The Piper's Price

by Audrey Greathouse

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  A subtle motion behind him caught her attention. Someone was on the stairs, silhouetted among many other shadows against the window. “Twill?”

  The man’s voice was familiar. The boy turned to face it. Looking beyond his son, he saw the girl in his garden. “Gwen?”

  He stepped down off the stairs and turned on a light.

  She felt the full force of her worlds shattering as they collided.

  She didn’t have a voice. It was her sheer disbelief that spoke. “Mr. Starkey?”

  “So this is where you’ve been,” he announced, staring at the fairy flitting by her side. “I’m glad to see you’re not sick.”

  Gwen shook her head, flabbergasted. “Mr. Starkey…”

  Her teacher was fully dressed in his usual tweed jacket. He must have already been awake, waiting up, reading, working… whatever grown-ups did at night. “I have to admit, I had a lot more sympathy for you when I thought you had mononucleosis. A very believable alibi, that was.”

  “I didn’t—I don’t—” She didn’t know what compelled her to speak when she knew that she had absolutely nothing to say, no words with which to react.

  He walked toward them, slowly. Foxglove tucked herself away behind Gwen, clinging to the collar of the girl’s dress. You know him? the fairy buzzed, but Gwen couldn’t hear anything but the sound of Starkey’s footsteps as he walked across the carpet, one slow step at a time. He didn’t break eye contact. His body was full of tension.

  “You should leave, Gwen. Whatever the plan is, it can work without my son. Twill, come here. Come back inside.”

  Even as he spoke to the boy, he kept his eyes on Gwen. She backed away slowly.

  Twill panicked.

  “No!” he screamed. “Take me with you!”

  His plea was irrelevant. With Foxglove’s dusting, he had everything he needed to enact his own will. Running headlong into the garden and crushing a few hibernating begonia flowers in the process, he took to the air.

  “Twill, no!” his father screamed after him. His eyes bounded back to Gwen. “I won’t lose him,” he declared. “I won’t let you take him away from me.”

  Gwen realized what Mr. Starkey’s slow approach toward her was distracting her from. His shadow, halfway across the room already, suddenly bolted for the fireplace. Up the wall, it reached for the shadow of the sword hung above the mantle. As soon as his shadow had hold of it, Mr. Starkey clapped his hands and flung it back to him. The shadow and its shadow sword warped back to him, bring the sword with it. He didn’t even need to look at the oncoming blade. His shadow held its shadow, and when the two figures synchronized, the sword sprang into his hand naturally.

  Gwen screamed and Foxglove pulled at her collar. She leapt into the air. She would have been too afraid to fly, but the sheer impossibility of her speech-and-debate teacher charging at her with a sword was enough to compel her belief in flight.

  She went straight up like a rocket. Feeling only marginally safer once she was on the roof, she saw Twill zipping toward the others… and the approaching Anomalous Activity unit rolling down the street toward them.

  “Twill!” Starkey screamed into the night. As he left his home, he grabbed a hat off his coat rack. The greyed tricorn was too modest and worn to be a costume piece. Twill’s laughter sounded from the sky on the other side of the house, and Starkey bolted out.

  She had to warn Peter.

  Flying as fast as her faith would carry her, Gwen went to the head of the line where Peter and Piper where shouting the last of their conversation over the approaching sound of otherworldly sirens.

  “I leave the rest to you, Pan!” Piper tucked his pipe into the shadows of his cape. There must have been a pocket somewhere in its cavernous folds, but the cape seemed to simply eat the pipe. He was grinning, his mustache and mouth twisted with vengeful pleasure.

  “Take care, you crazy dog!”

  “Give them hell for me,” Piper told him. “And, if you happen to survive…”

  He picked up his cape. Leroy scampered over to his foot and clung to the laces of his boot. His crooked posture made him look like a broken doll as he stood with his prized crown worn over his ratty hair.

  “…don’t ever try to find me again.”

