The Never War

“You shouldn’t antagonize her.” Holland kicked a rock with the toe of her boot. It was early morning, yellow light peeking through gaps in the trees. Peter was standing at the far edge of the practice ring, bending a bow to put the string on it. He didn’t look up at her, but she saw his brow arch. She imagined his mouth was quirked to the side like it often was. She hadn’t known him long, but she knew that much. “Antagonizing her makes her like you less.”

“Your sister seems like she could use antagonizing,” he answered. He strung the bow, examining it with his glittering eyes. Holland herself stood in the middle of the ring, her bow in hand. Down the path and back to the tree, everyone else was still asleep. She would have been if Peter hadn’t woken her. “Harrow thinks her way is always the best way. It isn’t.”

“And yours is?”

“It has been thus far, hasn’t it?” Holland shrugged, kicking another rock. She looked down at the ground, hearing Peter sigh. He walked to her but stopped about a foot away. She knew he was looking at her but she didn’t look up. “Your sisters inability to let you go near danger needs to be harnessed- just that, controlled. It doesn’t need to be wiped away and it doesn’t need to be muted. It needs to be shaped.”

Holland let out an unammused laugh. “She’ll never stop protecting me, even if it means her getting hurt. You saw what the Red Chief did to her.”

“The Red Chief does a lot of things that are questionable.”

Holland looked at Peter then. He was staring at her in the way that he often did. It never ceased to make her shift slightly. It wasn’t that she was uncomfortable under his gaze so much as she was nervous. He always looked at her like she were something to obtain or something to behold. “Coming from the boy who pushed me towards a mermaid. And shot an arrow at me.”

He shrugged is shoulder. “Those are questionable, but I have answers for my actions. The Red Chief does not. Now are we going to discuss politics or are we going to train? You said you wanted to harness this skill that you’ve got, didn’t you?”

In the blink of an eye, Holland pulled and released an arrow. It hit a banana, making it fall to the ground, the arrow cutting clean through it. She glared at Peter, a smirk twisting her lips slightly. “I don’t need to train archery.”

A single fluid motion was all it took for Peter to toss the bow and charge her, yelling, “Shoot me!” Holland was so caught off guard she stepped back, unable to do anything but yelp slightly as Peter crashed into her, grabbing her shoulders and rolling them. They stopped with him heavy on her waist, his dagger at her throat. A small noise of surprise left her mouth as he grinned down at her. “Looks like you don’t know how to shoot an oncoming target, darling.”

“You just randomly charged me!”

“Which is exactly what the Red Chief’s warriors did when they took you. Do you think that people play nice in a war, Holland? You’ve never seen a war. People don’t play by rules.” He rolled off of her easily. Holland laid there, feeling the phantom of his weight on top of her. At the thought of it, her cheeks went red. She pushed herself up. “Which is why I use questionable tactics. It isn’t about fair play. It’s doing whatever it takes.”

Without a response, she nodded her head, gesturing for him to continue. Holland didn’t speak for the next hour and a half. She was too embarrassed to say anything and she was too flustered from him pinning her down to form a coherent sentence. So she learned, practicing how to shoot someone who was charging you. She was itching to practice catching arrows, but it became clear Peter wasn’t going to touch that subject again.

Annoyed and with her bow arm tired, Holland opted out of their training finally. Slowly, trickles of the Lost Boys had come in. Some popped in and out, their heads sprouting through bushes to examine what was happening only to vanish again. Some stayed to watch, letting out a hoot or a holler when Peter flourished his skills.

If there was anything that Holland learned, it was that Peter wasn’t bad at anything. Everything he did, he did with confidence and without error. He didn’t misstep, he didn’t miss, he didn’t fumble. Everything movement of his was languid, smooth and practiced. Holland didn’t understand how he did it. Even Will didn’t seem to be as sinuous as Peter was. There was something more rugged about Wills movements.

Deep down, Holland wanted to be like that. But she wasn’t. She was too quick for everything, too hard moving. If she mistepped, it was because she was moving to hard or to fast. If she messed up, it was because she was pushing too much. She didn’t know how to slow down. There was only black and white for Holland: do nothing or do it fully. She never understood the gray area, like Peter seemed to.

