While they hoped to stop adults from so much as setting foot on land, even Peter doubted they could fend off the incoming forces that well. The first line of defenses on the beach aimed to stop as many adults as possible, maybe sink a ship or two, but once the adults were on Neverland's soil the children had to stop them from reaching the heart of the island where the Never Tree grew. Peter had made it clear to every girl and boy that they needed to resist the adult invasion at all costs, and anyone unwilling to charge into that fight ought to fly back home. None of the children left. None of them, even with their vivacious imaginations, could conceptualize leaving.
Gwen wouldn't abandon Peter either, but she conceptualized it with ease. She could leave the lost children to their wayward war and fly home to live as a teenager in reality. She could make it home for dinner with her parents, all her friends would be so glad to see her, and she'd pretend to have made a miraculous recovery from a near-fatal case of mononucleosis. She could go right back to school, and if a year or two or four had slipped away, she could pretend she had just moved to town. She could catch up with Jay.
Gwen did not struggle to visualize that alternative. She had cast her lot with Peter, though, and would not run when he needed her—when he needed everyone—most. Twice she had returned to reality, twice she had come to Neverland. Gwen did not give credence to the superstition that magical things came in threes. Two was plenty. If she went back home now, the third time would be the charm that charmed her back into the normalcy of adolescent life.
So she had decided to accompany the forest team—Operation Jungle Attack, as Jet had christened them. They went into the thick of Neverland to establish a wide, defensive perimeter around the Never Tree.
She felt a justified skepticism at the idea that a handful of grade school children could create any practical defenses against a militia, but Peter had no such doubts. He put his trust not in the children, but in Neverland itself.
“Neverland is smart, Gwenny,” he'd promised, “and what you plant in Neverland grows. We can plant traps, resistance, attacks, and surprises… Neverland will know what to do with them. It needs help, but we can teach it.”
So Gwen watched, feeling helpless in these playful war preparations, as nets and pits were strung with great vigor and little skill. The lack of expertise didn't matter, though. Finishing the task didn't even matter. The children's fervor and resolve would take root, and when their attention inevitably wandered, what they left behind would be fertilized in the fanciful earth of Neverland, eventually blossoming into exactly what the children had imagined when they started on the task. Today's hand-dug hole and mesh of leaves would grow, by tomorrow, into a perfectly camouflaged pit.
Rosemary stamped through the brush with a backpack overflowing with supplies. Something seemed to fall out of the pack with every step. She couldn't pick anything up—in each hand she held a mug of hot chocolate overflowing with whipped cream. Dew and Pin gathered the twine, nails, wood blocks, sticky putty, marbles, and fireworks leaking from her pack.
The little girl shoved a tin mug of hot chocolate toward her sister, its whipped cream sloshing over onto her hand. “I got this for you, Gwen!”
She thanked Rosemary and took it, deriving more comfort from the warmth of the cup than the sweetness of the drink. She wondered where Rosemary had managed to find whipped cream on the island. She watched as her sister plopped down on a mossy log and drank her own hot chocolate. As she sipped, she offered suggestions to the three lost boys industriously fiddling with fishing line to rig a trip wire that would “trigger poison darts and cool stuff.”
Rosemary didn't look much like she had during her past life in suburbia. Mrs. Hoffman no longer dressed her, combed her hair, or bathed her… the result was a wild thing. Rosemary gravitated toward colorful and clashing patterns when she pulled garments out of the dress-up chest in the morning and never bothered with shoes, although she sometimes pulled on mismatched knee-socks before bed. Her uncombed hair had gathered volume, among other things.
Her hair, barely restrained by her wide headband, seemed to float like a fluffy brown aura around her head. Remnants of song bird's eggshells, butterflies' cocoons, and toadstool tops found residence in her cozy nest of hair. Under any other circumstance, fungus in hair would have been disgusting, but Neverland made it endearing. The lost children had figured out that if any small toy went missing, as often as not, it wound up in Rosemary's hair. Scout especially liked digging through the poof for tiny treasures and charming creatures.
Gwen took another sip of her hot chocolate, but as she raised it to her lips, she noticed the whipped cream was gone. She looked at herself and the ground below, wondering how it could have slopped off her cup. The cream was nowhere to be found.
A voice came from the jungle that belonged to no child.
“Gwen?”
Her head perked up, and she stared into the brush where the sound had originated. Had the boy's voice been audible to the others, or were they just not paying attention? Gwen set her hot chocolate aside on a mushy tree stump and took slow steps toward the sound. “Hello?” she called.
“Gwen!”
Expecting the voice this time, she took off fast after the sound. “Who is this?” she asked, unnerved. It sounded so familiar that when she closed her eyes she could almost smell his charcoal covered hands. But she didn't trust her own perceptions. Jay, here? That was impossible.
“Gwen, don't you
