The Piper's Price

by Audrey Greathouse

  The door opened, but Gwen was already above it, her back pressed against the ceiling. The light clicked back on, but as her father rushed into the room, he didn’t glance directly up. The phone created a sense of urgency that allowed her to hide in plain sight. Her father didn’t close the door behind him. By the time he reached the phone, she had already shot out of the office and into the short hall downstairs. Foxglove stayed silent in the purse, and Gwen stuffed it deeper in the satchel so the fairy’s glow would be even less obvious in the dark. Banking on the hope that her father would stay in the office while he took his call, she lingered just outside of the room and listened to the conversation.

  “Hello? … It’s alright. Is something happening?”

  He sounded frantic and disoriented.

  “Are you sure? At this hour? … I suppose they wouldn’t be expecting that… yes, I saw the data this morning, too. It’s probably nothing. The MRP has an individual out by Lake Agana. You know how that screws with the readings… The radar probably picked up a minor anomaly related to them. I saw it… the anomaly wasn’t even radiating as much magic as a standard fairy.”

  He was quiet a long moment. Gwen wasn’t going to move until she heard him hang up the phone and step away from his desk. “Oh. That’s who they relocated out there? … Yes, I see your point. … Are you supposed to be telling me this, Harris?”

  Another silence, and then, “Do you think it has something to do with the girls? … I don’t know… off the record? … Yes. I saw Officer Armstrong’s report. His description of the girl at the party sounded like Gwendolyn to me.”

  A shudder snuck down her spine as she heard her father use her name. A childish impulse told her to run into the room, to hug and surprise him. She suppressed it and kept listening.

  “I reported her as a runaway to the local authorities. We told the school she had mononucleosis. She’ll come home soon, and we want it to be easy for her when she does. I don’t want her to have a record with your department if it can be avoided. She’s just upset with us, concerned for her sister. She’s sixteen.”

  Gwen’s stomach sank.

  “So this is a standard investigative run? Do I even have clearance to accompany you, Harris? … Okay. I’m not going to get my hopes up. It’s not half the signal Gwen had heading to the party. But if there’s a chance. … I’ll be ready to go in ten minutes. … Alright, see you then.”

  The phone clicked down, and Gwen shot over to the laundry room, tucking herself into a half-shut linen closet. Foxglove was still in the spider-silk purse, stashed in her satchel. She patted the purse as a gesture of reassurance, but could not gauge Foxglove’s feelings when the fairy was stone quiet. She made herself comfortable in a nest of spare pillows, waiting for her father to leave so that she could sneak back out of the house.

  He went back upstairs to dress and came down a few minutes later. She heard him pacing in the living room before he left out the front door. Once she was sure he had gone, she got up from the cozy pillows and crept into the living room. Afraid to go upstairs where her mother might still be awake, she slunk over to the door. It was locked but not dead-bolted now, so she walked out and left it in the same state.

  Music box in her satchel, fairy in her spider-silk, and a fifteen-page document from the enemy on her cell phone, Gwen felt like a real-life spy. Well, she was filled with the same sense of accomplishment and ambition that had once existed in her childhood dreams of espionage.

  She didn’t want to leave a trail of magic away from her house, so she kept Foxglove in the purse and started walking down her street. There were no lights on in the houses and no cars on the road. She was chillier than she’d been in a long time and kept her hands stuffed in her pockets. Her brisk pace helped warm her, but she had bigger problems in front of her.

  As she walked, she talked to Foxglove. “You should get out of here. If they’re looking at whatever little trail we’ve left since we got here, then making more magic tonight is probably a bad idea. If they go investigate Tiger Lily, we’ll probably be okay as long as we’re not actually there. We didn’t leave anything incriminating in her house, right? A little bit of dust, but I doubt that will be enough to register on whatever they’re measuring magic with.”

  Foxglove buzzed in objection. She didn’t want to leave. She wanted to beat the officers back to Tiger Lily’s and set awful traps for them. She wanted to get back at the officers. Gwen talked her out of this vengeful impulse and continued to think.

