The Neverland Wars

by Audrey Greathouse

  “Not today,” Peter answered. “There are other adventures to be had today.”

  Cynara was not amused. “When are you ever going to come with us, Peter? We have so much we could show you. We could teach you to read the skies for yourself.”

  “Why would I want that when I can trust you to read them so well?”

  “I could tell you everything I know,” Cynara promised. “I would, Peter, for you.”

  “But then what reason would I ever have to come back here to see you, Cynara?”

  “You’re welcome here any time. You don’t have to come just to find out what the skies say.”

  “Aye, but today, that is what I need.”

  “You always need so much,” Eglantine complained, floundering toward a rock and folding her arms over it. As she flicked her wet, curly hair away, Gwen could see the little bits of bright red coral, still living, that dangled as earrings from her ears.

  “And you ladies always give me so much. I’ve brought you something today.”

  All three mermaids’ heads picked up. They were beginning to grow tired of Peter until he made that announcement. “Have you finally brought us a sky glass?” Eglantine inquired.

  “No, I’ve forgotten to look for one.”

  Cynara seemed upset, even angered by this. “If you knew what we could do with a sky glass, if you understood the power it would have in a mermaid’s hands, you would not be so forgetful.”

  “You have not found one yet in all the expanse of the sea?”

  “No glass is formed in the sea, Peter,” Lasiandra reminded him. “But it is so plentiful on land.”

  “If I didn’t know better,” Cynara announced, coy and curt, “I would say you didn’t want us to have a sky glass.”

  Everyone was quiet for a moment.

  “Perhaps next time we meet, I will have acquired a sky glass for you,” Peter answered. “But today, I bring fruit.”

  Smiles washed back onto the mermaids’ faces. The announcement excited them and put Peter back in their favor.

  “Land fruit?” Eglantine inquired.

  “As if I would try to serve you any other, Eglantine.”

  Lasiandra seemed most enchanted of all. “Tell me you’ve brought me a mango, Peter. Tell me you’ve brought me a mango.” Her tail fluttered enthusiastically beneath the surface, stirring up a froth of bubbles.

  “Only papayas today.”

  Lasiandra’s excitement was considerably diminished, and Gwen’s heart sank a little when she saw the pretty mermaid’s spirits fall. She wanted to share the mangoes hiding in her purse, but she didn’t dare contradict Peter.

  “Sorry, Lasiandra,” he apologized as he pulled one of the papayas out of Gwen’s pack and tossed it to the blonde mermaid. She caught it in her hands and held it tight, like a cherished treasure she was afraid to drop. Peter took a second papaya and threw it to Eglantine, but as he did so, Cynara begged, “Pass me one, too, Gwen. Hand it here.”

  Gwen reached into her satchel and was about to do so, but she briefly caught Peter’s eye and remembered his instruction. Before she could bend down to hand it off to Cynara, Gwen responded, “Here, catch.” Cynara caught it with ease as she gently threw it down to her, but there was slight disappointment in her eye.

  Eglantine split her papaya open on a blunt rock and immediately began devouring its soft interior. Mermaids could stay underwater indefinitely, but they had no means to traverse land. Even if they climbed onto the rocks in their little lagoon, there was no conceivable way for them to scale up the cliff to the fruit trees that hung right above them, ever in sight and ever out of reach. The sea offered a rich feast of vegetables, kelps, seaweeds, and aquatic creatures, but nothing could compete with the sun-warmed sweetness of land fruit.

  Cynara and Lasiandra also began to eat the bright orange fruits as Peter asked again, “Can you tell me what the sky has been doing, what the planets have been telling you?”

  Although disappointed she would get nothing more out of him than fruit, Cynara was now willing to discuss the heavens with Peter. “The planets have been all unaligned for quite some time. There is disunity in the sky, and disharmony in the world. Pluto and Neptune will remain in the far corner of this wayward house for many years, but that is the way of this time. The war’s end is not in sight, and nothing you do now will end it.

