The Piper's Price

by Audrey Greathouse

  “I’m not about to smash a window to steal my own music box.”

  “You won’t have to smash a window. Your bedroom window will be open.”

  “My parents never keep windows open at night in the winter.”

  “They will now,” Peter answered, returning his gaze to Gwen. “Parents always do… the first few years, anyway.”

  She didn’t know whether to be glad she was finally getting him to show some emotion, or frustrated that she still didn’t understand whatever was going on in his head.

  “Alright,” Gwen ceded, “but where do I stay while I try to find the Piper? Which, by the way, I have no idea how to do even once I have the music box. I can’t live underground in real life.”

  Peter’s brief emotion evaporated off his face, and she regretted patronizing him. “I know that.” The words seeped out in a bitter tone. “I have a friend you can stay with.”

  She thought of Antoine the aviator, and wondered how many adults were in league with Peter. “Another ally?”

  “No, a friend,” he insisted. He walked behind Gwen and began pushing her to the tall oak tree. She plodded along with his shoving—it was either that or flop to the ground in an attempt to resist him. “And as for how to find Piper, leave that to me. I’ll figure it out by the time you need to know.”

  “Are you really so clever?” The sarcasm cut its way out of her mouth.

  “I am.”

  Gwen tried to let that assurance sink in, but she knew that she would never be as confident in Peter as he was in himself.

  “Once I’ve figured it out, I’ll send Rosemary to take over. If you can teach her the song, you can come back afterward.”

  Rosemary to take over? She wanted to balk at the idea, but it left her with too strong and unsettling a sense of powerlessness. Peter was serious. He had more faith in Rosemary.

  They got to the bottom of the oak tree and Peter rose into the air, flying up to the top. Gwen wasn’t going to let him get away that easily. As he took off, she linked her arm in his and continued with her questions. “Why don’t you come? Shouldn’t you find the Piper?”

  From directly underneath, they had to ascend to the top with caution as they dodged dozens of thick branches and passed through layer after layer of leafy coverage. “I think Rosemary is right—I had the idea myself earlier,” he said, as if to convince her of its validity. “We’re going to need to make Piper want to find us… and he’s not going to want to find me.” An ominous silence followed that Gwen didn’t dare break until they had reached the hole into the oak’s hollow.

  They landed on the last sturdy branch, and Peter unlinked his arm from hers. Before he could get away and bound down to his young comrades, Gwen grabbed his hand. Grasping for straws, she still tried to find fault in this plan that took her so far from what she wanted to be so close to. “What about your friend? How will I find him?”

  Peter stopped and chewed his lip. She felt like she was antagonizing him, and wanted to apologize for how she was acting… but Peter never apologized, so why should she? It was part of the childish code by which he lived.

  “I’ll fly with you, and introduce you to my friend. You can fetch your music box that night. Once you have it, I’ll send Rosemary. You’ll be fine.” He jerked his hand from hers. It did not feel unkind, but Gwen suspected he would resent any further questions.

  “How can you be so sure of it?” she squeaked.

  Peter turned, his face a spotty mesh of shadow and moonlight. “Because I’m certain of you.” He climbed into the tree trunk and gave her one last instruction before he fell into the darkness of the hollow tree. “Don’t doubt yourself so much, Gwenny-Lyn—it’s horribly grown up.”

  Rosemary woke up with ease and was much more eager to greet the day than her sister. What was Gwen’s last day in paradise was Rosemary’s excuse for a grand adventure across the island with her sister. While the other children hurried off to smash and dissect the awful drones trapped in the marsh, Rosemary was honored to escort her sister on a supply run. Peter was, again, holed away in the house and pouring over his notes from the aviator. Gwen was uncertain what supplies she needed, so she was glad she had someone to take the lead.

  Before she left the underground home that morning, Spurt had given her a square wicker picnic basket with closing flaps. It was a large, awkward object for the children, but Gwen could carry it with casual ease. Jam soon after approached her with the first of her supplies.

