***
29
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WARNINGS: Chapter 29 has been split into two sections, a and b, due to content. Part a is a 'Memories' section, containing implications of child rape, but no graphic content. If this will make you uncomfortable, please skip to section b.
Chapter 29a: Memories: Original Sin
Sails up and laying dead in the water, the great carrion feeder that was The Walrus lay placid and quiet in a sea of midnight stars. Her stomach was full and her muscles were tired; she had taken a prize that day. It was a meager prize, but the men had fought hard for it; an illegal slave ship that dumped her cargo before the Walrus could take it from her. They had killed nearly all her crew and taken their supplies and properties. It had not made them rich, but it had made them comfortable. In exchange for being about all day the crew was sleeping both shifts that night like the worst of idlers, except for one man from the larboard watch, keeping an eye on the sea.
Benton wasn't all that fond of his assignment. He'd fought as hard as anyone else and worked as hard to repair the ship. Standing dumbly on deck by the light of a brass lantern wasn't what he wanted to spend the night at, though he supposed being given time to loaf about and smoke wasn't the worst of fates that night.
Their prize, the Sure Security, had been taken early in the morning. She had flown a British flag, and they had flown one in response, hailing her like a friend. Captain Flint hadn't raised the black flag until the ships were side by side, and by then they were close enough to blast the deck of the Sure Security to bloody splinters. Grape shot and shells killed nearly half her crew in the first barrage, and in the blood and confusion they hadn't had a chance to raise to arms before the Walrus's men flooded her and began to slaughter them. Their captain surrendered immediately. Flint didn't care.
The men had died like dogs, that lot. Benton himself had cut through four of them, and only been nicked on the wrist for it. The decks had dripped with blood. When all the men aboard had either defected or died there had been one glint of bravery among the crew; one of the ships sorry guns had nudged its way out of its portal and fired a load of chain weights at the waterline of the Walrus. They'd spent the rest of the day pumping out the ship and repairing the hole. The two little cabin boys who had had the wits and the brass to fire that gun had been taken prisoner; they'd make valuable crewmen, eventually.
Well, one of them would. Flint had shot the other one through the back of the head.
Leaning back against the mast, Benton reached into his shirt for his tobacco pouch and restuffed the bowl of his pipe. There were voices coming from the captain's cabin again. It had been relatively quiet for an hour, at least as far as on deck was concerned. An hour ago there'd been screaming. Not much of it, of course, just shrill, involuntary bleats that made him think of a sheep being poorly slaughtered. Benton didn't think himself unsympathetic, but he wasn't about to tell Captain Flint what he could or could not do on his own ship, especially when their captive was a negro.
The reverberative sound of Flint's voice dropped off. Benton lit his pipe as the Captain's door burst open and slammed against the wall, the wood shaking in protest. Flint was a profile in the dark, bare legged with his long coat draped over his shoulders in a demonstration of what was obviously not modesty, but superiority. The little black cabin boy was strangling in his hand.
Flint glared at Benton and slung the boy out onto the deck, a naked tangle of legs and blood and bruises. He struck hard on his shoulder and began scrabbling across the deck. Flint's door bolted shut as the boy reached the bulwarks and started retching foam and acid up into the sea.
Benton took a puff of his pipe and watched him drape himself limply over the rail, his back hitching with short, hysterical breaths. In the dim light of his lantern he could see the discolored swellings on his hips that would be bruises tomorrow, and the thick lines of red creeping down the backs of his legs.
Benton listened to his shaking lungs, to his eventual oblivious, hysterical sobs, and smoked his pipe. By morning the boy had fallen asleep by the rail. Benton didn't wake him.
***
***
***
***
The Subtlety of Nightmares
Chapter 29b
Councilman Tiddly hadn't been asleep more than fifteen minutes when someone came knocking at the door. His electric blue guppy, which had been dozing peacefully against the ceiling, swam to the door and began to lip soundlessly at it. Tiddly put his arms over his head.
"If you want to live until morning you'll go away!" he shouted.
The knock came again.
Grumbling angrily to himself, Tiddly tossed aside the covers and struggled into his dressing gown, figuring to give the intruder a piece of his mind. He threw open the door and glared nastily.
"What do you WANT?"
Standing in the hallway with his arms crossed was a gangly, freckled little fairy with a torn tunic. He had buck teeth too big to fit in his mouth.
