Chapter 4

Sweet Tooth

Night had descended on Neverland. The stars were out to play and the full moon acted like a caring guardian. The island never slept, but that did not apply to those who inhabited it. Every individual, except for the nocturnal ones, were sound asleep. The crickets chirped and the owls hooted. In Crimson Castle, Red Jessica slumbered under her scarlet sheets, her kitten in a nearby cat bed. The Pirate Princess snuggled royally in Coral Castle. The trees of Tiki Forest awaited the rays of the sun. Captain Flynn and Camille rested their heads in the Pirate Pyramid. The birds of Skybird Island in their nests and the mermaids of Neptune City in their sea-beds.

Jake and his brave band of buccaneers were no exception. Even heroes need their beauty sleep. All the lights were off, and the four young pirates snoozed in their bunks. Bucky rocked to the gentle waves in his grotto. They dreamed of wonderful journeys in faraway lands, where the flowers were always blooming, where the grass was always green, where the tides were always calm, and where the adventures were always around every corner.

The clock, shaped like a tiny frigate, read two fifty-nine in the morning. The thin second hand ticked every second. It completed another full revolution, and the minute hand shot straight up.

Three o'clock. Right on the button. Jake and Izzy's eyes opened at the same time.

Izzy sat up in bed, fully awake. "You got the doubloon?" she whispered.

As Jake slid the red, sword-patterned cover off and eased himself out of bed, he reached under his pillow and found the warm tint of the gold doubloon. "Right here," he replied as he pulled it out.

The sheet in the bed above waved as Cubby rolled over from his right to his left. The two shot back down and lay perfectly still with baited breath as they waited for him to settle. Cubby crushed his eyelids tight and stopped breathing, as if a hitch had went off in his otherwise excellent dream. The next moment, he had relaxed and was snoring again.

Izzy reached over to her bedside table and grabbed her pouch of pixie dust. She nabbed a few specks between her thumb and forefinger. "Pixie dust away," she mouthed as she flicked the dust at Jake.

The tiny amount of sparkling dust landed on Jake's chest and took hold instantly. With that quantity, it would last no more than a minute – more than enough time for him to swap the tooth for the doubloon, slip back into bed, and pretend that nothing ever happened. Jake hovered up to Cubby's bedside. Cubby lay on his left, facing Jake. The leader was afraid that the map-reader would open his eyes at any moment and be bamboozled.

It was not a good position for Cubby to be lying. This is gonna be tricky… Jake flew over Cubby, placing themselves a foot apart, and pulled up the opposite side of the pillow. He had almost reached the tooth when Cubby stirred again. Jake jerked back just in time as Cubby rolled back onto the right side.

You're not making this easy, Cubby, Jake thought as he slid his hand under the other side. He explored between the pillow's cushiness and the mattress's springiness and felt his fingers brush against the tiny tooth. He grabbed the tooth and extracted it, not bothering to look at it, even if it did look a little whiter than an average tooth.

As he went to slide the doubloon under, something talked. "Excuse me," a tiny voice said. Jake instinctively turned his head in its direction and found himself staring straight at a little person with wings. He dangled from Cubby's tooth with one hand while holding a gold doubloon with the other. "Just what do you think you're doing?"

Startled, Jake yelped, swinging his arms back. When he did though, the little figure was still clinging onto Cubby's tooth. As a result, he was catapulted across the room, into the far wall. He hit the grey stone hard, then dropped down behind a stack of barrels.

Cubby shot up in the commotion. "What?" he said in a groggy tone as he rubbed his eyes. "What's happening? Are we under attack?" He opened them up and was staggered to find Jake hovering directly over him. "Um, Jake? What're you doing?"

Jake could only remain where he was, floating in a dazzle of sparkling dust. "Um…" he murmured as his face turned red. "Nothing…"

Izzy jumped out of bed. "What was that?" She followed a trail of white sparkles that arched across the bedroom. "I saw something fly over just now."

Jake gazed at the barrels on the opposite end, where the thing may have landed. "I don't know what it was. It looked like a fairy."