  “If I can’t go back to Tiger Lily’s, I need to find someplace I can stay until I’m sure that they’re done searching tonight. Wherever I go, it’ll be easier for me if I don’t have a fairy with me—no offense. Besides, you can go back to Neverland now and let Peter know I’ve got the patch and the music box to play the Piper’s song. He’ll be happy to hear that, and he’ll know what to do next. Barring any run-in with my dad’s friend in the Anomalous Activity Department, I should be clear to go back to Tiger Lily’s tomorrow.”

  Her fairy came out of the spider-silk purse. The trail of pixie dust she left was no matter—no one would be able to follow it to Neverland. Foxglove picked up Gwen’s pinky finger and pulled on it, lest Gwen not understand when she said, Why don’t you come with me?

  “Peter told me to stay in reality,” Gwen told her. “I’m not going to let him down.” If she went back to Neverland tonight, she’d just have to come right back, possibly through another storm, and her first storm landing was traumatic enough. “You don’t have to worry. I have a plan.”

  Foxglove made a tinkling-rattling noise. Gwen understood her word of caution. “I’ll be careful,” she promised. Foxglove planted a tiny, tingling kiss on her forehead as a final goodbye, then zipped off toward the stars. Her glittering form turned to a purple smudge in the sky before disappearing altogether.

  Gwen sighed, alone again. She was beginning to enjoy these brief spurts of time where she had no one—human or otherwise—watching her. She looked up and saw heavy, grey clouds blundering forward and swallowing stars as they encroached on her spot of sky. She wondered if it would snow tonight—it certainly felt cold enough for it.

  While she strolled through the dark suburban landscape, Gwen paged through the pictures on her phone, zooming in to read the tiny text of her father’s documents on her cracked screen. She tried not to feel guilty as she took advantage of her father’s secret work files.

  Most of it read like bureaucratic gibberish, detailing the need for “anomalous resources” in the Anomalous Activity Department and Research and Development. Gwen began to gather that structure of this strange organization, and suspected it might not even be as large as she once thought. The Magic Relocation Program was mentioned as a subset of the Anomalous Activity Department, and she saw that her father’s job with Anomalous Resources placed him in some clerical subset of Research and Development. The two branches of this strange Illuminati seemed to function only in a dozen other locations where strange and magical things culminated into something worth investigating.

  What intrigued her more was the report’s description of Neverland. In particular, the “Essential Capital” which was a resource they valued above all else they might find there:

  The Essential Capital represents the most powerful anomaly known. References to it as “Etz Chaim” date back over two millennia, and it is suspected to be one of, if not the only, actual physical trees of its species. If extracted from Neverland, the Essential Capital has the potential to advance medical technology and longevity research past all existing boundaries. The ability of this “Never Tree” to conceal itself and the host land it is rooted in is an equally anomalous, although less promising, aspect of the Essential Capital’s nature.

  As interesting as the following description was, there didn’t seem to be any information that would be of practical use to their resistance against the adults, and she doubted the grown-ups knew anything about Neverland that Peter didn’t. She tucked her phone away, watching her b
reath fume like smoke in front of her. She wished she’d had a chance to look at the Planned Resource Use for The Invasion of Neverland document, but she tried not to worry about that ominous title.

  She kept walking, keeping herself warm and mulling over a plan. She couldn’t return to Tiger Lily’s, and without a fairy, her options were further limited… but her feet swung forward and carried her along deserted streets for a few miles until at last she came to a familiar house on Park Street, where all the lights were off except for one—in an upstairs bedroom where a glowing computer screen was a sign of a still-conscious teenager.

  Gwen picked up some stray bits of gravel and pebbles as she approached Jay’s house so when she flew to his roof, she had something in hand to make a tiny noise. She didn’t want to startle him, so she sat beside his window, just out of sight, and tossed the rock flecks at the glass. Each one made a tiny plink noise against the window. Finally, Gwen saw the light shift in the room, as if someone was moving a laptop. Jay came to his window and peered out, a curious smile on his face. It widened with delight as soon as he saw Gwen sitting on his roof. She gave him a meek wave but matched his smile as he opened his window.

