"Oh, wow. It's huge!"
"That's just on the outside. Wait 'til you see the inside."
"Huh?"
"Never mind. Sit up here and I'll show you everything."
Levi wasn't paying attention. Her eyes were focused on the magnificent monstrosity sprawled out beneath here.
This makes the entire long, obnoxious trip worth it, she thought fervently. Who knew this place would be so awesome?
Mountains tramped across the island, soaring up into the clouds, tipped with snow. Glorious, lush vegetation coated everything in a luxurious green blanket, and Levi could catch the heady scent of innumerable blossoms, even this high up. Birds and animals and insects called to each other, creating a cacophony she could only barely hear. Rivers and streams were everywhere, twisting through the plants like blue and silver threads. Beautiful coves and natural harbors and long, bright beaches characterized the coast. A trio of magnificent three-masted ships was anchored in one of the coves, bobbing gently. Indian settlements were all over the place.
"Where do you live?" asked Levi, sitting cross-legged on a surprisingly firm cloud. Peter was lying on his stomach; chin propped in his hands. Tinker Bell was sitting on his head, buffing her fingernails.
"You can't see it from here. It's in the giant cypresses over the mountain range there. It's not big, but it's great. And the fairies are all over this place, but they mostly live in the mountains."
Levi grilled Peter incessantly for the next half-hour on every settlement in view. He was quite happy to answer her questions. Usually when Levi asked long, complicated questions she was snubbed, but Peter thrived on her questioning. It was a welcome change.
"Now those ships there," said Peter, pointing, "that's Hook's place. Pirate Town, they call it, but I call it the Codfish Castle." He smiled at his own wit. "They're a nasty bunch, but nothing I can't deal with."
"You mean they're the bad guys?"
"Uh-huh."
BOOM!
"Duck!"
"Ow!"
Peter had grabbed Levi's hand and yanked her off the cloud and down a good forty feet. Levi was going to tell him off, until she saw an enormous cannonball fly overhead. She swallowed hard.
"Hook's seen us. Tink, lead Levi home, I'll go after Hook!" Grinning as if this were merely a game of hide-and-seek, Peter drew his knife and vanished. Tink let out a stream of unladylike words that Levi couldn't understand (they sounded like nails on a blackboard, though) and flew off, and Levi was torn between helping Peter and following Tink.
BOOM!
"Fine, I'm going!" Levi snapped at the cannonball zooming past her. "Sheesh!" She dived down towards the island, eyes darting about for Tink's gold light.
"This sucks! I'll never find it now!" Levi paused, glanced at the ships, then the island (much closer now). Then, not knowing what in the world she was doing, Levi dove and broke through the thick canopy of tree branches with a thunderous crash. A branch whipped back and hit her in the head. Knocked off balance, she plummeted the final fifty feet to the ground.
She blacked out on impact. For the third time.
* * *
Peter grinned wickedly, watching the chaos beneath him unfold. He so loved to cause mischief; it was one of his favorite pastimes. Among many, in fact.
"You stupid louts!" Captain Hook bellowed, side-swiping a passing sailor with his hook. "It's just a kid!"
Peter snorted. Right. Just the kid who lopped off Hook's hand, he thought. And Hook was right-handed, which added insult to injury. Now the old crook couldn't even write his name straight. Peter smirked at the thought.
"Just a kid, am I!" Peter yelled. "Take this!"
He swooped from his hiding place and kicked Hook in the head. Hook spun, eyes flaming mad. Hook raised his claw, ready to strike, but before he could Peter was gone.
"So there, old man!" Peter crowed exultantly. "Nha!"
"Shoot him!" Hook yelled desperately. "Shoot him!"
All right, now it's time to go, Peter thought, blasting up into the clouds. Even he couldn't dodge bullets. And it was unfair anyway, one against over three hundred. The pirates would've been slaughtered.
Certain of his rule of the island, Peter flew towards the little settlement over the mountains. He even stopped to tease a few parrots and harass the mermaids; he was in such a good mood.
Thus it took much longer than it should have to reach the settlement. The Lost Boys acknowledged his arrival with a few cheers, then instantly went back to whatever they were doing. Peter liked praise, but he liked his men to be busy more so.
Peter swooped up through the tree branches to the little house that he called home, but didn't go in. Instead he peered curiously in the door of what looked like a big birdhouse.
"Tink? You in there?"
"Yes," Tink said shakily. "You all right?"
