Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
JOHN
G etting Michael up to the storehouse is about as arduous as last time. The only reason we were able to make it to the top of the cliffs the night Wendy told me to pack our bags and get out of Neverland was because I’d been working for weeks on a roundabout path to the top. The loss of my little finger has made climbing problematic.
In the night, I’d been sneaking out after Wendy went wherever she was going—I assume to Peter’s rooms, though I choose not to dwell on that—and working on forging a path up the cliffs from the long way around, on the north side.
It had been an anxiety-inducing task, mostly because it meant leaving Michael alone in our room. But Michael is an expert sleeper, and he’d always been fast asleep when I returned.
Of course, after Joel’s death, I’d started waking Michael in the middle of the night to come with me. It wasn’t as if I could leave him alone in the Den when I was suspicious of the Lost Boys. The disruption to his sleep pattern had been difficult for Michael.
My stomach still twists in knots when he melts down, especially if he manages to scratch himself and draw blood. I know there’s a possibility he’d do this anyway, but there’s always the thought lingering in the back of my mind that it’s my fault. That if I weren’t waking him up in the middle of the night and disrupting his sleep schedule, his body wouldn’t be so dysregulated.
But I remind myself that it’s better Michael be dysregulated than dead. And if I want him safe, I need to get him off Neverland.
Of course, I plan to find out what happened to Wendy first. But it would be preferable if I had a pouch of faerie dust on hand already when I find her. Or in case Peter finds out I’ve been snooping.
At the end of the day, if I need to leave Neverland before I find Wendy in order to save Michael, I will. Not because I love him any more than I do my sister. There’s simply an unspoken understanding between Wendy and me that Michael’s needs come before our own.
Still, were I a better protector, I might have been able to save both of them.
Can still save both of them, I remind myself.
Assuming Wendy’s not dead , the voice in the back of my mind whispers, quite dry and with little empathy. There’s a logical path that leads to that conclusion, but I’m choosing not to follow it at the moment. Instead, I work my way through the brush and make the steady climb up to the cliffs, Michael’s hand in mine.
If I was alone, it would be easier to ascend, but with Michael everything is more complicated. Part of the problem is that guiding him uses up my good hand, as I don’t want him wandering off toward the edge. The other issue is whether Michael decides coming with me is something he wants to do.
My brother can be quite determined.
Still, we make it to the top eventually; me sweating and heaving, though Michael doesn’t seem at all fazed.
Unfortunately for us, the storehouse is empty. Cleaned out. Swept, even.
That answers my question about whether Peter knew we were coming.
“You’re looking especially thwarted today,” says Victor, sweat forming on his brow as he watches over a pot of boiling water at the stove. Today’s my day to cook, but he volunteered to help, claiming fear that dinner wouldn’t actually make it onto the table if the “cripple” was the only one working on it.
As much as I don’t appreciate being called a cripple, I at least can acknowledge that it’s wise for Victor to come up with a reasonable excuse to help me. One everyone else will believe, especially Peter. Victor isn’t the type to offer to help with chores out of the goodness of his heart.
Besides, I really do hate kitchen duty. There might have been a time in my life when I enjoyed it. Cooking is basically just chemistry you get to eat, and both are activities from which I derive great pleasure. But between the fact that I still can’t grip well with my left hand and trying to keep Michael out of the furnace, it really does take me hours to get anything accomplished in here on my own.
“Thwarted is accurate,” I say under my breath, thankful that Michael is banging cast-iron pans together as if he’s experimenting on which combination is the absolute loudest. Michael usually isn’t fond of loud noises. Unless he’s the one making them. “Peter’s cleared out the storehouse. Moved all the faerie dust.”
“I was under the impression you were going after Tink,” says Victor. “Had I known you were planning on skipping out on me—”
“I wasn’t skipping out on you,” I say, which is technically true. I omit the fact that I will gladly skip out on Victor if given the chance. There are some things that are just better left unsaid. “Having faerie dust on hand would have been nice. Just in case.”
Victor grunts, but he doesn’t argue, the knife in his hand glinting. “Just don’t double-cross me and we’ll be fine,” he says.
The potatoes crunch underneath his blade.
