Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
Surely you know what a kiss is?
Ican’t struggle much with the brute on my back, but I wiggle some and try to kick my heel up to smack him on the leg. None of it works. I’m trapped.
“Why did you leave? We were making you supper,” my kidnapper whispers, his breath warm against my ear.
This guy can’t be serious. I wriggle more, but he lets all his weight bear down on me, the scent of woods and earth filling my nose, as if he rose from the forest behind me like one of the trees.
He puts his other hand by my head and lifts up, looking out at the sparkling sea. “All right, I think they’ve headed back. Come on. That was close.”
When he finally gets off me, I roll over and kick out at him.
He dodges it with ease and stares down at me. “Are you nuts?”
“Stay away from me!” I scramble to my feet, spitting sand as I go.
“Moira.” He shakes his head. “I brought you to Neverland, saved you from that boring grownup school. What’s gotten into you?”
I freeze, years’ worth of my family’s tall tales filtering through my mind as I stare at the young man with his head cocked to the side. “Neverland?”
“Neverland.” He nods. “Surely Wendy told you all about it.”
“Wendy?”
“Why do you keep repeating me?” He smiles. “Is this a game? I love games.”
I swallow hard, sand crunching between my teeth as I do. My hands go clammy as my neck seems to heat. The stars above me are still sparkling happily, as if this little drama beneath them is quite the show and they’ve had tickets for ages. “I need to go. Take me back to my dorm. Now.”
“I can’t do that, Moira.” He steps toward me right as more figures appear along the ridge above us. “We need you.”
“What?”
“Just come back to the cave. We’ll have supper. We can talk there where it’s safe.” As if on cue, some fearsome beast roars in the forest, the ferocious sound of it shaking the chambers of my heart.
“Moon’s getting high, Peter,” one of the shadows calls. “We need to go.”
“Peter?” I stare at the handsome man with eyes of a deep, warm brown and skin the color of honey. “Peter Pan?”
His eyes twinkle. “See? You do know me.”
“You aren’t real.”
“Harsh.” He smirks. “But then again, Neverland is full of things that aren’t real until they are.”
The beast roars again, and somehow—I don’t know how—but somehow, I know it’s closer than it was before.
“When the moon reaches the top of the sky, everything here wakes up.” He steps closer. “And those things are hungry, Moira.” His gaze slides down my body, then back up. “And you’d make a tasty treat for any of them.”
I want to tell him he’s lying, or this is a dream, or maybe I’m dead and this is purgatory like that shitty TV show ‘Lost’, but when the monster screams its hungry cry through the night again, I step toward him.
“The cave is safe?” I ask.
“Perfectly. No pirates. No hungry beasts.” He smiles disarmingly, wrinkles gathering at the corners of his eyes, and offers his hand. “Come with us.”
“Come with us, Moira,” the other men at the top of the ridge echo his words.
I know I shouldn’t. I know I should run and scream for help or look for some safe harbor, but when I look back at the forest, I see glowing orbs. No, not orbs—eyes. Dozens of eyes, some slitted and shining in that ethereal way of predators.
There’s nowhere to run. I glance at the water again, at the ship that sits in the distance.
“Captain Hook can’t hurt you if you’re with me, Moira. You’ll be safe. Please come.” Peter moves closer, his body blocking the ocean breeze sweeping down the beach.
I turn back to him and make a decision. It’s my only choice. I take his hand.
“Good.” He grins, that boyish charm flowing off him like rain off a roof. “Let’s go.”
When my feet leave the ground, I scream high and loud. It carries, and I see the glowing orbs moving. A giant paw, the claws black and jagged, leaves the shadows of the jungle just as we fly over it.
“That was close.” Peter smiles over at me as we fly above the treetops.
I scream again and hold onto his arm, then try to wrap myself around him. “Stop!”
He puts his arm behind my back, letting me hang onto him like a monkey as we soar up toward those laughing stars and the crescent moon that watches it all with a disinterested eye. “Stop? You want to land in the forest? That’s a bad idea, Moira.”
“No.” I shake my head and twine my hands around his neck. “Don’t let go.”
“I wouldn’t.” He laughs, the rumble passing from his chest to mine. “We’re almost there. Don’t worry.”
I clench my eyes shut against the glorious view, because if I don’t, I know I’ll be sick.
I’m flying. I’m wrapped around Peter Pan like a lover as we fly over Neverland.
I need to wake up. I need to hear my alarm blare and get up to finish my creative writing project.
