***
6
***
General Tory knew that this was not going to be a good day. This was, of course, mainly due to the fact that it WAS day, and he was not at home roosted toe to toe with Mrs. Tory while they dozed off to sleep. Instead he was standing on a cold wet rock with Corporal Hiram towering over his back and a frustratingly stubborn fairy sitting in front of him.
The imminent arrival of Captain Popper did little to help with his mood.
"Alright, lets start from the beginning again. Where did you meet those boys?" Tory asked slowly. Picadilly turned his stubby little nose up at him and sniffed.
"I TOLD you. One of them stepped on Lavidia's tail about an hour ago. I tried to yell at them and the ghoul tied me up in his bandanna."
"And just who is this Lavidia? Could she corroborate your story?"
Picadilly turned pink underneath his freckles and mumbled something. Tory cocked his head closer. "Say that again."
"I said she's a bloody jackalope!" He shouted.
General Tory rolled his eyes and he pushed a wing tip to his forehead. "A jackalope?"
"Yes, a jackalope!"
"And just what were you DOING with a jackalope at that time of the morning, if I dare to ask it?"
"It's none of your bloody business!"
One of the observing owls muttered something to its companion behind its wing. Its friend giggled, and Picadilly shot them a venomous look perfected by many years of glaring at the backs of bullies as they walked away after beating him up. Tory looked like he was getting a headache.
"Alright, so you were tied up in the ghoul's bandana. Did he have any provocation to do so? Did he seem overly agitated or aggressive? Unreasonable?"
Picadilly snorted "Of course he was. Would he have tied me up if he wasn't unreasonable?"
General Tory stared at him blankly for a moment. The fairy pouted and crossed his arms.
"What happened then?"
"They came to the island. The black boy handed me off to the blonde one because the blonde one could fly, and while we were over the water I talked him into letting me out. I, er, agreed to help them out with whatever they were after on Small Monday Island. The blonde boy seemed perfectly reasonable!" Picadilly defended. "I figured they needed some silly little thing, but he told me they needed an exorcist to get rid of a demon in his friend. His friend ate one of his shipmates, I think he was a pirate." He shivered.
"And it didn't seem woefully obvious to you that you were bringing a ghoul onto the island?" Tory asked scornfully.
Picadilly huffed. "Well how was I supposed to know? They said it was a demon, I figured they knew what they were talking about! Besides, who ever heard of ghouls in Neverland?"
"No one, until now!" Tory snapped.
"Oh, right, blame me! Like he wasn't here before I found him!"
The general had begun to puff when Captain Popper's obscenely cheerful "G'day General! Top of the morning to ye!" came down from above and Tory's head began to ache in earnest. He pressed his temples between his wing tips. "Ow..."
The merlin circled the beach once and tried to land by the stone, slipped, fell over on his side, and lay there with the broken pair of spectacles in his claws that had kept him from landing quite right.
"Er, bit of help, then?" he asked when he found he couldn't shift them. Picadilly jumped to his feet and dragged the spectacles away. Popper stood, fluffed the sand out of his feathers, and tried to look as though he hadn't just fouled his entire entrance.
"Well then, General, guess you're boys can go on home now. The SunCatcher Squadron is here to take up watch!" He said proudly with his ridiculous affected accent. "I'll leave one of my lads in charge today, if you don't mind, I have a pirate to investigate." He pointed to the spectacles with an elongated wing tip.
"You'll do no such thing." Tory said gruffly.
"Oh I won't, won't I?"
"No, you won't." he said. "There's much more serious matters afoot this morning than which pirate got eaten yesterday. It's the important matter of what ate him!"
Popper cocked his head and looked at General Tory nearly upside-down. "The croc ate him, didn't she? Those spectacles were pulled from her teeth by yours truly!"
"Yes, but if what Picadilly here says is true, the crocodile wasn't the first one to pick on that corpse. This idiot fairy—"
"Hey!"
