Peter smiled naughtily. “Where do you think? From Hook. That’s from the raid, what, a year ago?” He turned back to the Generals and began talking.
Wendy ran her fingers through the money, loving the calming way the coins flowed through her fingers, the light metallic sound of them rising and falling. Pushing her hands deeper and deeper into the coins, feeling their unique weight, Wendy flinched and shrieked when something burning hot brushed her fingers.
The boys stopped talking.
John rolled his eyes. “For goodness’ sake, Wendy, what is it now?”
Wendy wrapped the edge of her shirt around her fingers and then reached in again, quickly finding the burning coin and pulling it out. She held it up to the light, ignoring the uncomfortable heat that was spreading to her fingers through the shirt. In addition to its radiating heat, the coin was heavy, and whereas the other coins were rather dirty, this one was shiny and clean, almost as if it had been created yesterday. She turned it over in her palm. One side was marked with a single tiny skull, with wings stretching out behind it. A jagged X then was etched across the entire side of the coin. On the other side, long spiraling lines circled the coin, with interspersed dots spotted randomly on the lines. Behind the lines was the faint outline of an arrow, a single arrow pointing north.
“How beautiful!” she murmured, turning it over again in her hand, ignoring the heat that was now burning a hole through her shirt. “What does it mean?”
Peter walked up beside her and popped her on the bottom of the hand. The coin flew up in the air, spinning as it went, and Peter leapt up to catch it.
“Fairy money. Very rare. You must be careful with it.”
Abbott looked up at them. “Peter collects them. He thinks he has almost all of them.”
The flying boy grinned. “Of course I do! But that doesn’t stop us from looking for them on raids, ain’t that right?”
Peter slowly floated back down to her and replaced the coin with a dazzling jeweled bracelet made of pear-shaped aqua stones and bright white pearls, each surrounded by gold trinkets of every shape: ships and fairies, trees, flowers and moons. He slipped it onto her wrist, his fingers lingering on her own. Wendy felt as if his gaze could peel the clothes from her body. She gave herself a tiny shake.
“Peter,” she admonished, embarrassed, remembering that the Generals were all watching them.
Peter simply grinned. John rolled his eyes, and Abbott fidgeted nervously. Kitoko finally cleared his throat. It was the first sound she ever heard him make.
“Oh, all right. I suppose we should get back to the raid. Wendy, sit there.” Peter pointed to a stump in the corner of the room. Wendy sat obediently, feeling quite awkward indeed. She fingered the bracelet on her wrist. Peter had given it to her as if it were nothing. Feeling undeserving, she quietly slipped it off her wrist and back into the treasure chest. She turned her attention back to the Battle Room. In the middle of the circle of boys, there was a table, and upon the table, besides several glasses filled with a deep red liquid, was a crinkled map of Neverland. It looked ancient, drawn with a whimsical hand. Dragons and mermaids danced on the bottom of the map, where the sea was drawn in curling strokes. In the left-hand corner of the map, there was an upside-down compass. Wendy watched with amazement as Peter carefully brushed the compass with his finger and the map changed before her eyes; north became south, west and east changed places.
“How . . .” John was breathless.
Peter grinned. “Fairy magic. It’s still around here and there. And Neverland is not a place that wants to be mapped.”
Wendy was bursting with questions but instead chose to listen as the boys laid out their plan for the next night. She had to sit on her hands to keep from being fidgety. Peter circled around the table, leaning forward to put a tiny black ship into the wide crook that was the Bay of Treasures.
“Here’s where Hook will be tomorrow night. My spies in town say that he comes into Port Duette once every two weeks or so for food, drink, and of course, the tarts that grace Harlots Grove. He normally comes in on a Sunday night, the holy man that he is, but . . .” Peter laughed. “My spies deposited some rats into his cheese supply before he left for his last voyage. His men will be bellyaching for food. Hook will agree to go back to port a day early. He will land in the morning and will quickly dispatch his crew to get more cheese. Which means . . .”