“Where are you?”
His voice moved and migrated, leading her through the woods. She ran after the sound, hoping to catch him. Every time she thought she should have reached him, his voice came from an almost opposite direction.
“Where are you?” she shouted, suddenly realizing she no longer knew where she was. She couldn't hear the chatter of the lost children and did not know how to return to them.
“I'm over here!”
“Jay?” she finally asked.
“Yes, it's me, Jay! Come over here, Gwen!”
She followed, now slower and out of breath. She tried to quiet her emotional impulses enough to logic out what was happening. The jungle went quiet, and the voice—Jay's voice—vanished. Gwen felt winded from running after it, and her exhaustion compounded the frightening sense that she'd gotten lost. So, when she saw a small wooden stool amid the ivy and ferns, she was more tired than confused, and decided to sit down.
She tried to rub the goosebumps off her arm as she sat down, but fell onto the forest floor. With an unflattering yelp, Gwen plopped to the ground. She heard a hearty, booming laughter at her expense. She could tell it was the same voice—but it didn't sound like Jay at all. No longer affecting an American accent, it mocked her, “Oh ye fool of heart, ye mortal of mind… what on this island didst thou hope to find?”
The laughter insulted but did not threaten. Gwen only felt uncomfortable and disoriented in its presence.
Another voice, feminine and almost squeaky, declared, “Stop! Quit this!” In her peripheral vision, Gwen saw a glittery, fast motion. She got back to her feet, whipping her head around as the new voice accused, “You belligerent hobgoblin!” His laughter softened but did not stop, and she gave an exasperated sigh. “No doubt the wench be a friend to our kin!”
Gwen couldn't find the source of either voice until a fairy flitted up to her face. She hoped the small silvery thing would point her in the direction of the mysterious entities. To her amazement, the big-eyed and little-mouthed fairy asked, in a charming English accent, “Sweet lady, where resides Peter Pan?”
Chapter 6
“You… you speak English?” Gwen marveled.
“But of course! All civilized fairies do,” the silvery one replied. “I, Cobweb by name, bear a message, too.”
The bemusing creature that had called to Gwen with impersonated memories, emerged from the brush. He moved, slow and impish, as he flitted on wings like battered, autumnal leaves. “Deliver us to the captain of your band!” he demanded, his natural voice masculine though small. “For matters most urgent are now at hand.” He looked like no fairy Gwen had ever seen; ragged and dark, he kept a mischievous look in his yellow eyes that seemed almost dangerous.
Cobweb, however, seemed trustworthy and Gwen had no qualms about leading these baffling creatures to Peter, who was not far off in the woods. It still took a few minutes for her to find him. As they searched, the two fairies bickered in voices too small for Gwen to understand.
“Peter!” she called, waving him over. He strode over in great excitement as she informed him, “We have, uh, visitors.”
“Well met to-day, lord of Neverland!” the hobgoblin cried.
Peter, delighted by this greeting, held out his hands as he approached and allowed the fairies to land in his palms and rest their wings. “Sweet Puck!” he announced. “So quickly you have come! Hollyhock delivered our message then?”
“Aye, she rests now 'neath Titania's own bower,” Puck answered him. “And we messengers hath arrived this hour.”
“Well?” Peter inquired. “What do Titania and Oberon say to our plea? Will your company assist us?”
Cobweb cleared her throat—the noise tickled Gwen's ears—before she announced, “We hath come as civil emissaries, at will of the queen—”
“And king,” Puck added.
“—of fairies. My mistress sends sincere apologies that we cannot answer your fairies' pleas, and thus I bear my grief as well as hers… we cannot aid in thy Neverland wars.”
Peter seemed shocked. “What? No—certainly the kinship between fairies is stronger than that.”
“Ye rogue savages, off all charted course, needs must defend your land by your own force,” Puck told him.
Cobweb elaborated, “We English fairies shall not risk the wrath of the intelligent mortals who hath immortalized us in their written tomes, ensuring with them we always have homes.”
“They hath now named moons for our sovereigns,” Puck told him. “Such honors please fairies and hobgoblins.”
Peter pulled his hands back, flinging the tiny messengers into the air, where they recovered on their speedy wings. Angered, he accused them, “Moons? You prissy fairies would defer to the grown-ups' reality just to be the namesakes of rocks in skies you can't even see? What vanity is this! You're worse than the mermaids if that is true!”
Cobweb seemed distraught to deliver this unpleasant news, yet her air of dutiful formality masked the sentiment. “I am sorry we cannot be of use, but we dare not risk our own existing truce.”
Peter shook his head and crossed his arms, sourly replying, “You are fools. Your truce will not hold. The grown-ups will never have enough magic to suit them, and they'll come for you next, whether Neverland evades them or not. The grown-ups might not violate your truce, but they will erode it the way they erode everything else. Pages in plays and celestial names will mean little when the only ones who look at them don't believe one wit in you. Someday your twinkling light will start to fade, and when it goes, the last of the English fairies will go not with a kazam but with a mewl.”
The fairies stared up at him, offering no rebuttal and giving him only their apologetic eyes. Further frustrated, but having spent his anger, Peter scowled at the ground and clenched his fists at his side. “What about Queen Mab?” he mumbled. “Surely she'll help. Was she told?”
Puck answered, nodding with his whole body, the way fairies often did while flying. “Aye, but Mab's fallen weak, scarce holds domain o'er her
