The Grown Ups' Crusade Read online

  Gwen looked around again, almost hoping someone else would come along to verify what she was seeing. For the first time in Neverland, she felt like she was going crazy.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “That depends a good deal on who you think you are,” it replied.

  “I'm Gwendolyn Hoffman,” she announced.

  The cat twisted its head over. “I'm sure you are, but that wasn't the question. Who do you think you are?”

  Confused, Gwen answered, “I know I'm Gwendolyn.”

  “How?”

  She was not accustomed to being interrogated by cats. “It's printed on my birth certificate.”

  “Oh, but so much nonsense gets printed these days, one can hardly trust what one reads. Certainly you don't believe everything you see printed,” the cat replied.

  “Well no, but—”

  “Then again,” the cat interrupted, “if almost nothing but nonsense gets printed, it follows that you may be living in a very nonsensical world, at which point it is better to simply believe the nonsense than go crazy trying to avoid it.”

  “It isn't nonsense! My name is Gwen!”

  “That's a whole other sort of thought then,” the cat answered. “We haven't said anything about what you're named, only what you are. It seems perfectly reasonable that someone might be named Gwendolyn, but I can't imagine anyone being Gwendolyn. That's just some nonsense madmen wrote down when they first met you.”

  “They weren't madmen,” Gwen defended. “They were my parents, doctors, adults…”

  The cat chuckled, its laughter even more human than its speech. “We're all mad,” he told her. “Here, there, everywhere… and adults more than most.”

  “Can I help you? Gwen repeated, annoyed.

  “There's no helping the mad,” he told her, purring as though he delighted in this. “But you can deliver a message. Her majesty sent her rabbit with a formal declaration, but considering the circumstances, I thought it better not to rely on someone who will invariably arrive late.”

  Gwen's disposition eased back down as she asked, “What's the message?”

  “That we don't have so much as a dogfish in this fight,” the cat announced. “These 'sensible' men waging war against Neverland will never risk an encounter with us, and our realm will always be visited and sustained by some men in the streets of cities, in the mental wards of hospitals, in certain institutions of higher education…

  “You can tell Peter that he must be mad if he thinks we can help him,” the cat concluded, swishing his striped tail. His smile spread so wide now, it was running out of room and curling up on his face. The cat contemplatively purred before venturing, “Then again—if Peter really is mad, truly mad, we'd be under obligation to interfere.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Madness and nonsense is our sphere. So if Peter is mad, we'll help. If he's not mad, we won't. If he thinks he's mad, he's most certainly not—madmen never believe themselves mad—so if he thinks we'll help, we won't. But if he doesn't think we will, we might, but only if he's wrong.”

  Then, without warning or goodbye, the cat vanished. “What does that mean?” she called. She hadn't even blinked. The striped cat and his beastly yellow eyes seemed to have been snatched right out of the fabric of the scene. She sighed and picked up her dish basket. The cat was far from the first queer thing to happen to her this week, but Gwen was a little too old to be comfortable with such unusual encounters, no matter with what frequency they happened.

  As she walked, she heard the cat call back an answer before scampering off to whatever far reach its body had already disappeared to.

  “It doesn't mean anything,” the cat chuckled. “I might as well have said 'Gwendolyn Hoffman.'”

  Chapter 8

  Gwen spent the rest of the morning and a fair bit of the afternoon trying to track down Peter and relay the cat's message. She didn't relish giving him more bad news, or trying to explain what the cat had said. However, when she found Peter and explained—to the best of her ability—what the grinning cat had told her, he seemed so uninterested she couldn't even hold his attention. He dismissed her encounter with contemptuous apathy and a brief remark about how “those nursery-rhyme ninnies” didn't matter at all… which led Gwen to believe he had been hoping desperately for their help and reinforcements.

  He wouldn't admit it, but Gwen knew Neverland, however magical, had a very limited population to defend against approaching adults.

  “PETER!”

  The scream shot cold blood through Gwen's veins. Who had screamed? She knew the difference between play-screaming and fear-screaming, but she did not recognize the voice that had cried out with such terror.