Cubby looked down at Jake's hands. "What's that you've got there?" He homed in on the small disc of gold and a small, pearly stone. "Hey, is that my…?"

Jake quickly swung his hands behind his back. His face only got redder – so red, in fact, that it was now the same shade as his bandanna. "These? Oh, these are nothing," he said with a nervous giggle. The pixie dust wore off. Jake dropped onto Cubby's bed, having no choice but to bring his hands out to cushion his fall. He bounced before the mini matey, the possessions in his hands, the tooth and the doubloon, visible for Cubby to see.

Cubby's eyes widened. "My tooth! And a gold doubloon?" His hands went to his hips. "Jake, how could you?"

"No! No, no, no, no," Jake said desperately. The sweat trickled into his bandanna, soaking it. "You're just… err… having a dream. Yeah, this is all just a dream! You should go back to sleep and…" Before Jake could finish, Cubby reached over and began to play with his face. Cubby prodded Jake's cheek, pinched his nose, and yanked his ears, causing him to wince. "Hey! Quit it, Cubby," Jake protested.

"So this is a dream, huh?" Cubby pulled Jake's hair, causing more flinching. "You seem real enough to me," he confirmed.

Skully dragged himself out of his barrel bed. The bags under his eyes were large and blue, clashing against his green feathers. "Will you guys quiet down out there?" he asked, visibly annoyed. "I'm trying to…" He looked over at the human's beds and saw Jake lying in the same one as Cubby. A sly smile formed on his beak. "Oh, Jake, don't tell me you had a bad dream…"

"Jake didn't have a bad dream, Skully," Cubby explained. He folded his arms. "He just doesn't believe that the tooth pixies are real, that's all."

"What?" Jake blurted. "I…"

Izzy popped her head up from over the ladder. "Uh, mateys," Izzy said to Jake and Cubby, breaking up the dispute, "can we drop the anchor on this for one minute, please?"

The tiny glow behind the barrels groaned in pain. "Ouch, that's smarts…"

Skully turned toward the voice. "Hey, who's that?"

Carefully, Izzy climbed down and approached the barrels, taking cautious steps in her fluffy slippers. Jake and Cubby descended down the ladder and joined her. The pirate crew, dressed in their nightwear, neared the bundle. From a tiny crevice, they made out the white aura – the same one that darted across the room earlier. Skully landed on the left barrel while Jake grabbed the middle-most one, which was empty and light, and lifted it aside.

They gasped. Lying there, in a pile of dust brushed aside from a lazy sweeping job, was a pixie. A male one. He had pale skin, as white as snow, and a head of slick hair the same colour. His cotton tunic and trousers were white. His wings were white. The aura that surrounded him was white, illuminating all that was around him. The only thing that was not white were his eyes, which were a deep blue, like the deepest depths of the Neversea.

The pixie stumbled to his feet. The dust clung to his clothes. "I can't believe this. Years of tooth collecting without incident, and now this," he moaned while brushing himself down. The more he brushed, the more the dust spread. "I just got these washed yesterday."

"Shiver me timbers. A pixie," Izzy said, covering her mouth her with hands. "Are you okay?"

The pixie as pure as a snowflake grimaced, showing his pair of equally pure teeth. "Not really," he exclaimed as he took back his gold doubloon and stuffed it into his white satchel, which stretched out to fit the coin but shrunk back to its original size. "I'm both banged up and filthy." He pointed accusingly at the kid with the spiky black hair. "No thanks to mister jumpy-sandals here."

"I'm sorry," said Jake. Already, he was having a bad day. Everything and everyone was against him, and it was not even breakfast yet. "I didn't mean to. I had no idea you were there, honest."

The fairy's anger faded a little bit. "Did my ears deceive me or did I just hear an apology from a pirate? What is the world coming to these days?" He went to flutter his wings. The right one twitched unnaturally. He hunched over in agony, sieving through his perfect teeth.

Izzy gasped. "You're hurt!"

