Panic

Chapter Twenty Three

Chapter Twenty Three

            The colours flew around us again, the bright pink and oranges clashing and spiralling around me.  And then it stopped.  We were hovering over the crystal blue waters, and the sun was rising.

            “Peter,” I said.  “We have to hurry if we want to get back before morning.”

            “Yes,” of course,” he said and he started to fly out towards the island.

            Together we flew to the compound.  While we were flying over the jungle, I started to wobble in mid-air.  “The pixie dust is wearing off,” I said grimly.  “I’ll have to land and get more.”

            “What, you can’t do it while you’re air-born?” Peter asked disbelievingly.

            “And risk spilling our entire stash of pixie dust?” I asked.  “We’ll land, thank you very much.”

            “Alright, alright, no need to bite my head off,” Peter said.

            “I didn’t bite your head off,” I said as we descended.

            “No, no, of course you didn’t,” Peter said.  “You only sounded like-”

            “Peter, just let it go,” I said when we landed.  I put the candlesticks on the ground.

            “Wendy!” Peter yelled.  I whirled around and saw two black shadows standing in front of me.  I reached for my sword, and one of the shadows took a corporal form.  It was Nibs.  His eyes were black.

            Nibs ran into me, and I fell backwards.  The pixie dust fell from my hand, and Nibs grabbed it along with the candlesticks.  “No!” I yelled, lunging for him, but it was too late.  He had already launched himself into flight.  I reached over my shoulder, grabbed an arrow, notched it against the string and aimed at Nibs.  I let the arrow go, and immediately reached for another one.  My first arrow hit Nibs hand, and he fumbled at the pixie dust, but didn’t let go.

            “Wendy,” Peter said, stopping me from releasing my second arrow.  “It’s not worth it.  We need to get back to the compound while they are distracted.”

            I looked up.  “I’m so sorry,” I said, and then I kicked the nearest tree.  “Argh!  We finally had something working in our favour!”

            “It’s alright, let’s just go,” Peter said, taking my hand.  Together we walked to the compound.  The sun was high in the sky when we got to the tree.  We climbed it, and then descended into the compound.

            “Hey!” Peter yelled the minute his feet touched the ground.  “Lost Boys, assemble!  We’ve got a problem, and we have even less time to fix it.”

            James was the first one to get to us.  “I’ll go round up the others,” he said as a number of boys came running towards Peter.  I’d never realized how many there were: near fifty.

            “What’s going on?”

            “What happened?”

            “Where did you go?”

            “Where did you find her?”

            “What are we going to do?”

            “Shut it!” Peter said, and James came back with a few other Lost Boys.  “Our pixie dust was just stolen, along with the extra gold we brought back from London.