  “Tally ho, tally hey!” Peter shouted back, but his voice couldn't match the scream.

  He might have waited a minute, but Gwen had started running toward the sound of the scream. So worried, she forgot she could move quicker until Peter zipped by her on the air, remarking, “It's faster to fly, Dollie-Lyn.”

  Alarm bells and the shattering sound of sirens began to radiate from the grove. By the time Peter and Gwen arrived, half the island's children had already assembled. All confused, everyone demanded answers from each other. No one had any. Hawkbit and Dillweed danced over everyone's heads, giving them a preemptive coating of fairy dust for good measure.

  “What's going on, Peter?” Rosemary asked, Twill clinging to her arm.

  Peter surveyed all the children before his brow knit and he asked, “Where's Blink?”

  “PETER!”

  His head sprung up, and he saw the girl high in the oak tree that towered tallest in their grove. No wonder she hadn't recognized the voice, Gwen thought. She'd never heard Blink scream. She'd never seen Blink panic.

  Peter flew to the treetop where she perched, and the other children followed after him.

  The children nestled on tree branches, crowding around Blink like a flock of roosting birds, and the worried fairies landed on her shoulders. She didn't mind any them. She glanced at Peter to capture his eyes, before pointing out to the watery horizon beyond the island. “There's a ship,” she announced.

  Other children craned their necks to see, but the oak tree's verdant foliage left few vantage points.

  “We already knew that Blink!” a boy complained.

  “I thought there were three ships,” a girl objected.

  “Are they getting closer?” Newt and Sal yelled.

  But Blink looked in the wrong direction to see the approaching adult fleet. “No,” she answered, never taking her eyes off the distant threat. “This is a different ship, and it's sailing faster. Much faster.”

  Peter crept behind her, peering over her shoulder to see. Gwen, out on a limb she feared would collapse under her weight, brushed aside a branch and its obscuring leaves. She saw the triple-masted ship cutting through the water, its sun-bleached sails billowing in the wind. An ominous black flag, belonging to no nation or honest seafarer, fluttered above the crow's nest.

  “Pirates,” Peter announced.

  The gasps and cries that followed carried so little meaning, they might as well have fallen into a pervasive silence.

  “They'll be slowed down by Neverland too, though, right?” Gwen asked.

  “Pirates never follow the rules,” he scoffed. “They'll be here before the afternoon is out.”

  Her stomach started to fall, and it seemed to drop right out of her and to the ground so far below—as if Neverland didn't have enough problems right now!

  “What do we do, Peter?” one child asked on behalf of them all.

  “We head to the beach,” he declared. “And we prepare to do what we must.”

  The children gathered their slingshots, croquette mallets, weapons from the redskins, and all other manner of offensive tools. The impending conflict concerned Gwen.

  They took off through the woods, Peter spinning cocksure tales of past encounters with pirates as they went. Everyone's confidence seemed to
soar… until they broke the tree line. On this opposite side of the island, the adults' navy was nowhere in sight. All the children saw was the great flagship, not more than a nautical mile away.

  Peter peered at it through his spyglass and the children bombarded him with questions.

  “Is it the skull and stars?”

  “Is it skull and crossbones?”

  “It looks like the skull and swords!”

  “It's…” Peter began, troubled, “a skull and… pens.”

  “What!” Jam complained. “What kind of pirate has pens on his flag?”

  “A pirate who was once a schoolmaster,” Peter replied.

  “Starkey,” Gwen whispered.

  Eyes turned to Twill. He didn't look happy. “My dad's coming? No… no! You can't let him come! He'll take me home! You can't let him!”

  “Never!” Rosemary cried, hugging him tight.

  “Don't worry, Twill,” Peter told him, collapsing his spyglass. “I've never let a pirate steal one of my boys, and I won't start today.” He handed the telescope to the other children, passing it around once again. The situation felt uncanny to Gwen, and the moment seemed dusted with finely ground déjà vu.

  “We need to figure out who is aboard that ship and what they're planning,” Peter announced.