He held an open palm out to her. "It's nothing. I'm fine."

"You're not fine." Izzy reached down and gently picked the pixie up in her hands, against his objections. "Here, let me take a look at you."

Izzy carried the fairy out of the bedroom and into the foyer. The others tagged on behind, eager to lend a hand and help the pixie back to his feet. His natural aura served as a helpful nightlight in the darkness.

All the while, the fairy did nothing but complain. "Put me down," he whinged like a fuzzy child. "This is no way a fairy of my calibre should be treated! The indignity! The shame! The humiliation!" Although, he had to admit that this girl had quite the delicate hold. He did not think it was possible for pirates to have such soft hands.

In the darkened hall, Izzy set the fairy down on a crate. She asked the boys to get her some light while she searched for the first aid box. They kept an emergency case filled with dressings, tweezers, scissors, and splints to treat any minor booboos suffered in their day-to-day lives. Jake, Cubby, and Skully returned with separate lanterns and placed them around the general area, filling it with candlelight. Long, dark shadows were cast onto the walls, which combined with the eerie silence, adding a macabre tone.

Izzy set the box with a crudely painted green cross down beside the fairy and opened it up, showing the contents inside. "Thanks, guys. Now, let's take a look at you," she said, turning back to the miniature man. The extra light brought out the warmth and richness in her eyes. "Where does it hurt? Is it your wing?"

The white fairy's crummy manner crumbled at the sight of the medical supplies, especially the bandage scissors. Squeamish was the word. What was small to humans was less so for his kind. A thimble could double as a helmet. A matchbox would work as a wardrobe. In this case, those scissors were like garden shears.

He swallowed a lump down his throat and said, "I'm telling you, I don't need any help. You don't have to go through all this trouble for—" Izzy had barely brushed the disrupted wing, yet still the pain was sharp and excruciating. The pixie cried out, the rest of his words became lost in a haze of red.

"Oh, it looks like you've sprained your wing pretty bad there. You're lucky, it could've been a lot worse." Izzy turned to the parrot. "Skully, go to the medicine cabinet and get me Misty's tonic."

Skully replied, "I'm on it," then flew off, vanishing into the shadows.

Izzy pulled out two splints and a roll of unused bandage from the box. "Okay, Mister… I don't think I caught your name."

The fairy grumbled, then sighed. "If you must know my name, it's Iris."

"Alright, Iris – such a nice name – we need to stabilise that wing. I'll try to be as quick and careful as possible, but this might be a little uncomfortable."

The white pixie, now known as Iris, dropped his head in defeat. "If you must. It's not like I can stop you anyway."

Izzy took the splints and placed them on both sides of the damaged wing, where it was attached to the back. The contact made Iris flinch. She asked Jake to hold them in place while she wrapped the bandage around it.

"I gotta say, I've seen a few fairies in my time, but I've never seen one like you before," said Jake. He pinched the splints between his indexes and thumbs while Izzy did her stuff. "What kind of fairy are you?"

Iris looked at Jake in a way that suggested that he had been deeply insulted. "Wasn't it obvious when you saw me clinging to that tooth?" He stopped to recoil with more pain. "I collect lost teeth; I'm a tooth pixie."

"A tooth pixie?" the pirates reiterated in unison. They were surprised, but not all for the right reasons.

"Cool," Cubby cheered, peering over the brim of the crate.

"Wait a minute, they're real?" Jake blurted out. "Izzy, I thought you made that all up." He stopped himself too late as he noticed Cubby's blank gaze. "Maybe I said too much…"

Izzy shot Jake a glare. "Gee, you think?" she said sarcastically.

"Hold on," Cubby said, facing Izzy. "You made that up? The tooth pixies? The city? Everything?"

Izzy paused half-way through the wrapping. She mumbled for a moment, trying to come up with an explanation, but found that the only one that existed was the truth. "Yes, Cubby, I made it up," she conceited as she continued with the bandaging.

