“Mermaids?” Starkey echoed, intrigued by her sudden change of subject. “What would you like to know about them?”
“When I met the Piper, he seemed very afraid of them.”
“What has Peter told you on the subject?”
Gwen tried to get comfortable in her chair, but no matter how she sat, her insides squirmed. “He says they never lie.”
“That's true enough.”
“And that I should never trust them.”
“Even truer.”
“Why?”
Starkey took a moment to read Gwen's face. She feared that the answer was so extensive, he didn't know where to begin. “Do you about Piper's deal with the mermaids?”
“I know he made one,” Gwen answered. “That's how he got his magical tune—they taught him an old mermaid song.”
Starkey nodded, confirming this. “I never met the Piper myself, but I've heard the same story from everyone else who encountered him… back when he still told the story, I suppose.”
He straightened in his seat and started with the most unbelievable detail. “The Piper used to be a pleasant and likable person. Back in his mortal days in Germany, musicians were fewer and farther between, but you still needed one if you wanted any sort of music or dance. So pipers were popular as merry-makers, music-bringers, and festive folk.
“This wasn't enough for Piper though—or maybe it was, but once he ran into a mermaid in the River Weser his priorities changed. At that time, mermaids were still all sirens in the eyes of mortals, and even those who believed in them knew better than to trust them. So the one he ran into had a lot to gain for herself and her sisters.”
“Vanda,” Gwen said, remembering the mermaid Lasiandra had mentioned.
Starkey's mustache twitched as he gave her a questioning look, and she regretted mentioning it. He must not have known Vanda's name. He continued without a question, “He made a deal for great talent, impossible skill, and the irresistible music he's now known for. All she wanted in return was the acceptance, the praise, the glorification that mortals offered angels and other such beautiful myths.”
“How could he give her that?” Gwen asked.
“He couldn't. The magic to fulfill such wishes rests with the stars, in a language so strange and backward even mermaids—who are hatched from the falling stars that strike water—cannot read it unaided.”
Strange and backward, she thought. If that were literally true, then the only means to decipher the stars would rest in something that reflected them.
“So Piper procured a mirror—which were almost impossibly rare at the time. The Weser's mermaid kept her end of the bargain, and made the stars give him everything he desired in the realm of his music.
“But star magic is a finicky and exacting magic… what it gives to one, it pulls from another. Mermaids became revered creatures and depicted in a more favorable light than the sirens of early Europe, but Piper suffered for it.
“His home shunned him. No one wanted to hear his music, no one wanted to have anything to do with him no matter where he went. His talent sat dormant for want of an audience. Only rats would gather to listen, but when he turned this one advantage to use in Hamelin, he was cheated out of his due. After that, I suppose he went mad and lost what little remained of his benevolent nature.
“But you see, mermaids are born of fallen stars and they tend to do their accounting in a similar manner, even without secret star magic. Any deal you make with a mermaid will come back to bite you. They are always honest, but you will always get more than you barter for dealing with them.”
This depressed Gwen, but she refused to believe it. “Don't you think there could be some good mermaids out there?”
“Oh, I'm sure there are,” Starkey agreed, “in the same way that there must be some good scorpions, or morally superior specimens of snake.” He shifted forward. “So tell me, how did Gwendolyn Hoffman get herself tangled up with mermaids?”
She couldn't obscure the vested interest she had in their conversation. Starkey saw the obvious: she had a more personal and pressing stake in the matter. Still, she felt like an idiot for having the story forced out of her. “One of the mermaids… after I met her with Peter, she gave me one of her scales so I could always reach her. We went swimming together, we talked all the time. There isn't anyone else to talk to around here. I mean, if I want someone anything like me.”
“No one knows about this, do they?” he asked.
“No.”
“You should know better, Gwen,” Starkey told her. “If you feel like you have to keep something a secret, it's because you shouldn't be doing it.”
“Lasiandra has been a perfect friend to me,” Gwen insisted.
“Because centuries ago, Vanda made the deal that painted sirens as perfect creatures in all the myths that ever followed.”
“I gave her a mirror,” Gwen confessed, cringing at her own words.
Starkey's eyes widened and he leaned even further forward. “What deal did you make? What did you give her?”
“I didn't make a deal. I mean, that was the deal. I gave her a mirror in exchange for a friend's safety… someone who got all tangled up in this because of me.”
“Only the mirror?” Starkey mused. “Then perhaps all is not lost for you—though only time will tell how much more you sacrificed for that. I hope, for both your sakes, that your friend is not as trusting as you.”
Gwen wrung her hands in her lap where Starkey could not see the uneasy gesture. The last thing she had told Jay was how much she trusted Lasiandra, how much he could trust her.
“I can't imagine you making a deal with mermaids,” Starkey remarked, drawing her out of her thoughts. “You don't seem like the type.”
“What do you mean? What type?” Gwen couldn't tell if she was meant to process his remark as a compliment or insult.
“Greedy. Ambitious. Risk-taking. Desire-driven,” he elaborated. “To be honest, I still don't entirely understand what brought you to Neverland in the first place. I've never met a anyone who came to Neverland without an intense passion for magic, but you seem to have been blown here by little more than a strong wind.”
“I like it here. It's beautiful. It's surprising. It's relaxing,” Gwen defended, unable to form more complex thoughts out of her mismatched feelings for Neverland.
“And what about Peter?” Starkey asked.
“What about him?”
Starkey shrugged, but kept his smile in his eyes. “He's quite the attraction for most the girls who wind up here. And he seems to value your opinion more than any that I've seen.”
Gwen almost gagged on a laugh. If Peter took her seriously, she hated to think how he treated other girls.