  “We can ask them when they get here,” Spurt replied, staring through the wooden telescope. “It looks like they're rowing ashore!”

  A new babble broke out among the children, as they witnessed a small red dinghy lower into the water with three pirates aboard.

  “If some of them are coming ashore, they won't fire cannons at us, at least,” Rosemary reasoned.

  “We still need a reconnaissance mission to know what's going on aboard the ship,” Peter argued.

  “I'll go, Peter!” Spurt volunteered, waving his hand. Several others echoed his enthusiastic offer.

  “No, it has to be a stealth mission,” Peter told them.

  Blink stepped forward, standing at attention and saying nothing.

  “No,” Peter mused. “I think it's a doubles mission… Newt, Sal, are you ready to unearth intelligence for the sake of your homeland?”

  “Yes!” they cheered.

  “Good,” he replied. “Fly low and stay out of sight. Don't get captured! If either of you are fool enough to get captured, I might leave you to walk their plank.”

  “Understood, sir!” Sal announced, saluting him. He and Newt jumped into the air and took off, keeping their bellies almost against the waves. They took a roundabout course, ensuring the pirates would never see them coming from the shore.

  Hushed speculation turned to hysterical speculation among the children. Only Twill withheld comment on this new development. Rosemary patted his shoulder and reassured him, much as Peter reassured Gwen.

  “I don't like this,” Gwen muttered to him. “I'm scared, Peter.”

  He smiled at her, his starlight smile easing her worries down to a reasonable level. “Don't worry, Gwenny,” he commanded. “It's only pirates—and there's nothing in the world I'm better at than fighting nefarious seafarers.”

  She let out a nervous chuckle. “Well that must really be saying something,” she replied. “Seeing as though you're so good at everything.”

  Her sarcasm went straight past him. “Precisely,” he declared.

  The last thing Peter needed was someone feeding his ego. Gwen didn't know why she did it, or why she found his bursts of conceit so encouraging.

  They waited with tense impatience as they watched the dinghy row to shore. As it approached, Peter paced down the pebbled beach and the children followed. Gwen stayed close by his side. They watched as two scar-covered pirates rowed the dinghy with Polk High School's speech and debate teacher standing tall in it.

  “Salutations, Peter Pan!” Starkey cried out, his voice booming with villainous cheer.

  “Starkey!” Peter sneered.

  “Ah ah ah—” Starkey replied, wagging a finger at him. “It's Captain Starkey now, Pan.” He turned to Gwen and tipped his dark tricorn hat to her. “Hello, Miss Hoffman.”

  She felt her cheeks burning. She probably should have explained to Peter how she and Starkey had known each other before Neverland.

  Starkey still carried himself with the same confidence that had seemed almost out-of-place in the dismal environment of a public high school. He didn't look that different now. He had always seemed a bit odd: too chipper and gentlemanly for a modern adult. The collar of his brown overcoat turned up, he had knotted his usual scarf around his neck in a different fashion. He wore tall black boots and a loose white shirt, but even the worn leather of his gauntlets did not seem like costume pieces. Starkey was a real pirate, and he had the cutlass sword holstered at his hip to prove it.

  The other two pirates seemed out of breath from rowing their captain ashore. One had a tattoo of a sinister snake winding around his neck and a blood stained bandanna tied over his bald head. Gwen had no idea where Starkey had found him. The other, a wiry and scruffy man, simply wore blue coveralls. Gwen recognized him at once as Mr. Grouse, Polk High School's janitor.

  “Mr. Grouse?” she asked. “You're a pirate too?”

  A frightened look haunted his eyes, and he could not place Gwen as anything more than one of the many students he had cleaned up after. “I have no idea what's going on!” he yelled. “I was mopping the floors after hours and heard someone in a classroom. Someone hit me over the head, and I woke up on the open sea! Starkey kidnapped me!”

  “Shut up, you,” Starkey barked, kicking the poor janitor in the back and causing the grounded dinghy to shake. “We needed someone to swab the decks.”

  “How'd you get this ship?” Peter demanded.

