Escaping Neverland (4 page)

We walked for what felt like hours. When one girl
was stung by a wasp the size of my fist, the group stopped long enough for
Jasmine to give the girl some leaves to reduce the swelling, and then marched
on. I couldn’t help staring at the wounded girl. Her arm looked like one of
those cheap plastic bats they gave as prizes at the fair: all red and swollen
and tight. When another kid fell into one of the spider’s traps but climbed out
again a few minutes later with a pink and black smear across his back, any
plans I had for slipping off into the jungle and sneaking back to the Captain’s
ship died a quick death. I wouldn’t make it three minutes alone in this jungle.

William seemed oblivious to the group’s suffering.
Occasionally, he would turn and say something to Pyro, but most of the time he
walked with his eyes on the ground, a serious frown on his face and his hand in
a white-knuckled grip on his sword. When I was so tired and thirsty I could
barely put one foot in front of the other and noticed that William was actually
floating a quarter inch off the ground and wasn’t walking at all, I wished
again that I’d let him cut the power line with his sword. Instead, a child had
died for his stupid mission, and we were stuck walking through this green hell
of a jungle without food or water. The sound of water dripping off everything
was so constant it was beginning to drive me a little bit crazy.

Night was beginning to fall when William finally
looked up. “There’s a river ahead with an island in it where we can stay for
the night, but you’ll have to run.” He looked at me.

Before I could step away, he walked forward,
pulled me close to him and shot us both up into the air. I beat at him with my
fists, but stopped when his grip slipped and I slid down his body a little.

“Hold still,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to drop
you.”

I glanced up at him, but this close all I could
see was the edge of his jaw. It was set in a hard line.

When we landed on a small island in the center of
a river, he let me go, pushing me away from him.

I stumbled back, nearly falling as I tripped over
a rock. “What’s your problem?” I asked.

He followed after me as I backed up, his fists
clenched. “I wanted to thank you.”

I stared at him. “Could have fooled me.”

His shoulders slumped, and he looked down at the
ground. “It’s just . . . no one rescues me. I do the rescuing.”

I tried to hold my snarky comment back, but I
never was very good at keeping my thoughts to myself. “Like you rescued that
kid this morning?”

“Don’t talk about that.” He was in my face again,
so close I could feel his breath on my cheek. “It was an accident.”

“I told you not to let him—“

“I said not to talk about it!” His scream broke
the silence around us, sending birds screeching up from the trees across the
river.

I moved back, wiping his spit off my face. “Okay,
jeez. Sorry,” I muttered.

He sighed and threw his hands up. “What is it
about you?” he asked. “I try to be nice and then. . .” he trailed off, his
hands falling back to his sides.

“Then what?” I asked.

“Are all the girls like you now? So forward and
blunt?”

I frowned. “You think I’m forward and blunt?” I
asked. I guess I was kind of blunt. “Um…probably not all girls, but yeah, we’re
pretty out there now I guess. We don’t follow orders anymore just because they
come from a man, if that’s what you’re asking.” I wondered what decade the
newest girl on the island came from. William probably wouldn’t remember anyway
so I didn’t bother asking.

He smirked. “You follow my orders.”

I shook my head. “No I don’t.”

His smile faded. “You should. You’ll live longer.”

“Like you care,” I said. Again with my stupid
tongue.

He grabbed my vest. “Don’t say that,” he said. “I
don’t want anyone to die. I never wanted anyone to die.”

I resisted the urge to pull away from him. “If
that’s true, then why make us fight?”

He shook his head, his hair flying around his
face. “I told you. We have to stop the Captain. If we don’t, he’ll just keep
killing everyone anyway.” He pulled himself together, obviously struggling to
get himself under control.

“Paige, I don’t want anything to happen to you.
Please just promise me you’ll do what I say.” 

“If what you tell me to do makes sense, then I’ll
do it. I’m not going to promise anything.”

He looked like he was going to argue, but a wild
cry from the edge of the river interrupted us. The other kids had arrived at
the river. They all rushed in, not pausing to take off their shoes or their
clothes.

“Why are they in such a hurry?” I asked.

