Shadow (Wendy Darling #3)(73)
“Peter, it’s so odd but . . .” She was about to describe the strange image when the sound of the bell high atop of Pan Island began to ring loudly. Peter’s eyes twinkled, and he leapt into the air, floating backward away from her.
“It’s almost time!” He clapped his hands together, and for a moment, Wendy saw the boy he must have been when he was younger. Dirty, excitable, quick. The boy who looked down on her now was still that boy, only the look in his eyes when he gazed at her—no, there was nothing youthful about the fire in his adoring eyes, the way they swallowed her up in a consuming blaze. Wendy swallowed nervously. Peter pointed up to the alcove above the table, a wooden outcropping that she hadn’t noticed before.
“That’s where the Generals eat. And tonight, where we will drink! You’ll be welcome up there with us.”
“And Michael?” Wendy had finally spied her brother making his way across the Table, no interest whatsoever in the bottles before him as he chased a small mouse that was bolting for its life across the room. Peter’s mouth twitched.
“I’m sorry, Wendy, Michael can’t come. He’s not a General, so you can imagine how that would make the other boys feel. It would be unfair.” Peter waved his hand dismissively in Michael’s direction. “He’ll be fine.”
Michael narrowly missed the mouse, which had darted out of the open door and into the night. Michael collapsed into belly laughs after his breathless chase, resting his hands on his knees.
“Wendy, I think that Mr. Mouse likes me!”
Wendy grinned. “I can see that. He must!” It was then that John pushed rudely past her, on his merry way to the alcove. “John! Excuse you!”
John was snide. “Yes, excuse me, your royal highness.”
“John!”
Her brother spun on Michael. “And don’t be silly, Michael, that mouse doesn’t care about you one way or another.”
“John, why are you being so cruel?” Wendy demanded.
He ignored her reprimand and without another word, leapt into the air with Oxley, both Generals then settling smugly in the alcove overlooking the Table. Wendy pursed her lips in a tight line. Ah, so that’s how they got up there. John gave her a smug shrug from the alcove before turning away. Who was this boy? His change of behavior turned her stomach. Sodding git. She turned to Peter.
“I’ll stay down here with the other boys, I think. Thank you for inviting me.”
Peter gave her a hard smile, the corners of his mouth turning down a smidge, like a pout, which she found herself wanting to kiss off his face. Then she shook her head. The thoughts this boy made her think!
Wendy pulled out a chair from under the table and made herself comfortable, crossing her legs at the ankle as the chair creaked underneath her. Everything on Pan Island was like that: one hard movement away from collapse, an entire world made of breakables. She pulled Michael onto her lap, inhaling her younger brother’s golden hair, a mix of rich ferns, notes of citrus, and a heap of sweaty dirt. He snuggled happily with Wendy for a few blissful moments before scampering away with Thomas. The boys were flooding the room now, their bellies full, the whooping and calling growing ever louder, their jovial boyishness filling the room like a balloon. Shouts rang out as they tore into the bottles, each one feigning some liquor expertise as they ultimately chose the bottle they had laid eyes on when they entered. A fight quickly broke out over a particularly large bottle with black liquid inside of it and a puzzle of crossbones etched into its casing.
“’Tis mine!” cried a chubby Indian boy, a red tunic his only clothes, as he yanked the bottle away from a smaller boy, whose dark chocolate skin and deep-set iris eyes were almost blindingly beautiful.
“No, it’s mine, Eence! Don’t touch it again, or I’ll slit your throat!” Wendy flinched at their harsh words. Punches were thrown as the argument took a serious turn, and soon the two were wrestling on the ground, biting and hitting, throwing dirt in each other’s faces and mouths. The bottle was forgotten as their fight escalated, one boy pushing another into the side of the table, which shuddered and spun with the impact. Hunks of meat and piles of fruits went flying to the filthy ground. Eence was on top of the smaller boy now, his hands covering the boy’s face, pushing him down into the dirt.
“You want it? Well, you can’t have it! Peter said I could have it! He said!”
“No, he didn’t! It’s mine because I touched it first.” Blood was flowing from both their noses, dripping onto the dusty ground, mingling with spilled liquor and bits of food. Wendy looked up toward the alcove, but Peter wasn’t even watching the fight. He and the other Generals were laughing and toasting, Abbott’s arm casually around Peter’s shoulder. John stood awkwardly beside them, swirling a glass of wine in one hand and trying to look as though he fit in perfectly and that drinking wine was something he did nightly. Wendy turned back to the fight and the large circle that had formed around them; Lost Boys were six deep, some sitting on the shoulders of others, one frantically pushing past the bigger boys to see.
“Eence is going to kill him, I think!”
Another boy shook his head. “My bet’s on Ahmeh.”
The boys started chanting, “Kill, kill, kill!” as the cloud of dirt around the boys settled into an uncomfortable stillness. With her heartbeats thundering in her head, Wendy pushed through the boys, who parted upon seeing who moved through them.