36

Picadilly got a carry-case thrown at his head the moment he stepped through the door of Spoonthistle's Potions and Practical Poppycock. Picadilly ducked the airborn acorn shell and scrambled behind a shelf before Spoonthistle could throw another one.

"You disappear for a day and NOW you show your snubby little face?!" Spoonthistle shrieked. "Unless you died and Oberon just NOW breathed life back into your sorry hide you'd better start planning for how you're going to travel once I clip your wings off!"

Picadilly peeped around the corner of the shelf. Spoonthistle, barmy old codger that he was, was sitting behind the clerk's counter with his spectacles down on his nose. He'd snatched another carry case from under the counter and was holding it by the straps like an acorn flail, ready to bean the little fairy if he came close enough. Picadilly stuck his fingers out and waved nervously around the shelf.

"Um, 'morning, boss! Eh heh. What are you doing behind the counter?"

Spoonthistle, as a general rule, NEVER sat at the counter of his own shop. Even his apprentice was too good to sit counter. The old fairy growled at him, showing two rows of perfectly white teeth in his big bullfrog mouth.

"Oh, the nerve he has!" he asked an invisible audience. "Asking me why I'm behind the counter! Did it perhaps not occur to you, Picadilly, that without any clerks, I have no other way to sell potions?!"

Picadilly flinched. "Jun should have been down by now! You can't blame it all on me!"

"Jun hasn't been down for three days!" Spoonthistle roared. "He's been out with Avalonian Flu, as if you didn't know!"

Jun was the only other clerk in Spoonthistle's employ, and also one of the few men on Small Monday Island shorter than Picadilly. He was a tiny Japanese thing who wore kohl eyeliner and smoked what everyone presumed was tobacco (but didn't really think was) from a long ivory pipe.

Spoonthistle swung the carry case in a lazy circle. "Get your sorry blue ass behind this counter this instant! I put up with you when you raised a jackalope on my properties, I put up with you when you come tromping in at all hours of the morning, I shouldn't have to tolerate your truancies, too!"

Picadilly rolled his eyes and checked his tunic pocket for the list Doctor Gibbly had given him. Jun's infirmity had escaped his mind and he'd expected Jun to be sitting counter in his absence. Jun wouldn't have given him one lick of trouble. He probably wouldn't have even bothered scowling. He was a little surprised Spoonthistle hadn't shouted "You're fired!" yet, though.

Probably because, if he did, he'd be sitting at the counter for however long it took for Jun to get over the Avalonian flu.

"Okay, I'm coming out." Picadilly said, putting his hands on top of his head, palm out, as he crept out from behind the shelf. Spoonthistle snorted at him and held perfectly still until Picadilly got behind the counter and put his hands down. Then, THOCK, hollow acorn met hollow skull, and Picadilly rubbed his head with a whine.

"What'd you have to do that for!?"

"Because you're a brat." Spoonthistle said matter of factly. "And you're also twenty six hours late for work."

He thwacked Picadilly with the acorn again, in the chest this time (which earned a rather embarrassing squeal, his ribs still tender from being squished by a pirate) and shoved the carry case into his arms.

"I'm going to my room." Spoonthistle said, already moving towards the stairs to the quartered upper level. "If you want to keep your job, you'll sit behind that counter and sell like you have never sold before. If you don't wish to, you'll be the useless prat you've always been and be moving your things out of this building tonight."

Picadilly waited until the old man grumbled his way up the flight of stairs and the door to his private compartment clicked shut (the upper levels housed the master and apprentice on one floor, and the clerks on the upper, though a third of that floor was taken up by storage) Grabbing up a load of carry cases by their straps, Picadilly squirreled out from behind the counter and skipped over the 'Practical Poppycock' section of the shelves to the sensible potions area. There were ten potions on the list, and Picadilly went down the shelves grabbing at bottlenecks automatically and slipping them in the cases, keeping a quick mental total of the prices.

The first five potions on the list all seemed basic, logical potions for use on Aldus Aborigine, but the last half of the list was a little bit odd, and Picadilly almost hesitated. While he could well understand painkillers and menders and sleep inducers, he couldn't quite figure out why the doctor would be wanting the inducer and cure for priapism, since that was one ailment he was fairly certain Aborigine didn't have. Picadilly decided he didn't really want to know, and didn't particularly care what sort of extras Gibbly charged on the military account. It did, however, make him wonder if Gibbly's wife would be seeing the effects of this, since it was something he did not want charged to their normal, joint account where his wife would see the bill.