  “It is a turbulent moment, with Jupiter so far from its sister planets, and alone in its own distant house. Mercury is roaming quickly through the houses, but in little more than a week’s time, it will be alongside the other dark planets, just as Venus eclipses Mars.

  “There is envy in the sky, Peter, and when the heavens are jealous, no good can come of it. The stars have stopped shooting. They are holding their breath and waiting to see what magic will govern them in the centuries to come. The sky will not help you, but it will not impede you. These bodies cannot assist in a matter such as your war, but they are firmly sided with you. When your stars and his align, you will have your chance to meet the minstrel. He still moves with the music of the spheres, for now. That music continues to play, but its sound is softening, Peter.

  “You must understand that the magic is being drained from the mechanics of it. The constellations have left the stars and the man has left the moon. Your adversaries are emptying out the sky, Peter. They discover more and more every day, but they assign numbers and letters where once they gave names and legends. They are stripping the sky of its majesty. That is why the stars will not aid you in your battle—they are unable. They are too governed by physics and cannot bend to manifest their prophecies. They have whispered our destinies to us, but now it is in our hands to enact them.”

  The mermaid bobbed in the water with playful mystery. Peter pensively considered her words. “Thank you, Cynara, this is… an interesting turn of events.”

  “The one you seek is on his way,” she assured him. “His travels will be safe, and he will be invincible until he lifts his instrument again. The stars still love him, even if man has forgotten. If you want to find him, seek out the aviator, Peter. He is closer to the stars than you realize. The aviator has seen the whole world over from his place in the sky, and he will know how to find the piper.”

  “Will it really be that easy, Cynara?”

  “Oh, by no means. Even if you find that minstrel, you’ll still have to convince him to play his star-music once again… thank you for the papaya, Peter.”

  Cynara swam off, slyly smiling. She stayed on her back, but sank into the waters, her fruit still in her hands.

  Lasiandra retreated, but she kept her eyes peeking out of the water. She still watched Gwen, hardly glancing at Peter at all during this encounter. Gwen held Lasiandra’s eyes, but Peter seemed to have lost sight of her as she drifted back behind a low rock.

  “Perhaps next time, you will come swim with us.” Eglantine giggled. “Then you can speak to the planets yourself.”

  “Little boys cannot speak to stars; that’s for those whose dreams are born beneath the saltwater sky.”

  “Silly, Peter,” Eglantine replied as she, too, swam off. “Anyone can speak to the sky.” She left the rind of her papaya floating, having already devoured all of its flesh. “The only hard part is getting it to talk back.”

  Peter was in a hurry to leave the lagoon once the mermaids were gone. Gwen was not entirely sure that Lasiandra had really left though. As she and Peter walked back across the rocks, Gwen thought she saw motion in the water beside them. Peter led the way, so his back was to her when she reached into her pack and pulled a mango out of her satchel. Gwen got quickly to her knees and leaned down to one of the low-lying rocks, placing the mango where it would be within a mermaid’s reach. Gwen didn’t know why she left it for Lasiandra, or if the mermaid would even find it there.

  She got back to her feet before Peter could catch her in the act of… defiance? Kindness? Gwen didn’t know what motivated her, and she didn’t care to guess. Hurrying to catch up, she tripped over her o
wn feet as she landed on the pebbly shore, landing on her hands and knees. She didn’t hurt herself, but the contents of her purse’s side pocket went flying, and it took her a second to gather them back up.

  “What’s the matter? Bugs get your feet?” he asked.

  “Something like that,” Gwen answered, not wanting to decipher whether his expression was a permutation of cat-got-your-tongue, or if bugs legitimately ganged up on people in Neverland.

  She gathered her things: her notepad, her coin purse, and her compact mirror, stuffing them all back into the side pocket. Continuing to riffle through her purse as they walked, she checked the mangoes to make sure they weren’t bruised and shuffled through the side pockets to make sure she had everything she thought she needed. She had not yet taken inventory of her purse, and she couldn’t recall what was jammed in it when she left home. Still, when she could not find her cell phone, she knew she must have lost it.