  “It’s from Black Sun,” she announced, handing her something wrapped in a small weaving. Gwen unfolded it, and a smiling face with painted features greeted her. The papery substance of the cornhusk doll looked fragile, but the fibrous material was strong. Her starchy skirt was crinkly, but the little black eyes and sweet mouth gave the doll a soft expression.

  “What is this?” Gwen asked.

  “It’s a redskin doll!” Jam answered, unhelpfully. “Chief Black Sun said something about why it was important for you to have it… but I forgot.”

  Spurt came running by and snatched Jam’s headband off her head. She howled at this injustice and took off running after him. Rosemary was already at Gwen’s side, trying to pull her along to go hunt for other supplies.

  Gwen bundled up the cornhusk doll and stuffed it in her picnic basket. I guess I’ll just have to figure it out once I’m there, she thought.

  She went with her little sister on an expedition across Neverland, collecting everything they deemed necessary for a trip back to reality. Following Rosemary’s confidence through the forest, she felt powerfully out of her element.

  “What are we looking for now?” Gwen asked, her picnic basket already heavy with bottled tree sap, a hand-carved flute, assorted bird feathers, gemstone marbles, emergency reserve pixie dust, and a spider-silk lined jewel bag that would function as a covert hiding place in the event Foxglove needed one.

  “Fruit!” Rosemary declared.

  “There will be fruit in reality,” Gwen reminded her sister. She didn’t want to pack any heavier than she had to. “You do realize we could get mangoes at the grocery store, right?”

  “I don’t remember any mangoes.”

  “Well, Mom didn’t pick them up often… and they weren’t always in season…”

  Rosemary didn’t react. An alienating silence followed, warning that Rosemary had nothing to contribute or recollect about reality. Her older sister fidgeted with the basket, perturbed by this. “But Mom did get a lot of good food… do you remember all the nice things she used to cook?”

  Rosemary rolled her eyes up, but it was not apparent whether she was searching her mind for memories or the trees for fruit. “Um, rainbow rice?”

  Gwen’s heart sank. “Bard made that last week. That’s a Neverland food.”

  “Oh. No, I don’t remember.” She shrugged, and then plucked some mushrooms off the ground. She stuffed them into her dress pocket, unconcerned with her inability to recall anything from the life in suburbia she had spent eight years living.

  “What about her cheesy dogs and noodles?” Surely, Rosemary hadn’t forgotten the way she demanded her macaroni plain and her hot dogs slathered in cheese sauce.

  “Oh yeah!” She bounced happily at the memory, but it moved through her with the fluidity of something that had no bearing on her life.

  Leaves crunched under Rosemary’s gleeful feet. The day had a summer’s blue sky, a spring’s gentle breeze, but a thin, autumnal layer of crispy leaves rested beneath everything else green and alive. There was even a magical coziness in the air that Gwen had only ever associated with winter. The environment was overwhelming, the best of all moments and seasons, and Gwen saw how it was all joyful white noise painting over Rosemary’s memory. She, however, was lost in it.

  “Where are we, Rose?”

  “I don’t think it has a name.”

  Few places in the jungle did. She hadn’t been paying attention, and now she realized she would be lost if not in Rosemary’s tow.

 
; “But we’re almost there.”

  They trudged along, Gwen weighed down by the picnic basket and Rosemary enviably light. She decided to test her little sister again, this time direct and to the point. “What do you remember about Mom?”

  Rosemary stomped down hard on a patch of moss that was as springy as a trampoline.

  Giggling as she fell back onto her feet, she answered, “I don’t know. She was nice.”

  The young girl came to an abrupt stop. Gwen noticed a caterpillar in her wild hair and plucked it out. She tossed it to the ground, but midway down it turned into a butterfly and flew off. “Do you hear it, Gwen?”

  There was a noise like a hundred birds all in a hapless chorus. The random cawing and cooing united in a blur of syncopation and counter-melodies that blended into something chaotic but musical. She couldn’t imagine what a flock of birds was doing knit so tightly together in the middle of the jungle. Gwen rarely got lost in Neverland anymore, but she couldn’t begin to imagine where they were right now.

