Peter looked at the stars and then back at Gwen. “Alright,” he passively agreed, as if he were not about to facilitate a magical cosmic phenomenon for Gwen. “Which one do you want?”
Gwen had not thought this far ahead. She looked up at the sky, and for the first time in her life, she was truly baffled by the sheer quantity of the stars. At home, she had marveled over them, but they had been the dim and limited stars of a suburban sky. Even when she had been camping and seen the night sky in all its glory, Gwen had never been asked to pick between them. Now that she was asked to choose just one, she realized how many there were. “I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t want to take one that will be missed.”
“It’ll be back by tomorrow night,” Peter promised. “If they didn’t replenish themselves… well, just think how long ago people would have eaten all the stars out of the sky. It just depends on what kind of flavor you want.” Peter gestured to the stars as he explained each one’s particular taste. Gwen leaned close to him, to see as he pointed. “Sirius is sort of fruity and spicy, but Vega has this meaty, chocolate taste. If you wanted something creamy and sour, you could always try Rigel.”
Gwen took this in, but she was busy searching for a star that jumped out at her. She leaned in the nook of the stump, scanning the sky like a kid in a candy store. “What about that one?”
Peter shifted on the stump, leaning closer to Gwen to see which one she was pointing to. “Eltanin? Eh, sure.”
As Peter withdrew, Gwen tried to fish the star out of the sky. As focused as she was on it, she couldn’t manage to grab it. Peter laughed at her. “You can’t pull a star out of the sky while you’re on the ground.” He was in good spirits now, which Gwen appreciated even if it was at her expense. He put two fingers in his mouth, making a sound that purred and whistled at the same time.
Hollyhock, still watching from behind a heavy oak leaf in the tree above, didn’t want to give herself away by darting down to answer the call. Fortunately, Dillweed had heard it, and came to Peter’s aid. There weren’t many fairies who answered to Peter with such devotion. Too many fairies were afflicted with sloth or pride, such that they wouldn’t answer Peter’s call, but Dillweed came readily, if not somewhat unsteadily. Dillweed was given to drink, and that was his vice. There was no fairy who was quicker to rationalize a drink or find a reason for drunken revelry. The feast had made it particularly easy for him to justify a whole blossom full of honeysuckle mead.
He landed on Peter’s shoulder, holding onto the boy’s ear to steady himself. Smiling stupidly, the fairy steadied his double vision as Peter pointed. “Do you see that star, Dill? That’s the one we need. Think you can bring it down for us?”
Dillweed nodded his pink face, but he felt compelled to climb up Peter’s extended arm rather than take off on his wings. Only once he had scaled to the top of the boy’s finger did he leap into the air and set his fluttery wings into motion. Dillweed didn’t have to go far to capture the star. He grabbed it in both of his hands, bringing it slowly back down. It seemed bigger to Gwen, once it was out of the sky. It was hard to tell how brightly it was glowing when Dillweed’s shimmer encompassed it, but the silvery, white light of it was more intense than his faint red glow.
He handed it off to Peter, who in turn ruffled the fairy’s mop of hair with a single finger. Dillweed chuckled drunkenly, a noise which sounded more like crystal ringing than any laughter Gwen had ever heard. The tiny fairy flew off and away, too inebriated to notice Hollyhock even as he passed her hiding place.
“Here you are,” Peter said, presenting her with the cosmic fruit. He dropped it in her hands. “You can thank me later. Maybe you’ll tell better stories once you eat it.”
Gwen held it in her hands like a marble. It felt warm and viscous, like a tiny ball of warm Jell-O rolling around over the lines of her palm. She wanted so badly to eat it—to swallow it whole and let it worm and wiggle within her insides—and like all of her deep desires, Gwen questioned it. Something inherently told her to resist the path of easiest pleasure and quickest reward. Although Peter assured her that the sky would replenish its stars by tomorrow evening, Gwen was certain that eating a star would come with consequences. She didn’t know how it would affect her, but she wanted to clear one thing up before she went any farther with this fantasy.