"Hiya, Tiddly." The intruder said, and put his palm against the open door. "I'm here to collect a favor."
"Who the devil are you to ask a favor of me?"
The blue fairy pushed his way into the room, and shut the door. The guppy kept lipping at him.
"A year ago, your mother fell in love with a chickadee, and renounced her property and her council seat to go live with them. You, conveniently, inherited everything."
"That's common knowledge." Tiddly growled.
"Yes, but what isn't common knowledge is that she fell in love under the influence of Lynada's Liquid Romance, a potion which happens to be strictly regulated by the Worldwide Potions Security Council." The fairy said, smiling. "And you just conveniently happened to purchase a bottle of Lynada's Liquid Romance from the potions store here on Small Monday Island, on the sly, of course."
Tiddly scowled. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Of course not. But the clerk who arranged and sold you that lovely bit of illegality knows very well what he is talking about. And now he wants the favor returned or he's going to tell the Council how your mother lost her seat."
Tiddly stared at him for a few moments. "Oh bloody hell. I thought those stupid teeth looked familiar."
Picadilly smiled, showing off his buck teeth. "I got the only pair in fairy-dom. You owe me, big time, Tiddly."
"So what do you want?" Tiddly snapped. "And why couldn't you wait to blackmail me until the morning?"
"Captain Popper and I have been out wild-goose-chasing all day, on order of General Tory. We need someone with fairy dust to sprinkle what we caught and help tow it back to Small Monday Island."
Tiddly perked "Popper caught the ghoul?"
"No, something a bit more frightening than that. Aldus Aborigine."
Tiddly's face contorted with rage "You idiot! Aborigine was released by the council to catch the ghoul because Popper is obviously an incompetent! He's SUPPOSED to be out!"
"But he isn't SUPPOSED to be killing things. Which he is." Picadilly said flatly. "He's the worst criminal the fairy courts have ever dealt with. Did you really think he was going to just stop?"
"Do you have any proof of your accusations?" Tiddly snapped.
"My word, the word of a jackalope herd, and the word of Captain Popper, WHICH, you may remember, is considered admissible as evidence in court. And I'm sure if you asked the birds he was commanding they could tell you a thing or two."
Tiddly growled. "So it was of course necessary to involve ME in this?"
"Of course. You owe me." Picadilly said with a smirk.
Grumbling, Councilman Tiddly collected his pants from the floor and put them on. "Blackmail and random spite. You should have entered politics."
***
Picking away the knots in Peter's mind was like attacking an iceberg with a fishbone. She had never seen anything so awesome. Marvella had picked apart the knots of memory charms, of amnesia, of a dozen illegal magics that turned the mind to jelly, but never had she seen a mess so magnificent as what was inside Peter's head. The lines of an ordered mind should be smooth and slick as new copper wire, wrapped around the spool in perfect layers. Peter's had become an enormous, ragged tangle; loops running off in unknown directions, lines fraying, crossing and recrossing, and this was just the pieces she could see. Underneath it all, the lines dove down into an impossible depth, weaving together into a mess so tight Marvella had never seen the like.
At first she was afraid to touch it. Unraveling was a dangerous thing, taking care and precision, and extremely unforgiving. If she pulled the wrong line, she might make things worse, and she didn't think she had the time to go bumbling about in this mess. She already doubted her ability to get this done even in the confines of a night. This was the sort of thing she'd like to go at with a week of planning, with notebooks full of scribbles.
Marvella's magical hands set at the line like determined carrion crows. She stroked the threads to order, turning them from rough twine to bright wires, uniform and slick. Her hands worked memorizing through touch what she couldn't sense from seeing, and she began to carefully pull out the first loop.
The line was alive.
It jumped to motion like a startled worm and wrapped around itself, pulling away from her hands. The lines did not want to be untied.
"You haven't got a choice!" she snapped at it, grabbing ahold and hauling it free before it could burrow even further into the knot. The line flailed unhappily, struggling every inch of the way as she wrapped it around her shoulder in a neat coil. Progress was slow. There was no rhyme or reason to this knot, unlike the magically induced ones she usually tended, which folded into patterns she could memorize and tame. Sections were tied off at random, and bits seemed to fuse together and slide apart when she wasn't looking. The lines were an active participant in this game. But no matter how slow the progress was, it was still progress; Marvella was steadily wearing away Peter Pan.
