Lost Boy's Place

“We need a plan,” Leo said when we’d gotten back to Hangman’s Tree. All of us except Red were once again gathered around the common room table. Leo had explained to the others what the witch had told us about how to cure Red. Red was still barricaded in the cubby and somehow had managed to find another block of cheese to nibble on.

“What we need is to decide what we’re going to do,” I said glumly.

“That’s pretty much what a plan is, Furball.”

“Aw, leave him alone,” Tigger told his brother much to my surprise. “We gotta decide how we’re going to get Red back to normal.”

“Yeah, well I think we can rule out the one year kneeling trick right away.” Roo made an amused snort of agreement to Surefoot’s comment.

“Isn’t there any way we can figure out what Red’s real name is?” Surefoot asked. “That’d be the easiest way to take care of the whole thing.”

“Even if he wasn’t a mouse he still wouldn’t know what his real name is. Heck, Cub’s only been here a little while and he can’t even remember what his real name is.”

“Like that’s any indication of anything. Cub had problems remembering his name even before he got here.”

“Ha. Ha. Very funny,” I said as I tossed a rotten strawberry at Surefoot’s head. It didn’t come anywhere close to him, but bounced off the back of the chair next to him, ricocheted off a wall and made a neat hole-in-one into the stewpot. Stumble stood up so fast, he almost tripped over the bench he’d been on, rushed over to the pot and began stirring it vigorously.

“C’mon. There’s gotta be some way to figure out what Red’s real name was. Maybe Peter knows or keeps some sort of record that tells who he rescued.” Tig’s suggestion was subdued and not at all made in the boisterous manner he usually made them in. It almost looked as though dark circles were growing under his eyes as we sat there talking.

“That ain’t going to happen. The only way you’re going to find out what Red’s real name was is if he wrote it in his underwear and I’m pretty sure he’s gone through a few since he got here. Least I hope he has.”

“Ewwwwwww.”

“As for Peter,” Roo continued. “Get real. Did he happen to ask any of you what your name was before he rescued you?” There was general agreement that if Peter knew your name at all, it was usually just the first one. “Besides, even if he did know what your real name was, can you imagine him keeping a ledger book with all that stuff in it?” More agreement followed that statement.

“What about mousebane? Even if Mildred…”

“Matilda,” Roo corrected me sternly.

“Uh, yeah. Even if Matilda said it didn’t grow on the island, maybe the elves could manage to grow some here for us.”

Leo gave a shake of his head. “No way. If we asked them for mousebane, they’d know right away that something was up and wouldn’t rest until they’d found out what it was and fixed it. Not the way it needs to be fixed either. Even if they agreed to help and grow it, though, Peter would kill the rest of us for making him obligated to the elves for their help.”

“But he wouldn’t be. It’d be us who asked for it. We could tell them that Peter didn’t have anything to do with it,” I said louder than normal.

“It’s okay, Cub,” Tigger said gently. “He’s our captain so he’d feel like it was bound on him no matter what we told the elves. But Leo’s right. They’d be too busy trying to find out who’d been infected to do anything about it.”

“Fine. Then we gotta find the mouse that did this and either kill it or defang it. That’s all there is to it.”

“Easier said than done, Furball. It’s not like we even know what’s on the other side of that door and what if there’s like a zillion mice over there? How are we going to find the right one?”

“Yeah, but we still hafta try, Leo. There’s gotta be some way we can figure it out.”

“Wait a second, wait just a second,” Surefoot said getting up from the table. We watched as he went over to the dark door and started unstacking the stuff from in front of it. He leaned down to look at where the glowing still came from the wall, door and floor. “Just what I thought,” he said after a moment. “C’mere and take a look.” We left the table and stared ad where Surefoot was pointing. At the bottom of the door was a perfect un-glowing outline of a mouse shape. “I’d say the mouse is pretty much marked.”

“Yeah,” Leo said doubtfully. “But we still have to find it. Do you think you can track something small as a mouse?”

“Maybe. It just depends on if…” Surefoot slowly opened the dark door as though afraid something was getting ready to rush through from the other side. When there was a couple of inches of clearance between the door and the frame he peeked through the gap. “Yes!” I stood on my tip-claws and looked over Surefoot’s shoulder. In the darkness a set of glow-in-the-dark mousepaw prints crossed the ground. Surefoot stepped back, running into me, and closed the door. “I don’t think tracking it’s going to be a problem.”

“Okay so what’er we going to do?” Leo asked when we had gotten back to the table.

“We’re going to go find that stupid mouse,” I said, banging my fist on the table. It might have been more impressive if my fist hadn’t landed in a bunch of gravy splattering it all over my face and pelt. I only had myself to blame since I’d had table cleaning duty last.

“You better not let Matilda see you covered in gravy,” Roo said. I wouldn’t have been so concerned except that he said it in a deadly serious voice without a trace of humor at all.

“What I meant is that we gotta figure out who’s going into the dark to find that mouse,” Leo said, trying to take back control of the conversation. “Only three of us can go because the rest need to stay here.”

“I’m going,” Surefoot declared. “You’ll need me to track.”

“With glowing pawprints to follow? Any of us could do that. Heck, I can track as well as you can.”

“But you have to stay here to guard Red and because you’re Peter’s lieutenant. Anyway, I was the one who discovered the trail, so I get to go.”

“Me too. I’m coming with whoever goes,” Tigger said in a flat tone. “Don’t say a word,” he told his twin. “If I hadn’t been teasing Cub, this whole thing woulda never happened. You always say I gotta be ‘sponsible about stuff, well now I am.”

“I didn’t mean stuff that could get you killed. I meant stuff like pulling slats out of bridges or sneezing powder…”

“That was you?” Stumble erupted in outrage.

“But this is serious. You could end up going to the next adventure.” Leo looked intently at his brother, but the words came out sort of half-heartedly as though he already knew what was going to happen.

Tig rolled his eyes. “Yeah, like that couldn’t happen here just as easy. Anyway I’ll have Surefoot and whoever else with me.”

“That would be me,” I threw in. I prudently didn’t smash my fist to the table this time.

“But Furball, it’s not exactly like you’re, you know, a warrior. And you said nothing could make you go through that door. Remember?” For some reason I got the impression that Leo wasn’t reassured that I was looking to be the ‘whoever else’ that would be watching his twin’s back.

“I know I’m not real good at fighting and I’m pretty craven at times but I can carry a lot and Roo’s been teaching me some healing, and… and… I’m kinda strong and not afraid of the dark and Red… well, he’s sorta my best friend.”

“Plus he’s got luck,” Tigger spoke up, surprising me once again. Luck in Neverland was almost a tangible thing. I didn’t think I had anymore than anyone else, but Roo said that my success with wishing stars proved I might.

Leo looked as though he really wanted to argue about me going but instead settled for, “You going to take that wooden sword with you?” No one had quite figured out what the deal with my sword was. It had some sort of weird power and scared me a little. Still, I nodded that I planned on taking it with me. Leo threw his hands in the air in surrender. “Okay, whatever. You better figure out what you’re going to need so you can get going first thing in the morning.” I thought he’d also mention that I’d better make sure his twin returned unscathed, but he didn’t mention it. That made me feel a little better and that I really had become a true Lost Boy while sobering me with all that meant.

“Tomorrow? We can be ready to leave right now.” Surefoot and I watched as the twins went into argument mode. After a lot of yelling, Leo finally managed to convince Tig it wouldn’t do Red any good if we ended up getting eaten because we were half asleep when we started out. I felt wide awake but didn’t say anything. Instead I helped gather the stuff we’d be taking with us.

By the time we’d gotten all the stuff together it was late evening. I was headed to my pallet when Tigger stopped me. His eyes were downcast and he had one of the most serious expressions I’d ever seen. “Hey Furball… Cubby. I’m sorry about… you know. I shouldn’t have been screwing around. I just… you know.” He spread his hands apart in a helpless gesture.”

“It happens. I mean let’s face it, if it didn’t we’d all be in the ‘real’ world feeling miserable about ourselves and jumping off cliffs.” I didn’t know that would make any sense to most but Tig immediately understood what I meant and gave me a tentative grin.

“We’ll find the mouse. Promise. And I’m glad you’re coming too. You’re a pretty good fighter with that sword and you’re lucky. And I know you can do whatever you need to whether you think you can or not.” I stood there staring at him with my mouth hanging open. I’d have never thought Tig would have said that stuff about me. He stood there for a couple of moments grinning at me and then nodded. “You better get some shuteye. It get’s early fast when you start out on a quest.”

I nodded and stood there as he turned around and went to his hammock. I shook my head at the whole unreal conversation and climbed under the common room table and into my pallet. It took forever to get to sleep and when I finally did I couldn’t remember any of the dreams or nightmares that romped through my mind the next morning.

The whole thing started the day that Tigger double-dared me to walk through the door that led to the dark. At some time during the history of Hangman’s Tree, someone or something had leaned a door against one of the dirt walls. Our dugout in the tree was deep enough that part of the walls were the wood of the trunk and part of the walls were the dirt that the tree roots grew in. Anyway, this door had gotten propped up against one of the dirt walls and sometime after that ended up ‘growing’ into the wall. No one, not even Stumble, knew exactly when the door had been put there or where it led to. Every now and again we’d opened it but the only thing on the other side was a solid sheet of darkness and black. There was always a draft that came through the doorway that smelled of things musty, damp, and better left undisturbed. Red had once opened the door and thrown a lit torch through it. The moment the fire went through the doorway it was smothered by the darkness. There was a very loud moaning/cackling sound right after, so he closed the door. We kept a couple of things piled up in front of it now.

It was one of those cold, rainy days outside, so we were all in Hangman’s Tree trying to keep ourselves occupied. There’d already been a couple of food fights. We’d tried playing ‘King of the Table’ which isn’t nearly as fun as it’s hillside equivalent, but I may have just felt that way because I slipped in a puddle of stew and did a somersault off the table, thereby losing. Red and Surefoot had started a game of checkers causing the gold and silver coins they’d been using for pieces to be stuck in the dirt ceiling of the common room. I’m sure there really is a way of playing checkers that uses slingshots and mallets, but I’d never seen it until then. After that, we’d all been sitting on various furs, pallets and pillows talking about stuff. Stumble told us a couple of tales about Lost Boys who were now in Lost Boys’ Field. Leo told us about a time he’d had to brush a unicorn’s teeth (pretty sure that was made up). For some reason Roo had to describe a memory of eating warm chocolate chip cookies and my stomach wasn’t the only one that ended up rumbling. My contribution was to wonder what the Grim Reaper might be like. Yeah, it sounds morbid, but that’s a topic that comes up a lot with us. Not the death part of it, but the person who does it and their assistants. Rumor has it that the Grim Reaper’s house is somewhere on our Island, but no one had ever seen it or knew where it was. After we argued about what each of us thought the guy, or girl, looked like, Tigger came up with his brilliant idea.

“Hey, I know what we can do. Why don’t we explore the dark door? It’d be a perfect day for it.” There were a number of comments declaring that no day would be the perfect day to do that and it was better left closed, locked, and battened. Unsurprisingly, Tigger continued to push the idea. “We can’t all go. We’d have to have a group ready to rescue our heroic explorer. Someone who is brave, fair, courageous and can survive almost anything.”

“No way. I’m not any of that stuff,” I said, noticing that Tig looked at me the entire time.

“But you would be if you did this. Just think, you’d be the first one to explore the dark door. Your name would be passed down to Lost Boys who ain’t even been born yet.”

“Forget it,” I said as Tigger started moving the junk we’d piled in front of the door. “If I wanted to be remembered, I could do something like challenge Hook to a duel or try to steal the Elf Queen’s crown. I’m more than happy to fall out of trees.”

Tigger had finished moving the stuff in front of the door and had gone over to the wall where a huge brass skeleton key hung from a nail. He lifted it off its nail and walked back to the door where he inserted it into the lock. There was a grinding sound that vibrated through my teeth as he turned the key. “C’mon Cubs. We’ll tie two ropes around ya so in case something happens we can pull you back through. You’ll have your wooden sword with ya and the Viking helmet to protect your thick skull. I’ll even lend you my shield and my bow and arrow.”

“How’s he supposed to carry a shield, a sword and a bow and arrow?” Leo asked his twin. “I’m not sure this is a real good idea anyway. What if something happens?”

