Straight On Till Morning (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,39

island in their own games? And was there any part of Never Land that was just—itself, not prone to the stories and imaginations of children? Was this fairy with her a native, as it were, or the result of some little girl’s dream?

Maybe Wendy could get some answers once everything with Hook and the shadow was sorted.

Luna ran far below them, disappearing into the jungles here, reappearing on a trail there, keeping an eye on the two fliers and barking at their shadows.

(Wendy’s shadow waved insouciantly at her as she rippled over the treetops and clearings.)

The fairy was already descending toward the center of the island, which wasn’t really that big.

Despite the very obviously non-temperate flora near the beach, here the Pernicious Forest became solidly northern (if not quite Hyperborean). There were pines and oaks with their surprisingly familiar leaf shapes that spoke of cool, moist shadows below. But these grew alongside palms and vines and exotic flowers and the like, a mishmash of ideas. Spot in the middle of this mess was a scrubby clearing that was just short of terrifying and very long on creepy. A giant dead tree stood in the center. Its gnarled, broken-off branches and twigs were like bones grasping at the sky, as if the tree were still fighting its fate a hundred years after its death. What looked too regular to be vines turned out, of course, to be the frayed ends of ropes and nooses, all sizes and shapes. “For all sorts of necks, I suppose,” Wendy said thoughtfully.

The grass and weeds around the tree had been trampled into dry brown dust by unknown activity. Standing like sentinels on the cardinal points just outside this circle were other gigantic trees, but these were very much alive. Almost too alive.

Wendy carefully and slowly lowered herself to the ground, wobbling a bit as she went. She was hoping for a perfect, graceful landing like a Russian ballerina en one pointe but had to settle for a mostly-on-two-flat-feet stumble. She bowed forward with momentum, managing to catch herself before completely tumbling over her own head.

The fairy had disappeared, presumably into the hidden hideout of the Lost Boys.

“Luna?” Wendy called. “Luna!”

An answering howl came from somewhere downhill and to the south: the wolf was on her way, but still far.

“All right, I’ll see you in a bit!”

She made a barefoot circle of the clearing, the weight of her dress now feeling strange as it swished against her legs, catching against the little hairs on her skin. She studied the living trees on the perimeter carefully and was quickly rewarded for her efforts: giant knots in their trunks had suspicious black cracks around them. Body-sized holes rose up from their roots with edges that seemed strangely smooth, as if they had been polished by constant use.

“They’re not actually hidden that well, are they?” she mused. Anyone, not just clever Wendy, with an eye and a moment’s thought could tell there was something off and a little too frequented about the area. Did the pirates really never find Peter Pan’s hideout? Had they ever actually looked? It brought to mind the idea of when a child plays hide-and-go-seek with his mummy and tries not to giggle while posing behind something too small to adequately camouflage him. The family dog, for instance. Or a small ottoman.

Wendy shrugged and primly stepped through a door, feeling just a tad superior.

So she was more than a bit taken aback when the floor fell away mechanically below her and she tumbled, heels over head, down a hard and lumpy ramp.

She landed on an equally hard floor, a mess of dress, hair, and sash, legs splayed and vision spinning. But she could see enough to notice a very smug-looking fairy hovering in the air before her, arms crossed.

“Oh! I’m really here! This is Peter Pan’s hideout!…And yours, too,” Wendy added quickly just as the fairy began to frown.

The place was as delightful as she had imagined. The cave under the Hangman’s Tree was perfectly dry and smelled mostly fresh—with only the very slight tang of dirty little boys. The ground was even, and, if not neatly swept, then at least covered with an assortment of skins and rugs. One particularly large sheepskin near the firepit had its soft and thick fleece turned upward, showing indentations where it was obviously slept on. Other beds were stashed willy-nilly around the cave: some nestled in hollows made in the walls themselves, some in the cradling arms of