Gwendolyn was too big for most tasks, but she thought the singers might be able to use her. To prevent widespread fairy deafness, Queen Ree had banished the singers and the musicians to the fairy circle.
Gwendolyn waited until the orchestra took a break.
Crouching next to a singer, she asked if she could screech with them when she wasn’t moving the boulder.
The singer, a fairy named Ellery, told Gwendolyn to open her mouth. Then she called over Juliette, another singer. Ellery rested her arms on Gwendolyn’s lips and peered in. Over her shoulder she told Juliette, “Big space. Teeth are all right. Tongue is an excellent shape.”
Gwendolyn felt proud of her tongue.
“Gums?” Juliette asked.
Ellery pulled Gwendolyn’s lip down. “Healthy pink.”
The two singers backed away. “Take a deep breath,” Ellery said, “as deep as you can.”
Gwendolyn inhaled so long she felt her toes expand. The fairies nodded as the air streamed in, but when Gwendolyn couldn’t pull in any more and began to exhale, they shook their heads.
“You’ll be hoarse in ten minutes,” Ellery said. “We can’t have that.”
“Oh.” Gwendolyn felt ridiculous for being so disappointed. But she couldn’t argue with talent.
“If someone wants a break,” Ellery said kindly, “and we need a pinch screamer, you’ll be first pick.”
Gwendolyn nodded, feeling better.
Cymbals crashed, and the rehearsal was on again. Gwendolyn flew to her branch across from Mother Dove’s nest. The uproar drowned out conversation. Mother Dove’s neck pulsed, but Gwendolyn couldn’t hear even a single coo.
After a few minutes the conductor stopped everyone to tell them how to worsen their performances. In the comparative silence, Mother Dove cooed, “Gwen-n-n-n-n-n-dol-l-l-l-l-yn-n-nn-n-n,” stretching the name out for so long that Gwendolyn became frightened.
“Is anything wrong, Mother Dove?”
“Gwen-n-n-n-n-n-dol-l-l-l-l-yn-n-n-n-n-n…”
Gwendolyn pressed her hands together so tight they hurt. “Tell me, Mother Dove.”
“You try to be beware, but you don’t always succeed.”
Gwendolyn nodded miserably. “I know.”
“You can stop seeing and hearing fairies even before you’re grown up.”
“What?” She was sure she hadn’t heard right. “What?”
“If you harm a fairy, you could lose the ability to see and hear all fairies at that moment. If you harm a fairy tomorrow, you could lose the ability tomorrow.”
Gwendolyn almost fell off her branch. She hiccupped and didn’t think of the kiss. “Would you…” Hic! “…do that to me?” Hic!
“I wouldn’t.” Mother Dove cooed. “But Never Land might. It’s just an island. It may not understand you mean well.”
T W E N T Y - O N E
THAT NIGHT, Gwendolyn didn’t have a kiss vision, although she stayed awake long enough to have a dozen. If she accidentally hurt a fairy before they reached Kyto, she wouldn’t hear Tink tell her which boulder to move. She wouldn’t know if her screeching was needed. She’d fail everyone.
In the morning she sought out Peter for information. She found him and the Lost Boys digging on the beach. Two deep holes had already been dug, and water was seeping into both. The binoculars hung on a string around Peter’s neck.
Only Peter and Curly had proper shovels. The others were using soup spoons, which they would probably eat from later without washing.
She hovered unseen. Was Peter angry at her because she’d failed to clean the entire underground home and hadn’t darned a single sock?
He looked up and dropped his shovel. He stood, the image of astonishment. “Wendy! How did you get here?”
Gwendolyn landed, thinking, Can he have forgotten he brought me over?
“Gwendolyn,” Tootles said.
“Oh, yes. It comes back to me. Would you like to dig for pirate treasure?” Gallantly, he offered his shovel.
Touched, she took it and began to dig.
Peter flew along the shore and returned with the biggest clamshell she had ever seen. He crouched nearby and dug too.
After a few minutes she asked, “Has Never Land ever gotten mad at you, Peter?”
“Nope.” He dug deep and pulled out a huge load of sand, perfectly mounded, which he cast behind him.
Curly grinned, a sight seldom seen. “The island got rid of Skulk.”
