“They weren't madmen,” Gwen defended. “They were my parents, doctors, adults…”
The cat chuckled, its laughter even more human than its speech. “We're all mad,” he told her. “Here, there, everywhere… and adults more than most.”
“Can I help you? Gwen repeated, annoyed.
“There's no helping the mad,” he told her, purring as though he delighted in this. “But you can deliver a message. Her majesty sent her rabbit with a formal declaration, but considering the circumstances, I thought it better not to rely on someone who will invariably arrive late.”
Gwen's disposition eased back down as she asked, “What's the message?”
“That we don't have so much as a dogfish in this fight,” the cat announced. “These 'sensible' men waging war against Neverland will never risk an encounter with us, and our realm will always be visited and sustained by some men in the streets of cities, in the mental wards of hospitals, in certain institutions of higher education…
“You can tell Peter that he must be mad if he thinks we can help him,” the cat concluded, swishing his striped tail. His smile spread so wide now, it was running out of room and curling up on his face. The cat contemplatively purred before venturing, “Then again—if Peter really is mad, truly mad, we'd be under obligation to interfere.”
“What do you mean?”
“Madness and nonsense is our sphere. So if Peter is mad, we'll help. If he's not mad, we won't. If he thinks he's mad, he's most certainly not—madmen never believe themselves mad—so if he thinks we'll help, we won't. But if he doesn't think we will, we might, but only if he's wrong.”
Then, without warning or goodbye, the cat vanished. “What does that mean?” she called. She hadn't even blinked. The striped cat and his beastly yellow eyes seemed to have been snatched right out of the fabric of the scene. She sighed and picked up her dish basket. The cat was far from the first queer thing to happen to her this week, but Gwen was a little too old to be comfortable with such unusual encounters, no matter with what frequency they happened.
As she walked, she heard the cat call back an answer before scampering off to whatever far reach its body had already disappeared to.
“It doesn't mean anything,” the cat chuckled. “I might as well have said 'Gwendolyn Hoffman.'”
Chapter 8
Gwen spent the rest of the morning and a fair bit of the afternoon trying to track down Peter and relay the cat's message. She didn't relish giving him more bad news, or trying to explain what the cat had said. However, when she found Peter and explained—to the best of her ability—what the grinning cat had told her, he seemed so uninterested she couldn't even hold his attention. He dismissed her encounter with contemptuous apathy and a brief remark about how “those nursery-rhyme ninnies” didn't matter at all… which led Gwen to believe he had been hoping desperately for their help and reinforcements.
He wouldn't admit it, but Gwen knew Neverland, however magical, had a very limited population to defend against approaching adults.
“PETER!”
The scream shot cold blood through Gwen's veins. Who had screamed? She knew the difference between play-screaming and fear-screaming, but she did not recognize the voice that had cried out with such terror.
“Tally ho, tally hey!” Peter shouted back, but his voice couldn't match the scream.
He might have waited a minute, but Gwen had started running toward the sound of the scream. So worried, she forgot she could move quicker until Peter zipped by her on the air, remarking, “It's faster to fly, Dollie-Lyn.”
Alarm bells and the shattering sound of sirens began to radiate from the grove. By the time Peter and Gwen arrived, half the island's children had already assembled. All confused, everyone demanded answers from each other. No one had any. Hawkbit and Dillweed danced over everyone's heads, giving them a preemptive coating of fairy dust for good measure.
“What's going on, Peter?” Rosemary asked, Twill clinging to her arm.
Peter surveyed all the children before his brow knit and he asked, “Where's Blink?”
“PETER!”
His head sprung up, and he saw the girl high in the oak tree that towered tallest in their grove. No wonder she hadn't recognized the voice, Gwen thought. She'd never heard Blink scream. She'd never seen Blink panic.
Peter flew to the treetop where she perched, and the other children followed after him.
The children nestled on tree branches, crowding around Blink like a flock of roosting birds, and the worried fairies landed on her shoulders. She didn't mind any them. She glanced at Peter to capture his eyes, before pointing out to the watery horizon beyond the island. “There's a ship,” she announced.
Other children craned their necks to see, but the oak tree's verdant foliage left few vantage points.
“We already knew that Blink!” a boy complained.
“I thought there were three ships,” a girl objected.
“Are they getting closer?” Newt and Sal yelled.
But Blink looked in the wrong direction to see the approaching adult fleet. “No,” she answered, never taking her eyes off the distant threat. “This is a different ship, and it's sailing faster. Much faster.”
Peter crept behind her, peering over her shoulder to see. Gwen, out on a limb she feared would collapse under her weight, brushed aside a branch and its obscuring leaves. She saw the triple-masted ship cutting through the water, its sun-bleached sails billowing in the wind. An ominous black flag, belonging to no nation or honest seafarer, fluttered above the crow's nest.
“Pirates,” Peter announced.
The gasps and cries that followed carried so little meaning, they might as well have fallen into a pervasive silence.
“They'll be slowed down by Neverland too, though, right?” Gwen asked.
“Pirates never follow the rules,” he scoffed. “They'll be here before the afternoon is out.”
Her stomach