"Of course," said Peter absently. "Where's Levi?"
Inside her house, Tink paled. She had completely forgotten about Levi. She'd panicked and bolted, completely ignoring the girl.
"Uh… I don't know?"
Peter gaped at Tink through the little door. "You left her there?"
"I panicked!" Tink retorted defensively. She zoomed out the door, nearly hitting Peter in the face, and swirled around his head as she spoke. "What did you expect me to do! There were cannonballs all over the place, and you ran off, and you said to go home, so I did!"
"Levi doesn't know her way around, or even where she is!" Peter retorted, turning red from anger and fright on Levi's part. "You silly fairy! Who knows where she could be!"
"At least I didn't make Tootles shoot her down," Tink muttered. "She'll be fine! We'll just go and find her!"
"Right. You stay here Tink, I don't want you messing stuff up again." Peter dropped out of view, fuming. Tink went back in her house and sulked in front of her mirror. Everything was her fault, where that stupid boy was concerned!
"Slightly! Nibs! Scrabble! Tootles!" Peter hollered, zooming through the tree village, "I need your help!"
Four boys came flying out of doors and out of the tree branches, answering Peter's call instantly. Scrabble had a bit of glue stuck to his nose.
"What is it, Peter?" asked Nibs. Nibs didn't look like much of a Lost Boy- he was almost eighteen, for one thing, and his clothes were absolutely spotless. His blonde hair was cut fashionably shaggy. He liked to keep up on what was 'cool' in the Other World.
"I was bringing back a visitor, and Tink was supposed to lead her here, and Tink lost her!" said Peter furiously. "We have to go find her. We'll split up and search the whole island."
Slightly raised an eyebrow. "Her? Maggie's kid?"
"No, someone else. Her name's Levi. Let's go. Keep an eye out, the pirates are in a bad mood, and the redskins might have gotten her."
The four boys nodded and saluted smartly, although Scrabble got it messed up a bit.
"Scrabble, check the coast, get the mermaids to help. Slightly, you check all the redskin encampments. Tootles, comb the mountain range. Nibs, you check the forests. I'll get everything else. Let's go!"
They all tore off in different directions. All were intent on finding Levi before the others, Peter so she'd see a familiar face, and the other boys so they could impress Peter.
Tink watched from her house, and sighed.
* * *
"I did it again!"
Levi pressed a hand to her throbbing forehead. Third time in two days. I think I'll break some sick 'passed out most in a week' world record by this time next week.
Wincing, Levi stood up. She turned in a slow circle, taking in her surroundings. Tall, thick trees. Forest debris. A stream, gurgling loudly but out of sight. And the brain-numbing noise of birds and animals and bugs, all bellowing happily despite the teenage girl who shook her fist at the sky and declared she'd never go hungry again.
Oops. Wrong book.
Levi groaned. "Stupid narrator." She leaned against the broad trunk of a tree and sighed. "Now what?"
Streams ran towards rivers, and rivers ran towards the sea, Levi remembered suddenly. And cypress trees grew in rivers. Maybe if she found the coast, she'd be able to follow it around to the backside of the island and find Peter's home. It was a thin hope, but it was a hope.
Or maybe I could just fly straight up in the air, over the mountains, and skydive into the settlement, she thought dryly. It'd be quicker and easier.
But what about the pirates? They'd see her and shoot her down. Levi sank down to the ground and let out another groan.
"They always say if you're lost, stay put. Might as well," Levi mused. She took off her backpack and opened it, just to see if she'd forgotten anything important.
"Hygiene stuff… clothes… shoes… CD player?" She pulled out the discman and rolled her eyes at herself. Even when she was running away from home in a blind panic, she still remembered her discman. And her favorite CDs as well, apparently.
Levi stuck her Tangerine Dream CD in the discman, pulled on her headphones, and started the music. The strange, shifting tones filled her head, chasing away any thoughts of how this was cruel and unusual punishment. She'd only left home, after all.
Clipping the discman onto her waistband and turning up the volume, Levi stood and drifted to the music. She slowly added more detail to the dance, a spin here, a dip there, until she was weaving an elaborate tapestry of movement. And she was enjoying it thoroughly.
"You're good."
Levi jumped. She turned off the music and spun, searching for the source of the words.
"Up here."
Levi looked up. A teenaged boy, about eighteen, was sitting on a thick limb of the tree directly above Levi. As she watched he jumped off and drifted gently to the ground.
