Straight On Till Morning (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,36
since he never came to get it.”
The fairy tinkled angrily at her, rising up off her palm and clenching her tiny hands once again into tiny adorable fists.
“All right, look, before you start again, two things. One, I’m perfectly willing to make amends for what I did,” Wendy said, squaring her shoulders. “Whatever it takes. Right now.”
Her shadow stood up straight upon hearing this, intrigued.
The fairy frowned at her suspiciously.
“I’m absolutely serious. Also, number two, and potentially far more importantly: either as a result of my actions or alongside of them, Never Land is in trouble. Captain Hook seems like he means to destroy the whole island. We need to stop him—and find Peter. He and his shadow are involved somehow. And I will do whatever it takes to accomplish both things.”
She meant it. She conjured up images in her head of all sorts of brave Englishmen and realized she couldn’t think of a single face. But the idea of dying at sword point or being forced to walk the plank in a dramatic rescue attempt was somehow still easier to swallow than an eternity of serving aboard a pirate ship as a nanny and scullery maid.
The fairy narrowed her eyes, obviously reevaluating the human.
Then she nodded. Once.
Not enthusiastically.
“Shall we go then?” Wendy asked primly. “Last I saw, the pirates were headed north, or what would have been north in England. Up the coast. We need to get some help to stop them, I should think. More of you fairies, perhaps? And mermaids might be helpful. Or we could arrange some sort of boat, one with cannons, I expect, and a willing crew—”
The fairy stamped her foot angrily—then lowered herself back down onto Wendy’s hand so the big human girl could actually feel it. She shook her head. She pointed into the jungle.
“I’m sorry, I don’t…”
The fairy snarled in frustration. Then she made a big show of miming the act of looking for something or someone, hand shielding her eyes from the sun, peering into the distance. She pretended to find the thing and marched very dramatically toward it. She had a whole conversation with this thing, which was now obviously a person, took him by the hand, and pretended to fly off.
Then she and he either battled a small army together or succumbed to St. Vitus’s dance; it was hard to tell which.
“Oh—you want to find Peter Pan first?” Wendy said, suddenly realizing what it all meant. “Find him and bring him along to get his shadow back from the pirates?”
The fairy nodded excitedly, and for a heartbreaking second looked absolutely delighted that Wendy understood.
“But I don’t know how much time Never Land has! And do you even know where he is?”
The fairy shrugged and looked exasperated, throwing her arms out to indicate all of Never Land. Wendy wondered, from the way the fairy was acting, if the two friends had ever been separated before this happened.
In spite of her determination to save their world, Wendy was ashamed to admit her first reaction was No, let’s not go find Peter first—only because then she would have to tell her hero straight off that she had sold his shadow to his enemy. It was one thing to admit wrongdoing to a random fairy, but to the person you’ve slighted himself—well, that took a different kind of courage. “Perhaps he isn’t so useful right now, without his shadow?” she ventured.
The fairy frowned and pointed again.
“But perhaps we should drum up some other help against the pirates first?”
The fairy crossed her arms and closed her eyes haughtily, shaking her head.
“Oh, please,” Wendy said. “Even with Peter Pan, the two of us can’t take on an entire pirate crew. In all my stories about Peter Pan he fights Captain Hook man to man, not against all of them.”
The fairy turned her head away and sniffed.
Wendy rubbed her head. She hadn’t had a lot of experience cajoling people—beyond her father, at least—much less an irrational little creature like this. The thing wouldn’t listen to logic or reason.
But of course, she was a fairy. Why would she put up with terribly human ideas like logic and reason?
Wendy thought about her mother’s gentle arguments with shopkeepers when the Darling account came up a bit short.
“Well, how about this,” she said, using her best reasonable voice. “Let’s do go fetch Peter. But perhaps we should start with the Lost Boys? He’s always with his crew. So he might be there, or they might know where he is.