It was almost dawn when she decided she had done what she could that night. Carefully, she tied the coil of line into place and let it go. The remains of the knot shook it fretfully and, realizing it would not come free, pulled it back into itself and consumed it. Marvella drifted back from Peter's mind and opened her eyes.
Council was back in session.
The children that had come with Peter were beginning to wake and clump around him like iron filings to the magnet. They all looked bleary and uncomfortable. Nibs was right where she had last seen him, upright and stiff. The girl had fallen asleep against him. The scene was almost cute, if he hadn't looked so worried for his friend. The fairies had taken up their mushrooms again, wearing new outfits and looking a little red eyed; Thombelse still had her fleas, and yawned hugely as they scurried over her bosom to cover what her partial dress did not. Marvella's own mushroom was empty. So was Councilman Tiddly's. The man was chronically late, however, even by their standards, so she didn't think much of it.
"How's Peter?" Nibs asked quickly.
Marvella scrubbed her face with her hands and blinked. "I untangled some of it. The last ten years I got smoothed out completely. If he can't tell us what we need know he isn't going to remember."
"But is he—"
"—alright?" two of the boys asked.
"Oh. Yes. He should be fine. I was VERY careful."
"Marvella, if you PLEASE!" one of the councilmen called. She rolled her eyes and drifted back towards the circle, the orbital lights of her skirt going slowly.
"I was just telling the boys! Peter should remember now. You can ask him whenever you want."
Thombelse clapped "Good! Wake him up, Marvella!"
"Shouldn't we wait for Tiddly?"
"Forget Tiddly." She snorted.
The other members nodded consensus. Wendy, in the meanwhile, had woken up at the sound of the flea woman's voice and was quickly checking over Peter for damage. Other than a pink mark on his forehead where Marvella had sat for so long, he looked fine.
Marvella shooed Wendy's hands. "Move aside, dear. Peter? Up with yourself!"
She tapped him on the nose, quickly murmuring a precautionary spell around his brain. Peter snorted and swatted at whatever was bothering his face, but he did, however, wake up. His eyes dragged open lazily and he stared up at the crowding boys.
"What's going on?" he grumbled, scrubbing an eye as he sat up.
Wendy caught ahold of him. "Peter, are you alright?"
"Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?""
Actually, his head hurt a little, but he wasn't about to mention that to a girl.
"Peter, the council needs to talk to you." she said, brushing off his back. "They're already waiting."
The boy stared at the High Council for a moment, then yawned rudely, not bothering to cover his mouth.
The flea woman frowned at him. "Peter, we're going to ask you some questions again. We need you to answer, alright?"
"Alright."
"Peter, first, can you tell me my name?"
"Did you forget?"
"No, I did not." She said, narrowing her eyes. "I need to see if you remember. Who am I, Peter?"
Peter sniffed, and rubbed his nose. "Thombelse Bellringer, second seat in the High Council. You got the position a few months ago."
The fairy looked impressed. For Peter, this was quite a feat of memory.
"Alright then, Peter, who is Tinkerbell?"
"Tink's my friend." He said.
"And where is she now? Is she alive or dead?"
He frowned. "Alive. She's in England. Her brother got sick and she went to look after him."
The council was smiling a bit. All was looking promising.
"Alright now, Peter, this will be a hard one."
Peter stared at her.
"Who-was-Tybalt?"
For a moment his stare remained blank. Marvella sat up straighter, alarmed, but then his brow crushed together and he frowned.
"Tybalt used to live in the Underground House with us. Ledger made him a house out of paper and curtained off a whole shelf for him."
Nibs went a little pale. "Peter, did you just say Ledger?!"
"Huh?"
"Ledger, Peter! Did you just say Ledger?"
Peter blinked. "Yeah. What of it?"
"You made us promise never to say Ledger again!" he said, shocked.
Peter snorted. "That's silly. Why would I do that?"
Thombelse snapped her fingers, trying to get their attention again. "None of that yet, Peter! Please, try to focus!"
His brain was feeling like fuzzy caterpillars were crawling around inside it. He wondered if some had crawled in his ear while he was sleeping.
"Now Peter, think very carefully. Tybalt was put on trial. What was he put on trial for?"
The boy paused.
"Tybalt was on trial for betraying the King and Queen."
Thombelse waited. "..and what else, Peter?" she asked softly.
Peter frowned for a moment, and then his eyes went very wide in his head.
"Murder." He said quietly, as though he'd never heard of such a thing. "Tybalt was on trial for murder."