“I can’t stay here,” she declared.
“What does that have to do with eating stars?”
“I don’t know,” Gwen said. “But I need you to know that… I have to go home.”
“Do we bore you so terribly?” Peter asked.
“Not at all,” she answered. “This… this enchants me. Too much so. I need to go home, and I’m going to do everything in my power to convince Rosemary to go back with me too.”
“You really don’t want her to be happy here, do you?”
“No,” Gwen responded. “I don’t want her to be happy here. I want her to be happy in the real world. It’s impossible not to be happy here, in paradise. It wouldn’t mean anything.”
“You think you can’t be unhappy in paradise?”
Gwen delved into Peter’s eyes, looking for emotion. She was sure it was there, but she couldn’t decipher it. Peter’s face remained childishly blank and impossible to read. He was still too much of a child to know the range of emotions that Gwen was coming into. He knew excitement, but he had never been impassioned. There was love, but he did not understand commitment. Somewhere in him, he had frustration, but his temperament had never broached anger in the consuming sense that adults gravitated toward.
Gwen felt as though she’d insulted him, and he hadn’t even realized it.
Peter seemed to give the matter some brief thought and then triumphantly stood up on his stump. “I will need to return in a week’s time to search for an ally who is traveling and hiding within reality. When I go, I will take you home, and Rosemary as well, if that is what you two want.”
“Thank you, Peter.”
“Now, are you going to eat the star or not?”
Hollyhock watched on, feeling as though she should warn her, but not having the gall to interrupt them.
Gwen smiled at him, finally plopping the bright marble into her mouth. It rolled on her tongue, and she softly trapped it between her teeth. Biting down on it, she found it was gummy and soft. Chewing it like a caramel, she found that aspects of it melted into her mouth. It tasted like hazelnuts and milk, but the flavor changed the longer she spent chewing it. There was a peppery spice to it, but she could not place it. The more she chewed the star, the more massive it became. It seemed to be expanding and inflating, gumming up her teeth and growing into such a sticky mess that she could hardly move her jaw. Gwen tried to speak, but her garbled words were unintelligible.
Hollyhock shook her head and fluttered away, knowing she should have warned the big little girl. The children had quieted down after their feast though, and nothing sparked her curiosity faster than children who weren’t making noise. She left to investigate.
Peter leapt down off the stump, rolling into a somersault on the ground as he did so. His laugh was playfully vicious—the sort of laughter children make when trying to appear villainous for the sake of a game. Gwen began yelling, or rather making flustered noises, as she struggled with a mouthful of star.
“I told you,” he cried. “I told you that your story would have been different if you’d ever tried to eat a star!”
Gwen moaned a little, hoping he would help her through this predicament now that he’d had his laugh. She felt claustrophobic within her own body when she was unable to move the mouth she so frequently used for communication, eating, and breathing.
She jumped down and stumbled to her feet on the ground, running up to Peter. Her mouth was now firmly fixed in a half-opened state. Peter peered into her mouth, and she watched as he leaned closer, his face illuminated by the light that was seeping out. His green eyes caught the glint of it, but their twinkle remained all his own. “Oh wow,” he said.
Gwen squeaked, unsure what that remark portended. “How much did you chew it?”
Gwen whimpered.
“You’re a dumb girl.” It didn’t sound like an insult; it just sounded like a reality. “Didn’t you realize it was turning to star goo in your mouth?”
Gwen objected with a whining grunt. He hadn’t warned her at all.
“Come on,” he instructed, waving her after him with his hand. “We need to wash that out before it supernovas.”
A shrill, “Mahhhammma!” was all Gwen could say to articulate how terrified and confused she was at the prospect of having a star explode in her mouth. She raced after Peter, also afraid that she might lose him in the dark of the night and be left to explode by herself.
He dashed into the woods, extraordinarily light on his feet. Gwen felt herself bounding through the forest with increasing ease as well, but it was hard for her to make a conscious note of it when she was so distracted by the star gunking up her mouth. It was getting warmer, but not yet uncomfortably so.
