The Grown Ups' Crusade

by Audrey Greathouse

  “Well?” Starkey asked, smiling with an affable curiosity. “What happened then?”

  Gwen continued with as much confidence as she could muster. “Margaret May wound the music box again, and found that the music led her to the forest's edge and the cusp of Easten. As the sun set, she walked all the way to the castle and the coronation ball. When she arrived in her gorgeous black dress, she presented the music box to Prince James as a gift from the great-granddaughter of the first king of Westera and an emissary of the forest elves. They danced together all night, and by the end of the ball the young prince had fallen in love with her. His mother crowned him king the next day and he soon married Margaret May and made her his queen. She returned to the forest only twice. First, she went alone to make a treaty with the elves on behalf of Eastan and receive their blessings for her kingdom. The second time, she ventured with several of the court's finest knights to hunt down and capture the old raven witch, who spent her final days in jail and never harmed anyone again, human or elf.”

  Starkey's eyes still had a hint of expectation hanging in them, which compelled Gwen to close her story with, “And everyone else lived happily ever after.”

  Starkey leaned back and folded his hands over his stomach, letting his smile come to its full fruition now that she had finished. “That's a clever enough story. I can see why Peter and his playfellows keep you around.”

  “That's good,” Gwen replied, uncertain whether she should thank him for calling her story clever enough. Her delight at her teacher's approval superseded her nerves, and she felt herself smiling. She appreciated validation from someone who didn't constantly disrupt the narrative and badger her to skip to some favorite part.

  “What's the difference between Westera and Eastan?” he asked.

  The question caught her off guard. “Oh—nothing really,” she replied. “They're just two kingdoms. I don't imagine they'd be all that different from each other.”

  He nodded. “I see—so the important thing was only the space between them, and the young woman who lived in that in-between.”

  “Um, I suppose so, yes,” Gwen answered. She wasn't used to being quizzed on the content of her stories. The children always had follow-up questions, but only little curiosities to be addressed in a barrage of tiny epilogues.

  “Until she met this charming Prince James, that is,” Starkey amended. “It seems she had no qualms about joining him in his world then, and leaving behind the little inn and enchanted forest where so much magic abounded.”

  Gwen felt her cheeks warming as a blush spreading over her face.

  “Yes, it was a good story,” Starkey continued, “but I didn't care for the ending.”

  She shifted in her chair and tried to ignore the sensation of her reddening face. “No?” she asked.

  “No,” he answered, standing up and taking a step toward the edge of his massive desk. His out-dated globe sat on the corner of the desk, and he sent it spinning with a flick of his hand. Without looking at Gwen, he explained, “I don't think this Margaret May girl could so easily walk away from magic. I can't imagine someone adventurous enough to barter with elves, seek out raven trees, and go marching into uncharted woods would ever settle for a simple romance, no matter how regal. It's my experience that individuals like that tend to be very happy, but never quite reach happily ever after. It's a shame to end one's adventure—one's story—any earlier than absolutely necessary.”

  Gwen listened, but was loath to give credence to his argument. By that logic, all fairytales had unlikable endings. “I suppose all good pirate stories end with black beards going grey, more scars than wrinkles, and a bloody death in battle?” she asked.

  Starkey laughed. “Something along those lines.” The globe's spinning slowed, and Starkey stopped it altogether with a single finger against its painted ocean. His smile dropped away. “I didn't care for your treatment of the raven witch, either,” he announced. “I think you tried too hard to make a enemy out of your villain.”

  A look of confusion crossed Gwen's face, but Starkey didn't see it. He continued to eye his globe until she asked, “What's the difference?”

  Her old teacher looked back to her. “Quite a lot—often the difference between a bad reality and a good story. Enemies, true enemies, are an unfortunate thing to accrue. There's no fun in someone who hounds you for the sake of hounding you, who hates you and all that live for, who has no understanding or appreciation for the role you play, and no desire to play a role themselves. Enemies are empty things.”

