The fairy gives me an exasperated look before diving off my palm and whirring around my ankles.
Hook stares on and so do I as she fabricates a beautiful pair of knee-high moccasins from nothing. She zips back up to my hand.
“Oh, Rune, they’re gorgeous!” I look from her to my feet. “I love them! Thank you!”
Jamison’s just staring, mouth open, eyes wide, like he’s never seen a fairy before or magic.
Rune trills, glancing between Jamison and I.
“Just up the mountain, I believe. Would ye care t’ join us?”
She makes very tiny kissing sounds, and I pull her away from Jamison’s line of sight again.
“Oh! Stop that, immediately,” I whisper to her, and she jingles, laughing.
Jem cranes his neck, trying to see what’s happening, and Rune jumps from my hand and flits over to him, hovering at his eye level for a few seconds and then over to his ear, chiming so quietly I can’t hear her.
“I ken.” He nods and pulls back, looking at her, confused. “No, say that again, slower now. Oh. Oh, I will, aye.” He nods. “I swear. No, I d?nnae like him either.”
I frown over at them, and Jem flicks me a smug look as Rune moves away from him.
“Perhaps ye could fashion her up a wee coat fer the mountains too?” he asks her pleasantly, but that absolutely sends her bouncing between us like an enraged pinball.
“He didn’t mean it!” I shake my head.
“It’s fine!” Hook shakes his head quickly, panicked almost. “She can hae mine. If she’s cold, she can hae mine.”
That placates her a bit, and the fairy flies right in his face, tinkering and waving a scolding finger at him before flying away at the speed of light.
Jamison looks over at me, eyebrows up.
“All right, d?nnae ask a fairy for a coat. Now we know.”
I breathe out a laugh, and we start walking into the rain forest the town blends into.
He stares over at me for a little while before I say anything.
“What?” I ask defensively.
“The fae”—he squints—“d?nnae often take to people.”
I purse my lips, not really knowing what to say, but he keeps staring in a strange kind of awe.
Jamison shakes his head a bit. “And never do they do them magic.”
“Well.” I shrug, giving a tall look for no reason in particular. “I’m very charming.”
He catches my eyes and nods to himself. “Aye, I s’pose y’are.”
That disarms me a bit, enough for all the fuel I had to be argumentative and cross at him for no reason to be immediately drained from my tank.
Jem shakes his head, still thinking on it. “Ye d?nnae see a lot o’ fairies about these days. Good at hiding.”
I nod once. “And for good reason.”
“Ah.” He gives me an impressed look. “So ye’ve been doing some reading…”
I look over at him, pleased. “I have.”
“Come and take my books anytime ye want them,” he tells me, which although I don’t think he meant to be a sexy thing to say, it was absolutely a sexy thing to say.
Rye told me that it would really only take you a couple of days to walk around the entire island and that from the tree house to Neverpeak Mountain, it would take half a day. Less so from Zomertierra.
We’re in the part of the rainforest where it starts bleeding into a regular forest, which I can see up ahead begins to turn to autumn.
Jem and I walk for a bit in silence, and it is the best kind of silence. Peter doesn’t offer much of it; to him, silence is boring, silence is to be filled, and he fills it, constantly. Stories of himself, crowing, laughing, kisses sometimes—not exclusively with me alone, it would appear.
But here with Jem, it’s just a stillness I’ve not really been afforded much yet in life.
I can hear birds and the sound of the air moving through the trees around us and not much else.
But silence has a downfall. Silence is when the thoughts come.
Accidental thoughts, ones you’re not even trying to think of but there they are, growling away all the same from deep inside your monster of a conscience, ones you’ve been ignoring all day because if you don’t ignore them—if you were, perhaps, to ponder such things—the very fabric of everything as we know it might pull and fray, and then what?
But that is the question, isn’t it?
And then what? And actually, really, and then even what?
For all I know, the pirate is dating that girl, and he’s just a wonderful （terrible） flirt.*