A Winter's Day Tale

“Aw, c’mon.  You said you’d do it.  You can’t back out now,” Red jeered at me.
 
“He’s right.  You didn’t just say you wanted to do it, but you said you had to do it.  You know it’s going to be stupendous.  In fact, I bet that a million years from now that this tale gets told.  I’d give anything to be the one to be doing this.”
 
“Hey,” I said, taking a step back and gesturing to the slope that looked like it was at about a 65-degree angle heading down, “knock yourself out, Tig.  I won’t be upset.  I’m not the glory seeking type no way.”
 
Tig peered down the slope and shook his head.  “You’re due some glory, Furball, and you did say you’d be the first one down.”
 
“Chicken?” I asked, surprising myself that I’d say such a thing since I knew I was.
 
“Nope, I’m just a bit too fond of this adventure to be going downhill.”
 
“Downhill?  You’d be better off saying downcliff,” Roo advised.
 
“You think I’m going to die?  You’re the one who said how safe it’d be.”
 
“I didn’t say you were going to die, I just said that I was fond of my life.  I mean, c’mon.  You’re all the time falling out of trees and falling into pits and…” he paused.  “You’re pretty clumsy, aren’t you?”
 
“Are you seriously asking me that question?  Seriously?”  Tig looked responded to my question by looking a bit sheepish.
 
“Naw.  I know you get tangled in your paws a lot, but I didn’t really think about how many different places you manage to get tangled in.”
 
“Or stuck in,’ Red added helpfully.
 
“So are we going to do this or what?” Tig asked, looking at me expectantly.  I don’t know why we even bothered playing this game cause everyone present on the mountain top knew that I was going to go down on the toboggan the moment we’d arrived at the top of the mini-mountain.  The snow on the slope was a good foot deep and didn’t have a single print on it anywhere.  A belt of trees bordered each side of the slope and halfway down narrowed the cleared path to a couple of feet before the trees retreated after a few yards leaving a large area the rest of the way down, a very long distance.  I figured that the whole thing was probably close to a mile, even if I took off the distance I knew I was exaggerating.
 
The toboggan had been Tig’s idea.  Made with pieces of wooden ships that had washed ashore during a century of storms, it was long, heavy and unwieldy.  It was easier to drag than carry, and it had taken all four of us to drag it up the ‘hill’.  The back of the hill wasn’t nearly as long, steep or snow covered as the front of it was, so it hadn’t been too horrible.  I’d asked how we’d ever get the thing to the top of the hill again, but Tig said that he knew a couple of polar bears who owed him a favor.  I’d badgered him for the entire trip asking him how one managed to get polar bears to owe them favors.  His response was to tell me that he’d tell me when it was necessary.  Tig was always saying stuff like that.  It probably went hand-in-hand with his ability to create 218 different rules for tic-tac-toe.
 
“If I do this, I want…” I’d been ready to mention blueberries or chocolate or something else, but caught Roo looking at me, “…broccoli.”
 
“Yeah sure, that won’t be a problem… huh?  What?”
 
“Broccoli,” I repeated to answer Red’s question.  “What’s so strange about that?”  Red, Roo and Tig looked at each other.
 
“It’s okay, we’ll get you some broccoli,” Tig said in a placating voice as he held up a hand that I guess was supposed to soothe me or something.  I’d have preferred chocolate to broccoli, but their reactions sort of made up for it.  I wondered what they’d have done if I’d asked for beets.
 
“You know, there’s no way to steer this thing,” I said as I examined a rope that appeared to be on there for decorative purposes only.
 
“You lean,” Tig said, confidently.  “You’ll pick it up in no time.  Besides, it’s not like you’re going to need to steer.  When we start you off, we’ll make sure you’re aimed straight down the center.”  I wasn’t impressed, but that wasn’t something I was going to share with anyone.
 
“Whatever, I guess we might as well do this.”
 
“Told ya,” Tig told Red smugly.
 
I helped the other three carefully aim the toboggan in the right direction, Tigger carefully having us move it an inch one way and a couple of inches the other until it was lined up to his satisfaction.  “Hop on,” he directed me.
 
“Do we need pixie dust?” Red asked as I got on the device.  I glared back at him.  “I meant because the sled was so heavy.”
 
“It’s not a sled, it’s a toboggan.  There’s a huge difference,” Tig advised.
 
“Yeah, you can steer a sled.”
 
“But you can’t steer a cardboard box.”  We all stared at Red for a moment.  “You can’t.  Try it and see.”  There was no answer to that statement at all, so I grabbed the rope the way I figured cowboys did when they were riding broncos.  I was seated in about the middle of the toboggan and waited while Tigger dusted the contraption with a bit of pixie dust, sneezing when he sprinkled some of it on me.
 
“Ready, steady, go!” Red called out as the three started pushing the toboggan.  In spite of the weight, it started off quickly.  I heard a thump from behind me and threw a look behind my shoulder to see Roo kneeling behind me.
 
“What happened?” I yelled, figuring he’d slipped or something even though that wasn’t like him at all.”
 
“Nothing,” he yelled back at me.  “This looked too cool not to try.”  That was the second statement in less than a minute that there wasn’t any answer to, but it brought a grin to my face.  That is until I noticed that Tig’s careful alignment had us whizzing towards the trees.  “Lean!  Lean!  Lean!  Lean!” I yelled leaning towards the left although there was probably a good third of a mile until that would become a problem.  Through some quirk, the sled angled to the right, did a couple of 360s and a partial and ended up still angled towards the trees, but now going backwards.
 
“That was unexpected,’ Roo said before dissolving into laughter.
 
“They though I was crazy,” I muttered to myself, as I leaned to the left this time so far that the right side of the toboggan threatened to leave the ground.  We completed another couple of spins and wound up heading forward again, although still angled towards the trees.
 
“Wolf!” Roo yelled.  For a moment, I wondered what the heck that was supposed to mean until there was a thump in front of me as a snow wolf suddenly appeared on the toboggan.  It looked as though it had been running across the slope and had managed to intersect our course.  It gave me a look of surprised disgust (which is hard for a lupine face to express) causing Roo to break out in renewed laughter.  That in turn caused the snow wolf’s expression to look even more disgusted before he turned to face forward and sit on his haunches, ignoring both of us.  In the meantime the trees continued to loom in front of us as we got closer.

"You really ought to do something about not running into those trees," Roo suggested.  At the rate we were eating up ground, we had a couple of minutes before that event would occur.  As if in agreement, the wolf's tail thumped a couple of times against both the toboggan and my face.  As wolf tails go, his was pretty long.
 
"I'm open to suggestions," I retorted as I attempted to lean in either direction.  The wolf wasn't small and his weight, combined with that of Roo was enough to keep me from having any effect on anything.  I tried moving from side-to-side in an attempt to get something to happen causing Roo to comment that I was acting as though I needed to go to the bathroom.  "I'm not heavy enough," I said, fairly positive that it was the first time those words had ever been strung together in a sentence describing myself.  "You need to lean too.  To the right on three."  I counted to three and Roo and I leaned towards the right.  We might have gotten shifted more than we did, but the wolf leaned to the left at the same time.  "Seriously?" I asked in his direction.  He gave a yip and I counted to three again.  This time all of us leaned to the right in concert and the toboggan smoothly moved to the right.  "Stop!" I yelled, moments too late.  We were now perfectly aimed at the tree belt on the other side of the clearway.  The wolf's tail thumping increased in momentum and I was getting fur in my eyes.
 
"What'd ya do that for?" Roo demanded from the back.  "Now we're going to crash into the other side."  He wasn't laughing as he had been before, but there was a definite note of excitement in his voice that I hadn't heard for awhile.
 
"If you think you can do better, feel free."
 
"Like I could get past you and your friend to be able to steer."
 
"You can't steer, it's a toboggan."  I figured he already knew the rope was just for... whatever Tig had put it on for.  It sure wasn't for steering anything.  Before Roo could make a comment back I felt a weight on my left shoulder and turned to see that a raven had landed on it.  It stared at me with bright black eyes and gave a caw before ignoring me and facing forward.  "I don't think that's a good sign."
 
"What?  The raven?  I don't think they're bad luck.  At least not too much.  I think it's some other bird that's supposed to be bad luck and only if they're following a ship or a boat or something like that.  If it was a skunk that landed on your shoulder, then that would definitely be bad luck."
 
I declined to point out the fact that, fortunately, there weren't any flying skunks on the Island that I knew about.  The trees were now close enough that I could see individual branches.  I wondered for a second if all the branches really were pointed towards us or if it was just my imagination.  The wolf let out a howl, but declined to leave the toboggan.  The raven didn't either, although it spread its wings, cawed, and did something that both myself and my pelt wished it hadn't.  The light dimmed as the toboggan entered the small forested area between two tree trunks.  "I can't see the forest anymore, there are too many trees," Roo sang out.  I started to wonder if he'd somehow managed to get some pirate rum.  We generally didn't grab that on raids, but there had been mistakes made in the past.
 
"We're going to die," I sang out in counterpoint.  The wolf yipped and Roo laughed.  "Not with your luck," he said.  "If I were on this thing with anyone else, I might be concerned but with your luck there's no way they're going to let you die riding a toboggan in the middle of a forest."
 
"Lean!" I yelled as a tree trunk loomed in front of us.  We all leaned to the left, including the stupid raven, and there was a buzzing sound as the toboggan scraped the tree trunk as it flashed by.
 
"That was fantastic," Roo decided.  The wolf howled with what could have been agreement, disagreement, or a prelude to getting ready to rip my head off.  The way things were going, I sort of figured it was probably the first one.
 
"Are you crazy?" I demanded but quietly enough so he couldn't hear me.  There was something good going on behind me and I didn't want to take a chance of ruining it or having it end too soon.  The toboggan sped over a root mound and became airborne for several moments before crashing back to the ground with a teeth-rattling thump.  I ended up falling backwards and found my head in Roo's lap.  The raven had let out a caw and had leaped from my shoulder as I went backwards.  I looked up to see him grinning so wide, it looked as though his face would split.  What really got me, however, was the quick look I had of his eyes.  They were a kid's eyes, at least for now.
 
"Get up," he said.  "Someone's got to be in charge and it ain't me."  I grinned back and struggled back up to a sitting position.  We were still moving rapidly through the tree belt and I saw that the raven was no perched on the wolf's head.  Neither one of them seemed concerned about events.  The trees thinned briefly and we were racing across a pond or small lake.  There was a distinct cracking sound under us, but by the time I'd even figured out what words were appropriate, we were back on land again.  A branch slapped my chest as we went past it and there was suddenly a pear in my lap.  Anywhere else, that wouldn't have been possible, but on the Island...  I liked pears almost as much as blueberries, but was pretty sure I knew what this one was for.  I picked it up and held it behind my back, letting Roo grab it.  I'm pretty sure it was thanks he offered me, but it was hard to tell through his mouthful of pear pulp.
 
"Left," I screamed as I started paying attention to what was in front of us again.  For something that hadn't looked real big from the summit, this belt of trees was taking forever to get through.  Everyone leaned left as the raven directed things with a spreading of wings and insistent cawing.  Once more we didn't quite make it and sideswiped the tree leaving behind part of the ride side of the toboggan which was now vibrating.  I felt something new thump into my lap and looked down to see a raccoon taking a look around.  I tensed, since racoons aren't that fond of surprises such as these, and waited to feel teeth and claws against me.  Instead the raccoon finished looking around, lay down in my lap and closed its eyes.  I'd thought about closing my eyes as well, but there were just too many trees around for that.  Sometimes closing one's eyes wasn't the best solution.  Actually it wasn't the best solution most times, but it was really not the best one when you were zipping past trees.

"Don't even think about bringing it back to the Tree," Roo advised.  "There's no telling what reaction Stumble might have to a real raccoon hanging out."  There wasn't any time to ponder on that particular train of thought because we zipped out of the trees and were on bare slope again.  As if overjoyed to be cleared of the trees, the toboggan started picking up speed.  I'd closed my eyes as the sun shone full upon us without the tree branches to block it any longer.  Roo let out a cheer.

"Uh, Roo, we got a problem."  Ahead of us the ground did something unexpected.

"No we don't, not with your luck.  Anyway, even if we did, it'd be your problem since your the leader of this wonderful expedition."  The raven showed its superior intelligence by giving a caw and winging off the wolf's head and into the sky.

"There's a cliff," I pointed out.  "It's right in front of us and there's no way we're going to be able to stop in time."  It wasn't so much a cliff as a crevice.  The snow covering both sides had made it all but invisible from the top of the summit.  The distance between the two crevice sides was only about three yards or so.  Even I could have probably jumped it on a good day, with the wind at my back and my eyes tightly screwed shut.  None of that applied at the moment.

I felt Roo shift and look over my shoulder at the approaching topography.  "That's not good."  The wolf apparently had the same idea because it gave a yip and sprung off the toboggan and loped away.  The raccoon continued to sleep.  "Show off," Roo called after it, a smile in his voice.  "Well Furball, it's a good thing at least one of us is prepared."

"Maybe if we roll off..."  I had to stop to let a huge sneeze out.  It was big enough that I'm pretty sure the toboggan slowed a little from the force.  It was caused by something that Roo had sprinkled over my head which had gotten into my nose.

"Steady, Furball.  Be sure and grab the raccoon and think about blueberries."

"Blueberries?" I asked as I grabbed the raccoon in a bear hug which seemed to concern it not at all.

"Happy thoughts," he said as the bottom dropped out from under us when we ran out of ground.  The toboggan continued forward where it smashed into the opposite wall and pretty much became bits of driftwood and sawdust that rained on whatever was below.  Violating pretty much a whole slew of physical laws, Roo and I came to a stop over the middle of the crevice.  I was thinking of happy thoughts as fast as I could, but I was slowly sinking.  I was jerked to a stop as Roo grabbed my hair and pulled me up.  The raccoon forced it's head out of my arms and was staring around as though raccoons didn't normally find themselves a couple hundred feet above nothing.  "I should have brought more pixie dust," Roo sighed.

"It's because of the raccoon.  It weighs a ton."  I wasn't even convincing myself with that comment and the raccoon gave a squawk of indignation.  I'd never known that raccoons could squawk.

