blur resolved itself into a mermaid—perhaps even one of those Wendy had encountered—brushing her hair in the lagoon. Again and again and again. The little play looped around to the beginning again like a circle of yarn in cat’s cradle. Sometimes it went in reverse and the mermaid’s hair fell up in strokes.
Tinker Bell was rising in the night air along with the other creatures, stretching and looking a little grumpy. She was not, by any account, a nocturnal fairy.
“Tinker Bell! What is this creature?”
The insect flew very slowly and Wendy was able to move around it, regarding the thing from every angle. Also like a carpenter bee it seemed more interested in hovering than actually going anywhere with purpose or direction.
Tinker Bell made a bored, disgusted face.
It’s a thysolit. They’re stupid. Barely alive. Dangerous.
“Oh! Dangerous!” Wendy backed away from it immediately. The amount of poison in a stinger from a thorax that size would be enough to kill an army.
No, not like that, Tinker Bell said, yawning. They…suck you in. Not you. Not everyone. Those who pay too much attention. Poison the mind, not the body. If you’re that kind of person. And if you rouse a whole colony they get you.
“But I won’t get stung?”
No.
As if to illustrate, Tinker Bell approached another one of them that was just taking off from the ground and threw herself against it, hard. The insect fell to the side, confused, then shook itself and continued on its original path.
“Oh…” Wendy approached closely to see if it was all right—then peered at its images. These were of the same lagoon, but a different part of it. No mermaids, just lapping water and what might have been the fin of a fish about to surface, again and again and again.
More thysolits rose, buzzing drowsily and drifting into the sky like silky seedpods. Wendy walked among them, enchanted.
“But what is going on with their—derrieres? What are they showing?”
Anything. A moment of time from somewhere in Never Land. They collect them. Usually they’re only a few hours old.
The next one Wendy saw had a monkey swinging from vine to vine across a high stream that fell down into the lagoon. The one after that showed Hangman’s Tree.
“Oh, look, Tinker Bell! It’s the hideout!”
And in fact, another one had a loop of the Lost Boys themselves (and Luna), sitting around the table and eating a plum pudding they had gotten from who knows where.
The next thysolit showed a placid beach, a scurrying crab. The next one showed an empty sea.…
“And the pirates!” Wendy cried as the Jolly Roger came riding quickly through the waves.
Tinker Bell jingled impatiently. So? We should go! They are probably looking for Peter!!
“No, wait,” Wendy said, twirling around and searching all the other bees. “It seems like these creatures fly in clusters. Like they gather their moments together. There’s always a number of the scenes that take place at the same spot. If we can find all the ones related to this moment, maybe we can see where the pirates are, or what they are up to!”
Tinker Bell thought about that for only a second before nodding. She began to zoom around the creatures, checking their sides with as much grace and care as an American cowboy searching the flanks of his herd for the right brand.
That is, not very delicately.
Wendy was still a little hesitant about just grabbing and handling the insects. She resorted to glimpsing and ducking and weaving and saying excuse me when the situation warranted a gentle pushing-out-of-the-way. Dozens of them were now aloft. Their lights blinked on slowly, one by one, like stars coming out in a hazy summer night.
Some of their scenes took a moment to figure out: one was the black eye of a large animal, blinking; in another, a set of children who weren’t the Lost Boys danced and cavorted on a hilltop, ribbons round their heads and streamers flowing from their hands and toes.
Tinker Bell jingled loudly and excitedly. Wendy looked up and saw that the fairy was steering a bee from behind, flying it toward her friend.
This one showed a close-up of the prow of the Jolly Roger. While the view wasn’t far enough back to give them any geographical information, what it did show was interesting—and disturbing. It looked as though the pirates had hung a sort of cage off the front of the ship. The thing was extremely nasty-looking, covered on the insides with spikes and barbs and other horrid implements.
And