Escaping Neverland

by Lynn Wahl

  I let out a shaky breath. “Jake, we have to stop him. We can’t let him do this.”

  “Can’t let me do what?”

  I jumped, looking up to face the Captain. Beyond rational thought, I jumped to my feet, using Jake to steady myself when the room began to spin.

  “You’re a monster!” I shouted at the Captain. “You’re the worst, evilest person I’ve ever met.” I was spitting the words out and didn’t back down when the Captain strode into the room.

  He grabbed my throat and with a casual gesture, ground his thumb into my cheekbone. The bones cracked and popped under the pressure, and the pain that exploded there made me faint and nauseous. That must have been where my face struck the steps. I gagged from the pain and the Captain pushed me onto the bed.

  “Do you think I care what you think, you pathetic little girl? I’ve worked decades for this, and now my final goal is within my grasp. The fae had to go. They’re gone. It’s simple. Now. Come with me. I need you to draw something for me.”

  The order struck my brain like the whip of a lash. I was up and moving before I could think to stop myself. Jake caught me as I stumbled forward, almost doing another face plant.

  “Don’t antagonize him,” he whispered. “You can’t fight back. Don’t even try.”

  I glared at Jake through eyes gone blurry with pain. “You stopped fighting. How’s that working out for you?” I slurred. Man, I’d really done a number on myself if I couldn’t see or talk straight. I must look like hell, I thought to myself.

  We followed the Captain through the hallway to a room one door down from Jake’s. Inside, it was set up with paper, pencils, and markers. My sketchbook sat on one of the tables, all the pages with drawings on them torn out and lying nearby.

  The Captain sat on a stool across from the table and motioned me to the sketchpad.

  “The fae said you managed to heal two of them. Now you will heal me.” He held up his hook and with a quick motion, unfastened the buckles and let it fall to the table. The stump left behind was ragged and thick with scar tissue.

  I swallowed back my disgust and managed to pick up a pencil. I could barely see straight. I pointed at his other hand.

  “I need to see your other hand,” I said.

  The Captain smiled and rested it on the table. With the most precise strokes I could manage, I began to draw him sitting there, two healthy hands resting on the table in front of him. I started to finish the eyes when the tingling began, I nearly fell off my stool at the wave of exhaustion that swept through my battered body. I pushed against the feeling and felt a sharp bolt of pain in my head. I sagged against the table, only Jake’s hand on my back keeping me on the stool.

  “Finish the drawing or I’ll kill you,” the Captain said.

  I pulled my eyes to his face. He was deadly serious. I returned to the drawing, adding in a few lines around the eyes and felt the tingling return. With a groan of pain, I pushed on the feeling as hard as I could. My vision went red and then black at the edges. As I slid towards the table, I caught a glimpse of two hands on the table in front of me and the Captain’s smiling face.

  Good. He wouldn’t kill me. And then I was out again.

  Twenty-One: Jake

  I watched Paige as she lay in her coma, feeling like the biggest jerk in the world. I’d turned her over to Captain out of shame, because of how terrible she’d made me feel about myself. Now she was trapped here with me, and neither of us could escape.

  She’d come to rescue me and I’d turned her over to the Captain without even thinking about it. Her face looked like she’d gotten hit by a truck. Her cheekbone was broken for sure, and I couldn’t wake her up no matter how hard I’d tried. She’d had a concussion before passing out again trying to fix the Captain’s hand. She hadn’t moved or woken up since.

  I thought about the moment we’d had in the coffee shop the night before we’d been captured. She’d been furious with me, but she’d still climbed out of her window to come after me. She was so much a better person than I was, the thought made me sick. No wonder she’d wanted to go to the prom with someone else. She probably never even thought of me like that before. Now she never would.

  I dropped my head to the table. Sitting there in the dark, I tried to rest, to close my eyes and just let it all go, but it didn’t work. Not here. Not now. Not after what I’d done.