The Lost Boys lost their shyness in telling the tale. Skulk had been a Lost Boy, too, but not for long. He’d found a book of spells in a chest of pirate treasure and had cast one.
“The next time he flew,” Tootles said, “the island slid away from under him.”
“Did Never Land let him come back later?” Gwendolyn asked.
Curly smiled a second time, a record. “A shark probably ate him.”
The island didn’t seem very forgiving.
“Or…” Peter fairly spat the words: “The stupid boy grew up.” Peter didn’t forgive either.
Tootles said, “Skulk’s spell made a grasshopper, and the island let it stay, the Never high hopper. It’s everywhere now.”
Gwendolyn changed the subject. “You’ve fought many battles, haven’t you, Peter?”
Everyone laughed.
“Yes,” Peter said.
“Suppose a…a monster attacked Never Land, what would you do?”
Peter put down his clamshell. “Big monster?”
“Very big.”
“Scaly?”
“Scaly.”
“Sharp teeth?”
“Very sharp.”
“Flying?”
Gwendolyn didn’t want him to guess Kyto. “Very fast runner, breathes out ice that freezes people in a second.”
“I’d fight him.”
Why did he think the monster was a him? “How?”
“With my sword. I’d kill him.”
“Suppose you just wanted to capture it?”
“I’d dig a deep pit and chase him in and wouldn’t let him climb out.”
That wouldn’t work with Kyto. “Who would you want helping you?”
Peter shrugged. “The Lost Boys could help if they wanted to.”
A chorus rose. “We want to, Peter.”
“Would you ask fairies to be on your side? Or would you think they were too little?”
“They’re little, but they could help.”
Tootles said, “Never underestimate a fairy.”
I’m not, Gwendolyn thought, but they’re so tiny, compared to a dragon. “How do you get ready for a fight with Captain Hook or wolves or a Never bear?”
Peter sat back on his haunches. “Buckle on my sword. Put my dagger in my belt.”
“What do you think to get ready?”
“That I’m Peter.” He hesitated. “That it has to be a fair fight.”
Kyto wouldn’t care about being fair.
“That we’re gentlemen,” Slightly said.
Gwendolyn nodded.
“That there’s always another trick to try,” Peter added.
Hmm, Gwendolyn thought.
“I think, Don’t get cocky,” Peter said. “And I never do.”
The Twins coughed.
“Are you ever afraid?”
“Never.”
Everyone dug in silence until Peter said, “That’s enough. we’ll try somewhere else.”
Gwendolyn doubted their ideas would help, but she thanked them and excused herself.
At the Home Tree a multitude of fairies had gathered in the courtyard.
Tink and the other pots-and-pans talents had finished making the Kyto Keeper, and now they were polishing the chain, with fairy dust for polishing grit.
Marla, the cooking talent, asked why they were bothering. “Why does it have to look nice?”
Tink fixed Marla with her most scornful stare. “Beeecauzze,” she said, dragging it out, “if the chain is beautiful and shiny and interesting, Kyto may not try to bre
ak it. Dragons love beauty. A magnificent chain may make him feel better about being captured.”
The chain had twenty links, each link as long as Gwendolyn’s hand, the metal twice as thick as her thumb.
Prilla turned a cartwheel above the chain, then leaned in close. “I’m twisty!” She laughed at her reflection. “My nose is above my eyes, and my mouth is sideways.”
More fairies looked at themselves. Being beware, Gwendolyn waited until everyone had looked who wanted to. Then she flew to see, too.
Oof! Her face spread around a link. She had a doughnut face! She laughed. “Sprinkle on the sugar!”
Since everyone was assembled, Queen Ree announced which fairies were to go on the quest. She named ten dust talents, including Terence, ten scouts, ten nursing talents, five pots-and-pans talents plus Tink, and all the water talents and dairy talents and fast fliers and musicians and singers and light talents. Of the animal talents, only Beck was to come, and of the artists, only Bess, who had painted the face on the dragon suit. Three sewing-talent fairies were picked, to repair the suit if it tore. Dulcie and Marla were allowed to come, because they insisted they could make the food taste fresher.
