Gwen took her momentum and continued with it, soaring out of the oak tree and bounding into the sky. On any other occasion she would have dropped into the jungle and continued closer to ground level, but the jungle had turned treacherous and she didn't dare risk losing time. She couldn't afford to stumble onto a stray adventure. Over the treetops, she flew toward the mermaid's lagoon, hoping to find Peter and avoid trekking to the rendezvous point by herself.
The wind neither blew with nor against her course. The day had gone so still it startled Gwen. Devoid of its usual playfulness, the air seemed emptied of its magic. Still, she stayed afloat in it and managed to make it down to the lagoon just as fast as the tunnels would have served her, had they not begun to cave in. She didn't see Peter, but the mermaids were not alone.
One of the black coats' beach landers sat on the pebbled shore, and the sole black coat who'd stayed behind to guard it now stood knee-jeep in the water, his gun drawn and aimed at the mermaids. Gwen didn't bother with the stone steps down the cliff face. Confident in her flying, she dropped the fatal distance down in a controlled and slow descent. Facing the mermaids, the black coat didn't see her land behind him. He continued to shout at the sirens.
“Put your hands up!” he demanded, his gun aimed at Eglantine.
“You heard him, Nepeta,” Eglantine replied. “We've got to put our hands up.”
Both girls lifted their arms out of the water, and sank beneath the surface laughing.
The solider shifted his aim to Cynara. “Hold still. By order of the CAO, you need to comply with my instructions or face termination.”
“What are your instructions?” Cynara asked, her eyes sparkling with interest. Her two sisters surfaced in new positions, closer to the black coat. Their reappearance startled him and he yelped as he fired a poorly aimed shot at Nepeta. It would have missed her, even if she hadn't dodged it and dove underwater.
“We can help you,” Malva told him. “You're looking for heart of the ocean's magic, aren't you? We can show it to you.”
“Come closer,” Nepeta told him as she halfway surfaced.
“We promise we'll take you there if you come with us,” Eglantine cooed. Another two mermaids surfaced in the lagoon. “Isn't that right, Cattleya? Liatris?”
“Of course.”
“Cross our fins and hope to die.”
He took another step toward their promises, and the tide rocked tiny, alluring waves against his knees. “I'm here to help transport the Never Tree back to our research facility. Where is the Never Tree?”
The mermaids erupted into a chorus of aquatic laughter.
“He wants to find the Never Tree!”
“Oh, he doesn't know!”
“What?” the solider insisted. As the mermaids lolled about their lagoon and swam with languid strokes, he could not make up his mind which of them he should put in his gun's sights. None of them seemed threatened. He knew his ammo would kill them, and he thought they understood that, too. He couldn't make sense of why they didn't respect the danger he posed them. He didn't know he was the one in danger. He didn't know not to threaten mermaids.
“The Never Tree? That's nothing,” Nepeta scoffed, running her coral-painted nails through her long strawberry-blond hair. “Not compared to what lies at the heart of the ocean's magic.”
“If you had the heart of the sea,” Liatris suggested, “you could win such favor with your CAO. You could give him so much more than he hopes to gain from a single tree.”
“If you gave it to him,” Eglantine added, splashing happily. “With the heart of the sea, you could displace him. All he has, all he dreams of, could be yours as sure as the stars burn.”
“Come.”
“Swim with us.”
“We promise to take you there.”
Enchanted but wary of the offer, he took another hesitant step into the water. Before he could say anything in response, Nepeta dipped under the water. She'd edged ever closer to him on the tide. The second after she vanished, the black coat screamed and splashed down into the salty water, submerged as soon as Nepeta grabbed him. The other mermaids descended. Malva and Cattleya bolted for the solider and added their fins to the splashing fray. Gwen watched as the frantic thrashing and clouds of air bubbles moved deeper into the water. Not so much as a hand resurfaced as the mermaids retreated from the lagoon, carrying him away to the secret heart of the ocean.
“Look what the catfish dragged to shore,” Eglantine remarked, at last looking at Gwen. “The sea witch's promised week is nearly out—have you come to tell us what's become of our little sister?”
Nepeta, Liatris, and Cynara all approached, clustering back into the shallows beside Eglantine as Gwen neared, but stayed out of their reach. She stood on the shore, still clutching Jay's sketchbook.
“I'm just looking for Peter,” Gwen replied, feeling no obligation to these vicious, beautiful creatures. “If he's not here, I'll be on my way.”
She started to walk away, down the coastline, when Liatris quipped, “He's not on the weastern shore.”
Gwen stopped. “Where is he?”
“What of our sister, landmaid?” Cynara countered.
“Tell us what you know of her, and we'll tell you all we said and saw of Peter,” Eglantine offered.
Gwen sighed. For all the dealing humans had done with mermaids, she saw no harm in telling them the truth now. “Lasiandra has made a deal with the Chief Anomalous Officer to deliver his black coats to the Never Tree.”
The mermaids' enchanting demeanors dropped and their eyes narrowed. The others said nothing as Eglantine asked, “In exchange for what?”
“Legs,” Gwen answered. “Humanity.”
“Lies!” Liatras accused. “You are a human and humans lie.”
“Lasiandra does not have such power,” Cynara objected.
Gwen shook her head. “I gave her a sky glass.”
The mermaids howled. Their cacophony of disgust, outrage, and horror formed a noise that could have shattered glass.
“How could you give it to her?” Nepeta cried.
“That little mermaid has betrayed us!” Eglantine announced, slamming her fist against the water.
Gwen didn't care about their indignation. The mermaids were full of atrocities—she had no sympathy for them now. They would swim off to the hidden depths of the ocean and find new seas to play their dangerous games in. Lasiandra's loss, the loss of Neverland, would mean little to them once they had found a few new rocks to sunbathe and equivocate on.
“What about Peter?” she asked.
“Oh what of him!” Liatris huffed. “Our sister has traded us for an existence as pitiful and short as yours!”
“I have told you what happened to Lasiandra,” Gwen reminded her.
In a dismissive and sore mood, Cynara barked, “He came to ask impossible favors of us and ask starry questions he did not want answers to. When we had said our piece, he fled back into the jungle.”
“What? Why?” Gwen asked.
“That he might chance to free the children taken captive by the wil-o-the-wisp in this grown-ups' crusade.”
“What? No, he said we needed to get to the shore! It's dangerous out there.” How could Peter dive back into the jungle? Surely there was another way to help the children entraced away by the wil-o-the-wisp—or else there was no helping them at all. Going back into the jungle now was a suicide mission. Didn't Peter know that?
Liatris and Nepeta had already dipped off into the dark of the cool waves. The mermaids had finished with Gwen. For better or worse, everything ended in this moment. As Cynara and Nepeta dove back under and headed for safer shores, Eglantine shook her head and told her, before disappearing under the glassy surface of the lagoon, “You poor, foolish girl—Peter won't live to see the end of this war.”