29
***
WARNINGS: Chapter 29 has been split into two sections, a and b, due to content. Part a is a 'Memories' section, containing implications of child rape, but no graphic content. If this will make you uncomfortable, please skip to section b.
Chapter 29a: Memories: Original Sin
Sails up and laying dead in the water, the great carrion feeder that was The Walrus lay placid and quiet in a sea of midnight stars. Her stomach was full and her muscles were tired; she had taken a prize that day. It was a meager prize, but the men had fought hard for it; an illegal slave ship that dumped her cargo before the Walrus could take it from her. They had killed nearly all her crew and taken their supplies and properties. It had not made them rich, but it had made them comfortable. In exchange for being about all day the crew was sleeping both shifts that night like the worst of idlers, except for one man from the larboard watch, keeping an eye on the sea.
Benton wasn't all that fond of his assignment. He'd fought as hard as anyone else and worked as hard to repair the ship. Standing dumbly on deck by the light of a brass lantern wasn't what he wanted to spend the night at, though he supposed being given time to loaf about and smoke wasn't the worst of fates that night.
Their prize, the Sure Security, had been taken early in the morning. She had flown a British flag, and they had flown one in response, hailing her like a friend. Captain Flint hadn't raised the black flag until the ships were side by side, and by then they were close enough to blast the deck of the Sure Security to bloody splinters. Grape shot and shells killed nearly half her crew in the first barrage, and in the blood and confusion they hadn't had a chance to raise to arms before the Walrus's men flooded her and began to slaughter them. Their captain surrendered immediately. Flint didn't care.
The men had died like dogs, that lot. Benton himself had cut through four of them, and only been nicked on the wrist for it. The decks had dripped with blood. When all the men aboard had either defected or died there had been one glint of bravery among the crew; one of the ships sorry guns had nudged its way out of its portal and fired a load of chain weights at the waterline of the Walrus. They'd spent the rest of the day pumping out the ship and repairing the hole. The two little cabin boys who had had the wits and the brass to fire that gun had been taken prisoner; they'd make valuable crewmen, eventually.
Well, one of them would. Flint had shot the other one through the back of the head.
Leaning back against the mast, Benton reached into his shirt for his tobacco pouch and restuffed the bowl of his pipe. There were voices coming from the captain's cabin again. It had been relatively quiet for an hour, at least as far as on deck was concerned. An hour ago there'd been screaming. Not much of it, of course, just shrill, involuntary bleats that made him think of a sheep being poorly slaughtered. Benton didn't think himself unsympathetic, but he wasn't about to tell Captain Flint what he could or could not do on his own ship, especially when their captive was a negro.
The reverberative sound of Flint's voice dropped off. Benton lit his pipe as the Captain's door burst open and slammed against the wall, the wood shaking in protest. Flint was a profile in the dark, bare legged with his long coat draped over his shoulders in a demonstration of what was obviously not modesty, but superiority. The little black cabin boy was strangling in his hand.
Flint glared at Benton and slung the boy out onto the deck, a naked tangle of legs and blood and bruises. He struck hard on his shoulder and began scrabbling across the deck. Flint's door bolted shut as the boy reached the bulwarks and started retching foam and acid up into the sea.
Benton took a puff of his pipe and watched him drape himself limply over the rail, his back hitching with short, hysterical breaths. In the dim light of his lantern he could see the discolored swellings on his hips that would be bruises tomorrow, and the thick lines of red creeping down the backs of his legs.
Benton listened to his shaking lungs, to his eventual oblivious, hysterical sobs, and smoked his pipe. By morning the boy had fallen asleep by the rail. Benton didn't wake him.
***
***
***
***
The Subtlety of Nightmares
Chapter 29b
Councilman Tiddly hadn't been asleep more than fifteen minutes when someone came knocking at the door. His electric blue guppy, which had been dozing peacefully against the ceiling, swam to the door and began to lip soundlessly at it. Tiddly put his arms over his head.
"If you want to live until morning you'll go away!" he shouted.
The knock came again.
Grumbling angrily to himself, Tiddly tossed aside the covers and struggled into his dressing gown, figuring to give the intruder a piece of his mind. He threw open the door and glared nastily.
"What do you WANT?"
Standing in the hallway with his arms crossed was a gangly, freckled little fairy with a torn tunic. He had buck teeth too big to fit in his mouth.
