The Grown Ups' Crusade Read online

  In the dark, Gwen's imagination plagued her with visions in the water. The shadowy shapes rising and vanishing with the waves almost looked like voyeuristic mermaids, and when Gwen tried to sleep that night, she couldn't shake the illusion that the wind carried the sound of aquatic laughter.

  The other children fell straight out after a long day in the sun, but Gwen played the insomniac. She watched Peter with growing concern, waiting for him to retreat to bed too. When she finally fell asleep, Peter still stood beside the fire, etching battle plans in the sand and murmuring to fairies.

  He would have only make-believe sleep for the night, but when morning came, he would have more energy and optimism than anyone. He would have a plan.

  Chapter 5

  “Let's dig holes and put leaves over them! It'll be a secret trap!”

  Inch had already gathered a handful of leaves for her proposal, innocently unaware the leaves would be the last and easiest stage of the project. Jam made a face at the trees. “I want to go to the beach and work on the fortress. Why are we making traps in the jungle, anyway?”

  “For a second-line of defense,” Gwen told her. Jam did not uncross her arms until Gwen assured her, “Second-line defenses are even more important.” She didn't know if that would hold true, but she knew the lost children wouldn't give the matter much critical thought. They weaved nets out of strong vines and incorruptible spider silk, knowing their defenses needed to stop the adults. Stop them from what? Did the children have any conception of what was at stake?

  While they hoped to stop adults from so much as setting foot on land, even Peter doubted they could fend off the incoming forces that well. The first line of defenses on the beach aimed to stop as many adults as possible, maybe sink a ship or two, but once the adults were on Neverland's soil the children had to stop them from reaching the heart of the island where the Never Tree grew. Peter had made it clear to every girl and boy that they needed to resist the adult invasion at all costs, and anyone unwilling to charge into that fight ought to fly back home. None of the children left. None of them, even with their vivacious imaginations, could conceptualize leaving.

  Gwen wouldn't abandon Peter either, but she conceptualized it with ease. She could leave the lost children to their wayward war and fly home to live as a teenager in reality. She could make it home for dinner with her parents, all her friends would be so glad to see her, and she'd pretend to have made a miraculous recovery from a near-fatal case of mononucleosis. She could go right back to school, and if a year or two or four had slipped away, she could pretend she had just moved to town. She could catch up with Jay.

  Gwen did not struggle to visualize that alternative. She had cast her lot with Peter, though, and would not run when he needed her—when he needed everyone—most. Twice she had returned to reality, twice she had come to Neverland. Gwen did not give credence to the superstition that magical things came in threes. Two was plenty. If she went back home now, the third time would be the charm that charmed her back into the normalcy of adolescent life.

  So she had decided to accompany the forest team—Operation Jungle Attack, as Jet had christened them. They went into the thick of Neverland to establish a wide, defensive perimeter around the Never Tree.

  She felt a justified skepticism at the idea that a handful of grade school children could create any practical defenses against a militia, but Peter had no such doubts. He put his trust not in the children, but in Neverland itself.

  “Neverland is smart, Gwenny,” he'd promised, “and what you plant in Neverland grows. We can plant traps, resistance, attacks, and surprises… Neverland will know what to do with them. It needs help, but we can teach it.”

  So Gwen watched, feeling helpless in these playful war preparations, as nets and pits were strung with great vigor and little skill. The lack of expertise didn't matter, though. Finishing the task didn't even matter. The children's fervor and resolve would take root, and when their attention inevitably wandered, what they left behind would be fertilized in the fanciful earth of Neverland, eventually blossoming into exactly what the children had imagined when they started on the task. Today's hand-dug hole and mesh of leaves would grow, by tomorrow, into a perfectly camouflaged pit.

  Rosemary stamped through the brush with a backpack overflowing with supplies. Something seemed to fall out of the pack with every step. She couldn't pick anything up—in each hand she held a mug of hot chocolate overflowing with whipped cream. Dew and Pin gathered the twine, nails, wood blocks, sticky putty, marbles, and fireworks leaking from her pack.

