Peter Pan in Scarlet (4 page)

Fearlessly, Peter skipped out along the branches to pick twigs for kindling, built a wonderful fire in the grate and lit it using nothing but the spark of Imagination. Then Wendy told them all such sensational sea stories that the Twins were seasick, and their imaginary midday milk tasted of rum. Outside, whole rookeries blew out of the treetops, but high in the storm-tossed Nevertree, the Twins declared they were ‘ready to sail through waves as high as a house!’ Curly said he would sail through waves as high as a hill. John said he would sail through waves as high as a mountain. Then everyone looked at Peter. He raised a fist over his head. ‘I’d sail through waves as high as the MOOOOON!’ he said. ‘Then down to the bottom of the sea!’

At that, there was a noise like a ship’s mast breaking, and the whole Wendy House lurched sideways. The League slid down the floor and piled up in a heap, along with the makings of the fire and Puppy, too. They clung to one another and tried to think happy thoughts so as to defy gravity. But it was hard as, one by one, they realized: the whole Nevertree was listing, toppling, swooning …
FALLING
.

As it fell, the tree fumbled its grip on the Wendy House, which spun out into empty air, floor over roof over window. Branches impaled its walls; boughs caught it, then instantly broke and let it fall further, a spinning box full of falling figures plunging towards the forest floor. John had the presence of mind to pull the communication cord …

But it did not stop them crashing to the ground.

Thanks to the storm, a million leaves had fallen to the forest floor ahead of the Wendy House. The splash sounded like water, but water would have been harder. They sank and sank, then sprang up again from the spongy mattress of twigs, leaves, and old bird’s nests. It was impossible to see what damage had been done, for down here among the undergrowth there was barely any light. Only the glimmer of Fireflyer, darting angrily about, lightened the ton of dark weighing down on them. The League of Pan picked themselves up and wondered what to do. Wendy called everyone to her and checked them over for injuries. There were only a few scratches and bruises and torn clothes.

She thought, when she stumbled over Peter, that he was worse hurt: there was a trickle of blood coming from his nose. Quickly she pulled out the handkerchief from her sleeve and tried to staunch the flow, but he jerked his head away and glowered. ‘Don’t touch me! I mustn’t be touched!’ That was when she realized: he was sulking hugely. ‘Now see what you’ve done, all of you. I said you were too big! Now look. You have smashed my house! I wish you had never come!’

‘It was the storm, Peter!’ said Wendy; though she had not been hurt by the fall, her heart hurt now.

‘I was better on my own,’ grunted the Only Child.

The Nevertree lay along the ground, its roots bleeding gouts of earth. The storm mumbled on. On several of the tree trunks, posters advertised:

But the corners were curling and the paper was peeling as the paste failed in the rain. Somewhere the puppy was barking, though the where of it seemed to be somewhere else. Their whistles and shouts fetched only hoots, growls, and hisses from the undergrowth: wild things were prowling the Neverwood, with eyes that could see better than theirs in the dark.

‘I can hear Puppy!’ said a Twin. ‘Somewhere underneath us!’

‘I do believe it has found our dear old den!’ said the other.

‘MY den!’ barked Peter. ‘I just don’t use it any more.’

By following the unhappy sound of the puppy, they found their way to the circle of toadstools that marked Peter Pan’s underground den, and clambered about trying to remember how to get in. Years before, each had entered by sliding down their own particular hollow tree. Tootles found
her
tree, but found, too, that she did not fit it; she had become a slightly different shape since the faraway days of Before. The others twisted and turned her—‘
Oh,
mind my frock!
’—this way and that—‘
Ow, mind
my plaits!
’—trying to post her down the chute. ‘
Ouch, mind
my moustache!
’

‘Tootles, you haven’t
got
a moustache!’