“Cubby can handle it,” Tig replied with a lot more confidence than I felt. “He’s the biggest one of us and can take a blow like nothing. Remember when that dragon struck him? He was back on his feet in an instant.”

“Yeah. And then he had that dumb grin on his face and blew spit bubbles for half-a-day,” Roo reminded him. I think Leo’s right. We should just leave it alone.”

“I agree. There ain’t nothing that’ll get me through that door, I don’t care how many ropes and chains you attach to me. I can’t use your bow anyway. Last time I accidentally broke it.”

“That was just ‘cause it was wet. I fixed it and it’s stronger now. Anyway you don’t really have to use it. Anyone who saw a fierce warrior like you with a bow and arrow would turn tail and hide.”

I couldn’t help it. Even though I was nervous about Tig’s suggestion, I burst out laughing. “Yeah, I know just how fierce I’d look to anyone.,” I said thinking of my tangled red hair, round freckled face, and a bear-pelt that had numerous rips, tears, holes in both knees and one elbow and a few purple stains caused by blueberry juice. “They’d laugh so hard I’d be able to disarm them before they recovered.”

“C’mon, Furball, you’re too hard on yourself.” Tig’s wheedling look turned sly. “Besides, if ya do it, I’ll give you all the blueberries you can eat.”

“That’d be a lot of blueberries, I bet,” Red said, laughing. I shot him an annoyed look even though it was pretty much true.

“I wouldn’t care if you gave me all the blueberries I could eat for the rest of my life, I still ain’t going through that door. There’s absolutely nothing that would ever make me ever go through that and yeah, I’m not scared to say that it scares the heck out of me just thinking about it.”

Tig gave a dramatic sigh and pulled the door open a crack. “If you’re sure,” he said in a way that let me know he knew that I was completely sure. “Oh, well. It’s probably destined that someone else get the fame and glory for exploring the dark side. Perhaps one day… Hey! What’s that?”

Something had come tearing through the door that Tig had held ajar and was racing around the common room. We’d all jumped back until we discovered it was a mouse. “Get it.”

“Kill it. Remember what happened last time.”

“I’m still darning holes in stuff it ate.”

We raced around with poles, brooms, gourds and anything else that was close at hand, trying to brain the mouse who was extremely good at dodging and twisting. A mini-fight broke out between Surefoot and Stumble when Surefoot bellowed out to be sure not to let Stumble get it or it would end up in the stew pot. The rest of us managed to back the mouse into a corner where it stood watching us, quivering with fear. “We don’t have to kill it,” Tigger said in his ‘awwwwwww’ voice. “Maybe we can trap it and let it outside.”

“We could use this,” I said grabbing a pail that was pretty heavy for being empty.

Red moved towards the mouse making babyish sounds like it would cause the mouse to be comforted or something. He took two steps when the mouse dropped the ‘poor scared creature’ act and charged him. Before any of us could do anything, the mouse leaped as high as it could and clamped it’s jaws on Red’s ankle. “Get it off. Get if off. Get it off,” Red yelled as the rest of us charged him as well. “Owww, watch it.” Leo had the grace to look sheepish since it’d been the broom he was swinging that had bashed Red’s knee. The mouse unlocked it’s jaws from around Red’s ankle and started tearing around the room again. The sound of banging, yelling, and smashing continued as various stuff and Lost Boy body parts were hit by swung and thrown items. I’m pretty sure it was Surefoot who hit me in the back of the head so hard I saw stars, but he swears it was someone else while stating I should have been standing up instead of ducking to take a swing of my own at the mouse. By the time the common room was pretty much a shambles worse than normal, the mouse feinted a couple of times and as if finally discovering where it was, raced for the dark door that Tig had left open. I hurled the pail after it. It landed just behind it covering the mouse, the floor, and the bottom of the door in liquid. Apparently it wasn’t empty after all. As the mouse disappeared through the doorway, Leo ran into the door slamming it shut.

For a few minutes we all stood around the common room trying to catch our breaths. Tigger, naturally, started giggling and quickly infected everyone except Roo. While the rest of us were trying to laugh and catch our breath at the same time (an act that’s pretty hard to accomplish), Roo was busy examining Red’s ankle. “That rodent must have had some teeth,” Roo said with a whistle.

“Whatcha mean?” Leo asked, his laughter quickly coming to an end at Roo’s tone.

Roo rolled Red’s pelt leg up to reveal the leg under it. A thin stream of blood was oozing from two holes in Red’s ankle. “It made it through his pelt and his skin.”

“Is he going to be okay?” I asked, suddenly concerned.

Roo shrugged. “Yeah, he should be. I don’t think it was rabid or anything like that. I’ll wash it out and put some stuff on it and we’ll see what happens.” That bothered me. As many tales as there were of Lost Boys ending up planted in Lost Boys’ Field because of pirate fights, troll maulings, and various malicious spells cast by evil witches, for each one of them there were like ten tales of Lost Boys who’d died because they’d stepped on something rusty, had eaten something bad, or something else equally dumb. It wasn’t like you could dial 999 (or 911 in Canada or the states) when something happened.

Red suffered through the cleaning, probing and bandaging while letting everyone know that it was nothing, just a couple of scratches. By the time we started thinking about sleeping, it seemed Red was right. The wounds had stopped bleeding, there weren’t any red streaks and Roo said there wasn’t any fever and that the skin around the bite wasn’t hot or anything. I spent most of the afternoon getting razzed because the pail I thought was empty had actually been about a quarter-full of liquid fungus extract. The fungus grew on the outskirts of the swamp and glowed in the dark. Now the floor and the dark door, which had been re-secured, gave off a ghostly blue light where the liquid had splashed on it. When I finally fell asleep in my pallet under the common room table I dreamed about eating chocolate chip cookies (darn Roo anyway).

Sometime during the early morning hours I was brought back to semi-consciousness by a crash and a voice that sounded like Tigger yelling curses. Things got quiet and I drifted back to sleep to continue my dream of questing for a certain hollow tree. For some reason I wondered if the Keebler™ elves ever hung out with the Rice Krispie™ elves. Almost immediately I woke up to find Leo shaking me. “C’mon Cub, you gotta get up. Something bad’s happened.”

“Pirates?” I asked sleepily. I was pretty sure if they’d be willing to let me sleep, I’d be more than willing to let them kill me at that moment.

“Huh? No, it’s Red. He’s in a bad way.”

“Red?” I sat up, blankets and furs scattering, and then tried to stand up. I moved the common table a couple of inches with my head and heard dishes, gourds, and other stuff crash as they rearranged themselves. I sat back down quickly and rubbed the top of my head.

“Every time something happens you end up doing that. Why do you sleep under there, anyway?”

“Cause I’m craven,” I said as I crawled out from under the table before attempting the stand up thing again. “What’s wrong with Red?”

Leo didn’t say anything but motioned me to follow him. We ended up in front of Tigger’s hammock, one end of which was now on the ground. Tigger was sitting on the floor and looked both put out and worried. “What’s this got to do with Red?” I asked.

“He did it,” Tig said, subdued.

“You woke me up for that?” I turned to Tig. “It’s probably because of that itching powder. Or maybe the skunk weed. Or perhaps the stinking fish in his bedding. Or it could have been…”

“Naw, you don’t understand. He gnawed the rope.” Tigger showed me the end of the rope which had been holding up one side of the hammock. I looked at it blankly, not understanding. “With his teeth,” Tigger explained. “He chewed it apart.”

“Aw, you’re full of it. Why would he use his teeth. He has like a dozen daggers and it was him the other day that was running with those scissors.”

Leo shook his head. “That ain’t all. C’mere.” Leo led me over to a small cubby that had a bunch of stuff piled in front of it. “Climb up and take a look inside.”

I looked at him, but he didn’t say anything else. Shrugging, I started climbing the boxes, crates, chests and other stuff that had been piled in front of the cubby opening. After a couple of false starts and one tumble, I made it to the top and looked down. In the corner of the cubby was what looked like a nest made of a bunch of ripped fabric, paper and parchment. I recognized the pieces of Red’s teddy bear mixed in with the stuff, along with the cover of my favorite book. In the middle of the nest, curled into a ball, was Red. The hood of his fox-pelt had been thrown back and I could see that his once blonde hair was now gray. Not old person gray but a soft, light dark gray. His nose was more pointed than I remembered and there were definite whiskers growing on it. I gasped as the whiskers twitched as he looked up at me and voiced something that sounded like a squeak. In one hand he held a huge chunk of cheese.

“Hey! Where’d he get that cheese from?” Stumble asked. He’d climbed up next to me to see what was going on, but I’d been too busy being shocked by Red’s appearance to notice him. I climbed down to where Leo was waiting along with Roo.

“What’s wrong with Red? Why’s he like that?”

Roo frowned and looked at the ground. “I think he’s become a weremouse.”

“What? A weremouse? There’s no such thing.”

“How do you know?” Roo asked heatedly, then took a deep breath. “Sorry, I’m just… Anyway, there’s no reason there couldn’t be weremouses just like there’s werewolves and werebears. These are only smaller.”

I tried to process it and came up lacking. “What about the mouse that bit him? It looked just like an ordinary mouse, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, except ordinary mice don’t usually attack things about fifty times bigger than they are and then race around crowing about it.”

“It wasn’t really crowing. Was it?” I couldn’t remember. “Besides, I thought that meant it might have rabies or something if it acted like that.”

Roo looked hesitant and then shook his head firmly. “Anything that take a bite out of a mouse to give it rabies would have killed it and eaten it. Nope, it was definitely a weremouse and its bite is turning Red into one.”

“Does that mean he’s going to start biting us and sucking our blood?”

Leo sighed. “That’s a vampire, Cub. We’re talking about a were creature. It’ll turn into a mouse, I guess, and… what?” He looked at Roo. “Squeak at the full moon or something?” Roo just shook his head.

“Well we gotta do something. He can’t be a mouse. There’s gotta be someway we can cure him or make it go away. What if we put garlic around his neck or break a mirror or something like that?”

“Not a vampire,” Roo reiterated.

“Holy water?”

“Yeah, like any of us could go near that stuff if we even knew where there was some. I’m pretty sure none of us are on that guest list.”

“How about pixie dust?” I said, my face suddenly brightening. “It’s magic.”

“C’mon, Furball. What good would it do to have a flying weremouse?”

“But pixie dust is good for other stuff too,” I told Leo. “Maybe if we sprinkle it on him and wish hard enough, he’d become Red again.” I knew I was beginning to sound desperate and maybe a little bit hysterical.

“It’s okay, Cub. We’re going to ask Matilda. If anyone can tell us how to get Red back, it’ll be her.”

A half-hour later me, Leo and Tigger were hiking towards the swamp. Surefoot, Stumble and Roo had been left behind to watch over Red and to try and figure out where he kept getting cheese from even though he was supposedly securely trapped in the cubbyhole. Matilda was the improbable name of a dwarven witch who lived in a cabin on the shores of the swamp. She wasn’t exactly a friend to us Lost Boys, but she’d never turned any of us into a toad yet either. While to the best of my knowledge she’d never waltzed before, she had an accent that sounded like Roo’s (at least as much as you can figure out an accent from a dwarf) and seemed to have a soft spot for him. She’d once sent him a newt eye pudding and another time a pile of jellied lizard sticks. I tended to stay away from her since on the first day I’d met her she gave me a long, hard look and then told me she had a gingerbread cottage she was absolutely sure I’d enjoy.

The path we were on wound through mosquito infested woods and spit us out at the edge of the yard surrounding the tumbledown shack she called home. We were stopped by one of the graffitied unicorns who guarded her from unwanted callers. The bright orange ‘corn had runes painted on one side of his body and a giant inverted peace sign on the other. The pink ribbons in his mane were an interesting touch as was the smiley face antenna ball at the tip of his bright blue horn. He had a cropped tail that was a bit disconcerting. “Yeah, what do you scum want?” he asked in a voice that improbably sounded like it was from the heart of Brooklyn.

I growled deep in my chest and started to move forward before Tig and Leo grabbed me by each arm. The unicorn laughed. “Aw, go ahead and let him go. I could use a kickball and a pincushion all in one.” He shook his horn suggestively.

“Tell your mistress that Master Roo is here to see her,” Roo said in a voice that dripped ice crystals. “And be quick about it.” The unicorn smirked but his eyes went blank for a moment.

“Impressive,” he said when his eyes focused again. “I’ll take you to her.” As he led us to the cabin he walked next to Tigger. “You any good with that skewer?” he asked, nodding towards the sword that Tig had belted on.