“Anyway,” I say, taking careful note of Victor’s knife and trying to ignore the skitter of gooseflesh prickling my arms. “That leaves us back at the original plan of finding Tink. Seeing if she knows anything about Wendy’s disappearance.”
“I’m still confused why you think she’d know anything.”
“She has a habit of stalking my sister. Probably Peter too. It’s possible she saw what happened.”
“Or was what happened,” Victor says casually.
I adjust my glasses, though they’re fogging up in the steam from the pot—another reason it takes me so long to cook. Really, I should get rid of these, but I can’t bring myself to part with them. “All the more reason to start with her.”
There’s an additional reason I want to find Tink, but I keep that to myself.
No one knows how faerie dust is collected. The traders keep that secret locked down. But Peter has an abundance. It’s possible he steals it from traders in the other realms, but unlikely. I have a theory for how he gets it, though. I have ever since Wendy told me that the faerie who attacked her had shredded wings. At first, I assumed it had been Peter’s way of keeping Tink from escaping the island, but what if there’s more to it than that?
“So how are you planning to catch her?” asks Victor, plopping the potatoes into the boiling water.
“You’re good at traps, aren’t you?”
Victor glances at me sidelong. “Who told you that?”
“Wendy.”
Victor actually blushes a bit, which catches me off guard, though it shouldn’t. Objectively speaking, I am capable of acknowledging that my sister is the type of girl that boys might develop a crush on. Even if the thought makes me want to writhe out of my skin.
“I’m good at trapping animals. Faeries tend to be just a smidge more intelligent than hare, though. It’s not like she’s going to walk over a hole covered in sticks just because we put fish innards in the middle of the circle.”
I nod, focusing on chopping the onions in front of me. They make my eyes water, and when I wipe my eyes, dislodging my glasses, they sting. “The Twins were trying to trap something the day Freckles died.”
Victor snorts. “Good luck recruiting either of them. You think you’re a hermit…”
“Do you have a better idea?”
Victor shrugs. “We could follow Peter. If Tink’s stalking him, and we’re stalking him, we’re likely to cross paths.”
That’s actually not a horrible idea, except for the bit about having to follow Peter, who I’m still not positive didn’t hurt my sister.
“You really think we can trail him without him noticing?” I can’t help but glance over at Michael in the corner, who is now humming along with his pot-banging.
“Surely you’re not thinking of bringing him along with us, whatever we do,” says Victor, pointing his blade in Michael’s direction.
“I’m not leaving him alone. Not when we’re still not sure what happened the night Nettle died.”
Victor sets his knife down on the counter, tapping his fingers against the wood. “That does complicate things, doesn’t it?” I’m a bit taken aback when I don’t detect any mocking in his voice. What’s even more shocking is when he says, “I could stay behind and watch him.”
Suspicion instantly creeps up my spine. “And why would you offer to do that?”
Victor rolls his eyes. “Why do you assume there’s nothing I can do out of the goodness of my heart?”
“It’s not that. It’s that you’re not the trusting type. You’re the type who likes to see things done yourself. Why would you offer to stay behind and leave everything in my hands?”
Victor groans, wiping his slick hair from his forehead. I really wish he wouldn’t do that while he’s cooking. At home, the cooks with hair that long would have been required to pin it back.
“When we catch Tink, we need her to cooperate, right? If we want to get information out of her?” asks Victor.
“And?”
“Well, that’s going to be a bit problematic if I’m around.”
I narrow my eyes. “And why is that?”
Again, Victor runs his hands through his hair. I guarantee he’s not going to wash them before touching the food. “Because Thomas and I used to make a sport of hunting her.”
I snort. “Excellent.”
“Yeah, well, nothing that can be done about it now.”
“When you say hunt—”
“I mean, we used to track her down and blow darts into her wings.”
I don’t much like Tink after what she did to Wendy, but the thought of darts puncturing her wings makes me a tad sick.
Victor’s no longer looking at me. He’s just staring at a knot on the countertop like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen. “Like I said. Can’t go back and change it now.”
“And you think I’m going to let you watch Michael after admitting that?”
Victor whips his head toward me. His face is red, and not from the heat of the stove. For a moment, I think he might yell at me, but he must swallow it because he says, “I wouldn’t let anything happen to your brother, okay?”
Despite all rationality, I believe him.
“Michael’s not always easy to watch,” I warn.
