Mere Phantasy

by Ashley Lauren

  And then the world morphed around me entirely.

  Standing to my feet, I circled in order to take it all in. I was no longer inside the musty, enclosed hideout, but instead, completely immersed in a large, lush landscape. Trees towered high above me, humidity prickling at my skin. All around me were spotted mushrooms and all kinds of vines. Vegetation tendrils adorned with thorns and flowers draped over branches of the many kinds of trees and other growth. There were giant plants with amazing colors—colors more vibrant than I'd ever seen. Moss and dead leaves littered the earth, and it smelled like it had just rained.

  “This is insane,” I breathed, gazing up and around in awe.

  Sun broke through the trees and coated my skin with warmth, but it was just enough to meet the cool nip of the forest around us perfectly. I looked over my shoulder at Peter, who had just appeared behind me and was grinning, his hands placed on his hips happily.

  “Well? What do you think?” he asked, then quickly moved forward to grab my wrist and pull me along with him again. “Wait, don’t tell me until you’ve seen this.”

  “Seen wha—” But I stopped mid-sentence when I indeed saw what he was implying.

  As we move past large leaves and over moss-covered logs, we stepped into a large opening in the trees. The forest was peeled back, and now that we could see clearly, I watched in content fascination.

  We stood on a large hill overlooking an even larger meadow. It wove into other parts of the lush forest while also being decorated with hundreds of little flowers. Beyond the trees, near the horizon, sat the ocean. It sparkled with the reflection of the sun. Beautiful. Birds flew through the air calmly, and the whole atmosphere just felt like a huge sigh of relief.

  Looking back toward where we’d come from, I was able to understand just exactly where the hideout was located. Beneath the largest tree I’d ever seen—its trunk the width of a bus and its height so tall it disappeared into the mesh of its companions at the top, roots protruding from the ground. So the hideout wasn’t made of branches; it was made of gigantic tree roots.

  I was in an amazed stupor, unable to take it all in without missing something else eye-catching and then having to go back to take it in all over again. I realized Peter had taken his amused expression from me and was now gazing out into the horizon at the hills alongside Mitch and Lox. The other little boys were trumping around in the forest, playing some sort of game with the bagged fairy, completely oblivious to the weird energy coming from the four oldest of this group.

  Peter folded his arms over his chest, playing with his lower lip as if deep in thought. “I thought I got rid of him once and for all.”

  Mitch cleared his throat, kicking a rock by his feet and glaring. “I thought you’d be excited to know about it. I spied on one of his men waltzing through the forest like he owned the place.” Mitch glanced at his leader. “Are you not excited?”

  Sighing, Peter tried to seem happier than was evident. “I-I… Of course I am. It’s about time I got to mess with a codfish again.” He grinned at Mitch before nodding to him, as if offering him an invitation to go off with the other boys. Mitch, who I was beginning to realize, though tall for his age, must only be about fourteen, saluted Peter before jogging past me. With a smile, he moved into the forest to run after his friends, leaving me with Peter and Lox, who seemed to be completely ignoring my presence.

  “You should just tell them, Peter,” Lox suggested, moving all her snake-like braids onto one shoulder and peering out toward the setting sun. The amber of her eyes glinted like the gold of her hair, and I found myself squinting in jealousy, seeing that her skin offset her golden features perfectly. She was stunning, and all I had was a fairy-induced rats’ nest on my head.

  Peter pulled at the back of his neck and sighed. “I know. I just don’t think it’s the right time yet.”

  Glancing over at me, Lox’s eyes trailed down to my chest, and instinctively, I clutched onto my necklace with reddening cheeks. Blinking at me evenly, Lox looked away just as quickly and didn’t bother to look back.

  They say curiosity killed the cat. This was very true in my case.

  “You don’t think what’s the right time?”

  Both Lox and Peter turned to me then, each with different emotions. Lox not wanting to see me whatsoever, and then Peter smiling softly like he was glad I changed the subject.

