A voice came from behind them.
“I don't think I care for the way you tell that story, Peter.”
Gwen and Peter turned to face the sloshy sound of footsteps as Lasiandra approached from the forest's edge. Still in the black diving suit the Anomalous Activity Department had outfitted her with, she looked just as unnatural to Gwen as she had when she arrived on the shore. Her usually silky hair had dried, leaving her blond locks as frizzy and starchy as straw.
Gazing up at the tree, Lasiandra's eyes brimmed with satisfaction and grim delight. “What marvelous land fruit. I've never seen any like it. How come you never brought us fruit from this tree, Peter?”
He gave her an unhappy glare. “You've done a horrible thing, Lasiandra,” he told her. “You shouldn't have led the grown-ups here.”
“By that logic you shouldn't have led me here,” she announced, too pleased with herself. “But here we all are. I knew I was close, but I was just starting to think I'd never find this place when I found two sets of silly bare footprints heading right here.”
Footprints. If only the lawyers had not stripped them of their flight, they could have flown to the Never Tree without a trace and arrived with the same secrecy that the flying lost children had guarded it with. With grim horror, Gwen realized the lawyers would no doubt catch on to their route as well.
“How could you betray Neverland?” Gwen asked her.
“How could you consider Neverland an ideal?” Lasiandra asked her. “How could you think that this is somehow better than life? You have no idea what it is to live as a myth. You might have runaway and donned imaginary vestiges, but you have a life waiting for you, Gwen. You promised Jay you would go back. You had plans to abandon this place, you had plans to abandon me, and you have the gall to tell everyone through your teeth that Neverland is superior? If I've become a liar, I gleaned the art of it from you.”
Too wounded to muster any other question, Gwen simply asked, “Why would you say that?” She had made no secret of her confused heart to Lasiandra. That somehow made her a liar?
“Because you would have flown home to grow and live. You would have gone home to learn, and make a family, and create a life around you. You would have done all this, and left me to turn into sea foam on the shore. You would have forgotten about me and left me to die without a trace, while you lived out all the potential that is the birthright of every human.”
“No, Lasiandra, I—”
The girl strode forward, cutting her off as she replied, “It doesn't matter, Gwen. I don't hold it against you, and you won't hold this against me either. I'm going to bring the officers here, we're going to cut down this silly tree and end this war, and then we are all going on to fantastic things, the sort of things that can only be contained by a place that has a future. If this is paradise, then paradise is madness. We deserve so much more. All of us do.”
“We won't let them take the Never Tree,” Peter swore. “You've made a terrible mistake, Lasiandra. You've made a deal you can't fulfill.”
She smiled at the challenge embedded in his declaration. “Do you want to bet? I know the way now, and these legs may be new, but they're fast.” Lasiandra took off running, sprinting back into the woods to find her nefarious allies and bring them to harvest the Never Tree. “You've no options left,” Lasiandra cried, “I'll tell them where the tree is and this war will be over, once and for all!”
Peter did not pursue her, but as Gwen started to run after her he called, “Gwen, no, don't.”
She stopped, and watched as Lasiandra's legs carried her off into the thick of the jungle. “Why not!” Gwen demanded.
“We don't need to stop her,” Peter answered, setting down the bucket with the Never Tree cutting. “Let her go.” She watched as he rooted around the mud and kicked around, attempting to unearth something.
“But she's going to tell them where the tree is! They're going to win!”
“No, they're not going to win, and they're not going to find the tree,” Peter answered, bending down and pulling a long handled tool out of the swamp and wiped it off. The sharp stone blade lashed to its wooden handle, the hatchet looked like a weapon crafted by redskins. “If she wants to be a liar, we'll make her a liar,” he announced.
With all his strength, he swung the blade into the Never Tree.
Chapter 38
“Peter! What are you doing?” Gwen screamed. She watched in horror as he swung the ax again and again, each time deepening his cut in the Never Tree. White splinters sprung out of the tree as Peter chopped.
“I'm cutting it down,” he answered between blows. The thought that one boy with a tiny hatchet could cut down such a huge and regal tree was almost as absurd as the thought that he would want to cut it down.
A line of sweat had formed on his forehead by the time he broke from his rhythmic cutting. Gwen approached once he set the ax down, and listened to his heavy, distressed breathing. The tree, though far from toppled, understood Peter's intention to kill it. Groaning and creaking—much as Peter's man-eating trees had while attempting to swallow the lawyers—the tree began to recess into the earth. Shrinking and coiling away from the vicious stimulus of the ax blade, the Never Tree started to shrivel as if it were not a towering, woody tree but a simple leaf, browned and dried by the autumn. Gwen reached out to touch the beautiful, crumbling tree, but Peter had compromised its sturdy nature. She no sooner laid her hand on the trunk than a
