by Lisa Jensen
I release her, and she goes back to her table, littered with fragrant little piles of mint, jasmine, bay laurel. “I’d have sworn you’d lost a lung, but it turns out the wound didn’t go very deep, it only creased the muscle,” she goes on, as she wipes the base of the tankard with her apron and sets it back on the table. “And something must have broken your fall, although I can’t imagine what; you didn’t hit with near the force you should have, just enough to knock you out.”
“As usual.” I peep again at the reeking plaster over my breast. “I suppose you studied doctoring at university.”
“Oh, I’m scarcely a doctor,” she smiles wanly, tying up a bunch of her weeds. “I learned herbalism from my aunt, and I’ve had some nurse’s training. I won’t poison you or cut open a vein. At least not by mistake,” she adds, with a sidelong glance.
The creases round her eyes, her mouth, are more defined by the cold morning light, her eyes vaguely shadowed. “Surely, you haven’t been about it all night, Parrish?” I say gruffly.
“It wasn’t so bad,” she shrugs. “Someone sings so beautifully here at night.” She straightens, shoves back a wisp of loose hair with the back of her hand. “After they brought you down here, they took that other fellow off in the boat. I thought you were next.”
“I am never, ever to be buried at sea!” I exclaim.
Her eyes round in surprise, but she nods slowly. “The thing is, you never stopped breathing. Not like…” and she darts another guilty glance above. “I did try, Captain.”
I frown. “My men didn’t stop you, I hope?”
She shakes her head. “No, they all wanted to help. That Cornish fellow, he was pretty good at it. We tried everything I could think of, mouth-to-mouth, chest compression, but it was too late. Your Jesse was already gone.”
I recall Filcher nattering on about a Jonah. “They didn’t blame you, did they?”
“They blamed the boys,” she says quietly. “In very expressive terms. Your Mr. Burley sent me back down here. Your steward has been in to see how you are.” She gives a little shrug. “They seem to have got the idea that I saved your life. You won’t blow my cover, will you?”
“You’re welcome to take all the blame.”
She toys thoughtfully with the stem of one of her plants. “Where do they come from, your men?”
“The dregs of society, I imagine. They were all Lost Boys once, banished for the crime of growing up. They dream themselves here out of sheer perversity. Like you,” I add.
“Ah,” she murmurs, wiping her hands on her makeshift apron. “And how do they get back?”
“Back?” I stare at her. “They never go back.”
She frowns at me. “No? Well, why are they here?”
“I scarcely inquire into their biographies,” I snap.
“Why not?”
“Because they are going to die!” I exclaim, hauling myself up on my good arm again. “Every one of them! They are dead men already. They will all go the way of Jesse before long; I’ve seen it a thousand times.” She peers at me as if she too could see the vision I choose to spare her: bodies heaped in blood, rotting in the sun and wet for me to find whenever I crawl out of whatever dank hole I’ve found in which to lick my wounds. All of it waiting for me to begin the entire wretched business again. “Grow up or die; those are the only ways back from the Neverland.”
She nods, her face sober. “How many crews have you lost?”
“Countless. The Bay of Neverland is littered with their bones.”
She is quite still by her table, watching me. “How often has he … killed you?”
To this I can make no accurate response, only shake my head.
“And, who takes care of you, after?” she persists.
“Obviously, no one with your skill,” I mutter, twitching a loose flap of shirt across my middle, over the protruding tip of one of my angrier old scars. I dislike all these questions.
Her pitiless gaze is unwavering. Then she sighs. “I may have misjudged you, Captain,” she murmurs. “I’ve misjudged everything.”
I ease myself back on my bed. “You are not the first.”
She pretends to return to her business, neatening up one of her little piles. “What are the three signs?” she asks. “You spoke of them in your sleep.”
“Nothing. Some nonsense in a dream.”
“Dream?” she echoes. “You had a dream? Just now? Tell me!” She comes nearer, absently wringing her hands in her apron. “Dreams are important!”