Roo didn't say anything, but pulled me by the mane to the edge of the crevice and above solid ground again.  A few yards beyond the edge, the pixie dust went wherever used pixie dust goes to and we both tumbled to the snow.  I lay there catching my breath while the raccoon crawled to my chest and gave me a good chewing out in raccooneese before turning tail and running off.  I carefully moved various pieces of my body, but didn't feel anything that would indicate I'd broken, sprained, punctured, or slashed anything.  Roo was already on his feet and was giving me a crooked grin.

"That was fantastic," he exclaimed.  His face was bright red from the cold and excitement and the grin on his face was contagious and I found myself grinning back at him like an idiot.  His eyes were still young which was all that counted to me at the moment.  "Can we do it again?"

I almost choked, but found myself nodding in agreement.  "All we need to do is get back up this hill."  I sighed as I contemplated the journey back to where the others might or might not be waiting for us.  I wished we had some more pixie dust, but figured I could probably make it without tumbling down the hill after a misstep and ending up rolling into a snowball.

We'd climbed about 100 feet and I'd already broken a sweat and was huffing when Roo turned around and looked at me.  "Thanks."  He turned around and continued climbing.  I was still struggling, but after that I knew I could probably, somehow, climb a mountain three times this one after that.

Getting soaked, Snow, and Rangers

Before my body hit the water I was convinced that something was going to happen. I’d suddenly learn how to fly. The rope and chain binding me would dissolve so I could swim away. I’d hit the water and float. A seal would rescue me by dragging me to shore. All those possibilities flew through my mind as I fell from the plank off The Jolly Roger. It wasn’t until the warm water closed over my head and I discovered the chain around my ankles was more than heavy enough to overcome my natural buoyancy that I started to panic. Some water went up my nose and I choked for a moment before I realized I had to hold my breath and couldn’t cough. It was impossible for me to move my arms and while I could move my legs, it wasn’t enough to help me get to the surface or anywhere else.

I struggled and twisted so hard that it took me a minute to realize something had grabbed me by my hair and was pulling hard enough that it hurt. My imagination was filled with all sorts of unspeakable sea monsters that were undoubtedly getting ready to eat me. Drowning was one thing, but being eaten alive was quite another. My head suddenly broke the surface of the water and smashed into something hard causing me to see stars in the darkness. The darkness caused by the fact that I’d been too scared to open my eyes at all. “Crikey,” a familiar voice said. “Calm down, Cubbs. Oh, and open your eyes. That might help.”

“Hurry up and cut his arms free so he can grab on,” Leo said. His legs were paddling as hard as they could while he held me up on one side. Surefoot was on the other doing the same thing on my other side. In front of me in the dim light, I saw Red pull out his dagger and carefully cut the rope from around me.

“Don’t let the rope go, we’re low on it,” Surefoot said as Red finished up. I coughed out some of the water that had gone up my nose.

“Shhhhhh. Be quiet. They’ll hear you,” Red whispered.

“Who?” I asked just as quietly. “And where are we?”

“The pirates, Furball. We’re right under The Jolly Roger. Good thing you’re so clumsy or I’m betting we wouldn’t have had an upside down rowboat to hide under. That had your paw prints all over it” I could hear the smile in Leo’s voice. “Can you lift your arms? Good. Reach up and grab that seat for a minute while we get that chain off your legs.”

“Thank goodness,” Surefoot said when I managed to grab hold and hang from the rowboat’s middle seat. “Good thing you float cuz you’re sort of heavy, you know?” He treaded water at a slower rate since he didn’t have to help keep my head above water anymore.

“Where’d you guys come from?” I whispered. “I thought I was a goner.”

“Are you kidding?” Leo asked. “Pan’d be really irritated if he found out we managed to let the newest Lost Boy get killed so fast. Ewwwwwwww.” That last was because I’d suddenly realized what had almost happened and had thrown-up at the realization.

“You ready?” Red asked.

“I am now,” Surefoot answered. Both of them dived and a moment later, I felt the chain around my ankles being moved back and forth. They reappeared under the boat a moment later. “Whatcha think?”

“It’s pretty tangled but should only take a few more times. We gotta hurry though. No telling how long that rowboat is going to stay where it is before someone decides to turn it over.” Red shook his head causing water to spray. “Plus my fingers are getting all prune-y”

It took several more dives before Red and Surefoot were able to untangle the chain and remove it from my ankles and the air under the rowboat got hot and fetid. While they were doing on freeing me from the chain, Leo kept me company. I tried to tell him what happened, but he only shook his head. “Don’t worry about it now,” he whispered. “They might hear us up there. It’s okay.”

I wasn’t so sure about that but didn’t say anything. I felt relieved at being rescued of course, but also so ashamed that I could hardly stand it. Finally I felt the chain’s weight leave my ankles. It took a moment for me to get my arms to lower but I was finally able to gently tread water like the other three were doing. “You think you can swim to shore?” Leo asked after I’d been treading water for a little bit. I nodded my head. “Okay. Once we get to shore, you’re going to have to run into the woods to get out of sight as quick as possible. Got it?”

“Yeah. But won’t…”

Red grinned. “Don’t worry about that. Wait and see.” Leo slipped under the water again and was gone for a couple of minutes. “Anyone see ya?” Red asked when Leo reappeared.

“Just who we wanted.”

Before I could ask what that meant, there was a muffled crowing. Even under the capsized rowboat we could hear the commotion on The Jolly Roger as pirates started shouting. “C’mon, let’s go,” Surefoot said. The four of us dove under the water and swam as fast as we could for the beach. Now that I didn’t have a chain wrapped around my ankles, I was positive my rump was above the water as I moved through it. When we reached the beach, I did a combination crawl/gallop as I tried to keep my balance. Red and Surefoot pulled me into the trees while Leo kept watch behind us. Once I was in the woods I turned around to see Peter Pan doing flying in circles and figure eights on the side of the ship facing the sea. Every pirate’s eyes were on him as Hook yelled threats and insults at him while swinging his sword. A cannon roared but the shot didn’t come close. There was the smaller roar of flintlock pistols and muskets but again none of those came close. Peter, apparently seeing us cross the beach and reach the woods, gave Hook a mocking salute and sailed through the air out to sea.

“Didn’t I tell ya?” Red grinned. “C’mon. Let’s get out of here.” I followed Leo, Red and Surefoot deeper into the woods. After about 100 yards we ran into Roo, Stumble and Tigger. They were all armed to the teeth.

“I see you managed to rescue the Teddy Bear,” Stumble said.

“I guess you didn’t need us after all,” Tig said to his twin. “Welcome back, Furball. How’d the meeting with Hook go?” He’d dropped his normal joking manner and looked as worried as it was possible for him to.

“Is Peter mad at me?” I asked Leo. “Are you?”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” He looked at me as though I had lost my mind. “You must of hit your head on that rowboat pretty hard. Maybe Roo should take a look at you.”

“Naw, it’s not that. It’s just…” I wasn’t sure what ‘that’ was, but was saved from answering by Tigger who thought it might be a good idea if we put a little more distance between ourselves and the pirates before they got to wondering why Pan had put in such a weird appearance.

We took off at a trot towards Hangman’s Tree. As is normally the case I was bringing up the rear and Red dropped back to talk with me. “What happened?” I asked quietly so no one else could hear me.

Red looked around as though afraid that the trees we were passing by were eavesdropping. “I don’t know, Cub. I’m sorry. I thought you were right behind me and then I heard voices and by the time I circled around and got back they were already taking you to the beach. The only thing I was able to do was go grab help.”

“What’d you tell them?”

He looked guiltier. “I kinda told them that you got captured by pirates and I just happened to be passing by and couldn’t do anything except get help.”

I was upset for a moment. All I needed was everyone thinking I was so clumsy that I just wandered into the middle of a pirate trap. Of course, that’s sort of what I had done, but at least a little bit of it was still Red’s fault. Instead of getting mad, I just sighed and nodded. “No prob. It doesn’t really matter anyway.” He looked a little relieved when I said that, but I could still see the wheels turning in his mind and the guilt on his face. The good thing was that I was pretty sure it wouldn’t last too long when he saw I wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it.

“So what do you think happened to your friend? Do you think he ratted us out about the meeting and that’s why the pirates were waiting for us?”

He shook his head ‘no’ so hard the hood of his fox pelt fell off his head. “No way. He’d never do that. Ever. Something else must have happened to him. I hope he’s alright.”

I wasn’t so sure, but didn’t say anything. The whole thing was just too convenient for me to accept. Plus pirates were always supposed to be the bad guys, not the good guys. That thought led me somewhere else. “What’s the deal with Mr. Smee?”

Red shrugged. “Hook’s first mate is all I know. Why?”

“He just seemed a lot different than I’d have figured he would. Like he wouldn’t have killed me if he’d been given half a chance.”

“I dunno about that. Maybe you should talk to Roo. I think he knows more about Smee than the rest of us do.” I told him I would when I got a chance. I also wanted to tell Red the tiny bit I’d found out about the pelt, but we’d reached Hangman’s Tree and I figured I’d tell him when everyone wasn’t crowded around.

There was a lot of crowing and excitement as everyone found their trapdoors and slid into Hangman’s Tree. As was normally the case, I sprawled on the common room floor when I hit the end of my slide, but I was used to it and had gotten so I liked the laughter it caused. The laughter annoyed Tink, and while I was on the ground, she flew overhead and sprinkled my rump with pixie dust. For the next hour I floated upside down from the ceiling of the common room. Peter came in and congratulated everyone on my rescue and told me I was becoming a real Lost Boy even if I didn’t have enough sense not to get caught by pirates or had a thing for floating upside-down. I think he was joking, but sometimes it’s hard to tell where Pan is concerned.

I eventually dozed off and only woke up when my head hit the floor as the pixie dust faded away. I gave a little bit more thought about the problem of the pelt, but shoved it out of my mind when we headed out to check the beaches for treasure. Not pirate treasure, but ‘real’ world treasure. I wasn’t exactly sure where the dividing line between the ‘real’ world and Neverland was, but it seemed that a lot of ‘real’ world ships lost cargo in that area. One of the more interesting things had been finding a box that was half-full of Lego sets. Not as interesting was the case of corsets or the box of light bulbs.

After spending the rest of the day searching the southern beaches with Red, Surefoot, and Leo I returned with them to Hangman’s Tree as the sun started to set, only a left sneaker with a hole in the side to show for our efforts. Still, I’d spent a lot of time wading along with the others and was pretty sure I was going to have sunburned arms and face. It was a pretty weird way to end a day that had begun with me walking the plank at one point. I skipped dinner, which caused a lot of sarcastic comments from Stumble, and climbed under the common room table. I was worried about Nightmares and was a little apprehensive about falling asleep. I thought about tying Leo and Tigger’s tails together since they both hung down from their chairs within reach of where I was, but fell into a dreamless sleep before I started to act on it.

The next morning I opened my eyes and crawled out from under the common room table to find the place empty. I went over to the stew pot that was bubbling over the fire and scooped up a gourd full out of it. After taking a slurp, I took a closer look. The liquid was an alarming shade of greenish-brown and very runny. There were a couple of acorns along with some pine needles, a mushroom that looked suspiciously like a toadstool, a few chunks of stuff that could only be described as mystery meat or fish, and a plant with ‘leaves of three’. Even though my stomach was busy rumbling as though I was starving, I decided I wasn’t hungry and poured the gourd’s contents back into the pot. I figured it would probably be a good idea to find some fruit or berries while I was out.

A few minutes later I stuck my head out of my trapdoor and got nailed with a snowball. I was surprised for a lot of reasons, the main one being that yesterday it had been sunny and summer-warm. Now the clouds seemed to be hovering a few feet above me and there were a few snowflakes falling from them. The snowball caught me on the back of the head and I tumbled out of Hangman’s Tree into a snowdrift about a meter high. “About time, Furball,” Tigger crowed as he launched another handful of snow in my direction.

“What happened?” I asked as the snow hit my chest and exploded in all directions.

“I’d have thought that was obvious. I’ve nailed you with two snowballs and am getting ready to do it again.”

“No, I mean the weather.”

“Ah,” he said, this time launching the snowball in his twin’s direction right before he caught one himself on the arm from Surefoot. “Either Peter left the island to go visiting somewhere or the elves have been messing around with the weather again. Either way, it won’t last long, usually a week or so. Now ice, that’s something different.”

“It’ll be around long enough for someone to get frostbite,” Roo added in a sour voice.

I grinned despite Roo’s dire prediction of frostbite. He tended to exaggerate just a little when it came to what he might end up having to heal. Besides, this was the first snow of any decent amount I’d ever been in. Back in the ‘real’ world, it was sleet or a couple of centimeters of snowfall that made up a ‘snowstorm’ where I’d been, so I was just itching to make my first snowball and hurl it. I packed one, causing my fingers to go instantly numb and hurled it at Red. It didn’t come close but did make a satisfying thump when it hit a tree trunk.

“C’mon,” Surefoot urged. “We oughta go to that field by the Little Bear River and have a real snowball fight and make forts and stuff like that.” The suggestion was met with a bunch of howls of agreement and we took off.

As we hiked towards the field, I sped up a bit so I could catch up with Red. He’d been uncharacteristically quiet so far and I wanted to see what was going on. “Hey,” I said as I walked next to him.

“Oh, hi,” he said, his eyes suddenly interested in the ground in front of him.

“What about pirates?” I asked. He gave me a questioning look and I pointed back the way we’d come. “Can’t they tell where the Tree is from the tracks?”

“Oh,” he said in a relieved tone. I guess he figured I was going to bring up what happened yesterday or something. “Naw. The pirates don’t ever come ashore when it snows. They know it usually means Peter’s gone off somewhere and they figure they have a better chance of shooting him out of the sky if they’re on board The Jolly Roger. Plus, Hook’s got some sort of superstition about snow. He thinks it hides the spirits of all the Lost Boys he’s killed and that they’re waiting in ambush for him.