"Are you Levi?"
"Yes, I am," said Levi slowly, eyeing the newcomer suspiciously. "And you are…?"
"Nibs. Peter sent me to find you." He grinned cheekily and gave a bow, green eyes filled with merriment. "He was quite concerned for your safety."
"Really," Levi said flatly. "That's nice."
Nibs gave her a confused look. "Why're you being so irritable?" he huffed. "All I did was find you and offer to show the way to our settlement, but no, you have to be mean."
"Show me the way? Really?" said Levi, her suspicions fleeing in the face of potential rescue. "You mean it?"
Nibs paused, then grinned widely. "Of course. You can fly, right?"
"How else would I have gotten here?" Levi asked rhetorically. "Yeah, I can fly. Hang on a second." She hastily stuffed her things back in the backpack and zipped it shut, slinging it back over her shoulders. "Okay, let's go, uh, Nibs."
"Follow me." Nibs rose into the air, quickly vanishing through the canopy overhead. Levi ascended after him, wobbling a bit but otherwise all right. It would take her a while to get completely used to this.
"Keep up!" Nibs hollered over his shoulder. Then he sped up and very nearly vanished.
"Great," Levi groaned. She sped up as much as she dared, just enough to keep the green and yellow blob that was Nibs in sight. She wasn't a speed demon in the loosest sense of the word.
But she struggled on valiantly, keeping Nibs' form in sight. She had a bit of panic when he vanished, but then she realized he'd gone behind the mountains. She forced herself to speed up and not look down. A fear of heights was starting to creep up on her.
Then she crested the mountain range and gasped.
The mountains teetered right on the backside of the island. At the foot of the mountains, right on the border between land and sea, enormous cypress trees rose from the water, looking almost alive, roots arching hundreds of feet up and plunging back into the water, the crowns on the enormous plants reaching up as if to touch the sky. The smallest of them made a Sequoia look like a small fry by comparison.
"Oh, wow," Levi murmured. "That's just gorgeous."
"Hey, girl! Hurry up!" Nibs, almost out of earshot, waved desperately, then plunged almost straight down and vanished into the dark foliage of the cypresses.
Levi gripped her backpack straps tightly, screwed up her courage, and let one thought fill her mind from end to end- faster.
She jetted forward, feeling like she'd had a thousand fireworks strapped to her butt and set off all at once.
When she finally got under control again, she had crash-landed in the topmost limbs of a cypress and was clinging desperately to a slim branch, thoroughly afraid of what might happen should she try to fly again.
Nibs appeared apparently out of nowhere, a devil-may-care grin on his face. "You okay?"
"Uh… uh-huh," said Levi shakily, trying fervently not to look down. "Um, a little help? I kind of… scared myself."
Nibs laughed, then snatched Levi around the waist and took off again. Levi clenched her eyes shut and wished it were over, images of rain and water and concrete and bicycle tires flooding her head.
"It's okay, we've landed." The words were laced with barely suppressed laughter.
Levi opened her eyes and gingerly set her feet on the floor. She looked around, and had to grin.
This place was a kid's fondest dream. One great big treehouse, with no adults whatsoever to oversee the construction.
The level she was on--one of several--was nestled in the division point of the tree's two major limbs, which arched up on either side of the rough platform, giving Levi a sense of stability. This place wasn't falling down for anyone or anything.
Levi couldn't find words to describe the world she now saw. All she could process were vague impressions, the place was choked with kids and the structures seemed to always be shifting, but she got a sense of playful work going on.
A giant scallop shell hung from the ceiling, a cluster of teenagers inside trying to sew on buttons.
Some boys were arguing over something to do with swords and velocity plus edge plus attack angle, whatever that meant.
A burst of song from the level above, then laughter.
Mostly, just young people, milling about, all with purpose in their stride. Evidently this level was a sort of city square, it connected by ladders and slides and bridges to levels above, below, and strung out in adjacent trees.
There were splashes of paint in odd places, like the streak of dark green on a low wall, the orange across the "ceiling," and in a few places a dark, faded red color.
"Weird place," was the only thing that came even close to describing it.
Nibs laughed- he did that a lot. "Yes, it is. But it's home, and that's all that matters. Go over by that shell there, Knuckles and Mad are over there, they'll look after you. I'll go get Peter, you hang tight." And he flew off again, a streak of green clothing and blonde hair.
