Peter and the Sword of Mercy (11 page)

D
ARKNESS

W
ENDY LOOKED OUT HER WINDOW
many times that gloomy day, each time hoping to see her mother returning, each time disappointed.

Over and over Wendy told herself that nothing was wrong, that her mother had simply been delayed. But her worry deepened with each passing hour.

What if something happened to her?

As night fell, Wendy finally saw someone approaching the house—but it was her father. As he trudged up the front steps, Wendy turned away from the window, her knees weakening with dread.

What shall I tell him?

She listened, cowering in her room, as he entered the house and went from room to room downstairs, calling his wife’s name. He came up the stairs, still calling, his tone increasingly irritated. Finally, getting no response, he knocked on Wendy’s door.

“Come in,” she said. The door opened. Wendy was sitting on her bed.

“Where is your mother?” said George Darling.

“I don’t know,” said Wendy.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“She went…out,” said Wendy.

“At this hour?”

“No. This morning.”

“This
morning?”
George’s tone had changed from irritation to concern. “Did she say where she was going?”

Wendy looked down, saying nothing. Her father strode across the room and stood over her.

“Where did your mother go?” he said sharply.

Wendy put her face in her hands. She didn’t want to betray her mother’s confidence. But she was scared. Her father was leaning over her now.

“
Where did she go?”

Wendy looked up, her face red and tear-streaked. “She went to see Grandfather Aster.”

George straightened, his expression shocked, then guarded. “I see,” he said.

He
doesn’t know that I know about the Starcatchers,
thought Wendy.

“How did she go there?” said George.

“She took a taxicab,” said Wendy.

Her father turned, headed for the door. “Look after your brothers,” he called over his shoulder. Moments later, Wendy heard his footsteps pounding down the stairs.

Two heads appeared in the doorway, one below the other.

“Where’s Father going?” said John.

“Where’s Mum?” said Michael.

“What’s for supper?” said John.

“I don’t know,” said Wendy.

Hours later, after she had fed her brothers and—finally—put them to bed, Wendy crept down to the staircase landing and listened to her father talking with two Scotland Yard detectives. They were polite but had nothing positive to report. They had checked with the staff at the Aster house; Mrs. Darling had never arrived there. They had interviewed many hackney drivers, looking for one fitting the description provided by Wendy, but they had found nothing. None of the neighbors or nearby shopkeepers recalled having seen Mrs. Darling on the street. Of course, the detectives noted, people didn’t spend much time outside in this weather.

The detectives asked George, several times, why his wife had gone to see her father. Each time he replied that he didn’t know. Wendy didn’t believe him, and it was obvious that the detectives didn’t either. Their questions were making her father testy.

“What difference does it make
why
she went to see her father?” he said. “The point is, she’s missing. You should be out looking for her now.”

“We are, Mr. Darling,” said a detective. “We have men looking right now. But the more information we have, the better we can …”

“I’ve given you all the information I have,” snapped George.

A brief, uncomfortable silence followed. Then one of the detectives said, “We’ll be going now, Mr. Darling. We’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything.”

“I would appreciate it,” said George, coldly.

The detectives walked to the front door. From her place on the dark landing, Wendy saw them go past; they were accompanied by a bobby. With a shock, Wendy realized it was the same one she’d seen that morning, nodding at the hackney driver who had stopped for her mother. She had forgotten him until now.

Wendy was about to call out, but she caught herself. If the bobby had seen the taxi, wouldn’t he have said something to the detectives? Yet apparently he had not.

Why not?

Wendy waited silently as the bobby and the detectives left, and her father closed the door. Then she descended the stairs.

“Wendy,” said her father. “Why aren’t you …”

“I know why Mother went to see Grandfather,” she said. “And so do you.”

“What are you talking about?” he said.

“,” she said. “I know about them. And about what Mr. Smith found out. Mother told me all of it.”

Her father was standing right in front of her now, his face red with fury.

“That is
nonsense”
he said. “Your mother should never have told you that.”

“But what if it’s why she’s gone missing?” said Wendy.

“It’s got nothing to do with it!” he shouted.

Wendy flinched, but did not back away. “How can you be sure?” she said.