William shrugged. “The spiders will be out any
second now. The sun’s going down.”

A cry from the across the river reached my ears
over the splashing. Just reaching the water’s edge was the boy who’d fallen in
the trap. He was limping and gasping for air.

“William,” I said. “He’s not going to make it.”

William looked over at the boy. He flew straight
across the river, hitting the boy and lifting him into the air in one motion.
As their feet left the ground, three huge black shapes erupted from the tree
line.

I gasped. The spiders were the size of Shetland
ponies, with shiny black legs and a body sprinkled with pink spots. Their legs
clicked together as they moved to the edge of the river. A strange hissing
sound floated over the water.

William landed next to me and let the boy go.

“Thanks, William,” he said. “I thought I was a
goner.” He hobbled off to the fire some of the kids were working on getting
started. He didn’t seem to care at all that he’d almost just been eaten.

I looked at William, but he just shrugged before
settling down next to the other kids.

When Jasmine came up carrying a bowl of rice and
beans, cold, but smelling of onions and pepper, I took it with a grateful sigh.

“Remember what I said,” she said. “He does this
with every new girl.”

She got up and walked away, not waiting for my
answer. Which was good. Because I didn’t have one. I had no idea what I felt
for William. One minute he was caring and friendly, the next, a raging lunatic.
I couldn’t figure him out, and wasn’t sure if I really wanted to anyway.

I needed to focus on rescuing Jake and getting
back to Earth. There wasn’t any room for anything else.

The smooth click of steel claws on the floor as the
wolf stalked across the room was like music to my ears. I’d figured it out,
conquered the power problem, and now my creatures, three wolves, two spiders,
and ten mini dragonflies, flitted, scurried, and clawed their way around the
room. I’d had some of the Captain’s men brought in to help with the assembly,
and now they were busily working at churning out a whole army of spiders and
wolves. I was working on a larger creature shaped more like a horse to carry
people through the jungle. Cars wouldn’t work, too big, and rubber wheels would
be subject to thorns and tears from sharp rocks.

I’d left the power plant I’d built for the Captain
hours before with directions to replace the power source every three days. The
Captain’s men didn’t seem to have any problem coming up with the fairies, and
the Captain already had plans to try to get them to breed in captivity. The
Captain’s men were still looking for unguarded waterfalls across the island for
a hydroelectric plant, but the sites were hard to secure and the fae congregated
around the falls, so that was out as a potential power source for awhile.

The Captain came up and hit me on the shoulder.
“You did it, boy! Didn’t I tell you that you could?”

I nodded. “Yes, sir,” I answered. I didn’t like it
when the Captain was nice. It usually meant trouble for someone.

“Have you taught my men how to use the controls?”
he asked.

I nodded again. The machines were voice activated
with a number of different pre-programmed commands. I didn’t spend too much
time thinking about the images I’d uploaded into the creatures’ target
recognition software. I had a job to do, and I still had to sleep at night
after all.

“Good. Keep building them and we should be ready
to go by next week.” The Captain’s eyes shone with pleasure and greed.

“Ready to do what?” I asked. I cursed myself for
opening my mouth, for asking, for caring even that little bit, but I couldn’t
help myself.

The Captain eyed me for a few seconds while he
chewed on his mustache. Finally he shrugged.

“The fae here are deathly allergic to iron. I’ll
be using your inventions to route them out with minimal casualties and optimal
damage. They won’t be able to kill your little toys and one touch by one of
these things will make them sick enough they’ll wish they were dead. It’s a
perfect system.”

“But why?” I asked. I didn’t think about blood and
death. I’d created these things because I could and because they were
beautiful.

“I’ve got plans for this island, boy. Plans that
you’re going to help me achieve. This place is a goldmine of opportunity. What
do you think the politicians and businessmen of Earth would do if they could
see this place? If they could come here on vacation instead of the tropics?
What would happen if I could supply some of Earth’s greatest minds with an unlimited
supply of fairy dust? I’ll be the one to do it, and I’ll be a rich, rich man
while I live here forever in comfort. Once the Fae are gone, there’s nothing to
stop me from building resorts all over the island and harvesting as much dust
as I can get my hands on.”

