forever a lost boy

[lost_boy]

I woke with a start, my eyes open suddenly, instantly awake and without the slightest bit of grogginess that sometimes followed me into the morning. In Darrow, I had allowed myself to relax. When I slept, especially the nights I snuck into Eddie's room, I slept heavily. I slept like someone who felt safe, but this morning as I came awake, I knew everything had changed.

Somehow, I had known it even before my eyes were open, but now that they were, I could see everything in the dim sunlight that filtered in through the roots of the tree.

Slowly I sat up. The animal skins and furs piled on top of me fell away and it was a strange sort of relief to discover I was still wearing the t-shirt and striped pyjamas pants I had fallen asleep in. If nothing else, that meant Darrow hadn't been a dream, I hadn't gone there in my mind in some desperate attempt to escape Peter. Darrow was real and I was no longer there.

The very thought of it broke my heart.

I inhaled shakily, stifling the sob that wanted to slip out, then looked to my left. If I was here, it would be time to wake the other boys. Time to tell them what Peter was really like, but as I reached for the shape I thought would be Charlie or Nod or Crow, I realized the person lying next to me was familiar, but not for the reasons I would have thought.

I gaped at them, then turned to my other side and flung back the animal furs. I stood, stepping over shapes, pulling back the furs and skins so I could see those around me and another sob almost slipped out of me as I realized I wasn't alone. My friends were here. My friends from Darrow. I was overwhelmed with relief and gratitude for just a second before an absolute terror the likes of which I had only felt once before replaced my pleasure.

If they were here, they weren't safe. Not a single one of them. Peter would know I cared for them far more than I could ever care for him. He would see them as a threat.

As if my very thoughts had summoned him, a shape from the other end of the tree moved. Peter, holding a sharp blade in one hand and a rough piece of wood he'd been carving in the other, stepped into the midst of bodies, most of them still groggy, having just been pulled from sleep. He looked them over, a king surveying his domain, then smiled at me.

His teeth were perfect, tiny white pearls; his baby teeth. The ones I had knocked out the last time I'd seen him.

"Hullo, Jamie," he said cheerfully. "Welcome home."

[Initial post for anyone under 18. Feel free to use this for explanations, adventure, run-ins with fairies or mermaids or Peter, who will be outwardly cool to everyone, but won't be violent yet. In a few days I'll post a new top level for Jamie and Peter's fight.]

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[lost_boy]

Peter only laughed, the high, tinkling sound of a boy enjoying himself greatly at some wonderful game. It would have been such an innocent sound if not for the fact that he still had his hand on my hair and was busy trying to yank me clear off my feet. He rose higher in the air and my feet lifted, then settled once more.

I was almost a man, just like he'd said. I wouldn't be so easy to carry off.

"Or you'll what?" he asked Eponine in a sing-song voice. "Surely Jamie's explained things to you, hasn't he? I've seen him whispering. This Island is mine and so is everything on it."

"We don't belong to you," I shouted up at him.

[daughterofawolf]

"I don't give a fig for whose island this is," she says, lifting her chin, "I think it'll still hurt if you bleed."

"Jamie's not yours. You had it right, didn't you? He's not your Jamie. He's his own man, and I'm no one's girl. My own father couldn't keep rule over me, some petulant little boy won't. You didn't bring me here, did you? Someone has more control over who gets to be on this island than you, and you know it and I bet it scares you to bits."

She doesn't know that for certain; she doesn't know what takes them to these places in their dreams, or even whether that is what's happening now and if they will all awake all right. But she does know there's no way Peter can explain why they're here, not really.

Eponine wraps her free arm around Jamie's waist, setting her feet and her jaw as she adds her weight.

[lost_boy]

It made my heart ache to have Eponine trying to defend me, to hear the way she snapped back at Peter in ways no one had ever felt brave enough to do before. In the years I had spent on the island, no one had ever thought to defend me, not until Sal, but I knew part of that was that I hadn't needed defending.

Until the weeks before I left for Darrow, I had always been Peter's favourite. Sometimes I wasn't sure if I was more angry with him for having been so terrible or with myself for needing to grow up. Maybe if I had just stayed young I never would have known.

But then I wouldn't have had any of these friends either. Real friends. And I wouldn't have Eddie.

"I'll just send you both to the Many-Eyed," Peter said cheerfully enough when Eponine added her weight to me. It shouldn't have been possible, but he dragged us along, through trees, over the crisp vegetation, until the buzzing sound of the Many-Eyed grew painfully loud.

[daughterofawolf]

They should, between the both of them, be too heavy for this, for this flying child to be able to haul one, much less both of them off their feet. When he redoubles his effort, Eponine suddenly jolting up after Jamie, she lets out a yelp, slipping down.

For just a moment she has the instinctive thought to let go: it'd be a hard tumble but she's done that before. He'd have to choose between them, and she could run.

But she can't make herself do it. She kept herself alive for years by making quick, selfish decisions -- and maybe that voice in her head that does is cleverer, she's not sure -- but she can't just leave Jamie now, the way she couldn't just let Peter and he fight.