“I’m the best there is.”

“Ohhh, a master,” the unicorn said in mock awe. He continued in a more sarcastic tone. “You must give me the opportunity to try you sometime. I’m considered a master duelist myself.” He swung his horn in a figure-eight, ending with a flourish.

“Just name the time and place, Horse-breath. I’ll be there and you’ll be in pieces.”

The unicorn’s eyes narrowed, but before he could say anything the door to the cottage opened and Matilda stepped out. Matilda was broad and short like most dwarves. Her skin wasn’t green, but a pale blue. She sported long gray hair in dreadlocks and had a white beard strung with bells and beads. She wore the standard witch’s issue black cape and hood and wore a pair of boots that would have done a lumberjack proud. “Well, well, what do we have here?” The voice sounded like someone with a Scottish brogue trying to imitate an Australian accent while speaking with a mouthful of rocks. She fluttered her eyebrows at Roo in a way that frankly scared me. “Master Roo, what a pleasant surprise. I see you’ve brought a couple of wildcats, always good for the guard,” she said glancing at Tigger and Leo. “Oh, and dinner too,” she said looking at me. “You’re such a gentleman.” I thought about making a face at her, but was pretty sure that living the rest of my days as an amphibian with warts would probably be depressing to the max.

Roo drew himself up, as though bracing himself for something. “I need help,” he said. “I need some information that only the most intelligent and able of witches can provide me. Naturally you were the only one I thought of.”

“Naturally,” she said, drawing a taloned finger down Roo’s cheek. “Of course information can be a very precious thing, you know. It’s not something that can be gained lightly.”

“I’d be willing to trade for it.” This time Leo growled and his hand reached for his sword upon hearing Roo’s words. His hand froze on the hilt when the antenna-ball on the unicorns horn touched his neck. Roo glanced over at Leo distractedly and gave a slight shake of his head. Leo relaxed, but I could tell he was outraged.

“Before we make a bargain,” Matilda said, ignoring Leo and the unicorn, “I need to know what sort of information you seek. Some information is much more costly than others.”

Roo hesitated and then nodded. “A friend of ours was bitten by a mouse and is turning into what looks like a weremouse, if there’s such a thing. We need to cure him.”

“A weremouse?” the witch exclaimed in disbelief. At first I thought she was mocking the thought of such a thing, but the expression on her face revealed that she took this very seriously. “When?”

“Last night,” Roo said bemusedly. He seemed just as shocked by the witch’s reaction as I was.

“Did the mouse or your friend attack anything else?”

Roo shook his head. “The mouse went to… another realm and we’ve got Red pinned up for now.

“That’s good,” she said, not seeming at all surprised about the idea of a mouse who wandered between planes biting people to turn them into weremice. She looked up in the sky as she thought about things. “There are four ways to cure a were creature. The first way is to roll the affected over and over in the dew of mousebane. It’s only temporary and would have to be done every full moon. It doesn’t always work.”

“What’s mousebane?” Tigger asked.

“It’s what wolfsbane is to wolves and doesn’t grow on the Island,” the witch answered absently. Roo shook his head in exasperation. “The second method is for the affected to kneel in the same place for one-hundred years. They can’t move, talk, or anything else during that time or they’ll have to start over.”

“No one can do that,” Roo yelled. “That’s impossible.”

“Exactly. There’s not a great deal of success with that one. The third method is easy. You simply have to say the baptismal name of the affected three times in front of them. It almost always works.”

“That won’t work either,” I whined. “I don’t think saying ‘Red’ in front of him three times is going to do anything and I sure don’t know what his before name was. Heck, I can’t even remember mind. No one can once they get to the island.”

Roo nodded soberly. “Cub’s right. That won’t work either. What’s the fourth method?”

“The fourth way is to find the thing that bit him and either kill it or pull its fangs before the next full moon.”

Leo shook his head. That’s going to be almost as impossible. I mean, c’mon. It’s a mouse. It’d be like searching for a needle in a haystack.”

“Boy, you’d be surprised at how much easier it would be to find a needle in a haystack,” the witch cackled. The unicorn joined in with a horsey laugh making me wonder exactly why a search had been accomplished for such a needle.

“Isn’t there some other way?” Roo begged. “Some sort of magic potion or spell that would work?”

“Only death,” the witch said, her voice becoming strangely pitying. “And that would be a blessing for your friend if you could do none of the other methods.”

“No way,” I said barging in front of the witch. “There’s no way I’d kill Red. So what if he becomes a weremouse. We could figure out how to take care of him without killing him.”

“Down, boy,” she said, poking my chest with her finger with enough force to sit me on my rump. “If he isn’t cured before the next full moon he’ll forget all about you. His only thoughts will be to eat and to spread the disease he’s infected with. No matter how well you tried, there wouldn’t be anymore Lost Boys, only a pack of empty headed huge mice bent on biting everything you could. If I didn’t strike you all down, Peter would. Capiche?”

I couldn’t say anything, but Roo nodded his understanding. “We still have ‘til the next full moon. We’ll come up with something.” The witch mumbled something but looked doubtful. She leaned down and held a hand out to me. I hesitated before taking it and she effortlessly pulled me to my feet. “You sure you don’t like gingerbread, boy?” She cackled.

“Forget it,” Roo said. “He’s under my protection.”

“Like he’d actually need it. Now then, there’s the matter of my payment for your information.” She became formal and businesslike. “I have provided you with the information you sought. Information quite dear, I might add. Thus the payment shall be quite dear as well.” I gulped, wondering what it might be and vowing to rush the witch if I thought it would help Roo. As if hearing my thoughts, she looked at me. “Down, boy,” she said again, lifting a finger threateningly. She turned back towards Roo. “I require one flask of grog and one yard of gauze for the information.”

“Done,” Roo said, spitting into his hand and holding it out.

“And done,” the witch replied, spitting into her hand and shaking Roo’s hand. I couldn’t believe it. “Now mark my words, dearie. I will have proof that your problem has been taken care of or I will exterminate this weremouse myself. You have 28 days to take care of it and show me it has been or I will take care of it and with Pan’s blessing I’m sure.” Roo nodded agreement. I felt my face flush but concentrated on not saying anything. “Thorn will help if you need it,” she said, indicating the unicorn. He looked surprised but simply nodded.

Roo thanked the witch and promised to deliver the grog and the gauze and to let her know if we’d need Thorn’s help. With heavy hearts we headed back towards Hangman’s Tree.

Cubby let out a holler, his freckled face lit up by a huge grin as he ran along the tree limb. Running in front of him Tigger dared a quick look back, muttered a curse and jumped to a branch from an adjoining tree after a quick look. There was the sound of feet sliding along tree bark before Tigger recovered and continued along the new branch. Cubby threw himself in Tigger’s general direction trusting to luck to keep him from plummeting to the ground below. It had only taken a moment for Tig to catch his balance, but it was enough for Cubby to have gained some ground on him. “You’re about to be It,” Cubby crowed, swiping with his arm to try and tag his friend.

“You wish,” Tigger said, stepping off the branch he was on and falling a dozen feet before landing on a new one. Cubby followed, but when he hit the branch that Tigger had landed on before bounding to a new one, it snapped and Cubby went bouncing from branch to branch before landing on the ground. The woods came alive with his laughter as he looked up to see Tig sticking his tongue out at him.

“Maybe next time, Furball. Um… are you okay?”

The rest of the Lost Boys gathered around Cubby who assured them that he was okay. “It was just a little fall,” he explained to a bunch of eye rolling.

“Yeah, you only left a hole half a foot deep this time,” Red nodded wisely. “I’ll begin to worry when it’s a foot deep.”

“Hey, Furball,” Tig called from above, “you’re still It you know.” Faster than anyone would have given him credit for, Cubby regained his feet and planted a solid tag on Surefoot before racing up the tree Tigger was in. The rest of the boys bounded up the tree, with Surefoot waiting to go last. In an instant the woods were ringing with shouts and laughter as the boys swarmed through the branches.

The game continued for another hour as the moon continued to climb into the sky before Leo came to a sudden stop causing a sudden pile-up that sent Roo and Surefoot tumbling to the ground. The mild autumn night had suddenly become closer to winter-like and a strong breeze had begun whipping through the trees making it harder for everyone to keep their feet as they skipped over the branches. Along with the breeze came a nausea producing odor that alternated from sickeningly-sweet to charnel-house decay. “What is that?” Leo whispered to Tig. It seemed wise not to make any more noise than necessary, but that intention was quickly ruined by Roo’s voice yelling.

“Are you crazy? C’mon. Maybe they can’t climb trees.” Leo looked down to see that Roo had a death grip on Surefoot’s pelt and appeared to be dragging him up the tree even as Surefoot was swinging his sword at something. Leo couldn’t tell what it was even though there was a shaft of moonlight bathing the area where Surefoot’s sword was at.

“Who’s he fighting?” Leo asked out loud, continuing to peer down to try and see what was happening.

“I dunno.”

“I can’t see nothing.”

“Maybe he’s gone nuts. Maybe both of them have.”

“I say we send our best tree bouncer down to take care of whatever.”

By the time everyone had finished declaring they couldn’t tell who Surefoot was fighting, the two Lost Boys joined the rest of them in the tree. No one could help notice that both Surefoot and Roo were shaking violently. “What happened?” Tig asked, looking down at the ground.

“I c-could barely see it,” Roo said softly, looking at Surefoot for confirmation.

“Yeah, it was like they were there, then weren’t, then were. They looked like some sort of dragon-thing. They had huge claws and one had a freaking massive sword that it was swinging. I was going to fight it but Roo wouldn’t let me.”

“Them, not it,” Roo clarified. You’re good but no way you could fight three of them at once and I wasn’t going to patch you up.”

Before anyone could ask about anything else there was the sound of ripping bark from below. Everyone held their breath as the sound got closer. “I guess they can climb trees,” Leo observed. “Let’s get out of here. Cubby leads, then Red to watch him. Roo, Stumble, Surefoot, Tig and me.” Tigger acted as though he wanted to object but the sound of climbing got closer. Red gave Cubby a gentle slap on the back and the bear-pelted Lost Boy took off along the branches. He didn’t move quickly but his paws always seemed to know where to land to move forward. He’d tried to explain that he normally didn’t fall when running along branches because that wasn’t anything like climbing trees. No one understood it, but they accepted it.

With Cubby picking out a decent route among the limbs, they were able to make good time until the woods ran out. One moment he was sailing along the limbs, and the next moment there was a squawk and the sound of a body bouncing from branch-to-branch ending in a crash of snapping twigs. Red managed to keep from following his friend and stopped the others. They listened but didn’t hear anything except a familiar moan from below.

“Now what?” Surefoot asked Leo.

Leo looked around but couldn’t see anything that looked out of place. “C’mon, we gotta rescue Cub and keep moving. I dunno whether they followed us or not.”

“Maybe they’re on the ground and got in front of us,” Red said as he started to climb down, the rest following him. When they reached the ground, they found Cubby’s fall had been broken by a thicket of blackberry bushes. He’d stopped moaning and was busy picking thorns and thistles out of his nose and cheeks. Leo and Tigger squatted at the front edge of the blackberry bushes and peered out at a seemingly empty meadow. Behind the twins, Roo, Cubby and Stumble crouched down and watched them watch the meadow, Cubby continuing to pull thorns from various places on his body. Red and Surefoot were at the opposite end of the thicket watching the direction from which they’d come to make sure no one was sneaking up on them.

“Whatcha think? Have we lost them?” Tigger asked his brother in an uncharacteristically hesitant whisper.

“I dunno. I couldn’t see ‘em to begin with. For all I know they could be in the middle of this stupid bush with us.” Tigger shook his head and continued watching the meadow so hard that every shadow was in danger of appearing to be something else.

“Glarens,” Stumble said causing six others to shush him even though the shushing was a lot louder than Stumble’s comment.

“What’s a glaren?” Leo asked as quietly as he could, his eyes remaining on the meadow.

“I think that’s what’s chasing us. There’s a story from like forever ago about these things that looked like dragons but really wasn’t that I got told a long time ago.”

“How’d they know they weren’t dragons?” Surefoot asked.

“Cuz they just knew they weren’t, I guess. The story just said it. Anyway, the story tells about how they came and sort of attacked and the weather got all cold and windy and stuff just like it did now.”

