Part 2
Chapter 9
First Night with the Boys
I paused, waiting to see if the flute's music would reach my ears.
I heard nothing but the pounding of the forest, the stomping of boots, the clash of sticks, the snarl of the tiger lurking in the underbrush.
It's a mouthful, but believe me when I say the jungle never before seemed so silent.
The flute that must have been so much louder than usual to breach the percussion, had muted in my ears.
"I can't hear it."
The second I vocalized the realization, Rufio's face contorted into a puzzled mask. He was still moving, stomping in a circle, still taken by the music. It would be rather comical if I hadn't just found myself face to face with quite the conundrum.
He danced away, half moved by the music and half moved by a look of panic and something close to anger on his face.
It didn't take much to figure out why I couldn't hear Pan's flute.
The flute could only be heard by those who felt unloved. My deafness to it indicated that I no longer felt that way.
It would seem as though I felt loved.
Ha.
This was an issue of goliath proportions.
If I were to sit down and think logically, mapping out all our interactions with painstakingly obsessive detail, I knew there was no way my thoughts could match the feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Pan did not love me.
No, scratch that.
Pan does not love me.
It was - and is - a painful realization.
And, if I'm going to be perfectly honest, I get off on it.
The total agony wanting someone, of feeling as though they wanted you too, only to know intellectually they did not was mortifying. Yet, in a different way than I was used to. It didn't trample my pride, just cut my heartstrings. And for that, I'd sit by passively, secretly dwelling on the pain that made it feel more real, as though it could amount to something someday.
Even though I was a bit wrong on the specifics, as future years would indicate, it's all still applicable.
I don't mind it when Pan tortures me.
It was the closest I figured I'd get. Besides, I reasoned, what did reality matter? As long as I enjoyed the emotional strain, as long as I damned what my mind told me and simply laid back and felt loved, I was content. Just so long as I didn't allow it to affect my actions or blur my judgement.
The contentment from having a friend, from mattering more to him than the speckled array of new boys on the island, and the pain of feeling one way and knowing my feelings couldn't be more wrong was close enough to reciprocity that it didn't matter.
The boys were dancing around the fire for hours. I remained still, elbows locked on my knees, watching them.
The dance was ridiculous. The more I watched it the more ridiculous it became. But there was a chaos to it, a sort of undomesticate abandonment that lit me with envy.
For a moment I wished I could still hear the flute.
But then Pan propped his leg up beside me on the log, and I expelled the thought immediately.
He lowered the flute from his lips, and the dancing continued. Leaning forward onto his knee, his eyes skirted around between the dancing boys. I hadn't gotten such a close look at his forearm before and had to suppress the urge to touch it.
After a little while, he looked down at me, as though finally registering that I hadn't always sat stationary at night.
"What?" I asked, my voice barely breaking through the pounding of staves and the stomping of two dozen boots.
"You're not dancing."
"Can't dance to something I can't hear," I said before I could control what escaped my mouth.
No sooner had I said it than I was filled with waves upon waves of inexplicable and inexorable guilt.
"Can't you?" Pan said with a twitch to his eyebrow. In a breathy voice he added, "Interesting."
The area below my abdomen constricted, and I leaned forward, covering myself, and pleading to end the exchange.
Pan rarely listened to my ideas and suggestions, but he did whenever it really mattered. And, with a cavalier nod, he accepted my request and closed that conversation for good.
Everything was so strange that first night; I couldn't imagine that eventually it would become as commonplace as the crickets and buzzing insects and snarling wild cats.
The majority of the boys had retired to their bedrolls and hammocks, I laid in my own hammock lazily, not nearly tired enough to sleep. I was simply staring up at the constellation that peeked out from behind the leaves and branches: a satyr with his arms outstretched, dancing to a silent beat.
In my imagination the satyr began to dance, flailing about much like the boys around the fire had. It was a nearly identical scenario, since I couldn't hear the song the satyr was dancing to either, but it had an air of surrealism to it that kept me on my back, staring forward.
The scene grew more elaborate, the inky sky turned into a great expanse of dark fire, a huge wall of grey and black as the creature threw his arms up and stomped his cloven hooves. He seemed so near to me. I almost entertained the thought of reaching out to touch the coarse fur over his bowl-legged lower half.
It shifted as more constellations like him joined, thrashing around and keeping some sort of lyrical time together.
The original satyr stomped in the center, attracting the most attention, when a taller variant approached him. They circled each other a few times before latching together, morphing into the same stars, and adjusting into a position that isn't physically possible for creatures with goat legs.
I forced myself out of the scene, musing inwardly that my preoccupation with base matters was starting to rival Rufio's.
That's when I heard it. A muffled whimper, a louder cry. It was startling enough to make me falll out of my hammock.
From the ground I saw them, shivering into their bedrolls, covering their eyes and wiping tears from their faces.
A small voice cried out for their father.
It didn't add up. If they felt so unloved that they left, what were they whining about?
Pan had delivered them from hell, but there they were begging to go back?
Their noses ran and they whined all throughout the night.
I wrongfully assumed that they were just getting used to Neverland, and as they came to accept their new home the cries would stop.
If you ask me, they only got worse with time.