She couldn’t have said exactly when they started flying, only that they lifted off the ground at some point. They didn’t touch down again until they had made it to the stream.
In the middle of the slow creek was a tiny islet, hardly big enough for Gwen and Peter to both set foot on. They landed there however, and Peter encouraged her. “Have a drink and wash your star down. Put it out before it blows out.”
Gwen kneeled down, her knees resting against the uneven pebbles of the river’s exposed bed. She cupped her hands and lifted the fresh water up to her mouth, hurriedly pouring it in. She had drunk like this before, but never from a body of water. Sometimes, when she could not be bothered to get a cup down, Gwen had taken a quick drink from the kitchen sink in this manner. There was something novel about it. Her mother had seen her do it once though and been appalled. Just get a glass, Gwendolyn… and don’t wipe your hands on your shirt!
As she regained the ability to move her jaw, Gwen swished the water around in her mouth and let it dissolve the last of the star, washing it away into her gut where it glowed much more peacefully. All and all, the slight burning sensation reminded her of the time she had tasted a sip of her grandfather’s bourbon. She wiped her hands on her dress. They were only wet with water, after all.
Her mouth felt slightly numb, and Peter was still snickering at her. An idea occurred to Gwen, but she didn’t know if she was confident enough in her flying to attempt it. Deciding it was worth the risk, she pooled water into her hands one last time, standing up quickly to sling as much water as she could on Peter. Under pressure, she could not directly take off. Before he could react, she got a running start, tromping three steps across the bitty island, into the shallow stream bed, and launching herself from there. The bottoms of her pajamas dripped water, but Gwen did not think about her soggy pants as she rose into the air, fleeing Peter as he pursued her back to the grove. Rolling through the air, all Gwen thought about was the sound of her amusement. She had never appreciated it before. In Neverland, even her own laughter was brand new and full of magic.
When the children were finished with their feast, they abandoned it without hesitation. What little food was left on their wooden plates and tin spoons was devoured by the fairies. After an evening of dancing, they were all delighted to nibble away the last of the fruit and drink up the last of the milk. All of them except for Bramble, who had eaten alongside the children and gorged himself into a swollen, tired state already.
They tromped, jolly and excited, back to the grove to find Peter. He was there, with Gwen, but by the time the children had all ambled back, they were too full and sleepy to think of anything but bed.
Spurt, after a wild day of incessant energy, was totally spent and almost fell asleep on the grass outside. Bard prodded him and took his hand, leading him to the hollow tree that would slide them down into their underground home. Newt and Sal, in a final burst of excitement for the day, raced each other down their separate shoots. Blink and Jam slipped down a tree, one after another. Rosemary tried to get Gwen to follow, but when she approached the pine tree that her little sister disappeared down, she knew there was no way she would fit through the slender crack in the trunk.
Instead, Peter took her with him as he flew up to the branches of the giant oak tree. Gwen had not known how afraid of heights she was until Peter Pan asked her to walk across branches three stories above the ground in the dark. She followed him and was careful with her footing. Holding onto branches above her, she steadied herself as she crept toward the trunk.
“It’s just like I told you,” Peter announced, immediately worrying Gwen, since he hadn’t told her anything. “Just let your breath out as you go down and you won’t get stuck in the trunk.”
Stuck? In a thirty-foot oak tree? That was a possibility? Gwen had never known she was claustrophobic until Peter tried to put her in a tree.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Peter said. He didn’t seem to be very focused on what he was telling Gwen, and she was worried there were actually many more things she ought to hear before she attempted to go down on her own. “Breathe out slowly at the very end, so you don’t hit the ground at full tilt.”
With that last remark, he jumped into the hole in the oak tree, vanishing silently. Gwen could hardly bring herself to admit how much this startled her. She looked down to see if any children were left in the grove to better explain this process. Surely, Bard could shed some insight or encouragement, or maybe Spurt was small enough to go down with her so she wouldn’t be so alone in this? There was no one though, and Gwen resigned herself to diving into the tree alone.