  “Nothing you need to worry about,” he told me. Looking out at the world before us again, he motioned to it with a strong hand. “So what do you think?”

  “It’s… amazing,” I admitted honestly. Even the air felt sweet on my tongue, which was strange. I was so used to breathing in smog and the scent of city sewers back home. Being this close to nature in such a vibrant way was super overpowering. But I kind of… loved it. Almost as if it were putting me in a trance. Taking a deep breath of the clean air, I said, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anywhere on the planet being this beautiful.”

  “That’s because it isn’t on any planet, not one you know of anyway,” he stated, as if what he’d said was completely normal.

  I watched him skeptically. “What exactly are you saying right now?”

  He turned to me, as if finally noticing I was there, and smiled softly, the pink of his lips matching the hue of the sunset now forming on the horizon. “We left Earth yesterday at one in the afternoon, Lace.” Turning back to gaze out upon the valley, his eyes sparkled with the sun.

  But I was starting to shake again. “Th-then where exactly are we?”

  Visibly annoyed, Lox let out a breath before throwing her hand out in a mediocre show. “Neverland, all right?” Her plump lips curled in disgust. “Your very own dreamier version of hell.”

  Eight

  I was out of there the second she said dream.

  Moving as fast as one could run in a thick forest, I pushed through the undergrowth with all my might. I had no idea where I was going, let alone what direction I was going in. But I also had no intention of going back to those crazy people.

  Sure, this place is great. But these people are not.

  Branches and twigs zipped by me, cutting up my exposed arms and aggravating my jean-clad legs. Thankfully, I saw a low-hanging branch before it whacked me in the face. But in the midst of trying to dodge the branch above, I failed to see the large root protruding from the ground. The bark caught my ankle easily, sending me falling right onto my face in a large pile of dirt and leaves.

  As I recovered, I heard the sound of branches breaking behind me, my heart jumping into my throat. There was no time to lose; I couldn’t let them catch up to me. In the last hour since I’d woken up, I’d met the Lost Boys from Peter Pan (who was also the—singular—Lost Boy from my dreams), a demonic fairy who wanted to rip out my hair, and had been told the world I was in was the infamous Neverland, not Northern California as I’d been imagining.

  So there wasn’t one single thing holding me back from running away like a madwoman.

  Getting to my feet, I didn’t bother to wipe away the dirt. I started to sprint, fast, despite the twang of pain in my ankle and the throbbing of my head. I ran straight ahead with no deterrence, never stopping to think of just what might be lurking behind the vegetation.

  That’s why I never stood a chance against the large cliff. One that led directly down into the sea and sent me hurtling off its edge and into the open air without even a second’s warning.

  So a very stupid, stupid cliff and an even stupider Lacey were the reasons I went soaring in a free-fall straight into the churning waves.

  I’d like to point out, before you go ahead and judge me for falling off a cliff, that no girl, nor any person for that matter, would ever have a life-altering epiphany when plunging into an ocean from four hundred feet above. In fact, the only thing you can do is scream your blasted heart out.

  Which is what I did.

  The waves raced toward me, unforgiving wind ripping all oxygen from my lungs. There were a few seconds of earth and cliff and
air until finally… Sma-balsschhhh! A completely black wall of bubbles. I shuddered, the impact seemingly knocking my heart out of my body, and then I began to sink into the darkness.

  Dead, right?

  Wrong.

  I should’ve been dead. I took (and almost failed) physics in school. I knew how it worked. Lacey went flying off cliff. The height and her weight added to the force of gravity, which, in turn, could not possibly mean Lacey survived the crash into the waves below—a completely solid surface in junction with the velocity in which her puny body fell to her death. So Lacey dies.

  But I didn’t.

  And that’s how I knew I was definitely in a dream.

  As I floated aimlessly, completely out of it and unaware of my surroundings, the current blowing me wherever it pleased, I felt my lungs begin to burn. They ached because I wasn’t waking from this dream and there were three billion tons of water pressurizing against me, and even though the fall hadn’t killed me, the determined bout of stupidity in me thinking this was all a dream was going to.