“Not mine,” I sigh.
“Dreaming brought me here,” she insists. “I just don’t know why. Maybe another dream will explain what’s going on around here.”
Something odd is going on, that’s true enough. Even Pan senses it. It also occurs to me Parrish might have gone off with the boy when she had the chance, claimed herself my hostage and been rescued. Yet here she is. Whatever she might have been to the Pan before, she’s made herself his enemy now, caring for me. And so I tell her my foolish dream.
“A quest, that’s what he called it?” Her green-glinting eyes widen again when I describe the elderly shaman in his buffalo headdress.
“I’ve seen him too!” she exclaims. “In the Fairy Queen’s hall of mirrors. He’s the one who gave me those buds, like the one I gave you yesterday, or at least he directed me where to pick them in the wood. I thought it would just be a mild soporific, you know, to help you sleep. He called them Dream Flowers.”
“So the Indians are opium-eaters.”
“Not exactly,” she replies. “The shaman told me Dream Flowers are supposed to have … certain properties. It’s said they tell the dreamer what he needs to know.”
“Why should I need to know about redskin humbuggery?” I protest.
“I don’t know, Captain, but someone is on a quest. And this is the last chance to take it.”
* * *
The sun shines triumphantly in a bright blue sky. Whatever was troubling the boy before, the salubrious act of killing a pirate and another sound trouncing of me has restored his humor. In another few days, I am fit to go above and show myself to the men. All witnessed the grisly fate of Dodge when he landed on this very deck. Now they view me with awe, as if it were some talent I’ve perfected, this cheating of Death, not a wretched curse worthy of their derision. They are quick to snap to my commands, all but salaaming like Turks as I parade by. No one dares question the presence of the Parrish woman, still in her doctoring apron, on the quarterdeck, watching covertly to see her poultice stays in place.
Burley has been out fishing, and the men are making ready to haul in the gig boat. It sobers me anew to recollect her previous grim mission, and when I cross the dark stain on the quarterdeck where Jesse fell, I hasten down the ladder to join them.
“Who spoke the words over Jesse?” I ask Burley.
“I did,” he replies, as they sway the dripping boat in over the wales, and make her fast on her blocks. “And, Cap’n,” he goes on, wiping a sleeve across his sweating forehead. “The lads wanted to put one of his guns—yours, I mean—in with him. Didn’t seem right t’send him off without it. I told Filcher I’d take the blame.”
He peers at me resolutely through pale, seawashed eyes, ready for his punishment. Stout fellow, Burley.
“You did right,” I assure him, then turn away before he can see the fresh anguish that washes over me. However bravely Jesse met his death, there was nothing good about it. Another life wasted. Thanks to me.
Our skiff is in the water as well; someone must have gone off to the garden. The tackle sways out again, and Flax climbs astride the rail and reaches for the line to carry it down to the second boat.
“Oi!” he yells suddenly, grasping the line, staring down over the side. “Sod off, you!”
A mighty splash reverberates up from the water. Crocodile, I think, my blood chilling, as I rush to the side with the others, hooking Flax inboard by the elbow before he tumbles himself into the bay. Choppy water rocks the little
boat, then something long and gleaming unfurls from its greeny depths, a massive fishtail, too sinuous for a shark, and far too pert in the saucy flick of its long, gelatinous fin. A low wailing sullies the air before the thing dips beneath the surface again, leaving a wake of burbling, clamorous laughter, such as a drowning man may hear as the last of life is sucked out of him.
Lorelei.
3
No familiar commands leap to my tongue. I have no words for this emergency; no lorelei has ever come this far out into the Bay of Neverland before. They may be snaking up the chains even now. Do I order battle stations, or have Burley throw out his nets?
“Bows,” I yelp, “stern!”
“It’s gone, Cap’n,” Burley says at my elbow.
“How many was there, Flaxy?” Nutter cries from the tackle, straining to see over the side.
“Just the one,” says Flax. “She put something in the boat and swam away.”
