Never (Never, #1) (36)

“What were you doing in town?” Peter asks.

Calla shrugs. “Rye goes to town a lot.”

Peter looks at him suspiciously. “What for?”

Neither Rye nor Calla says anything.

“I like the town,” I offer, and Peter glares at me.

Rye gives me a little grateful smile.

“The panther had the baby, and it jumped out the window, scaling the walls. I shot it with an arrow.”

“Oh my god.” I blink. “Was the baby okay?”

Rye nods at the same time as Peter groans, “Who cares?”

I stare over at him, shocked if I’m honest.

Rye shifts, looking away.

“Well, for one”—I give Peter a pointed look—“the baby’s mother, I’m quite sure,”

Rye flicks me another grateful look.

Peter floats up out of the water. “My best story is the one where I kill Hook,” he announces, and I swear to god, I gasp a little, and I will very quietly admit to you (and no other) that my heart goes rather tense for a full four seconds before I realise he’s talking about the elder Hook and not the one with the perfect face and the ocean eyes.

I push my hair behind my ears and breathe out a measured breath.

If I were to be entirely honest, that gave me such a horrible fright that I don’t completely understand, nor do I care to think any more than that.

“Tell us, Peter,” Calla says. “It’s one of my favourite stories.”

Rye leans back on the rocks, eyes closed but squinting still with the sun.

“It was my cleverest death yet,” he tells me, eyes wide and excited. “I lured the crocodile from his cave.”

“How?” I ask, because he’s not big on the details, but I am.

“With blood,” Peter says.

Rye opens an eye, looking up.

“What blood?” I frown.

Peter shrugs. “Just blood.”

“From where?” I press.

“I don’t know.” Peter flies higher into the air before he dives into the sea like a cormorant and back up again, holding a fish he’s caught with his bare hands. “Just from somewhere.” He flies back up, holding the fish still. “So then I get the crocodile to this island that’s really far away. It’s far. It would take you nearly a full day in the Jolly Roger to get there…and then I kept the crocodile there by feeding it things it likes.”

“What does it like?”

“I don’t know.” Peter shrugs again. “Hands and stuff.”

My head pulls back. “Did you say ‘hands’?”

“Ham,” Calla says, over-enunciating. “Right, Peter?”

“Right.” Peter nods.

I swallow, watching that fish in his hand squirm, and all he does is hold it tighter.

“Then I started a rumour in the village about that island being the place where the fountain of youth is.” Peter looks over at me. “He was always obsessed with finding the fountain of youth, so he went. By himself! Like I knew he would, because he’s greedy and selfish, and he wouldn’t want anyone but him knowing where to find it.”

I stare at him, wondering if he knows what he’s saying, whether he’s aware of the hypocrisy, but I don’t think he cares either way.

“Then I tricked the fairies into making me a fountain that looked like it was from the olden days, like the real one but not exactly like the real one, and then I put it in the middle of some quicksand.”

I frown. “Why didn’t the fountain sink?”

He growls, impatient. “Why do you ask so many questions?”

Rye props himself up on his elbows, listening, waiting for an answer.

Calla looks up at Pan like he’s her hero—he is, I suppose. Her eyes are practically glazed over with awe, but mine aren’t. I lift an eyebrow, waiting.

Peter rolls his eyes again.

“I made a fairy spell it,” he tells me, annoyed.

Rye sits all the way up now, frowning himself. “How do you make a fairy do something?”

Peter gives him a long, blank look. “There are ways.”

I get that feeling again. It’s small and I bury it immediately, throw some sand over it, focus on the wonder of it all. No one does the right thing one hundred percent of the time, right? Least of all me. I’m not perfect—I lied to him the other night, and I can be quite a know-it-all sometimes. Oftentimes I think I’m learning more and more, and actually I’m not learning at all. If anything, I’m unlearning everything I thought I knew, but maybe that’s okay. And anyway, Peter is the literal embodiment of youth and freedom and joy, and sometimes those things have prices.

“And then it was easy, really,” Peter says, glancing down at the fish in his hands. It’s stopped flip-flopping now. Just its tail’s moving every now and then.

“Once Hook was on the island, he searched till he found the fountain the fairies made, and he went straight to it, grinning like the big idiot he was. It took him just a second or two to realise he was sinking and th—”

“Can you let the fish go?” I interrupt him.

Peter scowls down at me, cross now. “What?”

“The fish.” I nod at his hands. “Please?”

He looks at his hands again, like he’s just remembered it’s there and it’s real and it’s alive and he’s maybe killing it. He gives it a kiss and tosses it over his shoulder.