The Piper's Price

by Audrey Greathouse

  “Of course,” Piper began, “I’ll need collateral.”

  “Collateral? But we aren’t asking anything of you yet. We’ll pay up front.”

  “But you know where to find me. You know I’m near. I never break a deal when I shake, but I’ve learned not to take others at their word.”

  Gwen petted the rat and tried to suppress her repulsion. The trash-eating pest already had a great deal of affection for her. “What could you possibly want for collateral?”

  “You’ll come with me.”

  Gwen didn’t like the turn this discussion was taking. She didn’t look at him. She kept her eyes on her rat, feeling her best defense would be to feign distraction with this creature. “Where?”

  “You’ll do as I say. You won’t worry.”

  Gwen dropped the rat. It had the wits to land at her feet. She wanted both her hands to grab her sister, but when she looked to Rosemary and saw her eyes fixed upward…

  “I won’t worry…” the little girl echoed.

  “No!” Gwen screamed. She reached for Rosemary, but Piper was faster. He pulled Rosemary out of Gwen’s reach, never breaking eye contact with her. Gwen lunged to slap at his spellbinding eyes… but Piper only stretched up and stood tall where she could not reach.

  “You will come with me,” Piper repeated.

  The usual silence did not follow; Gwen filled it with her scream, “Rosemary, NO!”

  He spoke over her terrified babbling and calmly promised, “When you have the crown, Never Tree root, and pipe, send for me. Our deal is sealed, Gwendolyn.”

  He grabbed his cape, throwing it into the air. It caught its own impossible wind, expanding and twisting like a storm of silk. It engulfed Piper and Rosemary, and its blackness instantly became the black of the night along an empty street.

  Tiger Lily was sleeping, sound and dreamless, when Gwen burst into her room… not twelve hours after she’d come running in for help with Hollyhock’s sudden capture. This was an even more emotional event. Gwen came in, her face already soaked with tears that had dried and left an invisible salt from her hurried flight back.

  She had knocked at the door first, but didn’t have the composure to wait for Tiger Lily to answer. She had launched herself into the room, knowing the intrusion would be forgiven in such great emotional distress.

  Had there been room for logic in her screaming mind, Gwen would have known that no amount of volume or speed would have any effect on Tiger Lily’s reaction or ability to help. The same would have been accomplished with a quiet knock and a heavy, slow entrance. But Gwen was a volatile sixteen, lost in a stew of emotion.

  Tiger Lily sat straight up as if her hips were hinges. She tore off her sleep mask and turned on her bedside light. When she saw Gwen hurtling to her, she instinctively opened her arms.

  Without hesitation, Gwen ran into her embrace and felt Tiger Lily’s arms swaddle her to the best of their capacity. She held the girl close, repeating the question that Gwen had failed to hear when she came babbling in, “What’s the matter?”

  “Rosemary… he… he took Rosemary!”

  Pressed against the woman, Gwen physically felt Tiger Lily’s jaw drop. “Piper?”

  “Yes, he took her!”

  Tiger Lily pried Gwen away from her, but held even tighter to her arms as she locked eyes with her. She hunched an inch, making sure they were looking at each other straight on. This alone helped Gwen gather her wits, if only so she would be better able to fully communicate her panic. Tiger Lily was looking—she was listening.

  With careful and economic use of language, Tiger Lily gathered the relevant

  details. “Where did he take her?”

  “I d-don’t know—he just disappeared!”

  “Did he say why he was taking her?”

  “C-collater-ral—he said it was… collateral.”

  “He agreed to help you and Peter?”

  “Yeah, but he k-kidnapped Rosemar—”

  “Gwen,” Tiger Lily interrupted. The girl fell silent, mid-syllable. With calm authority, Tiger Lilly told her, “She’ll be okay. We will get her back. We can make a plan for it right now—but first, you have to understand that. She’ll be okay. We’ll get her back.”

  “N-n-no! He—”

  “Gwen. It’s alright. It’s scary, but there’s no reason to worry, and once you stop worrying, we can start working on a plan. Piper doesn’t want Rosemary. He wants gold, doesn’t he?”

