The beeping stopped, and a horrid ringing in her ears started. All the light in the room seemed to collapse in front of her into a single pinprick. Condensed into the brightest single point she’d ever seen, she closed her eyes and tried to blink it away. Her ears were screaming in themselves. Then the light disappeared altogether.
She was tumbling, collapsing, falling with a sob into the grass. Someone grabbed her arm.
“Run, Gwenny! Run!”
Peter pulled her along, but he met with untold resistance. Gwen had a vendetta against saving herself. She had to wait by the side of the building. Bard was going to come through the teleporter any second. Any minute. She would. She had to.
Bard was not coming.
She wanted to howl; she settled for sobbing, breathless and quiet. She felt weak at all her joints, and she clutched her hands and gritted her teeth. Her paranoia made her sense a definite weakness in all the muscles of her right arm and hand.
“Gwen-dollie, we have to get out of here or they’ll catch us too!”
He had come back for her. Without a plan or any means of clandestine infiltration, Peter had still returned and poised himself outside while black coats combed the grounds. The Anomalous Activity Department’s number one most-wanted fugitive had a better sense of self-preservation though.
“You stupid girl!” he exclaimed, his muttering words only audible to Gwen. She wanted to object—to defend herself and make him understand that wanting to save Bard wasn’t stupid at all. Before she could, he bent down and swept her off her feet. He took to the air and got them as far away from the ground as he could. They still didn’t know Peter could fly even within the radius of their anomaly reduction device. The black coats who accused Peter of knowing better than to get caught red-handed were right to think that Peter’s strategic mind knew the value of keeping himself out of risk. They just underestimated his love of adventure, his draw to danger, and his unerring loyalty to his friends and fairies.
Strange drones whirled in the distance. The devices the officer had spoken of were still running wild in the woods, looking for traces of fairy dust. As Peter carried Gwen—slowed by her weight and the detriment of the uncovered anomalium block within the facility—he reassured her as best he could.
“Holly and Fox are in a spider-silk purse. The drones are only going to find what’s left of their trails. Dill and Hawk are taking a very long route back home to throw the drones off everyone else. They’ll be fine, always half a mile ahead where it’s already saturated with magic. They can camp out in the trees too. The drones can’t follow them as fast here.”
Gwen cried into his chest, unresponsive. He kept talking, either oblivious to her sad silence or trying his best to keep it from consuming her. “Newt’s on his way back too. I sent Blink for the knapsack. She’ll be back to Tiger Lily’s with her rat by now.”
At last, they broke the perimeter of the Anomalous Activity hideout. Peter involuntarily lunged as his efforts became twice as productive. Almost whacking into a tree, he rose higher and adjusted their course amid the highest branches of the forest. “I’ve got you,” he whispered.
Gwen unlocked her fingers from where they were laced around Peter’s neck. With a deep breath, she thought of all the happiest things she could and pushed off him. She kept her arm linked with his, holding onto it as a safeguard against her emotional instability.
She wouldn’t let them win. She wouldn’t let the officers rob her of her joy.
Everyone, except for the fairies still running from the drones and the officers searching the woods, was already back at Tiger Lily’s. Without the fairies, no trail of magic would lead back to their safe house. Dillweed and Hawkbit would continue to give the adults a wild goose chase until they headed back to Neverland with a report for Jam and Spurt.
The adults would have no trail to follow to Tiger Lily’s home, and since they investigated just the other night, it seemed unlikely they’d come poking around again. When Dillweed and Hawkbit vanished to Neverland, they’d likely assume the children went too.
Even still, the children would arrange a guard shift for the night. At the first sign of adults, they would all flee and send Leroy to Piper with their plans for the invasion.
Peter and Gwen arrived at the safe house and hurried inside, the misadventure over at last.
She went straight to Tiger Lily, sitting down beside her on the couch and curling into her shoulder. She couldn’t bring herself to interrupt the gleeful sense of victory that kept the lost children all rejoicing. Tiger Lily took one look at her troubled face, though, and knew to fold the girl into her arms as she sat down.
