Evening waddled forward like a fat, old pig, eventually collapsing the day into darkness. This went much against the children's desires, but their stomachs called them to dinner by rumbling as much as Inch and Scout called them by ringing dinner bells. Afterward, they settled down with full tummies and contented spirits to hear the next installment of Gwen's story, to know what happened next to Margaret May.
By the time the youngest children started snuggling into each other and letting their eyes droop, Gwen had only just reached the part where Margaret May found the raven tree. A few months back—or some short infinity ago—Gwen had been forced to stop there by her mother. Back home, her mother had reprimanded for keeping Rosemary awake. Back home, she hadn't suspected anything would come of planting such fantastical and adventurous ideas in Rosemary's head.
She brought the story installment to a close—to the disappointment of some, and the yawns of others. In short order, all the lost children stomped away to bed, ushered by the fairies, who knew they children would need all the energy they could muster for one last day of preparations tomorrow.
Gwen had never had insomnia before reaching Neverland. Always sleep-deprived from the demands of high school, she leapt at every opportunity to cuddle into the comfort of her pillow and whatever vague dreams awaited her. Now, she counted Rosemary's muffled snores like sheep and tried to clear her mind. The same questions kept returning to her.
She sat up in bed, the quilt slumping off her. The heart inside her chest seemed to pound harder with every minute she remained in the dark underground home with her thoughts. She had no one to talk to. Everyone had fallen asleep, and even in the daylight, all they could only distract her from these complicated troubles. Even Peter was too invested in his childish identity to give her worries a serious audience. Once she had used Lasiandra as a sounding board, but Lasiandra had transformed into just another concern circling in her head.
Of course—the thought tip-toed into her mind—there were people in Neverland that she could have a serious, adult conversation with. One in particular, who she had trusted and respected back when they both lived in reality. Gwen sat in bed a minute more, entertaining that thought. Ashamed of herself, she lay back down in bed and resolved to calm herself and fall asleep on her own.
After fifteen minutes of compulsive worrying and no progress, her resolve started to falter. By the time half an hour had passed, she found herself slipping out of bed. Creeping through the cavernous halls of the underground home, she passed all the children lost in the murmuring dreams of Neverland. Moving even slower through the main room where Peter still hung his hammock and slung himself into sleep, she slipped up the big oak tree and out into the warm night.
No breeze fluttered her dress. Neverland itself seemed to sleep as if it, too, wanted to rest and prepare for what lay ahead. “Do I really trust myself this much?” Gwen muttered. Talking to fairies had become so second-nature, and they always seemed to be around. When they weren't, Gwen talked to herself to vent her musings.
She had always asked herself that question though. All at once another, opposite question occurred to her: what if I'm not trusting myself enough? On an impulse she decided not to question, Gwen stepped off the oak tree. She did not lift off. She did not jump into the air. She stepped, and fell.
Her heavy, cotton nightgown fluttered in fear, but she embraced the free fall. She closed her eyes. She listened to her heart beat and her blood pulse, but she didn't mind them. It was only fear, and she wouldn't indulge it.
With a deep breath, Gwen opened her eyes and saw the ground as she hurtled down. With instinctual swiftness, she started flying and curved up, pulling out of the dive with grace and adrenaline. Redirecting her downward momentum slung her in a beautiful arc that sent her flying faster than she ever had before. Soaring over trees, she cut across Neverland. Her bird's eye view directed her toward the edge of the island where Starkey's ship sat moored in the moonlight.
Flying lower, she dropped toward the water and misjudged how far away it was. She recoiled when she felt the water's spine-chilling cold on her bare feet. She still wasn't used to not having a shadow. It had been a small loss during their suburban battle. Sliced free by Starkey's sword, it had fled into the night. She missed it in an abstract way, but her lack of shadow only troubled her when she tried to make spatial calculations at night. Her wet feet dried as she flew, and she did not make the mistake again.
She approached the Grammarian, its reddish timber glowing with the ghostly shine of its wood wax. Gwen landed on the proud ship and paused before floating across the deck. Sails overhead beat like a slow, thumping heart in the maritime wind. She heard profanity-laced chatter from the other side of the deck while a few mates discussed mermaids in very vulgar terms. Dipping into the shadows, Gwen flew over to the wall of the ship. Out of sight, she waited until the crew's voices drifted further away, toward the bow of the boat.
She didn't know what would happen if a pirate caught her sneaking around. She only wanted to talk to Starkey. Would this be construed as espionage? Would they take her hostage? She couldn't waste energy worrying about these problems. Whatever happened, she would deal with it. Pirates couldn't be that unreasonable. They were adults, after all.
She suspected the captain's quarters would be—as it often was in novels and movies—above the hull. The dark body of the ship with its tiny porthole windows stored goods, cannons, powder kegs, and the crew. Starkey, she felt, would settle for nothing