  I had to do something to make this better. I couldn’t heal her, but maybe I could help her escape. She’d passed out before the Captain could order her not to escape or interfere with his plans. If I could get her to wake up, give her what she needed to get off the ship, she might have a chance.

  The thought spurred me on and I flipped on the light over the table set up for her sketching. With a few quick movements, I sketched out the device I needed, adding an electronics diagram to map out how I was going to get it to work. With the diagram completed, I slipped out the room, not bothering to be quiet. I wanted her to wake up, not keep sleeping.

  The doors to the workroom had been left unlocked so I could look in on Paige. The Captain was worried that she’d die just when he’d found another valuable power. He’d ordered me to take care of her. I grinned for the first time since I’d seen the massacre of the fae.

  Oh yes, Captain, I thought. I’ll take care of her. She came here to rescue me. Now I’ll rescue her so she can get off this ship and kick your ass.

  I didn’t really know how she was going to do it, but we’d been friends since kindergarten and I’d seen her take on bullies twice her size without backing down. Paige wouldn’t give up. With that thought spinning through my head, I began building the device that would help Paige escape. When the strange little compulsion in my head from the Captain tried to kick in and still my fingers, I focused on helping Paige and the urge slid away under the more recent command.

  The device was so small it took barely any time to finish. Now to see if it worked.

  Twenty-Two: Paige

  I woke up to darkness. I fumbled into a sitting position, straining for some sort of light. I could just barely see Jake sitting by the table that held the sketchpads. He’d stayed with me. I sighed and fell back against the bed. This one was much cleaner. I gave an involuntary sigh.

  The light over the table flipped on, and Jake rushed over to my bed. “You’re awake,” he said. “I thought you’d never wake up.”

  His eyes were sparkling, reminding me of how he’d looked when he’d had a new idea for a graphic novel or design back home. “What’s going on?” I asked, suspicious. Had Jake made some sort of new monster or something? At the thought, the Queen’s spell flared. The strength of it made me nauseous, but it faded after a few seconds.

  He put his hand on my arm. “Paige, I’m so sorry for how I’ve acted … I’m sorry for everything. I was jealous of you, of what you might be able to do here, and then the fae were killed and I realized what a terrible person I am, I—“

  I pulled him in for a hug, saving him the embarrassment of any more tortured apologies. “I understand,” I said. “I forgive you.”

  Jake pulled back. “Good. Now, I need you to get up and put this on.”

  Before I could protest, he pulled me to my feet and handed me a tiny little backpack looking thing.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Jake grinned. “It’ll make you invisible, so you can escape the ship. The Captain didn’t order you to stay, so you can leave on your own.”

  I stared down at the device and then back up at him. “Can you make two?” I asked.

  He shrugged, looking confused. “Sure, why?”

  For the first time since being captured, I felt a surge of energy. “Because my ride carries two,” I said, leaving the explanation for later. “Go. Make another one and we’ll get out of here.”

  Jake turned to go and then stopped. “I still can’t leave. Are you going to draw another spider?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “No. I’m going to try something else. Something I should have
thought of before. I’ll work on it while you build another thingy jig.”

  He rolled his eyes. “It’s an invisibility device,” he muttered.

  “That’s what I said,” I said, feeling my grin stretch to my ears. It popped my cheekbone and I winced. I waved Jake off and sat down at the table.

  Jake’s features spooled out from my pencil like he was sitting across from me. I’d always needed a reference photo to draw people back home, but my ability here made it as easy as putting the pencil to the paper and thinking about Jake. I drew him with his dirty face and fading bruises, adding the last final details except for the eyes as he walked back into the workroom carrying another device.

  “Sit down,” I said.

  He did, looking at the sketch pad with interest. He ran his fingers over the bruise I’d drawn on his face.

  “Jeez,” he said. “I look terrible.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him and pointed at my cheek. “I think I have you beat. My face feels like raw hamburger.”

  Jake stifled a laugh. “Sorry,” he said. “It does look kind of bad.”