Blink was wearing Princess Charlotte’s crown, tipped on her head so that the large crown wouldn’t fall down to her neck. Sal was glued to Newt’s side and talking a million words a minute at him—the chatter blurred into an almost consistent sound. Newt, shirtless, was too busy showing off his stomach to listen. His belly button was missing. Something must have gone wrong with the teleporter, because his belly button was now on his back. He was delighted as Hollyhock and Foxglove poked at it, marveling over the unexplainable anatomical change.
“Where’s Bard?” Blink asked, the first to realize someone was missing.
Peter sat down, cross-legged, on the floor. The sudden shift in atmosphere drew the others toward him. The children stood, fixed like stars, as the fairies orbited their favorite boy and listened as he explained in no uncertain terms that Bard had gone the way of all other lost children before her.
He spoke with great praise and respect, a natural orator as he gave an unconventional eulogy for the freedom she’d sacrificed in order to return Hollyhock and secure the pipe they needed for Rosemary’s rescue.
Gwen and Tiger Lily stayed together on the couch. The woman held Gwen’s right hand, and the girl felt the hand was somehow different. She had reached out for Bard with it, moving it in an even more dramatic manner than Newt had flexed his stomach with a breath during his teleportation. She was too concerned with Bard to worry.
“She was sweetest of all the girls,” Newt announced, tacking on, “No offense, Blink and Gwen.”
Blink nodded. “She was a Taker-Carer.”
Foxglove named her with a word that had no translation outside of Neverland—a word to mean that she had the soul of a mother. Tiger Lily, who had known Bard only briefly, in the long ago days that were her last in Neverland, agreed with the sentiment. “She was very motherly at heart. I think she will make as good of a grown-up as she made a kid.”
“I’m going to miss her,” Sal whined, sitting down and wrapping his arms around his knees.
“I wish she hadn’t lost,” Blink replied, taking the crown off her head as if it were a hat she needed to remove out of reverence.
Lost. The word struck Gwen in a strange way. Lost what? Bard didn’t lose anything—they had lost Bard. Then it occurred to her how they were using the word.
They were playing a game. As always, as ever, they were playing… and Bard had lost.
There was great melancholy and even some tears that night, but the grief did not extend beyond that. The children knew the stakes of their game were high, but at the end of the day, it would always be a game.
Newt and Sal slept, their limbs interlocked in the strangest way as they sprawled out on the couch. Blink wanted to sleep on the floor in Tiger Lily’s room where her animal town was still set up, so they piled blankets and pillows in the corner so she could make a happy little nest on the outskirts of her imaginary village. Peter and Gwen were given the twin beds in the guest room since they were the biggest.
Gwen fell in and out of sleep so restlessly she couldn’t tell the difference between anxious dreams and her tired thoughts obsessively replaying the past two nights' events. Her brain gravitated toward the same memories and fears, conscious or otherwise. First, Rosemary had been kidnapped, and now Bard was lost.
She thought back to the first day she arrived in Neverland and how welcoming Bard ha
d been. She was the oldest, with a childish wisdom that served her well. Gwen still had the pink ribbon she’d tied into her hair that afternoon… making braids and small talk while the others plotted to drown her in the lagoon if she didn’t tell a good story.
Tiger Lily’s remark gave her the most comfort. It was easy to see Bard as a mother, especially with how she had looked after Spurt and always searched for ways to make children and fairies feel more at home and safe. She’d knitted so many of their spider-silk nets with no substantive help from anyone else. She was destined for a loving adulthood. There wasn’t a bratty bone in her body, and that would translate into a kindhearted temperament too few adults possessed. Reality would be a bit better of a place if she was grown up in it.
