“Boring. The wine isn’t here. Next room!”
Wendy could have explored the chests for hours, but she followed Peter out of the room and back out into the narrow hallway. The next room had a half door that came down from the ceiling. Peter pushed it up into a narrow opening in the rock. They stepped inside, the Lost Boys at Peter’s heels, the room striking them wide-eyed and silent. This room was much larger than the chest room and was designed for a specific purpose. It was a perfect cylinder on the inside, its white walls smooth and shiny, reminding Wendy of a waterworn pebble. Two dim lanterns flashed their light against the walls, where it crawled and jumped with a hypnotizing shadow that circled around them: the shadow of bars. The walls were scrawled with random words and discombobulated sentences, each written angrily in black soot, everything from the word Pan, written again and again, to a snippet of a John Donne sonnet: Death, be not proud, though some have called thee.
In the very center of the room was a hanging cage. Its shape reminded Wendy of a birdcage, only it was large enough for a full-grown man. Its domed roof was marked by iron locks that snapped over each hinge. At the crown of the roof, a single orange lily bent its head over the cage, its pollen drifting lazily down. The cage was empty, but its impact was haunting all the same; moved by a few gears and pulleys that hung down through a cylindrical opening at the peak of the room, the cage continually spun clockwise, making Wendy dizzy just watching it. Faster and faster it spun in that one direction until it seemed to slow down before spinning the opposite way, gaining speed again until the pattern repeated.
“What is it for?” she asked.
“Torture.” Peter grinned, his eyes amused as he looked over the room without a hint of fear. “Particularly for someone who flies. It would disorient you, spin your internal axis.” He leaned back and laughed, clutching his belly. “And it’s all for me!” He kicked a splash of water toward the cage, completely unaffected by the jarring sight. He snorted.
“Hook thinks himself so creative with all his pulleys and inventions. As if he could hold Peter Pan. C’mon, the libations we’re looking for aren’t here anyway.”
Wendy continued to watch the cage spin, fascinated by how it continued rotating this way and that, faster and faster, like a spindle. There was a seductive rhythm to it. Peter’s fingers on her elbow finally pulled her out of the trance.
“Wendy?”
“Yes, I’m coming. Sorry.” She shook her head. Foolish girl. Time was of the essence—any moment now, Kitoko could shout down that pirates had returned, or worse, that the ships had somehow been notified. Peter flew past Wendy and the boys, landing in the doorway of the third room.
“In this room, we have—” Peter stopped. Wendy saw his body go rigid and thought that they had finally found what they were looking for, but then Peter turned around, his eyes the darkest shade of navy that Wendy had ever seen. He struggled to control his voice.
“The wine isn’t in here. Check the next room.”
The Lost Boys stared at him until he narrowed his eyes.
“Now!”
Then they all trooped past him, on to the next room.
“This one’s a privy!” one of the Lost Boys whispered, and then they all sloshed down to the next one, giggling as they went, as boys were known to do at the mention of a privy.
“Peter, look at this! Look at all this treasure!”
Peter darted toward the fifth door. Wendy quietly stepped into the third door, the one that had affected Peter so dramatically. She braced herself for the worst—bodies perhaps?—but found herself looking at a strangely familiar sight: instruments. Otherwise a bare room with elegant dark green walls piped with gold crowning, the room was piled high with haphazard stacks of instruments and sheet music, the piles sitting on a raised platform to keep them safe from the river lapping beneath them. In addition to the music, a broken harpsichord leaned up against the wall, its teeth askew. There was a lovely violin with tiny painted angels on the neck that rested on the broken harpsichord. A guitar, two brass horns, and one strange instrument involving animal skins, strings, and a corded bone also filled the space. The walls were adorned with flutes and clarinets and an ancient harp that looked like it once belonged to a lady of leisure. Wendy reached out to strum one of the strings of the harp, her fingers brushing it with a clean pluck. The sound rang out over the sound of the water around her feet, which were becoming quite cold.
A hand closed hard around her own.
Peter’s.
She turned to face him, afraid that he would be angry with her. But the eyes that met hers weren’t navy. They were the bright green that she adored so much, the color of trees and emeralds and life on Pan Island. He smiled gently at her.
“What are you doing in here?”