“How does someone ‘sort of attack,’” Tigger asked, looking back at Stumble for an instant.

“I dunno. Does it really matter? That’s what the story says. The one the elves tell.”

“Crikey, that explains it then. No way an elf is going to commit to anything that doesn’t have a rule attached to it.”

Stumble sighed at Roo’s comment. “Anyway. When they showed up they put a couple of Lost Boys in Lost Boys’ Field and took out a bunch of elven rangers. They have swords, big swords, and scales, but no armor and can’t breathe anything like fire or ice. They’re smart too. A couple of them might have said something.”

“Yeah. Might have,” Roo mumbled.

A dozen more whispered questions followed about the glarens to which Stumble could only shrug to in response as he looked more and more frustrated. Red finally asked, “How do you kill them?”

Stumble screwed his face up as he tried to remember everything he’d been told. He opened his eyes and shook his head. “There’s nothin’ in the story about any of them ever being killed. The weather just changed and no one saw ‘em after that.”

“So no one killed any of them?” Stumble shook his head in reply.

“Swords supposedly slow them down but just cuz of the force. Their scales were too thick for a sword to go through.”

“So now that we know we can’t kill ‘em, maybe it’s time we went someplace else ya think?”

“Yeah, Roo’s right. Me, Red, Surefoot, Stumble, Roo, Cubby and Tig to watch our back trail. You better not get hurt, either. We’re going to the Tree and hunker down for awhile. Maybe Peter knows something about this but until we talk to him, no one leaves for nothing.” There were murmurs of agreement. It would take something terrifying to have caused Surefoot to shake the way he had after his encounter with the glaren and no one was in the mood to try their own luck.

The boys moved as quickly as they could in single file across the meadow and into the woods beyond. None of them could help but notice that there wasn’t a sound to be heard in the woods. No sound of crickets, owls or the shrieks and cries of a dozen different things that hunted at night. Everyone had a sword or dagger at the ready and even Cubby was holding his wooden sword like a weapon rather than something that was on fire. False Creek was crossed without incident and the boys started to breathe a bit easier as they entered the more familiar confines of the Southern Woods.

The wind continue blowing but not as pungently as it was earlier. The trees whipped back and forth as the gale randomly changed direction and a shower of twigs, needles and pine cones fell from the sky. Cubby leaped straight up into the air, swinging his sword as a pine cone bounced off his head. “No! Stay away!” Cubby yelled as he swung the sword in an arc as hard as he could, almost braining Roo.

“Take it easy, Cub. It’s only a pine cone. I think,” Tig advised from behind him. He was sort of glad that Cubby had erupted because he’d been about ready to scream from the tension. During Cubby’s attempted destruction of the pine cone, the rest of the boys had moved ahead to get out of reach of his sword. Cubby was never quite sure if the glaren had dropped down, walked in, or simply appeared out of the air. However it got there, Cubby found himself face-to-face with a dragon-looking creature holding a sword. Cubby quickly used up his store of expletives as he back-pedaled so quickly that he sent up a spray of forest duff. There was a roar and something that sounded suspiciously like “surprise” from the glaren.

Tigger’s eyes got as round as Cubby’s before Cubby plucked him from the ground in one arm and made for the nearest tree.

“Lemme go, Cub,” Tigger demanded. “I have to see if Leo’s okay.”

Cubby complied by dropping Tig in front of the tree. “You can see if he’s okay from up there,” he said as fast as he could get the words shoved out of his mouth. Tig started to object but instead began to climb as the dragon-like being cut loose with another roar as it slowly approached the two. Tigger made it to the first branch, about ten feet up, with Cubby right on his heels. Tigger moved down the branch to make room for Cubby, gave a surprised urp and slipped from the branch hitting his chin on it as he fell.

“Tig,” Cubby cried as he watched his friend fall. He looked down from the tree and saw the glaren give a baleful grin and raise the sword to cleave it through the stunned Tigger. Impossibly, from up in the tree, Cubby saw Tigger’s eyes go from desperation to resignation even though it happened in an instant. There was a wrenching in Cubby’s chest and with a scream that overwhelmed his throat, he jumped from the branch holding the wooden sword aloft over his head.

Things slowed down as Cubby dropped to the ground. He saw Tigger look up at him and felt a lump form in his throat as the look in his friend’s eyes didn’t change at all. The glaren looked up and changed the direction of the broadsword so it was swinging towards Cubby. There was a tremendous clang and a shower of sparks as wood met metal and time suddenly sped up again. The glaren stumbled back and without thinking Cubby swung his sword as hard as he could towards the creature. There was a sound like crumpling cellophane as the sword came to an abrupt halt. Cubby felt something warm cover his face and looked down to see his pelt covered in red. The glaren stood for a moment looking down at the wooden sword protruding from its half severed body then made a noise that sounded like a kitten in dire distress and collapsed to the ground. Cubby tried desperately to see the expression on Tig’s face but the glaren’s body was between them.

“Holy crap, you killed it Cubs,” came Tigger’s voice, almost as a whisper from where he lay, neither happy nor upset but almost in a sort of awe.  Cubby stood there looking at the body of the glaren and the wooden sword sticking out from it in mute accusation.  He tried to say something but it felt as though his mind had overflowed with something sticky.  Words wouldn’t come out, he couldn’t breathe, and the image of drowning slammed itself through the corridors of his mind.  “Cubby?” Tigger asked, his voice not as subdued as it had been and then louder and firmer,.  “Cubby, don’t you dare move.  Don’t.  Don’t go.”  Tigger sounded desperate and Cubby saw movement as Tigger started to get up but his mind refused to process it.  Instead he continued to stare at the dead glaren whose blood covered his face and pelt.  He whimpered once, threw up all over himself and the glaren, and then turned and ran as though the hounds of hell were after him.  Tigger begged him to stop but he was beyond hearing anything except the sound of crumpling cellophane inside his head.

“What happened to you guys?” Tigger asked in an almost accusatory manner as the rest of the boys, less Cubby approached him. He got unsteadily to his feet and looked down at the wooden sword.

“You guys were right behind us and then you weren’t. Roo said Cubby went nuts over some pine cone and then the next thing we knew you were like a quarter-mile behind us. What the heck happened to you and how’d you kill that?” Leo looked around. “And where’s the furball? He didn’t leave you here to face that thing by yourself did he?” Leo’s expression was a mixture of concern and disbelief but the question was asked in a dangerously quiet voice.

“Don’t you dare say that about him,” his twin yelled as loudly as he could causing everyone to look at him in shock. Tigger had yelled at his brother before but nothing like this. “If it wasn’t for him I’d be there,” he said pointing to the body of the glaren. He’s the one that killed it and I gotta find him.”

“G’won.”

“No way.”

“Cubbs killed that? You sure you didn’t get hit on the head?”

“How’d he do that with a wooden sword?”

“Where’d he go to?”

“Was he hurt?”

“Quiet,” Leo said, staring at his brother. “He killed that? But how?”

“I dunno,” Tig said, looking as though he wanted to start bawling. He took a deep breath, snuffed once and continued in a steadier voice. “He jumped out of a tree after I fell and he hit it with his sword. That one. Then he was covered in blood and… I tried to stop him but he took off into the woods like he didn’t hear me. Leo, we gotta find him. It’s his first and, well it’s Cub. You know what he’s like, he feels everything. I don’t think he got hurt but I don’t know and c’mon we’re wasting time.”

Leo looked confused for a moment and Tig shivered as a beam of moonlight past over his brother making him look silvered and ancient before a cloud ended the lightshow. Leo walked over to where the glaren lay and pulled the wooden sword out of it. There was nothing special about it. In fact, as wooden swords went, this one was pretty plain and resembled a real sword as much as a raft resembled The Jolly Roger. He took a swing at a small tree with it and watched as the tree bend over under the force but didn’t make so much as a mark on it much less a cut. “Where’d this come from, anyway?”

“It was in the weapon chest when we were trying to figure out something he wouldn’t kill himself or any of us with and he chose it. Okay? Can we go now?”

“Yeah, Tig. Let’s go find the wandering bear. Stay together. We don’t know how many more of those things there are. Surefoot leads to track.” He examined the sword again, still not finding anything extraordinary about it, and stuck it in his pelt.

“Maybe we oughta get Peter,” Tig said. “Y’know he might have some ideas and stuff and…” he wound down and followed as Surefoot started tracking.

Surefoot didn’t have any trouble following Cubby’s flight. In fact Stumble could have done as good a job with both eyes closed. The biggest Lost Boy had left a clear trail of footprints, broken branches, and drops of blood as he’d run headlong through the woods. “Man, he must be terrified,” Red said, gazing at a sapling that had been uprooted by having been run over.

“No he’s not,” Tig declared. “He’s just… lost for a minute and doesn’t know what to do. Who would?” He looked around. “C’mon, we’re wasting time.” He pushed past Surefoot and started down the trail that Cubby had left. Surefoot looked at Leo who shrugged and followed after his twin. The trail continued up a rather steep hill with no sign of slowing and across a couple of valleys. The wind continued strong enough to cause the trees to whisper to each other but the charnel smell had been replaced by the smell of evergreen.

“He must be freezing,” Tigger said, more to himself than anyone as he looked at a shallow stream. In the middle sat Cubby, the water waist high on him. He wasn’t doing anything but sitting and looking down at the water, his face so pale the freckles seemed to float above it. His hair and pelt were soaked as though they’d been submerged in the creek.

“I better go talk to him,” Roo said, starting forward.

Tig stuck his arm out, blocking Roo’s path. “No, let me. Gimme his sword.” Leo pulled the wooden sword from his pelt and handed it to his brother. The boys watched as Tigger strode down the hill and walked through the water to where Cubby was sitting. Cubby looked up at the sound of splashing, his tear-streaked face clearly visible, before looking back down at the water. Tigger moved opposite Cubby and sat down in the water, wincing as the frigid water poured through his tiger pelt. “You okay?” he asked.

Cubby looked up and Tigger was reminded of a St. Bernard, his eyes a combination of eagerness and sadness. “Yeah, I’m okay,” Cubby finally mumbled. Cubby stared at his friend for awhile before opening his mouth again. “You didn’t think I could do it, did you?”

“Cub… I…” Tigger wasn’t sure what to say and felt miserable about it. It wasn’t that he hadn’t believed in Cubby, it was just that Leo, Surefoot, and Red, along with himself, were the warriors. Roo patched up people. Stumble was utility and support. Cubby was Cubby. Big and clumsy and unblooded. He was the one who was scared to death of his own shadow and had been created to make people laugh. He was the one you turned to when you were so depressed you didn’t know what else to do because he could always come up with an answer. He’d do just about anything he could for you, but that didn’t include killing monsters, did it? Tig shook his head. “No. Not that.”

Cubby gave a sad twisted half-smile. “Me either. But I did.” His voice, which had started out tentative, got a little bit stronger. “I couldn’t just do nothing.” He held up his hand as Tigger tried to speak. “It’s okay. I’d be the last person to think I’d have been able to kill that thing. I just… That look on your face killed me. I don’t blame you or anything, but…” Cubby continued looking towards Tig but wasn’t seeing him. “Then it made that noise and it sounded so pitiful and…” His eyes refocused on Tigger. “I killed it. I stood there and killed something. Something that was alive and could speak and think and all that other stuff.”

“But Cub, it was going to kill me. It would have killed all of us if it’d been able to.”

“I know. I’m not saying I’m sorry I killed it. Not really. It’s just that I never killed… I mean I couldn’t go hunting or fishing or even put down a dog that was hurt. It scares me. More than anything ever has.” Cubby closed his eyes and shook. “It’s all I can think about.” Tigger nodded. As much as the others wouldn’t have been able to believe it, both he and his twin had been the same way once upon a time. When it had happened they hadn’t been Lost Boys yet but being twin brothers had gotten them through it. With six ‘brothers’ helping him, Cub’d get through it too. He’d make sure of it.

“You forgot this,” Tig said, handing Cubby the wooden sword. He held his breath, waiting to see what Cubby would do. Cubby stared at it then leaned over and took it.

“Yeah, I guess I’ll need it.” He took a couple of half-hearted swipes with the wooden sword. His face was still troubled, but Tig noticed that the color had returned to it.

“Cubby, there’s something I really, really have to ask you. Something really important. Could we please get out of this creek? I’m freezing my rump off.”

