Unhooked(38)

From the other side of the tunnel, I can make out the sounds of voices. As the light gets closer, the sounds grow, and the glowing orbs peel off, leaving us. When we reach the end, the tunnel flares open into a great hall with a ceiling that soars stories above. Two sullen-looking boys snap to attention, blades drawn, but when they see Pan, they scuttle to their posts against the wall and avert their eyes.

The Great Hall of the fortress is a mad playground. Everywhere I look there are children, most much younger than the ones on the Captain’s ship. A group of small boys nearly runs me over as they chase after an even smaller one. They’re all screaming all sorts of inventive curses and brandishing swords that look too sharp to be safe for any game. Other boys, who couldn’t be any older than nine or ten, lounge around the edges of the great space, smoking thin, sweet-smelling cigars on thick piles of furs.

“Where did they all come from?” I wonder, struck by the number of them.

“The Dark Ones steal them from your world,” Pan tells me. “I bring them here and give them a home,” he says, throwing his arms wide.

Rows of torches lining the walls throw their flickering light over the scene before me. They give the whole space an otherworldly quality. But even with the high ceiling, the air in the fortress is dank and stale.

“This all belonged to my mother.” He takes a step into the chaos. “When I was a small boy, the Queen and her people filled these halls with light and merriment, and every day was an adventure. Now these walls offer me and my boys protection—from the Dark Ones, from the pirate, often from the other creatures of this land.”

“Where’s the Queen now?” I ask, moving closer to Pan to avoid being hit by a boy careening after a friend.

“The Dark Ones rose up and overthrew her some time ago,” he says, his voice dark and his jaw tight. I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t. “Come. I’ll take you to Olivia.”

Pan doesn’t seem to notice the disorder around us as he leads me through the hall, still holding my hand firmly in the crook of his arm. He deftly sidesteps the piles of broken weapons and an unconscious boy as we make our way to the far wall. Without warning, he scoops me into his arms again, and then we’re rising through the air toward a door nearly three stories up that I hadn’t noticed before. He gives it a brisk knock before pushing it open and setting me gently inside.

This space is brighter than the Great Hall below, and the air is fresher and smells overpoweringly of the hundreds of flowers that tumble out of vases and across the surfaces of the room—wildly colorful blooms, some as large as my head, others barely the size of my smallest finger, all bunched in bright bouquets and strung up in long garlands.

I’d thought we were inside of a mountain, but there is a window on the back wall, covered with brightly colored silks that rustle in a breeze. With the draping fabrics and the soft furs that cover the floor in a patchwork of color, the whole room reminds me of a sultan’s tent. In the center of the space stands an ornately carved canopy bed draped with silky white curtains. And in the center of the bed, half obscured by the diaphanous fabric, is a familiar figure.

“Olivia,” I whisper, afraid to move. I have the sudden feeling if I say her name too loudly, the spell will be broken and this will all disappear like a dream.

But it doesn’t disappear. She’s real.

The second I see Olivia, alive and whole, I can almost believe I might be able to find a way back to our world, because I don’t have to find it by myself anymore. I don’t have to be alone in this strange place. The one person who has ever come closest to understanding me is here, and we’ll find a way back together.

Olivia doesn’t see me at first—her attention is focused on stringing daisylike flowers together into a long garland that’s already trailing up over the canopy of the bed and halfway across the floor. I’ve never seen her do anything half so crafty before, and she looks absolutely absurd doing it now.

“Olivia, dear,” Pan says smoothly from behind me. “I’ve brought Gwendolyn to you.”

Olivia’s hands go still when she hears Pan’s voice, and when she sees him standing in the doorway, her whole face softens and her eyes brighten with delight. There is no fear in her expression, no worry.

Then she sees me standing next to him, and her expression darkens. “Gwendolyn?” she asks, her voice as unsure as the look on her face. I can tell she doesn’t recognize me.

If I hadn’t been looking for her, if I hadn’t seen the picture in the Captain’s quarters, I don’t think I’d have recognized her, either. She’s wearing a soft, flowing gown of the palest pink, something Olivia would never be caught dead in. Her long blond hair falls in its usual waves around her face, but her eyes aren’t right. Their pale green is too glassy, too distant.

It’s what this place does to people, I remind myself as I try to smile, but my face feels stiff with fear.

Pan steps forward into the room, toward the large bed. “Olivia, dear,” he says again, his voice soft and soothing. “You remember Gwendolyn, don’t you? You told me she was your dearest friend. You asked me to find her for you. And I have.”

Olivia’s brows draw together, like she’s not exactly sure she remembers ever asking for such a thing. But her features soften when Pan offers her his hand. She rises slowly and allows him to pull her toward me.