Stars (Wendy Darling #1)(77)
“Wendy, you didn’t drink that, did you?” Her throat constricted at the thought, and suddenly she was light-headed.
“No, no, Michael, I didn’t drink it.”
Michael reached for the cup to peer inside of it.
“Stop!”
Abbott pushed past him and grabbed the cup with some loose leaves, careful not to touch the base, which was beginning to leak.
“I’ll get rid of this.” He looked over at Wendy, his lanky build towering over her. “Go back to your hut.” Then he shook his head and made a disgusted sound. “Women.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
TWO HOURS PASSED, and Wendy was hanging her feet off the edge of her balcony when Peter came for her. Trying to ignore the beginnings of a headache that seemed to emanate out from the middle of her brain, she kicked her feet out over the drop from her hut, watching a black and white bird flit about the leaves below, catching large ants and gargling them down its enormous throat. Wendy noticed a shape swimming up out of the dark leaves below, becoming clearer and clearer, flying with impressive precision and speed. Peter. She smiled.
He flew up past her feet, landing behind her in a whoosh of air that sent her white nightgown swirling around her. He yanked her to her feet. Wendy crossed her arms in front of her chest and peered at him. “Tink?” Peter shook his head. “She’s fine. She’s . . .” He shook his head again and reached for her hand. “Honestly, the last thing I want to talk about tonight is Tink—is that all right? I’m sorry for what she did to you, and I swear on my life that nothing like this will ever happen again. I promise. I’m so angry at her.” He leaned in and pushed his nose up against her hair, clutching her desperately. “I can’t imagine anything happening to you.”
Wendy smiled shyly, loving the feel of his warm breath on her face. “Well then, you can thank Thomas later. He saved my life by giving me that flower.” She almost killed me. The thought kept bouncing around her head.
“I will. I’ll make Thomas a General for it.”
“Well, you don’t have to go that far.”
They both laughed nervously. Peter pulled away from her, and it was as if she knew what he was going to say before he said it. “Wendy, will you come somewhere with me tonight?”
Without a word, she put her hand into his. His green eyes stared at her, unabashedly worshipful. Wendy felt the blush rising up her cheeks, but something else rose with it—a strange twinge of betrayal, a tiny needle in her heart, and the quickest of sharp regret. What was wrong with her? There probably wasn’t a girl in the world who wouldn’t be burning alive with the way he looked at her now. Peter took her hand and spun her around and then covered her eyes with a blindfold. “Do you trust me?” There it was again, the pinprick of guilt in her chest, but when she felt the brush of his lips on her cheek, she could do nothing but nod.
Then there was the wind on her face, and she knew they were flying, lifting up and out of her hut and into Pan Island’s canopy of branches. Seconds passed, and then the air was clean and warm, and she knew that they had left the branches of Pan Island and were now flying up and above the island, heading to . . . somewhere. She laid her head on Peter’s shoulder and felt the whipping air on her cheeks, the strong muscles of his arms that held her, content and excited.
They flew for a few minutes before she felt Peter begin his descent on the other side of the island. His flight slowed carefully, and she felt the sudden lack of wind on her skin, only the radiating heat of his hand around her waist. They landed on a hard floor that bucked and swayed underneath her feet. Wendy grinned underneath her blindfold as her feet struggled with the pitch of the ground.
“Peter, where are we? I can’t stand straight.” She giggled foolishly. Almost drinking poison had made her giddy and reckless, and Peter was having that same effect on her.
The ground rocked beneath her again, and she finally pulled back her blindfold and gasped. At first she wasn’t sure where she was, or what she was in. Tall panes of green-blue sea glass surrounded her on every side, square vertical panes that ran from floor to ceiling. The glass was etched with subtle lines and patterns—squares, crescents, and arrows. She brushed her fingers across the glass, feeling the raised design like hard bubbles underneath her fingers. Her mouth fell open at the beauty of the craftsmanship. She raised her head. The tall single panes of dark teal glass then tilted inward on an iron bar and ran up toward a pointed ceiling. Where the ceiling came to a point, the glass on every singular pane ended at different lengths, their smooth tips capped off by iron. The tip of the ceiling was a deliberate pattern that opened up to the sky above—a star made to gaze at the beauty of the stars, and large enough to fly through. So that’s how they had come in. There was a small door in one of the glass panes, marked only by a small black latch and otherwise invisible. After all this time in round huts, being inside of a physical structure was incredible, and Wendy found that she had missed hard architectural lines. She spun around, taking it all in. It was the most beautiful place she had ever been.
“Why, Peter . . . it’s . . . it’s . . . we’re inside of . . . a lantern?”
He put his hands on his hips and laughed. “That it is! You’re sharp, Wendy. This is a fairy lantern, one of the last, and the only one on Pan Island.”
The ground moved slightly underneath her again, and she understood instantly: the lantern was hanging. Cautiously she crawled on her knees and pushed opened the latch on the door, letting it swing open in the wind. She poked her head out, the wind whipping her hair in all directions. Below her was only sea. Craning her neck, she looked up and saw that the lantern was attached on an outstretched branch that had curled itself out over the water, the farthest eastern point of Pan Island. The lantern gave another rock, and Wendy pulled the door shut again, not wanting to fall into the sea, so far below. She looked up again, taking in the stars that shone through the star-shaped portal.