Gwen sighed. For all the dealing humans had done with mermaids, she saw no harm in telling them the truth now. “Lasiandra has made a deal with the Chief Anomalous Officer to deliver his black coats to the Never Tree.”
The mermaids' enchanting demeanors dropped and their eyes narrowed. The others said nothing as Eglantine asked, “In exchange for what?”
“Legs,” Gwen answered. “Humanity.”
“Lies!” Liatras accused. “You are a human and humans lie.”
“Lasiandra does not have such power,” Cynara objected.
Gwen shook her head. “I gave her a sky glass.”
The mermaids howled. Their cacophony of disgust, outrage, and horror formed a noise that could have shattered glass.
“How could you give it to her?” Nepeta cried.
“That little mermaid has betrayed us!” Eglantine announced, slamming her fist against the water.
Gwen didn't care about their indignation. The mermaids were full of atrocities—she had no sympathy for them now. They would swim off to the hidden depths of the ocean and find new seas to play their dangerous games in. Lasiandra's loss, the loss of Neverland, would mean little to them once they had found a few new rocks to sunbathe and equivocate on.
“What about Peter?” she asked.
“Oh what of him!” Liatris huffed. “Our sister has traded us for an existence as pitiful and short as yours!”
“I have told you what happened to Lasiandra,” Gwen reminded her.
In a dismissive and sore mood, Cynara barked, “He came to ask impossible favors of us and ask starry questions he did not want answers to. When we had said our piece, he fled back into the jungle.”
“What? Why?” Gwen asked.
“That he might chance to free the children taken captive by the wil-o-the-wisp in this grown-ups' crusade.”
“What? No, he said we needed to get to the shore! It's dangerous out there.” How could Peter dive back into the jungle? Surely there was another way to help the children entraced away by the wil-o-the-wisp—or else there was no helping them at all. Going back into the jungle now was a suicide mission. Didn't Peter know that?
Liatris and Nepeta had already dipped off into the dark of the cool waves. The mermaids had finished with Gwen. For better or worse, everything ended in this moment. As Cynara and Nepeta dove back under and headed for safer shores, Eglantine shook her head and told her, before disappearing under the glassy surface of the lagoon, “You poor, foolish girl—Peter won't live to see the end of this war.”
Chapter 40
The mermaids lie, the mermaids lie, the mermaids lie…
She could not spare the breath to utter her mantra, but it circled in her head as she flew in breathless fear. If only she could repeat it enough, if only she could force herself to believe it, maybe she would make it so.
But she stood no chance. The magic that kept the mermaids bound to the star's own truth was as powerful as that which bound them to the ocean. Even if such a matter could be swayed by belief, Neverland no longer hosted such miracles. Gwen could hardly keep her flight going, despite what a desperate and certain belief she had in her ability. She had gotten so good at Neverland, and now it diminished around her.
The trees all shrank, their leaves furling back into buds and then dying on their stems. The transformation unfolded gradually, but the deeper she went into the jungle the more life regressed. She passed no exotic birds or glittering bugs. The fairies had evacuated, and an uneven carpet of fallen branches and brittle leaves littered the forest floor. Overhead, the aviator flew high amid the cloudless sky. The rattling engine of his plane provided a distant and rickety noise that matched Gwen's anxiety.
Her satchel banged against her side as she ran and her knuckles turned white as she clamped down on her little acorn. What was this tiny token for? He had given it to her when she handed over the tin can phone. Did it have any power to communicate with Peter or help her find him? No matter what she tried to imagine it doing, the acorn stayed only an acorn. Yet, she clutched it, because Peter had given it to her.
She had to save Peter. What was he thinking? The mechanics of his simple mind, noble and naïve were just as much a mystery to Gwen as ever. She would have to find him and persuade him to join the other children on the shore. If she could only find him, she would convince him it was his own clever idea to evacuate.
But even that thought seemed deluded with unwarranted optimism. This was the boy who thought to die would be an awfully big adventure. He knew what he was doing, he just couldn't conceive of the consequences. Gwen could see the hypocritical wrinkles in her logic as she dove into the jungle to save Peter with her own suicide mision, but the stars had promised her return home. She could afford to throw her youth away in an act of moderate martyrdom; it was already gone. She would go home without a fight—if only she knew that Peter was safe, and still out there.
The jungle canopy no longer gave the jungle shade. None of the browning trees stretched more than a single story high. Palm fronds dropped as branches cracked and shattered against the ground. In the thinning jungle, the light carried so much farther.
The will-o-the-wisp's color fluctuated, moving through a spectrum of magnetic purples, tempting blues, and guiling greens. Everywhere she looked she saw another dancing light, all but laughing at her from the sidelines of her path. She kept her eyes on her feet, not daring to let the lights distract her.
The will-o-the-wisp seemed to flourish where everything else rotted, as if it fed off the magical decay. The creature had grown stronger since Gwen last caught sight of it. She could not avoid it, and even as she skirted by, it chased after her and took shape.
“Eh barra! Ye uh big ane,