I didn’t say anything. It sounded awful. I’d seen
the island on our trip to the power station, and it was a beautiful place:
wild, untamed, absolutely pristine except for the small village on the beach
near where the ship sat in the harbor. The Captain wanted to turn it into a
resort. The thought made me sick, but I couldn’t do anything about it. If I
wanted to stay here and keep building, I’d have to do it for the Captain. The
Fae couldn’t get me the steel and iron I needed to build my inventions, and
they would never let me capture their little cousins to power my inventions.
From what I’d seen, the Captain had the only way off the island and back to
Earth, so all the computers, metals, and technology I needed had to come
through the Captain. I’d already asked why he just didn’t bring through tanks,
but having to disassemble them and then put them back together wasn’t very
efficient. He needed me. This went through my brain as quick as lightening, so
I grinned.

“Sounds like a good plan, sir,” I said.

The Captain nodded and gestured at the machines.
“They’re beautiful. Just what I wanted. You want to come see how they do?”

I hesitated, torn between wanting to see my
inventions in action, and not wanting to see them tearing into living flesh.
Finally, I shook my head. “No, I’ll stay and keep building. I want to finish
the horse as soon as I can and start it on the assembly line. The island’s too
big to be walking around everywhere.”

The Captain smiled and hit me on the shoulder
again. “That’s my boy! Good thinking.” He pointed at the men where they stood
with the machines they’d be running and pointed to the door.

I watched them go, still marveling over the smooth
action of the spiders and the skulking grace of the wolves. So beautiful. So efficient.
I put all thoughts of what that efficiency would be used for out of my head and
went back to work.

“Oh my God! What is wrong with you?” I looked up
from where I sat in a puddle of mud and river water. The water was cold, and
I’d landed right on a rock with my tailbone. William stood over me, a smile
twisting his lips.

“Got to keep you ready for anything,” he said.
“Come with me.” He walked away.

I sat there, sputtering, until Jasmine came up
with a chunk of meat on a stick and shoved it in my face. “Here. You’ll have to
eat on the way. William’s in a hurry.”

I almost swatted the food out of Jasmine’s hands
but then thought better of it and took it instead. The meat was hot, and I was
hungry after yesterday’s hike and small dinner.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

Jasmine shrugged. “William didn’t tell me,” she
said.

I scowled and threw the empty stick in the fire as
I walked by and stomped over to William where he stood waiting for me by the
river. I put my hands on my hips and glared at him. He returned my stare with a
small quirk of his lips. He picked me up and flew across the river, dropping me
as soon as we were on the other side. He dashed ahead, disappearing into the
trees.

I cursed and looked back, not wanting to leave the
relative safety of the group of kids.

“Paige! Come on.” William’s voice called from the
trees.

I sighed and trudged down the path. William was
waiting for me a few hundred yards into the forest. He was eating a piece of
fruit and flicked the remains at me as I walked up.

“You’re slow,” he said. “I’m not going to wait for
you. If you don’t keep up, I’ll leave you here in the jungle.”

“Right,” I said. “Seems like a good way to keep me
alive.”

He frowned. “Whatever. Let’s go.” He took off,
walking so fast that I had to almost run to keep up. After only a few minutes
my calves were burning and my bare feet felt like someone was smashing them
with a sledgehammer.

“Where are we going?” I gasped out in between
breathes.

William didn’t turn around. “Pyro reminded me that
cutting only one of the lines won’t stop whatever the Captain’s planning. I
need your help to destroy whatever new machine the Captain’s built.”

I stumbled to a halt. “What? No! Are you insane?”

He turned back on me, eyes narrowed in anger. “You
said you’d do what I said.”

“No. I said I’d do what you said if it made sense.
This is dangerous.”

William smiled, but the expression lacked any
amusement at all. “Fine. I’ll just leave your friend Jake to rot with the
Captain.”

I was so shocked, it felt like he’d punched me in
the belly. “So what, you’re going to rescue him? You’re blackmailing me?”

He looked confused and then just shrugged. “Help
me and I’ll help you try to get your friend back. That is what you want, isn’t
it?”

“Well, yes,” I said.