  She and Peter had only just started up the steps back up to the bluff and jungle, so she asked him to wait a moment, running back to the place where she had tripped coming down off the rocks. Sure enough, her cell phone was lying there among the smoothed-over pebbles and rounded-down rocks. Peter was not in sight, but rather at the start of the path just around the bend in the cliff’s face, so when Gwen noticed that the mango she left was gone, she didn’t hesitate to venture a little closer to the place where she had left it.

  Nervously glancing over her shoulder, Gwen reaffirmed that Peter was not coming back after her for any reason. There was something else sitting on the rock now. Her heart betrayed the excitement within her chest, but only Gwen could sense its nervous beating. She walked slowly, watching the water for any motion as she approached the rock. It was too low and close to the water’s surface for comfort. The lagoon was as still as glass though.

  Gwen picked up the token left in place of the mango. It was a glimmering coin, perfectly round and almost paper thin, shaped out of vivid, bright abalone. Like spilled oil in a rain puddle, the mother-of-pearl pattern was beautiful and fluidly random. Gwen felt its glossy surface, and then quickly pocketed it in her satchel. She didn’t want Peter to question what was taking her so long. She had her phone and the strange totem from the mermaid as well.

  It burned within her purse pocket, and Gwen itched to hold it in her palm again, but as she walked back with Peter up the cliff, she did not touch it. The coin remained in her purse, tucked securely away as she ventured back to the grove. She thought nothing of taking the mermaid’s coin with her. After all, it had certainly been left for her, and she did not doubt that Lasiandra had wanted her to have it.

  It took Gwen a while to work up the audacity to ask about, what she presumed would be, a rather explosive subject. The following morning, after Gwen’s encounter with the mermaids and the elaborate game of hide-and-seek that spanned across half the island, she finally asked Peter while in the underground home. “Are there… are there any pirates here?”

  Peter smirked and continued peeling his apple, sitting on a toadstool chair. Jam hungrily gobbled up all the sweet skin of the apple, just as soon as he handed it to her. “Not anymore.” He sheathed his knife at his hip, took a huge bite of the apple, and then passed it to Bard. As she munched the fruit, he stood up and began to speak. Hollyhock buzzed and trilled excitedly, rousing Bramble from the nap he was taking in the underground home’s little tree so that he, too, could hear the story.

  “The last of them were Captain Rackham’s crew,” Peter began. “They flew the skull and stars flag high on their mast, sailing a great flagship called the Black Death. It was a massive ship, with a hundred or more pirates all aboard it!”

  “A hundred?”

  “Maybe only a dozen,” Peter amended. He continued, undaunted. “They swore that there was booty buried in our jungle, a chest, buried by the oldest of pirates, old Scarface himself, who was more like a god than a man to all the pirates who came after him. Rackham and his crew swore to find the rumored treasure.

  “They sailed three times ‘round Neverland clockwise, and twice counter-clockwise while they tried to make sense of their map. Finally, they came ashore and stormed the island. They found Blink and took her hostage, you know. They were convinced she knew where the treasure was buried.”

  Bard delicately nibbled on the peeled apple, watching Peter like a movie as he bounded around their underground home. Spurt was still asleep in his little dog bed, but the other children were waking up, happy to start the morning with one of Peter’s stories. After a while, everyone but Spurt was awake and eagerly listening.

  Hollyhock bounced up and down, adding her own commentary, seemingly for the sake of hearing her own singsong voice. Bramble listened, sleepy but attentive, to Hollyhock’s version, while Peter related the story to the children. Peter told it exactly as he remembered it, so very little of what Gwen heard was true. Still, he got the feel of the story right, and that was what was really important.

  “So then I flew up behind his first mate, who couldn’t see me on account of the patch on his left eye.”

  “I thought you said the patch was on his right eye,” Gwen interjected.

  “It was,” Peter replied. “He had patches over both of his eyes. That’s why he couldn’t see me.”

  Gwen shook her head, getting fed up with his impossible story, but dying to know how it ended. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why didn’t you just say he was blind then? And if he was blind, why did you have to fly up behind him anyway?”