I dispatch men fore and aft anyway, while the others haul in the skiff, but no more sirens are found. The object left in our boat is so indistinguishable from all the other flotsam in that neglected bottom, it takes a moment to find it, knotted inside a kelp leaf in the stern. It appears to be the rubbery corpse of some expired marine creature, stinging tentacles cut away and sides sewn together to form a little pocket. A slim, hollow reed protrudes from the seam. It resembles nothing so much as a slimy bagpipe for some amphibious fairy, but otherwise appears neither harmful nor useful.
“Wot’s it do?” asks Filcher.
“It’s meant to confound us,” I tell them, as if arcane lorelei intentions are as clear to me as daylight on the beach. “But we’ll not be gulled,” and I drop it scornfully back into the boat.
The men begin to disperse, but Stella Parrish has come down to the rail by the skiff, watching us all. Her avid eyes shift to me.
“It’s for the journey,” she says.
* * *
“What journey?” I’ve hustled Parrish round the far side of the deckhouse; from the expressions of the men, they expect her to sprout a fishtail next and disappear cackling into the deep. I half expect it myself.
“I don’t know, do I? That’s just what the mermaid said.”
“How is it they all speak to you, the fairies, the loreleis?” I mutter.
“Why doesn’t anyone else listen?”
“Have you no more sense than to let the fey creatures of this place beguile you with their lies?”
“It’s their world, not mine,” she exclaims. “How else am I to know how to get on?”
“And where did it get you last time? The damned Fairy Dell,” I remind her.
“Where I discovered all that,” and she nods to the bandaged poultice beneath my shirt. “It’s come in rather handy since then, don’t you think?”
I’m in no position to deny this; my wound scarcely throbs at all. Clearly, I’ve never felt so well so soon before. “Well, since you are privy to their speech, what else do they say?” I whisper.
“But I’ve told you. The fairy who came on board that day said this was your last chance. And she told me to ring a bell to call a fairy—”
“Hey, lend a hand there!” Burley calls from the boat tackle.
I glance up just in time to see Nutter chugging past the deckhouse, huffing, “Okay, okay, hold your horses…” Then I nod at Parrish to follow me below.
“You’re the yarn-spinner,” I begin, when we are in my cabin again, dropping into the chair by my writing desk. “Journeys, quests, dreams, the whole lot of it. What do you make of it all?”
She’s pleased to be asked, seating herself beside her table of herbs. “Well, in the old fairy tales, things happen in threes. Magical tools. Portents and signs,” and she eyes me meaningfully.
“One from the earth, one from the sea, one from the sky,” I recite the shaman’s words.
“And there’s usually a task to be accomplished,” she goes on.
“A victory?”
She frowns. “Maybe. Or a heroic journey completed.”
“A ‘heroic journey’ can have bugger all to do with me,” I point out.
“Not necessarily.” Her mouth tilts up. “The old tales are full of disguised heroes—frog princes, animal bridegrooms.”
“You are whimsical, Parrish.”
“Can it be one of your men on a journey?” she suggests.
“They come here to follow a leader, not strike out on their own.”
“And you’re the one who had the dream vision,” she agrees. “Besides, the fairy said it was your last chance.”
Mockery, nothing more. I think of the imp queen’s sinister riddles and repress a shudder. “Surely you are the one on a journey,” I suggest.
“Oh, the heroines of the stories are never like me,” Stella laughs. “They are beautiful young virgins of irreproachable character.”
“Fairies, roses, Dream Flowers, all of it began with your arrival,” I remind her. “Please, Parrish, you’ve seen the dangers facing my men here. Is there nothing more you can tell me that might help me save their lives?”
* * *
“His name was David Islington. A big, bluff fellow, full of fun. We met at university.” Her mouth tilts up impishly. “He was reading history, and I started taking some of the same courses, you know, to throw myself in his way.”
“Minx,” I observe, and her smile broadens with tenderness; few enough women have ever smiled that way for me.
