Artifacts (14 page)

I laughed. “I’m sorry, but I’m very excited about your feather in a box.”

Slipping the box gently out of Tank’s hands, I ran my fingers along the few scratches on the weathered wood, pausing on the clasp. My eyes lit up when I saw the chicken feather was really a quill pen. The white feathers were coated in wax to preserve them and the pen nib was still pretty sharp. “It’s not a chicken feather.”

While I looked at the pen, Korie walked behind me and peeked over my shoulder.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, reaching out her fingers to gently touch the edge of the feather.

“Tank, where did you get this?” I asked.

“It was on the floor next to where you found the logbook,” Tank said. “It must have gotten knocked off when those two dopes went bouncing past it.”

“Hey, Skylights, have you ever seen this before?”

Skylights dropped what he was doing and walked over to see the pen.

“No, it doesn’t look like anything I remember ever seeing in Neverland.”

The Grumpkin was trying to listen to what we were saying, but Mouth and Crunch were making so much noise that it was nearly impossible. Turning around and timing it just right, he snatched them both in midair and held on to them tightly as we continued.

“I know that whatever present Slightly had given to Wendy had to be small,” Skylights said. “Small enough to hide away from the others until he had his chance to say good-bye.”

“This could be the artifact,” I said. “Tank, was there anything else on the floor?”

Tank walked over to where he had found the pen.

He flipped over several of the chairs to look under them. Tilting up the couch, he raised it high off the ground as he looked for something,
anything
that might have gone along with the pen and the logbook. Balancing it carefully, he reached down and picked something up.

Letting the couch crash down, he ran back to where we were standing. Opening his hand, he showed us a small vial of black ink that had rolled under the couch.

I knew what we had to do. I just didn’t know if I wanted to be the one to do it.

“We need to write something and see what happens,” I told the others. “If we had to write down a name of any fairy tale character that we wanted to appear, who should it be?”

“Whomever you choose, please don’t pick Robin Hood,” Skylights said. “He’s a know-it-all who thinks he’s the only one who’s ever lived in a forest before. And as far as his band of Merry Men, … I don’t see anything the least bit merry about any of them.”

“Please not a girl,” Tank said.

“What’s wrong with a girl?” Korie asked.

“Oh, nothing. I love girls,” Tank backpedaled nervously. I could hear the sound of an apology squeezing its way out at any moment. “It’s just that the really cool girls in fairy tales are some type of princess. I don’t think we need any more princesses, we already have Mouth.”

Everybody laughed including the Grumpkin. Mouth didn’t flinch because he was focused on trying to get away from the Grumpkin’s monstrous arms.

“
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
?”

“No!” Tank yelled. “He’d be climbing all over and ringing every bell he could find.”

“
Jack and the Beanstalk
?”

“No.” I shuddered. “Isn’t the Blackthorn enough? We don’t need another gigantic shrub ripping through the ground and spiraling into the sky. And, besides, those giants are
terrible.
”

“I could summon Peter,” I said.

“You wouldn’t want to do that,” Skylights scoffed. “He’d be all, like, ‘I can fly, I’m such a great swashbuckler, my shadow won’t ever stay on.’ We don’t need extra drama to deal with.”

As we all threw out names of fairy tale characters we’d like to see, Grumpkin slowly, very tentatively, raised his hand.

I was surprised but very interested in what he had to say. “Yes, Grumpkin?”

“T-T-T-Tootles,” Grumpkin said nervously, in a deep, child-like sound. “He’s a Lost Boy, a great warrior, and a good friend. He’s the one who brought Wendy home to London.”

I looked at Skylights.

“He’s right.” Skylights shrugged. “Tootles is a great friend and even though he shot Wendy out of the sky with an arrow after Tink—”

“Darn Tink,” Grumpkin grumbled.

“After Tink told him Wendy was a bird,” Skylights continued. “He did see to it that she made it home safely. He could be a great ally.”

Grumpkin laughed. “Plus nothing bad ever happens when Tootles is around.”

Skylights cracked up. “That’s true. Every bloody battle or thrilling adventure we’ve ever had has always happened once Tootles left to go do something else.”

“So, Tootles it is then,” I said. “What can I write on?”