The troubled look changed to embarrassment. “Yeah, but you’ll need to help me up. I can’t feel my feet or legs.”

Tig stood, sighed, and helped haul Cubby to his feet. “You furball.” Tig watched as Cubby grinned, but couldn’t help but notice it wasn’t quite the same grin it was before. He was pretty sure the old grin would come back and equally sure it would take awhile. Tig figured it’d be a good idea if he stayed up a little late. Nightmares weren’t as bad if there was someone they could be shared with quickly.

Rain is not an uncommon occurrence on the island. Unless some weather wizard has been messing around, it doesn’t rain any more or any less frequently on the island than any other place. Personally, I like the rain. I learned a long time ago that it doesn’t make me melt. It doesn’t make me shrink either, although there are certain times I’m not sure that wouldn’t be a bad thing. Most of us felt pretty much the same about getting rained on so it came as something of a surprise when Roo grabbed me and announced he wanted me to come with him to the elven marketplace to buy a rain protection token.

Magic tokens are sort of like low-level spells. Once activated they work until the magic runs out, the token expires or the token is overwhelmed by whatever magic it may be working against. It’s a way that a wizard can charge you again and again for the same spell. They’re normally used for simple stuff like starting a campfire, keeping someone warm, help keep a person afloat in the water, or in this case act like a magical umbrella. Elves made most of them, but there were a few dwarven ones that dealt with rocks, gems and the like.

“Why are you getting a token against rain?” I asked as I hurried to try and keep up with Roo. We were about the same height but I always had to almost break into a jog to keep up with him when he was walking.

“Oh, I dunno. Maybe to keep the rain off me?”

I sighed because I knew he knew what I was really asking him. “No. I mean, why do you want to keep the rain off?”

“If that’s what you meant, then you should have asked that to begin with.” Sometimes Roo could act almost grown-up, but since he also was the only one who could patch us all back together, we cut him a lot of slack concerning it. “Haven’t you ever heard that saying about fools and coming in out of the rain?”

“Sure, all the time back in the ‘real’ world. Course that was because when it started to pour I could go out without having to worry about anyone attacking me.”

He nodded in understanding. Trying to escape others was pretty much something every Lost Boy had done in the ‘real’ world. “Have you ever tried to sew up a wound while the rain was pouring down on top of you?” I shook my head no, although he already knew the answer. “It’s bloody hard to do and you lot never seem to get injured when the sun is shining.”

“I’m sorry,” I said with a grin. “It’s pretty inconsiderate of us to do that. Maybe we can talk the pirates into only having fights when it’s sunny outside.”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s not the pirate fights. You guys always decide to play rugby with the orcs or troll soccer when it’s raining.”

I stopped talking while we climbed a short but steep hill then asked why he’d wanted me to come along with him. He hadn’t exactly pleaded with me to come but did let me know he’d be extremely grateful if I did. In fact, he kept telling me how grateful he’d be until I finally gave up and agreed. It wasn’t that I minded the elven marketplace it was one of the neater places I’d been on the island, especially when you considered the fact that elves ran it. It’s just that the place was always packed. The dwarven marketplace wasn’t nearly as big but the stuff there was a lot cooler. Then there was the fact that if you accidentally bumped into a dwarf, normally they’d just shove you back and it would be forgotten, although you might get a mug of soft cider out of it if you fell spectacularly well. If you bumped into an elf, though, it would mean almost a quarter day of determining who might have been at fault, the risks involved, why it happened in the first place and the possibility that the whole event might have to be reenacted for some reason. When you bumped into an elf, there was never any cider, soft or otherwise.

“Cuz I might need your help in buying this token,” Roo explained in answer to my question. “I’ve never dealt with this elf before, he’s from one of the eastern realms, and I don’t know how much he’s going to charge for this.”

“So how can I help?” Roo knew I was notoriously shy and would rather cut off my own foot than try to bargain with someone.

“Are you kidding? You look like an overgrown St. Bernard. You look at him with those sad eyes of yours and he’ll cave immediately. I hope.” He hedged for a moment. “Um, there’s also a chance I might be able to get a better price if we move a couple of things for him too.”

“Whatever,” I muttered. I couldn’t be sure, but I was sure that being called an overgrown St. Bernard might not have been the best compliment I’d ever received before. The part about things to move sounded a little suspicious as well. Before I really had a chance to ask for clarification, though, we topped another small rise and stood looking down at the mass of confusion that was the elven marketplace.

The elves held their market in their common grounds. They only held it the day before, the day of, and the day after the full moon, so it was always extremely crowded. Of course, being in Neverland, the moon might be full for a week’s worth of days and then not be full again for three or four months. Astronomy was always a bit sideways when it came to the island. Half of the commons were overflowing with tents and wooden stalls that sold every elven thing one could imagine. The other half was overflowing with people who were taking a break from shopping and picnicking, recovering, or simply watching the flow of people. As always, when there was a crowd of more than ten people, I began to get nervous and started chewing my thumbnail. I followed Roo down one row of tents and up a row of stalls as he started looking for this wizard he’d been told about. There was no such thing as shade in the rows and the sun was blazing down. I started to take push back the hood of my pelt, but then got worried that might upset Roo’s plans, so I just left it up. I wondered why it never seemed to work so well in the winter.

Eventually Roo stopped in front of a small canvas tent. It looked as bright and shiny as a new penny compared to the other vendor’s tents. Unfortunately this didn’t mean that the owner was a stickler for cleanliness, but meant that he hadn’t been selling stuff very long. When the elf who owned the tent came out to talk to Roo, the impression intensified. The elf’s hair was short as was his beard and moustache. His robes were worn and patched which instead of meaning he’d worn them for a long time, usually meant that he’d bought them second or third hand. He shook Roo’s hand as though he was a long lost relative and the two began a discussion with a lot of hand gestures. I’d have liked to have gone into the tent to get out of the sun, but doing something like that was considered extremely bad form without an invitation when it came to elves.

“Hey, Cubby. Can you do me a favor?” I snapped my eyes open from where I’d been dozing. I had gotten amazingly good at being able to doze while standing, especially when it was hot and humid outside.

“Yeah. I guess so,” I said with a yawn.

“Reinolthosistian has six casks that he needs moved from his cart to his tent. He said he’d knock off half for the token if we’d move them for him.” I sighed. “Aw, c’mon Cubby. It’s only six, that’s just three trips for each of us and it’s not like it’s uphill or anything and it’s just a little ways away.”

I sort of figured that my St. Bernard act wouldn’t be needed, just the muscles in my legs and back. Rolling my eyes, I agreed to help. Rhinoser… Rhinyplaseee… The elf gave Roo directions on where to find the casks. I followed Roo to the wagon next to which six barrels sat. All we had to do was push them over on their side and roll them to the tent. I went over to the first one, shoved the top, and watched as absolutely nothing happened. I tried again, then once more. On the fourth try it slowly toppled over as I pushed as hard as I could. There was a deep indention left in the ground where it had sat. “What’s in these barrels?”

Roo shrugged. “I dunno. Some sort of stuff he says he can sell. He said he got here too late to take his wagon, so he has to move them this way.”

“You mean I have to move them this way,” I grumbled. Normally it wouldn’t have been any big deal, but I guess the heat was getting to me. For the next four turns of the hourglass I moved barrels from the wagon to the tent. Roo wasn’t able to move any of them even after I’d managed to knock it over. At first I’d been worried that I might lose control of them and have them go crashing through the crowd. As heavy as these things were, there was no way that was going to happen. By the time I got the last barrel moved, I had sweat pouring down my face and my hands felt like I’d rubbed sandpaper all over them. I’d pushed back the bear pelt hood, but all that did was cause the sun to pound on my head before I pulled it back on. Roo stayed with me the whole time, giving me encouragement and telling me what a great job I was doing. It freaked me out so much to hear Roo saying stuff like that, I finally asked him to stop. I think he might have been a little hurt by it, but I think it was mostly cancelled out by the fact that it freaked him out a little too.

“Excellent job, Master Roo,” the elf fawned as Roo went to purchase the umbrella token. “Obviously the things I’ve heard about Lost Boys are much made up and maligned. So, shall we strike a bargain?”

Roo nodded, and then stopped. “Can I test it first?”

“Test it? Why young master, what need would you have to test a token made with such care and attention. I guarantee all my work.” He looked at Roo. Roo just stood there staring flatly back at him. “Well, I suppose a small sample could be arranged, although I am somewhat hurt that you feel such a thing is necessary. However I know that there are those who are unscrupulous in the magic business and give all of us a bad name because of their isolated practices. Soooo….” Roo continued staring. “Oh, very well. Here.” The elf went into his tent and a moment later came out holding a token. “Let’s try it on your servant here to get a better test. He’s bigger and you’ll be able to see that the range adjusts for such things.”

“Servant?” I said, giving Roo his flat stare back at him. Roo blushed and started to correct the wizard, but the wizard was too busy to pay any attention. He walked over to where I was standing, still in the sun naturally, and waved the token over my head a few times. Then with a wail of noise and a click of his shoes, the elf broke the token over my head.

It felt wonderful. Right after the elf activated the token by breaking it, there was a tiny peal of thunder. A small rain cloud formed above me and in a few moments I was drenched as it rained all over me. At first it was just a sprinkle but quickly worked its way to a downpour. The rain was about a diameter of six inches beyond my body. Beyond that it stayed dry. I threw my head back and let the rain run into my mouth and down my throat. Although it didn’t bother me, Roo was not nearly as happy.

“What are you trying to pull here?” he demanded of the wizard. “That doesn’t look like any umbrella spell I’ve ever seen before.”

“Uh, yes. There does seem to be a problem with the labeling, doesn’t there? Let me see.” The wizard examined the pieces of the token, trying to piece the two halves back together. He did a lot of hemming and hawing. “You’re going to find this very amusing, Master Roo. It appears that there was a slight mix up in the labeling. This is neither an umbrella token nor a sample token.”

“Really? You don’t say,” Roo said, quietly. I took a step back knowing that Roo was building up to being furious. The rain obediently took a step back as well.

“It’s certainly not my fault,” the elf protested. “I get these through a distributor in the snowy realms. Sometimes the weather can wreak havoc with the integrity of both container and labeling. I apologize but assure you that I do have an umbrella spell that will suit you. I will also provide it for half price because of this unfortunate error.”

“Wait a second,” Roo demanded. “You already told me you’d give it to me at half price because of the work Cubbs did for you.”

“Oh, yes. That’s quite correct, isn’t it. Very well, I will give it to you at a third.”

“A fifth.”

“A fifth? I would be losing money on such a proposition. How about a quntiple?”

“I don’t think so,” Roo said with a look of disgust. “Perhaps a quarter?” I tried to do the puppy dog look, but every time I tried that, rain ran into my eyes.

“Is your friend okay?” the elf asked Roo. “It looks as though at some point he may have suffered a head injury and perhaps lost a marble or two.”

I don’t think it was really fair that Roo broke up laughing at that point, but I suppose I can’t blame him. In the end, Roo got the token he wanted for a quarter of the retail price after all and even was able to verify that it was really an umbrella token. They shook on the deal and a couple of shillings and a doubloon traded hands. “Uh, Roo?” I said. “I hate to, you know, rain on your parade, but could he do something about this rain?”

“Oh, sorry Cubby. Can you turn off the rain on him?” Roo asked the wizard. The wizard snapped his fingers and looked quite surprised when nothing happened. He did that a couple more times with the same result.

“Just a moment, please,” the wizard said and went into the tent. There was the sound of crashing, banging and the tinkling of broken glass. The wizard came out again with a wand. He waved it three times over my head and then brought it down smartly on my nose while saying what I guess was some sort of magic word.

“Ow,” I said. The wand was heavy and I knew there was going to be a bruise on my nose now. The rain continued to fall. It was not longer refreshing but had soaked me to the skin and was kind of cold. My hair hung down over my eyes and the bear pelt hood felt liked it weighed ten pounds as it sat limply on the top of my head. “Nothing’s happening,” I said just in case Roo, the wizard, and the crowd that had gathered around hadn’t noticed.

“Well it should be,” the wizard said in a tone that sounded as though he blamed me for the whole thing. “I don’t understand this at all. It should be working. Why isn’t it working?”