“Where’d he ever get an idea like that?” I asked as I turned my head to look at Red, which caused me to go heels-over-head after stepping into a hole that was covered by the snow. Everyone laughed, but Stumble thought this was so hysterically funny and laughed at me so loudly two ravens took off from the tree they were squawking in. Red produced the first grin I’d seen that day as he helped me up. I couldn’t help but laugh at myself either, especially now that my pelt was caked in snow. Still, I didn’t think it was as hilariously funny as Stumble continued to make it out to be. “Is it true?” I asked as we started out again.

“Is what true? Oh, you mean the spirits waiting for Hook? Naw. Least, I don’t think it is.” He called ahead to Tig who said he knew of the story but didn’t know how true it was either but allowed he knew stranger things about the island that were true.

We continued trudging towards the field. I was a little surprised that I hadn’t heard the sounds of the Little Bear River yet, but didn’t pay much attention to it. Red suddenly stopped and looked at me. “Look, about yesterday. I’m sorry what happened. I didn’t know we were walking into a group of pirates and didn’t mean to leave you behind. I thought you were following me and by the time I found you weren’t, all I could do was…

I shrugged, not knowing what else to do. “You still managed to save my life,” I pointed out. “I also found out that Hook seems to be as upset about that stupid pelt as Peter is.”

Red mulled that over a bit. “So what’re you going to do now?”

“I dunno. Part of me says the best thing to do is just bury it or give it to Nibbler to put to rest or stick it in one of those places in the Tree that seem to collect all sorts of junk.” I paused and when I continued was talking as much to myself as I was Red. “There’s just something about it that won’t let go. It’s almost like there’s something forcing or pulling me to find out whom it belonged to and why it ended up on Hook’s ship. Now I must sound as though I’ve gone crazy.

“Oh, yeah. Totally crazy. Just as crazy as ending up in a place where you wear a bear pelt, fight pirates and have a lot of conversations with a dead Lost Boy whose job it is to ferry the rest of us over when we move on to the next adventure.”

“But none of that really seems crazy. At least not like I uses it might have not so long ago when I was still in the ‘real’ world. It sounds more normal than some of the stuff I used to go through in the ‘real’ world.

Red gave me a quick grin. “Tell me about it. Why do you think you got ‘rescued’ by Pan? It sure ain’t cuz you fit in so well back there.”

“I’ve never really fit in anywhere,” I said in a quiet voice. I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself or anything, it was simply one of those things that is. There were still times that I even thought I was a misfit as a Lost Boy.

Red gave me a look of sympathy and then his eyes filled with a horrible, terrible sadness. He opened his mouth and started saying something before stopping himself. He shook as if resetting himself and I know for just an instant he had started to tell me how Peter had rescued him and from what. Instead he asked if I was still going to search for the story behind the pelt.

“Yeah,” I decided on the fly. “It’s like it’s something I’m supposed to do. Does that make any sense at all?”

“Sure. Everyone who ends up here has to discover something or conquer some sort of challenge.”

“I thought mine was not wetting my pants the first time I went on a raid against the pirates or managing to fit through my trapdoor,” I said, trying to make it into a joke. Both events had been challenging, though.

He shook his head. “Seriously. We all went through it. Some of us more than once.”

“What was yours?”

Before he answered, there was some yelling and a mad dash for the center of the field now in front of us. Using rock, paper, scissors, water (water rusts scissors and dissolves paper but rock splashes water—according to the ‘Rules of Tigger’), Stumble and Tigger were chosen as captains for the snowball fight. Stumble chose Surefoot and Tig chose his twin. When Stumble chose next, he called both Red and Roo.

“No fair. You can’t choose two at once,” Tig protested. His objection caused most of us to laugh since he’d managed to change or add to the rules of every game we played. The last time we played ‘tic-tac-toe’ he took a half-hour to explain the rules to us that he swore were in existence as well as the fact that the way we played was an ‘abridged’ version.

“I don’t wan’t the teddy bear and he’s big enough for two… heck, almost three normal Lost Boys.” I felt my face turn red.

“I’d have chosen Furball anyway,” Tig said a little heatedly. “He’s strong as an ox… uh, any two Lost Boys and I’ll take that any day.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but all the psychic energy I was hurling towards him, begging him not to, must have caught. He just turned and started telling me and Leo about his plan to conquer the other side.

There was something about Stumble that I wasn’t sure about. A lot of the time he’d treat me the same as he treated anyone else. Then there were the times he’d tease me about being clumsy, cowardly, or tubby. Of course everyone else did too, including myself. Yet with everyone else it was always them laughing with me. After all, I am clumsy cowardly and tubby and I knew it. Stumble, though, mixed a lot of meanness in with it more than a few times. “Sometimes I think Stumble doesn’t like me a whole lot,” I said, again trying to make it sound a little like a joke, but curious to see what the response would be.

The twins exchanged a look that spoke volumes. Unfortunately, the volumes were written in a language I didn’t know. Tig nodded at his brother, deferring to him. “It’s not you so much, but what…”

For the second time I missed out what was going to be said as a clash of arms echoed across the field and caused us all to look at the woods on the other side. Mounted on unicorns and horses were a troop of ten elven rangers. The apparent leader was white haired and looked old, which for an elf, marked him as ancient. “What say you men?” he called out to his patrol. “Mayhap this group of miscreants is a group of notorious and desperate Lost Boys that needs be overcome and routed from the realm?” There were cries of “Aye” and laughter from the men as they dismounted. The leader walked over to us stiffly, as though his leg was bothering him, and came to stand in front of Leo. By this time, Stumble and his team had joined us. Leo and the ranger leader exchanged salutes. “Seeing how battleworks have yet to be assembled, shall we say a half-turning of the glass before we commence battle?”

“Agreed, Captain,” Leo replied. “If the ‘corns want to join, both teams get half. Oh, and the white ones get evenly split between the two teams.”

The elven captain put on a look of mock chagrin and then agreed with a grin. “Wait a second,” Tigger said. “They outnumber us.”

“Come now, lad. It’s my understanding that a certain rogue in orange and black costume has claimed that he is as good as a trio of elves.” Leo looked at his twin who’d turned bright red, in amused surprise.

“I was talking about those three guys that are always giving us trouble,” Tig muttered into his pelt. I’d never seem him actually embarrassed about anything before.

“If you’ll let me leave the field of battle, I can find three to take the field on our team,” Roo spoke up.

“No trolls,” both Leo and the captain said at the same time.

“C’mon, give me some credit,” Roo said, rolling his eyes. “I’ll be back before we being with ‘em, okay?” He ran off into the woods as Leo gave his approval.

“No ice,” Leo stated.

“No rocks,” the captain came back with.

“No magic.”

“No daggers,” the captain said with a grin. Leo almost managed to look hurt at the suggestion.

“Agreed?” Leo asked.

“Agreed,” the captain responded. Both of them spat on their palms and shook on it. Right after that, both the elves and us started building snow forts. About halfway through our preparations, Roo showed up with Luke and Josh, two of the Indians I’d met before, as well as a third whom Luke introduced to me as ‘she who treads lightly over the snow like a doe but can give black eye’. Josh rolled his eyes at the same time the newcomer bopped Luke on the back of his head. Josh and Luke claimed that they preferred ‘Indian’ to any other term but Luke always came up with these long involved names that sounded as if they were from a bad western.

“You’re lucky I don’t decide to give you a black eye,” she growled at Luke. She turned to me and grinned. “My name’s Ophelia, and don’t ask. You’re the new kid, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, that’s ‘Bear who can’t leave blueberries alone’,” Luke said laughing. I tried to decide if that was better than last time when he’d christened me ‘Galloping Bear.’ He took a couple of steps back as Ophelia raised both an eyebrow and a fist.

“I’m Cubby,” I said, suddenly feeling flustered.

“C’mon, Furball,” Tig advised. “You can moon over her later. Right now we gotta finish. It’s almost time.”

We finished up and the epic battle started. The elves had built a much better fort than ours but our rate of fire was a lot faster than theirs was. After an hour the elves had an edge because our snow fort had crumbled to a small snow bank under their barrage.

“What’re we going to do now?” Red asked. “We can’t get near ‘em without being mowed down by snow and our fort is non-existent.”

“No worries, we’ll just use our secret weapon to destroy their fort.”

“What secret weapon?” Ophelia asked Leo skeptically.

“Watch and learn,” Leo said with a smirk. “Hey, Furball. Stand right here.” He pointed to an area in front of the small pile of snow we were pretending was a snow fort. I waited to be pelted from the other side, but the elves were apparently just as curious as I was about what was going to happen. While Leo was getting me into ‘perfect’ position, Tig was telling everyone to grab as much ammo as they could carry and then directing them to stand behind me.

“Uh, Leo…”

“Don’t worry, Cub. You’ll do great. They won’t know what hit ‘em.” With those words, he moved the last person in position and then both he and Tig got behind me. “Run for all you’re worth and when you get to their fort bellyflop into it.”

“Run?”

“Don’t worry, me and Tig’ll help.” Before I could give a thought to that, both Leo and Tigger were pushing me to the ‘no boys land’ between the two lines, the rest of our team following behind. When the elves saw what was happening, they started launching snowball after snowball. I quickly became covered in snow, but the two behind me made sure I didn’t falter. With a loud war cry (Red swears it was ‘blueberries’ but I think he’s lying) I leaped as high as I could and performed a perfect bellyflop on top of the elves’ snow fort. The wall crumbled beneath me and the elves didn’t stand a chance as the rest of my team swarmed over me and into the fort. I’m not really sure they needed to use me as a bridge with the walls down, but I was too happy to care.

There was a lot of laughter on both sides and the elven captain presented Leo with a small silver dagger as a token of superior leadership. The other elves shared hot chocolate that they magically produced before the rangers bid us farewell. Luke, Josh and Ophelia, decided they had to leave and bid us farewell too.

“Secret weapon?” Ophelia asked me, with a comradely laugh. “That’s perfect. Hey, pull your hood down for a minute.” I pulled the head of the bear pelt down and felt my red hair spring out all over. Ophelia grinned at the sight. “I could have guessed,” she said. She poked the tip of my nose with her finger. “Stay safe, Cubby.” There were a dozen replies I was ready to give as she and Luke and Josh left, but for some reason I was incapable of speech. Red smirked at my confusion but didn’t say anything.

“Hey! You know what we gotta do now, don’t ya?” Surefoot yelled out. “We have to go skating before everything melts. We’re near that pond that empties into the river and it’s perfect.

A Meeting With Hook

Mr. Smee didn’t look anything like I’d expected him to. He was kinda average, even for a pirate. Average height, average weight, average pirate clothing. There weren’t any scars or pieces missing from his face or hands. No tattoos or piercings save for a gold ring through his right earlobe. He was clean shaven and tufts of gray hair peeked beneath the shapeless hat he was wearing. If he’d walked by me on some high street I probably wouldn’t have given him a second thought. There was no way I could even begin to say that about Hook or the other pirates. Smee looked worried as he continued to stare down at me, then seemed to rouse himself and moved out of my field of vision so that all I could see were the stars again.

For awhile the only sound I heard was the labored breathing of the pirates and the splash of the oars as they moved back and forth through the water. I wondered what was going to happen to me and hoped that whatever it was, it wouldn’t hurt too long. I didn’t think that moving on to the next adventure would bother me as much as the pain I just knew would be involved getting to that state. It didn’t take nearly enough time for the bow of the rowboat to nudge the side of The Jolly Roger. The pirates began moving about and the oars were dropped on top of me where I lay in the bottom of the boat. From my position, I could see the side of the pirate ship and watched as a rope ladder came unrolled as it made it’s way down the side of the ship. In another moment I was jerked to my feet and stood unsteadily in the rocking boat as the circulation thought about returning to my feet.

“Wha’ about ‘im?” one of the pirates asked, giving me a jerk in case there was some doubt as to whom he was talking about. “I don’ fancy carryin’ him up t’ the deck.”

“Then perhaps ye should untie ‘im, Mr. Laskin,” Smee said. That suggestion caused the other pirates to start talking with a lot of gestures about the possibility that I might escape if I was untied. The thought of me being able to scrape up enough courage to jump into the ocean and swim the distance to shore was laughable, even if it was very easy to keep myself from laughing.

“Ye remember what happened the last time we untied one o’ these brats, doncha Mr. Smee?” one of the pirates asked.

There was a sigh. “Ye may be remembering that be on dry land as well, Mr. Finch. As well be the fact that the one ye cut loose was dressed as a fox. Foxes be wily and quick. This lad be dressed as a bear. Don’ that be tellin’ ye something?” Smee tried to explain patiently. When he mentioned a person dressed as a fox, I figured it had to be Red. He’d never mentioned being captured by pirates or anything like that but it could have been before I even showed up on the island. I wondered if it’d had anything to do with Red becoming friends with one of Hook’s crew. It sure didn’t sound like the way Red had told me he’d met Cookie, but it wasn’t something that was real important at the moment.

Before any of the pirates could comment on exactly what my wearing a bear pelt meant, there was a call from The Jolly Roger. “Mr. Smee, it has been exactly three minutes since you rammed my ship with that rowboat. Is there perhaps some reason the prisoner has not yet been brought aboard? Perhaps the bilge rats with you need some instruction in the finer art of prisoner handling.”

The rowboat threatened to capsize as the pirates reacted to Hook’s displeasure. The three crew members looked terrified as Smee simply shook his head. “No, Cap’n. They be just telling the brat ‘bout what could befall ‘im now that he be a visitor of the scourge of the Seven Seas.” There was no fear in his voice, just a matter-of-fact telling.

“I’m sure,” came the response. “I would suggest that the time for tales be ended and the prisoner be brought up forthwith or he will not be the only one walking the plank this day.” There was a lot of grumbling and fretful looking up at the deck above before one of the pirates pulled a rusty dagger from somewhere and with a couple of quick swipes cut the bonds on my ankles and wrists. Not only was I free, but I also had a new cut on the leg of the bear pelt from which I could feel blood oozing from. It wasn’t turning out to be a good day. I tried to fall over the side of the rowboat (it doesn’t take nearly as much courage to fall as it does to try and escape) but one of the pirates yanked me back while cussing at me.

