Chapter 15
“Wake up, little Magpie.”
The familiar voice coursed through Maggie’s ears and stirred her dreamless sleep.
She blinked a few times, but there was still darkness around her, even though she was in the waking world.
After some more moments, the world settled in and Maggie began to adjust to the darkness.
High above her head, the moon rested and looked down on them.
The pale white rays illuminated the beach, as though the moon was on their side and wished for the Boglin to be gone quickly.
Beneath the moonlight, the Everything Plant shone in a different sort of way.
Different colors still danced across the petals, but the paler light made them sort of ethereal and otherworldly.
Still stirring from her daze, Maggie realized that she was leaning against something soft but firm. A hand rested against her own shoulder, gently shaking her awake. She blinked a few times more before lifting her head and eyeing what it was she had taken for a pillow.
“Peter!” Maggie whispered, jerking backwards quickly. “I-I am so sorry. I didn’t meant to — well, you know, I didn’t mean to —”
“Relax, Magpie,” Peter cooed, his finger touching her cheek for a quick moment. “Look.”
With feather-like movements, Peter moved Maggie’s face until she was looking over the Everything Plants.
In the center of the row, a hideous creature with a hunched back loomed over the plants, long swiney hands digging deep through the leaves and branches, obviously searching for the fairies.
The creature was as dreadful to look at as Maggie had assumed it to be.
He was no taller than four feet, with wispy strands of hair at the top of his head and a face that was more frog-like than humanoid.
Webbed hands stretched into the leaves and padded around until they came up empty handed.
Waddling around the plant, the Boglin let out an irritated noise before searching through the plant once more.
“Good lord,” Maggie whispered. “He is a frightful thing to look at, isn’t he?”
Peter nodded, keeping one eye on the creature at all times. He was already crouching, ready to jump into action the first moment he got. “Sure the Boglin looks like a terror, but it’s hardly the way it looks that you need to be afraid of.”
“Is there something else I should know?”
“Their bite is poisonous,” he replied. “So keep your distance.”
Oh, great… that’s fun. “Okay, anything else I should know?”
“They’re bound if they give you their word. In Neverland, nothing else is more sacred than giving your word. The moment he hands it over is when we’ve got him.”
Maggie nodded. Though she wished she could carry the confidence Peter so easily had, she tried to appear confident. Even if she was a simple human with a bit of magic within her, she had every intention of setting that Boglin straight.
“What are we waiting for, then?” Maggie asked, her determination becoming something foolish. She began to rise out of their hidden canopy. “Time to teach this Boglin a lesson in –”
Peter’s arm hooked around her waist. With a quick motion, he pulled her back into the shadows, until her back was pressed tightly against his chest. They remained like that, his arms fixed solidly around her, until Peter pointed towards the Boglin’s waist.
“Look there,” he whispered in her ear. “What do you see?”
A jar hung from the Boglin’s leather belt.
Through the foggy glass, Maggie could easily spot four or five fairies trapped within, desperately trying to escape.
Their small hands clawed against the glass and tried to grasp at the lid, but it was no use.
They were far too small and outnumbered to fight against the Boglin’s jar.
Maggie’s head perked up at the sight of it. “Oh, no,” she whispered.
The determination she once felt grew into something far stronger, something that was entirely fueled by the poor fairies being trapped in the Boglin’s glass jar.
All she could think of was how welcoming and kind Vespera was to her, and how all the fairies she fed her stew to treated her with so much gratitude.
They were undeserving of the treatment they were receiving from the Boglin, and Maggie was a prime believer in seeing justice delivered where it was needed.
“What can we do?” Maggie whispered to Peter.
“Boglins are tricky creatures,” he softly explained, as though he could sense her rising anger. “We need to tread cautiously, think with our brains not our brawn, alright?”
“Right,” Maggie teased, “Like I have any brawn to think about.”
Peter rolled his eyes, but the smile on his lips spoke a different story. Keeping his voice down, he pointed towards the right. “Curve around the Everything Plant that way,” he instructed. “I’ll go in the opposite direction to cut him off, in case he tries to run. Can you get his attention?”
Maggie breathed in deeply and began to move towards the right. “I can.”
Without wasting any more time, Maggie moved through the row of Everything Plants, until she came upon the Boglin’s right side.
The fairies within the glass jar noticed her first, jumping up and down and smacking their hands against their confined walls in excitement.
The Boglin could feel their movements and jerked around, smacking his large hand against the side of the jar noisily.
“Keep it down, keep it down, fairies!” The Boglin’s voice was shrouded by a frog’s ribet, like there was a small toad living in the back of his throat. “If you get seen, then I might not be able to eat, and then –”
“That wouldn’t do,” Maggie called out as she stepped closer, “Would it?”
