“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.