She set down the sandwiches and took a seat at the round table with them. Gwen couldn’t think of the last time she’d been in the company of an adult that wasn’t a teacher or parent. Tiger Lily acted as if they were all on equal footing. She said make yourself at home, but every other time Gwen had ever been told that, she’d sooner or later gotten in trouble for wearing shoes on carpet or touching some dusty old antique. She had a feeling Tiger Lily meant it though.
“Old Willow has christened her Lily on Fast Waters,” Peter told her, his mouth full of a ham sandwich already half devoured. Gwen reached out and took a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich. It was on white bread, and she’d rarely had the pleasure of sweet bleached bread in her mother’s health-conscious kitchen.
Tiger Lily’s delight was apparent, but her face remained fairly inexpressive. There was a muted, stoic nature to even her most passionate expressions. “So you are a Lily, too, my friend?”
Gwen felt like she was blushing, and took tinier bites of her sandwich as she began to feel tinier. She was rediscovering the unpleasant nature of social dynamics with unknown adults. “That’s what Old Willow thought, when she threw my bones.”
Tiger Lily’s eyebrows raised, but she suppressed any questions she might have wanted to ask. She picked up a sandwich of her own and began eating. Peter reached across the table, still sitting backward on his chair, and tore into another sandwich. An odd silence lasted far shorter than it seemed to before she quietly asked, “Why are you here, Peter?”
“We’re going to call for Piper. I need your help.”
“I don’t know where Piper is, and you should know better than to be looking for him. I don’t know how to find him.”
“We do.”
“Then what do you need from me, Peter? They’re watching me.” Tiger Lily set her sandwich aside on the edge of the plate, and ignored it from that point forward. “It isn’t often, but they come by every few months. I think it has to do with when you come back. Two Anomalous Activity officers showed up in October, asked me all sorts of questions, and searched the house. They don’t trust me.”
“I know you’re on their radar, but that’s how much I need you right now. If we find Piper, he’ll be able to rally children for our resistance. We’ll be able to defend Neverland well enough to keep grown-ups away from it altogether.”
“You really think that final fight is coming?” Tiger Lily was skeptical, but not unwilling to believe it.
“They’re sending drones again,” Peter told her. “They’ve got bombs coming through. If we don’t do something soon, they’ll figure out how to incapacitate us and harvest what’s left with their technology… and that’s if they don’t manage to capture and manipulate a fairy into leading them there.”
“How is my tribe?” Her voice stayed steady, but her eyes were compromised by a look of concern.
“Safe and in peace. Captain Rackham is gone, but so is the strength and fire of the redskin people. Their numbers have fallen, and without adversaries to fight, their spirit slowly dwindles.”
She nodded. Taking this in, she then ventured, “My father?”
“Dark Sun is in good health.”
“My father?” She blinked back a sad confusion.
“Oh,” Peter exclaimed. “Yes—Dark Sun. He goes by no other name since you were taken. The sun clouded over that day, into darkness as it sometimes does, even on the clearest days.”
“But he is well?”
“Yes.”
Tiger Lily didn’t ask for any more elaboration.
“How are you fairing?” Peter asked. “How are the redskins here?”
She shook her head, the thinnest traces of amusement on her face. “They are not redskins, Peter. And now, neither am I.”
“Snowsalt!” he burst. “Of course you’re a redskin.”
“I’m a Native American.” She spoke it like an apology, as if she were informing him of a death in the family. “I’m real now.”
“I don’t understand,” he grumbled. Gwen didn’t think she had ever heard Peter admit that before. It wasn’t a concession though; it was an end to the conversation. He didn’t understand and wouldn’t be made to. Peter was not someone who changed, or grew, or knew what was once unknown to him. Tiger Lily knew better than to challenge that. “What, exactly, do you need from me, that you are willing to risk both of our wellbeing by coming here?”
“Gwen-dollie has heard Piper’s song. She’ll be able to find him, but she needs a few things, first and foremost a safe house to operate from. Her sister will be along shortly to help.”
