The clouds had spent themselves and begun to drift, and through the ruffles between them the wide silver plate that was the moon shone through, like a mirror covered in lace.  It was fortunately a fat moon tonight, and it's misty glow reflected brightly off the water to create a jagged maze of light and textures along the ground.  The dampness still clinging to the Lost Boys skin was just enough to let them show, and Nibs counted heads to see they were all there.

"Toodles...Slightly...John...." Nibs frowned "Where are the twins?"

"They're not back yet." John said.  "Didn't you send them by way of the mountains?  Maybe they found Peter there."

"Then why didn't they come back with him here?  I told EVERYONE that we were to meet back here in an hours time, and it's been bloody well more than an hour."

"Only slightly.  We should go after them.  They've probably found an adventure and we're back here, not having it!" Slightly protested, taking off his hat to snap the water from it.  Toodles flinched as the spray of droplets struck his face.

"We should go home.  The twins can take care of themselves, especially if they've found Peter." The round boy commented.  Nibs looked at him for a moment.

"You, Slightly, and John go back to the tree, I'm sure Mother Wendy has worried herself sick by now."

"Where will you be going?" John asked.

"To the mountains to find the Twins!"

Slightly straightened indignantly "Now wait a minute!  Why should you go off adventuring while the rest of us just go home and sleep?  If you're going after the Twins then I'm going, too.  They've probably been captured by pirates or something."

"In the mountains?" Nibs raised an eyebrow "Why would the pirates be in the mountains?"

Slightly's ears turned red "Maybe not pirates then, but at least lions or bears, or monsters.  Something worth the going."

"The only place you're going is home.  I'm sure they just got lost or something.  I'll find them, and maybe Peter, and then I'm sure we'll be back again within the hour."

"But it's not fair only you should go."

Nibs puffed proudly "Of course it is. I'M second in command, and with Peter gone, I get to decide who goes where.  And you're going home."

"Nibs!" It sounded a little too close to a whine for his pride, and Slightly crossed his arms and stuck his chin to his chest, while the red on his ears spread closer to his nose.  Nibs smirked and turned in the air.  As his body disappeared into the darkness he shouted over his shoulder "Go home!"

"Arrogant creep."  Slightly muttered.

Toodles only sighed. "Come on then.  Lets go home."

Fine. Nibs had never said he had to stay there.
 

The white skin of Jason looked terribly thin when he sat next to the fire, when all the little veins and vessels swoll with blood from the new warmth, and the fine lacings of blue and red rose to the surface.  It looked as though the muscle and bone had been fitted over with parchment in lieu of skin when he had been born (Wendy had a very strange image of a skinless infant like the drawings in the teacher's anatomy book, and the doctor, baffled, tying it into butcher paper to keep it wet)  It was almost like the skin on the back of her mother's legs, which had never seen light any day of their lives.

 Curly hovered at the edges of where the crisp heat extended from the hearth, looking frightfully silly as he tried to appear imposing, since he had forgotten about his state of undress for the moment.  Jason shrugged the bearskin cloak over his thin shoulders and looked about himself a moment.  He was a ragged little thing.  His hair was thinned and seemed to have agreed on a general length of about his shoulders, though it jagged up and down carelessly and split into frays at the base of his skull.  There wasn't any new growth there.  In fact, except at certain angles and certain patches, his pinkish white head could be seen through the strands.

Old women had hair like that.  And old women wore shoes like that; ladies boots that buttoned up the side in a fashion some many years out of date, though cracked extensively on the ball of the foot and sopped with water and mud.  Faded boys stocking popped from the lips of the boots and became red velvet breeches, that were worn of most of their fuzz and stained black at the knee.  Though he was bunched over in a geometric little curve of the back Wendy could still see that the clothes were not made to fit.  The lower set were too small for him and the top half too large, as the yellowed linen turned to a mess of bunches and creases under the cloak, too large to tuck in.  It covered his hands to the finger tips and the cuffs were cut neatly off and stitched back up in a whipstitched hem.

"What do you want?" Curly demanded, earning him shot glare from Jason before the boy looked to Wendy, his face suddenly filled with a theatric expression that hadn't been there before.

"N-nothing." he stuttered. "It's just that it was cold, and it was raining, and I wanted to get out of the rain... I didn't know the house was here.  Just the dry tree."

He frowned innocently as though the cold had gotten to his brain.  Wendy was, at this point in her life, still a generally trusting creature, and accepted that answer at value.  She scurried around to find a rag to help dry his dripping hair.  "But what were you doing out in the rain in the first place?  What are you doing in Neverland at all?"  She snatched up a cleaning rag and knelt down beside him, taking a fistful of his thin hair in the cloth and squeezing. The boy winced and the specialized muscles over his arms and back could be seen to rise even under the cloak.  She was, of course, oblivious to this.

"Neverland, is it now?  That's a fitting name for this place." The boy muttered a little bitterly through clenched teeth. He stared at her hands like they were fleshy spiders hovering above his head.  Wendy pulled the cloth away and moved to squeeze the water out of it before moving on to the next fistful.  She paused, frowned down at the cloth, and then registered with discomfort that no small portion of his hair had come out in her hand.

"Well?" Curly pressed, wanting more information.  He did not get an answer, however.  Both parties before him stared down in absorption at the hair filled rag; Jason's mouth fell open a bit.  Wendy suddenly dropped it and scooted back on her knees uncomfortably.  It remained there like a dead rat on the floor.