  “Then what's a villain?”

  Starkey sat down again in his chair, which Gwen appreciated. While he stood and she sat, their conversation felt too much like a classroom lecture. She preferred to sit down with Starkey and speak to him. She might not have been his equal in age or experience, but he had no inherent power over her as a conversationalist when they both sat down to talk.

  “A villain's simply an antagonist,” Starkey answered. “Someone with motives and goals that puts them at odds with a hero. Villains are what give stories obstacles and plots texture—and in life, they're what give us the challenges that keep life interesting and adventures plentiful. Without the raven witch, Margaret May's life would have been just another unmemorable link in some unremarkable monarchy. She wouldn't have any story at all. Considering she owed her life and all of its magic to the raven witch, I think Margaret May handled her very unkindly.”

  “If it weren't for the raven witch, she would have grown up with her real parents, and lived as royalty,” Gwen reminded him.

  “If it weren't for the raven witch, she never would have existed,” Starkey told her. “She's a little bit of fiction, a character in a made-up story, Gwen… and without the raven witch, she would have no story to exist in. Just like that, she'd be gone. ” He snapped his fingers. “So let us not be too unkind to those who craft the circumstances from which we grow.”

  The cabin swayed and the lights flickered as a riptide wave crashed against the side of the sturdy boat. Gwen didn't know how to counter her teacher's point, and waited to see if he would elaborate. No further explanation came. He had spoken his piece on the matter, and moved on. “Well then,” Starkey said, dropping the conversation, “a deal is a deal—I believe I agreed to enlighten you as to how I have retained my charming good looks over the course of the past century.”

  Something about his tone intimidated Gwen. She still felt defensive. She had grown unaccustomed to talking with people who carried themselves intellectually in conversations. Starkey opened a creaky drawer of his dark desk and pulled out, from the very back, the most disgusting clump of wood Gwen had ever seen. It looked like a wood chip someone had repeatedly pounded with a meat tenderizer.

  Starkey held it up so the cabin's candle light could illuminate it. “Bark from the Never Tree—I trust Peter has introduced you to the Never Tree by now. It's Neverland's best kept secret. At least until the adults realized that the phenomenon of Neverland couldn't be sustained by anything besides such a mythical lifeform.”

  “The Never Tree is what keeps the lost children young?” Gwen asked.

  “Yes,” Starkey answered. She imagined a tree breathing in carbon dioxide from the air and exhaling something more than oxygen, something immortal and magical that changed the chemical makeup of everything around it. He dropped the bit of bark and let it clatter against the desk. “I've been chewing this god-forsaken bit of bark for over a century now. It never breaks down, it's perfectly magic, but I wouldn't mind getting a hold of a new piece.” Gwen stared at the ugly hunk of wood. If a piece that small had kept Starkey alive a hundred years…

  “So,” Starkey began, “I'm sure you understand now what the Anomalous Activity Department's real interest in Neverland is.”

  “Immortality,” Gwen whispered.

  “They'll butcher it, of course. By the time you pump something as magical as immortality through a system as bureaucratic and industrial as the modern medical world, it'll be distilled
down to simple advancements in longevity. That is, if they choose to distribute it en masse.”

  Gwen tore her eyes off the bark to look at Starkey. “You don't think they will?”

  “I don't presume to know what the Chief Anomalous Officer will decide to do with it. But answer me this: if your executive decision meant the difference between anonymously extending the lives of people who wouldn't even believe in how you did it, or immortality for yourself and the secret society you're in charge of… what would you do?”

  She thought of the black coats, and the white coated researchers they had at their disposal. They already pulled so many strings behind the world's technological advancements. The idea of such people gaining immortality made her shudder.

  “Is there really any man alive you would trust with so much power?” Starkey asked.

  She thought for a moment. “You don't seem to have done anything too evil with it.”

  “Aye, but I only have a small chunk of it,” he reminded her. “Those ships coming, Gwen… they are angling for the whole tree, and nothing stands in their way but us.”