  I threw a pencil at him. “Shut up and hold still.”

  I ignored his fidgeting and began shading in his eyes. When the tingling started, I focused on Jake as I knew him, free and healthy, unburdened by shame over actions he couldn’t control. Most of all, I focused on the idea of Jake out from under the Captain’s control. As I finished the drawing, I tried to add in the last touches that would portray Jake as the guy I’d known back home, light-hearted and happy, but the pencil slowed and skittered on the page when I tried. When I looked up at Jake, I realized that he’d never be that person again. Instead of the tiny lines around his eyes that appeared when he smiled, I drew in the bruised look of guilt I saw there instead. As I drew in the last touch, a sweep of eyelash, the feeling swept down the back of my neck and into my arms, jolting my hands off the table. I pressed them back down, keeping my pencil in place.

  It was hard. I felt the blackness threatening to roll over me again, but held the effort right at the edge, pushing as slowly as I could. Finally, the tingling stopped. I looked up at Jake. His eyes were wide, his fingers buried in his hair.

  “It’s gone,” he said. “Paige, you did it! Let’s go.” He was up off his stool in a flash, hand wrapped around mine.

  The Queen’s spell was still there, but it was almost completely quiet. If I could get Jake away from the Captain, off of the ship, it’d probably go away for good.

  Jake, not paying any attention to me, flipped a switch on the device on my back and then swung his around to flip the switch on his own.

  “Do you know how to get out?” he asked.

  I nodded and looked at the space Jake had been standing. I couldn’t see him at all.

  “How do these things work?” I asked.

  From where Jake had been standing, his voice floated out, echoing in the metal room. “The device constantly scans our surroundings and projects the images directly behind us over top of our clothes.”

  I glanced down at myself, a little weirded out at not being able to see my legs. “What happens if we stand in front of a mirror?” I asked.

  Jake was quiet for a few seconds. “It would cause an eternal feedback loop in the mechanism. We’d probably be invisible forever, or sucked into the mirror.”

  “What?” I gasped.

  His laughter came from behind me, and I swatted in his direction, catching his shoulder or back.

  “Not funny!” I said.

  Once I figured out where Jake was, I stomped forward and grabbed my torn up sketchbook. The Captain had left my drawings of Stormy and Lavender, not interested in them, and I grabbed them too. “Yes. Follow me,” I whispered as we slid out of the workroom door. Being invisible wouldn’t help if people could hear us.

  As we passed Terence’s door, I slowed. I pointed at the door. “This is Terence’s workroom. He asked us to save him, right before the Captain showed up.”

  I couldn’t see Jake, but felt his hand tighten on mine. “We can’t, Paige. We’ll be caught for sure.”

  I swallowed hard and nodded, then realized Jake couldn’t see it. “Okay,” I whispered. I pulled him on, promising myself I’d try to help Terence when I got Jake safely away.

  When we came to the door leading down to the deck, I tugged Jake over to it, praying that it would be unlocked. It was, the first piece of good luck I’d had since landing on this cursed ship.

  We snuck down the stairs as quietly as we could. When we were almost at the bottom, the door above us suddenly swung open. I turned to look. It was one of the Captain’s men and he was coming straight for us. I pulled Jake back against the wall, feeling my device scrape against the metal, and winced.

  The man stopped, head tilted, and then shrugged and continued on. He passed so close to us I could see the sweat beaded on his forehead and the breeze from his passing whiffed my hair. He continued on out the door, letting it clang shut behind him.

  I let out the breath I’d been holding and gave Jake’s hand a squeeze. We waited a few minutes for the guy to get wherever he was going before opening the door at the bottom of the stairs. It was nighttime, the stars sparkling like diamonds overhead in a clear sky. The deck was empty.

  We stood there for a second, and then I let out a sigh of frustration. How was I supposed to let Stormy know I needed her? I’d been passed out for who knows how long. She couldn’t have been circling this whole time as I’d ordered her to do. She was strong, but couldn’t be that strong.