He didn’t answer, and Wendy saw in his eyes that he
wasn’t
sure. He took a breath and let it out, calming himself.

“Wendy,” he said, “this is a very sensitive matter. If I tell the police some story about some secret group chasing a magical powder, or an inhuman creature inhabiting the body of a royal adviser, I’d be locked up as a lunatic, or a traitor, or both. You must understand that, Wendy. You must say
nothing
about this.”

“But Mother …”

“I am as worried about your mother as you are,” he said. “And I will do everything in my power to find her. And right now I believe our wisest course is to let the police do what they are trained to do. They’re very good, Wendy. They will find your mother.”

“Maybe they already have,” Wendy said softly.

“What do you mean?”

“The bobby who was just here,” said Wendy. “I saw him this morning.” Her father listened intently as she described what she’d seen through her window.

“Are you certain it was the same bobby?” her father asked.

“Yes,” said Wendy.

“Perhaps he didn’t see your mother get into the taxi,” said George, sounding to Wendy as though he were trying to convince himself. He went to a window and looked out. There was nothing to see except the utter blackness of a foggy London night. He stared into it for a few moments, then turned to Wendy.

“Tomorrow morning,” he said, “you and your brothers will go visit your uncle Neville in Cambridgeshire.”

“But I don’t want to! Not if Mother …”

“Wendy,
listen
to me.” Her father’s tone left no room for argument. “If you want to help, you will go to Cambridgeshire, and you will look after your brothers. I can’t be worrying about your safety when I’m trying to find your mother.”

“But—”

“No. You’re going, and you’ll stay with Uncle Neville until it’s safe for you to return.”

“How long will that be?”

Her father looked out the window again, at the darkness.

“I wish I knew,” he said.

T
HE
G
LOW

I
T WAS LONG PAST MIDNIGHT
, but Cheeky O’neal was wide awake, listening. Fighting Prawn, keeping a close watch on his unwanted guests, had posted two warriors outside the hut where O’neal and his men slept. The warriors had been talking for hours, but in the past few minutes their murmuring voices had stopped.

Silently, O’Neal rose from his sleeping mat. Around him, snoring loudly, lay DeWulf, Kelly, and McPherson. Picking his way carefully past them, O’Neal went to the doorway and looked out. As he’d hoped, both sentries were slumped against the hut’s log supports, dozing.

O’Neal left the hut, his huge bare feet silent on the dirt. He quickly crossed the village compound and entered the jungle, finding the path he had scouted earlier. He knew exactly where he wanted to go; he’d been carefully studying the island’s geography, and particularly its water supply.

The jungle echoed with the hoots, twitters, screeches, and screams of unseen creatures. In places it was pitch-black, but most of the time just enough moonlight filtered through the thick tree canopy to enable O’Neal to follow the path. In a few hundred yards it led him to the mountainside, where it began to climb steeply. Every few steps O’Neal grunted in pain as his bare feet found sharp lava. To his left he heard water rushing, and after another fifty yards the path turned that way.

He came to the stream and turned right, following it up the mountainside, which was steeper now, sometimes forcing him to use his hands to climb. Finally he saw, in the moonlight ahead, what he was looking for: a cave mouth, nearly as tall as he was, the source of the stream. He stepped into the rushing water and waded to the cave, then inside. The water seemed to sparkle at his feet, like phosphorescence in the ocean, only different. In a few feet he was in pitch blackness, his feet feeling their way forward in the strong, cold current, his hands reaching out for rock walls he could not see. Deeper and deeper he went, his feet now, strangely, no longer sore.

The stream swung to the right. O’Neal felt his way around the bend. Suddenly the darkness gave way to a luminescence; the air was no longer ink black. O’Neal shuffled forward twenty feet. Another bend. He rounded it.

And then, in the distance, he saw it.

A constant, golden glow. Like sunshine. But warmer than sunshine. And coming from somewhere—it seemed from the air itself—he heard…
music.

O’Neal smiled.

U
NCLE
N
EVILLE

O
RDINARILLY, WENDY WOULD HAVE BEEN
thrilled to visit her uncle Neville, a magistrate with a large estate in Cambridgeshire. He was often described as an eccentric, but to Wendy and her two brothers he was the only grown-up they knew who acted more like them than like a grown-up.