Robots vs. Fairies(65)

I sat in the grass. I’d waited so long. Talked to so many parents. I’d been able to help reunite a few with their daughters in cases that turned out to be mundane—custody fights and such. How inhumanly heartless was I that even as I watched their joy and relief and gratitude, even as I took their money, I felt only disappointment?

A young girl of maybe seven years emerged from the trees. She wore a tattered green soccer jersey, and her black hair had bloomed into an enormous Afro, full of twigs and leaves and flower petals. Red paint stained her fingertips. “Who’re you?”

She had a heavy French accent. I wondered how long she’d been part of the Found Girls. Months? Years? It could have been decades. “Angela Davies. What’s your name?”

“I’m called étoilée.” She folded her arms and looked in the direction of the statue. “Are you a friend of Peter?”

“No.”

“Are you a cop?”

I bit back a laugh. “Do I look like a cop?”

I spread my arms so she could better see the old hoodie and T-shirt, the torn and faded blue jeans, the sneakers with the mismatched laces.

More girls emerged from the shadows. The trees had been empty when I looked before. I counted more than a dozen children, ranging from about four to sixteen years. The older ones were armed with makeshift weapons, mostly thick sticks with carved points on one end and stones or wooden spikes lashed to the other. The younger carried lighter weapons, like kitchen knives and slingshots. One waved a barbecue fork menacingly in my direction.

I searched each face, but Clover wasn’t among them. Neither was my lost girl, my Lillian.

That distant bell rang again. étoilée cocked her head. I tried to listen, but either my old ears or my fluency in the fairy tongue weren’t as good as hers.

“Tell us how to find Peter,” étoilée demanded.

I glanced up at the statue. “Has she told you his story, étoilée? How Peter left his mother and came to live with the fairies in Kensington Gardens? How he led them away? It’s not enough to search for the Neverland; the Neverland has to look for you as well. Peter and the Neverland are connected. It grows quiet in his absence, waiting for him to return. It’s only fully alive when he’s there.”

The ringing grew sharper. Angrier. I looked past the girls into the darkness of the trees, imagining that small, fierce light. “For years I’ve wondered why you stay. Why not return to the Neverland to find him?”

“Where is he?” étoilée repeated.

“It’s because you can’t. The Neverlands are made of human dreams and imagination. They might be able to help you find your way to and from their individual dreamscapes, their small, personal Neverlands. But to reach the true Neverland—Peter’s Neverland—Peter is key and compass. Without him, you’re stranded here.”

She needed Peter to find her way back. Just as I had needed a string of kidnapped children to find her.

Another furious chime. étoilée and the other girls raised weapons and moved closer.

“I found him,” I said. “I’ve watched him laugh and dance and fly. Watched him twist the hearts of children and shatter the hearts of parents. Just like you.”

I directed my words to the darkness, and was rewarded with a flash of gold light.

“I’ll take you to him,” I called out. “In return, you’ll let Clover Akerman and Lillian Davies go.”

Tinker Bell’s voice rang out from the trees, louder now. “You stupid ass. They’re welcome to leave at any time. They stay because they love me.”

“I know that.” The Found Girls weren’t a gang. They were a cult. These children worshipped Tinker Bell. They’d happily kill me if their goddess so commanded. The only way to reclaim a Found Girl was to drag her away, kicking and screaming and crying. The longer they’d been with Tinker Bell, the harder it would be. The longer the dreams would continue, the yearning to fly . . . “Bring them to me, and I’ll bring you to Peter.”

I was surrounded now. Stupid to let them close in behind me. I tried to ignore the itch between my shoulder blades, the anticipation of crude weapons striking my flesh. If this didn’t work, I might never leave Kensington Gardens.

I laughed, hoping they wouldn’t detect the fear and desperation. “He hasn’t come to London in generations. Without me, you’ll search forever and never find him.”

“Tomorrow,” said the fairy, with a sound like cracking bells. “Come back tomorrow night when the big clock strikes eleven. I will bring the girls. You will bring me to Peter.”

*

Her voice was so low that at first he could not make out what she said. Then he made it out. She was saying that she thought she could get well again if children believed in fairies. . . . She never thought of thanking those who believed.

—J. M. Barrie

*

Sleep hid from me as skillfully as any fairy, no matter how many times I paced the cramped confines of my motel room. I took an extra Xanax, but pills couldn’t calm the storm of my thoughts. Dark, swirling clouds of eagerness and excitement filled my head, rent by bolts of dread.

I couldn’t call Clover’s mother yet. Not when so many things could go wrong.

I considered calling Lillian’s father, but the mere thought brought new thunderclaps of fear and despair. I fled that idea like an animal sprinting from an oncoming hurricane. Instead I turned my thoughts to the children.