  “Ah yes, the Grammarian. She's a beautiful ship isn't she?” Starkey asked, hopping out of the dinghy and striding up the shore. He stopped several paces from Peter, a nonthreatening distance that put them at eye level on the sloping beach. “I procured her same way any pirate procures a ship: I pulled some strings, shot some men…”

  “What are you here for, Starkey?”

  The pirate captain smiled, his slender and dark mustache twitching with the quick motion of his mouth. “I'm here for my son. Now where is he?”

  All eyes turned to Twill, who did his best to hide behind Rosemary. He kept his dark hand locked in her pale fingers. He peered at his father with uncertain eyes.

  Starkey smiled at him. “Twill, my boy, come here! Haven't you missed me?”

  Twill shook his head.

  Starkey took a step toward him, and Peter moved between them. “I won't let you take him back. He doesn't want to grow up, least of all to be a no-good, buccaneering pirate.

  The snake-necked man grumbled, as if offended by Peter disparaging his profession.

  “Ah, but I think you'll trade him.”

  “You have nothing any of us want, Starkey.”

  Starkey laughed. “Brash Peter… I have the one and only thing you need right now.”

  “Nonsense. I don't need anything. Not from you, not from anybody.”

  “Oh really?” Starkey replied. “I suppose I should have expected as much from you. You'd rather spend the next few days fighting with us over one boy, wouldn't you? But surely you know the stakes. You can't afford to waste time or energy on this matter, not when there's a worse fate sailing toward you. I hear they have a mother aboard one of those ships just for you, Peter. They'll send her ashore and she'll drag you home by the ear when it gets late, and then march you to school in the morning.”

  Starkey laughed at his malicious joke, but Peter drew his knife.

  Starkey's laughter came to a fast stop, and his sword made a horrible noise as he whisked it out of its sheath.

  “It won't take but a breath and a half for me to kill you, and then whistle for the crocodile to eat up your body while we defend Neverland,” Peter told him.

  “Are you sure, Pan?” Starkey growled. “Would you risk it all now instead of taking the v
ery generous offer I am prepared to make you in exchange for the safe return of my son?”

  Peter's vile pride kept his mouth closed and his lips taut. Gwen had the sense to ask, “What's the offer?”

  Starkey sidestepped Peter and put his attention on Gwen. Gentleman that he was, Starkey even holstered his sword as he made his proposal.

  “It seems to me that a score or so children makes for a very small army,” Starkey began, “and that Neverland is completely without any naval defenses.”

  “What's your point?” Peter muttered.

  “I've been walking among land-lubbing men long enough to remember why I turned against them and headed to sea in the first place,” Starkey told him. “Give me my son back, and I'll turn the Grammarian and her crew to your purposes. We'll commandeer what we can and sink what we can't. I would hate to see Neverland fall into the hands of do-gooders, and for the mere price of my restored family, we can call a truce—albeit it a brief one—to defend Neverland.”

  The children bubbled with speculation at this idea. The fairies, wary and quiet, only listened.

  “I don't make deals with pirates!” Peter roared.

  Gwen put a hand on his shoulder, which either calmed him or simply caught him off guard. At times, Gwen had more sense in one finger than Peter had in all his body, and she took a rational approach to Starkey. “What happens when the adults land on Neverland? What good would pirates be to us then? And what motivation will you have to help us?”

  “Dear Gwen, I half suspect you don't trust me,” Starkey replied, bearing her his silvery smile. “But if you must have some greater motivation from me…” He took off his hat and held it to his chest as he announced, “I always swore to my dear old mother that I'd never work a slaving ship—but she's been dead so many years, I can't imagine it would turn so much as the maggots in her grave if I went back on that now. Rumor has it there are a good deal of inventive engineers, clever accountants, and expensive lawyers among those heading for Neverland. I'm sure their reality would pay a pretty penny in ransom to have them returned to their particular rungs of the corporate ladder. We can help trap them, and schlep them back to whence they came. Unless you have a better idea for how to dispose of them, of course. You must know the crocodile can only eat so many unpleasant adults.”