Gwen saw Tiger Lily's brown eyes change before she felt her grip slip into nothing. Her spirit and kindness abandoned her eyes, dulling their earthy color without changing it at all. Her heart stood stone still, and her lungs no longer stirred beside it. Nothing moved in Tiger Lily, except for the blood that continued to seep out of her fatal wound.
As she comprehended that Tiger Lily was gone, that she was alone now, Gwen started crying. She picked up Tiger Lily's arms and crossed them over her chest. It took her a moment before she had the courage to lower Tiger Lily's eyelids over her uninhabited eyes. She expected the gesture to calm her, but it only felt macabre. Gwen hoped she would never have to do it again as long as she lived.
Tiger Lily's belly rose as if with a breath, as if with life, but real things never recovered in miracles. What magic remained inside of her reached out, and from the bed of her bloody wound a flower stalk pushed up and unfurled its green leaves. Gwen sat beside Tiger Lily, clutching her knees to her chest, and watched as a lily blossomed—as orange as the setting sun, as freckled as the end of summer.
Gwen wept then, open and loud, for never in Neverland had she felt so much like a child.
Chapter 26
Gwen felt the strain of a headache punishing her for her grief. “Pull yourself together,” she ordered, sounding stronger than she felt as she still cried. Talking out loud gave her words a weight she couldn't achieve in her head. “We're still in the middle of a war, and if you don't pull yourself together and start fighting, all this might be for nothing.” She stood up, but her feet felt like trees with shallow roots. How was she supposed to balance, how was she supposed to walk?
She turned her back on Tiger Lily. She would have plenty of time for sorrow and ceremony after they had won this war. She left the woman looking peaceful on the ground, a tiger lily blooming up out of her bloody belly.
She could hear mumbled cries for help several yards off, from the black coat she'd pelted down with eggs. He deserved to stay glued to the ground until pirates found him and chained him up for a long, queasy voyage back to reality. He deserved so much worse, Gwen thought, but that would suffice.
Too harrowed to fly, she tromped through the woods. She needed to tell Peter. She brought the tin can telephone out of her purse. She couldn't give him the news over their tinny communication line, but she would need to find out where he was. The last they had spoken, Peter needed her to survey the nouthern shore. She reoriented herself and headed in the direction of the mermaid's lagoon. She would be able to see everything from the cliff side that led down to the lagoon, so she set off again on a course again for the shore and called Peter.
“Peter?” Gwen asked the can. “Peter, are you there?”
She hoped her voice didn't sound as uneasy as it felt.
“Hello, Gwen!”
She was taken aback by the chipper voice, the feminine voice… the voice calling her by her actual name. “Rosemary?” she asked. “Where's Peter?”
“Oh! He'll be real glad you're okay!” Rosemary answered. “He kept yelling your name in this can but nothing happened.” Gwen slapped a hand against her face in shame—she'd completely ignored her satchel and had the can buried in it while crying. “He gave it to me and told me to listen for you,” Rosemary added.
This didn't answer her question. “But where is Peter, Rosemary? Can you give the can back to him?”
“Oh no,” her little sister replied. “He said you went to the shore and would report back. You didn't report back, though, so he went there himself.”
Her feet quickened and she tried to unearth the logic driving Peter's decisions—an always impossible task. Did he head out to the beach and abandon the Never Tree because the intelligence information Gwen had failed to provide was that crucial to his strategy?
Or was he looking for her?
“I'm heading that way now,” Gwen told her little sister. “If you see Peter again, have him talk to me, and if you get into any trouble, you call me right away, okay?”
“Yep!” Rosemary chirped.
She stuffed her can into her purse and put her jellied feet to ambitious use, sprinting through the forest toward the shore. More aware of her busy mind than her surroundings, Gwen didn't see herself tripping until she fell flat on the ground. She got back to her feet in a flash, and looked to see what had sent her flying over her own feet.
There was nothing on the ground. She kicked around for a second, looking for some nefarious root or troublesome rock lurking beneath the soft bed of grass and ivy vines. She found nothing. Something had tripped her, and it wasn't there anymore. She hadn't heard a sound, not so much as a blade of grass rustling, when it moved. Gwen pulled out her flashlight.
She stayed put, but slowly spun around. Natural shadows abounded in the jungle. She didn't know how to identify a rogue shadow camouflaged against everything else blocking the afternoon sunlight. Gwen tested her feet to see if she could lift off the ground, but her grief and fear still weighed her down. She would have to fight while grounded. She counted to three in her head to ready herself, and turned on the flashlight. She whipped it around as fast as she could, throwing the light beam onto every inch