“You’re not staying?”
“I can’t afford to.”
“Of course.”
Both took a slow breath.
“I have a guest bedroom,” Tiger Lily said. “You’ll be comfortable enough there, Gwen, but I don’t think it is advisable for you to go out in the daytime. Whatever bidding you have to do, I’m sure it will be better for us both if you do it under the cover of night.”
Gwen nodded, agreeing with the logic while also feeling horrified by the prospect of being cooped up with this strange woman, an old childhood friend of the eternal child.
“If anything goes wrong… if they catch you using magic and trace it back to this house… I won’t be able to protect you. I’ll be lucky if I’m able to save my own skin.” Her tone became severe as she warned, “I will not forfeit Neverland for anyone. You must know that now.”
“Yes,” Gwen agreed, wishing she had the unwavering force of will to say the same… If not about Neverland, than at least about something.
Peter Pan and Tiger Lily dove into conversation with the intensity of hawks on the hunt and the playfulness of dolphins in warm water. They talked faster than Gwen could have kept pace with, even if she were familiar with the stories and subjects they volleyed back and forth. Her discomfort only eased when she grew comfortable being a third wheel. She never would have imagined that Peter could make her feel like such an outsider, trading their dynamic to throw himself into sociable antics with an adult. The fairies delighted in the conversation and ate jam by the handful.
As the afternoon wore on to evening, Gwen began to better understand the gravity of this reunion. After Tiger Lily had been captured by Captain Rackham and his pirate crew, she was never seen again by the denizens of Neverland. Peter’s tongue let slip more information than he seemed to intend as he asked Tiger Lily about various aspects of her life on the Agana Reservation. No one acknowledged how obvious it was that he had been keeping tabs on her, despite the risk.
They told decades worth of stories, leaving Gwen severely confused about how time passed for redskins even after they had crossed the threshold of reality and been assimilated to the culture theirs was based on. Tiger Lily was eager to hear the details of Captain Rackham’s demise. Peter went into great detail, painting a fantastic picture of how a blinding fog had rolled into Cannibal’s Cove one morning and set the stage for an epic battle in the hull of the ship once it had run aground in the impossible weather.
Tiger Lily had few stories. She tried to keep Peter talking and the fairies buzzing, which was an easy task. He needed little convincing to spew story after story that highlighted his adventurous spirit, and the fairies corroborated everything. What little Tiger Lilly said about her life on the reservation was about the Native American children in her community and their humorous, endearing adventures.
Gwen was intermittently roped back into the conversation, but these solicitations only gave her a chance to contribute the occasional awkward statement before fading again into the background like just another piece of mismatched furniture.
When they spoke of Piper, she was at least able to follow their thoughts and engage with what she was listening to. Peter rattled off everything the aviator had told him, and brainstormed with Tiger Lily in order to make sense of his instructions.
“The melody of the lamb and death?” Tiger Lily asked, taken aback by the phrase.
&n
bsp; “We’re not sure what that is,” Peter told her. His shoes removed long ago, he now had his feet kicked up on the kitchen table. “‘The mark of the first debt’ was easier to figure out… I’m certain it means a guilder, and I aim to gather a few of those before returning to Neverland tonight.”
“What’s a guilder though?”
“A golden penny. You know, a guilder.”
Tiger Lily clearly did not understand, but shook her head. “Why would Antoine give you such riddling instructions? It doesn’t seem like him at all.”
“They’re not his instructions. He got them from accounts of people who had found the Piper. Someone sees him every few weeks in some part of the world, but doesn’t recognize him or otherwise finds themselves led away from wherever they were when they spotted him. They’re always left with one of four clues. The mark of the first debt, the melody of the lamb and death, the tune of his enchantment, or the patch fit for a prince. The one I’m stuck on right now is a patch fit for a prince.”
“Well, he is the prince of pipes…”
“But what prince patches clothing?”
“What I don’t understand is why he’s giving his calling card out in piecemeal.” Tiger Lily brooded over this reality with healthy apprehension. “It’s suspicious. If he doesn’t want to be found, why leave these notes with anyone?”