The pieces clicked together in Cubby's mind as he turned back to Jake. "And you were in on this too, weren't you? That's why you were flying above my bed. You both tricked me!"

"We didn't trick you, Cubby," Izzy responded in a tone that was both calming yet stern. "We were just trying to make you feel better about losing your first tooth."

"And besides," Jake added, "we've got a genuine tooth pixie right here in our hideout, so the story was truer than we thought."

Cubby paused. Something just did not add up in his mind. "So, wait, if the tooth pixies really exist," he began to ask, "then why did you make up that story?"

Izzy answered, "Because I didn't know that they existed either."

"So, let me get this straight. Izzy made up that story, thinking tooth pixies didn't exist, but now we know that tooth pixie are real. But Jake tried to swap my tooth for a doubloon, because he also thought these fairies were made up, and yet…" Cubby's mind was going around in circles. He rubbed his eyes. "Oh, coconuts, I'm so confused."

"Tell me about it." Izzy stopped again, remembering something. "Wait a minute. Jake, didn't you take my first tooth when I lost it?"

"I thought Skully did," Jake answered. "Then who took my lost teeth?"

Iris shouted out, "Will you just finish with the bandage already?"

Not a moment too soon, Izzy apologised and tied a knot in the bandage, securing it in place. Iris attempted to move his wing, but the layers of dressing made it difficult. The most he could do was shift it by half a millimetre, which still brought out a slither of pain.

Skully returned with a small bottle clutched in his talons. The bottle was two-thirds full with a syrupy, green liquid. He set it down beside the first-aid box. Izzy thanked him and unscrewed the lid. As she did so, Jake, Cubby, and Skully backed away, for good reason. Wisps of green vapour escaped and filled the air with a stench that was both sickly sweet and sweetly sickening at the same time – a lethal combination.

"So," Skully began, thankful to be out of the foul radius, "who is he?"

Cubby gestured toward the fairy. "His name's Iris. He's a tooth pixie."

"What? So Izzy didn't—?"

Jake interrupted. "We've already been over that."

Izzy battled watering eyes as she took one of the many splints and dabbed on an amount fit for a pixie. "Open wide," Izzy said through pursed lips. The fumes filled her nostrils, causing them to run. Chopping raw onions became tame by comparison. Izzy dared not open her mouth lest she wanted the aroma to pepper her tongue. She brought the reserved amount to Iris's mouth, but he edged back. "Please, Iris. Don't you want to get better?"

Iris looked like he was about to cry. He slammed his blue eyes shut then took the medicine off the splint. The thick substance sloshed in his mouth, through his immaculate teeth, and danced on his tongue. His eyes snapped wide and were riddled with bloodshot veins. The flavour was indescribable. Iris stumbled around the crate top, hopping and shaking and twitching and hacking as he tried to down the concoction. After about ten seconds, he swallowed, yet the taste was not going to go away so easily.

Iris heaved. "Words cannot describe how horrible that was…"

Izzy replaced the lid on the bottle. "Good medicine tastes bitter. Not even a wonderful witch can change that." She waved away the vapours that lingered, clearing the air of the smell. When it had been cleared, the others moved back in. Skully perched himself beside the fairy. "That was her all-natural extra strength pain reliever. It should ease the ache, but I'd say stay off the flying for at least a few weeks, until your wing gets better."

Iris felt so powerless. The medicine must have taken hold quicker that he thought. "A few weeks? You have got to be kidding me. What fairy worth their weight can't fly?"

Izzy placed his hands against her hips and tilted her head. "You know, for a fairy you're pretty grouchy."

"Pardon me, princess," Iris retorted, "but a messed up wing and a tongue that tastes like I've licked a rotten watermelon doesn't exactly fill me with whimsical joy."

Skully took a few steps closer to Iris. "You could at least be a little bit more grateful since we helped you."

The white fairy's grouchiness only got worse. "I don't need some two-bit, scurvy, good-for-nothing bandit telling me how to behave, and I especially don't need your kind doing my job." He poked his pristine index finger into Skully's feathered chest. "Seriously, do I turn up in your raids and tell you how to do your job – how to seize ships and steal treasure and kidnap fair maidens? No. So don't tell me how to do mine."

