Straight On Till Morning (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,41

of a traveling salesperson and a red felt hat beaten into two peaks to resemble fox ears.

There was a set of twins with black gloves and black masks plastered directly onto their faces somehow. They also had fluffy striped tails affixed to their gray baggy overalls—which they wore with no shirts on underneath. Scandalous, like poor street ruffians. Wendy searched her mind for what animal they could possibly be and finally came up with raccoon, a creature from the Americas that was supposed to be terribly smart and devious but quite prim, habituated to washing its hands and food before dining.

The smallest Lost Boy was no more than a toddler. He also wore real fur, a beautiful black-and-white hide with a strangely pungent but not entirely unpleasant smell. Another New World creature: a skunk. They could spray their stink in acidic streams to deter predators. Very useful defense for one so small and helpless, Wendy found herself thinking.

Right in the middle of the group, neither the tallest nor the shortest, not the fattest or the skinniest, was an approximation of something that was not quite a rabbit. A long, very used dove-gray tailcoat had an equally long black tail with a white tip on the end. A leather headband that held back short brown hair sported two long, floppy gray ears.

“Oh! Hello!” Wendy said, clapping her hands together in delight at all of them.

They looked up at her with a little surprise, but not much more. A shadow hung over them and in their eyes.

“Who’s this, Tinker Bell?” the tall fox asked.

The fairy flew down in between them and tinkled and jangled.

“A Wendy? What’s a Wendy? Oh, she is. The Wendy. I get it.”

While Wendy was pleased with this introduction, she felt a little slighted. She had loved fairies, always loved fairies. How come the Lost Boys could understand what the fairy said, and she couldn’t? And they even knew her name!

“Pleased to meet you,” Wendy said, very properly holding out her hand.

The fox looked at it.

“I’m Slightly,” he said. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen, but there was something in his eyes that seemed both older and younger. “I’m the leader when Peter’s not around. This is Skipper.” He gestured at the rabbit thing, who looked away. “And these are the twins.”

The two raccoons bobbed their heads and grinned.

“How d’ya…”

“…do?”

Wendy grinned, charmed by the way they acted in perfect unison.

“Cubby.” The bear bowed and growled. He pointed at the littlest one, standing next to him. “This is Tootles. He don’t talk much. He’s a baby—but, I mean, a fierce baby. Don’t scrap with ’im.”

The skunk had started to look annoyed and sulky, but then smiled broadly, easily lulled by quick-thought words of praise.

“How do you do,” Wendy said, leaning forward to the little skunk. His smell was actually less offensive than what was coming off some of the other ones. She had to resist the urge to crinkle her nose or hide behind a scented glove (which she didn’t have, anyway). Slightly seemed to be the only one who bathed at all. His dark skin was free from the permanent layer of grubbiness that covered the rest of them. As with the pirates, Wendy desperately wanted to scrub them with a nice boar-bristle brush, starting with the fierce baby.

Tootles melted under her attention, practically swooning.

“Whatcha doing here, The Wendy?” Cubby asked, displaying a set of teeth pocked by the occasional absent baby tooth.

“I’m here because…well…”

Any internal struggle she had about confessing her use of Peter’s shadow and handing it over to the pirates was immediately cut short as Tinker Bell dove in, literally and figuratively, bouncing up and down and angrily shedding sparkles as she obviously told what she thought was a tale of betrayal and near-murder.

Slightly nodded and said, “Uh-huh,” madly understanding everything the fairy jingled.

“Oh…so that’s what happened to his shadow,” was all he said when she finished. Then he collapsed contemplatively onto a giant mushroom chair that bowed a little under his weight.

Wendy tried to stave off her anxiety while waiting for his reaction, conclusion, or decision, by running her hands through Tootles’s wispy hair.

Meanwhile, Skipper kept staring at her, unblinkingly, either in awe or disgust.

“But…wait…” Slightly finally said, frowning. “There’s one part of your story I dinna get, Tink. His shadow was in London the whole time and he never thought to look there?”

The fairy began to sway back and forth in the air, her face twisting like a child’s between contrived innocence and