The Piper's Price

by Audrey Greathouse

  Once she was in the black of the forest, her fairies burst out of her pockets in order to illuminate her way and search for Peter.

  He wasn’t hard to find.

  Hawkbit was with him, much to the delight of Foxglove, who scooped him up and shook him until their yellow and purple glows blurred together. Dillweed dutifully stayed by Gwen as Peter approached, a small squad of lost children behind him.

  Newt, Sal, and Bard were in company. Newt and Sal had painted their faces with dark mud and were in the most artfully dirty clothes they could find for camouflage. Bard was in a practical jumper and had her hair in a neat braid, wrapped and pinned to her head. Peter looked like Peter.

  “Ready to go?” he asked.

  Gwen nodded.

  “Where’s Blink?”

  “She’s waiting for us there—scouting the place with Leroy.”

  “Who’s Leroy?”

  “Sorry—Piper’s rat.”

  “Good.” Peter looked to the other children. “The adventure begins then.”

  Bard saluted him. Sal and Newt pounded on their chests in a demonstrative show of proto-masculinity. “Which way to their base?” Sal asked.

  Gwen handed Peter the coaster so he could examine it for himself as she announced, “This way.”

  The fairies led the way, illuminating a path through the forest. Newt and Sal bushwhacked their way through ferns and brush with large sticks, clearing the way for the others. “What’s the plan?” Bard asked.

  “We’ll know when we rendezvous with Blink,” Peter answered.

  “Stealth attack!” Newt yelled.

  “Of some kind, yes.”

  The children descended into a flurry of thoughts on this matter.

  “Sal should cause a distraction.”

  “The girls should wear camo, too.”

  “We should have a secret code.”

  “I think I’m going to need a bigger stick.”

  While they discussed their options, Peter cast a look at Gwen and seemed to register for the first time that something was amiss with her. “What happened to you?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t look so good.” The hard winter ground crunched under his feet with fallen leaves and dying shrubbery.

  Appalled with his memory, his indifference, or both, Gwen snapped, “My sister got kidnapped last night. I haven’t been so good.”

  Peter looked taken aback, as if her bitter tone surprised him. “I just meant your hair. And your clothes. You look weird.”

  “Oh.” A pang of guilt struck her for having attributed such callousness into his immature question. Her temper was flared now, and it was hard for her to push it back down and remind herself that Peter’s rude remarks still coexisted with his friendship. “I had to play with princesses in order to get the patch we needed for Piper.”

  “Hmm,” Peter responded. “Well, I’m glad it was for a noble cause. You look awfully grown-up though. It isn’t becoming.”

  She knew that on another day, she might have agreed with him, but she was too distraught to handle his blunt remarks about her appearance with a level head. She wanted to snap back, Jay thought I looked nice, but it was a stupid impulse. What did it matter how Peter judged her appearance anyway? On some shallow level, she could justify seeking Jay’s approval, but what did it matter what she looked like to a friend? And yet, because he was a friend, his frank opinions felt full of impartial honesty and greater weight.

  “But speaking of princesses,” Peter finished his sentence not with words but with an object. He pulled a glittering crown out of his knapsack and placed it in Gwen’s hands.

  “Princess Charlotte’s crown?” She knew it could be nothing else, but she was hesitant to believe it. She’d never held something so valuable before. It was almost underwhelming simply because it was a real object instead of a thing of impossible fantasy.

  “You don’t have to worry about Rosemary,” he promised.

  “What about the Never Tree root?” Gwen asked.

  Peter’s expression turned grim as he pulled a dark, scraggly root out of the pack as well. Tangled and dirty, it looked like strange symbols or runes were seared onto the root. He held it tight in his hand, but did not offer it to Gwen. “The tree suffered for it. The Never Tree is strong, but its roots are important. It’ll recover its full strength in time, but I hope I can talk Piper out of this madness. The root can’t do anything for him, and we could still graft it back to give it strength.”

