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 very 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.”
Peter glowered at the rocky beach. Gwen looked between him and Starkey. What the captain proposed would solve every problem with the children's plans. They couldn't do this alone. Neverland was never meant to exist with such a dwindled population of magical beings. They needed help, and it seemed the only contingency willing to support them would be tenuous allies, not trusted friends.
“Peter,” Gwen began. “We need help.”
Too haughty to respond, he turned his head even farther away from her.
“We can't do this alone, Peter. Don't sacrifice Neverland for a point of pride.”
Starkey's face lit up and he plopped his tricorn back on his head. “Now there's a smart girl!” he said. “That's the voice of reason. Listen to that, Peter. Hear your mother out.”
“She's not my mother,” Peter snapped.
He held up his hands in deference to Peter's objection, but his tone was not without a note of sarcasm. “Pardon my presumptuousness.”
None of this improved Peter's bitter mood, but he must have cared, and he must have had some command of common sense, because he ceded, “This isn't my decision to make.”
His arms crossed over his chest, he looked at Twill.
“I told you before, Starkey, I won't hold any boy back from Neverland,” Peter reminded him. “And I won't keep any here, either.”
Twill shifted on his feet, uncomfortable with all the attention he had garnered. His wide eyes, like crisp, brown leaves caught in an unfavorable wind, darted everywhere. His hand stayed clamped on Rosemary's.
“What do you think, Twill?” Gwen asked him. “Do you think it might be time to go home with your Dad?”
“No!” Twill cried.
“Theodore William Starkey,” his father reprimanded him, “haven't you any love for me?”
“I don't want to go home.” Twill sniffled, starting to cry at the very thought of it.
“Oh, Twill,” Starkey coaxed, “we won't go home.”
The boy smudged his eyes dry on the sleeve of his shirt. “We… we won't?”
“No, of course not. We'll sail the whole world over, all seven seas, and back to Neverland whensoever your heart desires. We have a ship, and will never have to return home again.”
“No more school?”
“None. I'll teach you to know directions by the stars, rig sails, and steer a ship in storm.”
“No more math homework?”
“All the math you'll ever need to know you'll learn, in time, with coastal navigation and naval trigonometry.”
“No more chores?”
“That's what our swabbie, Grouse, is for. A pirate captain's son doesn't do chores.”
Twill's motivations made a sudden and visible shift. He looked again at his friends and saw some of them even looked envious of the offer. Smiling and excited, he looked like he might bolt to his father… until he remembered his hand.
His smile faltered; his grip did not. “What about Rosemary?” he asked.
Starkey gave a sad nod. “You'd have to leave her behind. Pirates and lost children don't get along.”
“Rosemary could be a pirate, too!” one of the boys suggested.
“She can't be a pirate,” another boy objected, “she's a girl! Girls aren't mean enough to be pirates.”
In response, Jam walloped him upside the head and Blink gave his arm the meanest, prickliest pinch he'd ever had in his life. He quietly redacted his statement.
“I don't want to be a pirate,” Rosemary said, morosely leaning into him. “You're my best friend, Twill.”
“Rosemary's my best friend!” he cried.
Starkey's confidence started to fold, Peter looked vindicated, and Gwen realized this plan and Neverland's defenses needed quick thinking and fast saving.
“Well, you know,” Gwen began, “if Twill were a pirate, he could be your nemesis. Everyone has a best friend. It takes something special to have a nemesis.”
Twill and Rosemary looked disarmed by this idea, but curious all the same. Hushed chatter moved between the other lost children. None of them had a nemesis.
“Is that as good?” Twill asked.
Gwen shrugged, feigning indifference before giving an excited elaboration, “Maybe even better, just in the opposite direction. You'll never have to worry about picking teams again, you can plot against each other, and whenever you see each other you'll get to exchange antagonistic banter.”
The lost children buzzed with this idea.
“What's antagonistic banter?” Oat asked in awe.
“I don't know,” Goose answered. “It sounds important.”
“Could we be arch-enemies?” Rosemary asked her sister, now that Gwen had established herself as an expert on adversarial relationships.
“Of course,” Gwen answered. “Or even mortal enemies, if you wanted.”
Rosemary began bouncing with joy at the prospect. “I've never had a nemesis before!”
Twill seemed overwhelmed. “Um, well, neither have I…”
She let go of his hand in order to grab his arm and shake him. “Will you be my nemesis, Twill?”
“Well… okay, Rosemary!” he decided.
He shoved her.
She seemed taken aback, but only for a moment. She smiled and pushed him back. They pushed back and forth—poking, tickling, and pinching as well—until they had worked themselves into a fit of laughter.
“I wish I had a nemesis,” Jam mooned, glum and disappointed.
“Come here, Twill!” Starkey called. His son's happy feet pattered across the rocky shore and sent him running into his arms. Starkey picked him up and swung him around, to the boy's utter glee.
The pirate captain set him back down as the boy's laughter subsided. “It seems we have a truce then, Pan.” Approaching the boy, he extended his hand. “Allies until the last of the do-gooders have left Neverland and her waters. Let's shake on it and seal the deal.”
Peter did not uncross his moody arms. He nodded to Gwen with an impetuous jerk of his head. “I appoint Gwenny my emissary. She can shake for me,” he replied, immature to the end.
“What's wrong, are you afraid of making a level deal?”
“I won't shake a pirate's hand,” Peter insisted.
“What's wrong with my hand?”
“What's wrong with Gwenny's?” he countered. “Her hand is my word. You can ask Piper.”
“That's an awful lot of trust to put in another,” Starkey remarked, eying Gwen, “but very well.”
Gwen did not appreciate having this ceremonial gesture hoisted onto her. She remembered a similar sense of discomfort when she'd cut their deal with Piper. Why did Peter always thrust these mature responsibilities onto her? But of course, the question answered itself. Sheepishly, she accepted her speech and debate teacher's hand, and shook it with a healthy strength.
“It's a smart and dangerous girl that's willing to make such deals,” he remarked.
“It's a stupid man who needs to remark on the obvious,” she retorted.
Starkey smiled at her.
“You scabby scalawag!” Rosemary interrupted, yelling at Twill. “You won't get away with this!”
In response to such a vicious insult from his nemesis, Twill squinted his eyes, wrinkled his nose and hollered the loudest “Arrrrrrrr!” he could muster.
Starkey leaned over and swept his son into his arms again. “You're going to be great at this, Twill.”