“Is, is that… a scalp?” Gwen asked, more than a little horrified.
Tiger Lily followed her mortified gaze to her hand, and then laughed. “Oh no,” she chuckled, “one of those nimrods had a toupee—I stole it before Storm Sounds dragged him off to the pirates.”
She seemed pleased with herself. Tiger Lily had a grand command of whimsy and impishness here, Gwen could see girl she had been before pirates had kidnapped her from the island. She could imagine this woman as a girl, one who had lived and breathed beside Peter Pan from the moment he first set foot in Neverland. While various lost children had cycled through their feverish fascination with Neverland and generations of fairies had come and gone, Tiger Lily had been an unwavering constant in Peter's world.
A gunshot cut through the jungle's muddled silence, its painful noise as sharp as a knife. It happened so fast, Tiger Lily seemed to double over at the exact same moment, or maybe even before the sound.
“No!” Gwen screamed. “Tiger Lily!”
She wanted to help her friend, but Gwen's attention was, out of necessity, directed toward the solider who had fired the shot from behind Tiger Lily. He fired at Gwen as she ran toward him and hurtled raven tree eggs out of her purse. His magic repellent only stung Gwen, and she hit him square in the jaw with one of her sparkling black-shelled fruits. The sticky whites within exploded and solidified like drying glue over his mouth. He mumbled objections, but the goop silenced him. When he realized the uselessness of his weapon and the devastating effect of his adversary's arsenal, he started running away. Gwen aimed for his feet though, gunking them up and tripping him to the ground. She pelted him mercilessly until he stuck flat against the forest floor. She ran back to Tiger Lily.
Tiger Lily had a hand against the nearest tree, steadying herself as her other arm wrapped around her gut. Before Gwen could arrive beside her, her balance gave out and she collapsed beside the tree.
“Tiger Lily!” Gwen flung herself down and kneeled beside the wounded woman. “You're going to be okay, okay?” She took her dark hand in hers, trying to get Tiger Lily to look at her. Tiger Lily blinked back pain, staring at the lattice of tree branches above her with sputtering, hoarse breaths. She did not answer Gwen's question, but continued to hold her stomach, covering the injury. Blood seeped out, spilling over her dress and coating her hand.
“Oh, Tiger Lily,” Gwen stammered, “I'll get a doctor—a medicine woman! Old Willow!” But even as she said it, she knew they didn't have time to hunt anyone down. “We have to get the bullet out.” If it had missed vital organs, she might recover.
Tiger Lily gasped, but the noise was tiny and meek. She took her free, unbloodied hand and put it on Gwen's arm, but Gwen was panicking too much to notice the calm gesture. She gently pushed Tiger Lily's other hand off her stomach, and steeled herself against the sight.
Gwen felt herself gag when she saw the wound. She had expected a red and leaking hole where the bullet had tunneled into Tiger Lily's gut. The Anomalous Activity officers were not armed with metal bullets though. They fired magic repellent with the aim of dissolving whatever magic it came in contact with. The bloody abdomen looked like it had suffered a small explosion.
Dark Sun had once said that Tiger Lily had spent too long in the world of reality to ever return. Gwen understood now what he had meant this morning, and why he had been so close to tears when he told her things were rarely as they seemed. After so long in reality, Tiger Lily had become real, but only in part. She was still magical enough for the Anomalous Activity officers to dissolve her, but for all her time in reality, she was real enough to bleed, real enough to suffer.
Tiger Lily squeezed her arm and, with great effort, began taking deeper, slower breaths. When her peaceful eyes met Gwen's, the girl knew in her heart what she wouldn't dare say, or even think. She felt her throat seize up as she fought the urge to cry—because the last thing a dying person needed was panic and tears.
She could not force comforting words from her trembling lips anymore than she could find them in her screaming mind. Tiger Lily patted her arm. “It's okay, Gwen,” she whispered. “It's good that I'm here.”
Gwen nodded, but found no comfort in perspective.
Tiger Lily tensed and her hand sprung back to her stomach. She covered her wound as if the pain was an outside force, trying to fight its way into her. She grimaced and moaned. Gwen didn't know what to do for her. In her powerlessness, she leaned down and kissed Tiger Lily's forehead. The gesture should have been given to a child going to bed, not a woman going into death, but Tiger Lily's expression told Gwen that she had done right. Some comfort lurked in every gesture of love, even when it didn't fit quite right.
Gwen remembered something else Dark Sun had told her, long ago. “Perhaps,” she told Tiger Lily, “our spirits will dance together again in the world after this one.”
Her breaths shuddered, as if she were very quickly growing unbearably cold. Was death cold, Gwen wondered? Life—especially as Tiger Lily had lived it—was such a warm and sunny thing.
Her shuddering breaths turned to stuttering words. “P-please, T-t-tell Peter th-that…”
Tiger Lily trailed off, and Gwen encouraged her, “Tell Peter what?”
“Tell Peter,” Tiger Lily repeated, but to no avail. A weeping smile spread across her face, and she shook her head. Tears came with a sudden sob as she declared, “Don't tell him anything. He never listens.”
“No, Tiger Lily!” Gwen objected, reaching down to cradle Tiger Lily's head in her hand. “He'll listen! He'll know this is important.”
She
