hollyhock bobbed overhead and kept count in fairy language.

  Gwen couldn't keep all the new lost children straight in her head. What's more, she knew they'd all had normal names when they first arrived. Before long at all, everyone had forsaken their given names in exchange for easy and frivolous nicknames they felt more at home in. Fortunately, the lost children didn't care what anyone called them. They would answer to any name. Gwen could usually get someone's attention just by yelling gibberish at them.

  Amid all these children, in the middle of the grove, Peter and Jet fenced with wooden swords as if their lives and honor depended on it. Rosemary and Twill watched the fight while trying to figure out how to smash open walnuts with a nutcracker they'd found. They weren't very good at it, and the nuts they shattered into pieces they gave to tiny Dillweed and Hawkbit.