  The cape swooshed, swallowing Piper whole and vanishing him altogether.

  “Peter!” Gwen screamed.

  “Ah, you’re just in time! You are about to witness the greatest cunning of any general ever to take to air.” His vanity bled out from between the teeth of his smile. He pulled out his spyglass and expanded it to get a look at the arriving adult forces before barking to Newt and Sal, “Get the new ones moving. The fairies know the way—they’ll get them to Neverland!”

  Blink was already shepherding them toward the stars, the moon, the horizon… every celestial plane or object that was willing to bend to the children’s will. The sky was in a frenzy of delight, called upon after restless ages to perform great feats for the mortals it eternally watched over. They lent whatever power was left in them to the children, grateful to facilitate such a fantastic adventure.

  The fairies and children dispersed, in twos and threes and fives. The night welcomed them through its doors to another side of life, another reality that wasn’t real at all.

  Twill was already fraternizing with Rosemary. The lost children themselves weren’t going anywhere. They were bracing themselves for an unbelievable showdown. They needed to buy the others time, or this mass exodus would risk being compromised by trackers. Once they’d caused a big enough commotion, once they’d stirred up all the magic for miles, they would abandon the officers in a storm of enchantment that would leave their radars useless.

  “We’ve got company!” Gwen screamed.

  “Aye, I see them coming!” Peter yelled, not latching onto the unexpected fear that she was trying to communicate.

  “No—not them! A pirate!”

  She didn’t know if it was strictly true, but she knew the word would command Peter’s attention, which she desperately needed to draw to the man coming for them.

  Peter laughed, his confidence swelling like a balloon. He enveloped the night as he drew his dagger from its sheath and exclaimed, “Even better!”

  The Anomalous Activity officers came in force. The unit looked like a SWAT team. Half a dozen patrol cars came to a screeching halt in the street below, along with two armored vans. By then, the lost children had made their way to the last leg of their route and were caught in a cul-de-sac. They appeared blockaded in by the officers, but it was all part of Peter’s plan. Even the adults could see the brilliance of the perfect retreat he’d set up. If they needed to fall back overhead, no one would be able to follow the flying children past the street’s dead end.

  Almost half of the new children had been whisked away with fairies. Others waited impatiently, and a few were too excited to realize they shouldn’t stay and see this conflict out with the others. As the black coats rushed out of their cars, the fight began.

  An officer got out a megaphone. “Ground yourselves immediately. You are in violation of anomalous activity regulation and are hereby commanded to cease and desist all ‘magical’ activity. If you fail to comply, we will forcibly ground you and take you into custody.”

  No lights went on in any of the houses. Piper’s spell—perhaps in conjunction with whatever magic-control technology the adults brought—kept the suburbanites calmly sleeping or otherwise occupied in their homes. A few awestruck children pressed their faces against bedroom windows, grateful not to be caught in this confrontation. Aside from those timid kids, there was no recognition from any of the neighborhood’s residents.

  “Never!” Peter howled, his voice echoing like a war cry. That single word signaled everything his comrades needed to know. The children scattered in the air with what few fairies were brave enough to fight with them.

  In response, the adults raised their pistols. They looked larger than
life, like toy dart guns spray-painted to look like sinister weapons. They began firing, and long, fast streaks of lightning shot from the barrels of their guns. The children’s sporadic flight patterns were hard for them to target, let alone predict, but it made being in the air much more dangerous.

  Peter dropped down, free falling to escape with the aid of gravity. He was already attracting the most fire. He did not expect anyone to be waiting on the street below him. Gwen wanted to scream, but he felt the attacker before he would have heard her. Low to the ground, he felt his foot caught in the grip of a man’s hard hand.

  “Peter Pan!” Starkey shouted, startling Peter and pulling him so hard he whipped him out of flight. With all the strength of his left arm—his right still clutched his sword—Starkey flung Peter to the ground. The boy only recovered enough to mitigate the impact, not avoid it. He rolled back and threw himself onto his feet again. “Why, Gentleman Starkey,” he exclaimed. “What a sorry surprise to see you.”