  Rosemary laughed and took off running. “Rose, wait!” Gwen called, but it fell on ears that were deaf to all but Neverland’s noise of joy and the magic song of the bird flock. She struggled to keep up, the picnic basket banging against her knees with every stride. She kept Rosemary in her peripheral vision and watched her footing, until Rosemary disappeared behind a curtain of vines. Gwen had no attention to spare on where they were going as she parted the thick wall of foliage. At the exact moment that Rosemary came to a stop, Gwen tripped over a root, dropping her basket as she put out her hands to break her fall.

  The ground was hard and cracked, like a dried-up marsh. Dizzy, her first instinct was to look for Rosemary, who had gone quiet. She was safe and sound, staring ahead, so Gwen pulled herself up and repacked the marbles that had rolled out of her basket. She found one butted up against the root that tripped her, and examined the root with more careful awe.

  It was scaly and bony, rimmed like a bird’s claw. Where it dove into the dirt, the root was as dark and sleek as a talon gripping the earth. As her eyes followed it through a long mesh of roots to its source, she saw the raven tree.

  Rosemary swayed to the sound of the hundreds of chirping beaks that littered the trunk like bark. She looked so at home and had navigated them to this secret tree without any effort. All afternoon, Gwen had been trailing her sister, wrestling with the feeling that somewhere along their adventures in Neverland, Rosemary had become the knowledgeable and competent big sister.

  Getting to her feet, she approached with reverent caution. The raven tree had been a thing of her imagination, an odd little plot device in a homemade fairy tale. How was it that her own fantasy was so alive and real here, and that only Rosemary had known where to find it? The tree’s intricate root structure choked out all other trees for several yards, and it held its proud branches out unhindered by any competing vegetation. Black eggfruit hung in ripe and heavy abundance, every shell—or peel—dotted with a glittering starscape.

  “It’s just like in your story about Margaret May.” Rosemary stepped closer to the tiny snapping beaks of the trunk, and extended a little finger to pet one. “Do you remember the story you were telling me the night before we left for Neverland?”

  Gwen gave her a morose smile. The only thing Rosemary remembered from home were the fantasies they had carved out while stranded in reality.

  Rosemary ran back to Gwen and squeezed her in the biggest hug a little sister could give. “You never finished that bedtime story. You have to tell me how it ends… and if Margaret May gets back in time for Prince Jay’s coronation.”

  Gwen blushed, remembering how shamelessly she had woven her fantasies into the ones she gave Rosemary. “But the other kids don’t know the start of the story. I’ll have to tell you the rest sometime when it’s just us. Maybe when we go back home.”

  Rosemary made a face, implying sheer insanity on Gwen’s part.

  “We have to go home, someday, right?”

  Rosemary shook her head, and another caterpillar fell from her hair only to transform mid-fall into a beautiful blue-and-yellow butterfly. It flew right back into the girl’s hair, and stayed there like a living barrette. She didn’t even notice. “I don’t think so.”

  What was Rosemary’s plan? Gwen had committed to playing this game with her, but games only lasted so long. It was still a game, wasn’t it? She refused to believe Rosemary was looking at this in Peter’s strange terms of war and ideals.

  “Maybe when I come back to reality to help you find the Piper, you can tell the rest of the story.” Rosemary floated up to one of the branches and began judiciously feeling the egg fruits, picking only the ripest. She looked to her sister for an answer, and could not tell that Gwen was desperately trying to keep her face expressionless.

  Rosemary was going to return to reality with her. They would be back in the real world together, very soon. It was possible, she thought, that her little sister’s memories of home might return. Maybe even her desire to be home. It wouldn’t be betraying Peter or his cause if they just went home. “That sounds good,” Gwen answered, her mind elsewhere.

  Rosemary waddled back to her sister, her arms full of egg fruit. “Margaret May needed her music box to find the raven tree, but I found this one all by myself!”

  The raven tree’s squawking had calmed. It was exactly as Gwen had described it, but it still wasn’t quite as Gwen had imagined it. She didn’t realize that Neverland’s raven tree was born not from her whimsical story, but from Rosemary’s powerful imagination. The land bended to the wills of those who believed deeply in the contents of their fantasies, and this was the great advantage Rosemary had over her sister.