  “P-princess Charlotte’s crown…” she stuttered.

  “Okay. Princess Charlotte’s crown. That’s what he wants. We’ll get him that, and he’ll—”

  “An-and a root from the Ne-never Tree…”

  “The Never Tree?” Tiger Lily’s confidence seemed to falter.

  “What’s the Never Tree?” Gwen wept. “He wants it to hide from the mermaids.”

  Tiger Lily shook her head. “The Never Tree is the tree at the heart of Neverland. Fairies are born in its hollows, and redskins cut their bows from its branches. It’s the magical nucleus of Neverland, but I have no idea why Piper would want any part of it. It won’t hide him.”

  “But he thinks it will and—”

  Tiger Lily hushed her, firm and loving. “Then Peter will take a cutting and make him give Rosemary back. Peter never leaves anyone behind. I’m sure the tree will survive that. Did Piper tell you when or where he wanted to meet again?”

  “He gave me a rat.” Gwen held out the creature, which had been shoved in her coat pocket and traumatized by the flight back home. He squeaked, grateful to be near the ground and not in motion.

  “Oh!” Already on edge, Tiger Lily was startled by the rodent and jerked back. The rat squeaked again, and she took it on faith that the creature was not feral. “Alright. We’ll wake up Hawkbit and send him to Neverland right away. Peter will take care of the crown and the Never Tree, and we’ll call Piper back. In the meantime, Rosemary will be safe, and no doubt dazed and happy in his spell.”

  “B-but!” There were no words in her mind, just abstract fear.

  “If he did anything to hurt her, he would see the wrath of Neverland, the redskins, and the mermaids, too. He knows that. He wouldn’t dream of it, even if he had anything to gain from it.”

  “Are you sure?” She wanted to have that faith, but her adrenaline-flooded mind wanted her to suffer her fear still longer.

  Tiger Lily drew her into a hug again. “Positive. You don’t even have to believe it yourself, as long as you trust me. Don’t think about it. Just think about how much you trust Peter, Hawkbit, and me.”

  Gwen lifted her arms and returned the hug. In turn, she was rocked back and forth. Tiger Lily was asking her to stop thinking, to play the child and have faith in the one rocking and assuring her. She appreciated it. For a moment, it made it easier to be an adult about the situation.

  “Okay,” Gwen agreed, trying to convince her heart with her voice.

  “Did he tell you how to find Hollyhock?”

  Gwen nodded against her shoulder, and explained everything that had happened while they sat in the reddish glow of her cigar-store Indian lamp. The fairies wandered in after the initial commotion to listen as well. Tiger Lily kept her talking and made her walk through the better aspects of the night. When the fear and anxiety had dissipated enough, Gwen felt exhaustion, pure and simple, flood her system. With all the relevant information, Hawkbit zoomed off to Neverland to report back to Peter. Gwen closed her eyes, certain she would not be able to fall asleep, until the moment that she did. Foxglove dragged her pincushion bed in from the other room, and then helped the rat make a little bed out of a bandana beside her on the nightstand. Tiger Lily continued sitting in her bed, reluctant to move and risk waking poor, tired Gwen. When the girl began to snore, Tiger Lily brushed the hair out of her eyes and turned off the lamp. In the darkness, she snuggled down herself… but stayed in Gwen’s hold and kept a comforting hand on the young woman’s shoulder.

  Blink was waiting for them in the morning
. Gwen stirred herself awake before Tiger Lily, whose sleep schedule was suffering as a result of the girls and their emergencies. When Gwen pushed herself up and away from where she was cuddled against Tiger Lily, she caught sight of the girl in a blue softball jersey and cargo shorts.

  She was surrounded by all the blocks, stacking cups, playing cards, and other building materials she could find in the house, and all the plastic animals, too. She sat in the middle of a small village she had built on the floor of Tiger Lily’s room. Happy and silent, there was no telling how long she’d been sitting there, immersed in a world-building game of her own design.

  “Blink?”

  Tiger Lily stirred.

  The girl set down the narwhal figurine and plastic tiger. “Peter sent me. I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “Where’s Peter?” Gwen got up out of bed, watching where she stepped. Blink’s card-cup-block-and-Lego village spanned over most of the carpet.