Instead, all I hear is the wind. All I smell is Peter’s earthy, woodsy scent as I cling to him.
“Not real, not real, not real.” I whisper the litany, doing my best to hang onto the fraying threads of my sanity. I can’t let them go, because if I do, I know what will happen. I’ll be locked up just like her, left to waste away in an institution.
“It’s real, Moira.” He speaks softly, and I feel our bodies shift.
I peep out and see that we’re back in the grove of trees. “You said the forest isn’t safe.” I’m embarrassed to be holding onto him like this, but I can’t seem to pry my hands away. Fear has finally overcome disbelief.
“It isn’t.” He strides through the trees as if I weigh nothing. “But we’re home.” He heads right for the center tree.
“Where are we go—” My scream cuts off my question as he steps into the darkness. We fall straight down, and I wait for the impact, for the crunch of bones and implosion of organs.
Instead, I feel him walking again.
“Home. See?” He strides out of the cavern and down the hallway. Before I can even get my thoughts together, he deposits me at the kitchen table.
The other men crowd the kitchen, still pretending to make a meal as if they weren’t all standing on the beach only moments ago.
My emotions roil and rise, fear warring with disbelief.
Trapped in a cave with half a dozen strange men—not good.
But they’ve done nothing to hurt me. At least not yet.
If anything, they seem more concerned with their imaginary dinner than anything else.
That shouldn’t be a relief, but it is. They aren’t chaining me to a wall or threatening me with hot pokers.
“Needs more salt.” One of them licks the end of a wooden spoon. “Definitely more salt.”
He reaches into a cupboard and throws a pinch of nothing into the pot, stirs, then tastes again. “Much better.”
“You must be starving.” A curly-headed man sits across from me, laugh lines around his mouth. “Flying always makes me peckish.”
My tongue seems to be stuck to the roof of my mouth as he stares at me.
“Not talkative.” He shrugs. “I thought you would be, but that’s okay.”
“Curly, did you get the bread?” Peter asks him.
“Forgot. I’ll be right back.” He gives me a wink and disappears into a room to the right.
I try again to get my bearings, but the cave walls are all the same—some sort of gray granite with veins of silver and specks of random golden sparkle.
I could be at the bottom of the ocean as far as I know.
There’s no way home from inside these stone walls.
“Finally.” Peter elbows one of the redheaded twins out of the way and makes a big show of ladling some soup into a bowl.
I stare. There’s nothing else I can do as he brings the bowl over and places it on the table in front of me.
“Here.” He hands me a rough wooden spoon. “Enjoy it. It’s my favorite. After, maybe you can tell us a story?”
The other men seem to all pause for a split-second then get back to bustling around the kitchen as if nothing happened.
I look down at the empty bowl then up at the smiling kidnapper. “There’s nothing here.”
“What?” He blinks and then smiles brightly. “She even has jokes, boys. Did you hear that?”
One of the redheaded twins ladles up more ‘soup’ and hands out bowls until all the men are sitting at the table with their spoons at the ready.
“Got it!” Curly returns from the side room with an empty plate in his hands. “Bread fresh from the oven.”
When he sets it in front of me, for perhaps only the barest moment, I could swear I smell warm, yeasty bread. But once again, the table is empty.
The men begin dipping their spoons and slurping noisily, clearly enjoying the invisible food.
“Hey!” Peter sits at the head of the table and adopts a stern expression. “We have a guest. Where are your manners?”
The men look around at each other. “Huh?”
“Our guest should eat first.” Peter gestures toward me. “Go ahead, Moira. You must be hungry.”
The firefly that seems to haunt this cave flits past his ear and settles on his shoulder, and I can hear the distinct sound of a bell ringing, though the notes don’t hit my ear quite right.
It’s as if someone’s playing at a great distance, so far that the notes warp and go discordant before they reach me.
He waves the firefly away with an irritated sigh, then turns back to me. “Go on.”
I look down at my empty bowl. “Um.”
The other men watch me closely, one of them wiping the side of his mouth as if there’s something dripping from his chin.
“Don’t you like carrot soup?” Peter frowns.
“I do. It’s just …” I slowly slide my spoon into the bowl, stalling. “It’s just I already had those hotdogs, you know?”
“Right.” He throws his hands up. “I’d forgotten. I do that a lot.” He taps the side of his nose. “But how about some bread and butter? Curly.” He points to the empty plate as Curly mimes cutting off a hunk of bread and slathering it with butter.