  With a fearful glance around, I raised my hands to my mouth. “Stormy!” I cried out as loud as I dared.

  I waited, but nothing happened. I tried again, but Jake pulled me down to the deck.

  “Shh,” he said. “There’s someone coming.”

  We huddled there on the deck as two men passed by. They were whispering together about some sort of campaign the Captain was sending them on in the morning. Something about a gate and a meeting with someone.

  When they’d passed, Jake tried to tug me to my feet in the opposite direction but I pulled back.

  “Wait,” I said. “They were talking about meeting with someone. If we could find out who they’re meeting with back on Earth, we could expose them.”

  Jake stopped. “Paige. We’re not superheroes. We can’t keep running around trying to save everyone. You could have died.”

  I felt my cheekbone. “Yeah. I know. But that doesn’t mean I can just ignore it, Jake. This is big. The Captain could be causing some major problems back home, and we’re the only ones that know about it.”

  I didn’t tell him about the spell the fae had put on me or how it felt like it was pushing me to learn more.

  He was quiet for a few seconds and then gave a huge sigh. “Fine,” he said.

  He let me lead us after the men. They were stopped near the rail, passing a cigarette back and forth. Their accents took me by surprise. It sounded like they’d just stepped off a New York street onto the ship.

  “So ya know this bozo the Captain’s got us bringing over?” one asked.

  The other guy shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care.”

  “Ah, c’mon. He’s like a governor or something. It’s a big deal.”

  The other guy took a drag off the cigarette and threw it overboard. “Yeah, whatever. What does it matter anyway? We’ll always just be the gophers.”

  “You don’t believe the Captain about the reward?”

  The guy shrugged and lit another cigarette. “Why does the Captain have to reward anyone when he can just order someone to do something and they have to do it?”

  I personally agreed with the second guy. I couldn’t see the Captain rewarding these random men he’d plucked off the streets of Earth. I could see them dead and discarded, rotting at the bottom of the ocean once the Captain didn’t need them anymore, but not rewarded. What did they think they were going to get, some ritzy condo on the beach here on the island?

  I pulled Jake back awa
y from the men. “I’ve heard enough,” I said. The Captain was going to capture the Governor he’d been working with, probably to show him the plans and ideas he had for the island. If the Governor left, convinced that the Captain’s plan would work, the Governor would be the go to man on the Earth side, lining up investors, recruiting labor and the like.

  We needed to get off this ship and back to Nuada. I had to tell him what was going on. At the railing on the other side of the ship, I frantically searched the sky for Stormy. When I didn’t see her, I pulled out my sketch of her, trying to reach out to her through the drawing.

  Stormy, I need your help. Please. Come to the ship. We’re by the railing on the side closest to shore.

  I sent the silent summons out and waited. I had no idea if it would work. If the drawings I made allowed me to control my creations, it made sense that they might form some sort of link between us. I looked around, but no one else was on deck and the two men had gone back the way they came. I reached around and switched off the invisibility device.

  A tiny little squeak brought me out of my daze. I looked up in time to catch a full on facial assault from Lavender. Her hands pinched and pulled at my cheeks, but she pulled back when I gasped in pain. Her violet eyes flashed with anger and she gently patted my cheek.

  “Lavender,” I whispered. “Where’s Stormy?”

  The little fairie pointed up into the air. I looked up in time to see Stormy fling out her wings and land softly next to me. Right on top of a still invisible Jake.

  I could hear the thud as he threw himself off to the side. I tried to hold back my giggle, but I snorted instead, which hurt my face.

  Jake popped into view. “Not funny, Paige. You could have warned me.”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t know she was here already. Get on.”

  He eyed Stormy with suspicion. “She doesn’t bite, does she?”

  I rolled my eyes and using a box sitting on the deck that held a huge bit of chain, climbed up onto Stormy’s back. I motioned Jake up behind me. With a huge sigh, he followed me up. Stormy snorted as his feet scuffed against her wings.