  “We have to get Rosemary back, though,” Gwen insisted. She understood now that the Never Tree was no small thing, but her sister remained more important.

  “I’ll get her back. Sure as snowsalt. You know how clever I am.”

  Gwen handed the priceless Welsh crown back to Peter. “Yeah. I do.”

  They tromped through the forest, the most mischievous band to ever pass through those woods. Not so much as a twig snapped under her feet when Blink approached, even though she was avoiding flying and all traceable magic. She startled Gwen, the way she appeared out of the darkness.

  “What’s the report, Blink?” Peter took her sudden arrival in stride. “What diabolic defenses have they set up?”

  “Do we need more camouflage?” Sal asked, reaching down and grabbing a fistful of mud in preparation.

  Blink held Leroy in her hands like a baby and began to brief the others. “I don’t think you’ll need more camouflage. I ran some experiments to see if they could detect magic outside of the base. It looks like a school. It’s not a normal jail place. I can’t fly if I get too close to it. I think it might be dangerous for the fairies to go near.”

  “Is it safe here though?” Bard asked.

  “Should be,” she answered. Dillweed, Foxglove, and Hawkbit all nodded… They felt no ill effects of any kind of magic drain.

  Bard pulled a spider-silk net out of her overalls’ breast pocket. “We should set up a meeting place here, in case things go bad and we need to retreat or the fairies need to hide.”

  She passed the net to Newt, who put his bushwhacking stick between his teeth and held onto the silvery scarf as he climbed the nearest tree. He tucked it between branches and leaves, perfectly obscuring it.

  “Remember this spot,” Bard told everyone as the three fairies examined the hiding spot and made sure it would sufficiently obscure them above the heads of any magic hunting officers.

  “How could you not fly?” Peter asked Blink. “You’re the best flier I know—except for me.”

  “You might be able to fly, Peter,” she conceded, “but something is wrong about this place. It doesn’t want to let you do magic.”

  Gwen puzzled over this phenomenon. “How big of a radius is there where you can’t fly?”

  Blink blinked once and asked, “What’s a radius?”

  “How far away do you have to be before you can fly again?

  She thought. “Like half a football field?” she guessed. “It’s hard to tell with the forest.”

  “But how?” Peter demanded.

  This made sense to Gwen, but it was alarming. “They must have an anomaly reduction device of some kind… but it would have to be huge.” The simple keychain Dawn had carried around at the mall had been an intense magical drain and prevented any magic or perception of magic to crop up while they were in public. To create the same effect for such a large space of forest, they would need something much more powerful.

  “What’s an anomaly reduction?” Bard asked. The children all took a step closer to Gwen with curious wonderment.

  “Anomaly is the grown-up word for magic,” Peter answered, but he waited on her for a better understanding.

  “The reduction device is basically a black hole that sucks up magic and creates a field where nobody normal notices anything that might be magical and nothing magical can happen. The one I saw was a personal-sized one, like a coin. It was really heavy. I can’t imagine what the one inside their facility must be like.”

 
; Peter burst into a grin. The others were perplexed, but he was already scheming and ready to throw half a dozen questions at Gwen. Newt climbed down out of the tree and sat on the forest floor as he and the others watched their quick exchange.

  “Is there a way to turn it off?”

  “It’s just solid metal of some kind.”

  “Would I be able to pick it up?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Would the grown-ups be able to pick it up?”

  Gwen thought again about how heavy the keychain was. “Maybe a very strong one could… but I doubt it.”

  “Does it stop all magic?”

  “I’m not sure. I think it sucks up what it can, and then just hides the rest. Things that are innately magical might not be affected—or at least, not as affected. The way it was explained to me was that it was an extremely magical object that puts all its magic into hiding and stopping other magic from people.”

  Peter snapped and got the fairies’ attention. “Hawk, go with Bard and see what Blink is talking about. If anything feels wrong, you have her come right back with you. Stay in her reach.”