Peter flashed a knowing smile. “Piper doesn’t want to stay hidden. He just doesn’t want to be caught. He’s waiting for someone who can put it all together. It’s a trial. He won’t waste his time or take a risk on anyone who isn’t prepared to pay the price of a meeting.”
“But even you haven’t figured it out yet. I don’t like this, Peter. He made a deal with mermaids for his song, and now he makes deals like they do, too.”
“It’ll be alright,” Peter promised. “Once Gwen-Dollie has her music box, I’ll send her sister with everything else. You forget I’ve dealt with the fellow before.”
Slumped in her chair, Tiger Lily put her hand to her chin. Her braid was slowly coming undone, her silky black hair seeping out in strands like tributaries off a narrow river. “I don’t think you’re going to be able to find a patch fit for a prince.” Pursing her lips, she ventured, “But I think I know who might.”
Peter leapt up with great joy. “Then I put it in your hands, Tiger Lily. I will gather the guilders and make sense of the melody of the lamb and death. Gwen will find her music box, and we will manage this.”
“I can’t make promises,” Tiger Lily said. “They will not be happy with me for bringing it up. They might not be willing to help at all.”
“I have the most star-shattering faith in you,” he told her, as if that alone would dismiss any challenges she suspected in the task.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Peter. This is not a moment in which we can make it up as we go along.”
“Tiger Lily, when have I ever been wrong?”
She didn’t answer.
Gwen didn’t know what time it was. The stopped clock, antique and broken down, gave her no sense of how long they had been there, eating sandwiches and talking in the kitchen. Twilight had rolled by like a boy on a bicycle, the darkness at its heels.
Peter glanced at the window. Tiger Lily had long ago shut the blinds so that it would not be obvious she was entertaining two unfamiliar teenagers in her home. Still, the darkness crept in at the edges. The bright yellow kitchen light and the twinkling of the fairies was all they had.
“I need to leave now,” he announced, no emotion in his voice.
“Already?” Gwen asked, afraid to be left behind so soon.
“Be careful,” Tiger Lily warned him, standing up. “Don’t leave a conspicuous trail of fairy dust out of here.”
“Don’t worry,” he assured her, peeking out between the narrow blinds. “There’s enough wind tonight it’ll scatter instantly. I’ll walk back to the forest before I take off, too. It’s still early.”
Tiger Lily walked over and folded him into her arms. He hugged her as she planted a kiss atop his ruffled hair. “Take care, Peter,” she told him. “Take care of my home.”
He whispered something back to her, but Gwen couldn’t hear. They let go of each other, and Peter went to the door. He didn’t put his shoes on. The shoes remained ignored in the corner he had kicked them off. “I will,” he assured her. “Even if I have to scour the globe to find Piper myself.” He unzipped the grey sweatshirt and threw it aside on the depressed couch beside the door, then stripped out of his acid-washed jeans and down to his usual mud-and-grass stained shorts. He pulled off his polo shirt and chucked it as well, ready to head out bare-chested and barefooted into the night. In a way, Gwen was glad to see him looking so much more himself before he launched out into the cover of night.
“Goodbye, Peter,” she told him, afraid if she didn’t he might wander out without a word.
He stared at her, a sublime focus in his eyes. Hollyhock flitted to his shoulder, and he threw open the door. A breeze blew in, feeling like a great wind inside the still air of the house. “Find your music box and get her to remember Piper’s song,” he told her.
Then the door closed and he was gone. The wind was outside, he was with it, and the stopped clock on Tiger Lily’s shelf did not tick.
Tiger Lily stared at the door standing between her and every world beyond it. Peter had vanished, and Gwen, too, wondered when she would see him again. The magic of the evening was gone without Peter to animate it. Even Foxglove seemed muted after the parting, and Tiger Lily and Gwen felt equally stranded in reality, once again.