"Hiya, Tiddly." The intruder said, and put his palm against the open door. "I'm here to collect a favor."
"Who the devil are you to ask a favor of me?"
The blue fairy pushed his way into the room, and shut the door. The guppy kept lipping at him.
"A year ago, your mother fell in love with a chickadee, and renounced her property and her council seat to go live with them. You, conveniently, inherited everything."
"That's common knowledge." Tiddly growled.
"Yes, but what isn't common knowledge is that she fell in love under the influence of Lynada's Liquid Romance, a potion which happens to be strictly regulated by the Worldwide Potions Security Council." The fairy said, smiling. "And you just conveniently happened to purchase a bottle of Lynada's Liquid Romance from the potions store here on Small Monday Island, on the sly, of course."
Tiddly scowled. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Of course not. But the clerk who arranged and sold you that lovely bit of illegality knows very well what he is talking about. And now he wants the favor returned or he's going to tell the Council how your mother lost her seat."
Tiddly stared at him for a few moments. "Oh bloody hell. I thought those stupid teeth looked familiar."
Picadilly smiled, showing off his buck teeth. "I got the only pair in fairy-dom. You owe me, big time, Tiddly."
"So what do you want?" Tiddly snapped. "And why couldn't you wait to blackmail me until the morning?"
"Captain Popper and I have been out wild-goose-chasing all day, on order of General Tory. We need someone with fairy dust to sprinkle what we caught and help tow it back to Small Monday Island."
Tiddly perked "Popper caught the ghoul?"
"No, something a bit more frightening than that. Aldus Aborigine."
Tiddly's face contorted with rage "You idiot! Aborigine was released by the council to catch the ghoul because Popper is obviously an incompetent! He's SUPPOSED to be out!"
"But he isn't SUPPOSED to be killing things. Which he is." Picadilly said flatly. "He's the worst criminal the fairy courts have ever dealt with. Did you really think he was going to just stop?"
"Do you have any proof of your accusations?" Tiddly snapped.
"My word, the word of a jackalope herd, and the word of Captain Popper, WHICH, you may remember, is considered admissible as evidence in court. And I'm sure if you asked the birds he was commanding they could tell you a thing or two."
Tiddly growled. "So it was of course necessary to involve ME in this?"
"Of course. You owe me." Picadilly said with a smirk.
Grumbling, Councilman Tiddly collected his pants from the floor and put them on. "Blackmail and random spite. You should have entered politics."
***
Picking away the knots in Peter's mind was like attacking an iceberg with a fishbone. She had never seen anything so awesome. Marvella had picked apart the knots of memory charms, of amnesia, of a dozen illegal magics that turned the mind to jelly, but never had she seen a mess so magnificent as what was inside Peter's head. The lines of an ordered mind should be smooth and slick as new copper wire, wrapped around the spool in perfect layers. Peter's had become an enormous, ragged tangle; loops running off in unknown directions, lines fraying, crossing and recrossing, and this was just the pieces she could see. Underneath it all, the lines dove down into an impossible depth, weaving together into a mess so tight Marvella had never seen the like.
At first she was afraid to touch it. Unraveling was a dangerous thing, taking care and precision, and extremely unforgiving. If she pulled the wrong line, she might make things worse, and she didn't think she had the time to go bumbling about in this mess. She already doubted her ability to get this done even in the confines of a night. This was the sort of thing she'd like to go at with a week of planning, with notebooks full of scribbles.
Marvella's magical hands set at the line like determined carrion crows. She stroked the threads to order, turning them from rough twine to bright wires, uniform and slick. Her hands worked memorizing through touch what she couldn't sense from seeing, and she began to carefully pull out the first loop.
The line was alive.
It jumped to motion like a startled worm and wrapped around itself, pulling away from her hands. The lines did not want to be untied.
"You haven't got a choice!" she snapped at it, grabbing ahold and hauling it free before it could burrow even further into the knot. The line flailed unhappily, struggling every inch of the way as she wrapped it around her shoulder in a neat coil. Progress was slow. There was no rhyme or reason to this knot, unlike the magically induced ones she usually tended, which folded into patterns she could memorize and tame. Sections were tied off at random, and bits seemed to fuse together and slide apart when she wasn't looking. The lines were an active participant in this game. But no matter how slow the progress was, it was still progress; Marvella was steadily wearing away Peter Pan.
