The Piper's Price

by Audrey Greathouse

  Davies Park?

  She leaned against the pale blue corrugation of the mobile home’s wall, her phone in both her hands. She clicked the screen on and off, waiting until the smiling message icon appeared again.

  I can be there in fifteen.

  She grinned, and took to the wind as she typed.

  Same. See you then.

  Davies Park was only a few blocks from the town center where Rosemary and she had summoned Piper. Having flown that way three nights in a row, she imagined it would be easy to make it to the urban park.

  She flew at an enjoyable pace, grateful she didn’t have to hurry. Nothing was after her, and no disasters were unfolding. She was simply on her way to see her favorite man.

  It was funny how until she went to Neverland, she had always considered Jay more or less a boy. Now, he seemed like a man if only because he was in the process of growing into one. It might be an honorary title at the moment, but Jay made growing up look good.

  At the park, Gwen landed on the roof of the jungle gym. This late at night, no children were out, and few cars drove past the park on the ordinarily busy Howard Street. She waited on the plastic and metal structure, overlooking the uneven field of grass, swing set, and old merry-go-round spinner. She waited.

  A bicyclist came spinning up Howard Street at a ferocious pace, and then pedaled fast along the paved path toward the play structure and picnic tables. He popped a wheelie before coming to a stop.

  Gwen clapped, but also called out, “Show off!” as she drifted down off the jungle gym’s roof.

  “Says the girl floating over,” Jay replied, unstrapping his helmet and turning off the bike lights. “Like I can even attempt to keep up in the arms race of cool with you.”

  She laughed and lingered in the air a tantalizing moment more before dropping to her feet. In almost the same motion, she bounced up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek in place of a hello.

  The kiss drew the corner of his lips up toward it; she watched as his smile spread on his face. “Thanks for meeting me here. Dad’s got his car for work tonight and getting my mom’s keys… it would have been hard to explain on a Wednesday night.”

  “No problem. I’m glad we could connect.”

  He took hold of her hand. “One of these nights I’m going to have to take you out on a real date.”

  They strolled around the park, hand in hand, going back and forth on a whole number of subjects. Gwen and Jay unraveled each other with a conversation that wove and twisted over every subject… and every topic was romantic, because they were in a blissful moment of intimate discovery. Every answer, every detail, and every memory they shared was another piece in the puzzle they wanted to build. Gwen could not comprehend that this was what was fleeting about young love; this was the transitory bit of new relationships that she would spend most of her life without, whomever or wherever she settled with. She could sense a divine energy imbued in everything they discussed, and she knew this was magical in its own right.

  They talked about childhood memories, dreams, cooking mishaps, and everything in between. They discussed their aspirations, too.

  “It’s kind of exciting,” Jay admitted as they wandered off the path they’d been walking loops on. “I got the last of my college applications off today.”

  “Oh my gosh,” Gwen didn’t know how to react. Sometimes, she forgot how much a year’s difference made between her and Jay when they were in this transitional stage of life. She climbed onto the merry-go-round, giving it a little spin as she boarded. “Where did you apply?”

  “A few safety schools—the U, Eastern, Arizona State—but hoping to get into an academy.”

  “An academy?”

  “Yeah. I applied to West Point and the USNA, but I’m not sure about my odds. They’re really selective.” He came over to the merry-go-round and grabbed hold of one of its bars. With all his strength, he flung it. Gwen started revolving at twice the speed. “I think my best bet is with the Coast Guard Academy out in New London.”

  “London?” It was hard for her to hear as she spun away from him.

  “New London, Connecticut.”

  “Wow,” she responded. She couldn’t imagine that far into the future. Jay graduated, going out of state—joining the military? “The military? Really?” she asked aloud. It had always seemed to her that the military was a place for people who didn’t know what they wanted to do, needed the G.I. bill for tuition, or didn’t have other options. As Jay pointed out though, West Point and the rest were selective, and prestigious. She tried to fathom what would draw him to that.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “It seems like a good idea. I don’t know if I’ll go for sure, even if I do get accepted. Of course my mom hates the idea… but I think it might be the right place for me.” He kept spinning her with gentle pushes now that she was in motion. “Coach Wilson is always talking about the importance of training your body and mind as a unit. You shouldn’t think of them as separate entities, and any good you do for one will be negated if you don’t make sure to take care of the other. The idea of going to an academy that focuses on both seems like the richest experience I could have, you know?”

  Gwen sat down, her movements cautious as the merry-go-round spun. Jay backed away. As he continued to speak, the device slowed a bit with every cycle.

  “My uncle served in the army, so he always used to talk about it. It’s not that he glamorized it or anything—far from it. But the one thing he said that really stuck with me was that every man needed to give to his country as much as he could. Not everyone can join the military, but if I could do it, if I could push myself through the ordeal of it… shouldn’t I act on that? If those of us who can, don’t, who will, you know?”

  She stood up, holding to one of the many handles. “It’s really hard for me to imagine you in the military.”

  He clapped his legs together, rigid as a board, and saluted her. “Private Hoek, reporting for duty.”

  “Yeah, see, I still can’t really imagine it.”

