An eclipse would only last so long. Gwen suspected she didn't have more than five minutes before the totality of the eclipse began to dissolve. The moon would push past the sun, and the shadows would become powerful and swift again.
She heard rustling in the brush behind her and felt her heart leap into her throat. She did not want to be found in an open field without any cover.
“Ahoy!” a gruff voice greeted her. Two flat-footed pirates came stomping out of the brush, their pistols drawn. “Heard you screaming, didn't we, lass?”
Gwen looked off and gestured, pointlessly, to the place where her attacker had disappeared. “One of the shadows surprised me.”
The taller of the two, with a beard as red and rough as coral, shoved his pistol away. He had a bright green glass eye that didn't match his natural green eye at all. Gwen wondered if he knew eye-patches were more traditional. Holstering his gun, he remarked, “Can't shoot a shadow.”
The smaller pirate switched his pistol for a rolled up map and examined it as he announced, “I'm Jimmy Sloat, and this here is Madman Mulligan.” He unrolled the map, and Gwen noticed Jimmy Sloat was missing a finger on his right hand. The scar on his hand ran halfway up his arm. She didn't want to know the story behind such a scar. “Captain told us to keep a lookout for you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, Hoffman, ain't it?” he asked. “He said you'd surely get yourself stuck in trouble, running around the island with Pan's herd of pipsqueaks.”
Gwen resented Starkey's doubt. “Well you can tell him that I managed just fine on my own.”
“You got real lucky there with the weather,” Madman Mulligan grumbled, shielding his eyes as he looked at the eclipse.
Before Gwen could insist that it was an astronomical event, not a weather event, Jimmy Sloat barked, “You durn fool, that was redskin magic if I ever saw it.”
Madman Mulligan grumbled something else, and then asked, “Which way is we supposed to be heading?”
Gwen thought the pirates spoke very poorly, considering they belonged to the crew of a ship called the Grammarian.
Jimmy Sloat turned the map upside down, and then right side up again, with a cross expression that Gwen did not find encouraging.
“Do you know where them guttersnipes rigged their big trapping pit?” he asked. “This map don't give no point of reference for us to start at.”
“Yeah,” she answered, uncertainly. She had a healthy mistrust of pirates, the same as any lost child. “Follow me.”
For Gwen, the meadow served as a strong point of reference. She'd been with Rosemary and Twill while they had rigged the biggest of the leaf-covered holes just a few yards from the meadow's edge. With the pirates behind her, she cut across the meadow. While the men both had both their legs, Jimmy Sloat walked with a limp that kept him a pace behind at best, and scrambling to keep up at worst. Madman Mulligan carried a heavy, jangling bag that rattled as they walked through the cornflowers and past the lilac bushes.
Jimmy Sloat caught up once Gwen reentered the jungle and slowed down, careful not to fall into the trap herself. This was an unnecessary precaution—someone had already tripped the trap, and a team of three black coats bitterly occupied the bottom of the pit. Gwen felt bad for them, and hoped they hadn't hurt themselves when they toppled down together.
“Hey ho!” Jimmy Sloat chortled, looking down at them. “Had you a bit of a fall, did you?”
In response, the quickest draw of the three shot him in the face.
The magic-repellent splattered against Jimmy Sloat's face, covering it—hook nose, warts, and all—in blue gunk. Unamused, he smeared it off his face and drew his pistol. “You yellow-bellied, rat-faced, swine!” he yelled. “Do I look like a fairy to you? Pirates ain't magic, we's just here to capitalize on it—same as you ugly freebooters.”
To prove a point, he fired a booming shot from his wood-handled pistol. The iron ball, not as aerodynamic as modern bullets, struck the stony wall of the trap pit and carried little force as it ricochet into one of the men. He howled as it stung his arm, but one of his fellow soldiers picked it up and examined it with horrified curiosity.
“Now then,” Jimmy Sloat announced, as if continuing an eloquent discussion, “you've come a good long ways to be here today and we're going to schlep you a good long ways back. A most merciful fate, considering the atrocities you was intending to commit on this island. Why, such stuff's beneath even the most malicious of pirates! Ain't that right, Madman?”
“That's right, Jimmy,” Madman Mulligan answered, giving a single, solemn nod.
“So we's going to get you out of there and take you back to the ship with us—all with no fuss, eh boys?” He cocked his gun again. “And, in case you were wondering, that first shot was a warning shot. I'm the best shot this side of the Indian Ocean. Ain't that right, Madman?'
“That's right, Jimmy.”
The black coats, forced to surrender, reluctantly complied with Jimmy's demands. All the while they cursed the bad intelligence they had gotten regarding the pirate population of Neverland.
Gwen, meanwhile, was distracted by the sound of a man shouting a little ways off. It sounded like a heated, one-sided argument, and the odd rambling compelled her to investigate.
Chapter 23
Gwen didn't have a hard time tracking down the shouting. The man was clearly having some kind of trouble, and working himself into a fit trying to resolve it.
“No, I didn't say that! You're putting words in my mouth!”
As she neared, she heard the much more measured side of the argument. “Even supposing I did… it's your eyes putting me in this tree,” his antagonizer purred. “So who is really to blame?”
“No—you're not real!” But
