“There are no known carnivorous plants larger than the Malaysian pitcher plant!” one of the women yelled, her hair coming undone as she tried to thrash out of the vines' hold.
“Neverland is full of things never known before!” Peter exclaimed.
“The cryptozoological myth of the Madagascar man-eating tree was disproved in 1955!” another lawyer yelled. “There is no such thing!”
This statement elicited a sad groan from the smooth grey trees, and resulted in the instant release of the lawyers. The tentacle-like vines went slack and dropped their prey—most of whom stumbled to their feet—but the quickest trees had already shoved lawyers under their trunks and trapped them below. Two lawyers railed against the roots that caged them in the pits beneath the trees, but now that they'd stripped the trees of their animation, they couldn't move the trees to free themselves. The lawyer who had fainted didn't do anything at all, and remained unconscious in his trap.
No one yet suspected Gwen perched above them. Their focus remained on Peter. “Section 6, Subsection A, Article G,” another lawyer cited. “Flying is prohibited by conventionally understood laws of gravity as they apply to terrestrial physics.”
As soon as he said it, Peter dropped from the air and bounced to his feet. A look of shock preceded his look of utter contempt. Even in the Lake Agana research facility where the anomolium had stripped every other child of flight, Peter had retained his ability. Nothing had ever grounded Peter before, and his flight was a sacred thing he would not forfeit without a fight.
“I might not be able to fly, but you can't stand!” he taunted. “You're all standing in deadly nightshade!”
Sure enough, the grove's underbrush was a minefield of dark purple flowers. Several of the lawyers began to sway, woozy expressions overcoming their faces. One even passed out, collapsing into the poisonous flowers, before a woman could point out, “The Atropa Belladonna plant is only toxic when consumed. That isn't how it works, and it's no danger to us.”
Those nauseous few who struggled with reality enough to feel compromised by the flower came back to their senses. Peter seemed surprised they could so quickly counter his dire defenses. The lawyers had no problem dispelling his reality and replacing it with theirs. Part legal counsel, part physicist, and part mythologist, the team seemed to know everything they needed to strip Neverland of its magic.
But Gwen had a copy of their all-important contract, as well as the patience and industriousness to research the clause that kept Peter from flying. Finding the section they'd referenced, she scanned through it and yelled down, “It doesn't say anything about jumping! He can jump as high as he wants!”
While the lawyers began searching the trees for the source of this voice, Peter laughed and started bounding into the air, leaping with such strength he might as well have been flying.
He sprung away and the lawyers pursued. “Jumping is constrained by—”
“What?” Peter yelled, “I can't hear you! You're too far away!”
They trailed after him, bushwhacking through thorny bushes and tall ferns. Another lawyer, with a stronger voice, boomed, “Hooke's law dictates that the extension of a spring is in direct proportion with the load applied to it. You can only jump as far as your legs physically allow for.”
Peter, in the middle of a fantastic leap, started to fall as soon as they referenced and enforced this law. His sprawling arms hit their target however, and he grabbed a hold of a branch before he could fall down. The tree shuddered at this sudden weight and a few leaves shook loose, but Peter clung to the monkey-bar branch and stayed out of reach as the lawyers approached and surrounded him.
“You're outnumbered, and your imagination holds no water here,” one of them announced. “Surrender, Pan, and come down.”
Peter didn't seem troubled in the least. His cheeky smile spread ear to ear as he told them, “And fall into that quicksand you're all stuck in? I don't think so.”
Gwen watched as the lawyers' heads all bobbed down in unison, discovering that they had wandered into a slick pit of quick sand.
One panicky lawyer tried to hop back away from the sand, but only managed to sink deeper into it.
“Who knows how quicksand works?”
“Nobody move or you'll sink faster!”
“But quicksand is real!”
While liquid sand muck began seeping into their shiny dress shoes and slowly burying them, Peter shouted to Gwen, “Does that contract says anything about swinging?”
“Not that I can see,” she answered.
Rocking back and forth on the branch to build momentum, he flung himself farther than reality should have allowed him to. The lawyers, too preoccupied by their pressing predicament, didn't object as Peter landed back in the grove.
The lawyers trapped beneath the man-eating trees still shouted and pounded, but nobody gave them any heed. “Come on, 'Endolyn!” Petter called, standing under her tree.
“Give me a minute,” she said, climbing down out of the treacherously thin tree she'd settled in. “I can't fly.”
“We don't have a minute,” Peter told her. Even as they spoke, the lawyers debated whether the island's climate could feasibly support the formation of quicksand. One way or another, they would weasel their way out of that trap, too. Holding out his arms, he suggested, “Just jump. I'll catch you.”
Gwen, who had much more confidence in Peter's reality than the lawyers' reality, dropped out of the tree. It didn't even surprise her when she fell perfectly into Peter's arms. “See?” Peter asked. “Easy as pie.”
“Easy as pie,” she repeated, stepping out of his arms as he let her down.
“Now come on,” he told her, already tugging at her hand and starting to run. “These grown-ups' are worse than I thought. We need to find the fairies and get to the Never Tree.”
Chapter 36
For all that they'd bushwhacked and wound through the jungle, the lawyers hadn't even gotten close to the protective perimeter the lost children maintained