“Oh, I was completely shameless,” she agrees. “It’s a good thing too; subtlety was entirely lost on David. He preferred his life painted in very bold strokes.” Her grin fades. “When the war came, there was no holding him back. A world war, they called it. Everyone was involved, Europe, Russia, Asia, America—”
“That colonial backwater?”
“It’s a very powerful nation. They all are. Oceans of ships, armies of men, weapons you can’t even imagine…”
“Flying ships,” I inject. “Raining hell.”
She nods. “He was teaching history, by then, to boys who’d be off fighting in another year. History was happening all around him, and he wanted to be part of it.” Parrish shakes her head, eyes downcast, as if one of her plants were arguing with her. “I had his pay, and I’d published one or two silly books by then. The war was winding down. Then … he was killed in the liberation of France.”
I pretend to fuss with my shirt cuff. “And your child?”
She shakes her head again. “I never told him. David. I’d miscarried before. I was going to surprise him when he came home for good. But … when I got the news … I went into labor early.” Her expression is dreadfully composed. “He did not survive the hour of his birth. He died in my arms. Our son.”
A more gallant fellow might offer her a manly shoulder, however damaged, on which to weep. But she is far from weeping.
“I hated them all so much,” she says. “The world of men who made the war. I could never, ever forgive them.”
“So you came here.”
“At first I only wanted to die. But I was too cowardly,” she sighs. “Besides, I thought, what if it was my duty to survive?”
“Duty?” I echo. “To whom?”
“To my son. To David. To myself. What right had I to toss away what had been so cruelly stolen from them? So I sold our flat in town and went to live with my aunt in the Scilly Islands.”
“Your childhood playground, as I recall.”
“Yes. She was a widow herself by then, my last living relation.” Stella gives her head a wistful shake. “It’s such a rugged, wild place at the end of the world.”
“I know the Isles.”
“But they were all in such a great hurry to cheer me up, my aunt and her friends. Accused me of living too much in the past.” She makes a wry mouth. “The last place I wanted to be! I couldn’t even write any more. Every word was a complaint, or an outcry, or some mawkish ode dragging me back into the damned past. So I took myself back to London, found work in a military ho
spital. They were always in need of nurses, experienced or otherwise.”
“A strange choice of professions, did you mean to escape the specter of war,” I observe.
“I so wanted to be of use to somebody. But I was surrounded every day by sickness, hopelessness, dying. London was a burned-out wreck. When my aunt became gravely ill, I went back to Scilly; it rallied me out of myself for a while, tending her.” She sighs. “It was a blessing when she went; her life had become so diminished. But it was another ending. That’s when my dreams turned beyond rational time and place, beyond war and its never-ending aftermath. Beyond the world the grown-ups made.”
“The Neverland,” I murmur.
“My dreams were unrelenting. That’s when I found that old book again, the one signed by Mr. Barrie, in a box of things my aunt was storing for me. Believe, he wrote. I began to dream of the Neverland as a real, physical place—this bay, the beach, the wood, the laughter of children, they were all so real! A haven of childhood innocence, a place undefiled by war and poverty and hatred, where children might need a mother, where I might finally do somebody some good. Then my dreams became more abstract, as if some force were calling me.”
I peer at her. “You never saw who? Did someone speak to you?”
But she shakes her head. “It was never a conversation. It was more like a sense of exhilaration, like a flying dream. It was irresistible! I just knew I’d find something wonderful here. I got that situation in Kensington Gardens, worked for nothing, even used my maiden name, to start completely over. I had to find some place untouched by the war, to recover from my losses. I needed to come back to life.”
“You might have married again,” I suggest. “There was always a brisk trade in widows in my day.”
“But how could I confess what I’d done?” she beseeches her plants.
“Done?” I echo.
She glances up, startled that her words were spoken aloud. “I let him go,” she says quickly. “David. I wasn’t … enough for him, somehow, not enough to keep him at home. That’s what his mother said, anyway.”