"—led a pair of boys here earlier. He tells me they were looking for an exorcist to get the demon out of one. And they thought he had a demon because he KILLED and ATE one of the pirates in his sleep."
For a moment Popper didn't react, then slowly stuck his tongue out the side of his beak. "Eww!"
"Since only one pirate was reported dead yesterday it could only be the same corpse eaten later by the crocodile after the boy had already killed and eaten his fill."
Popper apparently thought on that for a while, then made a face. "Poor bloke, eaten twice in one day. Shall I go find us an exorcist then and hunt him down?"
"Nooo…" Tory looked at Picadilly a little evilly "Why don't you tell him the problem, Picadilly?"
"You mean I have to tell it AGAIN?" the fairy whined. Tory nodded. Picadilly started to swear.
***
Great Big Little Panther had known they were coming. In fact, he met them outside the Indian village, a water skin in hand and a cool, unreadable expression on his face. The boys hadn't realized how thirsty their exploits had made them until the water touched their mouths, and they drank the skin down between the two of them. Finally, handing the empty skin back a little sheepishly to the Chief, Slightly bothered a greeting.
"Hullo, Chief."
Great Big Little Panther nodded his head briefly in return. "Slightly"
"We slightly need some help." The boy said. "Something happened to Billy."
"I know."
Billy looked startled. "How?"
"Very little happens in Neverland that we do not eventually hear of. We need to speak, there is a story that you must hear." The Chief looked warily at one of the trees and gestured the boys to enter the village. "It would be best to go to my tipi. My people have scattered through the woods until it is safe to return, but some are not as far as they should be." He said the last very loudly, and the tree rustled, flashing a small pair of moccasins and a deer skin skirt in the leaves. Something that had to be a child leapt into another tree and disappeared.
Inside the Chief's tipi, the sunlight filtered through the bleached hide and cast everything with a calm, diffused glow. Great Big Little Panther gestured them to sit on the fur pallet that filled most of the space. Billy felt suddenly small, but the calming light of the tipi and rough bear fur under his legs were a welcome enough change, and he didn't mind so much that this redskin towered over him. Slightly had arranged himself close enough that their shoulders were touching so he could grab Billy if the boy jumped up, but it didn't seem like it was going to be necessary.
Great Big Little Panther finally seated himself across the way from them with a very dignified air. In the kind light he looked younger, the complex web of cracks around his eyes disappearing.
"I understand there was an incident on the pirate ship." Great Big Little Panther said calmly. Billy swallowed and nodded.
"Yeah. Smee was…was killed."
The chief bowed his head. "And it's the cause of his death that has so rightly alarmed you."
Billy nodded again.
"Do you remember your dreams?" Great Big Little Panther asked abruptly. Billy shook his head, then hesitated, and looked at his hands.
"Some of them. Not many." He admitted.
"Your dreams have not been like the dreams of other boys lately. Your dreams have disturbed the island, and the island has let others know." He matched Billy's gaze. "You will find, I think, that the ground where you step, the worms and insects scorn."
The boy tensed up, insulted, and Slightly discretely caught his belt in his fist to keep him from rising. Great Big Little Panther held up his hands. "It is not your fault." He said. "The story I want you to hear began a long time ago, when man knew more than he knew today."
Billy cast a questioning glance in Slightly's direction, and the boy shrugged.
"Long ago man built great cities," the chief began. "And these cities were of a type and quality unknown to man now, even paler men, who delight in the creation of the things. In these cities there was no sadness. No one hated or was hated, for there was no reason to hate; all things were equal, and all lives were lived in peace and comfort."
Billy, the only one among them who had ever seen a city, knew this wasn't possible. He'd seen enough filthy taverns and gambling dens to know that things were never equal while there were riches to be had.
"These people had lived in peace for so long that it became difficult to imagine anything other than contentment." Great Big Little Panther continued. "They assumed all those in the world shared in this contentment. But in this they were wrong." He paused to catch Billy's eye, who was glaring.