  “He’s coming tonight with the others, once it gets dark. He sent me ahead.”

  While Gwen appreciated the logic of sending inconspicuous Blink in daylight, she didn’t fully understand. “Why?”

  Blink stood up and artfully bounded around all of her houses. “So that you’d know that everything is going to be okay.” She approached Gwen, empty-handed, and announced, “He wanted me to give you this.”

  She was confused, but understood as soon as the girl threw her arms around Gwen’s waist. Her heart melted a bit, and the words echoed in her head. Everything is going to be okay.

  She turned and saw Tiger Lily lying awake in bed, watching the embrace with warm eyes. Blink looked at her, too. “I found some worms for my animal town outside in the mud. I put them in a jar with their dirt so they wouldn’t get on the carpet. They’re the only real animals I brought in. Is that okay?”

  Tiger Lily smiled. “Absolutely.”

  Foxglove had woken up as well, and now wandered through the imaginary streets of Blink’s animal town. She was delighted to find Dillweed dozing in one of the card houses. The green fairy had accompanied Blink to reality, despite his fears. His terrifying and drunken experience at Jay’s party left him wary of the real world, but Gwen had saved him from that, and he trusted her to watch out for him again if he came to keep her spirits up and help find her little sister. He owed her that much, and cowardice was no vice of his.

  Blink wanted to know everything Gwen knew. They went into the living room and listened to bacon sizzle while Tiger Lily cooked breakfast for the young strategists. Blink marveled over the coaster with Piper’s instructions for finding the holding facility. It shouldn’t have surprised Gwen that Piper’s directions pointed deeper into the woods, just past Lake Agana. The lake was beginning to seem the nexus for all the area’s magic.

  Blink gave everything her full attention and asked occasional, pointed questions. Any other child would have added to the frenzy of Gwen’s concerns, but Blink came with a mission. Dillweed and Foxglove stayed at her shoulders like two flitting angels in purple and green.

  Piper’s rat popped onto the table midway through their discussions and started gnawing on the coaster. Blink took it from him with a firm, scolding, “No,” but then gave him half a piece of bacon from her plate. She watched him eat it, vanishing the stiff slice of meat incrementally with his sharp front teeth. “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t know,” Gwen answered. “We only met last night.”

  “Pablo?”

  The rat squeaked in protest, and shook his head.

  “Rufus?”

  The rat shook his head even harder when he squeaked in denial.

  “Roscoe? Seymour? Norbert?” Each time Blink mentioned a name, the rat objected. “Leroy?” she tried.

  The rat hesitated, then made a low, contented rumbling sound, signaling some sort of approval, as if Leroy was not his name, but would suffice.

  “Okay, Leroy. I’m going to need your help today.” Looking again to Gwen, she asked, “Do you have some paper I could use?”

  Blink proceeded to outline her plan, drawing a map and tactical symbols on a page of the little notebook Gwen kept in her satchel.

  “I’m going to follow Piper’s instructions to the lab. They probably thought they were smart to put it out in the woods away from the town, but it is actually really close to us if it’s just on the other side of Lake Agana.”

  “It’s too far to walk on your own.” Gwen told her.

  “I can fly,” Blink said. “I won’t let anyone see me, so long as the fairies don’t come with me.”

  Dillweed assured her he wouldn’t. Foxglove wasn’t excited about going to the holding facility either.

  “What will you do when you get there?”

  “Watch,” Blink answered. She picked up the rat and held him in both her hands. He looked like a pet when she cradled him—not the animal Gwen had found in a dumpster last night. “I’ll be lookout and figure out as much as I can about it. I’ll find a way to sneak in… but I’ll need Leroy’s help.”

  Gwen could see the advantage a rat had over a fairy in this instance. The usual charms of fairies, who left their magic and presence undetected by unsuspecting eyes, would be of no use in an environment full of trained Anomalous Activity officers… or whoever guarded such a place. No one would suspect a rat though. Rats were ordinary things, unsavory pests that had no association with Neverland or magic.