  As if awakening from a trance, I shuddered and jolted, trying to swim, move, anything to get me toward air. Thankfully, I broke the surface in time to gasp a breath before a large, ear-rattling wave overtook me and sent me summersaulting into more bubbles and salty tide.

  I sank through the gloom, positive I was about to become one with the miles of sand at the deepest depths of the ocean, with only the sea creatures as my friends, lost forever. But then something wrapped around me. Logically, I thought it might be the slimy, grotesque tentacles of a sea monster or, better yet, a giant squid or something insane like that, but as the spindly laced fingers began to lift me farther and farther toward the light at the dazzling blue surface, I realized it was no sea creature that had me in its clutches.

  No. It was something worse.

  A net.

  Like a beached fish, I gasped for breath and floundered about (Get it? Fish? Floundered?), trying to see what was happening. I was drenched from head to toe, emerging from the ocean in a large slime-covered net that constricted my movements. My teeth chattered as the wind caught my wet clothes and hair, the net hauling me over the water and then, finally, onto the chestnut floorboards of a very large, very smelly surface.

  A ship.

  I was a very dead beached fish.

  Pirates smell like sewer, rum, and sea salt, if you didn’t already know. As I coughed out the water from my lungs onto the deck, some rancid, reeking men grabbed me from my hunched position, lifting me off my feet and onto them again, despite how weak I felt. I caught a whiff of the men as I was tugged up, and it took all I had in me not to gag.

  The moment I stood upright, I instantly felt the ship swaying and rocking beneath me. My stomach tumbled, and I tried to swallow back whatever was rising in my throat. When I was able to blink away the tears and see clearly, I caught my first startling sight of the Jolly Roger.

  Frighteningly beautiful, the ship outdid any fictional pirate ship I’d ever heard of in both size and magnificence. Its mast was so tall it seemed to disappear into the sea fog drifting above the shuddering sails and flickering ropes tied to them. The wood under my sneakers creaked no matter if I stepped on it or not, and it swayed with the routine of the waves underneath. But it wasn’t the ship that scared me the most; it was what was on it.

  These men surrounding me were vile, appearing as if they could blend in with the scum and rust scrunching under my feet. My original captors pushed me to move toward them all, and I felt my lip curl in disgust. Boils, dirt, and who knows what else caked their faces, stout and thin, leathery and chubby. Their scrunched limbs and missing body parts made it clear they weren’t just sporting eye patches and talking parrots, not like the pirates we imagined. Some stumps that used to home a leg or an arm, or even an eye, weren’t covered, and the scars littering their flesh, new and old, were disgusting enough to make me cringe. The men had crooked, decaying teeth, both sharp and nonexistent, and smiles that could curdle milk.

  Dirty, all around me was filth.

  I tried to back away from one with a large nose and slack jaw as he came toward me fast and reached to touch my hair. “Oi, a pretty girl. Ain’t that bad luck, mates?” he jeered to the crowd forming behind him, who all snorted and hollered their opinions.

  Claustrophobia’s fingers, just as grimy as these pirates, started to pull at me as the men started to close in. Some reached out to touch my pale skin, soaking clothes, and ridiculous hair as if fascinated by them. I squirmed to try and get away, but then I’d just find myself brushing against another nasty brute.

  One grabbed my arm firmly, and I tried to yank away with a shriek. “Let go of me!”

  He didn’t listen, pushing my body through the large cluster surrounding me. They did back up, thankfully, but not before I saw their depraved grins and hungry eyes. Just looking at them made me feel grimy and unsafe.

  Panting from struggling to escape, I hit at the large man’s grip to try and get away. But what was the use? We were surrounded by sea. Even if I tried to run, I wouldn’t be able to swim all the way back to land, which I could only see distantly from here, covered by the low-hanging clouds of the ocean. Had I really floated this far from land?