“Here, take this,” Crunch squeaked, breaking free of the Grumpkin’s massive arm for a moment to reach out and hand me the original list we had gotten from Bartholomew.

Putting the piece of paper down on a table, I flattened it out as best as I could. Taking a deep breath, I opened the vial, dipped in the pen … and held the tip just above the piece of paper. Finally, I slowly, carefully wrote the letters TOOTLES on the paper.

I put the pen down and waited.

“How long is it supposed to take?” Crunch asked.

“We have no way of knowing how long it takes,” I said. “This is our first try.”

Crunch put his elbows on Grumpkin’s shoulder, his face in his hands … and waited.

Suddenly, we heard banging on the front window. There was the face of a small boy, his face
shmooshed
up against the glass, one hand covering his eyes so he could see into the house and the other frantically waving at Grumpkin.

“Tootles!” Grumpkin shouted, jumping to his feet and dumping Mouth and Crunch to the floor as he ran to open the door.

“I have no idea how I got here,” Tootles said happily. “Where is here? How did
you
get here? Is it nice? Is it fun?”

I was awestruck. “He’s Crunch,” I whispered.

“Yeah, he is.” Tank laughed.

“Oh, no,” I countered, “this isn’t funny. Now we have two of them!”

Tootles ran from Korie to Tank to me to Mouth and finally stopped at Crunch. They stared at each other silently. Slowly, they started making faces, raising their arms, and hopping on one leg like they were looking in a mirror.

“It’s Jacob Grimm’s pen,” I whispered to Korie. “I always wanted to know what it was like for the Grimm Brothers to create a character for one of their fairy tales and then see it appear right before their very eyes.”

Korie smiled. “And now you know.”

I nodded. “And now I know.”

“This is the one treasure in this world Hook will be desperate to get his hands on,” I said, sliding the quill pen back into its long, thin, wooden box and snapping the latch shut. “We need to get out of the greenway and back up to the street. It’s too dangerous in this house and—”

Mouth cackled. “And no one can hear you scream.”

“If Mouth is beat up in the forest and nobody hears him, does he still make a sound?” Tank asked, slamming his foot on the ground like he was taking a step toward him.

Mouth jumped up, swung himself around onto the back of the Grumpkin, and held on tight. Grumpkin reached for Mouth, peeled his hands apart, shook him out like a shirt coming out of the dryer, and tossed him back to Tank.

“You guys have got to cut it out,” I said.

“Crunch,” I called out, “I need you.”

“Did he really say that?” Crunch whispered to Korie, bouncing around in his excitement.

Korie had this beautiful, broad grin. “Yes. Go on now, before he changes his mind.”

Crunch came screaming like he was on fire. “I’m ready. What do you need me to do?”

“I need you to paint everything you see outside,” I said. “Start with the porch, the house, all the way to the edge of the maze and the forest. Paint whatever you like, but make sure it will be something that slows Hook down.” Crunch smiled this big smile and turned several times in a circle before heading to the door. “Oh, and Crunch …”

“Yeah,” Crunch said, turning back around.

“Try to remember what you painted and where,” I said. “And leave us a path to get out.”

“You can count on me.” Crunch saluted me.

Crunch was out the door and whipping his brush around like he was conducting some invisible orchestra. Running up to the edge of the maze, he stopped, looked around … and suddenly he was painting up a storm again.

The moment he finished, he ran back to the porch, painted quickly over the glass and the frame, and dove back through.

“So, did you get everything done that you needed to do?” I asked.

Crunch nodded. “I think so.”

“Was it something awesome that will stop a hundred bloodthirsty pirates?” Mouth questioned him. “Or was it something stupid that’ll just make them mad?”

“Mouth,” Crunch said confidently, “what I drew will stop a thousand bloodthirsty Grumpkins … if there were a thousand Grumpkins … and there was blood … and they were thirsty.” Then he apologized to the Grumpkins. “Sorry, guys.”

“We have to get out of here before Hook and Butt-Kiss come back—”

“Too late,” Skylights said, pointing out the window to several lines of pirates, led by both Hook and Butt-Kiss, making their way across the grass toward the house.