  When they both fell silent, she noticed the rocking of the ship. Anchored in calm and friendly waters, the Grammarian's motion was subtle. Wooden boards creaked on the ship the way the candles flickered from a distance. It felt strangely safe. Aboard a pirate ship, Gwen felt she risked nothing of her good character but that which she'd already sacrificed by choosing to consort with pirates.

  “Mr. Starkey,” she began, “what do you know about mermaids?”

  Chapter 12

  “Mermaids?” Starkey echoed, intrigued by her sudden change of subject. “What would you like to know about them?”

  “When I met the Piper, he seemed very afraid of them.”

  “What has Peter told you on the subject?”

  Gwen tried to get comfortable in her chair, but no matter how she sat, her insides squirmed. “He says they never lie.”

  “That's true enough.”

  “And that I should never trust them.”

  “Even truer.”

  “Why?”

  Starkey took a moment to read Gwen's face. She feared that the answer was so extensive, he didn't know where to begin. “Do you about Piper's deal with the mermaids?”

  “I know he made one,” Gwen answered. “That's how he got his magical tune—they taught him an old mermaid song.”

  Starkey nodded, confirming this. “I never met the Piper myself, but I've heard the same story from everyone else who encountered him… back when he still told the story, I suppose.”

  He straightened in his seat and started with the most unbelievable detail. “The Piper used to be a pleasant and likable person. Back in his mortal days in Germany, musicians were fewer and farther between, but you still needed one if you wanted any sort of music or dance. So pipers were popular as merry-makers, music-bringers, and festive folk.

  “This wasn't enough for Piper though—or maybe it was, but once he ran into a mermaid in the River Weser his priorities changed. At that time, mermaids were still all sirens in the eyes of mortals, and even those who believed in them knew better than to trust them. So the one he ran into had a lot to gain for herself and her sisters.”

  “Vanda,” Gwen said, remembering the mermaid Lasiandra had mentioned.

  Starkey's mustache twitched as he gave her a questioning look, and she regretted mentioning it. He must not have known Vanda's name. He continued without a question, “He made a deal for great talent, impossible skill, and the irresistible music he's now known for. All she wanted in return was the acceptance, the praise, the glorification that mortals offered angels and other such beautiful myths.”

  “How could he give her that?” Gwen asked.

  “He couldn't. The magic to fulfill such wishes rests with the stars, in a language so strange and backward even mermaids—who are hatched from the falling stars that strike water—cannot read it unaided.”

  Strange and backward, she thought. If that were literally true, then the only means to decipher the stars would rest in something that reflected them.

  “So Piper procured a mirror—which were almost impossibly rare at the time. The Weser's mermaid kept her end of the bargain, and made the stars give him everything he desired in the realm of his music.

  “But star magic is a finicky and exacting magic… what it gives to one, it pulls from another. Mermaids became revered creatures and depicted in a more favorable light than the sirens of early Europe, but Piper suffered for it.

  “His home shunned him. No one wanted to hear his music, no one wanted to have anything to do with him no matter where he went. His talent sat dormant for want of an audience. Only rats would gather to listen, but when he turned this one advantage to use in Hamelin, he was cheated out of his due. After that, I suppose he went mad and lost what little remained of his benevolent nature.

  “But you see, mermaids are born of fallen stars and they tend to do their accounting in a similar manner, even without secret star magic. Any deal you make with a mermaid will come back to bite you. They are always honest, but you will always get more than you barter for dealing with them.”

  This depressed Gwen, but she refused to believe it. “Don't you think there could be some good mermaids out there?”

  “Oh, I'm sure there are,” Starkey agreed, “in the same way that there must be some good scorpions, or morally superior specimens of snake.” He shifted forward. “So tell me, how did Gwendolyn Hoffman get herself tangled up with mermaids?”