"No world can ever be completely free of pain." He allowed easily. "To achieve a world where they need not suffer to survive, mankind created a people who would suffer for him, a people who could live below the earth far away from their thoughts and eyes."
"Slaves." Billy said. The chief nodded.
Slightly frowned. "How did they create men?"
"I do not know. I only know the story, not the truth." He said apologetically. "However it was achieved, it was achieved. They created a sort of man who could live beneath the Earth in dark tunnels, for their eyes could see where our eyes cannot. They created a man who would eat the things they had no use for; the soiled entrails of animals, and the bodies of the dead, for they had long since gone past the need for funerary rights. They created a man they need neither see nor think about, and in the dark where they dared not go these men did all the tasks their lords needed to survive.
"But the one thing they had not counted on, the thing that they had not managed to erase from their servants, was a deep and burning hatred for their masters. These lords did not know hate, and so they did not understand its inevitability."
Billy snorted and crossed his arms. He was being disrespectful and was not entirely surprised when Slightly tugged his arm back down to his side, pinning his hand forcelessly to the bear skin and knotting their fingers so he couldn't do it again. Billy stared at his captive hand for a moment, then blinked at Slightly. It looked like an honestly innocent gesture. Feeling a bit of a letch for the stammer it caused in his chest he put his head down and tried to listen with his ears turning red.
"Any man who is forced to serve another will hate him." Great Big Little Panther continued, ignoring him. "This is a fact most men now know, and those who lord over others must be careful. These men were not careful. When the slaves rebelled, they did not know that it was coming. They were not prepared. Their cities were destroyed in the rebellion, and everything they had ever known lay in ruin. For the first time in thousands of years they came face to face with hatred."
"What happened?" Slightly asked.
The chief shrugged. "They knew they could never again enslave their creation, for they now hated them as sorely as they were hated. They scorned them instead. They tried to build again, starting as they started long ago in forests and in fields, but they found now they must live in fear of their creations, for their creations still lived in dark corners, feeding, hunting man for his flesh."
Billy suddenly sat up straight and ripped his hand away from Slightly. "You're saying I'm one of those things, those slaves, is that what you're trying to say?" he snapped.
"I say nothing." Great Big Little Panther replied in his most soothing tone. "I merely told you a story. That story was passed down from our fathers before me, and their fathers before them. It is an old story, and likely just that; a story."
"Why would you bother telling it to me if you didn't think it was true!?" Billy shouted, rising to his feet, and this time Slightly didn't stop him. "The fairy thinks I'm a ghoul and you're agreeing with him! Isn't that what you really mean by that story; ghouls living in the dark? Ghouls hunting for flesh?!"
"I never said—"
"Damned if you didn't!" Billy spat. It looked as though he were going to punch the redskin and Great Big Little Panther rose to his feet, towering over the boy now and causing his stance to waver.
"Chief, what can we do about it?" Slightly asked, putting a hand out to stop Billy but never actually touching him. Great Big Little Panther shook his head.
"No one can choose how they are born, and no one can change it once they are." He said. "There are magics in the world that can do great things. Wondrous things. But no redskin or fairy alive will agree to help a shunned creature."
"So I'm just supposed to go on like this!?" Billy screeched. His voice was slipping into a higher register. "I can't go to sleep! I can't eat! How can you expect me to live like this?!"
"I said no redskin or fae." He said quietly. "I did not say there was no hope.
The tipi fell into silence as Jukes blinked at him. The chief smiled softly and with a graceful movement swept open the flap of the tipi and gestured outside. Slightly took the hint and grabbed Billy's arm, pulling him with him out into the sun.
"Good luck." The chief said behind them. The trap fell back in place.
Stopping outside the Indian village, the boys looked at each other, and Billy looked up towards the sky. The light that filtered through the trees slipped in graceful patches over his bruised face and he closed his eyes, letting the light flicker red and black through his lids.
"Who do we go to now?" Slightly asked softly. Billy didn't reply.
