The Tooth Pixies

Chapter 1

Bright Smiles

Clear skies, warm suns, soft grass, calm waters, and gentle breezes; that is what Jake and the Neverland Pirates liked. The four young pirates rested their heads in the plush meadows of Butterfly Bluff, with a soft blanket against their backs and a basket with only a few morsels of tasty treats left.

They had been lying there for what seemed like hours, watching and waiting as the world turned slowly. The bright sun, made bearable through the lenses of their sunglasses, was beginning its long descent toward the horizon. Every once in a while, one of those brightly coloured, humongous butterflies would flutter past. For creatures so large, they flew with such a gentle and silent grace.

This was the life. As Jake and his crew loved their adventures, they also loved the quiet days – the smell of fresh flowers and warm grass. No danger. No quarrelling. No sneaky snook. Just a day to themselves.

The stillness was broken by Cubby. As quietly as possible, he reached his hand into the basket and pulled out the last coconut chip cookie they had left. Cubby pulled up his shades to inspect the biscuit in its original colour. The cookie, packed with oats and generous chips of white coconut, shone golden like a doubloon in the sunlight, having been baked for the perfect amount of time. Every bite could be heard from miles around and be easily mistaken for the sound of cannon fire. Cubby licked his dry lips. He was going to enjoy this.

A snort from Skully drew the mini matey toward his other mateys. Jake, Izzy, and Skully slept peacefully. Their breathing calm and measured. Cubby turned back to his cookie. It would be such a shame to wake them now, but those coconut shavings looked so good.

"Aw, coconuts…" Cubby whispered under his breath.

Temptation got the better of the little buccaneer. Cubby stuck his tongue out and dabbed it twice against the crunchy outer shell. The taste of delicious oats mingled for a second before fizzling out.

Cubby glanced at his friends again. They had not moved an inch. "Maybe I can be really, really quiet…?"

Cautiously, Cubby brought the cookie between his teeth, fearing that the slightest scrape would awaken the others. He clamped down and applied slow pressure, but found the cookie to be tougher than he had hoped. He applied more pressure, and when that did not work, he applied some more. Finally, his stomach could stand it no longer, he bit down with everything he had.

Crunch!

Something had broken the silence, but it was not the coconut chip cookie. Cubby sat there, the cookie still intact between his choppers. He turned to his mateys and found each of them holding a bitten apple. Their eyes were shut, but their jaws chewed. Cubby gazed at them silently, unsure as to what to say or do. Then, from behind the tinted lens, he spotted Jake peeking at him; a mischievous smile started to grow on the leader's lips.

Jake swallowed the chunk of apple, then looked at Cubby who looked confused. "What?" Jake asked. His grin showed no signs of stopping. "Oh, I'm sorry. Did we wake you?"

Cubby's lips fell into a frown as he saw the smiles on their faces. He had been had. "You guys are the worst," he spoke while the cookie was in his teeth, causing his words to come out muffled.

Jake, Izzy, and Skully burst out laughing. Little did Cubby know, they were not laughing at him, but instead, with him.

"Cheer up, Cubby," Skully said. "We didn't mean it in a bad way."

Izzy tipped up her sunglasses, revealing her brown eyes. "Yeah. We saw you itching to take that last cookie. You were eyeing it for the last hour," she said, pointing a playful finger at Cubby. "We knew you couldn't keep away from it forever."

Slowly, Cubby's frown began to turn upside-down as he saw the funny side to it. "Well, you know what, Iz? You're absolutely right!" And he bit into the cookie with a loud crunch, sending out a ripple that could be heard far and wide. His face lit up with delight as he munched away happily. "Totally worth it."

They all laughed. They laughed themselves back down onto the blanket, where it died down naturally.

"Ain't it just beautiful?" Izzy asked as she looked up at the spotless blue.

"Yeah," Jake answered. "I haven't felt this relaxed since… ever."