“Lad, you can’t be escapin’, so ye might as well hoist yeself up there and face it like a man… er a boy.” Smee’s advice was echoed non-verbally by one of the pirates who stuck his cutlass in the back of my neck, just slightly puncturing the skin. There was another brief argument about who would be the last one up, since everyone seemed to be in agreement that I wouldn’t make it to the top of the ladder without falling at least once. I could have told them it would probably be more than once, but no one bothered to ask me about it. Only another inquiry from the deck above stopped the discussion from becoming a full-blown brawl. I was puzzled by the apologetic look that Smee seemed to give me but figured I had imagined it.

In the end it was decided that all the pirates but one would go up before me so that there’d be one to offer ‘encouragement’ should I resist or try to escape. By the time my turn came to climb the ladder, I was so scared that I managed to slip as I started out. I fell back in the rowboat causing it to capsize and sending the remaining pirate and myself into the water. The pirate had managed to hold onto his cutlass and used it quite freely in directing me to the ship’s rope ladder. After a couple of tries, I managed to climb out of the water, the pirate following.

I actually made it all the way up the ladder on the first try through the encouragement of the cutlass from below and the increasingly irritated complaints from above. Once I got to the top, I swung a leg over the rail and collapsed on the deck breathing heavily and my eyes screwed tightly shut. There was a moment of foot tapping and then Hook’s unmistakable voice. “I will have him in my cabin in four minutes and you had best make sure that he doesn’t drip on the carpet.” There was the sound of retreating footsteps.

“Mr. Clifton, if ye’d be so kind.”

I felt something grab me by the back of the bear pelt’s neck and lift me up. In another moment I was being shaken like a rat and opened my eyes to catch the blurry sight of the giant pirate who’d picked me up and was shaking me in a slightly bored manner. When the water stopped flying from both the pelt and my hair, he dropped me to my feet on the deck. Mr. Smee gave me a cursory examination and then nodded at the giant who picked me up by the scruff of the neck again and followed Mr. Smee across the deck.

“Hey,” I said, surprising myself. “I can walk you know.” The only response was a tightening at the scruff of my neck and I decided it probably wasn’t necessary to say anything else for awhile. We continued across the deck, down a flight of stairs to a lower level and then inside. Smee stopped in front of a door and knocked. There was a reply from inside and Mr. Smee opened the door while nodding once again at Clifton. I was dropped to my feet and Mr. Smee motioned me into the cabin beyond the doorway. I turned around, thoughts of running to the side of the ship and throwing myself into the water, to see Mr. Clifton standing there grinning unpleasantly at me. There was a sigh from Mr. Smee as I turned to face the cabin doorway once again and walked through.

I’d never been on a ship before and wasn’t sure what to expect. Whatever I’d thought a pirate captain’s cabin might look like, this wasn’t it. Hook was seated behind a plain looking desk covered with maps and other papers. There was a neatly made bed against one wall, a couple of chests and some miscellaneous odds and ends scattered about. The carpet on the floor was just a big piece of fabric. On the desk was a teapot, a couple of china cups, and a plate of tiny cakes of some sort. Smee escorted me to the edge of the desk as Mr. Clifton remained by the door. “May I present Master Cubby, Cap’n.” he said before stepping back. A tiny part of my mind wondered how he knew my name but decided it probably wasn’t worth worrying about at the moment. From where I was now standing, I could smell the scent of chocolate coming from the pot on the desk.

“A bear. What a droll sense of humor dear Peter has,” Hook said as he looked up at me. The words were gently spoken, almost kindly. The eyes belied the tone completely. “Tell me, Master Cubby, do you happen to know how many br… boys have worn the pelt of a bear?” I shook my head. “Ah, I thought not. Mr. Smee, would you enlighten our guest as to the number of faux-bears that Neverland has had wandering about it?”

“I believe that’d be about eight, Cap’n.”

“Indeed that would be correct, Mr. Smee.” He turned his gaze onto me again and I had to make a very conscious effort not to disgrace myself. “Tell me boy, do you have any idea why you would be the ninth soul to be graced with the skin of a bear?” I just stood there trying not to whimper. Hook gave a half-smile as if sharing a closely held confidence. “It’s because they do not last very long, I’m afraid. All of them have come to a very terrible end. An end that happened to them very quickly but not very fast if you fathom my meaning. In fact, I do believe that out of all the boys Pan put into a bear pelt, the longest any of them survived was only three months. Would you not agree, Mr. Smee?”

“That’s right Cap’n.”

Hook nodded. “Thus if you have anything between those ears of yours except stuffing, boy, you can figure out yourself why you’re wearing that pelt. It’s a pity, really. I feel certain that you were given promises of carefree days participating in boyish pursuits with the occasional hi-jinks thrown in and maybe a ‘friendly’ battle or two. Pan tends to… embellish things when he recruits his team.” Hook leaned forward and put a concerned expression on his face which, again, didn’t reach his eyes. “There’s magic in this place, boy. Real magic. Magic that could let you live like royalty. I could show you how to use that magic. Would you not rather live a long life as a prince, than a very brief one as a disposable pauper?”

I didn’t say anything, but just stood there which neither seemed to anger or surprise Hook. “Everyone must make their own decisions about their future, boy. I trust, for your sake naturally, that you will make the right decision when it comes to yours.” He sharpened his gaze on me. “You know, it would only take one person. A courageous and brave person. Just one person to end this wearying feud between pirates and Lost Boys. Do you think my men want to kill those who have made a home here? Of course not. They would much rather be on the high seas. This fight is between me and Pan. You could be the one who went down in history as the one who stopped the battles by telling me where I can find Pan. I promise a fair fight. Mr. Smee will tell you I’m a man of my word, won’t you Smee?

“Yes indeed you are Cap’n. No member of the crew would ever dispute that.” For some reason that didn’t sound like a very reassuring recommendation to me.

Hook reached across the desk and poured a cup of liquid from the teapot into one of the cups. It wasn’t tea but hot cocoa that splashed into the cup and my stomach rumbled at the smell. “Ah, I see you’re familiar with this delectable beverage. Might I pour you a cup?”

My mouth started watering in spite of me. Somewhere in the back of my mind, part of me was arguing that there was no way that taking a drink of cocoa would bring harm to myself, Peter or any of the Lost Boys. In fact, it would actually mean that Hook had less cocoa, and wasn’t that a good thing? I stared at the cup and the little cakes on the plate for a long time before slowly shaking my head no.

Hook shook his head in mock sorrow. “This is what I mean. How can an agreement between our two factions be reached if I cannot even get one of Peter’s crew to take a cup of chocolate or a biscuit? Are you afraid they might be poisoned boy? That would be poor form indeed and not worthy.” To demonstrate he made a great production of putting the cup to his lips and quickly drinking its contents. “You’re sure you will not join me?” he said as he replaced the cup on his desk. “You look as though you are one who would surely enjoy a large serving.” He gave a significant look at my midsection causing me to blush. He then looked up at the lack of response from Mr. Smee and Mr. Clifton causing forced laughter from both of them. I just stood there not saying a word and looking down at the deck in front of me trying to figure out how to become invisible.

“What did you do with the clothing you stole from my ship?”

“What clothing?” I stuttered out, continuing to look at the deck. I figured maybe if I looked at that instead of Hook then maybe I could pretend he was someone else. Anyone else. I couldn’t help but think if I accidentally looked into his eyes, I’d be struck frozen like a bird in front of a snake or something. “You mean the pelt?” I could have bitten my tongue as the words left my mouth. There probably wasn’t anything bad about saying them, but if Hook could cause me to say stuff like that, then what other stuff could he trick me into saying?

“Pelt?” Hook roared, causing me to jump. “It is no pelt you stole, just a castoff piece of clothing from the ship’s slop chest, yet you have an unnatural curiosity about it, boy.” I looked up in surprise. “Oh, yes. I know you’ve been asking about it.”

“How’d you know about that?” I asked, quickly looking down again to avoid those eyes.

“I know many things, boy. I know it was you who took it. I know it was you who threw the rock at me when I was parleying with Pan.” He slammed the hook down on the surface of his desk causing me to jump again. An involuntary look revealed a gouge in the desktop.

“Marble,” I said quietly, almost to myself. “It was a marble and you weren’t talking to him. You were trying to trick him.”

The voice that answered was one of suppressed rage. “Regardless of the type of object you foully threw before battle had been called and regardless of what you thought in your foolish, simple mind were my intentions it was both poor form and constituted cheating. Such actions can neither be excused or tolerated and as such must have consequences to deter others from these actions.” I risked a quick glance at Mr. Smee to see him looking straight ahead with no expression at all on his face. There was a sound similar to nails scraping across a blackboard as Hook pulled his hook out of the desktop. “Smee.”

“Yes, Cap’n?”

“The usual. If Master Cubby will not deign to accept our hospitality, answer simple questions, and take a fiendish delight in throwing stones then it is obvious the only use he is fit for is to serve as an example to other brats who persist in messing with their betters.”

“Uh, Cap’n?”

“What is it Mr. Smee?” Hook didn’t sound at all happy about the interruption and I certainly wasn’t going to call any more attention to myself by looking up.

“Are ye not goin’ to give the lubber a opputuny to join the crew? Sir?”

“Did you not hear my orders, Mr. Smee? Was I perhaps not clear enough, or perhaps you would like to join him?”

“Aye, Cap’n. No, sir. Mr. Clifton?”

I felt the deck shake as the pirate left his position by the door to come to where I was shaking in my pawmocs. I figured I was going to be instantly struck down by the huge pirate but was instead lifted up in the air by the scruff of the pelt’s neck once again and carried back onto The Jolly Roger’s deck with Mr. Smee following. I was dropped next to the main mast and surrounded by a group of jeering pirates. “Well, Mr. Smee?” one of them called.

“O’er the side, boys.”

“Anchor, rope and chains?” the same pirate asked. I didn’t think it was possible for my shivering to get any worse but it did until the thought hit me that this wasn’t for real. Obviously it was all a big fake act to get me to talk or drink cocoa or tell where I’d hid that stupid pelt or join the pirates or something else. Armed with that rationalization, I calmed down a little.

Smee gave me a speculative look. “Skip the anchor. It be too much t’ waste on the likes o’ one like ‘im. Tie ‘im up wi’ manila and a twist o’ the light chain.”

“Just one? Are ye sure, Mr. Smee?” I was really getting annoyed with whoever this pirate asking all the questions was.

“Could be I be needin’ four after all, Mr. Bart. One for the boy and three for those who be questionin’ me authority.”

There was a long moment of silence as the pirates surrounding us waited to see what the outcome in the battle of wills was going to be. There was a moment in which Mr. Bart seemed ready to take up the challenge but he finally lowered his eyes. “Aye, Mr. Smee. One chain and manila line.” These were produced fairly quickly and before I knew it I’d been thoroughly tied up and my ankles shackled together with a long length of chain. My earlier rationalization was beginning to crumble just a bit as Mr. Clifton once more took the scruff of the bear pelt and propelled me to a plank jutting over the side of the ship that hadn’t been there when I’d climbed aboard. I was carefully placed on the ship end of the plank. Mr. Bart gave me an evil grin as he replaced Mr. Clifton behind me.

“Just be trying something. I beg ye. Molly here ain’t had a taste of the red stuff in quite awhile,” he said quietly as he shook the black stained cutlass he was holding. “Why I might even make it quick-like.”

“Belay that, Mr. Bart,” came a shout from aft. It should have been impossible for Hook to have heard what Bart had been whispering to me but I was beginning to discover that there was lots of stuff that Hook was capable of doing which should have been impossible. Bart grumbled in a very, very quiet voice, but lowered the cutlass and gave Hook a respectable nod. “Mr. Smee, pipe the crew up please.” Smee nodded at someone who played a few tones on some sort of a whistle. There was the sound of hatches crashing open and footfalls on deck as The Jolly Roger’s crew assembled around the area where Bart, Smee and I stood. Captain Hook joined us as the crowd of pirates parted to let him through. There were catcalls and yells from both the deck and the rigging of the ship. I was no longer rationalizing anything.

“Men,” Captain Hook started in a quiet voice which silenced the crowd immediately. “Today I call on you to witness justice. This cur who stands before you is charged with and guilty of firing upon a ship’s captain during a flag of truce.” There was a low murmur of voices. “As such there can only be one punishment meted out.” He turned to look at me. “Master Cubby you are indeed guilty of the bill of particulars and as such will walk the plank.” The murmur quickly swelled to a roar of approval. Near the front of the crowd I heard pirates placing bets with one another on how big a splash I would make as I hit the water.

“But… But I’m just a kid,” I managed to stammer out. “I don’t want to die.” This whole thing was impossible. I wasn’t supposed to grow up but not because I was dead before I had the opportunity to. This was insane. I stepped off the plank, the chain around my ankle jangling as I moved. Bart struck with his cutlass and I quickly stepped back on the plank as I felt blood trickling down my side. There were guffaws of laughter.

“Is it not as I said, boy? Peter knew. He put you in that costume because he knew you were going to die quickly. Very quickly. In point of fact, I do believe you may have set a new record for speed of expiration. Would you not agree Mr. Smee?”

“Aye, Cap’n,” Smee said woodenly.

“Any last words, boy?” Hook asked me in a solicitous voice. I froze as my eyes crossed his. They told me how much he was enjoying this and how he lived for it. They also conveyed something else but I was too terrified to figure anything that subtle out.

“I don’t wanna die,” I shrieked. “Please don’t kill me. I’ll do anything. Really I will. I don’ wanna die alone.” I started babbling and couldn’t stop. I didn’t even know what I was saying after I mentioned dying alone. I’d managed to scare myself more with that thought than about anything else I’d imagined so far.

“When Peter joins you in the Netherworld you can thank him yourself,” Hook called out, laughing at the end. “Mr. Bart put this cur out of our misery please.”