6
***
General Tory knew that this was not going to be a good day. This was, of course, mainly due to the fact that it WAS day, and he was not at home roosted toe to toe with Mrs. Tory while they dozed off to sleep. Instead he was standing on a cold wet rock with Corporal Hiram towering over his back and a frustratingly stubborn fairy sitting in front of him.
The imminent arrival of Captain Popper did little to help with his mood.
"Alright, lets start from the beginning again. Where did you meet those boys?" Tory asked slowly. Picadilly turned his stubby little nose up at him and sniffed.
"I TOLD you. One of them stepped on Lavidia's tail about an hour ago. I tried to yell at them and the ghoul tied me up in his bandanna."
"And just who is this Lavidia? Could she corroborate your story?"
Picadilly turned pink underneath his freckles and mumbled something. Tory cocked his head closer. "Say that again."
"I said she's a bloody jackalope!" He shouted.
General Tory rolled his eyes and he pushed a wing tip to his forehead. "A jackalope?"
"Yes, a jackalope!"
"And just what were you DOING with a jackalope at that time of the morning, if I dare to ask it?"
"It's none of your bloody business!"
One of the observing owls muttered something to its companion behind its wing. Its friend giggled, and Picadilly shot them a venomous look perfected by many years of glaring at the backs of bullies as they walked away after beating him up. Tory looked like he was getting a headache.
"Alright, so you were tied up in the ghoul's bandana. Did he have any provocation to do so? Did he seem overly agitated or aggressive? Unreasonable?"
Picadilly snorted "Of course he was. Would he have tied me up if he wasn't unreasonable?"
General Tory stared at him blankly for a moment. The fairy pouted and crossed his arms.
"What happened then?"
"They came to the island. The black boy handed me off to the blonde one because the blonde one could fly, and while we were over the water I talked him into letting me out. I, er, agreed to help them out with whatever they were after on Small Monday Island. The blonde boy seemed perfectly reasonable!" Picadilly defended. "I figured they needed some silly little thing, but he told me they needed an exorcist to get rid of a demon in his friend. His friend ate one of his shipmates, I think he was a pirate." He shivered.
"And it didn't seem woefully obvious to you that you were bringing a ghoul onto the island?" Tory asked scornfully.
Picadilly huffed. "Well how was I supposed to know? They said it was a demon, I figured they knew what they were talking about! Besides, who ever heard of ghouls in Neverland?"
"No one, until now!" Tory snapped.
"Oh, right, blame me! Like he wasn't here before I found him!"
The general had begun to puff when Captain Popper's obscenely cheerful "G'day General! Top of the morning to ye!" came down from above and Tory's head began to ache in earnest. He pressed his temples between his wing tips. "Ow..."
The merlin circled the beach once and tried to land by the stone, slipped, fell over on his side, and lay there with the broken pair of spectacles in his claws that had kept him from landing quite right.
"Er, bit of help, then?" he asked when he found he couldn't shift them. Picadilly jumped to his feet and dragged the spectacles away. Popper stood, fluffed the sand out of his feathers, and tried to look as though he hadn't just fouled his entire entrance.
"Well then, General, guess you're boys can go on home now. The SunCatcher Squadron is here to take up watch!" He said proudly with his ridiculous affected accent. "I'll leave one of my lads in charge today, if you don't mind, I have a pirate to investigate." He pointed to the spectacles with an elongated wing tip.
"You'll do no such thing." Tory said gruffly.
"Oh I won't, won't I?"
"No, you won't." he said. "There's much more serious matters afoot this morning than which pirate got eaten yesterday. It's the important matter of what ate him!"
Popper cocked his head and looked at General Tory nearly upside-down. "The croc ate him, didn't she? Those spectacles were pulled from her teeth by yours truly!"
"Yes, but if what Picadilly here says is true, the crocodile wasn't the first one to pick on that corpse. This idiot fairy—"
"Hey!"
