Disclaimer: If you recognise it, it's not mine.
AN: For more apologies for the horrifically long time this chapter has taken, please see my profile. To answer questions: I'm afraid I won't be writing any sex scenes of any kind, which I think would ruin the story anyway. You know, after the prince and princess get married in fairytales, the author generally just cuts to a discreet 'happily ever after'. The rating is for upcoming violence, and to be on the safe side. The joke that Wendy and Peter were laughing at in the last chapter cannot be disclosed, partly because my beta assures me that it was the worst joke known to mankind, and partly because I've forgotten most of it now. But John doesn't know either, so there you are. Oh, and Peter aged three years because he wanted to. Which really seems the only reason Peter does anything. Tune in sometime in the next decade for Chapter Eighteen!
Chapter Seventeen.
It wasn't long after Peter and John had returned that Wendy began to feel a slight sharpness in the otherwise balmy air. Barely suppressed excitement stirred the lounging boys, driving them after Peter as he wordlessly led the way back underground to the secret hideout. Wendy and John followed. The sky seemed to blush and the air to glow a deeper gold as they walked, as if Peter's very impatience were all the sun needed to be persuaded to set a little early tonight.
Once underground, the boys began to shove and jostle for swords. John dumped his bang inside the little house, but although he looked sidelong at Wendy the general exhilaration and festival mood that filled the house to bursting seemed to forestall any comment he might have wanted to make. The Imp stamped his little feet and made a high-pitched squealing, clambering up on the table the better to tug at unguarded hair and to shriek in unwary ears. Wendy laughed, sweeping him into her arms. So overcome with excitement was he that he immediately wriggled free of her grasp and was soon lost to her sight. Feathers and brightly coloured strips of fabric were being tied to any old bit of clothing to boys happened to be wearing, and in a short while the quite ordinary theme of John's white shirt and grey trousers had also been appropriately embellished upon.
She felt a tug at her belt then, and found Peter expertly tying a sheathed sword to it with a length of thick black cord. He grinned at her, but although she smiled back she felt apprehensive. "Peter, why are we taking swords?" she asked, low so that the boys couldn't hear. "Are the gypsies . . . unfriendly?"
He looked down, tugging the cord tight. The sword felt heavy at her side. At last he said, "No, they're not unfriendly. But you'll see when we get there." And though he smiled that impish smile at her again and tugged at her belt in a playful way, the thrill she felt shivering up her spine wasn't this time to do with Peter at all.
This is a dangerous night, Wendy thought as they emerged into a cool and lively breeze. The green cloak from the dress-up box, miles unimaginable away in icy London, swirled around her under the bruised sky. Charlie led the Imp away to where the Indians lived, and they looked like goblin shadows in the dusk. Even John's familiar eyes took on a dark gleam behind his glasses. The lit torches Southey and Gert carried swooped through the air, their tails of light fading behind them. Peeps whooped suddenly, as if unable to contain himself any longer, leaping over broad leaves and bench-like tree roots that grew up out of the earth before curving down to rejoin it. Peter caught the torchlight and glowed in it, taking her hand as they walked through the dangerous night.
They heard the first faint strains of music before they saw the flush the bonfires cast on the sky. Wendy seemed to feel her blood run a little quicker as the stamp and tap of the drums grew steadily louder and louder, and as what she knew to be a violin stirred the beat to greater exuberance. A little spring appeared all of its own in her step, and Southey and Gert began to turn around and around with their torches. Twin danced a mad little jig as they progressed, kicking the reappearing Charlie quite by accident. They grew so close that the shouts and yelps and laughter twined with the smoke and music in the sky, but even then Wendy couldn't have imagined the sight that would meet her eyes when they reached the party ground.
She gasped. Gypsies and Indians! Utterly useless words for this, which was a swirl of bright fire and full skirts in every colour imaginable, a singing of violins and a howling of completely unexpected bagpipes, the beautiful dark eyed girls and the gaily-dressed men that pressed cups of sweet dark wine on them. John stood at her side, mouth agape. There was as much of a hush as such a wild scene could manage, and a tall regal man that Wendy recognised as Tiger Lily's father came forward to greet Peter. A gypsy woman, her striking face lined and her magnificent black hair streaked with grey, was beside him. Slowly, Wendy went to Peter's side, and the woman smiled at her.
"Hail to you, Peter Pan and Wendy Darling," the woman said, and her voice was as rich and dark as her eyes. The taciturn chief inclined his head in an incongruously English salutation. Wendy curtsied as deeply as she could, but she felt that the effect might have lost a little in the complication of the sword at her belt.
"Hail to you, Queen Margot," Peter said, with a rakish little bow. "And hail to you too, Chief."
Tiger Lily's father's mouth twitched, and the woman addressed as Queen Margot smiled. Wendy felt a light something come to rest on her head, and reached up to feel a crown of glossy leaves. This adornment seemed to mark the end of formalities, and when Peter wore what she thought must be an identical green circlet the music struck up again, and with a great yell the gypsy boys swept the Indian girls into riotous dancing around the three great bonfires that crackled and spat fireflies into the starry sky.