“Oh, is that the time?” Tiger Lily asked. Gwen didn’t notice what clock she looked at. “I should make dinner. I’m sure you’re hungry if all you’ve had to eat are those sandwiches. I think I have some fish fillets in the freezer or chicken soup…”
“I’m not actually hungry,” she replied, “but thank you.”
“Neither am I…” Tiger Lily began clearing the table. Little remained on the platter but crumbs and the crusts of Peter’s sandwiches. “Whenever you get hungry, help yourself to anything in the kitchen. Would you like a cup of tea?”
“No, thank you.” Gwen looked at the pile of clothes Peter had cast off before leaving. They were clumped in a sad heap on the couch.
Tiger Lily filled a kettle and put it on her electric stove anyway. “So, you’ve heard Piper’s song?”
“A long time ago,” Gwen admitted. “I don’t remember it now, but Peter thinks that when my mother turned on my music box… This sounds absurd, but he thinks the music box might remember.”
“Not as absurd as you think. Come take a look at this.”
Gwen got up from the table and followed Tiger Lily into a dark bedroom. She flicked on the overhead light, and Gwen was overwhelmed by what greeted her.
The bookshelves and wall shelves were filled with redskin knickknacks. None of it looked like actual craftwork by Native Americans; it was all kitschy trinkets that seemed like props out of a low-budget western film. A colorful feather headdress sat decked over a vanity littered with more face paint than makeup. She had bracelets and necklaces made of bright plastic beads and painted bone, cheaply imitating Native American jewelry. Her collection of carved figurines looked like miniature cigar-store Indians, and a little cloth tee-pee was surrounded by toy dolls made of red cloth skin and black yarn braids. There were books and CDs collected on shelves, sage incense, and a tapestry on the wall that depicted a buxom woman in leather and feathers riding a wolf under a full moon.
Tiger Lily went straight to a treasure chest jewelry box on her vanity. It was painted with romanticized pictures of natives wandering through wide, grassy plains. When she opened it, a figure inside started spinning like a ballerina, only it was a dancing man with a bow and arrow in his hand. Tinny music began clicking out of the music box to the tune of “One Little, Two Little, Three Little Indians.”
“Music boxes were one of the first integrations of magic and technology,” Tig
er Lily explained. “The legend says a watchmaker built a clockwork watch with fairy dust in the gears that then played music when wound instead of telling time. It was only when another watchmaker without magic attempted to imitate his creation that a purely mechanical solution was discovered.”
Tiger Lily set the music box in Gwen’s hands. “But that must have been hundreds of years ago,” Gwen argued. “Modern music boxes wouldn’t be magical at all.” She felt the weight of the mechanisms inside, and watched the little archer spin in a victorious dance, powered by a simple spring.
“Magic is harder to get rid of than you think,” Tiger Lily told her. “Music boxes were conceived with magic, and that lingers in their nature. You’re right; they aren’t magic. But they’re still receptive to it. So when an ordinary music box is exposed to an enchanted song, something magical just might happen.”
Gwen closed the jewelry box and handed it back to Tiger Lily, who set it aside on the vanity. “Why do you have all this… stuff collected in your room?” She refrained from calling it junk, but that was what it looked like. It was just corny decorations that tried to make Native American culture looked exotic and mysterious.
“If I kept it out front, it would perturb most of my guests,” Tiger Lily replied. “But if you’re asking why I collect it in the first place… It reminds me of home.” She touched the feathers of the vibrant headdress with an odd sort of longing.
“This doesn’t look like your tribe though… not really. It isn’t nearly as real.” Gwen remembered the beautiful leather headband Dark Sun had given her, and the turquoise pendant Old Willow had gifted to Rosemary. Those things were not tacky decorations.
“This is true,” Tiger Lily admitted, “but I’m not nearly as real as I used to be either. This stuff all came from the same vision of Native Americans that imagined my tribe into being. There’s an echo of home in anything that portrays the mythical red man instead of Native Americans. I have to go out and be a Native American every day now, but I still like to fall asleep with reminders of what I used to be.”
The Piper's Price Page 8