  She couldn't obscure the vested interest she had in their conversation. Starkey saw the obvious: she had a more personal and pressing stake in the matter. Still, she felt like an idiot for having the story forced out of her. “One of the mermaids… after I met her with Peter, she gave me one of her scales so I could always reach her. We went swimming together, we talked all the time. There isn't anyone else to talk to around here. I mean, if I want someone anything like me.”

  “No one knows about this, do they?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “You should know better, Gwen,” Starkey told her. “If you feel like you have to keep something a secret, it's because you shouldn't be doing it.”

  “Lasiandra has been a perfect friend to me,” Gwen insisted.

  “Because centuries ago, Vanda made the deal that painted sirens as perfect creatures in all the myths that ever followed.”

  “I gave her a mirror,” Gwen confessed, cringing at her own words.

  Starkey's eyes widened and he leaned even further forward. “What deal did you make? What did you give her?”

  “I didn't make a deal. I mean, that was the deal. I gave her a mirror in exchange for a friend's safety… someone who got all tangled up in this because of me.”

  “Only the mirror?” Starkey mused. “Then perhaps all is not lost for you—though only time will tell how much more you sacrificed for that. I hope, for both your sakes, that your friend is not as trusting as you.”

  Gwen wrung her hands in her lap where Starkey could not see the uneasy gesture. The last thing she had told Jay was how much she trusted Lasiandra, how much he could trust her.

  “I can't imagine you making a deal with mermaids,” Starkey remarked, drawing her out of her thoughts. “You don't seem like the type.”

  “What do you mean? What type?” Gwen couldn't tell if she was meant to process his remark as a compliment or insult.

  “Greedy. Ambitious. Risk-taking. Desire-driven,” he elaborated. “To be honest, I still don't entirely understand what brought you to Neverland in the first place. I've never met a anyone who came to Neverland without an intense passion for magic, but you seem to have been blown here by little more than a strong wind.”

  “I like it here. It's beautiful. It's surprising. It's relaxing,” Gwen defended, unable to form more complex thoughts out of her mismatched feelings for Neverland.

  “And what about Peter?” Starkey asked.

  “What about him?”

>   Starkey shrugged, but kept his smile in his eyes. “He's quite the attraction for most the girls who wind up here. And he seems to value your opinion more than any that I've seen.”

  Gwen almost gagged on a laugh. If Peter took her seriously, she hated to think how he treated other girls.

  “You're too old for all this nonsense, or at least, too old to pull any meaningful satisfaction from it. You're not here to fight redskins and talk to fairies. You want more out of life than that. Everyone does and, sooner or later, everyone flies home for it. Yet everyone is always amazed poor Peter stays behind, as if that isn't what he's always done…”

  Gwen cast her glance elsewhere, not wanting to meet Starkey's eyes. However, she brought them back when he pierced the calm of the cabin with pointed melancholy. “He's a terrible heart-breaker, that boy.”

  “He is who he is, and he's Peter Pan,” Gwen announced. “I'm old enough to understand that.”

  “But are you wise enough to believe it?” Starkey questioned. “Wisdom is not inherent in age. Growth is earned, not given, and your current residence is in the one place that allows the least of it. So on a scale of alcohol to mermaids, how hopelessly tangled up are you in Peter?”

  Gwen resented the question. She resented everything about it: the directness, the cleverness, the insightfulness… and in response, she got defensive. “I'm not in love with Peter,” she announced. “He's a good friend, but he's immature and impatient and inconsiderate and a million other things that aren't attractive in the least.” Gwen closed her hands around the stem of the wine glass in front of her, gripping it in frustration.

  “That describes every child that ever set foot on this island,” Starkey observed. “So the question becomes, why are you running around with all of them?”

  “I love my little sister,” Gwen told him. “I don't want to lose her. And the reality of being sixteen doesn't have much to recommend it.”

  “No, I'll grant you that,” Starkey agreed. “But why stay stuck at sixteen then, Gwen? All your current troubles are rooted in this age you've gotten stuck in. There's no going back—not even Neverland can do that for you—but with just a little time you could resolve the worst of your condition.”