Playing in the rain can be lots of fun, but not when it continues to come down in a deluge. It wasn’t only the rain, or the fact that wherever I was standing tended to become muddy quite quickly but I noticed that a number of frogs had appeared seemingly out of nowhere to get soaked. Of course once they finished, they were able to go someplace drier. “Hey! If you can’t stop the rain, what if I used an umbrella token like I was supposed to get? Wouldn’t that keep me from getting rained on?” Roo looked at the wizard.

“Oh, no. We couldn’t mix tokens attuned to the same thing. That would cause a disaster.”

“Like this isn’t?” Roo said under his breath.

“An umbrella token and a rain token would probably cause a hurricane or a tornado or something bad.” I wondered why a hurricane or tornado weren’t considered something bad too but was too busy trying to keep the water out of my eyes to ask. “I just cannot work on a solution under these circumstances. You’re going to have to go and I’ll simply figure out how to get rid of this… problem and get in touch with you. I can do that, you know, I have magic. I can communicate over very long distances.”

“What if you can’t fix it?” I asked. It sounded a little garbled because of the water.

“Nonsense. I can fix anything. It just may take a little while to accomplish, that’s all. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a problem to solve and sales to undertake.” With that, he disappeared back into the tent and tried to slam the tent flap. It didn’t work.

I looked at Roo who just shrugged at me. “Can we go home now?”

Roo agreed and we headed for Hangman’s Tree. Before we got halfway there, I’d been stopped twice and asked to stand in the middle of gardens and stopped once while a troll suspended me over a well for half a turning of an hourglass. It was after the well that Roo suddenly looked at me. “We can’t go back to the Tree.”

“Why not? I’m hungry. Even stew is starting to sound good.” Being at the elven fair normally meant I snagged a pastry or two. I quickly discovered that it was very hard to sneak pastry when it was raining around only you. It was almost as hard to persuade anyone to let you buy something. I didn’t succeed in either one.

“Look behind you.”

I turned around. “Yeah? So what?”

“Notice anything?”

“Just the stupid water from this stupid rain that won’t stupid stop raining on me.”

“Uh-huh. And by now everyone knows that you’re being rained on. So what do you suppose is going to happen when a group of pirates runs across the trail you’re leaving?”

Now that he’d mention it, it looked like an arrow pointing straight to where I was standing. “But that’s not fair,” I wailed. “What am I going to eat? Where am I going to sleep? What’s going to happen to me? Look at this,” I said, holding my hand in front of his face. “My fingers look as though I’d been in a bathtub for a month.”

“How would you know? I bet you’ve never spent more than a minute in a bath.”

“Yeah? Well… Uh… If I had, I bet they’d look just like this.”

Roo nodded. “I think you’re hair is beginning to turn green too. Like algae or something is growing on it.”

“What?” I galloped over to a pond and tried to look at myself in it. Unfortunately the rain kept dissolving the reflection so I couldn’t see anything at all. “Aw, this sucks giptels. You’re lying. Aren’t you? Please?” He just grinned, so I knew my hair probably hadn’t gone green quite yet. The whole thing was still too much like a shower for my liking though. I stood there, head hanging over the pond trying to think. Thinking is harder than you… uh, think, when rain is falling on your head. Pelt hood or not. There had to be a way to stop this. “Let’s go this way,” I said, leading us away from the Tree.”

“Where are we going?” Roo asked. Normally he’d have complained about the detour but I think he felt a tiny bit guilty about how things had turned out.

“You’ll see. This might help my rain problem.” Roo didn’t say anything and followed me until we got to a wishing well site. “Wishes can be stronger than magic,” I explained. I pulled a doubloon out of my pocket. “And since I didn’t ask for this magic to be on me then it’s not really a wish for me. Right?”

Roo looked skeptical. “Maybe.” His tone was just as skeptical as his look.

I shrugged, made my wish, and dropped the coin in the well. Fortunately the rain didn’t appear to have any effect on the business of wishes. There was the sound of magic being worked. “Yes,” I whispered ecstatically. There was a rumble of thunder and a few moments later it was pouring. Pouring both within and without the diameter of the token spell.

“I told ya it wouldn’t work, Cub. It really was a wish made for yourself.”

“It worked perfectly,” I said, gesturing at the rain that was falling. “Now I can go to the Tree and no one can follow any trail I might leave.”

“Cubby!” he exclaimed.

“I know, pretty cool, huh?”

“No. If you were going to make a wish like that, why didn’t you just wish that the token would stop raining?”

“Well that’d just be…” I reached up and scratched my head. One good benefit about this was that most of the fleas seemed to have abandoned me for drier climes. “But…” I started to explain and then realized he was absolutely right. “Aw, rats.”

I have to give it to Roo. He didn’t laugh. I probably would have if the situations had been reversed. I actually thought about laughing but was pretty sure it would have been that type of laugh that would have caused Roo to look at me in concern. Still, he made sure I was looking at him when he activated the umbrella token. For a brief moment I kinda hoped that it would turn out to be like mine. Instead, it worked as we’d been told it was and a circumference of rain free space opened up that extended six inches beyond him. I refused to sigh. We continued on to Hangman’s Tree and each went in through our trapdoors.

“Cubby, what are you doing?” Tig asked as he stared at me. It had gone back to raining within my circle. I sighed since I’d hoped that maybe, somehow, it wouldn’t rain inside. I should have known better. I looked down at my paws were a circle of water was slowly expanding across the floor. Starting towards the common room table, I suddenly realized that any stew I ate was going to be pretty watered down by the time it got to my mouth. I was going to have the same problem with my pallet too. After a couple of minutes the blankets and stuff were going to be soaked. The thought of hysterical laughter was beginning to sound better and better.

“Maybe if we sprinkled him with pixie dust then he could float above the cloud and it would disappear or go someplace else,” Surefoot suggested.

“What if the someplace else it went was one of us?” Leo said.

“Why would it do that?” I asked.

“The same reason it’s still raining on you, I guess.”

Stumble searched until he found a couple of old mealy apples that I could have instead of stew that would have been instantly diluted. I sat and ate them as the water continued to fall around me. “So what should I do now?” I asked as I swallowed the last piece.

“Well, ya can’t stay here tonight,” Leo said. “You’re raining faster than the ground can absorb it.”

Tig reached down under the chair where I was sitting and scooped up a handful of mud. “So? When was the last time we played Mudball in the tree?” He hurled the ball of mud at his brother who ducked causing the mudball to catch Red squarely in the face.

“What was that for?” Red demanded, picking up his own ball of mud and proceeding to chase Tigger around the common room with it. He let fly about the same time Tig tripped over Stumble’s raccoon tale. The mud didn’t come anywhere near Tig, but dropped into the stew pot with a splash. All the boys turned and looked at one another.

“I guess this means it’ll be thicker next time,” Surefoot finally said with a shrug. He dipped a gourd into the pot and sampled the muddied stew. “Actually it’s not too bad,” he decided as Tig and Red doubled over and made fake retching sounds.

“You better cut that out or I’ll start adding it and not tell you,” Stumble said.

“The only bad thing about that is we probably won’t know when it’s been added.”

“It doesn’t matter about the stew,” Leo reminded his brother. “We gotta figure out what to do with Cub. If he stays in here we might drown. Look at the floor.” Naturally everyone looked down to see that the floor was awash in about a quarter-inch of water. I glanced under the common room table to see my pallet was soaked and looked as though it would start floating any time.

“I guess I’d better leave,” I said. Not that there was anything else I could do. I started towards my trapdoor and noticed Roo starting towards his, with a face that looked uncharacteristically guilty. Even the tail of his kangaroo pelt was dragging. Not that it didn’t normally drag, but in this case it was a very depressed looking dragging. “You don’t have to leave too. It’s not like you did it on purpose or anything.”

His face brightened up, but he sighed at the same time. “Yeah, but if I hadn’t dragged you to the market you wouldn’t be leaking all over the floor right now.”

“Raining,” I corrected. ‘Leaking’ didn’t sound nearly as cool as ‘raining’ when it came to what was happening. “Even if you hadn’t dragged me along against my will with me yelling and arguing every step of the way, I’d have still managed to get in trouble somehow. That’s just what I do.”

“You were not screaming and yelling every step of the way. In fact you went pretty willingly when I explained what I needed.” I nodded agreement. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah, but still, you can’t go out there all alone. You might drown.”

He had a point, I was clumsy enough to manage that. “What if I sleep in a tree? Then I won’t drown. I might fall out of it but I won’t drown.” Roo considered the sideways logic to that and finally agreed.

“But you gotta stay close by so we can check on ya.”

I agreed and climbed out through my trapdoor. It had gotten dark outside and was still raining which I considered a plus. There weren’t a whole lot of things around that would eat Lost Boys that also traveled through the dark and the rain. There were a couple of things, but they probably wouldn’t want to eat something that was continually getting soaked, especially after it was inside them. For a moment I thought about the possibility of something eating me and then exploding because of the rain that would still be raining. I quickly thought about not thinking about that at all.

It didn’t take very long to figure out that lying down on the ground to sleep wasn’t going to work. As we’d sort of figured, the ground got muddy real fast and I found out that there really was a possibility of me drowning. Next I tried a tree. Unfortunately tree bark gets slippery when it’s wet and I catapulted out of two different trees before I figured that wasn’t going to work either. Finally I headed to the hill where we played ‘King of the Hill.’ It had a pretty good slope on it and most of the loose dirt had been worn away by generations of Lost Boys being thrown down the sides, sliding, and being hurled. Sleeping on something that was basically rock wasn’t real comfortable, but there wasn’t enough mud to cause me to slide down the hill and the slope was enough that the water didn’t pool deep enough to drown me. Sleeping in the rain didn’t bother me a whole lot but getting a mouthful of water when I snored was more than a little irritating.

At some point in the night I must have fallen asleep. I opened my eyes to see a couple more apples next to me and a sprite staring at me in amazement. When she saw I was awake, she pointed. “It’s raining on you.” I looked around to see a brilliantly clear, sunshiny day. Everywhere, that is, except for six inches around me. It was still merrily raining away and didn’t appear to have let up at all. I stood up and learned that if you sleep while it’s raining on you, it causes all sorts of stiffness, pain, and other good stuff. It also causes an unhealthy dose of chattering because I was freezing. The goosebumps were more like emu-bumps as big as they were. It’s not like a blanket would do any good. The thought briefly crossed my mind about what would happen if I got a warming token and added it to the mix. Briefly because as I thought about it I figured with my luck the rain would end up boiling as it fell. I decided I could live without that.

“You shouldn’t let it rain on you like that,” the sprite said in a very serious manner, “You might get wet and waterlogged.” I was pretty sure there wasn’t any ‘might’ about it, but thanked her for her concern and told her as soon as I found a way to stop the rain, I’d do it. “The dryers can help you,” she said after spending some time considering the water that was dripping from my face. I’d discovered that it was very hard to wipe the water off your face if it was continuing to rain on it.

“Dryers? What dryers? What are they? How can they help?”

“Wise and mysterious are the ways of the dryers. They can get to the root of any problem as well as the root of any tree. They can tell you what you need to know.” All of this was said in slow measure as though she wanted to be sure I didn’t screw it up.

“But what are the dryers? Where are they?”

“The dryers are everywhere. They will find you if they want you to find them there then.” She did an elaborate curtsy and then zipped off out of sight leaving me to wonder if she was just a few acorns short of a tree or if there actually were a group of mysterious people known as the dryers who practiced removing magic spells or maybe dehydrating fruit or something. Either one was as probable as the other. I munched on the apples which tasted as though they’d already been dehydrated, even though they were, strangely enough, soaked. From the look of the paw prints, Leo had brought the apples at some point while I was sleeping. That meant I wouldn’t have to try to turn around and try to see what had been tied to the bear pelt’s tail like I would have if Tig’s or Red’s paw prints had been there. I finished the apples, cores and all, and was trying to figure out what to do when I had a sudden brainstorm. It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t a rainstorm.

I galloped as fast as I could, which was slower than usual because of the mud that now seemed to be instantly forming wherever I went, until I reached the western portion of the Southern Wood. This area was sorta swampy but also had three or four hot springs that seeped up from the ground. The odor was pretty bad but the water wouldn’t take off your skin and it was nice and warm. I rushed over to the nearest one and cannonballed into it. The sudden change from cold to warmth was amazing but the sigh of relief died as the water around me suddenly turned cold. I put a hand under the water to find it was raining under the water too and making it colder. I was pretty sure that should have been impossible. Not that impossible really meant a whole lot on the island. I yelled, “It isn’t fair,” to the skies above, but they whoever might have been up there wasn’t impressed at all and refrained from commenting on the whole situation.