  “That’s okay,” he told her, hopping up on the merry-go-round with her, pressing himself against her as he held onto the same handlebar. “It’s hard for me to imagine you in Neverland.” He kissed her forehead and studied her face, a blur of confusion and adoration on his. “Are you really going back? Is this just… what you’re going to do?”

  The merry-go-round spun her slowly back around.

  “I guess so,” Gwen answered. “At least for now. I can always come back. Everyone does eventually. There’s not a lot of opportunity cost at my age. It’s either leave my family and watch my friends scatter for college in the next year, or just put everything on pause.”

  “Gap year in Neverland, huh?”

  “Yeah. Only the whole not-aging thing would make it easy to take a gap decade… if I wanted. I’m not sure how long I’d be there, really.”

  She hadn’t stopped to think how long she would really stay in Neverland. Children could go half a century—she’d seen that in action with Bard—but she had cultivated and grown her mind into more complex an instrument. She didn’t think she could be forever satisfied in an existential petri dish like Neverland. There was a massive world in reality, with infinitely more people and places to explore, even if Neverland’s magic could generate a never-ending stream of new experiences. They would all be bound to the nature of the island.

  “Maybe only four or five years,” Jay suggested. “When I got back from West Point or New London, I could look you up.”

  “And help me study for my GED.” She regretted the joke as soon as she made it. This wasn’t like any other life decision that could take two lovers away from each other. This was a choice that would fundamentally begin reversing their ability to relate. Wherever they went in reality, they would continue growing and having a rich spectrum of experiences as young adults coming into their own as people. In Neverland, Gwen would simply be on pause. There would be no opportunity for intellectual or emotional growth, and as mat
ure as she felt, she knew that a lot of personal development would happen in the next few years of their lives… If she chose to be there for it.

  She kissed him. She didn’t know what else to do. Did it cheapen their nascent romance to know it was a doomed affair? Gwen wished she could tell him that everything she felt was very real, very true, and she would give the world to explore every inch of their hearts together… but so much more than this mere world was on the line.

  There would be other boys, other romances… she had one shot at Neverland, and it was already more like a second chance considering how old she was. She didn’t want to believe that trivialized their feelings. High school sweethearts rarely lasted—couldn’t the romance still mean something even if they acknowledged that?

  “I suppose I should spare myself certain rejection and not ask you to be my girlfriend then, huh?”

  Gwen winced and smiled, her heart feeling exactly what her face displayed in that moment. She hadn’t known she could experience both with such simultaneous intensity. She wanted to say yes, just for tonight. Her desire had a desperate excitement to it, but the logistics of it wouldn’t mesh with the decisions she was making in her life at large. The chambers of her heart once again were pulling away from each other—a single organ conflicted to the brink of civil war inside of her. “Yeah, probably,” she squeaked.

  “That’s okay,” he told her, yet again. “My ego isn’t hurt if you’re leaving me for Peter Pan,” he admitted.

  It sounded wrong to her when he said it like that. She wasn’t leaving him for Peter, not in any sense that people usually used that expression. “It’s just that…” She collected her thoughts and did her best to articulate them. “I’ve got my whole life to fall in love. I’ve only got this one last chance to run off and be a kid.”

  “I get it,” he assured her. His understanding tone told her she didn’t need to further defend herself. Who knew, maybe a year or two earlier, Jay would have made the same choice if confronted by the chance Gwen had. She appreciated him, she loved him. With this realization, all of her effort went into trying not to cry. It was so unfair. She wished Peter had never arrived in her life at that moment. She would be so happy to continue forward with Jay, unaware of any other option. Knowing her options, however, she knew she would never be able to live with the wondering and unfulfilled longing for a Neverland she might have had.

  “Do you know when you’re leaving? For… good?”

  She nodded, biting her lip and hating that the conversation had come to this moment. “Tomorrow night.”

  “What!” Jay exclaimed, leaning back and almost losing his balance on the merry-go-round. “No, you can’t—it isn’t finished yet!”

  “What isn’t finished?”

  “Your gift!”

  More confused than flattered, she had to ask, “What gift?”

  “I’m making you something, something I want you to have.”

  Gwen’s heart sank another inch in her chest. It never seemed to get tired of falling. One of these nights, she knew it was going to fall right out of her. “I’m sorry, Jay.”

  He hopped off the merry-go-round and paced a bit. On the next cycle, Gwen stepped off too. She was dizzier, having spun for so much longer.

  “I can finish it tomorrow,” he decided. He smiled. “I’ll stay home sick and work on it. I can get it to you tomorrow night.”

  This gave him a visible sense of relief, so Gwen was loath to squash his excitement. “I’m not going to be able to meet you tomorrow night.”

  “No—I can make it work. I can meet you wherever you need me to.”

  How could she explain that tomorrow she would be meandering all over suburbia with the Pied Piper and fleeing the authorities immediately after?

  “I’ll drive out to Lake Agana tomorrow night.”

  “No, you shouldn’t—I don’t think I’ll be able to… no, I’m certain I won’t be able to make it.”

