Straight On Till Morning (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,104
at first looked like a lazy, reclining Peter was actually a taut-faced, wan Peter, collapsed into his own skin somehow. He shivered on the burning beach but had sweated through his shirt as if he were in the grip of a great fever. Sometimes he grimaced, eyes closed, and clenched his stomach.
“Oh my goodness,” Wendy cried, rushing over and laying a hand on his brow. Tinker Bell didn’t even object. He wasn’t burning up—in fact, he was a little clammy.
Did you find them? Are they coming?
“Yes, though I’m afraid it will be a few hours before they get here. Are you managing to get any liquids into him?”
Tinker Bell nodded, pointing to a leaf she had been using for just that. A puddle of pink juice lay along its veins.
“Good. Well, that’s something.”
Wendy slowly collapsed on the sand next to them, exhausted and worried. The hard bark of the palm against her back felt like heaven, or at least something far softer than it actually was. She wiggled a bit to scare off any unicorn beetles—an opalescent one fell glittering to the sand, and without thinking, she scooped it up and placed it back on the tree next to her.
(Her shadow stood up against the palm trunk, watching Peter with worry.)
They’re taking the Cenotaph Caves? Tinker Bell jingled.
“Um, yes. Do remind me to ask you about what those are sometime. Has Peter been like this the whole time I’ve been gone?”
“Wendy—you’re back,” the ailing boy murmured, rousing a little upon hearing his name. Then his dreamy smile crumpled in a rictus of hurt.
Those terrible pirates! Tinker Bell wail-jingled.
“Well, we shall give them what for directly,” Wendy promised, summoning brightness into her features.
The three settled in to wait for the pirates—or the Lost Boys, whoever came first.
The sun beat down hard until it hurt to have the tiniest bit of skin exposed beyond the shadow of the palm trees. Waves of heat danced like spirits between the sand and the sea, the latter of which lapped appealingly against the shore and seemed endlessly far away. Hurdy-gurdy gnats droned and riffed their unending calls.
Wendy reached out and squeezed Peter’s hand whenever he went through a particularly bad bout of whatever was happening to him. Tinker Bell brought nectar, or sap, or—really, Wendy didn’t want to think about the alternatives; beetle milk?—and carefully poured it into his mouth. But silence reigned over all of them; even the fairy’s jingles were absent.
Wendy watched her shadow for a bit: she sat at the base of the tree, also apparently trying to keep cool.
“Really. Fat lot of good it did, you running off like that before,” she murmured. “We’ve all wound up back at precisely the same place. Again.”
Her shadow shrugged. Maybe looking a little sheepish. Then she stood up, straight and proud—not sorry at all.
Tinker Bell raised an eyebrow at Wendy.
Are you actually yelling at your own shadow?
“But what good did she do?” Wendy demanded, feeling a little childish.
She rescued me.
“All right, yes, but then…after…She could have been a help, or…I was so tired.…”
And yet here we are. You won. You beat the thysolits and the First. We found Peter.
“But—”
You’re different now. Maybe she is, too, in Never Land. Maybe drop it?
Of course Wendy was different. She was beat up and in tatters, although sometimes she had flashes of feeling heroic. That was something. She considered the black shape standing tall on the sand, her arms crossed. Maybe…her shadow wanted a chance to feel heroic, too?
“Maybe that’s right,” Wendy said slowly. “I’ve wanted an adventure my whole life—of course it follows that my shadow would, too. I suppose shadows have their own minds in Never Land. I’m not your master, merely your…I don’t know, solid object. Home, maybe?”
The shadow nodded eagerly.
“Whatever you are, I need you and you need me. And we all will most certainly need your help to rescue Peter’s shadow. So would you mind staying around at least until we get to the happily-ever-afters? I’ll wager you have a better insight into how to aid a fellow shadow in distress than we do.”
She reached out her hand and tried to place it on her shadow’s. It didn’t really work, but the shadow patted the air near where the flesh-and-blood hand was.
Tinker Bell sighed in relief.
And then, finally, something happened.
Tink was high in the sky on one of her lookout missions when she came diving back down like an angry bee (or thysolit).
I see them—the pirates! They’re not far off, rounding Bloody Neck.