“Good. Then let’s go.” He turned and started
walking off. This time he gave up any pretense at all of walking and floated a
few inches off the ground.

I wanted to just sit down and take a nap, but
William’s offer was too hard to resist. I wasn’t sure why he was offering now
when he’d been so against it before, but I wasn’t going to argue. I scurried
after him in time to catch a piece of fruit he threw at me. I ate it and
settled down to a long walk. I was sore and bruised from the hike the day
before, but at least it wasn’t raining. When we stopped outside a large
clearing, my feet were blistered and I was covered in bug bites.

William was unsympathetic. “The lines go into that
building.” He pointed with a mud spattered, muscled arm.

I looked where he was pointing and felt a nasty
shock. Beyond the outer ring of trees around the clearing, the undergrowth was
trampled. The trees were splintered and broken. It looked like they were left
where they’d fallen. At the center of the cleared space sat a newish looking
stone building. The hardware on top of the building made it look like a power
substation. I knew enough to know that that’s what it was but not enough to
figure out how to destroy it. I decided to keep that info to myself. When
William began to creep towards the building from the back, I followed, clumsy
and awkward on my sore feet.

When we rounded the corner of the building and
came upon two guards armed with black rifles, William didn’t hesitate. His
sword was a silver blur in the air. Before I could turn away or stop him, the
guards lay slumped at the door. A fine spray of blood painted the stone behind
them. I stared at the dead men, my heart leaping and cartwheeling in my chest.
They hadn’t even had a chance to fire their weapons.

“You killed them,” I said. The words fell like
bricks out of my mouth into the silence.

William didn’t look at me, just pushed through the
door behind the guards. His cry of surprise brought me rushing inside after
him. In a cage in the center of the room lay what look liked hundreds of
fairies. They were all emaciated, their wings shriveled and cracked against
their pale, naked limbs. The cage was hooked up to lines that disappeared into
the ceiling and hummed with power.

“Help me,” William said.

At the sound of his voice, a few of the fairies
stirred. Their weak, mewling cries of pain made me sick to my stomach, but I
grabbed William’s arm. “Don’t touch the cage,” I said.

He shook me off but didn’t reach out to touch the
metal. He stared at the trapped fairies with rage. “I’m not leaving until
they’re freed,” he hissed at me.

I nodded, trying to think. There had to be
something in the metal itself that was pulling energy from the fairies. If I
could just stretch the bars of the cage out, I should be able to pull the fairies
out. Before I could chicken out, I shoved my staff through the bars and threw
my weight into it. When the metal gave out with a soft squeal, I nearly fell on
my face. Whatever the material was, it wasn’t steel. The fairies that were
still well enough to fly streamed out of the box. The others crawled onto
William’s outstretched hand and clung like shipwreck survivors. When all of the
living fairies were out, the bottom of the cage was still drifted with bodies.

William stared at them, his face pale and set.
When he snatched the staff away from me with one hand and began beating the
cage and the connecting wires, I stepped back and didn’t say anything. The
fairies clinging to his other arm were keening, and the others that had flown
out came and clung to William’s hair and shoulders until he was wearing a
living blanket of little blue and green and yellow fairies. He was screaming so
loudly it hurt my ears in the small space.

While he destroyed as much of the machine as he
could, I looked around the building. When I spotted a box of colored pencils
and a pad of graph paper sitting on a table off in the corner, the sweat on my
skin turned to ice water. I approached the table slowly, already knowing what
I’d find. In the colored pencil box, only the red and blue pencil showed any
use. The graph paper tablet was full of schematics, all neatly labeled and
notated in Jake’s cramped, precise handwriting. The last page with writing on
it contained an illustration of the cage behind me. The fairies in the cage were
rendered as stick figures with frowny faces.

Before William could come up behind me and ask
what I was doing, I shoved the tablet down the front of my pants. On an
afterthought, I dropped the colored pencils in too. I hoped William wouldn’t
notice the square outline across the front of my thighs, but when I turned
around again, William was gone.