Smirking to himself, Picadilly hopped over the counter and quickly flipped open the sale book to the most recent page. The top third was filled with his own loopy handwriting, denoting a day Jun was sick and out from work, but the middle was nothing but a handful of listings in Jun's neat, slanted copperplate, gone a little shaky. Spoonthistle must have called him down from bed every time there was a sale yesterday to properly record the transaction. Picadilly winced and reminded himself to do something witty and apologetic once Jun was up, presuming, of course, Spoonthistle was letting him keep his job that long.

Picadilly quickly scrawled out the sales and totals, then tugged the military account book off the shelf behind the counter and recopied everything into it. As an afterthought, he added the bottle of Detecto Brand Detecting Potion #217 that he'd borrowed yesterday and spilled when he'd found out he'd just stuck his hand in a ghoul's mouth. It would really be best if Spoonthistle didn't know about that incident.

Feeling successfully sneaky, Picadilly snapped the books shut and left a note on the counter.

Spoonthistle: Gone to deliver military sale 135 gold! Be happy, you barmy old codger!

He then collected the carry cases, turned the sign on the door around to say "Closed: come again!" and darted off to Gibbly's office.

Anchored securely, the creaking hull of the Jolly Roger bulged up and out from the spinal keel, its masts jutting up like the stiff legs of a dead dog. The sails were furled and the rigging hung limp as hair, with the ominous tatter of a flag slumped helplessly against the mast. A pair of pale seagulls drifted aimlessly over the ship. It looked derelict already.

Nibs hesitated for a moment as they approached, feeling an instinctual surge of disgust at the quiet rot, but they went on regardless. The Lost Boys and Wendy Darling touched down on the silent deck and squinted around themselves, suddenly nervous.

"Peter?" Toodles called.

Something low in the ship gave a deep moan as wood strained against itself. Michael took Wendy's hand. To all appearances nothing was wrong with the Jolly Roger; it had gone a bit to disrepair since they had last seen it, but that was nothing new. The boards on the deck were grey and sagging under their feet and the boys were abruptly glad they didn't weigh any more than they did. They began to disperse.

"Peter?" Wendy tried, tugging at the door of Hook's cabin. The lock shrieked as the latch pulled back and the door flopped open listlessly in her hand, shifting a little as a hinge wiggled loose. The air inside the cabin was musty as the attic in her old London home.

Wendy called again. "Peter!" The sound died shortly inside the door, but there was no reply. Michael put his head in, curious, and toddled across the creaking floor in the dark. Wendy faintly heard something scrape, and the shutters on Hook's windows squeaked and sagged, falling open off their hinges. Michael, now visible standing on a chair before them, winced at the splintered wood.

"Everything's going to pieces." Wendy admonished softly. The room looked like it hadn't been occupied in years. Dust had settled over everything like a funeral veil and the bed, an unmade mess against all standards Hook must hold himself to, looked settled into its form, the blankets like discarded scraps of cowhide dried into their shapes. Wendy crept to the desk and peered at the Captain's Log. Only three days old, the ink was already fading into brown, the paper gone brittle and foxed. Though his ship was always filthy Wendy imagined Hook a fastidious man in his private quarters; the condition of the cabin was a bafflement.

Below deck, the Twins crept into Billy's forge, calling carefully to Peter. It didn't seem right to make too much noise here, like the ship might hear and begrudge them their voices. The metal in the forge had begun to rust in thick layers, and the ashes had made a solid mat of themselves. The water barrel had rotted through and purged stagnant water across the boards. The tiny white bodies of dead mosquito spawn had come with it.

John and Toodles were gone to investigate the galley, and upon opening the door they both stumbled back from it, gagging. The galley of the Jolly Roger had produced its share of filth in its day, from soups made with toad bones to salted molasses duff, but Cookson had rarely used components quite so foul as what came wafting out of that galley. Barrels had rotted and split, spilling their moldering contents onto the boards where not even weevils and maggots crawled through it. The iron galley range had lost a leg under its own weight and slumped at an angle on the ground, its doors hanging open like slack jaws. Pots had begun to rust and crack on their posts. John and Toodles slammed the door on the rotting reek.

Our last pair, Nibs and Curly, went further down to the hold of the ship. Here in darkness the crates and trunks of stolen goods slumped together as the boards bowed beneath them, and here and there they'd crashed through, falling into the level of bilge water and waste below. The boys carefully flew over the missing patches.

"Peter?" Nibs called out, not really expecting an answer.

In the dark, something shifted, and a surprised grunt startled the both of them.

