“Ah, it’s good to be young! Back to the story—on that fateful day when Hook lost his hand, I decided that I would fly over Miath. When I arrived there, there wasn’t the usual group of drunken pirates, gawking over some of the rocks that lie up the mountain from the mermaids . . .” Peter’s eyes widened, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “No. There was only one man, his broken body lying on the great sea-glass rock that overlooks the Gray Shore. This is Sybella, the rock that the mermaids pulled from the bottom of the depths of the sea. As large as a table and filled with the skulls of their elders, the rock is pure evil.”
Peter got a faraway look in his eyes. “To this day, I will never understand how the man got there. He had been stabbed with a single, thin blade, up through his ribs, and was slowly bleeding to death, his blood turning Sybella a terrible shade of auburn. His body was slowly calcifying, and green sores cracked at his lips, a combination of the salty air and the mermaids’ poison that was slowly seeping up from the rock.”
Peter shook his head.
“I did what I could to save him, but it was too late. I offered to carry him home, but he confided to me that he had no home, that the pirates had been his home, and they had betrayed him. I told him not to speak, to save his energy, but he kept whispering to me . . . three little words.”
The entire room leaned forward as Peter bent over the moon throne, his eyes glittering with excitement. His mouth turned up in a serious smile, and he began whispering it again and again . . .
“‘The Sudden Night . . . The Sudden Night . . . The Sudden Night.’ I didn’t understand what he was saying, but I was sure that he was calling out for death to take him. Those words had no meaning for me, not yet. I stayed beside him as he whispered these words, his body convulsing with each breath. Finally, his eyes went dim, and I saw the life snuffed out of him upon that green glassy rock.” He closed his eyes. “Though he was heavy, I heaved his body off the sea-glass rock, where it would be a haven for Keel cats. It was only then that I saw the message that he had written in blood on the side of the rock. Scrawled in red were the numbers 42 and 73, and he had drawn some strange lines beside them. At first I wondered if these were the amounts of gold he had been promised, or the number of men he had left behind, but no. I remembered that many years ago, I had seen a nautical map, a tool of sailors, and had tossed it into the treasure room. The oceans of Neverland are vast, and pirates often end up circling in its tricky waters. I committed the numbers to memory and flew back to Pan Island. To say that I turned the treasure room upside down is a bit of an understatement.”
He chuckled and took a breath. Wendy shifted, and when she moved, all the little Lost Boys moved with her. Michael clutched possessively to her hand, and she watched as members of the crowd kept their eyes riveted on Peter.
“Finally, at the bottom of a chest, under a bag of dresses, I found this map.”
From his pocket, Peter pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and held it up to the lunar light. The crowd gasped at its beauty, but to Wendy, who had seen many maps, it seemed fairly plain.
“After a few minutes of figuring out how it worked, I learned that 42 and 73 were coordinates.”
He paused for effect.
“And so, like a fool, I decided to fly there by myself. When I reached the coordinates, I kept rechecking the map, thinking that I had done it wrong, because there was nothing there. It was only the Teeth, those sharp white cliffs that rise out of the ocean on Neverland’s east side—you know them well.”
Wendy did remember them from their flight in: uninhabitable, sharp, deadly cliffs that jutted violently out of the surf.
“The water pounds so hard against the base of the Teeth that not even the mermaids dare to venture there. There was not a stitch of anything there, not a person, nor a glint of anything along those rocky crags. Until . . .”
He leapt off the top of the throne and settled down into the seat, his legs crossed, his body floating inches off the chair. Showoff, Wendy thought with a warm smile.
“Until I flew up to the sides of the cliffs, so close that I could brush their razor-sharp edges with my fingertips.”
He trailed his fingers down through the air, and in that dark room, Wendy swore that she could almost feel the jaggedness of the cliffs.
“As I flew, I felt a strange, warm air brush my fingertips, so unlike the coolness that radiated off the Teeth. I turned back and followed the warm air upward a dozen feet. There, disguised by a crudely painted whitewood slab, was a . . . a hole.”
The room gasped. A Pip with a jagged scar over his eye leapt to his feet, unable to control his excitement.
“What was in it, Peter? What was it?”
Peter grinned in his direction. “Would you like to know, Will?”
The boy was practically bouncing. “Yes! Yes!”
Peter turned to his adoring crowd.
“Would you all like to know?”