"—led a pair of boys here earlier. He tells me they were looking for an exorcist to get the demon out of one. And they thought he had a demon because he KILLED and ATE one of the pirates in his sleep."
For a moment Popper didn't react, then slowly stuck his tongue out the side of his beak. "Eww!"
"Since only one pirate was reported dead yesterday it could only be the same corpse eaten later by the crocodile after the boy had already killed and eaten his fill."
Popper apparently thought on that for a while, then made a face. "Poor bloke, eaten twice in one day. Shall I go find us an exorcist then and hunt him down?"
"Nooo…" Tory looked at Picadilly a little evilly "Why don't you tell him the problem, Picadilly?"
"You mean I have to tell it AGAIN?" the fairy whined. Tory nodded. Picadilly started to swear.
***
Great Big Little Panther had known they were coming. In fact, he met them outside the Indian village, a water skin in hand and a cool, unreadable expression on his face. The boys hadn't realized how thirsty their exploits had made them until the water touched their mouths, and they drank the skin down between the two of them. Finally, handing the empty skin back a little sheepishly to the Chief, Slightly bothered a greeting.
"Hullo, Chief."
Great Big Little Panther nodded his head briefly in return. "Slightly"
"We slightly need some help." The boy said. "Something happened to Billy."
"I know."
Billy looked startled. "How?"
"Very little happens in Neverland that we do not eventually hear of. We need to speak, there is a story that you must hear." The Chief looked warily at one of the trees and gestured the boys to enter the village. "It would be best to go to my tipi. My people have scattered through the woods until it is safe to return, but some are not as far as they should be." He said the last very loudly, and the tree rustled, flashing a small pair of moccasins and a deer skin skirt in the leaves. Something that had to be a child leapt into another tree and disappeared.
Inside the Chief's tipi, the sunlight filtered through the bleached hide and cast everything with a calm, diffused glow. Great Big Little Panther gestured them to sit on the fur pallet that filled most of the space. Billy felt suddenly small, but the calming light of the tipi and rough bear fur under his legs were a welcome enough change, and he didn't mind so much that this redskin towered over him. Slightly had arranged himself close enough that their shoulders were touching so he could grab Billy if the boy jumped up, but it didn't seem like it was going to be necessary.
Great Big Little Panther finally seated himself across the way from them with a very dignified air. In the kind light he looked younger, the complex web of cracks around his eyes disappearing.
"I understand there was an incident on the pirate ship." Great Big Little Panther said calmly. Billy swallowed and nodded.
"Yeah. Smee was…was killed."
The chief bowed his head. "And it's the cause of his death that has so rightly alarmed you."
Billy nodded again.
"Do you remember your dreams?" Great Big Little Panther asked abruptly. Billy shook his head, then hesitated, and looked at his hands.
"Some of them. Not many." He admitted.
"Your dreams have not been like the dreams of other boys lately. Your dreams have disturbed the island, and the island has let others know." He matched Billy's gaze. "You will find, I think, that the ground where you step, the worms and insects scorn."
The boy tensed up, insulted, and Slightly discretely caught his belt in his fist to keep him from rising. Great Big Little Panther held up his hands. "It is not your fault." He said. "The story I want you to hear began a long time ago, when man knew more than he knew today."
Billy cast a questioning glance in Slightly's direction, and the boy shrugged.
"Long ago man built great cities," the chief began. "And these cities were of a type and quality unknown to man now, even paler men, who delight in the creation of the things. In these cities there was no sadness. No one hated or was hated, for there was no reason to hate; all things were equal, and all lives were lived in peace and comfort."
Billy, the only one among them who had ever seen a city, knew this wasn't possible. He'd seen enough filthy taverns and gambling dens to know that things were never equal while there were riches to be had.
"These people had lived in peace for so long that it became difficult to imagine anything other than contentment." Great Big Little Panther continued. "They assumed all those in the world shared in this contentment. But in this they were wrong." He paused to catch Billy's eye, who was glaring.