  “I want my son back, Pan. I’ve no quarrel with Neverland if I have my boy.”

  “What—this fight doesn’t concern you? Where have you been all these years?”

  “Never you mind. I want my boy, Twill, and I’ll get him if I have to run you and every one of your lost boys through to do it.”

  “Over my aged body,” Peter replied, brandishing his dagger as he ran head on to his adversary.

  Peter was comparatively safe from the officers while on the ground, or at least not such a clear shot for most of them. The children above continued to draw fire away from Peter and the new kids trying to escape into the night. Rosemary, her pockets stuffed with more fruit than they should have been able to physically fit, began egging the officers with raven tree fruit. The thin shells broke on impact and covered the officers in goop with the consistency of marshmallow spread and the stickiness of super glue. While she managed to jam guns and glue feet to the ground with this tactic, Foxglove lead her fellow fairies in a wicked campaign to jam guns, cut wires, and steal earpieces.

  Newt screamed as he and Sal hurtled water balloons at the officers. Whatever liquid they were filled with, they seemed to force the opposition into slow motion upon impact.

  “This one’s for Bard!” they cried, avenging their comrade with all the passion their little hearts could muster… Which was a lot.

  Gwen covered Peter. She avoided flying, but tried to take as much of the adult’s fire as she could to protect him. After the first shot she’d unintentionally taken, Gwen had realized their fire was calibrated for children. While it grounded her all the same, she was not debilitated the way the children were. Or maybe it was just her belief that she was older and more capable that compelled her to power on. Maybe the difference was that she wasn’t afraid of imaginary lightning guns the way children were. Every shot stung, but not in a painful way. Her spine tingled from top to bottom as she absorbed the electric shocks, like an acute and powerful dopamine rush she could feel moving through every major connection of her nervous system. The children above cooed in delight and awe, watching her bravery in action while they continued to skitter away from any fire. When the time came to fly, she would have her work cut out for her, escaping this onslaught, but her tactic was sustainable for now.

  “I see the years have finally stopped being cruel to you,” Peter told Starkey, slashing at him, one blow after another.

  “Ah, but what they are doing to you,” Starkey cut back. A line of sweat beaded on his forehead. He did not have the ability to break up his exertion with bursts of flight.

  “What are you doing here?” Peter chuckled. “A schoolmaster again?”

  “Nothing so ostentatious,” he replied, able to banter and backslash as well as any self-respecting gentleman scoundrel.

  “How far you’ve fallen since the days you sailed with Hook! You would have been better off if the crocodile had gobbled you up when you fell into the water.”

  “Ah, but then I would never have the chance to vanquish the infamous Peter Pan!”

  The voice of the megaphone sounded again. “We’ve established a perimeter. There’s no escaping. Surrender and ground yourselves!”

  “Never!” half the children cried, echoing their fearless leader. The adults weren’t bluffing though. As the ragamuffins soon discovered, there was no pushing past a certain height or distance. Somehow, the Anomalous Activity Department had put an invisible bubble over the battleground and trapped all fliers within it.

  The children still had the advantage. They didn’t need to defeat the Anomalous Activity officers, only escape them. Blink lead a team of children out to the backyard of a house on another street, her fast thinking giving her the idea that they might be able to make a run for it and pass undetected if they were on foot. She doubted the adults would trap themselves, and her hunch proved right. Adapting, she began ferrying everyone out on foot through the neighbor’s yard. Whatever was working against them was a double-edged sword for the adults. None of the officers or special forces were shadow-casting, and Gwen suspected this was an inability created by their field.

  It was not a long-term solution, and Peter’s wandering attention convinced him he had greater adversaries to contend with than Starkey if the grown-ups were causing so much trouble. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, launching up, bowing, and tucking his dagger away. “I’m needed elsewhere. It’s been awful, Starkey. Awful as always.”