Cubby took another hearty bite from the cookie. "You can say that again," he said with his mouth full.

"What did he just say?" Skully asked.

It was late afternoon. Time to go home. Izzy had wrapped up the blanket and secured it inside the mostly empty basket. Jake stretched his legs, which were stiff from immobility. They had no other plans other than traversing their way back to Bucky and sailing back to their hideout on Pirate Island. There, they would most likely spend the remaining hours lying on the beach, and waiting for the sun to set and the stars to come out and play.

Izzy shouldered the basket onto one shoulder. "Okay, team, which way back to Bucky?"

Cubby retrieved his map of Neverland and gazed at its surface. "We could just retrace our steps back to Shipwreck Beach, or…" he paused as he examined the map. "We could take the scenic route if you're feeling adventurous."

"The scenic route?" Skully asked.

"Yep," Cubby clarified as he pointed at his map. "According to my map, there's another route that can get us back to Bucky just as fast." He looked up at his mateys. "Do you remember the slide at the top of Spiky Pike Peak?"

Jake answered, "How could we forget?" as they recalled the fond memory of sliding down it, all the way from the mountain peak to ground level. That moment was the biggest for Cubby himself; the day he realised just how brave he actually was.

Cubby turned back to his map. "Well, here's another slide that sounds even more awesome. The Crazy Corkscrew. It's not far from here. It'll take us right back to Shipwreck Beach."

"Crazy Corkscrew?" Jake echoed. He folded his arms and stared at the ground, a frown appeared on his face. Something about that name just did not sit well with him. "That sounds a little extreme, don't you think, Cubby?"

Cubby smiled a hard smile that brimmed with determination. "Trust me, Jake. It'll be a blast!" He began to pace across the bluff. "This way, mateys."

The little map-reader led the way while the rest of the pirate crew followed. They navigated turns and dips and steps for five minutes before arriving at the lip of a precarious cliff. The air had a peculiar stillness to it, almost as if nobody had been through in a long, long time. There, right in front of them, was the mouth of the half-pipe.

"Here we are," Cubby announced as he reached the lip and looked down at what awaited them. "Crazy… Corkscrew…"

The four pirates felt a mixture of varied feelings as they overlooked as much of the slide as they could see. Out of all the feelings, excitement and dread were perhaps the most prominent of them all. Jake was right: the name did sound extreme, and for good reason. The Crazy Corkscrew was the wildest, twistiest, and – for want of a better term – craziest slide they had ever seen in their lives. It put Spiky Pike Peak to shame. They could make out three loop-de-loops, five steep drops, a figure eight, many twists, and even a few corkscrews as if they were purely constructed to make the name relevant. There were manoeuvres present that nobody would think were even possible on a slide, such as butterfly inversions, dive loops, double dips, and hammerhead turns – and they all weaved together like the threads in a sheet. Worse, the slide trailed off into the thick jungles beyond. Who knew how long it went on for, or what further mysteries awaited them? It sounded to insane to conceive, but there it was, Crazy Corkscrew, waiting for some poor chump to take the plunge and hope that they came out intact on the other side.

Cubby continued, now with a lump in his throat. "I'm sure it's perfectly safe… but I didn't think it would look that…" He stopped to swallow it down. "Dangerous…"

Skully hovered overhead. His birdy peepers struggled to comprehend the intensity of Crazy Corkscrew. "Crackers," he said, "its times like these that I'm glad I'm not human. You guys have my sympathies."

"So, uh," Cubby said in a shaky voice. "Who wants to go first?" He eyed the pirate lass. "Izzy?"

Izzy shot a wide-eyed look at Cubby. "Yay hey, no way," she cried.

Cubby felt a bead of sweat on his forehead and his heart beat with increasing tempo as he turned to the other. "Jake?" Don't say no. Don't say no.

