Witt, who found herself quite amused by all this, did not want to miss a moment of it by falling asleep, but as she listened to the raspy melody of Piper’s flute, her body relaxed and her eyes became droopy.
Then suddenly an earlier statement popped back into her head.
“Wait,” she sits up and asked, “if Piper’s not a misfit, then why does she sleep here?”
“Piper doesn’t sleep,” Lexi replies yawning. “She’s afraid she’ll miss out on something. She comes around when she can’t find another adventure.”
“She doesn’t sleep?” Witt asks in a whisper. “Isn’t she from the other side of the second star like us?”
Oc shrugs. “some stories say she is, some say she isn’t.”
“So what’s the truth?”
“Well no one really knows. It’s just how the stories go.”
“Like Piper being a Lost Boy!” Avit signs, peeking over her hammock and turning her lantern on low… “or so the story goes.”
“I thought girls couldn’t be Lost Boys” No One interjects.”
“Right,” Poise agrees. “I’ve heard that too, something about girls being too smart to fall out of their cradles.”
Myth laughs staring up at the stars, “everyone has an answer for everything. You don’t have to be smart to stay in a cradle, they’ve got belts and loops and those sorts of things don’t they?”
“Well yes.”
“And any way I slice it, it seems girls and boys aren’t so much smarter than each other since we’re all pretty much the same…except,” she signs thinking for a moment, “well ‘cept girls have even more reason not to want to grow up.”
“That’s true,” Avit agrees. “It doesn’t seem like much fun for…for anyone.” She turns to the new arrivals and signs curiously.
“The stories goes…that they play a strange game on that side of the stars, that it’s not just pretend, but you’re forced to play a part.” she hesitates, that you are what the say you are…and only what—”
Myth shivers, scratching her skin in itchy discomfort. And Avit drops her hands, unsure of what to say next.
Oc looks over at the new arrivals, brows furrowed in frightened concerned and picks up where she left off. “Is it true? Does it really not matter what you think…and no one really cares if you’re happy?”
“I heard,” Lexi interjects. “I heard from the pen scratch of a girl’s diary, that traveled all the way from there to here, that they stop girls from going on adventures…”
The new misfits all go quiet. And the sound of rocking hammocks, chirping insects, and the raspy lullaby from the Maestro’s pan fill the silence.
“I was never the right girl anyway,” Poise’s voice raspy and sullen breaks the silence. “My body never fit and my hair and my skin—”
“There is no right,” Brave spits out, her rage bubbling beneath her sharply whispered words. “We’re supposed to be silent…compliant, fit someone else’s story.”
“And if you couldn’t be, whatever it is they wanted you to be…you weren’t anything at all,” No One whispers.
“Sounds like they’re wrong,” Piper interjects from the top of the banyan tree.
“They can’t all be wrong,” No One mumbles a defeated sigh.
“Why not? If all of you are and you say what you are, then what else is there? Besides, who cares what they say if they were so smart, they wouldn’t have grown up in the first place.”
“That’s true,” Avit signs laughing, “growing up’s for pickle brains and everybody knows it.”
“But everyone does it over there, on that side of the stars,” Myth adds, swinging pensively. “They couldn’t think of any other ways to be?”
“They sound like unremarkable creatures,” Oc decides flatly. “No wonder they have unremarkable beliefs.”
“They’re not—” Witt begins to defend, but hesitates. She glances over at Brave, twiddling a branch between her fingers, eyes narrowed and angry.
She turns to Deter, who is lying with her back to everyone, arms wrapped tight around herself as she rocks quietly in her hammock.
Witt bites her lip worriedly, then thinking quickly called out to the Maestro. “Piper?”
The lullaby pauses. “Were you really a Lost Boy?” she asks. “What was it like?”
“I don’t know, I don’t remember, ask Myth.” She leans down over the branch and calls down. “Myth.”
The Storyteller mumbles a groan, yawns, then sits up. She crosses her legs, tilts her head in thought, and positions herself for telling a tale.
“The story goes that Piper was a Lost Boy with the best of them. That she was and still is a better flyer, a better fighter with her sword and her fist, although she tends not to use them, preferring her music. They say that she learned every bird call and mermaid song she ever heard, that she knows the songs of the sunrise and set, the songs of sleep and death, and the song of youth. They say she even played it for the Lost Boys so none of them would ever have to grow up, but they…” the Storyteller’s voice tsks with heavy disapproval.
“…did not appreciate that the Maestro had forgone her typical payment, and took her gift as an entitlement.”
“What do you mean?” No One asks.