I don’t remember anything about walking the plank. I think Bart stabbed at me a couple more times but I’m pretty sure I moved under my own power to the end of the plank. Below me I could see the greenish-blue water of the sea as it caused the ship and the overturned rowboat below to bob on its waves. I looked out at the island of Neverland, at the beach, the forest, and the mountains that rose behind them. I wished I could see Hangman’s Tree from here but that was impossible. I wondered if Nibbler would be waiting for me when I died and didn’t feel quite as alone as I had. I wished I could have told the rest of the Lost Boys goodbye which caused the loneliness to crash down again. The sky was blue and the sun was shining. There was a cloud that looked like a dragon. I wasn’t screaming anymore but I was crying. Mr. Bart let me stand and stare for a moment that seemed like an hour and then shoved me with the flat of his cutlass. I fell like a rock.

Strawberries, Pirates, and a Bearnapping

Tig, Leo, Stumble and I were sitting at the common room table, each of us with a pile of strawberries in front of us. It wasn’t often there were strawberries for breakfast and it was even more uncommon that they didn’t end up in stew somehow. You haven’t really lived until you’ve tasted fish stew with chunks of strawberries floating in it. There was a thump as Surefoot stumbled out of his trapdoor and landed on the dirt floor. “Hey Tig, that elf you wanted is outside. She says if you’re buying you’d better do it now.”

Tigger looked at his strawberries and then at Surefoot and back at his strawberries. Surefoot gave an elaborate shrug and disappeared back through his trapdoor to the outside world. “Don’t worry, I’ll guard your strawberries,” Leo said to the anxious expression on his twin’s face. Tig shot him a look of gratitude and started off towards his trapdoor. He’d only gotten a few steps when he turned and ran back to the table and carefully licked each strawberry.

“What’d ya do that for?” Leo demanded.

“Oh… you know,” said Tig in a vague way before heading back towards and through his trapdoor.

Leo watched as Tigger disappeared through the door and then stared at the pile of now slightly damp strawberries. He was down to the last two of his own. Stumble and I exchanged grins as we watched Leo. “Like that’s going to stop me,” Leo muttered just loud enough for us to hear and started scarfing his brother’s strawberries down. I couldn’t feel too sorry for Tigger, he should have known better. Last week half of us were playing ‘Dragon Hunt’ and we’d come across a real dragon. Fortunately it was a young one. Unfortunately it was a young one with a cold. Leo had been leading and ended up covered in dragon snot. If that hadn’t been a problem, I doubted that a little brotherly spit was going to be.

I’d finished my strawberries first, so I was sitting there pondering about what I should do with the rest of the day. There was something I wanted to avoid doing, but couldn’t remember exactly what it was. I was still waiting on Red to talk to his pirate friend before doing anything else about finding out who owned the dragon pelt. It’d been awhile since I’d gone blueberry hunting and there was a great place next to a cool swimming hole that I could look. I started to get up when Roo walked into the common room. I looked at him and ducked under the table suddenly realizing what it was I’d been trying to avoid.

“Nice try, Furball, but I already saw you. C’mon it won’t be that bad. You might even like it.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Leo asked, looking under the table.

“Nothing,” I grumbled. Leo had figured that Roo was getting ready to dose me with some sort of medicine or maybe sew up a wound. “He’s decided to show me how to fish.”

Leo looked confused. “What’s wrong with that?” he asked as I crawled back out from under the table.

“Nothing if you like to fish.” I’d been coerced into it once upon a time when I was still in the real world. It was some sort of school thing and we all went to this brook to ‘wet a line’ as the headmaster was so fond of repeating over and over again. After two minutes I was bored silly. By the end of that afternoon I had been pretty sure there was an area of purgatory that involved poles, lines and hooks. Leo rolled his eyes, but didn’t say anything. He was pretty much used to the fact that I made my way to the beat of a different piper—even for a Lost Boy.

A few minutes later I was carrying and dropping a couple of fishing poles. There was a bunch of string tangled up in one of my pockets and I was pretty sure that I’d managed to get a hook snagged in the back of my right thigh. There had been no sign of Tigger or Surefoot when we’d gotten outside so I couldn’t beg either one of them for help. Roo was carrying a bucket of something that sloshed as he walked as well as an empty bucket and was telling me about ranges and tides and things like that. I nodded whenever he paused and tried to look as interested as possible. “Worms.”

Roo stopped his monologue. “Huh?”

“Worms. Don’t we need to dig up some worms or something to put on the end of the hooks for bait?”

“No, we don’t need worms. That’s what this stuff is for.” He shook the filled bucket causing whatever was in it to slosh again.

I looked down in it, dropping one of the poles I was carrying in the process, to try to see what it was. “Phew. That stuff stinks. What is it?”

“Got me. I asked Stumble if he had anything I could use for bait and he gave me this.”

“It’s not stew is it?” I asked suddenly feeling very green.

“Who knows. As long as the fish like it, that’s all I care about.”

We continued on to the beach and I spent what seemed like a lifetime following Roo up and down looking for the exact perfect spot. He did pick one that had a couple of palms for shade, so I figured at least I wasn’t going to die from heat exhaustion. He put the dodgy bucket down and asked me for the string/twine. I pulled it out from my pocket and gave it to him.

“What the heck happened?” he asked as he stared at the string that had somehow morphed into a single very large knot in my pocket. I shrugged. “And what’s that?” he asked as he pulled something off of it that kept stretching and stretching and stretching.

“Ooooohh! I wondered where that had gone. That’s my pine sap gum. Here.” I grabbed the side not attached to the string and started pulling. After a few feet most of it came flying off the string and I popped it in my mouth and started chewing. This time it was Roo who looked a little green, but all he did was shake his head and start muttering about something I couldn’t make out. I really didn’t think it took that long to get the string untangled and we only had to use the knife twice. We finally had two pieces of string of decent size and attached one to each of the poles.

“It’d be tons better if we actually had reels, but this’ll work if you’re careful. You just gotta cast out as far as you can and make sure the line doesn’t get tangled up when you do. Then,” he said, taking out a couple of wood rollers, “you just use this to reel the fish in by turning it.” I must have looked really skeptical. “Aw, it’ll work. The fish that come here aren’t real big so you shouldn’t have any problem using it. Now watch how I do it.”

I stood and watched as Roo took a piece of… something out of the bucket and quickly attached it to the hook he’d tied to the string. He carefully laid the string back in a straight line behind him then picked up the pole, which was facing towards the land, made a whipping motion with it, and I watched as the weight of whatever caused the hook to sail out beyond the breakers. “But that’s impossible,” I said. “The line is too long and you shouldn’t be able to get enough momentum to even begin to do that.”

“You saw it happen,” he said with a shrug. “Now you try.”

I gave a long suffering sigh and tied the hook to the string. It promptly came untied and fell into the sand. After crawling around to find it, I tried again with the same result. I finally tied it with a couple of square knots, a granny knot, and a couple of knots that I don’t think had existed before then. It didn’t look real good, but I figured it probably added some weight to it. With the hook firmly attached, it was time to add bait.

One All Hallows Eve I’d had the opportunity to put my hand in a bowl of ‘eyeballs’. It was really only runny gelatin and tiny marshmallows. That was exactly what this bucket of bait felt like. Except this was warm. The ‘eyeballs’ hadn’t made a sucking sound when I’d pulled one out either nor did it leave a grey stain on my hands like this stuff did. The piece of bait was light and dark grey in colour and felt really slimy. I stuck it on the end of the hook, piercing both the bait and my finger with it. There was blood. I ripped the hook out of my finger, turning the puncture into a cut and without thinking stuck my finger in my mouth. After all, everyone knows that’s how you clean a cut. Big mistake. I gagged on the taste that was so foul I couldn’t even come up with anything it might have possibly tasted like. Roo looked way too amused as I spat on the ground until I didn’t have anymore spit to spit with. The taste was still horrible and seemed to be getting worse. The only solution was water. There was only one quick source for water.

It took all of Roo’s strength to pull me back from the sea. I gagged on the seawater too, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the taste of the bait was. “Are you crazy? You can’t drink seawater. You’ll get sick.”

“Promise? Even used seawater has got to taste better than whatever is in that bucket. Besides it’s not like I was swallowing. I was just rinsing.”

Roo shook his head and returned to his fishing pole which fortunately hadn’t washed away or anything. I went back to my pole and started pulling on the string so I could try baiting the hook again. I was pretty proud of myself that I didn’t throw everything into the sea when the hook fell off the line as it rose from the sand. I double and triple tied, used granny knots, square knots, bow knots, half-hitches, whole-hitches, double-hitches and when I was done took the gum out of my mouth and folded it around the knots. No way was that hook falling off now. I carefully pulled a piece of bait out of the bucket and managed to put it on the hook without impaling myself or causing another food disaster. I gently placed the line just as I’d seen Roo do it, grabbed the pole and gave it a mighty swing.

“What happened?” I said when I didn’t see the baited hook sail into the water. There’d been some resistance, so I knew that it’d moved. The line was still attached to the fishing pole but instead of heading towards the water, it seemed to be headed up and behind me. I looked up in the air just in time for the baited hook to bounce off my nose and hit the ground. I tried several more times and failed just as miserably, although I made sure not to look up so it was my hair that got pummeled by falling bait.

While I was busy trying to get my first cast into the water, Roo had been busy pulling fish in as soon as his line had hit the water. The fish, as he’d said, weren’t real big, but he’d gotten enough that the empty bucket he’d filled with sea water was probably a third full. “Hey Cub. I think I forgot to mention something. You need to put just a pinch of pixie dust on the hook before you cast it. That helps it when you snap the pole forward.”

“You forgot? You didn’t think that might have been important or anything?” I tried to take a close look at Roo’s face, but there wasn’t any sign of smirk or smile so I figured maybe he really had forgotten. Of course I couldn’t get the best view because he was busy pulling in another fish. I put some pixie dust on the hook, made a mighty cast, and watched as the hook sank six inches from the beach.

“You need to go out a little bit further than that,” Roo said, completely deadpan. The bad part about it was I’d swear he wasn’t trying to be funny or anything. He really was letting me know I hadn’t cast it far enough. Three casts later I finally got it beyond the breakers. I’d used more than a pinch of pixie dust which seemed to have helped. I stood there with my pole waiting for a strike and watched as Roo pulled two more fish in.

“This isn’t funny.” Roo was pulling in another fish and I had yet to get anything. I figured as long as I was going to be stuck here, I might as well make myself comfortable. I took off my pawmocs and sat in the sand, keeping my pole at the approved angle while wiggling my toes in the sand. The sun, heat and sound of the waves took their toll and I slowly slipped off to that place between waking and sleeping. I was pondering a place where kids with antenna were riding very large dragonflies and shepherding huge floating blueberries when the daydream was shattered by Roo yelling my name and telling me to move quick. I figured I’d caught a fish and instead of moving, tried to stand up. That might have worked, except when I stood up, I put my foot right in front of the claw of the crab that Roo had been warning me about. I yelled in both pain and surprise and gave a mighty yank on the fishing pole while trying to jump, move, and kick at the same time.

I looked at Roo who was looking at me upside down. “How the heck did you manage to do this?” he asked in awe. There were a bunch of stars circling in front of my eyes and for some reason I was drooling. The stars weren’t so bad, but instead of dripping down my chin, the drool was going up my nose. It wasn’t too hard to work out after that, that he wasn’t really upside down, I was. Somehow when I pulled back on the fishing pole and tried to get away from the crab who was busy amputating my big toe I’d managed to get the line twisted around myself and the palm tree we’d been near. Now I was hanging upside down from my right foot which had somehow gotten lashed to the palm tree with the string attached to the fishing pole. I was getting hit in the face by a goldfish size fish blowing in the breeze from the other end of the line . “At least you caught a fish,” Roo said, hastily backing away from my reach and trying not to laugh. He shook his head. “That line wouldn’t even hold me up like that. It should be impossible for you. You must’ve used too much pixie dust or something.” Before I could answer, there was a musical ‘ping’ and the string that had been holding me up was no longer holding me up. Fortunately it was sand that I landed in so the stars in front of my eyes didn’t last as long as they normally did.

“This isn’t working,” Leo observed. I could have told him that before we’d even started but he wouldn’t have believed me. “Let’s try something else.” He grabbed what I’d thought was another fishing pole, but it wasn’t quite as long as the others and had a sharp point on one end. He gestured at me to follow him and I ended up standing in the sea a couple of feet from where the waves were breaking on the sand. The water was a little above my knees. “All ya have to do is stand real still until the fish get used to you.” We stood there for a few minutes, Roo with the stick held poised above the water with the pointy end down. The sun was beating down on my head and I wished I’d brought a hat or something. I could’ve put the hood up on my pelt, but there’s something about a fur hood in hot weather that just doesn’t work real well.

“See?” Roo whispered at me. I looked down and saw some rather large fish swimming below where we were standing. Faster than I could follow, Roo took the pointed stick and speared a fish. “It’s easy. You can try it here and I’ll move down a bit to fish.” He handed me the stick and waded back in to throw the fish in the bucket at to grab his fishing pole.

I carefully stood as still as I ever could, holding the stick as Roo had shown me. The fish finally reappeared and I waited for them to approach my legs. As one was almost perfectly placed I sneezed and watched as the fish disappeared in an instant. “You can’t sneeze, Cub. You’ll scare the fish.” I thought of about a million responses to that but didn’t say anything. I shifted my legs and stood motionless once again.

It took a little longer for the fish to reappear this time. Finally one got in the perfect position. I stuck my tongue in the corner of my mouth, held my breath, and slammed the pole down on top of the fish. At least on top of where I thought the fish was. I didn’t come close to the fish, but I did manage to spear something else. Pain blossomed in my right foot. Red swears that he heard the sound of my yell back at Hangman’s Tree, although I think he’s just joshing. It did clear the beach of seagulls for about a minute. I came out of the water hopping on one foot trailing blood with Roo telling me it was a good thing there weren’t any sharks around. I think he was kidding.

I collapsed on the sand and looked at my foot which had an impressive amount of bloody water on it. Roo looked at it. “It’s not too bad. It just looks that way. You scraped a bunch of skin off but didn’t go too deep.” He bandaged it up with a strip of cloth. “Whoa.”

“What?” I asked, waiting for him to tell me I’d managed to stick a hole in an artery, although I wasn’t sure there were any arteries in the top of a person’s foot.