I was beginning to feel like a certain blue-gray donkey as I headed through the woods. There wasn’t really anyplace in particular I was going to, as I’d run all out of ideas. Since it had stopped raining I was once again leaving a trail so I couldn’t go back to Hangman’s Tree. I thought about the wishing well, but making more than one wish on the same ‘event’ can be sort of unpredictable and with the way everything had turned out so far, I didn’t think I really wanted to add that to the mix. I thought about going back to the elven marketplace, but I was sure there were probably about a zillion rules against someone raining within the boundaries of it. Unfortunately when a dispute between us Lost Boys and elves occurred, it was always the elves who won.

If I hadn’t been so busy wiping water out of my eyes and listening to the sound of the rain hitting my pelt, I’d have probably been able to avoid what happened next. From behind me there was a yell of “Lost Boy” and the sound of thudding feet that seemed to shake the pine needles from the pine trees. I dropped into a gallop again but was nowhere near as fast as those pursuing me. Not that it really mattered. Not only was I still leaving a trail but the water in my eyes blurred my vision so much I managed to run into a tree. Red told me later that while the story about water in my eyes was good, he really didn’t believe it since I managed to do it just as often when it was a sunny day and I didn’t have any spells flinging moisture about.

Bouncing off the tree, I landed on my back and looked up at the sodden looking stars that slowly circled my head. They eventually faded away to be replaced with five young trolls looking down at me. At least it wasn’t the pirates I thought it was going to be.

Adult trolls grow to be about eight or nine feet tall and have a lot of strength. The cubs looking down at me were probably around my age and were about a foot taller than I was and just as broad. The major difference being most of that was muscle. Troll cubs and Lost Boys get along for the most part although Roo has had to set numerous bones in the past. There’s also a firm rule, even though we don’t normally have any rules, against playing ‘King of the Hill’ with trolls. They could be a little bullying, but it was hard to hold it against them because that’s just the way they were. They didn’t really mean anything bad by it.

The leader of the pack looked down at me and grinned, his tusks appearing over his lips. “Play tag?” he asked.

“Uh, not really. I’m not feeling real well.” This brought chuckles from the rest of them for some reason. I didn’t really think it was that funny. The leader reached down and gently, for a troll, picked me up, not quite dislocating my shoulder. He set me down on my paws and then frowned.

“What that?” He looked at the rain, put a hand that was bigger than my foot out and caught a few raindrops on it. He brought it to his nose and sniffed. “Rain. Why just there?”

“Uh…” Trolls really aren’t dumb although they sound like it and may look like it. Trolls didn’t really believe in magic and didn’t practice it. If they wanted something they simply used brute force to get it. It had a great success rate, although they wouldn’t fight pirates because they didn’t like the sea. Even when the pirates were on land they equated it with the sea and refused to fight. It made trying to explain spells to a troll a little iffy. However, there was good news seeing from which group my troubles stemmed. “Elves,” I said.

The leader took a step back and two of his gang crossed their fingers as if trying to ward anything elven away from them. The leaders frown of puzzlement became one of puzzled understanding. “Elves. We fix.”

“Huh?” That didn’t sound at all good. “That’s okay,” I started stammering. “I’ll, you know, take care of it or something. Then maybe we can play tag or even hide-and-seek.”

The troll shook his head. “Nope. Elves need lesson. Come.” He gestured at one of his gang and the command became unnecessary as the junior troll grabbed my arm and effortlessly pulled me along in the gang’s wake. About now was when I’d normally begin to wonder if things could get worse, but I was tempting nothing at this point. We traveled through the woods until we came to one of the tallest trees I’d ever seen. Aside from being tall, it was also branchless for about fifty feet up. It would have been a horrible climbing tree. The leader said, “We wait.” The junior troll dropped me to the ground, which had turned muddy. There was a quick exchange of trollish and two of the trolls headed back off into the woods, chortling loudly. I lay there shivering and sneezing while wondering if maybe the warming spell idea wasn’t too bad after all.

A few minutes later there was a high squealing noise as the two trolls dragged an elf from the woods. I didn’t know whether I should be upset by the fact it took two trolls to drag an elf while it only took one troll to drag me along. That thought was quickly replaced in my mind by a feeling of awe as I saw one of the trolls climb the tree trunk just using his fingers and toes. I watched while he made it to the lower branches. Sitting there in the mud, I was pretty sure that he never fell out of trees. That thought didn’t make me feel as bad as it probably should have. Once the troll was comfortably sitting on a branch, one of the trolls on the ground threw two lines up to him. Throwing a line fifty feet up was pretty impressive. Almost impressive enough to make me forget the rain, but not quite. What did make me forget about the rain was when one of the trolls tied the ‘ground’ end of the line to my left ankle. Naturally it took two trolls to tie the ‘ground’ end of the other line to the elf’s ankle. The elf’s squealing which had turned into righteous indignation quickly turned back to squealing as the elf was hauled up by his ankle until he was about a yard off the ground.

My contribution was, “No, no, no, no, no,” as I found myself hauled a yard into the air as well. That turned to a simple unintelligible “aaaaaahhhhhhh” as two trolls started running me around the tree trunk as fast as they could. Before the world started moving too fast to see anything I saw one troll (yeah, now it was only one troll) running the elf around the trunk in the opposite direction. I had a really bad feeling about the whole thing. A very, very, very bad feeling. My bad feeling was proven a minute later as I ran into the elf. Actually I think the elf ran into me, but it didn’t really make a difference. All I know was that I saw more stars than I’d ever seen before at one time during the day. I tried standing up which turned out to be a very big mistake since I was extremely dizzy. I looked over at the elf who looked as dazed as I felt. However his daze was a soggy, rainy one. The collision had jarred the raincloud so it was raining on him. I didn’t want to feel good about it, but I was feeling warmer. Plus he was an elf so chances were excellent his plight would be looked at as needing a bit more attention than when it was just me.

I breathed a great sigh of relief now that my worries were over. At least they were until I watched as the troll in the tree jumped from the branch and landed with a ground-jarring thump. The leader walked over from where he’d been watching the elf with great satisfaction. He looked down at me, tusks appearing once again as he grinned. “We play tag now.”

“Where the heck are we?” I asked Red, who’d made a big deal about leading this particular expedition. We were supposed to be heading for the cliffs that overlooked the sea, a route so familiar that even I could have wandered it in my sleep, but this path was heading towards the center of the Island instead. That’s not as unusual as it sounds since a lot of the Island’s geography changes on an irregular basis. It was unusual for this particular trail to have changed.

Red looked at the surrounding trees and then up at the sky where twilight was beginning to put in an appearance. “Search me,” he came up with. “Isn’t the sun supposed to be setting over there?” he asked pointing ninety degrees from where the coppery glow of the sunset was showing over the trees.

I spun in a complete circle, almost falling and managing to step on the tail of Red’s fox pelt causing a ripping sound. I scratched my head and shrugged. “I dunno, but this sure isn’t the way this path usually goes.”

“Aw, it doesn’t matter. This path has to go somewhere. When we get there, it’ll be where it goes. Right?” He started along the path again after making sure the pelt’s tail was still attached to it. That was one advantage to having a bear pelt. You didn’t have these dragging tails like Red, Leo or Tig did that always seemed to be stepped on or used to tie their owner’s to. Not that I’d know anything about that (although it was a lot easier to tie two pelt tails together than it was to tie shoelaces together—especially when you considered we didn’t have shoelaces). I got a lot of jokes about ‘rabbit tails’ but it’s never been stepped on or tied to something else.

“Sure. That’s about the only thing you’ve said that makes sense so far,” I said as I followed him down the trail. The wind had picked up and the branches of the trees around us were creaking. A low moaning sound was coming from somewhere, just what you’d expect with wind through pine needles, but this one had the hair on the back of my neck standing up. “You know, this place is sorta creepy and scary,” I said in a voice just slightly above a whisper.

“That might worry me if you weren’t scared of your shadow,” Red replied, but I noticed it wasn’t with his usual bravado. I also noticed he’d started looking around and at some point his tomahawk had appeared in his hand.

“You feel that?” I asked. My wooden sword had been in my hand several minutes earlier. “It’s like what happens right before a storm hits or something.”

Red nodded. “Yeah, but there’s nothing up there,” he said looking at the sky again to confirm that it was cloudless. “And no thunder either.”

“Maybe we should go back. We can always hit the cliffs some other time.”

Red stopped, considered it, and then nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s get out of here.” Having Red agree with me scared me more than if some spirit had come out through the trees or something. I was gripping the wooden sword so tight, my fingers hurt and I knew they were probably whitish by now. We turned around and started back down the way we’d come. At first it seemed normal, but then the woods abruptly ended and we walked out into the middle of a field. The path ran from one end of the field to the other and was intersected at the center of the field by another path. Where the two paths crossed, there was a signpost with a sign pointing in each direction, but it was too far to make out what it said. It was not too dark to see the figure who was leaning against the signpost looking at us.

“Who’s that?” I asked. I was getting a funny feeling about the person. Not really a bad feeling, but a sort of muted worried one. As if there was something not quite right about things but not in a threatening manner. Evidently the hair on the back of my neck hadn’t gotten the message because it was attempting to work its way through the bear pelt’s hood.

“I dunno,” Red said. I did a stutter-skip to avoid running into him as he came to a stop. “Probably some elf or someone. It doesn’t matter, though. It’s two against one and you’re bigger than he is.”

“Yeah, but he’s taller than I am,” I argued.

“But you have a sword and I have a tomahawk.”

“Uh-huh. And mine’s made out of wood and…” There wasn’t really any fault I could find with the tomahawk. “Uh, and he might have a sword made out of steel.”

Red turned around at me and grinned. “So? How many pirates have you fought with a sword of wood against their cutlasses of metal?”

“Two.”

“Oh. Well. You did pretty good and you’re still among the breathing. Besides whoever it is doesn’t look threatening.” He looked around. “At least not as threatening as whatever else is around.”

“Hey, Red. Have you ever noticed whether or not Nibbler breathes?”

Red’s look indicated he thought I was pretty much out of my mind. Even more so than could be considered normal. “What?”

“What you just said. You know, about me still being among the breathing? That got me to wondering. Have you ever noticed whether Nibbler breathes or not? I mean he is a ghost or sort of one but he hangs around Lost Boys’ Field too, so I wonder if he has to breathe or even if he doesn’t if he does anyway because it’s sort of a habit.”

Red started to say something and then stopped for a moment as he considered the thought. “Great. Now that’s all I’m going to be thinking about before I go to sleep for the next cycle. Thanks a lot.”

“I think we should turn around,” I said, getting back to the here and now. “Maybe whoever over there is harmless, but why take chances?”

It came as something of a shock when Red agreed with me. “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s turn around. There’s something about this place that gives me the creeps.” I refrained from mentioning anything about his shadow but turned around and started heading back into the woods. As we walked they thickened up around us and then a few yards later thinned back out again. We passed the last tree to find a familiar looking field in which two paths crossed at the center. There was the signpost and a guy leaning against it.

“No way,” I said. I turned around, moving Red out of the way and started back into the woods again with him following. In predictable fashion, we entered the woods again and then broke out with the same field. “This isn’t very funny.”

“What if I stay here and you walk back the way we came?” Red suggested. Maybe that would break whatever cycle-thingy we’re in.

“Oh? Well why don’t I stay here and let you walk back, then?”

Red shrugged. “Okay.”

That hadn’t worked out quite like I’d hoped it would. “Wait a second,” I said, grabbing his arm as he prepared to walk away. “Maybe we shouldn’t split up. What if one of us ends up back where we should be and the other keeps getting caught in this thing?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll just go in a little way and then turn right around. I won’t go out of the woods in the other direction. Promise.”

I looked back towards the middle of the field where the figure hadn’t moved at all. It was a bit easier to make things out because right behind him the moon had started to rise above the trees and it looked now like the figure was holding something. “Is it just me or did it start to get dark really fast?” Already there were a few stars out.

“I dunno. I wasn’t paying any attention, but that moon sure is huge. Anyway, you want to do this or what?”

“Okay,” I said. I knew that if I’d said it was a bad idea, Red wouldn’t have said anything about it and we’d have come up with something else. Still, he was right about me being scared of my own shadow. There didn’t seem to be anything really awful out there, just a feeling which could have also been fear. I figured Lost Boys weren’t supposed to be scared of nothing and maybe it was time for me to start acting that way too.