Down below, the puppy’s barking grew frantic.
Something
had taken up home in the underground chamber: a badger? a python? a giant truffle? Whatever it was, Puppy had a very low opinion of it. In fact, as Tootles struggled to get down, the puppy was trying to get up, so that neither could manage. The Something began to stir and move about.

‘So
that’s
why you don’t live down there any more!’ said Slightly, edging backwards, shivering in his evening shirt and bare legs.

‘Don’t care to!’ Peter retorted. ‘Could kill it if I wanted, but I liked living up in the treetops … until you all came along and broke my house!’

Peter’s sulk cast a guilty gloom over everyone. They shuffled their feet and picked at the circus posters on the trees, tried to warm their palms round Fireflyer, and glanced towards Wendy for help.

‘Soon, can we go to the circus?’ said John.

‘Ooo, can we, Peter? Can we?’ begged the Twins. ‘We’d be out of the rain!’

‘And there might be clowns!’

‘I hate clowns,’ said Peter. ‘You can’t see what they’re thinking.’

Around them, the trees could be heard clenching their roots in the ground, cracking their knuckles. It was impossible to tell what the trees were thinking, either.

‘As soon as it’s light,’ said Wendy, ‘we shall build a new home!’ and everyone felt instantly brighter … except for the One-and-Only-Child. Perhaps Adventure was calling him, or perhaps he had grown too used to making all the decisions.

‘No we shan’t!’ he said, tossing Wendy’s bloodstained handkerchief aside. ‘Why stay at home? We shall all go on a Quest!’ He said it as if no one in the whole history of the world had ever spoken the words before or had such a wonderful idea.

‘Oh, a Quest, yes!’ said Tootles, entranced. ‘What a cracking idea!’

‘I can’t help it. I’m just so marvellously clever,’ Peter explained. ‘Anyway, the Quester who brings Princess Tootles the heart of a dragon wins her hand, and a Happy Never After!’

‘Dragon?’ said Tootles, startled, and scratched her top lip.

Wendy looked sternly at Peter, thinking there had already been enough danger for one night.

‘But it’s raining!’ said a Twin.

‘Then we shall get wet!’ said Peter.

‘And muddy!’ cried Curly.

‘And mucky!’

That clinched it. Adventure and the chance to get dirty were calling too loud to ignore.

The Twins said they would go questing together and share the prize (since Tootles had two hands). Slightly asked if he could win half a kingdom instead of Tootles’s hand. Curly started to say that he couldn’t win Tootles’s hand because he was already married, but broke off, for that was clearly nonsense and he could not imagine what had put such an idea into his head.

Fireflyer said that he was too hungry to go questing anywhere, and began scouting about for conkers to eat. When the top-hat chimney suddenly came rattling down out of the tree-canopy, he took shelter inside it, out of the rain. The Questers snatched up dead wood to use for swords.

‘Off you go now!’ urged Tootles delightedly. ‘I’ll count to twenty!’ and she turned her face to a tree and covered her eyes. The Questers waded away waist-deep through the fallen leaves, towards all points of the compass.

‘When I come back,’ said Peter to Wendy, in a low voice, ‘I shall build a stockade and call it Fort Pan. Those others can’t come in, because they broke my house. But you can, if you like.’ He said it as if he did not greatly care one way or the other. ‘You stay here with Tootles while I go questing.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Wendy. ‘I want to go questing too! I don’t much want Tootles’s hand, but I’ve never seen a dragon!’

Princess Tootles, after counting to twelve-ish, picked up the top hat with Fireflyer in it, and struggled out of the wood. She sheltered from the rain in the mouth of a cave, at the head of a beach, and made herself a throne out of seaweed, a crown out of some pretty pieces of metal she found lying about. ‘I dub you Royal Liar Extraordinary!’ she told Fireflyer and he was so flattered that his scorching little body set the seaweed pop-pop-popping.

