“What does that mean?” Gwen asked.
Old Willow smiled at her. “It is time we unmake what Raven has made, and build it again for ourselves.”
“That doesn't sound good,” she replied, unsettled by the cryptic comment.
“Do not worry,” Old Willow told her, putting a soft and wrinkled hand to Gwen's face to reassure her. “Worlds are made and unmade all the time. Only the foolish fear it.”
“These adults,” Peter told her, “I've never seen any like them. I didn't know they would be so powerful. I didn't know they could undo Neverland.”
Old Willow hunched over and kissed his forehead. “You have done well. You have served Neverland with admirable valor.”
“But now horrible things are happening to it!” he objected.
He thinks this is his fault, Gwen realized. For more than a century, he had defended his home and governed it, too. He couldn't have anticipated the strength or nature of the black coats' invasion, but he grown used to priding himself on maintaining Neverland. Did he blame himself for this?
Old Willow shook her head. “No, Brave Peter. Nothing horrible ever happens. Good and bad do not befall us; we choose between them, and you have always chosen the good.”
Peter nodded once to affirm her words, but didn't look as though he believed them.
“Don't forget that, Peter. Now hurry: save the Never Tree and all will be well. I will do my part, and you can rest assured that they will follow you no farther after they find me. May the wind ever kiss you and the stars ever smile on you, until we meet again, in worlds not yet made.”
“May you enjoy such blessings yourself, Old Willow,” Peter answered.
“Goodbye, Brave Peter.”
He was already running again, and dragging Gwen with him and forcing Hollyhock to keep pace on her jittery golden wings.
She let him pull her by the hand but glanced back. Old Willow stood in the forest, stock still. “What's she going to do? How is she helping?” Gwen asked him. She couldn't imagine the stoic elder doing anything to slow down the lawyers, let alone stop them from pursuing Gwen and Peter to the Never Tree. Hollyhock answered, but Gwen didn't understand the intricate response.
“She's going to trick them,” Peter replied.
“How?” Gwen glanced back again, but Old Willow had disappeared. With abrupt confusion, Gwen stopped running and forced Peter to let go of her hand. Where Old Willow had stood seconds ago, a small, gnarled tree now grew, and grew fast. Gwen watched as it visibly fattened, its bark expanding out at the same time that its trunk stretched up and began unfurling long, tendril branches.
“They're looking for an old, magical tree,” Peter told her. “If they think they've found it, they'll stop looking. Now come on. We've still got to save the Never Tree.”
He took off running, and Gwen followed for fear of getting left behind and lost in the impossible tangle of the jungle's depths. “But Peter!” she objected, horrified at this strategy. “The adults want to cut down the Never Tree!”
Peter, his voice brewing with pain, confidence, heartbreak, and victory, reminded her, “Old Willow is not afraid to be unmade in this world.”
Gwen felt her eyes watering, but something kept her from crying. She felt empty, like a dried up well. She had cried so much for Tiger Lily, and so many other little tears had escaped her today. Tiger Lily had returned to Neverland to fight, just as unafraid of her unmaking. The redskins were so brave. Was that because they had been dreamed into existence by rowdy children who wanted an exotic face to attach to their ideals of courage and cunning? Or was death just less frightening when you didn't really exist to begin with? Maybe Tiger Lily and Old Willow had not passed into the oblivion that people spent their lives in apprehension of, but back into the imaginations from which they'd come. The redskins had been summoned to life in a made-up world. Maybe the difference between existing and not existing wasn't so stark, so terrifying, for them.
Peter paused, and Gwen—so distracted by her own mind—almost ran into to him. He looked around, examining a spread of slimy vines. The ground had become muddy, almost swampy, and they stood in the muck while Hollyhock helped Peter determine the exact place to cleave through the curtain of vines.
“We're here,” he whispered, parting the vines and holding them open for Gwen.
Chapter 37
At that moment, Gwen realized she had visited the Never Tree before. The aura of familiarity this place carried made so much sense. Months and months ago, she had followed Peter through the night to this place. Fairies had collected in the dark marsh, and the mud had even glowed beneath her feet. She remembered, with melancholy clarity, the night after the bombing that killed Bramble, when the fairies had gathered at the willow tree for his funeral and sent his pyre drifting across the marsh. She and Peter had danced together that night, floating on the air beside the Never Tree by the glow of fairy light. As sad as the night had been, the memory itself carried a pleasant sense of comfort.
They stepped into the swampy openness that surrounded the tree and listened as the vines fell shut behind them, like a beaded curtain secluding them in this epicenter of Neverland's magic. An intuitive feeling told Gwen that her ability to fly had returned to her, but she felt too in awe of the Never Tree to employ it.
The Never Tree did not look quite as she remembered it from that night with the fairies.