With slow, delicate motions, she lowered herself into the hole. At first, she braced herself against the inner walls of the trunk, holding herself in place with her feet, hands, and stiff back. Once she was used to the feeling of being inside of the dark tree, all Gwen had to do was loosen up to begin falling.
As she whooshed through the darkness to an underground destination she did not understand, Gwen began to scream. Her dress fluttered up around her, and her hair became a tangled mess. She tried to stop herself again, but it was no use. The further down she went, the wider the trunk became.
At last she toppled out of the darkness and into a room full of mellow light. She put her arms up in front of her shocked eyes, clenching her eyes shut and bracing herself poorly for the fall. When she slammed against the ground, it was bouncy and soft. It did not feel like a ground at all. Gwen opened her eyes and saw that she had fallen directly on top of a bed. The children were all gathered around her, and they had obviously been waiting for her to fall.
“I told you moving the bed would be a good idea. I knew she’d fall,” Newt declared.
Jam stared at her, confused and disappointed. “But she’s a big kid. How do you not know how to go down a tree if you’ve been a kid for so long?”
Gwen awkwardly sat on the quilt bedspread, and Bard climbed up to comfort her. “But it’s her first time,” Bard justified. “My first time, I got stuck and PeterSal had to finish pulling me down. Have a cookie.”
Bard gave Gwen a cookie, and in that simple gesture, the totality of the embarrassment she felt vanished. The children didn’t care—and certainly weren’t going to remember—that she had screwed up this first descent. From the look on Spurt’s tired, freckly face, he had already forgotten everything that’d happened in the past two minutes. This was not like arriving in homeroom late or that time she’d shown up to class crying out of her left eye because she had flinched, forcing Claire to stab her in the eye while applying mascara. No one was going to remember this. As children, what did they care who had blundered or how? Tomorrow, one of them would do something equally stupid. It was inevitable, and they respected that.
The other girls climbed up into the bed. Jam and Blink nestled themselves against Gwen, and Rosemary dashed up behind her so that she could wrap her arms around her sister. Everyone was still watching her, but Gwen quietly stuck the cookie in h
er mouth and took a small bite. It was delicious, and still soft.
She broke the cookie in half, handing the smaller half to Rosemary and keeping the larger half for herself—it was her cookie, after all.
“No fair! I want a cookie too!” Spurt objected. Bard hushed him as she climbed off the bed, pulling another cookie out of her pocket. She handed it to sugar-hungry Spurt. As he ate it, she wrapped her arms around him from behind and carried him off. She was the biggest and he was the smallest, but it was still hard for her to properly carry him. She took him over to a tiny, woolly bed that was made up on the floor. It was a dog bed, but no one questioned why Spurt slept in it, or why he liked it.
“Will Gwen sleep with us or in the big bed?” Blink asked. Gwen kept waiting to see some sort of hesitance, reluctance, or indecision exhibited by Blink, but as far as Gwen could tell, Blink was the single most confident and direct human being she had ever come across.
“Yes! Yes!” Jam yelled, bouncing on the quilted bed.
“Gwen can sleep wherever she wants,” Peter replied. Gwen heard his voice, but she did not see him. She began looking for him in the big, underground room. The walls were lined with the roots of all the trees that shot down into it, and the floor was made of the red-brown dirt. Vines crept all around the roots and ceiling, full of strange lilies that were more like lamps than blossoms. Thus the room was dimly lit with the yellow and blue glow of flowers that had lights in place of filaments.
There were places where roots did not cover the walls, where hollowed-out alcoves were filled with all manners of things. Ancient books with broken spines were piled in one tiny nook, alongside markers, crayons, and paper. There were dishes, most of them chipped, and a traveling trunk left open… revealing what was perhaps the grandest collection of dress-up clothes any child could ever hope to own. The largest and roundest of these alcoves had a little ladder leading into it, and Gwen saw that Bard and Blink were already tucking themselves away in it for the night.
The Neverland Wars Page 9