  “Because I had to strangle him!” Peter declared. Hollyhock flew up behind Peter, pantomiming this part, dragging Bramble along to be her victim. “With the very rope he’d used to tie up Blink, I flew up behind him and just like that! BAM! I pulled the rope around his neck and nearly popped his head off. He dropped to the deck, dead as a doorstop!”

  Newt and Sal cheered at this part. Spurt was still sound asleep in his dog bed. It was amazing, really, that the one who was usually the most high strung and noisy was the soundest sleeper as well.

  “What about the captain, Peter?” Bard asked, smiling and chewing her apple. She had heard the story before, so she knew just which question to ask to get to her favorite part. She did love the part about what happened to the captain, mostly because it changed every time. No one could tell a story as well as Peter could, because no matter how many times he told it, and no matter how much it stayed the same story, the details were always radically different.

  “The captain?” Peter echoed, “The captain! Well, Captain Rackham came up behind me and nearly cut me in two. He would have, too, if I hadn’t seen his shadow creeping up. He jabbed his sword forward to stab me, but I flew up and out of his way, and his sword went right into his first mate.”

  “But his first mate was dead on the deck of the ship. He fell over when you strangled him,” Gwen objected. In response, Hollyhock pinched her. “Ow,” Gwen complained.

  “Shush,” Rosemary told her.

  “This was before he fell. Once he was strangled and stabbed, then he fell over and was dead as a doorstop.”

  Newt and Sal cheered again.

  “At that point, Bramble and Dillweed had already found the captain’s treasure chest in his quarters, but they had gotten themselves locked in there. If I hadn’t realized they were missing, they might have been locked in there forevermore, but I saw them glittering through the porthole window as I zipped around the ship, and I went back to the deck while the captain was still looking for me near the bow of the ship. Blink and I teamed up then, to roll a great barrel of rum across the deck, smashing it straight into the captain’s door. We didn’t have a key of course, but the rum exploded everywhere, the door broke down, and Bramble and Dillweed flew out.

  “I saw the chest then, and knew just what it was. Blink and I ran in, and by that time, Newt was there as well to help us. The three of us pushed over the chest and dumped all the gold, pearls, jewels, coins, and riches out of it so that it would be light enough to lift.
>
  “That’s when Puddlebee—Rackham’s parrot—found us, and began squawking as loudly as he could, ‘Caw! They’re in here! Caw! In here! The rotten children!’ But Bramble was quick and boxed him between the eyes. Puddlebee snapped his beak at him, but Bramble flew faster than the parrot could. The dumb bird chased him all around the room, until at last Bramble flew for the chest and just narrowly turned back up and away. Puddlebee wasn’t as quick and slammed right into the chest, knocking himself out and falling into it, which we shut up quick.

  “Of course, the captain had heard his bird and was coming right for us. So, thinking as quickly as I always do, I lifted the chest and flew out of the quarters with it. I went to the edge of the boat and stood with the chest over my head.”

  At this point in the story, Peter felt it necessary to go over to Spurt and pick him up, dog bed and all. Peter was telling a fantastic tale of his own valor, and would not stand to have anyone sleep through that. Regardless, Spurt remained sleeping even as Peter carried him across the room and continued his story. Bramble and Hollyhock circled overhead, dropping a light film of fairy dust over the sleeping boy.

  “When Captain Rackham saw me there, he came running as fast as he could on his limpy peg-leg. He swore a vicious streak and screamed at me not to throw it overboard, thinking all his treasure was within it.

  “I waited until he was spitting distance away from me… and then I heaved the chest overboard!”

  Peter then chucked Spurt, tossing him squarely to the bed. Jam and Blink scrambled out of the way as the freckly little one slammed against the bed, finally waking up with a start and a gasp. Wide-eyed and awake, the first thing Spurt saw was Peter storming toward him, yelling, “And the fool was so scared for his gold, that he dove in after it!”

  Peter launched himself onto the bed and tackled the newly awakened Spurt, who began howling with joy, kicking and screaming right back. Newt and Sal exchanged the briefest of glances before yelling in unison, throwing themselves onto the bed to join the wrestling and tickling.