  All cocky and full of himself, Peter zoomed through the air. “On three!” he screamed. Everyone within hearing distance either panicked or prepared. “One… two… three!”

  A deafening roar, even amid the clamorous chaos of their fight, erupted as Newt, Sal, Blink, Spurt, Jam, Gwen, and Rosemary all screamed with Peter, “OLLY-OLLY-OXEN-FREE!”

  Nothing visible changed at first, but Blink found she could once again fly up past the bounds of the adults’ perimeter. She gave an affirmative wave to Peter, and shortly thereafter, they noticed the engineers and flames that were pouring out of one of the armored vans. The device they’d been manipulating the environment with had short-circuited, and the ensuing electrical fire was spreading throughout their equipment and mobile tech lab.

  Children were getting snatched out of the sky. The veteran children were too nimble in the air and familiar with flying to be taken down, but some of the others were sitting ducks with their disoriented reaction times. Various officers plucked them out of the sky—some officers undercover in ordinary police uniforms and others in their terrifying black coats. The lightning bullets did not zap them of their magic, only removed their ability to manipulate it. As if paralyzed and pulled by heavy chains, the children froze in the air and lowered, against their will, to the asphalt street below.

  Once grounded, the children were captured by officers who loaded them into an armored van—the one that wasn’t on fire. Locked away, there would probably be a nasty process of bureaucracy and cover up for the Anomalous Activity Department before the kids made it back into the homes they had left short minutes ago. Most of the children, however, were still making it away on the wings of the night alongside the fairies.

  Gwen was dodging fire and trying to stay low to the ground. She was less confident in her flying abilities than the other children seemed to be. Pushing her insecurities out of mind, she did her best to stay clear of both the adult’s fire and her teacher-turned-pirate. Starkey was still brandishing an impressive sword. He was chasing after Peter, but Gwen was now between the two.

  “Pan!” he howled.

  The scene was pandemonium. Officers were tripping over their feet or glued to the ground. Researchers were attempting to put out a vehicular electrical fire. Children were vanishing and darting through the sky while their fallen compatriots were loaded away. A suburban pirate was stalking down the street with blood lust written all over his face. When one of the black-coated officers pulled a bazooka out of the patrol car, it almost went unnoticed.

  “Ready, aim, fire!” his commanding officer shouted.
He aimed straight at Peter, and with the wide spread of its projectile, there was no escaping it.

  The children’s spider-silk net had been re-purposed by the adults they’d terrorized last night. Packed into the cannon and tied to weights along its edges, it came spinning out like a high-velocity fishing net. As soon as it hit Peter, it knocked him off his equilibrium and pulled him out of the sky. He dropped like a fly, and front-line officers marched forward in full SWAT gear.

  Furious Foxglove didn’t stop to think before she flew to the bazooka-wielding officer. Rosemary, familiar enough with Foxglove’s vice to see the vindictive, pointless retaliation for what it was, flew after her.

  It was too late. In her wrath, Foxglove bit the officer’s ear. The uniformed man yelped, and dropped the bazooka as he slapped his hand against his head—missing Foxglove and whacking himself. He had a better weapon against her though.

  “I don’t believe in fairies!”

  Like a candle flame, Foxglove’s purple light was snuffed out. Her body drained of color, stiffened, and solidified… going through the stages of death and hitting rigor mortis in the blink of an eye. She dropped to the ground like a dead bird.

  Rosemary slammed an egg into the officer’s face, and then kicked him in the chest until he was down. Yanking the megaphone away from the woman holding it, she swept up Foxglove’s body and shot directly up before retreating away from the density of officers.

  “I do believe in fairies!” she screamed into the megaphone. It was too late for little Foxglove, whom she tucked neatly into the pocket of her dress for safe and reverent keeping until she could be returned to Neverland and buried on her native soil. “I do believe in fairies!” she continued to scream into the megaphone, counteracting any other utterances from officers attempting to suppress anomalies in their vicinity.