Jam stuffed a flashlight in both pockets of her pink dress and carried as many as she could in her arms, much as she had carried the raven tree fruit before Gwen all but tripped over her. She had taken no more than four steps away from the crate when Gwen heard a horrible creaking overhead.
She lifted her head in time to see the tree bough falling, tumbling down almost in slow motion. It looked, for a second, like it only waved in a strong wind. But Gwen had heard the deafening snap of the branch, weakened from the crate crashing into it. She screamed to Jam, “Look out!” and fell over backward as she scrambled to get away from the collapsing branch.
Jam was not so quick.
The little girl dropped the flashlights and covered her head with both her hands, as if that would stop the bough from crushing her. The heavy branch fell on top of her with a hideous thud.
“Jam!” Gwen cried. “Jam!” She fought her way back onto her feet—no easy task when every inch of her body shook. Gwen's first thought was to call for the girl's parents, but that impulse had no merit in Neverland. Jam's parents? What parents? This little girl had run away so long ago, who knew what had even become of the man who used to work on his auto by flashlight?
As she approached, she felt her stomach shrinking to the size and hardness of a peach pit inside her. The bough, as thick as little Jam's waist, had the girl trapped under it, face down in the dirt. Gingerly, Gwen picked it up off the little girl. As she did, she heard Jam groan. Amazingly, the girl was conscious and well enough to complain, “That was heavy!”
Jam stood up. Her face smudged with dirt, she spat with a demonstrative, “Phewy!” noise, and brushed off her dress.
Gwen stared in awe as the small child gathered the flashlights and took off running again, no worse for wear. After she had disappeared from Gwen's sight, Jam's laughter rang and wove through the forest.
Stunned, Gwen tried to make sense of what she had witnessed. She knew the impact should have killed Jam. But Jam lived in Neverland, as invincible and full of super powers as her mind would allow her to be. How could she die? She didn't give Neverland the power to kill her, and Neverland bended, as always, to the will of its inhabitants. Perhaps she could be killed by pirates or meet some such heroic fate, but to die in a simple accident would be no adventure at all.
A subtle horror snuck into Gwen's mind and unfolded into something that terrified her: she did not share Jam's childish invincibility. Gwen knew that accidents, disasters, and mishaps could kill her, and she knew also that accidents, disasters, and mishaps abounded in battlefields. Had she stood under the tree when the branch descended, the bough would have killed her, because her last thought as it fell would have been of certain doom.
Jam's laughter receded as she submerged herself again in the game of war she played alongside the other indestructible children. Gwen took off running, fearing for more than herself. She had grown old enough to know all the myriad things that could kill her, and she suspected that despite all his efforts to avoid that knowledge, Peter knew too.
Chapter 25
Gwen ran through the woods, flying as much as her nervous heart would allow. She oscillated between sprinting on her feet and zooming on the air, holding tight to her satchel so it wouldn't bang against her hips—those awful hips she had never needed, never wanted, and never had as a child. She did not want to break the raven tree fruit's fragile shells in her panicked hurry. In the palm of her clenched fist, she held onto Peter's acorn, hoping it would reveal some much-needed charm. Until it did, she would hold it for comfort during chaos.
She needed to survey the coast and report back to Peter. She hoped the aviator's intervention would improve the situation, but she didn't know what to expect. She couldn't have felt more out of touch with the world around her. Neverland was still surprising her in ways she didn't expect to be surprised by the island, and she suspected the grown-ups still had aces hidden up their sleeves. Her role in all this left her with an amorphous assignment that made her a messenger, lookout, and decoy. She knew why she jumped in and out of all these various responsibilities—she needed to solve whatever needed to be solved by a more mature mind. Peter had allotted her no specific station in this battle because she was more useful as a free agent. Still, this came with its own challenges.
The jungle all started to look the same to Gwen. She would have given anything to break up the trees with something more familiar, more human. She froze when she heard the sound of someone pushing past the yellow blossoms of the scotch broom bush ahead. While trying to mentally retrace her steps and plan a course to the nearest trap, she realized she wouldn't need to start sprinting. Tiger Lily emerged.
“Gwen!” She exclaimed, her smile proving she was fine. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah—you?”
Tiger Lily shook her head and cast her smile at the woods around her. “Yes, I am.”
Everything about Tiger Lily signaled that she felt at home, at last. When Gwen had met her on the reservation by Lake Agana, Tiger Lily had moved with the graceful fluidity of someone perfectly comfortable in her own skin. Here, that grace manifested tenfold, as comfortable in her environment as in her skin. The sun caught the sheen of her dark hair and her breath moved through her with a joyful motion.
Gwen noticed Tiger Lily held something in her hand. The blond hair, no longer attached
