Oh, the Cleverness of You

“Carling and Tink have finished the bags of pixie dust!”

There was a mad scampering of young boys rushing into Peter and Thistle’s shared room. The two pixies gave themselves a final brush to get rid of the excess pixie dust just as the Lost Boys dashed towards them.

“No need to run!” Thistle laughed. “There’s one for each of you.” She motioned to the cotton bags, carefully strung closed. “There’s also enough dust in each of these to fly for a week. We can finally play.”

It had been a few days since Peter had returned with the pixie — he had since told Thistle that his name was Carling, his favorite color was peach, which also happened to be his favorite food, and that Thistle was his new best friend. She made a small cushion from dandelions to sit next to her pillow so he wouldn’t have to leave her side. Peter said it was pretty normal for pixies to shadow their laughs for a little while, for sixteen years without one’s laugh was a very very long time.

It had also been decided that in celebration of Carling’s arrival to Neverland, there would be a great game of hide and seek. The Lost Boys were to be given pixie dust to make things fair — Thistle and Peter did not need it any longer with their pixies so near. Slightly was the Seeker — the blonde boy just as tall as Thistle stood at the front of the group, and she handed him the fullest pouch she had.

“As soon as you start getting hungry, you can start looking,” Peter instructed, floating with his hands on this hips next to where Thistle stood.

“But Peter, I’m already hungry!” Slightly whined.

“Well eat something fast, and then when you get hungry again it should be mid-day. Good luck, boys!”

As Slightly shuffled into the other room, presumably to find something to munch on, the Lost Boys opened their sacks and began to soar out of the hideout. Only when their hollering voices couldn’t be heard any longer did Peter open his palm for Thistle to take, and together they with their pixies close behind, flew out of the log in the pond.

“Any suggestions for our first hiding spot, Yam?”

She shrugged, pushing the hair from out of her eyes with her free hand. They were above the tree-line now, and just below them she caught sight of a Lost Boy flying face first into a branch. She slowed down the tiniest bit to laugh as he righted himself and continued flying, but Peter’s hand tightened around hers and she caught up to his side.

“How about the closest beach? Everyone else is going to go as far away as they can, but then they can’t come back inland. We should start close, and then work our way further.”

Peter blinked, his grin becoming even more lopsided. “Now that sounds like a stupendous idea. I just cannot believe I didn’t think of it myself! For the record, if we win, I did think of it myself.”

Thistle kicked his shin, which was quickly returned by Peter shoving her down towards the trees. As she spiraled she screamed, “Curse you Peter Pan!” before she broke through the trees and could not longer see him. She slowed herself down before she hit the ground, but she was still lying face up when Peter dove through the canopy after her.

“That was mean, Boy,” she teased.

“I never promised to be nice!” Peter taunted as Carling finally caught up to her and began tugging her hair upwards.

We have to get to the hiding spot! he yelled as he dug his feet into the earth, pulling fruitlessly at a lock of her hair.

“Okay, I’m going, I’m going,” she giggled as she scooped Carling up in one hand. “Which way, Boy?”

Instead of responding, Peter grabbed her free hand and tugged her behind him. Slowly, the salty brine of the air around the sea reached her nose, and Thistle knew they were close to their first hiding place. But before they reached the beach, foreign voices reached their ears.

“…wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it, honestly.”

Both Peter and Thistle came to a halt. Any trace of a smile vanished from their lips. The voice was too deep to be a Lost Boy, and too English to be an Indian. It was too human to be the voice of an alluring merman, and that left only one other possibility.

“Pirate,” Peter hissed.

They did not need to say a word to know to be silent. The floated silently, skirting around leaves whose noises would have given them away. Just as the light from the beach was breaching the forest, Peter and Thistle slowed to a halt, and silently let their feet touch the sandy earth.

If the grown ups standing on the beach were pirates, they were the strangest pirates Thistle had ever seen. Some wore hard hats, tool belts, and jumpsuits that identified them as handy men -- there were around a dozen of these people. Then there were four others, three men in slick black suits and sunglasses, now concerning themselves with straightening their ties and fixing their short hair. The last was a woman — she had frizzy brown hair that could compare to Thistle’s in terms of wildness, a blue pinstripe jacket and pants, nails painted deep red, and perfectly polished shoes. Unlike the other adults, she stared in awe at the island, her glossy red lips fallen open.

“I thought you said the pirates all left after you killed Hook,” Thistle breathed, ducking behind the undergrowth of the forest.

“I thought they did,” Peter said, an unfamiliar dark look creeping into his eyes as he continued to watch the adults. “These look different. This isn’t Hook’s crew.”

“Maybe they aren’t pirates then. Maybe they just want to live here, like us,” Thistle whispered, but even she knew it was naive to be hopeful.

“I don’t think so,” Peter replied gravely. Carling, who had been peeking at the grown ups from behind a leaf with Tink, spun around to face Thistle and buried his face in his tiny little hands. Jaw clenched, Thistle stood once more to look at the adults, unsure what she was going to see.

What she did see scared her more than Peter — surely he didn’t know what they could do. From bags the crew must have carried with them, they had made a pile of chainsaws, axes, dynamite, and lastly five submachine guns that Thistle had only ever seen in her father’s movies.

She swung around, sitting with her back against the tree. “They mean to tear this place down.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because that’s what these kinds of people do back home. They tear the wild down so they can build their industries and get money and power.”

“Sounds like pirates to me,” Peter replied decisively.

Though Thistle was no longer watching, she could still hear their conversation.

“There will be plenty of space here for the first development, ma’am. Once we lay the foundation, that is.”

“How many houses?” A woman asked. Thistle could only assume it was Red-Lipstick-Red-Nails.

“To start, 400. We can expand from there.”

Another man joined the conversation. “Say we sell tickets for one point five million each… which is a little low, I admit, but to gain interest… We’ll have six hundred million dollars as our first paycheck.” She could hear the grin in his voice.

“They’re going to bring more grown ups here!” Peter hissed. “They have to go. We can’t allow this again.”

Thistle nodded, and gripped his hand tight. They flew silently through the woods, then the further they got the braver they became until they were flying above the tree line once more. The Boy in Green stopped, cupping his hands around his lips and crowed. It reverberated through the trees, echoing all through the island. And slowly but surely, little heads of little Lost Boys began to peep up through the tree tops, their faces grave.

“Back to the Clubhouse, now,” Peter ordered. “We have business to attend to.”