“You broke the point of the spear off. Leo’s going to have to make another one now. Wait ‘til he hears how this one got broken. I don’t think that’s ever happened before.”

“Can we be finished now?” I asked plaintively.

“I guess so. We got plenty of fish and your pole and the spear are broken. Anyway, maybe you were right. Maybe it’s better if you don’t go fishing anymore. You can dig clams or oysters or something next time.” That made me happy enough that I even carried the bucket of fish back to Hangman’s Tree. Surprisingly enough there weren’t any mishaps on the way back and both bucket and fish arrived intact.

“You get in a pirate fight or something?” Red asked, staring at me. I’d just given the fish into Stumble’s care when Red had popped into the common room.

“Naw. I got to go fishing.”

Red looked as though he really wanted to ask a question or two but instead settled on ignoring that and whispering, “Tonight.”

“Tonight? Tonight, what?”

“Shhhh. Keep your voice down.” He looked around even though the only other person around was Stumble who was busy rendering fish into stew. “You know. Those questions you had about a certain thing for a certain someone? He left a note saying he could meet tonight in the usual place.”

“Oh. Yeah. Tonight? Why tonight? Why can’t it be during the day?”

Red sighed. “He’s the ship’s cook. It’s the only time he can get away without anyone being suspicious.”

“But didn’t you say he met you during the day before?”

“Yeah, he did. That doesn’t have anything to do with now, though. He could do it then but can’t do it now because now he’s not gathering anything like he was then so if he does it during the day then it’ll look funny but won’t if no one sees him going out at night so it’s better that way. Get it?”

I didn’t but finding out who had owned that pelt was still bugging me big time so I figured it didn’t matter if I got it or not. “I guess so. You’re sure he can be trusted and everything, right?”

“Why do you keep asking me that?” Red demanded. He was still whispering and the words weren’t loud, but they were said with enough force I could practically feel the dirt walls shake with the intensity.

“Because I’m scared,” I said honestly.

“Aw Cubbs. You’re scared of everything. Even your own shadow. If you don’t want to come, you don’t have to. I thought you wanted to find out about the pelt.”

“Don’t worry. I do. I’ll come with you. But I got one more question.”

“What now?” There was an exasperated tone to the question.

I pointed to where Stumble was still working on the fish. “Aren’t you supposed to clean and take the bones out of those before you put them in stew?”

“C’mon,” Red said, pulling me away from where I was staring at Stumble’s food preparation. “Sometimes it’s just better not to know about things at all.”

The rest of the day went by smoothly and quickly. I won at “King of the Hill” as I normally do and lost at “Tag” which was also where I usually place. I scarfed as many berries as I could find during the day too since I wanted to avoid the stew that evening. I climbed into my pallet early but no one was suspicious. They just figured I was trying to get away from hearing about my fishing adventure for the zillionth time. Stumble said he was pretty sure the whole thing would become some sort of Lost Boy legend for the future. I was glad I was able to provide so much amusement for my friends.

“C’mon, Cub. Man, you’re impossible to wake up.” I opened my eyes to see Red’s worried face peering down at me. “About time. I’ve been trying to get you up forever.” We both listened but only heard snoring and a few moans and whimpers. Unfortunately the moans and whimpers were as normal as the snores were when it came to sleeping. Lost Boy’s dreams weren’t always the best. After deciding that no one was actually awake, I grabbed my wooden sword and we each took to our own trapdoors and tumbled outside of Hangman’s Tree. The night sky was alive with a zillion stars but there was something missing and the night was darker than just the mist rising from the woods would cause.

“It’s a new moon,” I said accusingly to Red. “We can’t go out there. We have to do this some other time.”

Red looked around too, the ears on his fox pelt bent over giving him a uncharacteristic defeated look. “I didn’t know there wasn’t a moon out. It doesn’t matter though. You haven’t been a Lost Boy that long and I… I’ll just have to deal with it.”

Neverland has a very interesting and usually pretty cool lunar system. There’s almost always a moon ranging from a crescent to a full moon. Sometimes there are even two of them floating through the night sky. Every now and again, about twice a year, there’s no moon at all. Anywhere else it wouldn’t be a big deal whether the moon was there or not. Neverland, however, isn’t like anywhere else at all. When there is no moon in the night sky the boundary between Neverland and the ‘real’ world tends to run and fade a little. It’s a time when it’s easiest to move between the two places without benefit of happy thoughts and pixie dust. Even then it’s still bloody hard for physical things to go from one place to the other. It’s other things that move between the two places almost without pause. Memories. Feelings. Wishes. Thoughts. One of the best things about being a Lost Boy is that when you get to Neverland you start to forget about the ‘real’ world and especially those things that happened there that caused you to need to be rescued and become a Lost Boy in the first place. It’s not exactly falling out of prams that cause a boy to become a Lost Boy. But on the night of a new moon those memories can come tumbling across the border and those things you thought you’d left behind forever are suddenly there once again just as horrible and terrifying as they were the first time. I’d been told that Midnight Walks were a frequent thing when there was a new moon. Of course it wouldn’t be Neverland if there weren’t some good that came of it too. Thoughts and wishes on our side of the border found themselves in the ‘real’ world and were picked up by those who were receptive to it. Why do you think the name Peter Pan is so well known in the ‘real’ world?

Normally the best way to combat a new moon was to sleep through it. The nightmares would be worse than usual, but nightmares were always better than having the memories of stuff haunt you when you were awake. Since I hadn’t been a Lost Boy that long I still pretty much remembered why I’d come to be here. Red had been away from the ‘real’ world a lot longer and probably just had the vaguest idea of what had happened to him or caused him to become lost. “Let’s just forget about it tonight,” I said with as much feeling behind it as I could. “We can find out some other night or something.”

Red shook his head. “Naw, it’s okay. I can handle it.” He gave me a grin that looked both false and ghastly in the starlight.

“Maybe you can handle it, but I’m scared and not just of my shadow which I can’t even see. C’mon, it ain’t worth it.”

Red stubbornly shook his head. “I’m going with or without you, so if you want to find out if Cookie knows anything about that pelt, ya might as well come with me.” The problem with Red was he figured if he didn’t go it’d make him look like a coward. Even if I’d been nutsy enough to think he was cowardly for not going, I’m the last person who’d have mentioned it to him or anyone else. He’d end up thinking that he hadn’t been brave enough and that would eat at him for ages. Fortunately, as craven as I am, I didn’t have any such problems with being chicken. I just wasn’t going to be able to use it to stop him like I normally could.

Red started off through the woods and I watched until he almost disappeared among the trees. With a sigh and a curse for myself, I took off at a gallop until I caught up with him. He flashed me a grin which told me he’d never been in doubt that I’d be right behind him. I decided I’d figure out later whether that irritated me or made me sort of proud.

The trip through the woods was worse than normal. It wasn’t the hills this time but the fact that with only the light of the stars to see by I tripped over every root, branch, and hole imaginable. Not to mention I was pretty sure that my tramping could be heard all over the island. There would be no sneaking up on anyone tonight. Red suddenly came to a stop and I almost ran over him. I stood there breathing heavily with sweat dripping off my face while Red looked around. “I’m not used to it being this dark,” he said uncertainly. “Maybe we should have turned… naw, that’s not right. It’s over here I think, but…” He gave a low uncharacteristic moan and suddenly spun around twice, continuing to moan as he turned.

“Red, what’s wrong?” I’d never seen him like this before and had no clue what was wrong or what to do. For a moment he cowered from something I couldn’t see and then turned to me.

“We gotta get outta here. Right now.” Before I could begin to ask what we had to get away from, Red bolted.

“Red! Wait up,” I yelled as I started to trot after him. I knew if I lost sight of him they’d probably find my partially eaten body in the middle of nowhere, although I’m sure someone would have come up with a pretty good tale to explain it. I hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps when something clamped on my left shoulder and squeezed so hard that I collapsed to the ground. I’d felt pain before, but nothing like this. The hand that had grabbed me released it’s grip. In the darkness I could see three or four forms, but couldn’t make out anything beyond the fact they were vaguely man-shaped out.

“Where ye think ye be going, maggot?” a voice that sounded as though it was coming through a throat made of rusty iron pieces asked.

“I don’t believe this one be liking our company,” a second voice of smug satisfaction declared. “No matter, ye’ll find our company grows on a body in one form or another.” There was grim chuckling at that announcement and I went from being merely terrified to horrified. “You’re pirates,” I said in one of the more unnecessary sentences I’ve ever uttered.

“Pirates? Us? G’wan. Ye must be kidding. What be givin’ ye that idea, maggot? Could it be these powerful sharp swords we be carryin’?” There was a rasp as a cutlass was pulled from it’s sheath and playfully poked at me a couple of times before being returned. “Or pehap it be the fact that we could be making you walk the plank and go swimmin’. A swim ye never be returning from, eh?”

“Belay that bilge,” a voice that I hadn’t heard yet called out. “The cap’n be wanting to ask this brat some questions and ask them swiftly. Ye can be terrifying ‘im later.”

Amateur. I’d passed terror awhile ago. While there was a verbal fight going on about the parentage of one of the pirates, I sprung up as fast as I could and took off in the opposite direction. It was a daring escape. One that the elves tell tales about, that dwarves toast, and that bards sing about. Funny, they never mention what happens when one bounces off a tree they don’t see in the dark. I did a brilliant job of that and the night suddenly exploded into millions of lights as my head hit the trunk. Before I could hit the ground, I’d been grabbed by three sets of hands.

“He be a runner, that one. Tie ‘im up, hands and ankles. If we don’t get back soon, all of ye’ll be the ones takin’ their last swim. Within a couple of minutes my wrists and ankles had been tied tightly together.

“Now what?” one of the pirates asked the one I guessed was the leader.

“Now you swabs pick him up and carry him back to the boat. Be quick about it. No tellin’ when his friend’ll realize what happened.”

“Pick ‘im up?” one of them asked in astonishment. “He looks ‘eavy.”

“Then it’ll be you that tells ‘im why he ain’t with us when we get back to the ship.” There was some general cursing at that thought and after a couple of minutes I was hoisted over someone’s shoulder which created a great deal of specific cursing. I stuck my tongue out at the pirate following which only resulted in getting a nasty tasting piece of cloth stuck in my mouth. After what seemed like forever but was probably only about half an hour or so the woods became a beach that I didn’t recall ever seeing before. Of course it was still almost pitch black and I wasn’t exactly in the best position to see anything. The pirate carrying me casually dropped me into a rowboat that had been pulled up on the beach.

“Ye great lumberin’ idjit,” one of the pirates said to the person who’d dropped me. “Get ‘im out o’ there. It be bad enough dragging the rowboat without him bein’ in it.” With a curse, I was pulled back out of the boat and dumped on the beach which I quickly discovered was gravel and not sand. The pirates dragged the boat into the water and while two of them held it, the other two came back and dragged me by my feet to the water’s edge. I was picked up again and ‘accidentally’ dropped into the water by the boat. I was beginning to be convinced I was going to drown before one of them hauled me up by my hair and dumped me in the boat. “That’s for bein’ so bloody ‘eavy.”

“Enough,” the leader said. “Start rowin’ ye dogs.” There were a few grumbles and then I heard the splash of oars on the water. I’d landed face up and all I could see where the stars above me. They were suddenly blotted out by the leader’s head looking down at me. “T’would hate to be in your shoes, lad,” the man said in almost a whisper. He didn’t look very happy at matters at the moment. “Ye made the cap’n very upset with ye and that normally be a very fatal condition.” He pulled the cloth out of my mouth and tossed it overboard.

“That was me best one, Mr. Smee,” one of the pirates objected. There was no answer, just the splash of the oars.

A Visit to Lost Boys' Field and Red's Secret

There are a lot of things I hadn’t expected when it came to being a Lost Boy. Chores, including latrine duty, was one of them. Another was milk. Drinking milk was the last thing I’d have expected to be doing as a Lost Boy. It seemed so… “real” world for some reason. I mean in stories of great adventures and quests or books about elves or dwarves, you never read where someone was told to drink their milk before they set off. Still, Roo insisted that we have a couple of servings a week whether it be cow, goat, or some other type better not mentioned. Most of the time it was a pain, but there were a few times it could work out real well.

I sat at the table concentrating on the stew in the gourd in front of me trying not to burn my fingers again and watching Red as he ate. The timing for this was going to have to be almost perfect. Red finished his stew and then started on a huge gourd of today’s milk which was goat. He liked milk a lot and always gulped it down when he finished his stew. I looked over at Surefoot and gave him a tiny nod.

“This milk tastes gross,” Surefoot loudly declared after taking a swallow. “What kind is it?”

Right on cue Stumble spoke up in a matter-of-fact voice, “It’s not really milk. I got some water from that pond by the swimming hole and dipped some chalk and some clay and a slug or two in it. I couldn’t find any milk and didn’t feel like having Roo yell at me like last time.”

Red turned a distinct shade of green as he dropped his milk gourd and forcefully ejected the contents of his mouth. He got a lot of distance with it. The milk crossed the table and landed all over Tigger who just happened to be sitting across the table from Red. Tigger looked up, milk dripping from his face and hair, and started to say something to Red until he noticed me at the end of the table devouring my stew. There wasn’t anything unusual about me doing that, but it would have been more natural if I’d looked up at the sound of spraying milk.

“Cubby?” Tig asked in a deceptively mild voice.

I looked up, stew dripping off my chin. “What?” I tried to ask in a normal voice. I could feel my face turn red and my voice squeaked. It wasn’t fair that I couldn’t fake not being involved better than I was able to, especially in situations like this.

Tigger was wiping the milk off his face with his sleeve. “Funny. Very funny.” I looked around. Most everyone else thought it was funny. Even Red was grinning while wiping the milk off his face that had exited through his nose instead of his mouth.

“So we’re even now, right?” I asked hopefully.

“Even for what?”

“You know. About the snipe hunt and you saying I was stout.”

“But you are and the snipe hunt’s a tradition so you can’t blame that on me. Besides, I was just gettin’ you back for the blueberries in my bunk.”

“Oh. Yeah.” I had forgotten about that. “But, we’re even now, right? Right?” I was keeping my paws crossed.