But who would take the place of the little mother of Neverland in the meantime? Gwen’s stomach churned—should that responsibility have fallen on the oldest girl? Or the oldest child? Either way, she felt at once that she had shirked away from some innate responsibility she hadn’t known to assume in Neverland. Bard had been so much better suited to it. Gwen was at last comfortable enough to admit that she was often more lost than any of the other lost children. She needed to be watched after in Neverland, not the other way around.
It’s not such a terrible thing, she told herself. It’s what everyone in the whole wide world has ever done. All children grow up.
Except one.
She wasn’t sure she’d fallen asleep at all, but when she rolled over in her groggy haze and saw Peter missing from his messy bed, she knew she must have nodded off at some point. She waited a minute to see if he was only getting a drink of water and would be right back, but the window was open, and in her heart, she knew he was already gone.
She couldn’t imagine where he would go. Fresh air didn’t sound like a bad idea, so Gwen pulled her chic little jacket off the floor and put it on over her pajamas. It was still freezing cold in the middle of the December night, so she wrapped herself in the downy quilt of her bed. Half-crawling, half-flying, she made her way out the window and floated up in the makeshift robe. She didn’t have to get very high before she spotted Peter.
He’d taken one of the sheets with him and laid it out like a picnic blanket on the unsloped roof of the mobile home. He was stretched out on it, hands laced behind his head as he stared straight up at the stars. He caught sight of Gwen and gave her a nod.
She floated over and sat down beside him on the sheet. “Was the bed too comfortable for you?” she teased.
“I don’t like beds.” He didn’t move his eyes away from the stars. “First, you get a bed, then you have to have a bedtime, and it’s all downhill from there.”
“It’s a slippery slope.”
“Most real things are.”
“Mind if I join you?”
Peter scooted over a few inches, leaving plenty of room on the sheet for Gwen to lie down. “Want some blanket?” she asked.
“Sure.”
She spread the square-dabbled quilt over them with one sweeping motion. Nestled under the blanket, lying beside Peter, she at last was free to look at the stars.
After a whole life in suburbia where streetlights and house lights dimmed the brilliance of the stars, she couldn’t help but marvel at these ones so much closer to Lake Agana and the forest. “They’re beautiful… all of them.”
Peter didn’t share her perspective. “They’re not as bright or many as they are in Neverland.”
“True,” Gwen acknowledged, “but I’m pretty sure Neverland has stars all of its own. As far as reality goes… it doesn’t get much better than this.” She remembered what Lasiandra had said about the strange stars that hovered over her home world, and how peculiarly they arranged themselves in the sky. She wished she understood the differences better.
“We’ve got better constellations and better stories for them, too,” Peter bragged.
She smiled, imagining what stories must arise from stars in such a fantastic place. “You’ve never mentioned constellations there. What constellations does Neverland have that we don’t?”
“I forget.” Peter stretched under the cover, fidgeting like a little boy in bed. “But they’re better. You should figure it out when we get back. You’re the one with all the good star stories.”
“We should go stargazing some night.”
Peter smiled. “Everyone will love that. We could catch some fireflies and slingshot them up. See if any of them stick. That’s how you make stars, you know.”
Gwen laughed. She couldn’t tell if he was pulling her leg or not. Peter lied to her so often that it didn’t matter anyway. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“I’ll go with Rosemary then, when she comes home. She’d love it. She could get stars to stick.”
“Now you’re just trying to make me jealous.” Peter didn’t react, his face just held tight to his smile. He was so confident Rosemary would be home safe and sound soon. She couldn’t help but share in the glow of that optimism. Gwen imagined the impossible pastime of shooting stars into the sky and felt encouraged. “I’d like to make stars with you.” Her voice was soft, as if only now respecting that they were close and alone in the middle of the night, not needing to speak any louder than a whisper.
She stared at Peter, but his eyes never left the sky. He could have watched the unmoving stars for hours, for years… for lifetimes. Reaching out under the cover of the quilt, she took hold of his hand in hers where not even the stars could see it.
He finally broke his gaze and looked at her, a blank expression replacing his starry smile.
“Thank you for coming back for me today, Peter.”