  The little girl shoved a tin mug of hot chocolate toward her sister, its whipped cream sloshing over onto her hand. “I got this for you, Gwen!”

  She thanked Rosemary and took it, deriving more comfort from the warmth of the cup than the sweetness of the drink. She wondered where Rosemary had managed to find whipped cream on the island. She watched as her sister plopped down on a mossy log and drank her own hot chocolate. As she sipped, she offered suggestions to the three lost boys industriously fiddling with fishing line to rig a trip wire that would “trigger poison darts and cool stuff.”

  Rosemary didn't look much like she had during her past life in suburbia. Mrs. Hoffman no longer dressed her, combed her hair, or bathed her… the result was a wild thing. Rosemary gravitated toward colorful and clashing patterns when she pulled garments out of the dress-up chest in the morning and never bothered with shoes, although she sometimes pulled on mismatched knee-socks before bed. Her uncombed hair had gathered volume, among other things.

  Her hair, barely restrained by her wide headband, seemed to float like a fluffy brown aura around her head. Remnants of song bird's eggshells, butterflies' cocoons, and toadstool tops found residence in her cozy nest of hair. Under any other circumstance, fungus in hair would have been disgusting, but Neverland made it endearing. The lost children had figured out that if any small toy went missing, as often as not, it wound up in Rosemary's hair. Scout especially liked digging through the poof for tiny treasures and charming creatures.

  Gwen took another sip of her hot chocolate, but as she raised it to her lips, she noticed the whipped cream was gone. She looked at herself and the ground below, wondering how it could have slopped off her cup. The cream was nowhere to be found.

  A voice came from the jungle that belonged to no child.

  “Gwen?”

  Her head perked up, and she stared into the brush where the sound had originated. Had the boy's voice been audible to the others, or were they just not paying attention? Gwen set her hot chocolate aside on a mushy tree stump and took slow steps toward the sound. “Hello?” she called.

  “Gwen!”

  Expecting the voice this time, she took off fast after the sound. “Who is this?” she asked, unnerved. It sounded so familiar that when she closed her eyes she could almost smell his charcoal covered hands. But she didn't trust her own perceptions. Jay, here? That was impossible.

  “Gwen, don't you recognize me?”

  “Where are you?”

  His voice moved and migrated, leading her through the woods. She ran after the sound, hoping to catch him. Every time she thought she should have reached him, his voice came from an almost opposite direction.

  “Where are you?” she shouted, suddenly realizing she no longer knew where she was. She couldn't hear the chatter of the lost children and did not know how to return to them.

  “I'm over here!”

  “Jay?” she finally asked.

  “Yes, it's me, Jay! Come over here, Gwen!”

  She followed, now slower and out of breath. She tried to quiet her emotional impulses enough to logic out what was happening. The jungle went quiet, and the voice—Jay's voice—vanished. Gwen felt winded from running after it, and her exhaustion compounded the frightening sense that she'd gotten lost. So, when she saw a small wooden stool amid the ivy and ferns, she was more tired than confused, and decided to sit down.

  She tried to rub the goosebumps off her arm
as she sat down, but fell onto the forest floor. With an unflattering yelp, Gwen plopped to the ground. She heard a hearty, booming laughter at her expense. She could tell it was the same voice—but it didn't sound like Jay at all. No longer affecting an American accent, it mocked her, “Oh ye fool of heart, ye mortal of mind… what on this island didst thou hope to find?”

  The laughter insulted but did not threaten. Gwen only felt uncomfortable and disoriented in its presence.

  Another voice, feminine and almost squeaky, declared, “Stop! Quit this!” In her peripheral vision, Gwen saw a glittery, fast motion. She got back to her feet, whipping her head around as the new voice accused, “You belligerent hobgoblin!” His laughter softened but did not stop, and she gave an exasperated sigh. “No doubt the wench be a friend to our kin!”