Levi watched him go, then sighed and began pushing her way through the crowd to the enormous shell. It struck her that almost all of those around her were boys, she saw very few girls. No more than ten, actually. Highly odd.
Levi reached the shell with little trouble and climbed up inside, making it rock slightly. Its current inhabitants looked up from a group consultation over a pair of ripped trousers and eyed her curiously. Two were girls, the others young boys.
"Um, Nibs said that I should come here, said something about people called Mad and Knuckles," said Levi uncertainly, eyes darting from one unfamiliar face to the other.
One of the girls--a freckled, straw-haired, brown-eyed girl of twelve--grinned and stood, one hand extended, the other clutching some fabric and empty spools. "Hello there," she said, her accent unmistakably Australian. "I'm Knuckles. This," here she gave a gangly, dark teenaged boy a kick, "is Mad. And you are?"
"Um, Levi Morrison," said Levi. "I fell off a bridge and Peter caught me, brought me here." She accepted Knuckles' hand, then quickly dropped it again.
"Ah." Knuckles nodded as if this were perfectly normal. Mad waved absently and stuck a handful of pins in his mouth and began trying to get a patch properly pinned on a tattered shirt. Levi couldn't help but grin at the ludicrous sight--a teenaged boy, at least sixteen years old, dressed like a color-blind gypsy, and trying to pin a red patch on a green shirt that would have been better off in a rag bin.
"Anyway, Mad and I, we're the unofficial new-arrival officers," Knuckles said, by way of explanation over Nibs sending Levi to them. "Get them settled. You'd be surprised how often people end up here. Some go home, others stay, some get killed. People always going in and out of this place."
"Getting killed?" asked Levi, suddenly pale. "What do you mean?"
Mad gave Knuckles a dirty look. Knuckles carefully ignored both the glare and the question.
"Knuckles, help," said one of the boys plaintively. "It won't go on."
Knuckles turned to help a young boy with a button. Levi nervously sat, careful not to rock the shell, and regarded her new neighbors.
Knuckles looked like your generic pre-teen girl, even if she was dressed like an Indian. She behaved with a bubbly air that would have driven any baby-sitter insane.
Mad was silent, intent on his work, his rough fingers surprisingly quick and delicate in their movements. He would make a good piano player, Levi mused.
The only other girl in the shell was a small African child, about six years old, cutting patches from a large, hopelessly destroyed tunic. These people obviously believed in merciless recycling.
The other three boys looked like brothers, all between the ages of eight and fourteen, all with sharp, patrician features and a Southern twang to their words. Two were dark haired, the youngest red-haired. It was the redheaded boy having trouble with the buttons, the other two were jointly mending the ripped trousers, needles and thread moving quickly with the ease of long familiarity.
"Levi! There you are!"
Every head turned upward. Peter Pan came gliding down on them, grinning playfully. Levi couldn't help feeling relieved at seeing a somewhat familiar face.
"Hey, Peter," she said. "Where've you been?"
"I could ask you the same thing. Been keeping her out of trouble, guys?"
Mad spat out the pins and said, "No problem, Peter. Where'd you find this reticent creature?" His words had a rich Arabic accent to them that Levi found absolutely swoon-worthy, but before she became truly enamored she'd have to find out about that nickname.
"Trying to fly by jumping off a bridge," said Peter laughingly. "Any empty beds?"
"Girls' hide-away, third hammock on the left, trunk's empty," said Knuckles immediately. "I'll take her, warn her about her new roommates." She grinned impishly.
"Nah, I've got it covered. Keep it going, guys, shift changes in a little." Peter then reached out for Levi's hand. She bit her lip, then took his hand and allowed herself to be pulled through the air, hovering like a snowflake and about as pale as one.
They flew down three levels, then across to a tree near the edge of the cluster. It had no platforms, just balconies stuck here and there before large openings in the tree.
The largest "landing platform" was just below the splitting point of the enormous limbs. They landed there. Inside the tree, Levi saw a large room, made of cool wood. Several hammocks and trunks were inside.
"Third on the left is free," said Peter. "So's the trunk, although in there, I don't know how they have it organized. Girl territory, you see." Peter grinned slightly. "Get settled in, then go exploring. Don't be afraid of flying, its not a big deal. And no one bites, I promise." Peter gave another goofy smile, hazel eyes flickering, then flew away.
Levi sighed, then walked inside.