  “Hey!”

  “Howdy.” Rubbing her near-frozen fingers, she asked, “Mind if I come in?”

  “Yeah, no, of course,” he answered, throwing the window up all the way and allowing her to climb in before he closed it and shut out the wintry weather that was trying to come in with her. Gwen didn’t involve flight at all in the process. It didn’t seem appropriate—plus, she was wearing pants from her shopping trip earlier that day. For the first time in weeks, she didn’t have to worry about moving in a ladylike fashion. Neverland was too playful for pants.

  “Wow, you look good,” Jay remarked.

  Gwen remembered that she was also still wearing a face full of makeup from her superficial adventure with Dawn, artfully applied by the mall cosmetologists. Gwen laughed a little, keeping her voice low. She didn’t want to wake his parents any more than she had wanted to wake hers. “Thanks. I got dragged to the mall to day and doted on.”

  “By who? Wendy Darling?”

  “You’re closer than you think,” Gwen whispered, raising her eyebrows and realizing the truth was so ludicrous, she wouldn’t dare explain it.

  “You don’t have to keep your voice down,” he told her. “Troy and Sean were over until about an hour ago, so when my mom went to sleep, she put her earplugs in. We were kinda making a racket.”

  “What about your dad?” she asked, raising her voice to a natural volume.

  “He’s working a night shift—he’s not here.”

  “Your dad works night shifts? What does he do?”

  “Not usually. This week is just a weird schedule for him. He works in electrical maintenance. Basically, he gets paid to be a really smart guy who stands around in case something goes wrong. Anyway, you don’t have to worry about my parents. What are you doing all dressed up and out tonight?”

  Gwen laughed. “Nothing glamorous.”

  “Well, you’re sure making me feel under dressed.”

  Up until that moment, she had been doing everything in her capacity not to think about what Jay was wearing. Or rather, what he was not wearing. After his company had left, Jay had trudged upstairs and gotten ready for bed. When Gwen had arrived, he had been cuddled down in his warm bed in a pair of flannel pajama bottoms. She’d seen him shirtless at the beach in a few of his photos online, but it was a much more intense experience in person.

  “Sorry,” she apologized. “I shouldn’t have shown up unannounced.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I should have shot you a text—I’m out of habit with that.”

  “No cell reception in Neverland?”

  “None,” Gwen laughed.

  “Well, I’m glad you came by.” He leaned over and stole a kiss. The motion was so quick Gwen was surprised for a second before she realized she should be happy. He looked proud.

  “I have some time to kill. Some of those officers are on their way to search the safe house right now.”

  “Where you’re staying out by Lake Agana or whatever?”

  “Yeah. I can’t go back until I’m sure they’re done scanning the area. I figured I’d drop by here first and see if you were still awake.”

  “Oh man, that’s wild,” Jay replied. “I guess I’m aiding and abetting your escape now, huh?”

  “I’m not doing anything illegal,” Gwen answered.

  “But the mystery cops are after you.”

  The selfishness of arriving at his window occurred to her with the full weight of its unpleasantness. “I can leave; I just thought—”

  “It’s all good,” he cut her off. “You are just a lot to take in, Gwen Hoffman.” Her name sounded so good when he said it. “I’m just still trying to wrap my mind around how unbelievable you are.”

  He gave her a look that made her insides as melty as her outsides were freezing. “Okay. I don’t want to keep you up.”

  “I’m pretty sure I’m officially nocturnal after how late you kept me up last night. I still had to drive home after you left, you know.” He was complaining, but poorly. He looked far too happy for Gwen to take his grievances seriously. “I woke up at, like, three this afternoon.”

  “I had to get up at nine-thirty this morning.”

  “You must be exhausted.”

  “I really am,” she chuckled.

  He leaned in and gave her a hug, but shuddered as he did so. “You’re so cold.” Gwen tried to form words, but being pressed against Jay’s bare chest short-circuited several portions of her brain, including the part used for structuring coherent sentences. “Do you wanna go downstairs and watch a movie or something? You can sleep a while too if you want… my dad gets off work at six though, so you’ll want to fly off before he gets home.”