  Blink lifted Leroy to meet her eyes and asked him, “Are you prepared to do daring and brave things for your countrymen and infiltrate an enemy base?”

  The rat growled with a happy and hypnotized thirst for adventure.

  “Alright,” Blink announced getting to her feet. “Leroy and I will scout and have a full report by tonight. Peter and the other kids will come, and then we can all go save the day together.” Gwen admired the girl’s confidence as she took her map and tucked it into the pockets of her cargo pants. They looked like boys’ pants. Gwen missed having functional, deep pockets in her clothing. Blink pulled her hair into a high ponytail to keep it out of her face and looked like she was prepared for anything.

  “Excuse me, Tiger Lily?” she asked. “Would you pack me a lunch, please?”

  Gwen bit her fingernails more that day than she had in the past six months. It was a nasty childhood habit she had almost completely beat, but it crept back whenever she suffered through an episode of blind anxiety. She wound and rewound Irene’s invisible thread around her hands until they went numb. Tiger Lily tried to keep her heart calm and her mind distracted, but there was only so much she could do with card games and work around the house. Gwen appreciated it, however. If it weren’t for Tiger Lily’s almost apathetic regard for the situation, she probably would have gone to pieces worrying about Rosemary. She tried to remember Peter had sent Blink with a hug and a plan.

  The day dragged on like a wounded animal, but when dusk at last came, it seemed to devour the sky all at once.

  Gwen sat outside on the porch, the way she had once waited in the yard for her father to come home in the evenings—back when her father coming home from work could be the highlight of her day. Even that happy memory seemed complicated and melancholy to Gwen now. She wished she’d spent more evenings waiting for her father to come home from work—that strange, adult work she was now fighting against.

  If she could have snapped her fingers and been safe at home with Rosemary, she would have. She’d sworn she would watch out for Rosemary, but she’d only enabled the girl to embroil herself deeper into dangerous adventures. Gwen could not escape the feeling that she was at fault for Piper taking Rosemary. The treasures and enchantments Piper demanded from them seemed like small trinkets in contrast to what Gwen suffered in her sister’s absence, and she understood, too late, everyone’s warnings about what price the Piper would come at. She was paying for what she’d instigated now.

  She watched for stars in the sky. A few untwinkling planets emerged—Venus and Jupiter, as Lasiandra had taught her to identify—but
it took another minute and much sky scanning before Gwen caught sight of the first star.

  Wringing her hands, she started, “Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight…” As her voice plodded through the words of the superstitious rhyme, Gwen thought of every other time she’d asked favors of stars. Always wracked with indecision, always torn in two by the divided nature of her conflicted heart, she’d never known quite what to ask for. Every wish had left her melancholy in her suspicion she was misusing potential.

  As she made her wish tonight, Gwen longed for the luxury of confliction.

  Midway through the sky, it adjusted its course by a hair, and her eyes trailed after the fast-falling speck of light until it hit the artificial horizon formed by the towering forest. Half a second after the star left sight, a faint, white aurora surged from the depths of the forest. It was subtle enough that it would have gone by unnoticed by anyone not waiting for the impact.

  Nothing else happened.

  Gwen kept her eyes on the forest, but backed up and opened the door to the trailer. “Dillweed. Foxglove,” she whisper-called. The fairies, eating apricots in the kitchen, came when called. “I think they’re here,” she whispered.

  Tiger Lily came to the door, too. She looked out into the night with wild longing in her eyes. A smile of supreme mischief crossed her face, and Gwen watched as it withered away. “Go,” she said. “I’ll keep watch for anyone who might track your magic trail back to here. If I suspect anything, I’ll light a campfire in the fire pit.”

  Gwen gave her a hug. “You are a wonderful safe house tender,” she told her.

  Tiger Lily smiled at the compliment, but there was no mistaking the sadness in her eyes… the desperate wish that she could run, brave and wayward, into the woods with the children to thwart their adversaries. “Go,” she said again.

  Gwen almost stuck her hands into the pockets of her crop-top jacket, but realized that Dillweed and Foxglove had nestled themselves in those cavities. She dashed over to the woods, careful to stay on foot since the night was still so young and newly dark.