“You sure?” he asked. I nodded, not trusting my voice to agree a second time. “Okay, I’ll be right back. I’m just going in a little way. If it works the way it’s supposed to, then when I get back, we can both walk through the woods without ending up here again.”

“What if it doesn’t work like it’s supposed to?”

“Don’t worry,” Red said in a hearty manner that sounded a bit forced. “It always works the way it’s supposed to.”

I couldn’t help but think that sounded an awful lot like a rule and everyone knew that when it came to us there were no rules. For the most part. I watched as Red turned around and vanished into the woods. Then I waited. I waited a very long time. I could tell it was a long time because when I finally took another look at the meadow, the moon was in the middle of the sky. It was still huge and shone with a bright dull-red light giving a tinge of red to everything below it. I decided enough was enough and started down the trail into the forest myself. Within a few steps I was back at the field again. I tried it once more with the same result.

“You might as well come out, lad. The result is going to be the same as long as you continue that. The only way you’re going to get somewhere else is to walk by the sign post.” It was from the man leaning against the signpost, or at least it was coming from that direction. The voice had a sort of nasally twang to it with something of a hillbilly-ish type accent hidden away inside of it.

“How come? Red was able to walk away.” I called out.

“That’s because me and him have already jawed once upon a time. You. Well you’re new. I haven’t had the opportunity to find out anything about you yet. So why don’t you come out, say hello and visit a spell. I promise not to harm a hair on your head.” That last was accompanied by the faint chime of magic being worked, which normally meant he was being truthful. Of course I wasn’t nearly as concerned about the wild mane of hair on top of my head as I was about the rest of my body. Still, it didn’t seem like there was going to be any other way out of this place.

I slowly walked out to where the figure was standing, ready to turn tail and run at a second’s notice. After all being cowardly was one thing but there was nothing wrong with being prudent. As I got closer to where the figure stood, I saw that it was a man and he was holding a fiddle and bow in his hands. His appearance was remarkable only in how unremarkable it was. He was wearing a flannel looking shirt, worn jeans, boots and some sort of hat that looked like it’d belong more at home in the Australian bush. It was almost impossible to tell what color anything was because of the red tint washing down from the moon. I tried to see what his face looked like, but every time I looked at it, my gaze simply slid off like a metal rod against a piece of steel. I stopped a couple of feet from where he stood.

“Well, well. If it isn’t one of Lord Pan’s stout-hearted lads. I would be willing to bet you’ll have pirates quaking in their boots when you appear in battle.” He chuckled but it was hard to tell whether it was a comradely chuckle or one that mocked. “What’s your name, boy?”

“Cubby”

“Not your real name of course, but one that fits you well I can see. It is wise not to give your true name, especially to those you don’t know. No matter. Should things work the way I expect they will, I’ll have knowledge of it.” He pulled the bow across the fiddle, causing a few notes to come forth and tumble into the sky towards the moon. “If not, then the knowledge will not be necessary.”

“What do you mean?”

“Wishes, Friend Cubby. We’re talking about wishes. Those things you long for with all your heart. The things you dream about and yearn for. How the impossible becomes possible in a single flash. That’s what I mean.” Of all the things I thought I might know at that moment, I was absolutely positive that we had not been talking about wishes. At the same time I wasn’t about to start arguing with him either. “Tell me. Is there a wish you wish for with all your might? One that you would move proverbial mountains to obtain?”

“Sure there are,” I declared. I could probably think of a half dozen without even breaking a sweat.

“Excellent. And what might that wish be?”

I paused for a moment as I tried to think of any danger that could come from revealing a wish to someone. The only thing I could think of off hand was that you shouldn’t tell anyone what you wished for when you blew out candles on a birthday cake or it wouldn’t come true. Of course I’d only had one of those once and the wish didn’t come close to being fulfilled, so I wasn’t concerned about it. “I really wish that Roo wouldn’t be so lonely. He’s the one that helps all of us, but there are a lot of times it seems like he could use some help himself but he won’t ask us for it.”

There was a long pause. “Oh. As much as I would like to be able to do something about that, such a wish is beyond my power to grant. I’m afraid it must be a wish you’d make for yourself.”

“Whatchamean a wish I’d make for myself? That is a wish I’d make for me. It makes me miserable to see him like that. And at night he whimpers about whatever it is that bothers him so it keeps me up cuz his hammock is near my pallet.”

“I understand that,” the figure said with exaggerated patience. “However, the wish you make has got to be something just for you. Something that will benefit you directly and nobody else.”

“You mean like the type of wishes you get if you rub a lamp or that pixie dust grants you?”

“Exactly!” the man said. “Now you understand.”

“Did you ever wonder what would happen if you rubbed a magic lamp with pixie dust? Do you get six wishes then? Does the magic cancel each other out so nothing happens? Does it make sparks?”

The glimpse I caught of the look the man gave me was similar to the one Red had given me earlier. “Why would anyone wonder about something like that?” The tone left no doubt that he wouldn’t be included on a list of people who did wonder about such things.

“Why wouldn’t they?” I said, a little hurt. “I thought about it, didn’t I?”

“Well that’s hardly a sterling recommendation, now ain’t it?” His voice went from formal to southern twang and back again over and over. “However once again we done strayed from the point we were jawing about. Have you thought of that wish yet?”

“What about that every kid everywhere have a happy childhood? That’d be awesome and it’d be a wish that was for me because it’d make me happy.”

The man sighed, his voice sounding as though the patience were a bit more forced this time. “Look friend Cubby, perhaps you’re not getting this or perhaps you have something else in mind. Let’s try this here thing one more time. You can have a wish. A wish that will benefit you and no one else. You can have treasure. You can become Lord’s Pan lieutenant. Or even better you can become Lord Pan.” He tousled my hair and the ones on the back of my neck rose even higher. “Courage, boy. I can offer you more courage than anyone else anywhere has. Minstrels will be singing of your quests and accomplishments for years to come. Or something beyond courage, perhaps. A sword that will make you the best swordsman ever will let you find your own courage.” As he’d been outlining the treasures he could give me, his voice got lower and more intense. The wind around us had died and there was not a sound to be heard. The moon was still as big and red and the air was just as thick, it was just as though all of this was occurring in some sort of vacuum.

I couldn’t become Pan and I sure couldn’t ever have that much courage. I had all the treasure I needed from raids against pirates. It all sounded very exciting and stuff, but there wasn’t anything that I was really interested in. Still, he didn’t sound very happy and his patience didn’t seem to be in inexhaustible supply. “So all I do is tell you what my wish is and then you grant it?” I hedged.

“C’mon, boy. You know that something worth something has to be worked for. It’s the extent of the work that need be done that changes. In this case all you have to do is win a little contest. You could say it be a sort of wager.”

“What type of contest?”

The man looked at me in surprise. “What type of contest? Why any type of contest ya want to have. You don’t play the fiddle by chance, do you?” He played a few chords which I hope weren’t supposed to make me believe anyone had a chance of outplaying him.

“Uh, no. I don’t play any musical instrument.” I was pretty sure the kazoo didn’t count and my skill with that was pretty questionable.

“No matter, lad. No matter. How about cards? Chess? Dominoes?” I shook my head at each one. “Tic-tac-toe?" The note of exasperation had been rising with each suggestion “Surely there’s something you’re good at. Good enough that you know that you can beat me at it.” It looked as though the grin was a little forced and I suddenly noticed it was possible to look at his face again. A face which seemed all at odds with what he was wearing. It was a face that should have been above a body in a tuxedo or suit or something like that.

“How about a tree-falling-out-of contest?” I asked. “I bet I could win that with my hands tied behind my back because if your hands are tied behind your back it’s a lot easier to fall out of a tree that way.”

“How does someone win a contest such as that?” the man asked, his forehead furrowed in puzzlement.

“Aw, that’s easy,” I bragged. “Whoever makes the bigger thump or the bigger hole in the ground when they land. Or sometimes the guys say it depends on how many pine cones come down with me or how many branches I knock down on my way. Of course you can only use the number of pine cones if you’re in a pine tree. But I bet if I fell out of an oak tree and I managed to have even just one pine cone fall with me, they’d say I won.”

The look the man gave me wasn’t exactly one of horror, but it sort of had that type of quality mixed in with it. “I do not believe such a contest would be capable of being fairly adjudicated.”

“Huh?”

“We wouldn’t be able to tell who won. Fairly.” The last word came out as though it had had to be pulled.

“That’s no problem. How about a mudball contest? I’m really good at that.”

“Mudball? Is that some sort of sport?”

“Not really,” I said, thinking hard about it. “It’s more like,” I brightened up, “like a contest! It’s kinda like a snowball fight, but you use mudballs. Oh, and I can’t do that with my hands tied behind my back cuz I can’t throw with my feet yet. Leo says that I should probably learn since I’m so bad with a sword that maybe I’d be better if I used my toes instead of my fingers. Of course if I did that, I’d have to go barefooted all the time but that’d be okay. I’m always losing my pawmocs anyway. Roo swore he was going to sew them to my feet, my real feet, one day, but he hasn’t yet. I think I’d rather lose them then have then sewn to my feet though.” The expression on the man’s face was a bit closer to fascinated horror. “Oh and there’s this guy who’d be perfect to tell us who won. He’s not really a guy but more like a sort of spirit. He’s Chinese and sometimes does snowball fights with us. That’s pretty cool too, but it’s too hot to snow and the elves won’t make it cooler just for us Lost Boys. Maybe they would for you.”

For some unknown reason, the man pulled the bow across the fiddle again. All that came out were a bunch of discordant notes that didn’t rise as far as the top of the signpost before falling to the ground. Above us the moon had gone from a red tint to more of a pinkish one. “I do not believe such a contest would be possible either. Perhaps some other sort of contest. One that has a definite winner and a definite… loser.”

I sat down on the ground and put my head in my hands. “You don’t think any of my ideas are any good, do you?” I sighed. “Hey! I got it. Blueberries.”

“Is that what you want as your wish? All the blueberries you can eat?” The fact that I might have actually come up with a wish seemed to make him all excited for some reason but his face actually crashed when I shook my head to indicate it wasn’t my wish.

“That’d be a ton of blueberries. But I was thinking what if the contest was who could eat the most blueberries at once and if we tied, then we could have it be whose paws… er, hands, were more stained with blueberry juice.”

The fiddle fell to the ground with a raucous crash. The man turned towards me, fire in his eyes. “You’re doing this on purpose aren’t you?”

“Doing what? You said stuff I was good at. Well I’m great at falling out of trees, mudball fights, and eating blueberries. I bet I could even win at the blueberry contest if my hands were tied behind my back but if it was a tie, then we couldn’t settle it by whose hands were most stained. Maybe whose shirt was. Well, your shirt or my pelt. I’m also good at King of the Hill, but I don’t know that it’s really cuz I’m skilled at it.”

“Enough,” the man said, the bow dropping to the ground to join his fiddle. “This is the height of ridiculousness. I should… should…” He never finished what it was he should do but instead snapped his fingers. There was a sudden lurching and I was glad I was already sitting down because I was pretty sure I’d have tossed my cookies if I hadn’t been. It was a close thing nonetheless.

When the ground stopped moving I looked to find myself on the cliffs above the sea. Sitting on a cliff edge, tossing rocks into the water below was Red. “I see you made it back,” he said with a grin.

“Back from what? Who was that guy?”

“I’m not exactly sure who he was, but I’ve got a pretty good idea. Every one of us meets him at some point. He just suddenly appears. He asked you about a wish and a contest didn’t he?”

“Yeah. He said I could have whatever wish I wanted if it was for myself as long as I beat him at some contest.”

Red grinned. “And you refused three times, right?”

“Not really.” Red’s grin became a frown. “I refused twice and decided to choose a contest instead. He didn’t like falling out of trees, mudball, or eating blueberries and finally gave up.”

Red rolled his eyes. “Only you, Furball.” He sighed. “Sorry I didn’t recognize him or I’d have never wandered off. I should have recognized him and that stupid field. That’s where he always shows up. At some crossroads.”

I shrugged. “No big deal. He’d have probably caused it to happen some other way if you hadn’t. Still… there is something I coulda wished for.”

“What’s that?”

“It would have been really cool to have had that blueberry eating contest.”