Prilla, the only blinking talent, was included so she could start mainland Clumsy children clapping for fairies. Gwendolyn was coming to carry the boulder and for pinch-hit shrieking.
“We’ll leave in the morning from the fairy circle,” Queen Ree said. “Mother Dove will send us off.”
The left-behind fairies had pale, depressed glows, but they got to work on the final defenses in case the expedition failed. They began by hiding Fairy Haven again, just as they had before Gwendolyn’s arrival.
Gwendolyn said nothing, but what good would hiding do when Vidia, the traitor, knew exactly where everything was?
T W E N T Y - T W O
FOG COVERED all of Fairy Haven. Gwendolyn’s seventh day on the island began. In the Home Tree courtyard, fairies were loading balloon-carrier baskets. Food went into one basket, the musicians’ instruments into another. The basket for the Kyto Keeper was enormous, and its balloon was twice as big as the others, too big for Gwendolyn to hold in her arms.
After she lifted the Keeper inside, the dairy talents called her to hoist the dragon suit into its basket. The huge suit fit with room to spare because its cloth was as thin as a butterfly’s wing.
Terence and another fairy-dust talent pulled the fairy-dust balloon carrier in from the mill.
Rani decided to ride with the Kyto Keeper. Tink put her in charge of the precious screws that would hold the collar closed.
Everyone was ready—or as ready as could be. Queen Ree carried Grandma’s earring as a shield. Gwendolyn felt a thrill. The earring, going to battle!
The questers and the left-behinders followed Queen Ree to Mother Dove’s nest. when they arrived, Gwendolyn perched on her usual branch in the hemlock.
“Dears,” Mother Dove cooed, “Kyto will be bigger than you expect, and his face will be purely evil. Don’t give up hope. You have strengths he can’t guess at.”
Gwendolyn hoped for boulder-lifting strength she couldn’t guess at and for a beware talent she hadn’t shown so far.
“And now,” Mother Dove said, “I offer this advice: Be nice to Vidia no matter what she does. Be nice even if she helps—”
“—Kyto,” Rani finished. “Kyto?”
Mother Dove cooed. “Kyto.”
Gwendolyn didn’t want to be kind to Vidia. Still, obeying was sure to be part of being beware.
Queen Ree recited the traditional quest words, adjusting them to include Gwendolyn. “We’ll be careful. We’ll be kind. We’ll be Never fairies and a Clumsy at our best. Follow me.” She straightened her tiara and flew.
The other fairies streamed after her. The balloon carriers rose from the fairy circle as the sun pierced the fog. Gwendolyn shaded her eyes to watch, feeling herself a witness to history.
Once the balloon carriers cleared the forest canopy she began to fly, too. From above the hawthorn she looked down at Mother Dove, who had shrunk to the size of her hand. How does it feel to be her? Gwendolyn thought. She loves fairies as much as I do, but she can’t go with them. As Gwendolyn soared away, she heard a plaintive note in Mother Dove’s coos.
In five minutes she caught up with the questers. Her long shadow and the shadows of the balloon carriers glided across the treetops, but the fairies’ shadows were too small to see.
Queen Ree said Gwendolyn bounced too much to pull a carrier. Instead, fast fliers towed the carriers in shifts.
Some fairies had never traveled this far from Fairy Haven. Gwendolyn oohed and aahed with them over the wonders below: a Never hairy lizard sunning on a rock, a grove of gigantic cypress trees, a field of scarlet daisies, a herd of long-nosed pigs.
When they weren’t hauling balloon carriers, the fast fliers raced each other ahead and back. Sometimes Gwendolyn raced too, although she always lost. No matter how she tried she was no speedier than the average fairy.
“Hawk!” a scout shouted. “Hawk coming from the west!”
Fairies darted around in confusion. The sky offered no sanctuary.
Gwendolyn yelled, “Everyone! Behind me.” A hawk against a Clumsy? Hah!
Fairies rushed to her until another scout cried, “Injured hawk. No danger.”
Gwendolyn saw the hawk in the distance, a bird flying with a distinct limp.
Beck went to meet it while everyone else landed in a meadow and waited. After five minutes, she and the hawk descended. Its left wing was singed at the tip and still smoking.