  He picked up her face in his hands, lifting her eyes to his with the gesture. “I think you will. Tell you what, I’ll be there. If you can’t possibly make it, so be it. But I’ll be there, with your gift. I don’t want to miss the chance to give it to you, however slim it might be.” He added, “I’ve put a lot of work into it.”

  “I won’t be able to come.” But her voice betrayed how badly she wanted to, and Jay was banking on that desire to win out and worm its way into her agenda, whatever other obligations she had that night.

  “I’ll be there,” he told her, his gentle smile making the promise as much as his words. “I’ll be there for you.”

  Still holding her face in his hands, he brought her lips to his and kissed her again, by the light of the moon and in the shadow of the jungle gym. The merry-go-round spun to a stop beside them.

  Leroy was sent for Piper first thing in the morning. Gwen took a picture of Peter wearing the crown and holding the antique pipe and Never Tree root. Tiger Lily uploaded it and printed it on her desktop printer. Peter then scrawled a message to Piper, telling him when and where to show up with Rosemary that night. There was no communicating with the rat regarding Piper’s whereabouts, but they suspected he was nearby, possibly even watching them in some capacity already.

  Gwen slept in late that morning—still on Neverland’s schedule or just nocturnal from all her late nights. She woke up in the last minutes of the morning, full of anxiety. Foxglove was waiting on the nightstand beside her bed.

  Humming to herself, biding time until Gwen woke, Foxglove’s purple shimmer was the first thing Gwen saw upon opening her eyes. The instant visual stimulus was enough to remind her with full force everything that would occur today.

  Meeting Piper, rallying children, whatever face-off resulted with the Anomalous Activity officers, leaving again for Neverland… rescuing Rosemary.

  On the other side of the bedroom door, she could hear a happy ruckus of discussion with everyone talking over each other. She saw the quilt she’d left with Peter balled up on the floor. She was glad she’d crawled back into a real bed and fallen asleep fast and cozy after returning from her outing with Jay.

  She dressed in the little blue party dress and long, purple leggings that Dawn had bought for her earlier this week. Outside the bedroom, she discovered that Blink’s animal town had migrated like a small circus, and was now scattered around the perimeter of the living room’s carpet. In the center, the children were clustered around multiple maps of the town. They perched with the wild excitement of wolves over a fresh kill. Tiger Lily sat with them, her back as straight as her face, offering strategic wisdom as a redskin tactician, and practical advice as a resident in this corner of reality. She held her head high and wore feathers in her hair. She’d smeared lines of bright red lipstick over her cheeks like war paint.

  The afternoon was consumed by planning a route for the night. Peter’s intention was to cover as much ground as possible. They would be on the move already when the Anomalous Activity officers responded. They charted potential routes with crayons, circling and coloring in advantageous areas. When the adult forces caught up to them, they wanted to make sure they had the higher ground. Blink rebuilt her animal town into a shoddy model of the neighborhood they intended on ending up in. Gwen helped—blowing the children’s minds in the process—by saving and comparing routes on the map app of her phone.

  “Zoom in! Further! Further!”

  “How does it know the names of the businesses, too?”

  “Is that little blue dot really us?”

  “Is it a map of the whole world?”

  Peter was blunt enough to take it right out of her hands. He had trouble with the accelerometer. No matter how he tried to tip it to get the screen to face up, it always reoriented itself before he could get a good look at the contents of the map. “This is the most marvelous compass I’ve ever seen!” he declared. “It’s awfully big, but I understand now why you always carry it around with you.”

  Gwen took it and turned off the auto-rotate feature bef
ore handing it back to Peter. He was amazed to find he could get addresses and even pictures of houses with it.

  “Does it tell you which houses have children in them?”

  “No, definitely not.”

  She was surprised to find she, too, had trouble manipulating her own phone. Her hand seemed uncoordinated, as if it had forgotten basic motor tasks. She tried not to worry about what the transporter had done to her hand when she’d reached out for Bard. It wasn’t until she tried to scrawl a note on one of the maps that she realized what had happened.

  “Oh my God,” she announced, staring at her hands. “I’m left-handed.”

  The children intermittently grew tired of planning an invasion and wandered off to play with the wide selection of toys contained in Tiger Lily’s house. Their interest drew them this way and that, but at any given moment, there were always one or two children helping Peter plot. Once they had eaten the last of the bread and peanut butter, Tiger Lily smudged off her war paint and took the feathers out of her hair to go to the grocery store.

  Dinner was served in installments—a pot of mac and cheese with hamburger mixed in stayed on the stove all evening, and grilled cheese sandwiches were made on demand. The children all took Tiger Lily’s caring and cooking for granted, which she seemed to deeply appreciate. She was preserving their world—a behind-the-scenes actor who propelled their endeavors forward through acts of simple support. When she brought them popsicles, however, she received ample, excited gratitude.

  The sky darkened. Night fell. The clock stayed still, but time passed in creeping seconds and slinking minutes. In order to avoid releasing any trackable magic ahead of their meeting with Piper, the five flying children and four fairies loaded into Tiger Lily’s car and she drove them into town. The fairies sat in Peter’s lap, and Newt and Sal double-buckled. It was a cozy ride, but the children were more thrilled for the novelty of being in a car than they would have been to fly.