“I’ll manage.”
I glance at my brother, then back at Victor. There’s an earnestness in Victor’s eyes I haven’t often seen. He might be rough around the edges, but he isn’t cruel, and he hurts for the loss of his brother.
“Fine,” I say, knowing instantly I’ll come to regret it. “But tell me: whose idea was it to hunt Tink?”
Victor pretends not to hear me.
As I’m clearing the plates after dinner, I count and realize I’m missing one. When I go to the table to search for it, I find it empty. Strange, one wouldn’t expect a dinner plate to go missing between the dinner table and the kitchen.
I’m pondering where it could have gone when the roots on the ceiling descend, dumping Smalls onto the floor with considerably less care than they did Peter. Smalls huffs as he shoves himself to his feet, his pale face flushed red and his dusty brown hair disheveled. He wipes the dirt off of him until he looks up and spots me, at which point his hands stop mid-sweep.
The child salutes me, whistles, and bounds off.
I frown, and once he’s gone, signal the roots to sweep me away.
The plate is hidden poorly. I only had to circle halfway around the reaping tree’s base to find it, covered in pine needles atop a stump. After picking aside a few of the pine needles, I realize Smalls has left over half of his portion on the plate. I’d be tempted to be annoyed by this, given Smalls whined to me about needing extra, except something rustles near the tree line.
Instinct has me slipping around the curve of the reaping tree, just in time for the sound of footsteps to approach. It’s dark out, but when I peek around the trunk of the tree, the glowing orbs on its limbs illuminate the stranger well enough.
And the fact that her wings are glowing.
The next night, when Smalls leaves a plate of food for the wild faerie, I’m already waiting.
Unfortunately, the boy waits around for a while, whistling with his hands in his pockets. I wonder if he’s developed a crush on the faerie, if he’s ever seen her, or if he just makes up a beautiful female in his head.
Well, if a beautiful female is who he’s picturing, he’s certainly not wrong.
I’d been a bit dumbfounded last night when I first laid eyes on her. It didn’t really matter how many times I recited to myself that her beauty was simply a glamour meant to entice her prey.
It had been an exercise in self-control not to go out to her.
I’m beginning to think I might have given Wendy too hard of a time for falling so easily into Peter’s clutches. Still, my sister was ensorcelled by the fae, and now she’s missing. In the end, that had been enough to keep my wits about me until Tink disappeared into the woods and out of sight.
Several minutes pass before Smalls’s attention span comes to its inevitable end. He yawns as he kicks over nearby rocks. One of them he punts with such force, it almost strikes me in the throat and I’m only just quick enough to dodge it. Eventually, the younger boy gives up on getting a glimpse of the rumored faerie and raps three times on the side of the reaping tree before it swallows him.
I waste no time sprinting to the stump. I’m not sure how long it will take Tink to get here. I’d wanted to carry out this part of the plan before Smalls got the plate outside, but he’d watched his leftovers like a hawk.
If I’m going to do this, this is my only shot. When I reach the stump, I stuff my hand into my pocket and pull out a parcel. Inside the piece of fabric is a baked onion, seasoned just like the one on Smalls’s plate. Except for one extra spice.
Tonight was Victor’s turn in the kitchen—his actual turn—so he’d helped me bake this onion separately. We’d chosen onion, because we figured it would hide the taste of rushweed the best.
Quickly, I swap the onion on Smalls’s plate for the one Victor and I enhanced, then slip back around the tree. I’m only hidden for moments before the footsteps return, and out of the woods prances a beautiful faerie with cropped blond hair and twinkling butterfly wings as sheer as a dragonfly’s.
Like last night, she stuffs the food into a makeshift satchel made of burlap, just like her clothes. She’s about to turn around, when her ears flick in my direction.
I startle, yanking myself behind the reaping tree and out of view. Heart pounding, I hold my breath lest she hear that too. Once my head feels as if it’s about to explode, I finally hear footsteps pad over the leaves and fade away.
Once I’m sure she’s gone, I glance behind the tree again.
And make eye contact with the feral faerie.
She offers me a smug look. She must have engineered the footsteps to make it sound as if she was walking away. Sure she’s about to rip me to shreds, I go for the dagger at my side.
But then the faerie does something I’m not prepared for.
She winks.