"Look, Cubby," Jake began, "I know you're trying to put on a brave face for us, but you've got nothing to prove. We already know how brave you really are." From out the corner of his eye, he could make out Izzy and Skully nodding profusely. "We won't think any less of you if you don't want to do this."

Cubby, clearly outnumbered in this situation, looked back to the slide, and it only got longer the more he stared. The truth was, Cubby did not want to slide down the Crazy Corkscrew, but something urged him forward. He thought back to the previous slides and remembered the apprehension he felt at the time, which was nowhere near the dread he experienced right there and then. He recalled the day he had to get the Emerald Coconut back from Captain Hook; the day he aided the crabs against the same villainous pirate. He never went into these situations without fear, but he always came out on top at the end.

The little, quivering pirate asked himself why he was doing this, and the answer presented itself like a bolt of lightning. He was not doing this for them, he was doing it for himself.

He started small. "N-n-n-no…" Suddenly, Cubby shot upright, pulling his shoulders back, his chest out, and his head high. "No! I'm gonna do it! I wanna do it!" He marched to the lip of the slide. "Just watch me."

Never before had Jake ever wanted to reach out so bad. Usually, he would be encouraging his map-reading matey from a mountaintop, but this time, he had to fight every mode of sense in his body to not grab Cubby by the shoulders and pry him away from the crazy concoction. He had a bad feeling about this, but being a worrywart was supposed to be Cubby's job, not his.

Jake brought his hand up to his red bandanna and briefly adjusted it. Now he was starting to sweat. I never thought I'd ever say this, Jake thought, but bring the old, nervous Cubby back, please.

Cubby grabbed the slide by the corners. His heart sank as he gazed down the drop that awaited him. The opening plunge was practically vertical and seemed to go on forever. In order to clear most of the elements, the unlucky missile would need to be travelling at breakneck speeds.

Cubby gripped the corners tighter. His legs shook uncontrollably. "O-o-okay… I'm sure it's safe… nothing bad is gonna happen to me…" he murmured, more to himself than to his friends. "On three." He gently rocked his body back and forth in rhythm with the numbers. "One. Two. Thre—" He stuck his right foot out, only to retract it at the last moment. "Whoa! Maybe not!"

Izzy rushed beside her matey. Her hand delicately went to his shoulder. "Nobody's forcing you to do this, Cubby," she explained. "Let's just go the other way back to Shipwreck Beach."

"No, no, I got this," Cubby reassured her. "Let me try again." He composed himself, taking deep breaths. "One. Two." He closed his eyes and leaned forward. "THREE!" He shouted at the top of his lungs, while remaining rooted to the spot. A flock of birds from beyond the trees took to the sky, startled by his voice. "I didn't jump, did I," he said.

Skully rolled his eyes and sighed. "Nope, you didn't. Are you done yet?"

Without taking his hands off the slide, Cubby turned his head to meet the others. They could tell by the look in his blue eyes that he was afraid. Cubby gulped down another lump, then asked, "Can you push me?"

Jake almost choked. "Wha—? Push you? We're not doing that!"

"Please. I think that's the only way I'm going down this slide."

Jake looked at Izzy. Izzy looked back at Jake. Jake looked up at Skully. Skully looked at Izzy. Izzy looked back at Skully. Skully turned back to Jake. Izzy turned back at Jake. Jake kept his gaze on Skully. Izzy turned back to Skully.

"Best do as he says." Skully broke the silence. "None of us are leaving here until we do."

Izzy and Jake dropped their heads and sighed in unison.

"Okay, Cubby," Jake said, "We'll give you a hand…"

While they positioned themselves behind the pint-sized matey, Izzy handed the basket over to Skully. It was light enough for their faithful lookout to handle with ease. Jake stood to Cubby's right while Izzy to the left, and they both placed a motivating palm on the back of his vest.

"Ready?" Izzy asked. Cubby nodded. "On three." She spoke slowly and calmly, pausing before each word. "…One…" Then Cubby jumped.