“Of course,” he told her. “I knew you wouldn’t make it home without me.”
She laughed at his ego. He didn’t care. “I owe you my life,” she told him.
“No, you don’t.”
“I owe you my childhood then.”
“Probably.”
“What’s left of it.”
“There’s plenty of it left in you,” he told her. “Trust me. I’m a certified expert.”
“Who certified you?” she chuckled.
“I did. I’m an expert, remember?”
The nonsense trickled away. They kept holding hands.
“You don’t owe me anything,” Peter told her. “Not your childhood, not your life. Everything you do, you do for you. Remember that.”
“I suppose so,” Gwen agreed, dismissing her usual argument that everything she’d done since meeting Peter was for Rosemary’s sake. “I know I don’t owe my life to you… but I might give it to you in Neverland anyway.”
“There are far worse things,” Peter told her, “than giving your life to friends and spending it down in Neverland.” A silence lapsed over them before he asked, “You are going to come back with us, after the invasion with Piper? No back-and-forths about it this time?”
Gwen was reluctant to answer. How could she explain that her brain only functioned by going back and forth on everything all the time? There was no way to put that out of the process, but she thought she could for once foresee the end result of all her belabored confliction.
“Bard would want you come back,” Peter whispered.
“I think everyone would,” Gwen admitted, “even me.”
When Peter didn’t offer any continuance of the conversation, she looked over and saw his eyes closed. His breathing was deep, and his eyes raced under his eyelids. She imagined that Peter, no matter how long or little he’d been asleep, spent every unconscious moment dreaming of new adventures. His hand twitched, jerking out of Gwen’s, and he turned away, as free and unconstrained as ever.
She made herself comfortable, tucked tight under the quilt and fortified against the cold with the warm magic Peter seemed to radiate. She closed her own eyes and, as she drifted off, she imagined the stars were gossiping in approval of the children’s strange and wonderful friendship.
Gwen felt Bard shaking her. Her dream had her back in her own ho
me, but not her bed. She was sleeping in Rosemary’s room, in her bed, terrified, but slowly waking up to realize the girl had come back. Only this time, it wasn’t Rosemary; it was Bard. She could almost hear the girl’s voice, but the dream was giving way. The feeling of a hand on her leg, prodding her gently, was overwhelming her sense of dream. Her consciousness, barely alert, didn’t want to identify the sensation, because in her heart, Gwen knew it couldn’t be Bard shaking her.
In reality, it was her cell phone in the flimsy pockets of her polka-dotted pajamas, shaking with the exuberance of an incoming call at this late hour. Dizzy and groggy, she fished it out as she came to terms with her consciousness. She was on the roof, and it was cold. This didn’t make sense anymore.
She saw the call just in time to miss it. Jay Hoek’s name and contact picture was plastered on her cracked phone screen for just a second before the call went to voicemail. She didn’t have a chance to answer, but opened her messages app and quickly texted him back.
Hey, sorry, people are sleeping here. What’s up?
A moment later, after he’d left her a voicemail, he responded to her text.
Just wanted to know if you wanted to meet up tonight.
So much happened between her glimpses of Jay that it seemed like weeks had passed since she last saw him, not days. At least, that was how she justified her pounding desire to see him. She checked the time. Amazingly, it was just minutes past midnight.
Can you make it out to Lake Agana?
Gwen snuck down off the roof.
Not sure. Can you come over here? Or meet somewhere in the middle?
It was probably for the best that they didn’t head into the forest tonight, even if they did stay in the state park. Who knew what the Anomalous Activity officers were doing, or where they were searching for the children.
Still, flying all the way across town to Jay’s seemed like a lot, and Gwen was apprehensive about meeting him at his house. It had been wonderful, but almost too much so. She felt comfortable, she felt infatuated, she felt cherished and cared for… It was a lot to take in, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for the intensity of that experience on a night when they weren’t just going to watch a movie and fall asleep on the couch downstairs.
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