I was amazed to see how differently everybody reacted as the villains approached. Tank, Skylights, Grumpkin, and Korie stepped toward the door to meet them head-on while Mouth and Crunch backpedaled across the room, pulling the suitcases filled with Smee and Jerkin along behind them.

Without hesitation, I slipped the pen into my pocket and stepped up with Tank and the others.

“Where did the other pirates come from?” I asked.

“They’ve been around for a few days now,” Skylights said, “and we’ve seen them coming in and out of the woods more often than we would have liked. The edges of our worlds are constantly touching, giving new opportunities to cross over from one to the other.”

“I thought nothing bad ever happened when Tootles was around?” I said.

“Nothing bad has ever happened in the past while he was still around,” Skylights said. “This is a dream come true for him.”

“And a nightmare for them,” I said, pointing to Touch, Grifter, and the other Grumpkin finally making it through the maze and to the edge of the grass behind the pirates.

“They should just go back through the maze and try to save themselves,” Korie said.

“They should,” Skylights said. “But as long as I’ve lived, I’ve never seen a Lost Boy do what he should do. They always seem to opt for what is expected of them.”

As Skylights finished, I saw Touch race around the Grumpkin and start toward the pirates at a dead run. Crossing the grass, he picked up speed, leaped over the back line of pirates, and crashed into Butt-Kiss. The impact rolled them over and over, and once Touch got back to his feet, he continued running to the house.

Butt-Kiss stopped dead in his tracks.

Hook and the pirates slowed as they waited for him. Suddenly, Butt-Kiss turned around and ran back toward the forest.

Touch stumbled up onto the porch and fell through the doorway into the house.

“That was …
amazing!
” Touch said, breathing really hard, trying to catch his breath.

“What did you say to Butt-Kiss?” I asked.

Touch laughed. “I asked him why he was out in his undies in the middle of the day. It usually works pretty well on those big, think-they’re-tough kind of guys. But if I had a couple of more moments, I could have come up with something really good.”

“Convincing him he was in his undies and making him run away was pretty good,” Tank said. “Maybe you can say something like that to Mouth so he’ll be right behind him.”

Outside, with Touch gone, the Grumpkin couldn’t wait any longer. Putting Grifter on his shoulder, he headed straight for the first line of pirates. As they turned to meet him, our Grumpkin ran out of the house and the two immovable forces crashed in the middle of the field with half a dozen pirates
squashed
in the middle.

“Ouch!” I said, cringing. I could feel the initial explosion and the aftershocks rattling the cartoon window frames of the house. “That must have really hurt.”

With the pirates dazed, the Grumpkins headed back to the house. The moment they hit the porch, they dove through the window like Crunch had done. It was a good thing Crunch had painted the window frame because the second Grumpkin was so big it had to stretch, nearly to the breaking point, before letting him slip through.

“Crunch, I don’t see any of your mind-blowing, spine-tingling, terror-producing booby traps stopping any pirates out there,” I said, looking from one side of the clearing to the other. “Did your magic brush run out of paint, or is it working on some kind of a delayed reaction?”

Crunch giggled to himself. “Great work takes a little bit of time,” Crunch said, “and it’s going to be
awesome!
”

As the pirates regrouped with Hook, several of them went running off into the woods. “They must be going after Butt-Kiss,” I said.

“If we can make it back to the forest, we’ll be back within the familiar and be able to defeat them like we have so many times in Neverland,” Skylights said. “But it’s a long way from here to the forest.”

“Hey, Jax,” Korie said, looking out the window. “The pirates weren’t going into the forest to get Butt-Kiss.”

“How do you know that?” I asked, running up behind her.

Korie pointed out the window to where they were rolling out half a dozen cannons they must have dragged off Hook’s ship.

“Such lousy timing,” I said, wishing they had waited until we had gotten out of the house.

At first giggling loudly, Crunch finally sighed. “Are you crazy? Their timing is perfect.”

I looked at Crunch like he was nuts. “They’re going to blow us to smithereens.”

Crunch countered, standing up and raising a defiant fist into the air, “Not if we smithereens them first.”

In moments, a blood-curdling roar burst from somewhere out in the clearing. Running to the windows, we waited to see what had made the noise … and what it would do next.