“Mr. Starkey! Come back! Let me out!” Gwen howled, but he didn't respond. He had already left to tend to the battle at hand. Losing her breath, Gwen slumped against the door and sat on the floor, kidnapped by pirates.
Chapter 29
The faintness passed, and Gwen got to her feet. As she considered her position, she paced in Starkey's cabin. She didn't feel well, but she didn't have any disastrous symptoms, either. She had no cognitive impairment. Her mental facilities seemed normal, even if a blistering headache accompanied them. Wanting to be sure she wasn't deluding herself, she decided to do mental math and check herself against her phone's calculator. The cell phone, however, had been submerged along with everything else in her satchel and become nonfunctional. She hadn't lost anything important—in a zippered pocket she found Peter's mysterious acorn still secure and discovered that some magic had water-repellent properties when she checked her pouch of emergency pixie dust. Only her phone and notebook had really suffered from Lasiandra trying to drown her. Or trying to kind of drown her. Gwen was too bitter to appreciate that Lasiandra had left her alive. Regardless, Gwen knew she had to deliver this news to Peter. If she didn't, who would?
She had to figure a way out of Starkey's quarters. She kicked herself for giving Rosemary the skeleton key, but stood by her decision. If Rosemary got into trouble, she'd need it. Gwen could figure out a solution on her own. Pounding again on the heavy door, she confirmed she couldn't break down the thick wood. Even if she found a hatchet or sword to cut her way through, someone would notice and intervene before she managed to chop through.
The thin glass of the windows offered a more viable option for escape. Gwen could smash them with anything. The stained glass lamp or globe on Starkey desk could break through the windows, but the windows on the back of the boat offered no escape except down into the water. She couldn't risk drawing attention to herself by breaking a window until she could fly again.
She knew better than to depend on her ability to fly while feeling frustrated, anxious, and betrayed. She didn't imagine that even a slight concussion would impair her ability to fly, but everything else weighing on her kept her grounded.
Walking over to the window, she glimpsed the adults' ship under heavy cannon fire before the Grammarian changed course to navigate around the besieged ship. Starkey's pirate ship seemed to breeze over the water in a way the Anomalous Activity's ship couldn't hope to imitate. A vicious sense of justice filled Gwen. If they had trusted Lasiandra when she said the pirates had fled Neverland, there was no need to prepare for naval warfare, then at least they got a little of what they deserved for making a deal with a mermaid. Approaching from the other side of the island—responding to distress calls from its suffering flank ships—the towering flagship lumbered toward the conflict. As much confidence as she had in Starkey, Gwen didn't want to be stuck aboard the Grammarian when the black coat's modern monolith arrived.
She closed her eyes and tried to lift into the air again. For several minutes, she focused on willing herself off her feet. Jumping, as often as not, proved counter-productive. Most times when Gwen jumped, she came right back down, too prepared to fail. So she took a deep breath, cleared her mind, and waited to transport herself off her toes and into the air.
As the boat rocked and swayed on the tumultuous waves, Gwen felt her feet leave the ground. “See, easy as pie,” she told herself. Talking helped boost her, so she kept it up. “I've flown in worse circumstances than this. I've flown all the way to Neverland and back before—twice! I've flown in storms and from drones, up Mount Neverest, and during a suburban invasion…”
As she remembered the many victories that dotted her time in Neverland, Gwen's flight steadied and stabilized. For whatever reason, she often forgot how successful and happy she had been during her adventures. The first night she met Peter, that first night she flew, now seemed distant and strange. Rosemary had brimmed with so much confidence in her sister, it even outweighed Gwen's own confliction, pulling her into a world she didn't think would ever quite fit her. She'd tailored and darted and mended this world—and more often, herself—to make it fit, and she had made good use of every magical opportunity she found.
She turned around and saw an unattached shadow on the floor.
Gwen screamed, and the shadow panicked. She stayed in the air where it could not touch her. She had nothing to fear from it as long as she stayed afloat, so the shadow seemed more perturbed than her.
It turned profile so that Gwen could see it was holding a finger to the outline of its lips. It waved frantically at her, but when she called for help, it signed to shush her again. Its frantic waving was familiar though. The first shadow that had attacked her, back in the meadow, had made the same gesture. Was this the same shadow?
The shadow began moving its hands back and forth, gesturing to Gwen, gesturing to itself. It continued, until Gwen noticed the shape of the shadow—smaller and more feminine than any of the uniformed soldiers.
Gwen lifted her left hand, timorous and slow, and waved at the shadow. She watched as it lifted its right hand and copied the motion.
“Are you… you're my shadow?” Gwen exclaimed in a whisper.
The shadow facepalmed in exasperation, and then nodded furiously.
“Oh—oh!” Gwens announced. Their encounter earlier made so much more sense. Her shadow had wanted to get her attention. The shadow, now standoffish, seemed to hold a grudge against Gwen for not recognizing it. “I'm sorry,” she apologized, “I haven't seen you in a while. How did you get here?”
The shadow went to