“The story goes that they came from the other side of the stars too, and over there, there were mothers, and they demanded Piper become theirs. They, free from the duties of age, wanted someone to shoulder it.”
“Couldn’t they do it themselves? Youth never rid us of responsibility,” Deter mutters.
“Or so the story goes, but they were used to taking, and taking,
so they insisted that Piper take the place of their mother.
But the Maestro wants nothing more or less than this, to play, to find, and create every song that is and ever will be, to be, at any moment, and every moment, completely and entirely free.
Which enraged them.
So one night they stole her pipe while she was sleeping. Then they locked her up, so she could not leave.
And they would come around routinely, playing a strange game, crying and whining, demanding she comfort them. And when she told them
‘I DON’T CARE!’
They yelled, spit, and screamed
‘YOU HAVE TO CARE, YOU HAVE TO CARE’
as they dangled her pan in front of her, as they broke it into pieces and taunted her.
‘It doesn’t sound like a mother, it doesn’t sound like a mother.’”
The leaves of the banyan tree sway as the Storyteller tells the tale. The cold wind pushes through them taking the words and their sting with it into the dark night and open air.
“With nowhere to run and nothing to play, the Maestro started to fade.” Myth whispers as the island became still and the melody somber.
“Then, she started to age. They say she could feel time stretching her forward, first by her head as her feet pressed deep into the ground in defiance, trying to escape the current which pulled on her and her alone.
And she realized, that if she did nothing she would be forced to become what they said she was, and only what they said she was.
So she escaped.
She waited till someone fought over the sun and the moon and in the middle of the day when the were all away, she flew high into the sky,” Myth exclaims, voice bright with delight.
“And she was just a little ways from getting away, when The Boy ordered one of the Lost Boys to shoot her down,” Myth whispers her voice becoming low and dark.
“And one of them did.”
She pinches her fingers as if grasping the tail of an arrow, closes one eye, as if aiming.
“Straight in the side.” She shoots.
“And Piper fell.
She tumbled out of the sky yelling the whole time.
‘I don’t want to be their mother, I don’t want to be a mother’
And after she hit the ground, while her whole body still stung and ached with pain, and right before her eyes closed she heard a voice say.
‘Fine, you don’t have to be’
And Piper was relieved.
But when she awoke, she found herself looking up, but unable to stand. She yelled at The Boy and the Lost Boys, and at everyone, in the land that never is or was, but they pretended not to hear her, and The Boy just looked down at her and shrugged coldly, asking
‘What good is a girl who doesn’t want to be a mother? A girl like that isn’t a girl at all, just a shadow.’
“And that’s how you became Pan’s shadow?” Witt asks looking at her.
“Pfft, not his shadow, a shadow.” Piper recoils annoyed.
“A shadow,” Myth corrects, “and the Maestro spent every day plotting and planning her escape, for she would not assist in her own capture. But the boys made her pain into a game, every time she would try to slip away they’d attempt to catch her.
Until one day a mermaid came to her aid. She smuggled her underwater until she was just under the reflection of the second star and then she told her to fly as fast as she could till morning.
And Piper did.
But The Boy chased her and chased her, around the world through every town, and country, through countless children’s bedrooms. You’d think he’d have lost interest quickly, that The Boy, who forgot everything, would forget about her, but no.
He only forgot what he had and hated to lose anything he wanted, so he chased and she ran till they got to an open window in London with—”
“Her,” Piper interrupts her voice foreboding and sinister. The island suddenly shrouded in dark, dark shadow. “who tied my feet to his feet so I could never escape.”
“Or so the story goes.” the Storyteller’s voice cuts through the heaviness, her voice a comforting lull to soothe the Maestro.
“And so the story goes,” the misfits echo lifting the shroud with their chorus of voices.
“But wait,” Poise protests, not content with the ending. “That can’t be the end…how—how did you…” She turns to Myth, “how did she get free?”
Myth shrugs, “I don’t know, that’s just how the story goes.”
Brave sits up suddenly. Her brows knit, uncertain. “I think I know, and Witt, maybe you do too.”
“Not all of it but some of it.” Witt agrees thinking very hard. “Piper flew into a little girl’s bedroom one day,” Witt begins
“Yes, yes,” Brave continues “and the little girl untied the string.”
“Who told you that?” Deter asks.
The two girls look at each other from across the banyan tree. “We don’t…remember,” Brave admits.
“It doesn’t matter,,” Myth says listening. “If that’s how the story goes, that’s how it goes. Tell me and I’ll add another beginning to the tale of Piper Pan.”