Shadow (Wendy Darling #3)(74)
“Excuse me, boys, excuse me!” Exasperated, she finally snapped, “Out of my way, PLEASE!” Finally, she had made her way to the front, where the two boys were so covered in blood and dirt that they were now almost indiscernible from each other. The wine bottle they had so coveted had been smashed, its contents soaking into the ground, although one shoeless boy was scraping it into his mouth. Wendy stomped her foot.
“Stop it! I said, stop it!” The two boys kept wrestling, and Wendy finally grabbed the nearest one by the back of his neck, now using a maternal voice that she had heard someone use once upon a time, somewhere.
“I said, stop it! Right now, or you’ll both be sent to bed without your suppers! And I’ll make you say a hundred Hail Marys in front of me before I let you go to sleep!”
All eyes turned to her, and the two boys froze, their arms in choke holds around each other’s necks.
“What’s a Haley Marie?” Eence asked, before the other one punched him squarely in the mouth.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, stop acting like animals! Stand up!”
The two boys rose slowly to their feet. Wendy turned back to look at Peter, who was watching her with amusement, his glass held aloft like a king.
“It’s a Hail Mary, and I don’t think one hundred would even suffice for this lot.” She pointed to the bottle. “Who started this?”
“He did!” the boys answered in unison.
“Of course,” Wendy said. “Neither of you. Well, here is what you are going to do. You are going to pick up these broken pieces of glass and dispose of them. Then you are both going to your hammocks for the night and staying there while you think about what you’ve done. You’ve wasted an entire bottle of wine due to your . . .” her words were coming faster, “irresponsible behavior. Kitoko and Darby gave their lives so that you could have this!” She gestured to the table, now glittering with far fewer bottles than it had before. “And you have wasted it.”
She shook her head. “I’m ashamed of both of you.”
Both the boys stared up at her with wide eyes. She waited for the group to laugh or push her aside to continue with their bacchanalian feast, but they didn’t. Their lips quivered, and then they were wrapping themselves around her waist, their hot tears soaking her hips.
“We’re sorry, Wendy! We won’t do it again! Please don’t send us to our hammocks!”
Wendy felt a rush of affection for them both and laid her hands atop their heads, feeling their dirt-laden locks.
“Don’t do it again, boys. I don’t want to hear any more about your fighting. Eence, go get your Lost Brother a drink.”
Eence nodded and scampered off, pulling a green bottle off the table. “C’mon, Ahmeh.” With a grin, they patted each other roughly on the shoulder and slouched off to a dark corner to drink more wine than any boys their age should. The rest of the Lost Boys were swarming around Wendy now, reaching for her.
“Do it again! Tell me about the Mrs. Hale Marie! Will you yell at me? I’ll go to my hammock! Please, Miss Wendy!”
She laughed gaily as Michael buried himself in the folds of her dress, at once needy and possessive of his older sister.
“Not tonight. But be on your best behavior!” The boys nodded and scampered off. She sat back down at the table and continued to sip on her warm rose liquid as the feasting continued. More large oak platters of food were brought up by the Pips, through the center of the table—bright yellow cheeses and buckets of berries, leafy greens and . . . Wendy poked a strange-looking fruit, bright green with a gaping red mouth. The bug wiggled off her plate, and she sat back, repulsed. An older Lost Boy plopped down next to her, effortlessly scooping it into his mouth with one hand.
“You don’t know what you are missing,” he said between sharp crunches. Wendy laughed and dove into the berries, smearing them on a hunk of bread. As the night went on, the boys got more rowdy, the bottles of wine whittling down steadily until there were only about twenty left. Wendy, on the other hand, just sipped her bottle slowly, taking it all in: the Table now full of boys lying around, swinging their bottles in the air, breaking them against the ground and then crying, arguing belligerently with each other one minute only to be best friends the next, wrapping their arms around each other with profound declarations of love. Peter had given a few of them temporary flight before the feast, and they were drifting lazily through the air, bumping into the perfectly round walls of the Table, then drifting downward, reminding Wendy of kites, their pants like tails lazily spinning behind them. Three Lost Boys were lying under the table at her feet, batting her shoes every once in a while as they slurred tearful memories:
“Remember when we raided the Vault? Peter was so brave. He killed a pirate with his feet. I saw it.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“That was today, I think!”
“I heard Peter killed them with a bottle!”
“No, it was his feet!”
“How many pirates were there?”
“A thousand thousands!”
Then a silence.
“I will miss Kitoko.”
Then giggles turned to sobs, and before she could even adjust to the sad sound of little boys crying, they were giggling again, poking each other.
“Your tears are fat!”
“They aren’t even real!”