  The man was escorting me to a door at the end of stairs that swept down from the upper to main deck, a wooden railing lining them. If not for the reek of bile, sea air, alcohol, and sweat, the sculpting of the wood and the art of its craft might’ve been pretty. But it just added to the feeling of dread building heavily in my gut.

  I was in mid-jerk away from my captor when he finally let go, and amidst my frazzled hair and flailing elbows, I glanced up for just one second. That was when I caught my first glimpse of Hook, the captain, smiling down at us gruesomely, as if happy to see me.

  From head to toe, he didn’t seem like the rest of these pirates, but he also didn’t seem to be a proper English gentleman, as the stories portrayed him, either.

  His clothes were less dingy, clean and sleek, unlike his crew’s. But his face… it was brutal, definitely worse-looking than most of those onboard, coated in a mangy fur I guessed was supposed to pass as a clumped beard. Though he had all his teeth, they were all either pointed, cracked, or brown. His hair was wiry black and gray, saltwater slicked, and matted near his sunken cheekbones. Hook’s skin was yellow in pigment, wrinkled from age, and when he grinned down at me from above, it stretched maliciously near his eyes and mouth, like a terrifying Halloween clown. And to add to the horror-movie theme, a rough, jutted hook protruded from where his left hand should’ve been.

  “Ah.” His voice was gravelly, plummy, despite his gross outward appearance. His arms swayed out around him in a welcoming gesture, but I had no urge to take any steps closer. “Welcome aboard, miss!”

  One of the men behind me hit his forearm into my shoulder so I was forced to move forward anyway. As I went, so did the captain, descending the steps. The sound of his battered boots and the salty wind rustling the sails above was the only noise around until I stood equidistant from Hook himself. Calmly, he clasped his hand and hook behind his back, dark eyes falling on me.

  “I’m James Hook, captain of the Jolly Roger, the vessel that so gracefully saved you. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He bowed in front of me, and I found myself pulling away in discomfort. It was too formal a voice coming from such a hideous man. When he noticed my reaction, he frowned slightly, tilting his head and standing up straight again. “How foolish of me, my dear. I do apologize. You must be rather tired from your journey. Almost drowning and all. You’re very lucky my crew saw you falling from that cliff. You might’ve been mermaid meal.”

  The hat I hadn’t noticed before was positioned back onto his head, torn in different places and looking like something you wouldn’t even pick up at a garage sale.

  Captain Hook smiled again. “Why don’t you rest for a while? Then after, my men will bring you to me. And we’ll… hmm.” His eyes seemed to dance as he flutte
red his fingers. “Talk a bit.”

  Before I could say anything, I was being pulled back into the arms of the men on the ship. While I scrambled to try and wrench away from them, I heard Hook call distantly, “Not a single hair on her head, lads!” before the pirates’ greedy hands got ahold of me and they dragged me somewhere dark.

  And then fear consumed me.

  Nine

  For some reason, I always thought it might be thrilling to be aboard a pirate ship. I’d seen all the Pirates of the Caribbean movies; I’d been on the ride. I thought I knew just how exciting it would be being thrown into the ship’s cellar as a rebel stowaway about to kick the enemy’s butts the second I broke free. But the movies lied. There was nothing exciting about this place.

  They imprisoned me in a small lockup in the ship’s hold. It was freezing, and only a little light slanted into the cell through a crack in the deck above. Shivering, I huddled in the cold and listened to the noises of the creaking vessel. Mice and rats scampered around, and the roar of the ocean waves smacked against the sides while water dripped from holes in the ceiling. All this above the groaning of the ship itself was making my head throb. It took everything inside me to block out those constant sounds and control my panic. They’d just left me down here—no food, no fresh water—like a prisoner. Like I’d done something wrong. The way Hook had talked to me, I’d been expecting maybe some sort of luxury as a guest. But he obviously was as ugly inside as he was out.