Shadow (Wendy Darling #3)(32)
“Shut up!” John snapped.
“John! What’s gotten into you?”
Oxley frowned. “John, be nice to your sister.”
John moaned. “Fine.” He turned to Michael. “I was up late with Oxley here, Abbott, and Kitoko. We were talking battle strategies for a pirate raid.”
“And what exactly would you know about pirates, or raids, or battles?” Wendy voiced, her tone growing more aggressive than she would like.
“More than you,” he muttered.
“All right, children,” Oxley said in a calm voice, which was amusing considering Oxley was younger than Wendy. “Shall we take the tour?” Oxley stepped back. “You’ll see the Teepee and the Table tonight, so, Darlings, why don’t you pick? What would you like to see?”
John cleared his throat. “I . . . I would like to see the base of the tree. I want to understand the physics of how it holds everything up.”
Wendy almost laughed out loud. “Oh, John,” she said. Here they were, on a magical island, and John wanted to understand the science of it. She reached out to ruffle his hair, but he stepped away, annoyed.
“You’re not our mother,” he snapped. She recoiled, stung by his words, remembering how he had looked at her with such hatred the night before.
Wendy turned away from him. “I’d like to see the water, I think—the beach?”
“I can show you that!” With a wide grin, Ox loped over a few feet to the largest branch that Wendy had ever seen. Several thick ropes dangled down from its upper branches, and Ox began tying one around himself and Michael.
“There are, of course, several ways to get anywhere in Pan Island, but this is probably the fastest.”
Wendy looked at the ropes, frayed at the ends, thinking that a longer way down would probably be fine with her. He looped one around Wendy’s waist, and John’s, and gave the ropes a tug. Then he turned his face upward.
“DARBY, MATE! TAKE US ALL THE WAY DOWN!”
“Yes, sir!” came the reply from one of the branches above. Oxley laughed.
“Darby will be a General soon, we hope. He’s a good chap. Getting old enough now.”
Wendy hadn’t been aware that anyone was near them, but as she looked up into the tree, she could see the subtle movements of dozens of boys, watching them. Boys everywhere. Where was Peter? For reasons that she wouldn’t let herself linger on, she was desperate to see him. Ox took her outstretched hand in his own and gave a tug on the ropes that pulled them up on their tippy toes. Then he leapt off the tree, off the platform that held him, and disappeared into the canopy below. Wendy followed with an unladylike screech, John with a cry of pure joy. At first they were free-falling, or so it seemed, but then there was a gradual tightening of the rope around her waist, and it seemed that they were in a controlled fall. Wendy dangled helplessly in the air, her feet circling above Oxley’s head, eternally thankful that she wasn’t wearing a dress at the moment. She leaned forward and looked down at the ground, still hundreds of feet below her.
“What do we do now?”
“Watch!” Oxley grinned. He swung forward toward the largest nearby tree branch and placed his feet up against the trunk, leaning backward on his rope belt. Soon, he was horizontal to the ground, and began steadily walking backward down the trunk. It was astonishing.
“Say! That’s pretty great! You are using your weight to balance against the . . .” John squinted his eyes above. “Pulley system. Is that right?”
Oxley nodded and began taking longer, graceful leaps down the tree as the two clumsy Darling children attempted to do the same. Michael giggled the entire way down, happily strapped to Ox’s back, oblivious to anything else but the wind on his face. Wendy crept down, step by tiny step. John had passed her up a long time ago, but with each step she seemed to grow a bit bolder, and each step grew longer than the next. It seemed to be an eternity before she reached the ground. Finally, her shoes met solid ground, and she quickly untied the rope around her waist, letting it fall into the pale sand that lined the base of the roots. She knelt down and ran her fingers through it. It was so fine that she was able to carve tiny lines with her fingertips, little circles and swirls by barely moving her fingers, so fine that it barely left any stain on her nails. She picked some up and held it up to the wind, where it disappeared in the slightest lukewarm breeze.
“Neverland soil,” Oxley said, laughing, “is very fertile.” He gestured to Pan Island. “As you can see.”
Wendy dusted off her hands and leaned back, way back, to take in Pan Island.
“Brilliant,” John said breathlessly.
Michael silently appeared by Wendy’s side. “That is one big tree.” She pulled him close to her. To call it an island was almost a stretch. There was the tree, and the tree was the island. There was very little beach—ten feet maybe—between the tree and the water. It was as if the island solely existed to support the great tree, and the tree itself was the source of life for the island.
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
She turned around to look behind her. A thatch of branches dotted with tiny blackberries ran around them, but if she closed her eyes, she could smell that it was very close: the turquoise sea. She let Michael’s hand drop and walked forward, ducking under the thicket of pink flowers that bordered the berries, brushing branch after branch out of her hair. Within a few steps, she was there. It stirred something in her heart, each gentle curve of the waves whispering its joy into her ear. Wendy wiped away a tear. She had never seen anything so superb. The ocean lapped silently near her feet, the brilliant blue green stretching out as far as she could see. The sun blazed overhead, warm but never hot. John was running back and forth at the base of the tree, knocking on its wood, measuring out its distance by walking carefully, foot by foot, around its perimeter. Michael was playing happily in the sand with Ox, building small castles and rivers.