  Hawkbit saluted Peter like he was his commanding officer. Bard didn’t question the order but marched off in the direction Blink pointed her. While they went to test the anomaly reduction field, Peter continued his line of questioning.

  “So is this akin to a fairy field?”

  “A fairy field?” Gwen asked.

  “When enough fairies gather, they can use their magic to hide in plain sight. It happens all the time in Kensington Garden.” Peter’s grin was growing like a fern’s unfurling leaves in the light.

  “So it is a little bit like the spider-silk?” Blink asked.

  “Yeah, a little. Only it works on unsuspecting adults, instead of drones.”

  “They won’t expect us!” Sal cheered. The children were all sorts of nervous and excited, glowing in the spastic purple-green light of Dillweed and Foxglove, who were getting more fidgety in the air every second.

  “But they know about magic, so they might not be so unsuspecting,” Peter mused, putting his hand to his face and stroking an imaginary beard in thought. “Still, it is some advantage. This would explain why it took Piper so long to escape… did he tell you how he managed to get out?”

  Gwen shook her head. “He just mentioned he hypnotized someone.” She bit her lip, trying to force back the shudder that wanted to strike her spine. “But then that doesn’t make sense with my theory that it only affects things that aren’t innately magical…”

  “Piper is magic,” Peter assured her. “He could have done it if his guards got sloppy. This is good news. Blink, what’s the layout like?”

  In answer, she let Leroy down and got down on her hands and knees to pull up all the plants in front of her. She smoothed over the dirt quickly, the cold of the night never seeming to bother her or any of the lost children. When it was out of mind, it didn’t occur to Gwen to feel cold either. It was only an occasional thought of reality that reminded her she ought to be cold during winter nights like this.

  Leroy dragged a tiny rat toe along the dry and level dirt, limping along as he etched lines on the ground. Blink pointed and explained for him as he finished his diagram. “Whatever anomaly machine they have, Leroy isn’t affected by it. And he must be at least a little magical because he’s the smartest rat I’ve ever met. The entrance is here, and they have a lot of laboratories along this hallway. There’s a basement, too. Leroy couldn’t get into any of the rooms down there. There was a guard, and all those rooms needed keys.”

  “Easier to get to the experiments than the prisoners then,” Peter surmised, staring at the simple dirt sketch. “Real keys or their magic card keys?”

  Leroy squeaked. Blink somehow translated. “Magic flat keys.”

  His eyes went back to the dirt sketch. He squatted and picked up a twig, tracing small rooms in the basement Leroy had outlined. The rooms lined the walls, leading to a single room at the end of the basement’s hall. “What I want to know,” he asked, “is if there are experiments upstairs and locked cells downstairs… what do you think they have locked up here?” He placed a promising X on the cell at the far end of the hall.

  “Do you think that’s where the magic-stopper is?” Blink asked.

  Something rustled in the bushes. The sound startled everyone, but the yellow glow of Hawkbit was an instant relief. Bard had returned and was happy to announce, “Hawkbit doesn’t have a problem with the field. He said he could feel it, but he was okay to fly in it.”

  “Good.” Peter rose and stood tall, flinging his twig away. He looked at the fairies, all hovering over Bard at the moment. “Everyone, dust up. We need at least one fairy to stand watch and signal Tiger Lily and the others back home in case our mission fails and we get caught.” He took off the knapsack—Princess Charlotte’s crown and the invaluable Never Tree root within it—and threw it into the trees above. It caught on a broken branch and hung inconspicuously camouflaged above their heads. He announced to the fairies, “If all else fails, you need to get Leroy to bring Piper here for his payment and return Rosemary.”

  Gwen smiled. For someone who rarely thought more than a minute into his playful future, Peter was a masterful strategist, with all the right priorities.

  Peter looked back into the tree above them. “Newt, get that spider-silk back down out of the tree. I’ve got a plan.”