Skully angrily pressed his beak into Iris's nose. "Who're you calling two-bit, you—?"

Not wanting to see a scuffle break out between his trusty lookout and a tooth pixie he had only just met, Jake brought his hands down between the two of them, walling each other off, separating them.

"Now, now, let's not get carried away here," Jake said to both of them, then turned to Iris. "You've got it all wrong. We're pirates, yes, but we're not those kind of pirates. We're all friendly buccaneers here." Jake stepped back and placed his hand on his chest. "I'm Jake, and these are my mateys: Izzy, Cubby, and Skully."

Iris shook his head and scoffed. "Friendly pirates? I'll believe that when I see it."

Cubby craftily eyed Iris from over the crate edge. "I think you already have."

Iris retraced the last ten minutes, fresh in his head. Other than the shaky first impression – the incident with his wing – these pint-sized thugs have treated his injury and given him medicine, which was starting to numb the ache. Any other pirate crew would have torn off his wings or coaxed every speck of pixie dust out of his body or – if he were lucky – get tossed out into the water like a banana skin.

One of the lantern flames flicked for a few moments, causing the shade to sway left and right. Almost as if those ghastly shadows were about to come to life, like Peter Pan's, and pull elaborate pranks on them.

Iris reached back into his satchel and pulled out a folded piece of white paper, pixie sized. "You're wasting my time. I've got a job to do. I came here to collect one tooth from… Cubby?" He traced his finger across the faces and came to a stop of the one with the blue eyes and bandanna. The boy smiled, showing the gap. "Just hand it over."

Jake reached into his pocket and pulled it out. "Here you go," he said as he handed it to Iris. Strangely, the pixie stared at it as if he had never seen a tooth in his life. Jake watched as Iris held it out and examined it from every angle. "Is something wrong?"

"I've collected a few teeth from pirates – horrible, rotten, black and yellow things, stank of fish and brandy. But this pirate tooth. I've never seen one so… well-kept."

Cubby smiled. "We take really good care of our teeth," he said with a sense of pride. "We always brush them, at least twice a day."

"Yeah, well, thanks for the break in the monotony." Iris stuffed the tooth into his bag. Still, it retained its shape. "Now would be a good time for me to get back to Ivory City, but…" He glanced back at his injured wing. "Without both my wings, I can't fly home."

"So how are you going to get home?" Jake asked.

Iris paused, bringing his snow-white hand up to his snow-white chin. "That's a good question. Hold on." Iris reached into his bag and heaved out a book thick with pages. Skully managed to make out the words on the title: The Ninety-Nine-Hundred Rules on being a Tooth Pixie. "I got to check the manual for instructions." He opened it up and began to flip through the pages. After several hundred page flicks, he stopped. "Ah, here we are. The missing fairies report. It says right here that upon the discovery that a fairy has gone missing during an assignment – either they become lost, injured, or unable to return to Ivory City for whatever reason – a missing fairy report will be filed after… fourteen days?"

Iris dropped the manual and stamped down on the crate in frustration. His soles made hollow thuds on the timber. Waiting at least a few weeks to be able to resume flying was agonising, but half than that away from his home was even more so.

"Just relax," Jake said, "if you really want to go home, we can get you there."

After letting his anger vent, Iris pulled the book back to his blue eyes. His tense face loosened as he read something else. "However, if the circumstances demand it, a tooth pixie may seek alternative modes of transportation. Only ask for assistance from outsiders if absolutely necessary." Iris silently traced the remaining words down the page and over to the next one. He nodded. "I guess that's that then," Iris said as he stuffed the book back into his satchel. "How about I cut you troublemakers a deal?"

"A deal?" Jake repeated. "What kind of deal?"

"Since I can't fly, and you guys are the ones who got me in this mess, how about this? You get me back home to Ivory City, and I'll see to it you get an exclusive audience with the king. He'll want to show you his personal gratitude for helping our cause."

