She dove underwater, drawing the bag of fruit with her, and did not resurface.
Chapter 2
Gwen returned to the grove much slower than she had left it, and with none of the anxious optimism she'd had on her way to the lagoon. Light crept in only through the crevices of the forest, and Gwen trudged along shielded from the pale pink of the morning. Faint glowing fairies stirred awake and lumbered through the air on groggy wings, none of them knowing, suspecting, or caring where Gwen had been.
Eglantine meant to upset her, wanted her to doubt herself. Gwen couldn't have possibly been in Neverland five hundred years—Eglantine and Cynara would have died by now if she had lost that many years to this impossible world. She had not lived here five years, either. She could not have let that long pass unnoticed. Eglantine wanted to upset her. She couldn't trust the mermaids on a good day, let alone on days they hated her. She didn't need to give another thought to Eglantine's hyperbolic question. Mermaids, unable to lie, always gave people questions instead of answers when they wanted to hide the truth.
She took her time wandering home—for this was her home now—and it didn't surprise her to find the morning in full swing. A standard and wild ruckus had blossomed as soon as the lost children had woken.
Mint was teaching Jam and Blink how to fold saris, using small blankets from the linen basket. Scout, unaware that the day was only agreeably warm, attempted to fry an egg on a rock. Goose turned cartwheels while Cat pressed flowers, and Oat fussed because his friendship bracelets never came out as well as Yam's. Pin had finished her cootie catcher, and soberly informed Tin that the tiny paper prophet had doomed him to a future full of elephant farts.
Inch, the only girl who could match Spurt's hyperactivity, ran all over the grove with him as part of a game they'd invented, called Who Can Pick Up The Most Leaves. Newt and Sal had teamed up with Fish for a diminutive game of capture the flag against Dash, Clay, and Squall. Wax and Dew were fast at work in a noble but doomed effort to make their own bows and arrows—they hoped to launch a surprise attack against the redskins before dinner.
Peach, Pear, and Plum—the three girls convinced they were long lost sisters, despite ethnic differences that would suggest otherwise—were in the middle of an extended game of double dutch, joyfully chanting to the rhythm of Pear's skips while Hollyhock bobbed overhead and kept count in fairy language.
Gwen couldn't keep all the new lost children straight in her head. What's more, she knew they'd all had normal names when they first arrived. Before long at all, everyone had forsaken their given names in exchange for easy and frivolous nicknames they felt more at home in. Fortunately, the lost children didn't care what anyone called them. They would answer to any name. Gwen could usually get someone's attention just by yelling gibberish at them.
Amid all these children, in the middle of the grove, Peter and Jet fenced with wooden swords as if their lives and honor depended on it. Rosemary and Twill watched the fight while trying to figure out how to smash open walnuts with a nutcracker they'd found. They weren't very good at it, and the nuts they shattered into pieces they gave to tiny Dillweed and Hawkbit.
Twill and Rosemary had grown inseparable as soon as he set foot on the island. He followed her like a shadow, and seemed almost as timid as one, too. No one had rechristened him with a made-up name, but his name had already sounded a bit made-up. For a pirate's son, he was surprisingly quiet and well-behaved. Gwen had finally gotten used to having him around, and had learned to ignore the twinge of guilt that twisted her spine whenever she thought about poor Mr. Starkey and the moral issue of kidnapping her teacher's son.
Pin, her braids bouncing on her head and glasses bouncing on her nose, ran up to Gwen with the cootie catcher. Before she could burst into chatter, Gwen asked, “What are Peter and Jet fighting for?”
“Mint, what are they fighting for?” Pin shouted.
Mint lifted her eyes from the bed sheet sari she was wrapping around Jam, contemplating the question in a flash. “They're fighting for Gwen.”
“I want them to fight for me!” Jam objected. Blink, also in a sari, tested to make sure she could still turn cartwheels with Goose.
“You're not as good of a prize,” Pin replied.
“Why not?” Jam demanded, scowling.
Jet called out in between jabs at Peter. “Gwen's bigger. Sorry Jam.”
“Prizes are like presents,” Pin elaborated. “Bigger ones are better.”
Jam couldn't argue.
Peter shot his eyes to Gwen with as much of a glance and smile as he could spare while locked in combat. “Then I shall vanquish this scoundrel in your name, Dollie-Lyn!”
Gwen smiled and shook her head, “Some other time, Peter.” Leaving them to their battle, she headed for the grove's tallest oak tree.
As she left, Gwen heard Jam exclaim, “Does that mean I get to be the prize now?”
Flying to the top of the oak tree, Gwen found her hole and slipped, as usual, into the trunk and down into the underground home. Everyone had fled out into the bright new day unfolding over Neverland. Only she crept underground, alone through the main room and down one of the cavernous halls. The glow lilies from the main room had spread like weeds and rooted their vines in the ceiling. Their bright filaments illuminated the tunnels an inch above Gwen's head.
When Gwen had last left for reality to find the Piper, Newt and Sal had only just begun the ambitious project of digging a series of secret tunnels. By the time she came back, however, they'd made unbelievable