It was almost dawn when she decided she had done what she could that night. Carefully, she tied the coil of line into place and let it go. The remains of the knot shook it fretfully and, realizing it would not come free, pulled it back into itself and consumed it. Marvella drifted back from Peter's mind and opened her eyes.
Council was back in session.
The children that had come with Peter were beginning to wake and clump around him like iron filings to the magnet. They all looked bleary and uncomfortable. Nibs was right where she had last seen him, upright and stiff. The girl had fallen asleep against him. The scene was almost cute, if he hadn't looked so worried for his friend. The fairies had taken up their mushrooms again, wearing new outfits and looking a little red eyed; Thombelse still had her fleas, and yawned hugely as they scurried over her bosom to cover what her partial dress did not. Marvella's own mushroom was empty. So was Councilman Tiddly's. The man was chronically late, however, even by their standards, so she didn't think much of it.
"How's Peter?" Nibs asked quickly.
Marvella scrubbed her face with her hands and blinked. "I untangled some of it. The last ten years I got smoothed out completely. If he can't tell us what we need know he isn't going to remember."
"But is he—"
"—alright?" two of the boys asked.
"Oh. Yes. He should be fine. I was VERY careful."
"Marvella, if you PLEASE!" one of the councilmen called. She rolled her eyes and drifted back towards the circle, the orbital lights of her skirt going slowly.
"I was just telling the boys! Peter should remember now. You can ask him whenever you want."
Thombelse clapped "Good! Wake him up, Marvella!"
"Shouldn't we wait for Tiddly?"
"Forget Tiddly." She snorted.
The other members nodded consensus. Wendy, in the meanwhile, had woken up at the sound of the flea woman's voice and was quickly checking over Peter for damage. Other than a pink mark on his forehead where Marvella had sat for so long, he looked fine.
Marvella shooed Wendy's hands. "Move aside, dear. Peter? Up with yourself!"
She tapped him on the nose, quickly murmuring a precautionary spell around his brain. Peter snorted and swatted at whatever was bothering his face, but he did, however, wake up. His eyes dragged open lazily and he stared up at the crowding boys.
"What's going on?" he grumbled, scrubbing an eye as he sat up.
Wendy caught ahold of him. "Peter, are you alright?"
"Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?""
Actually, his head hurt a little, but he wasn't about to mention that to a girl.
"Peter, the council needs to talk to you." she said, brushing off his back. "They're already waiting."
The boy stared at the High Council for a moment, then yawned rudely, not bothering to cover his mouth.
The flea woman frowned at him. "Peter, we're going to ask you some questions again. We need you to answer, alright?"
"Alright."
"Peter, first, can you tell me my name?"
"Did you forget?"
"No, I did not." She said, narrowing her eyes. "I need to see if you remember. Who am I, Peter?"
Peter sniffed, and rubbed his nose. "Thombelse Bellringer, second seat in the High Council. You got the position a few months ago."
The fairy looked impressed. For Peter, this was quite a feat of memory.
"Alright then, Peter, who is Tinkerbell?"
"Tink's my friend." He said.
"And where is she now? Is she alive or dead?"
He frowned. "Alive. She's in England. Her brother got sick and she went to look after him."
The council was smiling a bit. All was looking promising.
"Alright now, Peter, this will be a hard one."
Peter stared at her.
"Who-was-Tybalt?"
For a moment his stare remained blank. Marvella sat up straighter, alarmed, but then his brow crushed together and he frowned.
"Tybalt used to live in the Underground House with us. Ledger made him a house out of paper and curtained off a whole shelf for him."
Nibs went a little pale. "Peter, did you just say Ledger?!"
"Huh?"
"Ledger, Peter! Did you just say Ledger?"
Peter blinked. "Yeah. What of it?"
"You made us promise never to say Ledger again!" he said, shocked.
Peter snorted. "That's silly. Why would I do that?"
Thombelse snapped her fingers, trying to get their attention again. "None of that yet, Peter! Please, try to focus!"
His brain was feeling like fuzzy caterpillars were crawling around inside it. He wondered if some had crawled in his ear while he was sleeping.
"Now Peter, think very carefully. Tybalt was put on trial. What was he put on trial for?"
The boy paused.
"Tybalt was on trial for betraying the King and Queen."
Thombelse waited. "..and what else, Peter?" she asked softly.
Peter frowned for a moment, and then his eyes went very wide in his head.
"Murder." He said quietly, as though he'd never heard of such a thing. "Tybalt was on trial for murder."