With a curse, I dashed out of the building after
him only to see him disappearing over the treetops. I screamed at him to wait
and sprinted back towards where we’d entered the clearing. Desperate, I
searched the ground for some sign of the path we’d used, but beyond a faint
scuff on the leaves, there was no trail. He’d left me and night was coming. I’d
helped him, and he’d abandoned me in the middle of the jungle. One minute he
wanted to keep me alive and make out with me, and the next he just disappeared.

“Jerk,” I said. The sound of my voice was the only
noise in the clearing. Panicked and unsure what to do, I went back to the
building and shut the door behind me. Maybe William would come back and fly me
to safety. I should stay here where he could find me.

Yes, and maybe I’ll wake up and realize this
was all a crazy, awful dream
. I wandered around the small building, eyes on
the wire mesh over the windows up near the ceiling. I tried not to imagine the
spiders tearing through the screen to get at me and failed. Finally, exhausted,
I sank back against the wall to wait for night.

A soft moan of sound woke me up a little later.
Moonlight painted the inside of the concrete building a pale, silvery gray. I
imagined scrabbling legs and clicking fangs in the deep shadows pooled in the
corner, but when the moan came again, I pushed myself to my feet and tiptoed
over to the broken cage. With gentle fingers, I pushed aside the drift of
stiff, brittle bodies until I found the source of the noise. The fairy, smaller
than the rest and colored a very dark purple, clung to my fingers with her
hands and feet. The creature shuddered and cried out in pain as I pulled her
free.

“Oh, you poor thing. I’m sorry,” I said as I
brought the fairy over to the table where I’d found Jake’s tablet. The fairy
huddled on the bare wood, one wing broken and hanging, both legs tucked up
against her chest. I plucked at the shirt I wore under my vest, and finding a
hole, ripped off a piece of material to cover the shivering fairy. I sat there,
staring at the injured creature and felt like crying. I couldn’t imagine Jake
being any part of this cruel torture, but I’d seen the proof of it. I pulled
the tablet out, squinting to read it in the pale moonlight.

Some of the drawings made me cringe. One in
particular looked like something out of a nightmare. It was a wolfish looking
iron creature with captured fairies resting in its chest. The teeth were made of
what looked like serrated knife blades.

Without thinking, I pulled a purple colored pencil
out of the box and began to sketch the fairy before me. I drew the wings strong
and straight, the body well-fleshed, and the face stretched in a mischievous
smile. When I moved to finish the eyes, I felt the same tingling I’d felt when
I’d drawn the tiger for the Captain.

An irresistible compulsion to finish the drawing
rushed through me, molten and hot. It was uncomfortable and made my stomach
clench. When the feeling intensified, I gasped, fighting the compulsion. It
flared, my insides growing so warm I began to sweat. With a cry of pain, I gave
up and pressed my pencil back to the page.

The image of the fairy, whole and healthy flashed
in front of my eyes, and I latched onto it, pulling the health of the tiny
creature I’d drawn on the page into the fairy lying on the table. The tingling
intensified, until with a sharp, stabbing pain in the middle of my forehead, it
subsided. With blurry eyes, I plucked the makeshift blanket away from the
injured fairy, barely suppressing the foolish hope. The tablet fell to the
floor in my shock.

Staring back at me was not the emaciated, stick
fairy I’d laid on the table. Instead, a vivacious, sparkling little creature
leaped into the air, and with a sharp, high-pitched squeal, launched herself
into my hair, her tiny hands stroking my cheeks. I couldn’t help laughing. When
the fairy finally settled back down and was prancing along the table with the
piece of t-shirt as a cape, I went in search of food. If I knew Jake, there’d
be a stash somewhere. He couldn’t work without eating.

I let out a little squeal of my own as I unearthed
a box of water and dried meat and fruit beneath the table. In between mouthfuls
of food, I tore off little bits and offered them to the fairy. After a few
attempts at trying to get the fairy to eat some fruit, I gave up and handed
over a strip of jerky. With my stomach full and the fairy curled up in the
curve of my neck, I stared at the drawing I’d done. Apparently, I did have a
special ability. I wondered if I could draw something from scratch and bring it
to life. Instead of trying, I tucked the tablet and pencils up against my side
and curled up against the wall to listen for William or spiders.