  Gwen couldn't find the source of either voice until a fairy flitted up to her face. She hoped the small silvery thing would point her in the direction of the mysterious entities. To her amazement, the big-eyed and little-mouthed fairy asked, in a charming English accent, “Sweet lady, where resides Peter Pan?”

  Chapter 6

  “You… you speak English?” Gwen marveled.

  “But of course! All civilized fairies do,” the silvery one replied. “I, Cobweb by name, bear a message, too.”

  The bemusing creature that had called to Gwen with impersonated memories, emerged from the brush. He moved, slow and impish, as he flitted on wings like battered, autumnal leaves. “Deliver us to the captain of your band!” he demanded, his natural voice masculine though small. “For matters most urgent are now at hand.” He looked like no fairy Gwen had ever seen; ragged and dark, he kept a mischievous look in his yellow eyes that seemed almost dangerous.

  Cobweb, however, seemed trustworthy and Gwen had no qualms about leading these baffling creatures to Peter, who was not far off in the woods. It still took a few minutes for her to find him. As they searched, the two fairies bickered in voices too small for Gwen to understand.

  “Peter!” she called, waving him over. He strode over in great excitement as she informed him, “We have, uh, visitors.”

  “Well met to-day, lord of Neverland!” the hobgoblin cried.

  Peter, delighted by this greeting, held out his hands as he approached and allowed the fairies to land in his palms and rest their wings. “Sweet Puck!” he announced. “So quickly you have come! Hollyhock delivered our message then?”

  “Aye, she rests now 'neath Titania's own bower,” Puck answered him. “And we messengers hath arrived this hour.”

  “Well?” Peter inquired. “What do Titania and Oberon say to our plea? Will your company assist us?”

  Cobweb cleared her throat—the noise tickled Gwen's ears—before she announced, “We hath come as civil emissaries, at will of the queen—”

  “And king,” Puck added.

  “—of fairies. My mistress sends sincere apologies that we cannot answer your fairies' pleas, and thus I bear my grief as well as hers… we cannot aid in thy Neverland wars.”

  Peter seemed shocked. “What? No—certainly the kinship between fairies is stronger than that.”

  “Ye rogue savages, off all charted course, needs must defend your land by your own force,” Puck told him.

  Cobweb elaborated, “We English fairies shall not risk the wrath of the intelligent mortals who hath immortalized us in their written tomes, ensuring with them we always have homes.”

  “They hath now named moons for our sovereigns,” Puck told him. “Such honors please fairies and hobgoblins.”

  Peter pulled his hands back, flinging the tiny messengers into the air, where they recovered on their speedy wings. Angered, he accused them, “Moons? You prissy fairies would defer to the grown-ups' reality just to be the namesakes of rocks in skies you can't even see? What vanity is this! You're worse than the mermaids if that is true!”

  Cobweb seemed distraught to deliver this unpleasant news, yet her air of dutiful formality masked the sentiment. “I am sorry we cannot be of use, but we dare not risk our own existing truce.”

  Peter shook his head and crossed his arms, sourly replying, “You are fools. Your truce will not hold. The grown-ups will never have enough magic to suit them, and they'll come for you next, whether Neverland evades them or not. The grown-ups might not violate your truce, but they will erode it the way they erode everything else. Pages in plays and celestial names will mean little when the only ones who look at them don't believe one wit in you. Someday your twinkling light will start to fade, and when it goes, the last of the English fairies will go not with a kazam but with a mewl.”

  The fairies stared up at him, offering no rebuttal and giving him only their apologetic eyes. Further frustrated, but having spent his anger, Peter scowled at the ground and clenched his fists at his side. “What about Queen Mab?” he mumbled. “Surely she'll help. Was she told?”

  Puck answered, nodding with his whole body, the way fairies often did while flying. “Aye, but Mab's fallen weak, scarce holds domain o'er her own…” he watched as his words nailed Peter's grim expression to his face. “She wilt not see thee again.”