Tigger looked at me a moment and then grinned. “Naw, I don’t think so.” He glanced over at Stumble. “You and Cub can watch each other’s back.”

“Me? What’d I do?” Stumble sputtered. “Why do I get blamed for everything?”

Tigger laughed at him as he got up. “No worries. Furball’s going to be my main target.”

I groaned as he left, although I was a little bit pleased. I’d never pulled a stunt good enough to get his undivided attention. This could be good, at least up to the point where I get covered in bees or ants or up to my neck in dried mud. I finished up my stew and then dropped down under the table where my pallet was. I sighed as I found some of the milk had made it down here too, but figured I probably deserved it. Opening the chest next to my pallet, I took another look at the jaguar pelt I’d found on The Jolly Roger. I still hadn’t found out anything about it and that was beginning to bug me a lot. I wasn’t sure why either.

I carefully put the pelt back and closed the lid. Maybe today would be the day to ask Nibbler about it. Before I could come up with any concrete plans, there was a bunch of commotion in the common room. I tried standing up to see what it was and then slid out from under the table rubbing the new bump on my head to find that Peter had arrived and was sitting on his throne.

“Cubby the Brave,” he said with a smirk as he caught sight of me. “I hear you found a snipe. Or maybe it found you. You sure don’t smell like one though.” I laughed along with the rest of the boys. It seemed a lot funnier now that I didn’t smell like skunk.

“Can I ask you something?” I said, walking over to his throne.

“For being a first class snipe hunter and bath taker you may ask a question.” There was some groaning at the mention of a bath from the others.

“It’s about something I found during a raid on The Jolly Roger.” Both twins frowned and Red shook his head slightly. Pan seemed slightly curious but that was about it and nodded at me to continue. “There was this place below the floor, uh deck, and I went into it and there was this thing I found.” I stopped, suddenly worried. Red was shaking his head even harder.

“What thing? C’mon out with it.” Peter wasn’t the most patient person in the world, especially if he suspected that you were stalling which I’d started to.

“Well there was this thing in there and at first I thought it was a blanket because it was all soft like one and in a paper package, but then I opened it and…”

“And?” Peter demanded. Surefoot winced in sympathy and the twins were worriedly whispering to each other. To avoid looking at Peter, I stared at his throne instead. It wasn’t really a throne, but a very big rough wooden chair with large arms and a huge back that was stuck in a small alcove in one of the dirt walls of the common room. If you squinted, it looked just like a throne. There was a legend that Pan had either won it, stolen it, or fought for it from or against a pirate king that was before Hook’s time. I was wondering how anyone could have ever managed to bring it through one of the trapdoors when there was an impatient cross between a throat-clearing and a growl.

“It was a pelt,” I whispered, knowing it was too late to say anything else. Even being the most cowardly Lost Boy didn’t prepare me for the sudden urge of wanting to throw up. “A jaguar pelt. I just wondered if you knew who it belonged to.” The question didn’t seem like the type that shouldn’t be asked. Not like asking another Lost Boy what he was lost from without them volunteering it or asking Peter how he came to be our leader.

Peter sat there staring at me with eyes that were unfamiliar with their expression of anger. I wanted to turn and run, but I was a Lost Boy and Pan was my captain and my friends were behind me and… I was too scared to do anything except stand there anyway. Pan slowly stood up and moved towards me until he was right in front of me. I still couldn’t move and wasn’t even sure I was breathing so I found myself looking straight ahead at his neck. “What did you say you found, Cubby?” he asked in a voice rimed with ice.

I wanted to say that it was nothing or that I’d only been joking. Anything that would make this whole terrible nightmare go away. I couldn’t. Lost Boys lie to each other at times, but none of us ever lied to Peter. He was our protector and our rescuer from the ‘real’ world and if we lied to him the magic might go away and never come back. “I found a jaguar pelt, Peter.” I spoke in a whisper so low that even I didn’t hear the words.

Peter moved so fast that I didn’t even see him un-sheath his dagger, the point of which was now poking against the soft part under my chin, pressing lightly against it. “Don’t ever mention that thing to me again, Cubby the Brave. Do you understand?” I nodded as much as I could without putting a hole under my chin from the dagger still pressed there. “If you ever mention that within my hearing again I’ll…” He stopped, his eyes not as furious as they were puzzled. As if he wasn’t sure what he was doing now or what he’d do if he heard of the pelt again. “I’ll… I’ll… I’ll banish you forever or tie you to the crocodile or something even badder.” There was a gasp from one of the boys behind us that Peter ignored. The pressure from the dagger had steadily increased as Peter had tried to figure out what the consequences would be and I finally fell over backwards to escape it. I looked up at him from where I was sprawled on the ground and for some reason felt a lot of sympathy for him. I suddenly knew there was something wrong about this pelt that I didn’t know about and that he couldn’t tell me even if he wanted to. My heart was beating so loudly that I heard it pump a dozen times while everyone and everything in the common room froze. Pan’s dagger made its way back to its sheath and then he grabbed one of my arms and helped me up with some effort. He stared at me once again, his eyes having returned to the look of mischief that Lost Boys and their captain normally carry. “Don’t ever mention that in my hearing nor let me see it ever.” He spoke in a normal voice, but emphasized the ‘in my hearing’ part. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Cubby the Brave?” Any other time being called ‘the Brave’ would have been mocking me but I didn’t get that sense at all. I nodded and he clapped me on the shoulder as though we’d spent the last few minutes discussing how I’d managed to get stuck on the ceiling upside down once again. Peter moved away from me and went over to talk to Leo and Tig about some sort of ambush that could be done from a tree somewhere. Red came up shaking his head.

“That pelt’s going to get you into a lot of trouble. You oughta give up on it and bury it in the woods somewhere or throw it off the cliffs.”

“I can’t,” I answered. “It’s something that needs an answer. ‘sides I couldn’t throw another Lost Boy’s pelt away. You couldn’t either.” Red nodded in less than enthusiastic agreement. “Maybe I should go talk to Nibbler now. He might be able to tell me something about where it came from or who it belongs to.” I tried to reach the middle of my back so I could scratch at whatever it was that had started biting me there.

Red looked around the room to see that Peter, Tig, and Leo had wandered somewhere else. In fact he and I were the only ones in the common room at the moment. Red grinned. “Perfect. I’ll come with you, but first I gotta do something.” I watched as he took the slingshot that he’d ‘modified’ the elastic on and dropped it on Tigger’s hammock. He gave me a grin and then climbed through his trapdoor to the outside world. It took a couple of attempts for me to get through mine and then I got stuck once before I finally fell out of the other door outside Hangman’s Tree. “What took you so long?” Red demanded when I got to my feet.

“Never mind,” I said. I was going to have to lay off the blueberries, and the apples, and the stew, and a bunch of other stuff. He laughed at my answer and then led the way to Lost Boys’ Field. As if knowing where our destination was, the day was cloudy and gloomy with a bit of drizzle occasionally falling. Neither of us minded the rain and by the time we got to the big oak tree that guarded the ‘sort of cemetery’ we were both covered in mud from our knees down from having stomped through mud puddles.

“What if he’s not here?” I asked Red as we stopped underneath the oak tree where it was surprisingly dry.

“Then I guess you’ll just have to wait for him, Furball,” a voice from above called down. We both looked up to see Nibbler swinging upside down from a tree limb by only his feet, the rabbit ears of his pelt swaying back and forth as he swung. I could do the same thing using my knees but I was pretty sure there was no way my feet were strong enough. I glared half-heartedly at Red cuz I knew he’d be the one to have passed on his nickname for me to Nibbler.

“Can you teach me to do that?” I asked as I looked up again to see Nibbler still swinging from his feet.

He moved his feet and plummeted through the branches, managing to miss every one of them. He twisted in midair and landed lightly in front of us on his feet. I tried not to be too jealous since I hardly ever landed on my feet when I fell out of trees. “I can’t teach you now, but I promise I will if you ever show up on the other side.”

“Um… okay.” I really wasn’t sure what to say to a promise of something that will occur after you go on to the next adventure.

Nibbler laughed as though he knew exactly what I was thinking. “So what’s up mates o’ mine?”

Red poked me in my side with his elbow when I didn’t say anything right away. I was a little scared to mention it after Pan’s reaction to it. Red poked me again. “Quit it, that hurts. It’s about this pelt I found,” I said to Nibbler. “It’s a jaguar pelt and it’s gotta belong to a Lost Boy but no one knows whose it is or anything.”

Nibbler reached down and snagged a dandelion and started chewing on the end of it while he pondered. “A jaguar pelt?” he mused aloud. “I don’t think there’s ever been one of those around that I know of. Where’d you find it?”

I looked at Red who shrugged back. It couldn’t be nearly as bad as having told Peter. “I found it on The Jolly Roger when we were doing a raid. It was down this door… uh, hatch thing in a room with just a chair in it.”

“Bow or stern?”

“Back… Stern.”

Nibbler continued chewing on the dandelion stalk as he stared up into the tree as though some sort of answer might be attached to one of its branches. He slowly shook his head. “I’ve never seen nor heard of a jaguar pelt and I’ve never shepherded anyone through the ways who didn’t have their pelt with them. Sorry Cubbs.”

I let out the breath that I’d been holding. “Rats. I was hoping you’d know cuz I mean it doesn’t belong to any current Lost Boy, so it must belong to someone who’s gone on to the next adventure. Now I don’t know how to find out who it belongs to.”

“What makes you think whoever it belongs to has gone on to the next adventure?” Nibbler asked.

“If he don’t live in Hangman’s Tree and I’ve never seen him or any of the others haven’t then it’s gotta belong to someone from a long time ago. And if they ain’t one of us no more than that must mean their dead. Uh, gone on to the next adventure. Right?”

“Not always,” Red said. “You know if a Lost Boy grows up, Peter banishes them. You can’t have grown ups around cuz they’d want to make you go to bed on time or eat your vegetables…”

“Or drink your milk,” I chimed in.

“Yeahhh, but that’s kinda different in Roo’s case. He’s…” Red struggled to explain it and finally gave up. “If it weren’t for Roo half of us’d be in the middle of that field right now. Anyway, if a Lost Boy grows up, he’s gotta be banished. Some go to the real world and some go… other places.”

I groaned now that I had something else to worry about. “What happens if I grow up? How do I stop it if it starts? Aw, this is just great.”

Red gave me a gentle shove. “Relax, Furball. Of all of us, you’d be the one I’d least expect to grow up. Grow out maybe, but not grow up. It’s not like it happens real often and I figure you’d be the one to help others not grow up. That does happen sometimes.”

I wasn’t sure about that but wasn’t going to argue about it. Nibbler let out a huge yawn and I wondered if ghosts could get tired or need dandelion stems to chew on or stuff like that. All of a sudden I had a million questions I wanted to ask Nibbler and knew that I’d never be able to ask any of them because his being a ghost was something that had happened before. I didn’t even know how he’d become a ghost. “You guys want to play marbles?” Nibbler asked, dropping to his knees. We both agreed and joined him on the ground. Nibbler smoothed out a large patch of dirt which I’d have sworn was moss covered a second ago. He drew a big circle in the dirt and we all dug in our pockets for marbles.

“Can I use these? I don’t have a lot of marbles.” I held up a half dozen foil covered tiny chocolate eggs.

Red was surely going to suffocate, he started laughing so hard. “Who’d have thunk it? Cubbs doesn’t have a whole lot of marbles. You loose a few marbles, did ya?” The words squirmed out between bouts of laughter.

Nibbler was doing his best not to smile too hard and even I had to grin in spite of myself. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very funny. Can I use these or not?”

“I don’t care,” Nibbler said. “But if I win ‘em, I’m going to eat ‘em. So if they’re magic or something you better not use them. Oh, and no weird rules either. Just regular marbles.” I figured Nibbler must have played a few games that Tigger had organized. We both agreed and started to play. Within the first few minutes, I managed to lose five of the six chocolate eggs but had won a marble that was bright red and glowed with some sort of yellow light inside. My stomach rumbled letting me know it didn’t think much of the trade-off.

Red was getting ready to shoot when Nibbler spoke up. “So what’s the big deal about this pelt, anyway?”

I waited to answer until Red shot and missed my last chocolate egg but did manage to knock one of Nibbler’s marbles that had a picture of an orange seagull on it out of the ring. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “It’s in my chest right now, but it’s always there in my mind too,” I said tapping my head as though I wasn’t sure they’d know where my mind was. “Its like it needs me to find out the story behind it or something. I know. It sounds like I’ve lost my mind… or my marbles.”

The sound of laughter or teasing I’d expected never happened. Instead Red looked at Nibbler and they both nodded. “One of those things,” Nibbler said. “Sometimes we get into stuff that just won’t let you forget about it. It’d figure that a pelt would be one of those things if its owner got into some sort of trouble or something.” Nibbler didn’t say anything until it was Red’s turn to shoot again. He carefully lined up one of Nibbler’s marbles that looked a lot like a ruby in his sights and got ready to shoot. “You know, if you found the pelt on The Jolly Roger mayhap you should ask a pirate about it. Red might be able to help you with that.” Red’s shot ended up flying way over the field of marbles and hit the trunk of the oak tree ricocheting off into the grass.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Red sounded as though Nibbler knew exactly what he was talking about and was less than thrilled that he did.

“Just tell him,” Nibbler said calmly. “He won’t tell anyone and it’s not like he probably wouldn’t find out sometime anyway. You can’t keep something like that from your best friend. And someone needs to know.” I looked from Red to Nibbler and back again wondering what was going on. Whatever it was, I could tell Red was pretty upset by it. Nibbler sighed and started picking up the marbles and eggs he’d won. “You guys figure it out, I have to go meet someone.” Both Red and I looked at Nibbler with expressions just this side of scared on them causing Nibbler to sigh again, this time in a depressed way. “No, it ain’t none of you. I… Aw, heck. What’s the use? I’ll see you guys later if you’re not scared of me too much.” I watched as he climbed up the tree and disappeared among the leaves. I knew by now that if I climbed up, I’d find he wasn’t there anymore.

“What’s wrong with Nibbler? I didn’t do anything to get him upset did I?”