“You're too old for all this nonsense, or at least, too old to pull any meaningful satisfaction from it. You're not here to fight redskins and talk to fairies. You want more out of life than that. Everyone does and, sooner or later, everyone flies home for it. Yet everyone is always amazed poor Peter stays behind, as if that isn't what he's always done…”
Gwen cast her glance elsewhere, not wanting to meet Starkey's eyes. However, she brought them back when he pierced the calm of the cabin with pointed melancholy. “He's a terrible heart-breaker, that boy.”
“He is who he is, and he's Peter Pan,” Gwen announced. “I'm old enough to understand that.”
“But are you wise enough to believe it?” Starkey questioned. “Wisdom is not inherent in age. Growth is earned, not given, and your current residence is in the one place that allows the least of it. So on a scale of alcohol to mermaids, how hopelessly tangled up are you in Peter?”
Gwen resented the question. She resented everything about it: the directness, the cleverness, the insightfulness… and in response, she got defensive. “I'm not in love with Peter,” she announced. “He's a good friend, but he's immature and impatient and inconsiderate and a million other things that aren't attractive in the least.” Gwen closed her hands around the stem of the wine glass in front of her, gripping it in frustration.
“That describes every child that ever set foot on this island,” Starkey observed. “So the question becomes, why are you running around with all of them?”
“I love my little sister,” Gwen told him. “I don't want to lose her. And the reality of being sixteen doesn't have much to recommend it.”
“No, I'll grant you that,” Starkey agreed. “But why stay stuck at sixteen then, Gwen? All your current troubles are rooted in this age you've gotten stuck in. There's no going back—not even Neverland can do that for you—but with just a little time you could resolve the worst of your condition.”
She shook her head and scoffed at the idea. “If I age an inch, so many more problems will crop up for me. If I went back to growing up, I'd be right back to worrying about my GPA. I'd have to take the SAT, and do my college applications… and then actually go to college, declare a major, earn a degree, and before you know it I'll be stuck in some career. The fun ones don't pay well, the lucrative ones aren't exciting, and the only thing they all have in common is they go on for forty years.” Gwen had held a low opinion of adulthood before she left for Neverland; it had only diminished since then.
Starkey gave her a thoughtful look. “That's only if you go back to the mainland.”
“What else would I do? There's Neverland and there's reality. Alternatives aren't exactly abounding.”
He nodded, but Gwen could tell he disagreed. She waited for the thought that seemed lurking just beyond his dark eyes.
“You know, Gwendolyn,” he told her, “I think you would make a wonderful pirate.”
Such a sentiment was the last thing Gwen had expected, and she did not have a response.
“There are too few women pirates,” Starkey lamented. “Of course the history books have Anne Bonny and Mary Read, and literature has Fanny Campbell… but really, women are worse represented in piracy than the sciences.”
“I can't imagine why.”
Starkey ignored her sarcastic tone, and addressed her with continued candor. “Nor can I. There's nothing so liberating, and the sea has a beautiful romance to it. There's a certain freedom in being able to sail in and out of the myths woven around your profession. In all seriousness, Gwen, you've peaked behind the green curtain and seen the wizard running the show. How can you go back to the drudgery of an ordinary life? At the same time, you can't expect that lolling about a tropic island with only children for company could satisfy you. I suspect you've already run into your fair share of conundrums of that nature.”
An endless series of memories could confirm what Starkey asserted. Gwen remembered all her conversations with Lasiandra, looking for someone with a mature mind. She still felt twinges of social discomfort whenever they visited the redskins, whom the children fondly referred to as savages. All the time she spent wandering the forest on her own, doing chores simply for the peace of it… Gwen never had such introverted tendencies around peers her age.
“What role have the children relegated you to for when the do-gooders invade?”
Gwen had to admit, “I don't know that I have one.”
Starkey smiled at this news, and lost no time in suggesting, “Then you should be here, fighting with us. We could always use another able-bodied crew member. Have you ever loaded a cannon before? It's easier than you might expect.”
She shook her head. “I appreciate the offer, but it would break Peter's heart.” She couldn't even imagine telling Peter. The last thing he needed was Gwen defecting to piracy. He had taken Twill's departure hard enough.
Sad and amused, Starkey warned, “Anyone who worries about breaking Peter Pan's heart is liable to get her heart broken by him, sooner or later.”
“I said he is a friend—I didn't say I don't care about him.”
“Fair enough,” Starkey acknowledged. Picking up his wine glass once more, Starkey proposed, “To good friends, and the adventures they bring with them.”
Gwen lifted the glass she had in her fidgeting hands, clinking it against Starkey's. The crystal rang with a single, angelic note that faded away to the same place the gramophone's dreamy chamber music had gone. With only a slight hesitation, Gwen drank the sip of wine Starkey had poured her.
“The offer stands,” Starkey told her, “if you ever decide there's more to life than playing Swiss Family Robinson with the children.”
“There's much more to life than that, Mr. Starkey,” Gwen told him. “And I suspect I'll enjoy most of it, someday, without ever resorting to piracy.”
“Time will tell,” Starkey answered. “Even in Neverland—time always tells.”
“I think I should get going,” she announced, standing up. “Thank you for the conversation, Mr. Starkey.”
“Anytime, Gwendolyn,” Starkey said. “If you ever want to talk, you'll know where to find me.”
Twill rolled over in his sleep. Locked in his dreams, he didn't seem to notice his own motion. Gwen said goodnight to her former teacher, and showed herself out. She avoided running into any of the Grammarian's crew and took to the air. She flew back to the grove so she could crawl into the underground home and into bed. By the time she did, her exhaustion felt so absolute that she fell asleep within a minute. Her bed seemed to bob, and even in her dreams she felt the comforting, lullaby-like rocking of a boat in tranquil waters.