Straight On Till Morning (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,28
the shore met the jungle was a perfectly picturesque shipwreck. She clambered up it, holding on to the helpfully curvy trunk of a palm tree for balance. With a hand to her forehead, Wendy surveyed her new kingdom.
She was perched at what was obviously the edge of a cove, Pegleg Point just to the south and west of her. Despite its scurrilous reputation the place looked downright pleasant. Tiny waves of sparkling aquamarine lapped at the edges and were probably delightful to splash in. Out of sight to the northeast lay Mermaid Lagoon. Off the shore beyond that would be the nefarious Skull Rock, riddled with caves where pirates hid their loot.
Emptying into the cove was Crocodile Creek, a wide, sparkling rivulet whose source was somewhere in the Black Dragon Mountains (Michael had named them). These were a wild range in the center of the island that grew bleaker and spikier to the northern, or Hyperborean, shore (John had named that). While the closer peaks were green and clear, the farther ones were gray and shrouded in mist and mystery.
And if one followed Crocodile Creek toward these mountains, through the Pernicious Forest and Quiescent Jungle (both John’s touch), one eventually came to the Hangman’s Tree, hideout for the Lost Boys. But in the very northwesternmost part of the island, there was…
There was…
Wendy frowned.
She couldn’t remember—or she had never described it, or had never dreamed it. Or maybe she had, and then she had forgotten it? There was something there, but it was like it was wiped from her memory completely.
Or maybe the reverse—maybe it was unimagined yet. And therefore unexplored.
The sun was a brilliant lemon yellow, the sky a bracing blue. The sea wind whipped Wendy’s hair into an obliging jig.
Her adventure was beginning! Her quest to find Peter Pan and save Never Land!
But, truth be told, while she was living the adventure, it didn’t feel like one. It felt horrible. Not at all like the stories she made up. Never Land wasn’t supposed to be actually dangerous. Never Land wasn’t supposed to have murderous grown-ups in it. Pirates shooting each other seemed awfully funny in the context of a bedtime tale, but the blood on the deck had been thick and ugly and she could still hear the way his head had hit the planks. Pirates attacking ladies had never been part of her story.
And neither was laundry.
“And that poor pirate,” she whispered. “Zane. What was his story? I didn’t make it up.…What did he mean he was trapped?”
Never Land was not as simple—or as innocent—as it had seemed. Wendy would have to stay on her toes whilst there. But everything looked just as bright and sunny and perfect as ever. Her shadow was as black and strong against the sand as a child’s drawing, and…
Wait, was the shadow crossing her arms?
Wendy looked at her own arms, which were first at her sides, and then snapped to her chest in surprise.
Her shadow still kept her arms crossed. And was now shaking her head as if to chastise.
Then she flexed her hand and curled it into a menacing hook. Shadow puppets without the puppets.
There was no doubt at all what she was trying to say: she was upset with what Wendy had done, selling Peter’s shadow. Of course shadow–Wendy was worried about shadow–Peter Pan. Here she was simply free to express it.
“He didn’t want his shadow,” Wendy muttered to herself—and her shadow—for the thousandth time.
She still didn’t believe it.
Wendy took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. Whatever, it was done. She had already dealt with some of the results of her actions and would now see to righting the additional wrongs she had created as a result. She would go find Peter.
She would save Never Land.
And if he was angry with her for what she had done—well, she would deal with it and accept it as fair punishment for her actions.
She hopped off the shipwreck and wandered toward the greenery at the edge of the cove. Trying not to notice or hope that her shadow was coming along and behaving, trying to keep her eyes on the jungle ahead.
A strange structure untangled itself out of the background like a hallucination, not part of the natural landscape. It was a funny-shaped, almost spherical, green podlike thing woven from living branches of trees and vines. A trellis of flowers hung down over the opening that served as a door.