  She unloaded her armful of fruit into the open flap of the picnic basket. Her excitement fell away into timid optimism as she continued, “Peter thinks your music box can help us find the Piper, too. If that’s so, it might help to have some egg fruit.”

  She smiled wide, and Gwen wondered if her missing tooth would ever come in so long as she was in Neverland.

  After a long day of gathering supplies, Gwen and Rosemary were on their way back to the underground home when they ran into Bard.

  “There you are,” she exclaimed, finally stumbling onto the sisters in the last of the twilight. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” From the looks of her muddied, wet, and grass-stained dress, she had been everywhere.

  “What’s going on?” Gwen asked.

  “I have something for you,” Bard chimed, digging into the ragged pockets of her calico dress. She pulled out a dark iron key, heavy and wide. Handing the Edwardian artifact to Gwen, she told her, “I think this might help you with your mission.”

  Gwen felt the weight of the huge metal key in her hand before Rosemary’s grabby fingers took it from her so she could ogle it for herself. “What does this key go to?” Gwen asked.

  “Everything!” Bard exclaimed. “It’s a skeleton key. There aren’t many locks in Neverland though, so I think it’ll be more helpful to you. Margaret gave it to me when she left Neverland and stopped being our mother.”

  “Margaret?” Gwen asked, but before she could get an answer, a blue light came buzzing furiously by.

  “Hello, are you alright?” Bard asked. The girls all knew how unusual it was to see fairies this far away from their clustered home at the heart of the island. With all the drone attacks, it wasn’t safe for the fairies to wander so far from any of the spider-silk nets that could shield them from the invading magic probes.

  The fairy grumbled, his voice like pebbles pelting into water, and Gwen did not get the sense that he was in a pleasant mood. “Are you trying to get home for the night?” she asked, tucking the skeleton key into her basket of supplies and preparing to help the unhappy creature.

  “It’s not safe for fairies alone out here! Did you get lost?” Rosemary asked.

  The pebbles struck harder as he made some flustered noises.

  Bard translated. “He says his name i
s Oxalis and he does not get lost.”

  “Then what is he doing all the way out here? Would you like us to walk you back to a fairy hollow?” In response to Gwen’s question, Oxalis pinched her. “Owww!”

  Gwen took a step away, but the fairy just continued to jitter in his blue glow. Remembering what Hawkbit had said yesterday, she began to suspect this was one of the fairies who thought the lost children were to blame for the drones. “Do you not like kids?” she asked.

  His buzzing made it clear that he did not. This fairy, prideful Oxalis, was not happy to feel in danger simply because he had flitted to the other side of the island.

  “The offer stands. Whether you like us or not, nobody deserves to be snatched up by a drone,” Gwen told him.

  Oxalis remained disgruntled, but the fairy was swayed by this logic. As Gwen marched on with Bard and Rosemary, he flew close behind and they all kept their eyes peeled for the red glow of any lurking drone’s scanner.

  The girls hadn’t been walking long before a rustling in the jungle caught their attention. It sounded low to the ground as it slowly rustled in the distance. Rosemary took a hesitant step toward it, and the noise amplified as the creature scurried away. Bard grabbed her friend’s arm and pulled her back. “I think it might be the crocodile,” Bard muttered. “What would he be doing so deep in the jungle? Do you think he’s lost, too?”

  Oxalis buzzed in objection.

  Gwen, duly cautious, was filled with the exact opposite urge to investigate that Rosemary and Bard had.

  “We’ll go check, just to be safe!” her sister declared, bounding into the air with Bard.

  “Wait, Rose, no!” Gwen cried, wanting to explain checking on a crocodile was the least safe thing they could do.

  “It’s okay, Gwen,” Rosemary assured her. “We’ll fly out of reach. I’ll make sure it’s safe.”

  The little girls darted off before Gwen could convince them otherwise, and she sighed as she considered the odd reality that her sister had just taken off to keep her safe. The blue fairy pitched a fit at this delay, which didn’t subside until Gwen resumed their trek toward the safety of one of the fairies’ spider-silk hollows.