Straight On Till Morning (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,120

and people with his fingers, stretched out in the air on his back.

At one point he sat up and noticed his shadow on the rocks below, reinvigorated by the bright light of the two moons. Wendy’s shadow was playing cat’s cradle with her friend, using a shadow piece of string from somewhere.

“Hey,” Peter said, a little vexed.

Shadow Peter turned to look at him, which of course was no more than a shifting of flat black shapes. But even Wendy could feel the look he gave the solid Peter. Really? You want to start this again?

“As you were,” Peter said quickly. “You could ask us if we wanted to play, though.”

This was such a ridiculous and impossible idea that everyone just ignored it.

And then the bomb went off.

It was a noise like nothing Wendy had ever heard before, an earsplitting sound preceded by a blast of air so strong it knocked her back like a carriage pulled by eight panicking horses. Somehow Peter flung himself around her and wrapped her body with his.

The two were thrown, the world went black.

She must have only been out for a moment or two, but when Wendy came to she found the world a topsy-turvy place that made no sense. It was almost perfectly silent, for one thing; noises like rocks falling and gulls screaming sounded almost hollow, as if very, very far away. Dust and grit poured from her lashes as she tried to make sense of gravity, light, and pain, all of which were coming at her from strange angles.

Peter Pan was lying next to her, one arm still thrown protectively over her waist.

“Peter,” she whispered. Even that sounded wrong; she felt the vibrations in her throat but couldn’t hear the words.

Wincing at the extreme, wrong pain in her back, she managed with great difficulty to push herself onto her elbows and knees.

“Peter, wake up.”

She gasped at how bloody he was; a thousand lacerations covered him from forehead to feet. After a panicked moment of wiping it off—with his own soft hat—she was relieved to see they were just tiny divots and scrapes from the grit and scree shot out by the explosion. No wound seemed especially deep.

“Where’s Tink?” he murmured. At least, that’s what it looked like his lips said.

“I don’t know!”

“I can’t hear you,” he said accusingly.

“The explosion.” She touched her ears, then waved to the black and windy sky.

“I can’t hear you!” Peter shouted.

This Wendy could hear a little, which was a relief. She forced herself to stand up. Her back was a throbbing mass of pain—but it obeyed her will, albeit reluctantly. No permanent damage except for maybe a cracked rib. No tingling in her feet. She was all right, though the crimson streak in the corner of her right eye was a little worrisome.

“TINK!” she shouted as loudly as she could, unsure how loud it really was.

The landscape was much changed in the last five minutes. Skull Island was almost entirely gone. What Wendy stood on were its remains: a whole new atoll of big, ugly chunks of gray rock, some of which were still rolling and shifting into place like knucklebones. Dust had risen up and nearly blocked out the moons and stars, diffusing their light strangely and, turning the sky the same sort of monochrome white she associated with the First. A wind had sprung up and the water was an ugly shade of lead.

“TINK!” she screamed.

“Tinker Bell!” Peter yelled, and this time Wendy thought she heard him. He shot into the air, darting back and forth over the sea in the same random, unorganized way Tinker Bell would have. Wendy struggled to fly, buffeted about by the winds and very, very unsteady. She coughed and spat up sand and blood.

“Tinker Bell!”

In snippets and wisps sound was coming back, but it was confusing and snarled. Somehow the noises made her want to vomit. She gagged and ordered her stomach to settle.

“Tink! TINKER BELL!” Peter Pan called again.

A faint shadow appeared over Wendy’s vision. This is it, she thought; she was going to pass out again.

Then it blinked away and everything was light…and then it was dark again. On and off, like a signal.

Confused, Wendy put her hands up between her face and the sky.

Her shadow appeared on her palm, shrinking quickly to fit. She had been trying to get Wendy’s attention! She pointed and waved her arms toward what might have been north. Wendy dropped her hands and the shadow fell to the sea, just visible