Instead, she clings, hanging on for dear life around Jamie's waist as they're both hoisted over canopy and jungle. She hauls herself upward, even dares to try and swing one arm out to slash at Peter's wrists, though the fear of falling overcomes her almost immediately. Eponine cringes as her efforts almost certainly drag Jamie downward against Peter's grip, but if she falls now she's dead.

Maybe they both are anyway. Her skin prickles as the buzzing below them grows louder. She's never been afraid of spiders, but this isn't how she planned to go.

He's done this before. Killed a Many-Eyed, just like he said. And there are two of them now. She has to believe they'll be all right.

[lost_boy]

The plains of the Many-Eyed are the same plains where the fairies live. The fairies I killed by accident when I lit their fields on fire. Somehow, though, there's no fire damage when Peter flies us lower and lower over the grass and I can see little glittering lights flitting here and there.

The fairies had never shown themselves to me. Not until now. They were excited, I thought, because they were Peter's, too.

Peter began to fly down toward the plains. The grass caught at us, long and dry, and then suddenly he had released my hair, dumping me to the ground and Eponine with me. The buzzing hum grew louder and as Peter laughed, flying away, I slowly stood.

"We need to run," I said in a low voice.

[daughterofawolf]

Eponine plummets as Jamie does, and throws her free arm out in instinct: she can't tell if it was a smart decision, giving Jamie's legs some room, or terrible, for her shoulder takes the brunt of the fall and she winces as she rolls over, getting to her feet.

She's already prepared to do just that and nods, urgently. "You lead, you know this place, and I'll follow. I've still my knife if we need it."

[lost_boy]

I wished I still had my knife, but it was lying discarded somewhere by the tree, and I knew I wasn't going to have easy access to any other kind of weapon. It was good that Eponine had hers, but I would have felt better if we were both armed.

"This way," I said, touching Eponine's arm before I made for a path that cut through the plains. The buzzing of the Many-Eyed grew in volume and I didn't know if we were going to be able to avoid them, but I certainly wanted to try. We would never escape if there was more than one.

"Hurry!" I called. "They're too much for us to face a whole pack."

[daughterofawolf]

Eponine follows him, taking off behind him. Jamie's taller and swifter than she is, but despite being more a sprinter -- she moves in quick, decisive spurts, always -- she's stubborn. The grass whips across her legs and arms. She ignores it and the pain in her shoulder, keeping pace with Jamie as best she can.

"Why do they hunt in packs?" she calls back, to which she knows there is no answer. That seems unfair; she's never seen a pack of spiders before. She's never seen a giant spider, though, at all: the why might be as easy as that Peter finds it amusing.

[lost_boy]

"They don't," I answered. "They don't hunt at all, not in the traditional sense. They just live in packs. In family groups. I've never been in their territory before, not like this."

I ducked into the grass, lowered to my knees and paused for a moment so I could listen. The buzzing was further away and I didn't know if the Many-Eyed even knew we were here. Peter might have told them, I couldn't put that past time, but it didn't seem like they were coming after us.

A fairy flew close to my ear, lashing out at my cheek, but I just swatted her away, ignoring the burn of pain where I bet she had cut me. The Many-Eyed were a much more prominent threat.

[daughterofawolf]

Eponine nearly stumbles over Jamie when he drops without saying anything, but recovers easily and drops to crouch, still beside him. It feels, momentarily, a little like when they were at Regan's home, keeping quiet for the monsters.

She has so many questions -- where Jamie had run into the Many-Eyed he'd killed if it hadn't been here, what they do do to eat (do they have webs? if they don't hunt, are they just afraid and angry and is that why they kill?), what else he knows about how to hurt them: but right now she keeps herself still and breathes, slowly. The buzzing does sound like it's further away, like the way they're running is certainly getting further from their family groups.

She turns her face to Jamie's ear and says, softly, "We're going in the right direction, we must be."

[lost_boy]

"We are," I said with a nod, then pointed. "Do you see that mountain? There's a cave there. We'll be safe. The Many-Eyed don't come up the mountain."

Well, they usually didn't. Something had been off with that one that had climbed up the path and confronted us, even if I still wasn't sure if it had been sick or dying or if Peter had done something to it. Whatever the case, that was the one and only Many-Eyed that had ever gone up there and I was willing to bet they weren't going to follow us there now.

"The path that leads to the cave isn't far from here," I told her, then swatted at another fairy. "We can make it there in under two minutes if we run."

[daughterofawolf]

She nods, quiet and abrupt. Eponine hasn't taken much notice of the fairies: they're tiny, like large insects -- but as she smacks at something buzzy in her periphery, silencing it, she thinks of something Montparnasse had told her (rather admiringly) about wasps.

If you kill one, the others can smell its death on you and they'll hunt you for it.

She hasn't had that thought in her mind more than a moment before she starts to hear a low, isolated hum from a different direction, from their flank. It's not as loud or cacophonous as the sound of the packs of Many-Eyed behind them, but it's still similar, the sound of underbrush rustling along with it.

"Let's run, then," she says, eyes darting over.