The Boglin jumped a few feet in the air with his sprouty hindlegs.
Stepping around the Everything Plant, the creature got a better look at Maggie before hopping around.
He made a single leap away from Maggie before he realized that the King of Neverland stood in his way, very much ready to chase him if he dared to try and run.
The Boglin spun back around, wide eyes landing on Maggie heavily.
“I wish to speak to you,” Maggie said. “Can you do that?”
The creature mumbled and let out a few sounds before nodding his slimy head, his arms crossed impatiently over his chest.
“I see you have a taste for fairies, don’t you?” Maggie asked.
“What of it?” The Boglin stuck his tongue out at her. “Everyone’s got to eat!”
Maggie nodded. “You and I can agree on that. Everyone does have to eat, which is why Peter Pan and I are here to speak with you.”
“To…me?” the Boglin repeated, glancing hesitantly over his shoulder. “Why?”
Maggie inched closer, noticing how Peter’s eyes narrowed as his warning came rushing back to her mind. She kept her distance. “Your…sophisticated taste in fairies has left all of Neverland without food, Boglin.”
The creature’s green eyes widened. “All of Neverland?”
Maggie nodded. “The Everything Plant is no longer producing the berries everyone eats. We believe that it’s because the fairies left in order to avoid you, so now their magic isn’t fueling the plant.
The only way for the berries to return to the plants is for the fairies to come back as well. Do you understand?”
The Boglin simply stared, one hand protectively wrapped over his glass jar.
Maggie inched closer. “We need you to leave the Everything Plants and the fairies alone.”
“Oh, oh yes,” the creature quickly replied, without a moment of hesitation. “Leave it all alone, yes indeed.”
The Boglin spun around, already trying to hop away. Before he had the chance to get very far, Peter stepped in his path, one finger pointed accusingly.
“Not so fast, Boglin,” Peter snapped. “We’re going to need your word. Nothing more, and nothing less.”
“But –”
“You know as well as I do that your word can’t be broken,” Peter interjected. “Anything else is fair game.”
The Boglin’s face began to turn a deep shade of amber as he growled.
The sound wasn’t like a normal animal’s growl, but something entirely unusual and unexpected.
Maggie flinched backward at the sound, the realization hitting her easily.
The Boglin wasn’t going to leave the fairies alone at all.
He never gave his word, the very thing Peter had warned her about.
Maggie’s impatience grew as strong as her annoyance as she caught him in the lie.
Unbothered by Peter’s warnings from before, Maggie strode toward the creature fearlessly. “You’re going to give us that jar of fairies, Boglin,” she demanded. “Along with your word!”
The Boglin snatched the jar from his belt and raised it high above his head, waving it around like a dog toy. “Is this the jar you want?”
“No games or gimmicks!” Maggie shouted. “The jar, Boglin!”
A sound that was meant to have been a laugh but was something along the lines of an unpleasant gurgle echoed out of the Boglin’s throat.
Suddenly, without a hint of warning, the creature moved fast and threw the jar over his head.
The glass jar was flung through the air, coursing through the sky above their heads.
Maggie’s eyes held onto it as she ran, arms out and desperate to catch it before the fairies were put in any more danger than they had already experienced.
In the opposite direction, Peter did the same and lunged to catch the jar.
They slid into the same spot, their hands folding over each other as the glass bottle seamlessly landed in their outstretched fingers.
Maggie flinched, half expecting the entire thing to crash into a million pieces the moment it made impact.
But as Maggie and Peter turned to peer into their hands, all they saw was that they had been effortlessly tricked, and by a creature that had the brain of a frog.
“Boglin!” Peter shouted in a fit of anger. He pelted the empty jar across the beach and it smashed against a protruding rock, the pieces shimmering in the moonlight as they littered the sandy ground.
Maggie, without even thinking, grasped onto Peter’s tightly wound fist. “It isn’t over,” she whispered. Raising his hand, she pressed his trembling knuckles to her lips in a quick, fleeting motion. “We can still run. It isn’t over.”
He stared silently at her for a few moments before intertwining his hand with her own. “It isn’t over,” he repeated.
With their hands bound together, Maggie and Peter chased after the leaping and bounding Boglin, entirely aware of how fast the creature was, and how far he had already gotten.
The creature was quickly getting away, his figure growing small and foggy in the evening.
Nevertheless, Maggie and Peter bounded after him without a moment to lose, not daring to get any more space between them.
They kept going and going, even when the faith had left.
All Maggie could do was picture those poor fairies, slamming their small hands against the glass jar and waiting for someone to come save them.
And Maggie had no intention of failing them.