She couldn't mistake the plane's cantankerous engine for anything else, but through the weave of branches, Gwen couldn't get a good look at the plane. Leaping into a tree, Gwen's flight ability returned the moment she forgot she couldn't fly. Too consumed with worried curiosity, she flitted up a tree to get a better view of the craft. Hurrying back to the meadow may have given her an unobstructed view, but she didn't want to risk getting caught in the open when she could hear the rattle of gunfire. Each click boomed across the sky as the plane fired off a round of ammunition.
She thanked the stars when she saw not a modern plane, but an anachronistic contraption. Its propeller spun wildly and the grey sheet metal of its body did not even have a coat of paint covering it. Gwen had seen such a plane once before, on the night she first returned to reality with Peter.
Circling back, it let loose another round of gunfire at a distant, invading ship.
Overcome with joyful relief, Gwen laughed and waved at the aviator. She knew Antoine de Saint-Exupery couldn't see her, but she didn't know how else to process her delight. She watched as he zoomed back over the island in his antique plane, and something dropped from the aircraft. At first she feared return fire had struck his plane, but the black coat navy had not come equipped with anti-aircraft guns. A parachute blossomed over the parcel, and more parcels fell out of the plane, drifting down on parachutes all over the island.
She set her sights on the nearest one. She had no way to know what was inside the small wooden crate, but she trusted she could make good use of whatever supplies Antoine dropped. Jumping down from the tree and landing with a flighty grace, Gwen began running for the place where the parachuting crate would land. If nothing else, she wanted to get before any adults did.
Twigs snapped and brush rustled under her quick feet as she plowed through the forest. Scanning the sky, she watched for the falling package and gave little attention to anything on the ground. She almost tripped over Jam.
“Whoa!” Jam yelled, darting out of Gwen's way. Raven tree eggs filled her arms. “You should watch where you are going! Don't you know this is a WAR ZONE?”
“Sorry,” she apologized. “Did you see a package fall around here?”
Jam's irritation turned to intrigue with the riveting speed that only children's emotions could switch with. “What package?”
“Can you help me look for it? The aviator just flew by and parachuted down some supplies, I think.”
“What kind of supplies?” Jam asked, already scanning her surroundings for the package. “Here, hold these.” She thrust the eggs into Gwen's hands and the older girl shuffled them into her satchel without breaking any of the sticky fruits' shells. “When we find it, can I have it?”
“I don't know. We'll have to see what it is,” Gwen told her. “I think it's this way.”
So the girls took off together, scanning the trees in case the parachute tangled in the branches. Luckily, they did not to run into any black coats as they wandered, and Jam's eager eyes spotted the crate awkwardly nestled underneath its white parachute. Having crashed through the tree branches, it sat lopsided in a pool of sunlight.
Jam squealed with excitement and ran over to it. Crawling under the billowing parachute collapsed over the box, she tried to pull it off from underneath. Gwen kept her eyes peeled for enemy soldiers.
Uncovering the crate, Jam clapped and giggled in anticipation. The wooden box came up to her waist, so she threw herself over it as if hugging it. “Open it!” she demanded.
Gwen brushed Jam away and began working at unknotting the thick twine that strapped the crate's lid on. She ignored Jam's impatient pestering and eventually loosened the knots. Pulling the wooden lid off, she set it down beside some of the fallen branches the crate had broken on its way down.
Jam, bent over the side of the box, sifted through the packing straw to find out what the mysterious box contained. “What?” she asked. “What are all these?”
Gwen returned to find the girl holding two flashlights in her hands and studying them with slight contempt. Flashlights filled the box, and Gwen unearthed one from the straw and showed Jam. “It's a flashlight.”
“A what?” Jam asked. Gwen turned hers on, and Jam cooed as it prompted a memory. “Oh, I remember now! Daddy had one he'd use when he worked on the auto in the evening… But why did the aviator give us flashlights?”
Gwen gripped the flashlight and waved it, watching the beam of light cut through the shade of the jungle like a knife, or a sword. Realizing it's utility, she muttered, “So we can fight.”
“Fight what?” Jam whined.
Gwen smiled. “The darkness.”
Remembering the urgency of the situation, Gwen started digging all the flashlights out of the box and instructed Jam, “You need to take as many of these as you can and give them to everyone you can find. If you see any shadows that don't have people attached, shine the light on them. Force them back.”
The sound of rattling gunfire shot across the sky, and Gwen imagined the aviator sinking one of the naval ships, and the pirates taking the shipwrecked invaders back home. Not all grown-ups were bad.
Jam comprehended these instructions with ease, and seemed to derive a special significance from the task. Gwen tucked several flashlights into her satchel and tried to make a mental note of the crate's location so she could to direct others toward it. She knew three soldiers who wouldn't dare let their shadows loose on the island, but she doubted the rest of the black coats would keep theirs under control.
Jam stuffed a flashlight in both pockets of her pink dress and carried as many as she could in her arms, much as she had carried the raven tree fruit before Gwen all but tripped over her. She had taken no more than four steps away from the crate when Gwen heard a horrible creaking overhead.
She lifted her head in time to see the tree bough falling, tumbling down almost in slow motion. It looked, for a second, like it only waved in a strong wind. But Gwen had heard the deafening snap of the branch, weakened from the crate crashing into it. She screamed to Jam, “Look out!” and fell over backward as she scrambled to get away from the collapsing branch.
Jam was not so quick.
The little girl dropped the flashlights and covered her head with both her hands, as if that would stop the bough from crushing her. The heavy branch fell on top of her with a hideous thud.
“Jam!” Gwen cried. “Jam!” She fought her way back onto her feet—no easy task when every inch of her body shook. Gwen's first thought was to call for the girl's parents, but that impulse had no merit in Neverland. Jam's parents? What parents? This little girl had run away so long ago, who knew what had even become of the man who used to work on his auto by flashlight?
As she approached, she felt her stomach shrinking to the size and hardness of a peach pit inside her. The bough, as thick as little Jam's waist, had the girl trapped under it, face down in the dirt. Gingerly, Gwen picked it up off the little girl. As she did, she heard Jam groan. Amazingly, the girl was conscious and well enough to complain, “That was heavy!”
Jam stood up. Her face smudged with dirt, she spat with a demonstrative, “Phewy!” noise, and brushed off her dress.
Gwen stared in awe as the small child gathered the flashlights and took off running again, no worse for wear. After she had disappeared from Gwen's sight, Jam's laughter rang and wove through the forest.
Stunned, Gwen tried to make sense of what she had witnessed. She knew the impact should have killed Jam. But Jam lived in Neverland, as invincible and full of super powers as her mind would allow her to be. How could she die? She didn't give Neverland the power to kill her, and Neverland bended, as always, to the will of its inhabitants. Perhaps she could be killed by pirates or meet some such heroic fate, but to die in a simple accident would be no adventure at all.
A subtle horror snuck into Gwen's mind and unfolded into something that terrified her: she did not share Jam's childish invincibility. Gwen knew that accidents, disasters, and mishaps could kill her, and she knew also that accidents, disasters, and mishaps abounded in battlefields. Had she stood under the tree when the branch descended, the bough would have killed her, because her last thought as it fell would have been of certain doom.
Jam's laughter receded as she submerged herself again in the game of war she played alongside the other indestructible children. Gwen took off running, fearing for more than herself. She had grown old enough to know all the myriad things that could kill her, and she suspected that despite all his efforts to avoid that knowledge, Peter knew too.