“If it weren't for the raven witch, she would have grown up with her real parents, and lived as royalty,” Gwen reminded him.
“If it weren't for the raven witch, she never would have existed,” Starkey told her. “She's a little bit of fiction, a character in a made-up story, Gwen… and without the raven witch, she would have no story to exist in. Just like that, she'd be gone. ” He snapped his fingers. “So let us not be too unkind to those who craft the circumstances from which we grow.”
The cabin swayed and the lights flickered as a riptide wave crashed against the side of the sturdy boat. Gwen didn't know how to counter her teacher's point, and waited to see if he would elaborate. No further explanation came. He had spoken his piece on the matter, and moved on. “Well then,” Starkey said, dropping the conversation, “a deal is a deal—I believe I agreed to enlighten you as to how I have retained my charming good looks over the course of the past century.”
Something about his tone intimidated Gwen. She still felt defensive. She had grown unaccustomed to talking with people who carried themselves intellectually in conversations. Starkey opened a creaky drawer of his dark desk and pulled out, from the very back, the most disgusting clump of wood Gwen had ever seen. It looked like a wood chip someone had repeatedly pounded with a meat tenderizer.
Starkey held it up so the cabin's candle light could illuminate it. “Bark from the Never Tree—I trust Peter has introduced you to the Never Tree by now. It's Neverland's best kept secret. At least until the adults realized that the phenomenon of Neverland couldn't be sustained by anything besides such a mythical lifeform.”
“The Never Tree is what keeps the lost children young?” Gwen asked.
“Yes,” Starkey answered. She imagined a tree breathing in carbon dioxide from the air and exhaling something more than oxygen, something immortal and magical that changed the chemical makeup of everything around it. He dropped the bit of bark and let it clatter against the desk. “I've been chewing this god-forsaken bit of bark for over a century now. It never breaks down, it's perfectly magic, but I wouldn't mind getting a hold of a new piece.” Gwen stared at the ugly hunk of wood. If a piece that small had kept Starkey alive a hundred years…
“So,” Starkey began, “I'm sure you understand now what the Anomalous Activity Department's real interest in Neverland is.”
“Immortality,” Gwen whispered.
“They'll butcher it, of course. By the time you pump something as magical as immortality through a system as bureaucratic and industrial as the modern medical world, it'll be distilled down to simple advancements in longevity. That is, if they choose to distribute it en masse.”
Gwen tore her eyes off the bark to look at Starkey. “You don't think they will?”
“I don't presume to know what the Chief Anomalous Officer will decide to do with it. But answer me this: if your executive decision meant the difference between anonymously extending the lives of people who wouldn't even believe in how you did it, or immortality for yourself and the secret society you're in charge of… what would you do?”
She thought of the black coats, and the white coated researchers they had at their disposal. They already pulled so many strings behind the world's technological advancements. The idea of such people gaining immortality made her shudder.
“Is there really any man alive you would trust with so much power?” Starkey asked.
She thought for a moment. “You don't seem to have done anything too evil with it.”
“Aye, but I only have a small chunk of it,” he reminded her. “Those ships coming, Gwen… they are angling for the whole tree, and nothing stands in their way but us.”
When they both fell silent, she noticed the rocking of the ship. Anchored in calm and friendly waters, the Grammarian's motion was subtle. Wooden boards creaked on the ship the way the candles flickered from a distance. It felt strangely safe. Aboard a pirate ship, Gwen felt she risked nothing of her good character but that which she'd already sacrificed by choosing to consort with pirates.
“Mr. Starkey,” she began, “what do you know about mermaids?”
Chapter 12
“Mermaids?” Starkey echoed, intrigued by her sudden change of subject. “What would you like to know about them?”
“When I met the Piper, he seemed very afraid of them.”
“What has Peter told you on the subject?”
Gwen tried to get comfortable in her chair, but no matter how she sat, her insides squirmed. “He says they never lie.”
“That's true enough.”
“And that I should never trust them.”
“Even truer.”
“Why?”
Starkey took a moment to read Gwen's face. She feared that the answer was so extensive, he didn't know where to begin. “Do you about Piper's deal with the mermaids?”
“I know he made one,” Gwen answered. “That's how he got his magical tune—they taught him an old mermaid song.”
Starkey nodded, confirming this. “I never met the Piper myself, but I've heard the same story from everyone else who encountered him… back when he still told the story, I suppose.”
He straightened in his seat and started with the most unbelievable detail. “The Piper used to be a pleasant and likable person. Back in his mortal days in Germany, musicians were fewer and farther between, but you still needed one if you wanted any sort of music or dance. So pipers were popular as merry-makers, music-bringers, and festive folk.
“This wasn't enough for Piper though—or maybe it was, but once he ran into a mermaid in the River Weser his priorities changed. At that time, mermaids were still all sirens in the eyes of mortals, and even those who believed in them knew better than to trust them. So the one he ran into had a lot to gain for herself and her sisters.”
“Vanda,” Gwen said, remembering the mermaid Lasiandra had mentioned.
Starkey's mustache twitched as