The undersides of its wings were gold!
Prilla fluttered at Gwendolyn’s ear. “He’s the golden hawk.”
Gwendolyn remembered the Golden Hawk constellation.
“There’s only one like him.” Prilla sounded awed. “He helped Rani change back to a fairy when she was a bat.”
“Oh.” Was that why Rani had Rani-bat in her head?
“His wing won’t stop sizzling,” Beck said. She soothed the hawk while a nursing talent spread ointment across his feathers and Terence sprinkled on fairy dust.
The smoke thinned and died out.
“How far away is Kyto?” Queen Ree asked.
“At the base of Torth,” Beck said.
Tink said, “The hawk smoldered from there to here?”
“He tried to smother the embers on the ground,” Beck said, “but they wouldn’t go out.”
Oh, no! Gwendolyn thought. Was dragon fire different from other fire?
“He thinks it might be the gold in his feathers or magic flames that kept him burning.”
Rani burst out. “What if water makes his flames burn hotter? What if the water birds are useless?”
T W E N T Y - T H R E E
BECK PATTED the hawk’s wing, then stood. “He says Kyto is flying well, with a flat back, like our fast fliers. A fairy is with him.” Gwendolyn heard “sweet” and “darling” in angry voices as fairies railed against Vidia’s treachery.
Now that he’s flying strongly, she thought, he can attack before we reach the first boulder. If he did, the entire plan would fail.
The questers resumed flying. The golden hawk told Beck he’d stay with them as far as his nest.
They passed either north or south of the tiffens’ banana farms, but not over them. Gwendolyn wondered whether the tiffens were preparing for Kyto or just debating, as Arli had predicted.
A scout called out the first sighting of the wough, the widest river on the island.
Queen Ree exclaimed, “So soon! Excellent. The island is in a small mood.”
Gwendolyn flew next to the Kyto Keeper carrier, where Terence and Tink were flying. “How can Never Land be in a small mood?”
Terence smiled. “Sometimes it is, and sometimes—”
“—it’s in a large mood.” Rani leaned over the edge of the basket.
Tink dimpled. “You never can tell.”
The river came into view, and the golden haw
k flew to his nest on its banks. Even by Clumsy standards, the wough was mighty. A log raced downstream, borne on a powerful current.
Rani pulled out a leafkerchief and blew her nose. “The wough is upset.”
Terence said, “Because of—”
“—Kyto?” Rani nodded, wiping her eyes. “The river doesn’t want its fish to boil.”
Gwendolyn shuddered.
From across the swarm of fairies, Queen Ree announced there was no time to stop for lunch. Dulcie and Marla passed food around while they flew. Dulcie gave Gwendolyn a Clumsy-sized roll dotted with raisins and nuts. A quarter of the balloon-carrier basket for food was filled with rolls just like it, all of them for her.
Dulcie explained that the baking talents hadn’t had time to make any other big food. “I’d fly backwards if I could.”
“I’ve never tasted such delicious raisins,” Gwendolyn said, meaning it. “Are the nuts pistachios?”
Dulcie nodded.
“I love pistachios.”
“And the flour is our best rye, and the oil is pistachio, too.” She smiled. “I’m so glad you like it.”
The quest reached the plains at sunset. At first the fairies and Gwendolyn flew over a desert dotted with cactuses shaped like raindrops. Then, an hour later, in gathering darkness, boulders pricked up between the cactuses. Soon the boulders multiplied and the cactuses thinned, replaced by grass.
“Ree,” Beck called, “I smell something.” Although scouts had better eyesight and hearing than any other talent, animal talents had the best sense of smell.
Gwendolyn smelled only sweet grass.
Queen Ree went to Beck, who was flying next to the dragon-suit balloon carrier. Gwendolyn followed, along with Tink, Terence, and two scouts.
“Kyto?” Queen Ree asked.
Gwendolyn reached into her pocket for the kiss.
Beck closed her eyes. “Sweat, tooth decay, dirt, ash. It’s Kyto.”
A scout shouted, “Smoke ahead.”
“Sh! Everybody whisper,” Queen Ree whispered.
Scouts flew among the fairies, relaying the news.
Fairies and the Quest for Never Land Page 8