  She rubbed her eyes, at last coming to terms with how tired she was. “A movie sounds great.”

  They stripped the blue-striped comforter off Jay’s bed and took it with them to the media room downstairs. The Hoeks owned an impressive collection of DVDs, shelved like library books beside the television. For almost half an hour, Jay and Gwen just went back and forth discussing movies and swapping stories about their favorite films, during which time he convinced her to watch one of his favorite animated movies.

  Aside from Sailor Moon reruns and a few Hayao Miyazaki films, Gwen was unfamiliar with anime. As he put the movie into the DVD player, Gwen cuddled into the blanket on the leather couch and waited for her body heat to warm it up. Jay had pulled a shirt on—it was colder downstairs—but he still looked so handsome. She listened, not wanting to interject anything as his warm voice explained how nerdy and into manga he’d been in junior high, and how he hung out with the kids from Japanese Club now just because nobody else wanted to watch anime with him.

  He sat down beside her on the couch, excited to share something he loved with someone who had never seen it before. Gwen slumped against him, and he took hold of her hand as a plot about a sci-fi mystery in a virtual reality started to unfold, full of characters with colorful hair and an imaginative blend of Asian culture and internet memes.

  She thought for a moment that she was tired, but her happiness infected every inch of her. Her eyes did not even feel heavy; they were buoyed by such contentment as she sat hand in hand with Jay on his couch in the wee hours of the morning.

  To Tiger Lily’s surprise, Gwen walked in the door minutes before dawn.

  “Hello there,” she announced, instinctively getting up to put the kettle back on the burner for more tea. “I thought you must have headed back to Neverland.”

  “Foxglove did,” she answered, yawning. “Did officers come around last night?”

  “That they did.” Tiger Lily caught her yawn and it lifted out of her lips like a roar. “I hardly got any sleep after they woke me up and did a brief search.”

  Gwen brushed her hair back and tried not to ap
pear as nervous as she felt when she asked, “What officers came by? I mean, what did they look like?”

  “Oh, I don’t know… they looked like adults,” she responded, as if momentarily forgetting she, too, was an adult. “Only one of them was in uniform. The other must have been undercover. He didn’t say anything, just let his partner do the talking. He looked… really worried.”

  Gwen’s gut knotted as she imagined her father here, talking to Tiger Lily in a fruitless attempt to find his daughter. She remembered the look on Dark Sun’s face when he had discussed his own daughter’s disappearance to a foreign world.

  “I was worried about you,” Tiger Lily continued. “It was a good thing you didn’t come back home while they were here.”

  “I stayed at a friend’s house.”

  “Is that going to cause problems, if one of your friends knows you’re back?”

  “No, he’s chill. He won’t mention it to anybody. He knows I’m kind of in trouble,” Gwen mumbled. “I didn’t get much sleep either…”

  After their movie, she’d talked with Jay for another hour or so, a discussion of the movie segueing into a discussion of life, future, and the universe as best they could speculate on it as teenagers. At some point, she’d fallen asleep on the couch for a few hours, and woke up to her cell phone’s silent alarm vibrating in her pocket. She had unwound herself from the blanket and slipped off the couch, trying not to wake Jay as she did so. He was handsome awake, but gorgeous in his sleep. Somehow, it was better remembering his eyes’ vibrant blue color while they rolled around, dreaming under his eyelids. She had found her satchel—music box still tucked in it—and put her coat back on. Before she left, she had kissed the top of his head. He took a deep, sleeping breath and rolled over, sprawling more comfortably on the couch now that she was no longer on it with him. A peaceful smile spread over his face.

  There was just enough of the night left to take to the sky and be invisible in the darkness as she flew back to the reservation. She landed along the deserted highway, walking the last mile to Tiger Lily’s trailer park. Vigilant though sleepy, she watched for any car or soul that might have been associated with the Anomalous Activity Department. No one was out at that unnatural hour of the morning.