“Naw. It’s just Nibbler wants to fit in so badly sometimes and he’s sort of stuck between this adventure and the next adventure and it gets to him sometimes. He’s too young to be doing some of the stuff he does but it’s what he wants to do. It’s hard to explain.”

It might have been hard to explain, but I knew exactly what he meant. I’d have to make a wish on the wishing star that Nibbler’d be happier or something like that. “So what’s this thing he was talking about? You and asking pirates and stuff?”

Red had worn a lot of expressions in the time I’d been on the island, but this was the first time he’d had a stricken expression on his face. He looked all around and up in the branches of the tree as though expecting to find someone listening in. “Look, you gotta promise me if I tell you ‘bout this you won’t tell anyone. I mean anyone at all ever. No way, no how.”

“I promise.”

“Naw, it has to be a solemn swear that you’ll cut your own tongue out or walk the plank before you’d tell. That you could be tortured or beat up or threatened and you still wouldn’t tell anyone in the whole world or universe or infinity what I’m going to tell you. No matter what.”

“C’mon, Red. It’s me. I won’t tell, never.” The thought of being tortured or walking the plank was something that didn’t bear thinking about right now. Instead I was busy thinking about whatever the heck it was that had started biting me on the back again.

“Okay. Repeat after me. I double-dog swear on the grave of every Lost Boy before me and every Lost Boy after me that I will never tell the secret I’m about to hear or I hope my eyes fall out and my tongue swells up and kills me and I get thrown off the island forever and ever.” I repeated it and then we each spat in our left hand and shook on it.

“Hey, Red. What happens if Peter asks me about it.”

“That’s different. He won’t and if he does then he’ll already know and it won’t matter, but you’re right. We should have thought of that.” We went through the whole swear ceremony except we added that it’d be okay to tell Peter but only if he asked first. When we were done, Red told me to follow him. I’m not sure where he took me and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t find it again if my life depended on it. We went up and down hills and across trails, through a couple of caves, up a tree or two and finally jumped from the top of a big hill and landed in a clearing in the middle of a briar patch. Well Red landed in the middle of the clearing. I didn’t quite have the same amount of distance and managed to land a couple of feet short of the clearing. Red was nice enough to pull me into the clearing and to spend several minutes helping me pull thorns out of both my pelt and my hide. Even the thing biting my back settled down for a few seconds. After most of the thorns had been pulled out, we both sat down in the clearing, branches of thorns all that was visible around us. Red did the looking around thing again and then started to speak.

“What? I can’t hear you. You need to talk louder.”

After a couple of times of that happening, he finally spoke loudly enough so I could hear him. “There’s this pirate I know…”

“What? You know a pirate?” I couldn’t help it. It surprised me. A lot.

Red tried to look everywhere at once as he tried to shush me. “Are you crazy? If anyone else finds out about that they’ll kill me or banish me or make me grow up or something.”

“But how? Why? When did this happen?”

“If you’ll quit blabbering, I’ll tell you,” he said grumpily. “Just be quiet and listen.” He settled down again, swallowed and started talking. “Have you ever wondered how Hook get’s his pirates?”

“I dunno. I guess there’s some island or someplace he goes to?” It hadn’t really been high on my list of wonderings. Not when I could wonder how I could persuade one of the unicorns to take me for a ride or figure out how to fall asleep in the crook of the moon. Both of which I’d been told Lost Boys had done before.

“Yeah, I guess sometimes he does that,” Red admitted. “But that’s not how he gets all of them. Some of them are Lost Boys who grew up and Pan sent away...”

“What? Go on. That ain’t true. No Lost Boy would ever fight with pirates. It just wouldn’t be right.”

“If Pan sends them away they ain’t us anymore, are they.” It wasn’t a question.

“No, but still. I mean even if I grew up…” I looked around for a piece of wood to knock on. Red realizing what I was doing suggested I try my skull. “Ha, ha. Anyway, I could never fight you guys and I sure wouldn’t ever become a pirate. That’s just wrong.”

“You can barely fight as it is,” Red said with a grin. He seemed a little more relaxed but was still serious. “You don’t have to worry about growing up anyway. Them that does aren’t like you and me or any of the rest of us or they wouldn’t have grown up ever. Leastways I don’t think they would. And when you grow up things that used to be important aren’t quite the same as they were.” He cleared his head by shaking it. “It don’t matter, that’s not what I’m talking about right now anyway. You gotta stop interrupting.” We both knew that was more or less impossible but had to be mentioned anyway. “There are others who should have been Lost Boys but something went wrong somehow. Pan didn’t rescue them or they drifted ashore wrong or something like that.”

“How does that happen? Doesn’t every Lost Boy end up here as a… you know, Lost Boy?”

Red looked around again. “How should I know? We don’t even know why we were rescued much less why someone else wasn’t. Peter once told me there were a few Lost Boys that got misplaced and they’re in the ‘real’ world wandering around as grown ups but are really anything but.” He rolled his eyes. “Not another word, Cubster or I’ll make sure everyone calls you that for a month.” I quickly closed my mouth and nodded that I’d be quiet. I still wasn’t sure exactly what Red was being so secretive about. All of what he’d told me so far didn’t sound as though it was a huge secret.

Red took a deep breath and looked down at his feet. “About half a year ago I was down by the South Shore and almost got took by a pirate. I wasn’t paying attention like I shoulda been and he popped up behind a sand dune. I started throwing coconuts at him but he ducked all of them. All I had was a knife and started to pull it when he threw the cutlass he had down on the ground. Then he sat down. At first I figured it was a trick or something but there wasn’t any other pirates around. I just stood there and he sat there. I knew if he tried to get up, I could get away ‘fore he even got close.” He stopped as he got a thoughtful expression as though replaying the day in his mind.

“Then what happened?” I finally asked impatiently.

“If you’ll give me a moment, I’ll tell you. Cubster.” I closed my mouth so hard it made a clicking sound. “He told me that he wished he was a Lost Boy. He said that he’d gotten mixed up in Hook’s crew because he’d been in some raft or lifeboat or something like that because he’d tried to get to Neverland that way. He’d been so out of his mind with hunger and thirst that he’d agreed to almost anything and wasn’t sure what he’d been doing when he signed The Jolly Roger’s log to become a pirate. Now he says he figures he’s more one of us than a pirate. He became cook so he doesn’t have to fight us and even if he did he’d make sure he didn’t hurt any of us.” He nodded at me, grinning, as I tried to say I wanted to speak without actually saying it. “Yeah, go ahead Cub.”

“So how’d he end up on this beach if he was a cook and why’d he have a cutlass?”

“He was on the beach looking for shellfish and he had a cutlass in case anyone attacked him.” Red wasn’t quite exasperated with me, but I could tell it wouldn’t take a whole lot.

“So you don’t think he might be tricking you or something?”

“Why would he do something like that? He could have captured me if he wanted to. Anytime. Not all of them are bad ya know. Some of them didn’t want to be pirates but didn’t have any choice.” Red’s words got louder and faster and I wondered how many times he’d had this argument with himself.

“How could he have captured you ‘anytime’?”

“Sometimes he tells me when the pirates are going to try searching the island for us again and I tell him about some of the adventures we have. Not stuff that he could use to tell Hook about or how to find us or anything. And I know he can’t follow me when I leave.” After the amount of time and trouble it took to get to this stupid clearing in the middle of the briar patch, that was one thing I could truly agree with. Still there was something that didn’t ring true about the whole thing even if everything sounded like it was nicely wrapped up in good reasoning. Maybe it was the fact that everything seemed to be too neatly tied up. Maybe it was that whatever was on my back was now biting me again and had been joined by at least another friend. I tried to reach around to scratch my back.

“So you could ask him about the pelt, I guess?” I finally asked when the biting had subsided.

“Or you could,” he said slowly as his face brightened up. “Yeah. That’s it. You can come with me next time and ask him. Then you’ll know that he’s a Lost Boy that ended up being a pirate by mistake. You’ll see. He’s a good guy, really. And if he doesn’t know about the pelt, he could probably find out about it. Right?”

“Uh, yeah. I guess so.” I wasn’t at all sure I liked this idea, but Red had been a Lost Boy a whole lot longer than I had and probably knew what he was doing. “When do you meet?”

“Whenever he has some information to give me about whatever Hook might be up to. I could let him know we want to meet by tying a bandana around a palm tree on the South Shore. That’s how… What the heck are you doing?”

I’d suddenly sprang to my feet and was spinning around as fast as I could trying to reach my back because there were not four things biting me that I desperately had to scratch. I finally threw myself backwards into the briars. If nothing else, maybe I could impale whatever it was on a bunch of thorns. There was blessed relief for a couple of seconds before the normal pain of having a bunch of thorns puncturing your back occurred. I explained what I was doing to Red.

“You know what it is? You’ve got fleas. Time for a flea-dip, Furball.” After a lot of pulling and tugging from Red, I managed to escape the briar patch. We went through the 100-mile back and forth and sideways trek to travel a half-mile to make sure I couldn’t find my way back to the place and finally came to the swimming hole. By the time we’d spent all that time walking, the sun had started to shine so when I bellyflopped into the swimming hole, the fountain of water I made re-soaked him. There are a couple of advantages to being the heaviest Lost Boy when it comes to the ability to move water into the sky.

“This isn’t a bath, you know,” I emphasized to Red. “I’m just going for a swim.” I splashed, imagining fleas getting on flea-sized life rafts to escape the deluge. The biting was gone. I swam to the shore, laying with my head and chest on the sand, eyes closed, and the rest of me in the water. “This has gotta be one of the best feelings in the world. You oughta jump in and get rid of your fleas too. It could just be a matter of minutes before they start biting you. It’s not like it’s a bath or anything.” No self-respecting Lost Boy ever admitted to taking a bath. It just wasn’t done. Which is why it was known as a flea-dip instead of a bath.

Red was sitting on a rock spinning a marble. “I don’t have to. I don’t get fleas.”

“Whatdayamean you don’t have fleas?” I stood up, water streaming from the pelt and hopefully carrying any remaining tiny critters with it. “We all got them. Even Roo.” I’d found that out the first time I’d discovered fleas on my pelt. That was one reason it wasn’t too unusual to find a Lost Boy swimming while it was snowing, the so-called ‘flea-dip’.

“I used to, but I got an amulet from this elf I know. It repels ticks, fleas, and stuff like that. See?” He pulled out a small round clay circle attached to a string around his neck. There were some symbols and runes on it. “I got another one you can have if you want.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out another amulet that looked just like the one around his neck.

“You’re going to just give it to me?” I asked, suddenly suspicious. He might be my best friend, but there’s no way he was going to just give something like that to me.

“Heck no.” He thought about it for a moment. “You have to be Stumble’s assistant for me for a week, you gotta do latrine duty for me twice and you gotta do… I dunno. Clean fish for me.”

“It’s not worth that much,” I said. Latrine duty was totally gross. Almost as bad as cleaning fish.

“Fine,” he said beginning to shove it back in his pocket. “I’m sure Surefoot won’t mind not being eaten alive by fleas.”

The moment he said that my back began to itch in anticipation of what I knew would happen later. “Fine. I’ll do it.” He grinned as he tossed me the amulet. He knew I’d agree to it. Heck, even I’d known that I was going to agree. I put the amulet around my neck. “Is that it or is there anything else I have to do?”

“You have to rub it three times in the sunlight and it’ll be activated. Then you’ll be flea free.”

We headed back towards Hangman’s Tree and I paused in the middle of a large field to activate the amulet. It grew warm as I rubbed it. That was normal. What wasn’t normal was the fact that Red was running as fast as he could for the edge of the woods. “Huh?” I asked intelligently as I tried to figure out what was going on. Before I could get my paws around that fact, I was interrupted by a very loud humming sound coming from the other edge of the field. “Oh Hook’s handkerchief,” I cursed as I looked to see what was making the humming sound and knew instantly what was going on. Coming towards me was a swarm of cowflies so thick it was like a black cloud.

Cowflies were like horseflies with a few important differences. Cowflies were about twice as big as horseflies which is why they were called cowflies. Plus it sounded a lot better to call them cowflies rather than ‘twice-as-big-horseflies.’ Another important difference was that the bite of a cowfly hurt twice as much as a horsefly. They were also twice as mean and would chase a Lost Boy twice as far. The most important difference was that a cowfly could fly twice as fast as a horsefly. I could barely out-gallop a horsefly. I was doomed. Naturally the amulet was spelled or something so I couldn’t just pull it off. I only had one chance which was to turn around and gallop as fast as I could for the swimming hole. Red’s laughter followed me.

It took most of the rest of the day for the amulet to dissolve in the water. Red hung out with me while I was waiting, but not before he let every other boy know that I was trapped in the swimming hole so they could come and visit me and listen to Red tell them about the horrified look on my face as I’d discovered what was going on. Tig was especially impressed by how fast Red had gotten me back for the milk joke that morning as well as the fact that he’d used cowflies. I’d moved fast enough, as Red knew I would, to avoid most of the bites and only had a few welts. Twice as big as horsefly welts would have been, naturally. The cowflies hovered above the water and dive-bombed me regularly until the clay dissolved. They didn’t pay any attention at all to the others.

“How’d you manage to pull that on me?” I asked Red when the clay had dissolved and the cowflies had gone looking for real cows to bother. “The milk stunt was only this morning.” After refusing to believe he was psychic—“Psycho is more like it”—he told me that the whole thing was a coincidence. He’d planned on using it on Surefoot who he also owed a trick to. Everything had fallen in place for him to play it on me so he’d gone for it.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” I demanded as I squished my way back towards Hangman’s Tree with him following.

“That you owe me one now?” He didn’t seem particularly worried about the possibility.

“Heck no. I mean I do, but that’s nothing compared to what I mean.”

“C’mon Cubbs. It was only a joke. You didn’t get killed or anything.”

“Doesn’t matter. I don’t care what you say. I’m not doing latrine duty or cleaning fish or helping Stumble cook stew. So there.” I couldn’t see it, but I knew he was rolling his eyes. I might have been able to come up with something worse, but I still wanted his help to find out about that pelt.