He rolled his eyes and batted it away without a second glance. The spider gave a tiny cry as it fell through the jungle air. Peter motioned forward with silent hand gestures that Wendy didn’t understand but didn’t need to, as she just followed the rest of the boys, flitting from branch to branch, leaping through the air like apes, catching and swinging. Wendy was a bit more cautious as she went, carefully weighing which branch she would grab next, unable to swing so joyfully like the other boys. Peter laughed silently at her before giving her a wink. Her heart fluttered at the gesture. Through the trees they went, silently making their way toward the Vault. Finally they halted, and Wendy could see a small clearing through the dense mosaic of green, a peephole of misty gray light. They were here.
As she moved closer to the cave, hand over hand through the trees, Wendy began to understand that the pile of rocks she had seen from above was much more than a loose pile of boulders. What she had believed was the front of the cave was actually the side of a gigantic rock face, its discombobulated features assembling themselves at just the right point. Violently carved in shades of dust and bone, the menacing skull rose up out of the river, the main head composed of three enormous boulders clustered together. The face was made up of deep grooves carved into the rock face, each accented with stitches made of bones that crisscrossed over the eyes and nose. Dripping green condensation pooled at the bottom of the concave eyes and trickled down the face, angry tears to mar a horrified expression of fear. The mouth of the cave opened up underneath the pooling green, an unhinged jaw open in a perpetual scream, wide enough to swallow a man whole.
The river poured out of the mouth and onto the rocks below, foaming angrily underneath large wooden spikes that protruded out of the mouth like wicked teeth. On the other side of the skull’s head, another line of children’s skeletons rocked in the wind, their rib cages also filled with the red birds picking invisible scraps of meat off their bones. A gray mist of water and air and river poured over the skull, caressing the sides of the cave like a bridal veil. At the center of its forehead sat Peter’s yellow moon, a painted third eye that seemed to watch their approach with an unwavering stare. The moon had been crossed out with what appeared to be blood in the shape of two hooks. The sun shifted, and suddenly the gigantic skull was encased in a dim light as Shadow Mountain cast its heavy shroud over it. The yellow moon glowed in the mist, the empty eyes weeping a luminescent green.
“Quite a sight, isn’t it?” Peter whispered to the boys. “I can’t wait to see the inside.”
He rubbed his hands together greedily.
“Finally. The Vault. It’s ours. Boys, this is going to be great.”
Wendy thought quite the opposite as a panic rose within her. At the peak of the massive skull, a single guard stood watch, marching left and right, the tick-tock of a clock in his hand loud enough to hear from the silent trees, his eyes going from the sea to the land and back again. His lean muscled arms rested on the huge scabbard at his waist and the pistol in his other hand. At his feet sat a copper cannon that faced out to sea, its black string trailing between his legs.
“Idiot,” Peter mumbled. He turned back to his troops, trailing silently behind him in the trees.
“It begins.”
“Peter, no!” Wendy whispered as she reached out for him, hoping to try and convince him to reconsider this folly, but her arm fell into empty air.
“Peter?”
He was gone, and she watched in silent horror as he flew straight upward, out of the jungle, disappearing into the low clouds. She looked back at the pirate, who had turned toward the jungle, his hand twitching, his eyes narrowed.
She turned to Abbott. “But where . . .”
“Shut up, you stupid girl!” he hissed at her, and Wendy was reminded of why she thoroughly disliked him.
She turned her head back to the sky, and that’s when she saw Peter. Nothing had prepared her, and she felt a cold hand of regret tighten around her throat. He plummeted downward through the clouds, feet first, the soles of his feet flexed out in front of him, his body hurtling down toward the guard with a staggering speed, a bullet in the air. Peter let out a happy crow, and the pirate turned his face up, raising his pistol in the air, but it was all for naught. Wendy watched in horror as Peter landed hard on the man with one foot on each shoulder, crumpling his body into the ground as if he were made of paper. Loud snaps filled the air as the man’s bones broke one by one, his life snuffed out in seconds, his body contorting as it was ground down into the rock by Peter’s speed.
The pirate’s head snapped back hard against the roof of the cave, and then there was no sound, just the quiet cheering of the Lost Boys beside her. She covered her mouth with her hand as nausea rose up inside of her throat. Peter stood on the rock and waved happily toward them. Then, with a laugh, he kicked the pirate’s body off the top of the skull. It fell a few feet before crumpling lifelessly against a large rock. Then, leaving a smear of blood on the rock, it rolled into the foamy river, where it turned over and floated faceup. With a whoop, Peter leapt down off the skull and flew toward the jungle, hovering above his troops.