  The boy didn't look at the fairies. He cast his furious and sad expression at an innocent holly bush that had done nothing to wrong him. “Queen Mab taught me how to fly,” he muttered. “She showed me, in Kensington Garden.” His eyes seemed so focused, as if they looked at the memory itself, not the holly bush in front of him. “And then I flew to Neverland.”

  Gwen felt a chill pass through her heart and leave a cold residue behind. Peter had called for help, and no one could come to his aid. Some lacked the will, others the ability. She couldn't tell which stung him more. She didn't know how to comfort him, but it didn't matter. Proud Peter wouldn't have wanted her comforting.

  Cobweb apologized again, but when her elegant words didn't draw Peter's eyes or response, she and Puck had little recourse but to bid him farewell.

  Peter didn't answer their goodbyes. He didn't watch as they flitted back to the sky, back to England… a home and country so long abandoned, it didn't have any relevance to Peter at all.

  Chapter 7

  The hours seemed longer and shorter, slipping like sand through a bottle-necked hour-glass. Gwen helped where she could, but found her primary purpose in a role of moral support. Neverland's defenses depended on the rich imaginations building them, and Gwen couldn't compete with the vibrant whims of two dozen children. When she rigged nets, they laid inert on the ground, no matter how long she left them. She lacked the imagination to fertilize them into spring-loaded traps. Instead, she made sure meals got cooked, she washed the clothes in the dress-up chest, and she felt very grown-up for someone defending Neverland. She tallied the days, paged through Jay's sketchbook, and wondered, with a violent guilt, if she would really suffer so much if adults came and called an end to this magical vacation from reality.

  But she still told stories, and every evening that the children gave her their unabashed attention, staring up at her and delighting in every plot twist and mysterious reveal, she felt at home in Neverland. At Rosemary's request, she had started the unfinished story of Margaret May and her magical music box, from the beginning. The lost children had never heard any part of the story, and Rosemary herself had forgotten almost everything besides the raven tree.

  She knew she had three nights to tell it when she began that evening. Gwen tried not to worry that it might be the last story she ever told around Neverland's campfire. She had only uneasy sleep that night, and woke in the morning to a day much the same as the previous.

  Dragging a basket full of dirty dishes to the creek, Gwen wished she had some more glamorous roll to play in this fantastic drama. She tried to find satisfaction in sparing the children their chores during this adventure.

  The morning sun trickled down through the treetops and seemed a very dull gold by the time it reached her. The basket of metal and porcelain dishes weighed heavy in her arms, and her troubled mind weighed heavy in her head
. Rosemary and Twill now led the sand castle team, and she knew Newt and Sal were hard at work expanding their tunnel system. The rest of the children had scattered all over, rigging booby traps and dreaming up other defenses. She didn't expect any interruptions on her way to the creek.

  To be fair, she wasn't interrupted. When she stopped, it was not due to any stimulus or exclamation. She was simply overcome by the feeling that someone was watching her. Unnerved, she set her basket down and looked around. She didn't see anyone. Unable to shake the feeling, she looked up.

  Resting on the bough of a nearby tree, a fat and striped cat had its eyes fixed on her. The orange creature looked a great deal like her old house cat, Tootles, whom she and Rosemary had left behind.

  The cat wore a wide smile, with its teeth bared in full.

  Gwen didn't even know cats could smile so wide. She'd seen her fair share of happy felines in person and silly cat pictures on the internet, but they always kept their mouths closed—or else they showed only their front teeth. This cat had an almost human smile fixed to its face. It certainly wasn't Tootles, and yet it reminded Gwen of her cat back home. She didn't like these strange new creatures appearing in Neverland. Did they really imitate the memories that informed her imagination, or had she grown so homesick she couldn't help but project Jay's tone onto mysterious voices and Tootles's fur onto foreign cats?

  Since it had such a disturbingly human mouth, Gwen wondered if it might be able to speak. “Hello?” she asked it.

  The cat grinned even wider, which in itself seemed impossible. “Hello,” it replied.