“Here you are.” Curly hands it to me, the candlelight overhead catching the strands of silver in his hair. “I churned the butter myself.”
“Thank you.” I take the ‘bread.’
One of the twins snorts.
“Hey.” Peter gives him a sharp look.
“It’s just, she’s getting butter all over her hand.” He elbows his brother, who matches his twin’s amusement.
“Sorry.” I place the ‘bread’ on the table beside my bowl. “I, um, I ...” Stupidly, I wipe my palm on my pants, though I’m certain there’s no butter greasing my skin.
Peter frowns.
They all stare at me, some eyes hopeful, others curious—none of them giving any hint that this is some big prank on me. In that moment, I realize how well and truly screwed I am. I’m at a table with several grown men, all of them playing pretend and expecting me to play along.
I force a smile. “Well, I suppose I could try the soup.” I take my spoon and gingerly dip along the top of my bowl, then put it in my mouth.
Everyone seems to breathe a silent sigh of relief.
“Good, right?” The man to my left gestures toward my bowl. “We grow the carrots in the Glowing Glade. A Neverian showed us how the mushrooms glow just enough to make the carrots grow.” His face falls. “Before the pirates killed her.”
“The pirates killed people?” I ask, not sure what he’s even talking about, but not liking it all the same.
“Let her eat.” Peter shakes his head.
“Yeah, Slightly, no one cares about your garden.” One of the twins rolls his eyes.
The men eat as I slowly dip my spoon again and again, all the while pretending to savor the taste of the absolute nothing in my bowl.
“You, um, haven’t touched your bread.” Curly seems deflated as he stands and takes his bowl to the sink.
“Sorry, it’s just the soup is so good.” I grab the ‘bread’ from the plate and mime taking a big bite, then chewing with gusto. “Absolutely delicious. Thank you, Curly.” I adopt the same tone as I would with a child playing pretend.
It works.
He beams at me, pride in his eyes. “I knew you’d like it.”
I continue my chewing as I try to push aside my disbelief at all of this. Me trying to escape almost got me discovered by pirates, and from what Slightly says, they aren’t the kinds of people I want to run into.
If this is a dream, then I’m probably safe either way, though.
Wait, I try to remember what happened in “Inception” if Leo DiCaprio died in his dream.
Did he wake? Or did he die in the real world?
Or was that those old Freddy Krueger movies where you die in the dream and then die in real life? I can’t remember which movie is which.
“We’d sure love a story.” Peter hands his bowl to one of the twins and stands.
There’s that eerie pause again—the men hesitating like they’re afraid of their next breath—but then the clatter continues as they load up the stone sink.
I stop pretending to eat. “A story?”
“Sure.” Slightly leans over and grabs something from the floor. “You dropped this,” he says apologetically and puts something into my bowl. Must’ve been the ‘bread.’ Then he clears it away for me. Thank god. I’m more than ready for this mad tea party to end.
The men file out of the kitchen, some of them jostling each other or pushing with laughs and snorts.
They’re all wearing similar clothes to Peter’s—forest green tunics with linen pants, all the seams done roughly with what looks like twine.
Some of them wear big boots and others are barefoot.
They all have that earthy smell, as if they’ve been digging the soil all day before coming underground to get nuts with their make-believe dinner.
Though it makes me uneasy, I follow them through the craggy passage, the walls rubbed smooth where my hands touch but still rough above. It keeps going, sometimes flaring out into wide open space with moonlight filtering down, then coming in close again.
I wonder if I can find a weapon, something to defend myself. Where are they taking me? They haven’t hurt me, but that doesn’t mean they won’t.
“This is very ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’, and I can tell you right now I’m not much of a Disney princess.” My voice sounds small and scared.
“Oh, is that a story?” Slightly turns and asks, his eyes wide.
“What?” I gawk at him. “Yes, of course it is. You’ve never heard of Snow White?”
“No. Is he a pirate?” His mouth turns into a tight line. “If he’s a pirate, I’ll cut him down before he gets anywhere near you, Moira. I promise.”
For the first time since this whole mess started, I’m speechless. Who hasn’t heard of Snow White?
“You can tell us about Snow White. That can be your story.” Peter walks behind me, his sure steps following mine as we wind through the caverns.
I peer up at the stalactites that hang overhead as we enter another open space, the men spreading out and walking abreast of each other. “Where are we going?”
When Peter puts his hands on my hips, I yelp. “To bed, silly. Where else?”