"An audience with the king of Ivory City?" Cubby said, dumbstruck. "You mean, we get to see the mythical home of the tooth pixies?" His hands shot up above his head. "That sounds like awesome coconuts!"

"It sure does," Izzy added, looking just as excited.

"We'll do it," Jake said without hesitation, "but no reward is necessary. We only want to help."

"Don't let your strange sense of pride sting you too soon, kiddos," Iris countered. "But Ivory City is all the way up in the sky, so unless you got wings under your bandannas, we're going to have a little trouble getting there."

"We have Bucky," Jake replied, "the fastest ship in the Neversea. He can get you home, no problem."

Iris retorted, annoyed, "And just how exactly is a boat gonna—?"

"You'll see. Give us a few minutes to get ready and we'll head straight out."

Jake, Izzy, and Cubby ran off back to their bedroom, leaving the fairy alone with the pirate parrot and the silent shadows. Over the course of the next few minutes, they exchanged very little talk, questions that could be answered with only one word. It was unclear as to whether these two had gotten off on the wrong foot, or just would not get along with each other.

Eventually, they returned, still donning their clothes. Jake slipped his right arm into his blue and gold vest. Izzy hopped into the hall, stuffing her left foot into a red boot. Cubby fixed the knot in his bandanna.

"Is everybody ready?" Skully asked as he took flight.

"You bet, Skully," Jake announced as he held his wooden sabre, carved from the Forever Tree, over his head. "I've got my sword."

"My map." Cubby held the scroll aloft.

"My pixie dust." Izzy motioned to the pale pouch that hung from around her neck.

"Yo ho, crew, let's go to Ivory City!"

Iris once more found himself nestled in Izzy's delicate hands as they rushed to the nearest slide and jumped down it. This one was nowhere near as intense as the Crazy Corkscrew, but it still had its share of twists. They appeared in the dim light of Bucky's Grotto and landed on the ship's surface, still shiny from the thorough scrubbing they gave him yesterday. Bucky shook up with a start, his bell chimed.

"Ahoy, Bucky," said Jake. "Sorry to wake you, but we got an extra special job to do tonight."

Izzy presented the fairy to the bell. With Bucky being a ship, it was impossible to pinpoint where his line of sight stemmed, so the bell became the automatic focus point. "Meet Iris. He's a tooth pixie, and we're going to take him home."

Iris looked at the kids, then around the expanse of the deck. "Okay… first you pirates act all friendly," he said slowly, "and now you're talking to this dingy boat. I'm seriously starting to wonder which mainland nuthouse you lot were plucked from."

The bell on the ship rang fast and sharp as Bucky voiced his disapproval.

"Bucky heard that," Skully said to Iris, "and he didn't think it was very nice of you to call him names."

"I'll call it whatever I want."

A panel on Bucky's cabin wall opened and a squirt of water shot out. The thread of seawater struck Iris, a few drops flecked against Izzy who kept the fairy at arm's length. Iris shielded his face, but could not stop the flow. After seconds of spraying, Iris was soaked to the bone and dripping.

Iris, the drowned rat, whispered, "I hate pirates…"

"You'll dry off," Izzy remarked, cradling him close to her torso.

Jake climbed up to Bucky's wheel and hollered, "Set sail, Bucky!"

Bucky opened full sails while Skully operated the contraption to stop the waterfall. The flow stopped and the pirates sailed out of the candlelit grotto and into the shine of dancing stars. The cool, night air breezed against their skin.

Jake and the Neverland Pirates gathered at the ship's bow and sang:

Yo ho, mateys away

They'll be treasure and adventure today

(Let's go!)

Heave ho, here we go

Together as a team

Jake and the Neverland Pirates

And me

"Who're you singing to?" Iris asked as his blue eyes darted around once more, trying to locate something – or someone – he could not see. Now he was starting to think that maybe these people were more dangerous than the typical, marauding breed of privateers. "You pirates just get stranger and stranger…"