"Who iz zere?" someone grumbled hoarsely. They heard the struggling creak of weight shifting as the man came to his feet.

"Cookson?" Curly asked dumbly.

"Ah, iz stupid boys." He slurred dully. They couldn't see him in the dark, but he sounded like he'd been drinking. Heavily.

"Has Peter been here?" Nibs asked.

Cookson gave a wheezing sound. "Was here....Maybe dead now." The weight on the boards shifted.

"What do you mean, may be dead now!?" Nibs demanded.

"Everyzing dead now." He mumbled. "Even ze rats. Ze rats turn to dust. Ze ship turn to dust." There was a strange slopping noise, not really belonging to anything either boy could identify, but undeniably Cookson's. "If he still here, he is dead; he iz small."

"How long ago was Peter here?" Curly asked.

Cookson grunted. "I don't know. Hour? Year? He came for Hook, but zer was no Hook."

That slopping sound came again, and in the dark Cookson made a dull retching sound, and both the boys cringed back. There was a wet smack as something fell to the boards and Cookson began to swear dully in a language they didn't understand. After a moment he gurgled and went quiet.

"A-are you alright?" Curly asked, not entirely sure he wanted to help, if the noise was any indication of the man's state. There was a sharp sound as Cookson started breathing again.

"How you think I am?" He said, his voice rasping like sand. The tones were calm and mournful. "I already dead."

The slopping noise began again, and Nibs grabbed Curly by the shirt and bolted.

John and Toodles stumbled back on deck with their hands over their faces, senses offended beyond reason by the smell of the galley. Wendy had emerged from the Captain's quarters with a square book open in her hands, looking almost afraid to close it.

"This place is a wreck." John said, his voice nasal. "We've got to get out of here, Wendy. The pirates have really let it go."

"I don't think they have." She said softly. "We saw this ship only five days ago. It was normal then, wasn't it? A mess, but normal."

"So?"

"This is far too much rot for five days, even with the way the pirates treat things. They may not be very clean but they never let their ship go to pieces, not if they could help it." She said primly. "And look here, John. The Captain's Log. Just look at it!"

She held the book out to him, and John peeped into it. The writing was pale and blotched by foxing, and the paper gone stiff with its age. "What of it?"

"The date, John." She said. "The date is only three days ago! How could things have gotten this bad since then? I think there's more going on here than simple neglect."

The Twins came up from below next. They looked nervously at each other.

"The forge is—"

"—wrecked." They said.

"The whole place—

"—Looks dead as a doornail."

Wendy nodded. "Something's horribly wrong here. I wonder if what happened with Billy has anything to do with it?"

"I don't see how." John said. "Did Hook write anything down in the ship's log about it?"

"Not that I see. I'm afraid to turn the page back, it's so brittle." She admitted. "There's only the last half of an entry and then a short little note for three days ago. The last full entry seems to be talking more about Long Tom than anything else. There's a bit at the end, though, saying no one can get any sleep. It says the gunner is still having night terrors and screaming the whole ship to pieces. Hook sounds a little angry about that."

"What about the note on the entry three days ago?" John asked.

Wendy shook her head. "See for yourself."

At the bottom of the page, accompanied by a quick, abbreviated annotation of the date, were three crooked words that seemed determined to escape.

"SMEE IS DEAD......."

The ink trailed off into the spine of the book. Wendy pulled it back to her and softened, giving the page a suspiciously tender look.

"The poor man..." she whispered.

The stairs leading below deck suddenly wailed and collapsed, sending its burden down into the mess with a shout. A clumsy moment later Nibs and Curly flew up from the door, looking a little white, and a little sick. Wendy blinked at them.

"Are you alright?" she asked worriedly.

Both boys shot towards them. "Peter was here." Curly said quickly.

"But he's gone now." Said Nibs. "We need to be gone, too. Something is VERY wrong on this ship."

"So we noticed." John said flatly.

Nibs shook his head. "No, REALLY wrong. Cookson is down in the hold. We couldn't see him but I don't think we have to. If we don't leave I think we're going to turn to dust like everything else."

"Is Cookson alive?" Toodles asked.

Nibs and Curly looked at each other, unsure.

"M-maybe." Nibs said. "He was talking. Look, we need to move, NOW. Peter Pan's still out there somewhere."

"Oh! Wait a minute!" Wendy said, and hurried back into Hook's cabin. She carefully replaced the ship's log on his desk, fitting it into the dust print where she had found it.

"Wendy!" Nibs called impatiently.

She lingered still a moment, giving the empty cabin one last, mournful look, before hurrying out to her boys and away from the decaying ship.