  The mischievous band followed Blink and Leroy to the facility. Peter marched forward with such confidence Gwen would have thought he already knew where he was going. As soon as they were in the magic-reduction device’s radius, they lost their ability to fly, but also their ability to be reliably tracked. At least, they assumed that when no officers came for them.

  Peter was the only exception. Too confident to let anything interfere with his flight, he continued to bound into the air as if nothing was wrong at all.

  Once they reached the building, they hung back in the bushes. The description Blink had given of it as a school seemed fitting. There were windows all along the walls, but they were high and out of reach, even for adults. The building was a single story, but it was a towering story. It was made primarily of brick, but concrete reinforced what wasn’t, and two tall columns stood beside the doors of its only entrance. The windows were wide enough for children to fit through, but without their normal ability of flight, those would be useless.

  A tall, razor-wire fence surrounded it—which also posed a problem to flightless children. The chain link fence’s gate was clamped shut with a heavy padlock, but something was flying on the other side.

  “What is it, Peter?” Newt whispered while his commander investigated with his spyglass.

  “Drones,” Peter answered, staring their little red lights down through his wooden periscope. “At least two of them, and probably four—one monitoring each side of the building.”

  “How are we going to get inside?” Sal hissed.

  “Gwen has my lucky skeleton key,” Bard told him, “but I don’t know about the drones?”

  Peter adjusted his spyglass, fixing his gaze on the door. “The skeleton key won’t help us, except with getting through the gate. I don’t think the door has a keyhole.”

  The six of them and their three fairies huddled together in a discussion of all their options. All plans were considered, even the impossible ones, until Sal fell upon the best solution.

  “We should break a drone,” he announced. “When grown-ups’ things break, they always find out and try to get someone in trouble. When a grown-up comes out, we could attack them and get the key!”

  Bard stared at Hawkbit and proposed, “Or maybe we could have a fairy steal it from him. He wouldn’t even know then.”

  Foxglove volunteered, but recanted when she was informed she couldn’t pinch, bite, or otherwise harm the adult. Dillweed decided to go instead.

  Peter agreed at once with this course of action, and gallantly took charge. He pulled out his slings
hot and loaded it with a steely marble before he hovered up over the fence and fired down at a drone rounding the corner of the building. They watched the red light fall to the ground with a crash, and then fade off. After that, they waited.

  Gwen felt a tug on her jacket sleeve. Bard was staring up at her.

  “Are you scared?” the little girl asked. How could someone so small read her like a book? Gwen nodded a bit and smiled as if she felt silly for it.

  “It’s okay to be scared. I just wanted you to know you don’t have to be. Everything will be okay.” She wrapped her arms around Gwen’s hips in one of the half-sized hugs she was now so used to.

  “Thanks, Bard,” she whispered, feeling a little stronger for it.

  In a minute, a dark-haired man in grey coveralls came out of the facility, grumbling. He had a set of keys and a plastic card attached to his belt. He wandered the building’s perimeter until he found the collapsed bot. He wore a miner’s light, and kneeled beside the broken drone as he examined it.

  Dillweed shot between the chain links of the fence and zipped to the man’s hip. With the drone down, he wouldn’t have to worry about it finding his pixie dust trail until the man had finished fixing it. He worked industriously and inconspicuously to slip the key card off its metal clip. Once he had it, he flew back to the others and dropped it into Peter’s hand.

  Gwen, in the meantime, had been figuring out how to use a hundred-year-old iron key to open a steel padlock manufactured within the past year. To her amazement, the tip of the wide key shrunk down and melted into the lock. With a simple twist, she had the lock opened and quietly pulled the gate open. They flooded in, lucky that the drone engineer had his back to them and his focus on his machine.

  The children swiped into the facility and flooded in, uncertain what they would find inside.

  The building’s interior reminded her of a doctor’s office or small hospital. The tile was freckled with blue and silver, and the walls were a drab blue color, like a foggy sky. The wood doors were almost white in contrast. A stairway to their right lead down into a darker region of the building.