Dawn welled up, and Tootles glimpsed the shifting, oily sheen of the Lagoon. In her memory, it had been a shining crescent of turquoise water over shoals of white sand. The Lagoon she saw now was darkly heaving: a horse’s flank slick black and streaked with foam. A mane of washed-up seaweed lay among the pebbles, busy with flies. All along the high-water mark lay strange, white containers, like birdcages or crab-pots. On closer inspection they proved to be the skeleton ribcages of mermaids, with here and there a backbone or a hank of yellow hair. Tootles looked nervously around and ran back to the cave.

Meanwhile, the Twins found a Forest Dragon, with wooden limbs and a wooden body and a sharp, spiky mane of twigs. Just like a pile of fallen trees, in fact. They killed it with fire.

At about mid-morning, Slightly spotted a Cloud Dragon. It filled the sky from one horizon to another … until the wind sprang up and it went all to pieces.

At about midday, Curly reached a beach and found a Water Dragon. Every few seconds, the Dragon surged up the beach towards him, shapeless and smelling of salt, then retreated again. Curly tried to kill it, but his blade went straight through its watery hide and his boots got wet. So he sat down on the beach and threw stones at it instead.

In the mid-afternoon, John sighted a Rock Dragon: knobbly spine of limestone, a boulder of a head, and a pebbly cascade of tail. John left his wooden sword sticking up out of its neck. A triumph, he told himself.

Meanwhile, Wendy could not think where to look for a dragon. Surely they do not live in the open, she thought, or people would see them all the time and take photographs. Then she glimpsed one—its shoulder, at least—a great bulging thing the colour of blood, rising up from behind a hill. Her heart tried to jump out of her mouth but got wedged. She wanted to whistle up Peter, but her lips were too dry to blow. Wendy shut her eyes tight. Only as she crawled closer on hands and knees did she remember that she had not made herself a sword. The dragon rattled horribly loud—obviously a saggy, baggy monster with loose, flapping skin … And so big!

When she finally dared to open her eyes, Wendy burst out laughing. Not a dragon at all—just a huge, wind-blown circus tent! She could read the word painted in fading letters across the canvas roof. Ship’s cables tethered it to the ground. Around the tent were various cages on wheels, some empty, some with zebras or ostriches inside; a gorilla, three tigers, and a cotillo; a puma, an okapi, and a palmerion. None of the cage doors were shut. Ponies with plumes in their browbands grazed the grass round about. From inside the tent came the strains of a piano. Intrigued, Wendy climbed down for a closer look.

It was not a proper piano, at all, but a pianola, reading its music off a paper roll. The keys dipped, though no fingers were touching them, and a carved wooden figure on top of the lid conducted the music in jerky movements, squeaking for want of oil. Wendy was so eager to see it close up that she ducked indoors. The air glowed yellow and the noise of the wind was thunderous in the big hollow space. There was a smell of cough drops and damp sheep.

Oh, and a hint of lion.

Wendy had reached the centre of the sawdust floor before she saw them. They were ranged around the tent like the numbers round the face of a clock: twelve lions seated on upturned tin baths.

‘Ah!’ said a voice behind her. ‘A customer.’ It was a low, soft voice, plush as velvet, with sibilants as swashing as the sea. ‘Welcome to Circus Ravello. I was so hoping you would come.’ The lions rumbled like thunder. ‘Your devoted servant, madam. Do pray stand still, or my cat-kins may mistake you for lunch.’

Against the brightness of the doorway, the speaker was a patch of darkness in a halo of daylight. His outline was frizzed. Wendy could just make out a prodigious garment of some kind, its sleeves reaching far beyond the fingerends, the hem straggling to the very welts of his shineless boots: a thousand broken strands of wool, coiling and kinking, blurred the bounds between man and shadow. There was no telling where his wild hair ended and the hooded cardigan began. The colour of both had unravelled, too. A sheep tangled in barbed wire would have looked a lot like this tangle of manhood. And yet he moved with feline grace, planting his feet one in front of the other like a tightrope walker crossing a ravine.