"No world can ever be completely free of pain." He allowed easily. "To achieve a world where they need not suffer to survive, mankind created a people who would suffer for him, a people who could live below the earth far away from their thoughts and eyes."
"Slaves." Billy said. The chief nodded.
Slightly frowned. "How did they create men?"
"I do not know. I only know the story, not the truth." He said apologetically. "However it was achieved, it was achieved. They created a sort of man who could live beneath the Earth in dark tunnels, for their eyes could see where our eyes cannot. They created a man who would eat the things they had no use for; the soiled entrails of animals, and the bodies of the dead, for they had long since gone past the need for funerary rights. They created a man they need neither see nor think about, and in the dark where they dared not go these men did all the tasks their lords needed to survive.
"But the one thing they had not counted on, the thing that they had not managed to erase from their servants, was a deep and burning hatred for their masters. These lords did not know hate, and so they did not understand its inevitability."
Billy snorted and crossed his arms. He was being disrespectful and was not entirely surprised when Slightly tugged his arm back down to his side, pinning his hand forcelessly to the bear skin and knotting their fingers so he couldn't do it again. Billy stared at his captive hand for a moment, then blinked at Slightly. It looked like an honestly innocent gesture. Feeling a bit of a letch for the stammer it caused in his chest he put his head down and tried to listen with his ears turning red.
"Any man who is forced to serve another will hate him." Great Big Little Panther continued, ignoring him. "This is a fact most men now know, and those who lord over others must be careful. These men were not careful. When the slaves rebelled, they did not know that it was coming. They were not prepared. Their cities were destroyed in the rebellion, and everything they had ever known lay in ruin. For the first time in thousands of years they came face to face with hatred."
"What happened?" Slightly asked.
The chief shrugged. "They knew they could never again enslave their creation, for they now hated them as sorely as they were hated. They scorned them instead. They tried to build again, starting as they started long ago in forests and in fields, but they found now they must live in fear of their creations, for their creations still lived in dark corners, feeding, hunting man for his flesh."
Billy suddenly sat up straight and ripped his hand away from Slightly. "You're saying I'm one of those things, those slaves, is that what you're trying to say?" he snapped.
"I say nothing." Great Big Little Panther replied in his most soothing tone. "I merely told you a story. That story was passed down from our fathers before me, and their fathers before them. It is an old story, and likely just that; a story."
"Why would you bother telling it to me if you didn't think it was true!?" Billy shouted, rising to his feet, and this time Slightly didn't stop him. "The fairy thinks I'm a ghoul and you're agreeing with him! Isn't that what you really mean by that story; ghouls living in the dark? Ghouls hunting for flesh?!"
"I never said—"
"Damned if you didn't!" Billy spat. It looked as though he were going to punch the redskin and Great Big Little Panther rose to his feet, towering over the boy now and causing his stance to waver.
"Chief, what can we do about it?" Slightly asked, putting a hand out to stop Billy but never actually touching him. Great Big Little Panther shook his head.
"No one can choose how they are born, and no one can change it once they are." He said. "There are magics in the world that can do great things. Wondrous things. But no redskin or fairy alive will agree to help a shunned creature."
"So I'm just supposed to go on like this!?" Billy screeched. His voice was slipping into a higher register. "I can't go to sleep! I can't eat! How can you expect me to live like this?!"
"I said no redskin or fae." He said quietly. "I did not say there was no hope.
The tipi fell into silence as Jukes blinked at him. The chief smiled softly and with a graceful movement swept open the flap of the tipi and gestured outside. Slightly took the hint and grabbed Billy's arm, pulling him with him out into the sun.
"Good luck." The chief said behind them. The trap fell back in place.
Stopping outside the Indian village, the boys looked at each other, and Billy looked up towards the sky. The light that filtered through the trees slipped in graceful patches over his bruised face and he closed his eyes, letting the light flicker red and black through his lids.
"Who do we go to now?" Slightly asked softly. Billy didn't reply.