“We’ll pick back up after eating,” Peter said. He had appeared next to her. She had been sitting on a rock, looking up at the trees. She flinched when he sat down next to her. She noticed his eyes were more blue than they were green in that moment. “Did I frighten you?”

“No, you snuck up on me.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No.”

Holland stood, walking up the path towards the home tree. She paused to see Harrow walking down the path. A smile light Holland’s face and she opened her mouth to greet Harrow, but the older girl brushed past her. Holland’s face fell, recalling Harrow’s face when she had heard Holland tell her to stop trying to protect her.

Peter let out a whistle, looking between Harrow’s retreating figure and Holland standing still, stunned. “Awkward.” Holland glared at him, stamping off up the path towards camp. Peter followed her, snickering lightly. She was sure that there wasn’t anything he didn’t find amusement in. “Did I offend you?”

“No, you annoyed me- no, it isn’t the same thing, before you ask.”

He walked towards his own living quarters, throwing her a smirk. “I wasn’t going to, darling.”

For three hours, Holland occupied herself with sitting in the tops of the trees, eating apples. She loved the way the apples tasted in Neverland. Something about them was exotic, opening places on her taste buds that she didn’t know existed. She was always eating the apples, hopping up to the treetops and plucking them down. The green ones were her favorites, though the reds were just as succulent.
This time, she heard Peter before she saw him. The sound of a branch bending made her turn her head. He easily jumped to the one that she was on, making it bounce lightly. She turned away from him, continuing to bite into her apple, swinging her legs as she looked out at the ocean.

Sun high in the sky, the view was beautiful. The water was the bluest she had seen it since she had been there, the sun reflected off of it’s surface. She could see the cove in the far side, wondering where the mermaids were. She presumed they were somewhere underneath the cool surface, up to some malicious deed.

Peter didn’t say anything to her. He watched her watching everything else. He did that often, she noticed. He liked to watch her, whether because he got some sort of enjoyment out of it or because he was trying to learn things about her, she wasn’t sure. But she never interrupted him when he watched. She always let him speak first.

Gently, Peter tapped her hand. She looked at him and he gestured for her to follow him. So she did, limb after limb until they were on the ground. He didn’t stop there. He walked to the left, taking her a direction she never had walked in. It wasn’t a clear path, trees and branches hindering their walk. He always pushed them aside gently, never cutting or hacking them down.

In fact, Holland realized Peter rarely ever damaged the plant life. They lived in the branches and the hollowed out tree, but it wasn’t cut or carved. They adapted to the flaws in the tree, working with them. The firewood they used was always made up of dead logs they found, and even the practice ring show that there were no signs of manmade tampering.

Though she wondered how they had been lucky enough to find so many ways to work with the earth, Holland didn’t ask. Peter had still yet to break the silence, so she let it run on. This time, she watched him. He moved as smoothly as he did when he was training, like his limbs were made of running water.

Breaking out of the forest, they were standing on a part of a beach Holland had never explored. Even with Holland, she hadn’t stumbled on this part. They stood extremely close to the edge of it, Peter holding out his hand, catching her on the stomach to push her back, keeping her from going forwards like she often did.

At first she wondered why, but she didn’t wonder for long. There was a large bay, opening up to the entirety of the ocean. In the middle of the bay was the biggest ship that Holland had ever seen. It was glorious, with billowing white masts, stretching sides and a wonderfully sharp bow. It was absolutely magnificent, something that she had only ever seen in paintings.

How she had never seen the large vessel before, she wasn’t sure. It was impossible to miss, commanding attention in the emptiness of the bay. Though they were far away from it, she could make out the title on the side of it. Jolly Roger. It was done in flowing, white script against the dark wood of the ship. She wondered who it belonged to and why it was in the middle of Neverland. As far as Holland had known, there were not a large amount of people in Neverland.

“That’s the Jolly Roger,” Peter said quietly, as if worried someone would hear him. She looked at him. The way he looked at the ship made her nervous. He didn’t look at it with fear or anxiety- it was the opposite. He looked at it with hunger, his pupils dilated by some sort of craving for the boat. “Remember how I said the Indians weren’t the only one in this war?” Holland nodded. He had said that. He smirked. “That, darling Holland, is our third counterpart of this war. “Captain James Hook of the Jolly Roger. Would you like to meet him?”

Holland didn’t reply, but she felt herself nod.