Jason's mouth quivered the slightest as one covered hand went experimentally to his skull.  He raked fingers down his wet locks and stared with obvious dismay at the clumps that came out between his digits.  Wendy felt unsure of what to do (something she hated more than anything, for she saw it the sign of a bad mother)  Instead of doing anything for him, then, when he began to blink quickly to cover shiny eyes, she stood and went to the sewing basket and put away the needles and patches and pins nervously.  She couldn't help but glance towards the open tree.  She wished Peter were here.

Wendy rested her hands on the basket lid and chewed her pink lips, unwilling to turn around for reasons she couldn't place but she knew were shameful.  She felt those black eyes resting immobile on the back of her dress, and seconds ticked by without movement from any creature in the house.  Curly looked back and forth between them, trying to place quite what was going on, but his mind couldn't interpret cleanly the twitchy expression that became more malignant with passing time over Jason's face.

It was Michael who broke the silence.  The boy had slept through the noise and the conversations (boys in the underground house learned how to sleep through anything) but the sudden uneasy quiet set his little mind to waking.  He yawned and stretched, and Jason's head snapped up like an alerted elk towards the hanging basket.

"Whats that?" he asked shortly, his mouth pulling in a the corners.  Wendy turned and saw the boy and her little brother look up and down at each other.

"Thats Michael." she replied in equal curtness.

While Michael was normally and agreeable child, he certainly wasn't pleased when Jason fished his arms into the basket and hauled him out by the ribs, holding him at length in front of him with a little too much ease for their sizes.  Wendy made an shrill noise and fluttered her hands helplessly. "Oh!  Put him down!  Jason, put him down!"  she pleaded.  She tried to take Michael from him as a first time mother with a newborn might, but he turned his back to her and examined Michael like a toad.

"Stop!" Michael protested with a whine.  Jason had flipped him onto his belly and was running two finger along the sides of his spine, frowning in concentration, before flipping him again to check his teeth.  Michael bit him.

It was only a game of inches that Curly lunged and caught the little boy before his head struck the ground.  Jason did not even seem to care that he had dropped him, on his head, none the less: his attention was quite easily taken by the little red circle of teeth marks on his finger.  Wendy had had enough.  She didn't care how lost he was or how cold and wet the rain had made it, she wanted him out of her house this very instant, and as mother it was her right.  She got up into a fluster before him, arms jutting out from her hips and cheeks flushing a notably shade of red, and told him to take the cloak and get out and don't come back again unless he learned some decency.

From some boys this would have earned a cowled little exit; from others, a display of anger and indignance.  She wasn't quite sure what reaction came out of Jason.  All she knew was the sting of something cold against her face.

And it was silent.
 

Far across on the other side of Neverland, the twins had descended down the thorny briar to poke and prod at the massive granite slab.  It was slick with a sheen of the sulfur filled mud that even the rain hadn't been able to wash away completely.  Queen Mab pulled a pair of minute little glasses from her skirt and stuck them low on her pert little nose.  It was quiet for a moment.  The twins almost thought the knew what they meant until she gave a theatrical little huff and shrieked "Captain Partlet!"

"Yes, my queen?" Her bird replied, head whipped up at attention.

"It's all still covered in mud!  I can't see what it means!" she complained.  "How can I tell my sister what we've found if I can't even tell her what it means?"

"I'll take care of it, your majesty!" the captain replied, seeming genuinely happy to be doing so.  He squirmed until the twin dropped him and stood, shook himself, and paraded with the wet little squishes of his feet in the muck to the top of the slab.  He looked ridiculous, soaked down to the skin and his little green raincoat hanging off him in pieces, but he puffed his chest forward and stuck out his beak, and looked very nearly captain-like before them.

"Men!  Er, I mean, Boys!  As subjects of the island of Neverland and it's notable king and queen, Oberon and Titania, you are hereby deputized to aid her Royal Majesty Queen Mab of the British Isles, who acts in official capacity by the authority of King Oberon and Queen Titania of the Island of Neverland!  From this moment until our investigation is concluded, you are to act in accordance to the orders of Her Royal Majesty and Myself!"

The Queen clapped her hands eagerly and the captain puffed even more, a pleased blush staining his cere red.  The Twins were not as impressed by his speech.

"What does--"

"--Deputized mean?"

The captain blinked.  "Deputized?  Er, that means you have to do what we say."

"Why?"

The Queen huffed "Because he's Captain Partlet of my flying brigade and he said so!"

"Oh."

"Okay." they said.  And it was strangely as easy as that.  The captain looked confused for a moment before coming to and giving his first order.

"Deputy Twins!" he shouted, addressing them as one person for lack of a better way. "I order you to clean this slab of granite so that Her Royal Majesty may better examine it's inscriptions!"

"Yes, sir!" they replied, deciding to play along.  A game was a game, after all.  It wasn't a very fun game, though.  In only a few minutes they were both covered to their ears in sticky mud, and the whole while the captain snapped encouragement to them "Use your back, boys, aye, there's the ticket!" or "Quickly man, for the queen!"  Compared to some of the games Peter had made them play this one was a stroll through the daises, though.

The Queen, meanwhile, for whom all this fuss was being made, was sitting contentedly in the feathers under Captain Partlet's wing: the only dry spot on the whole island.  Every now and then she stuck her head out to sneeze, at which point the Captain apologized sincerely for his dust, and went back to bothering the boys.

In ten minutes, most of the mud had gone from the slab onto the twins, and Captain Partlet declared the job to be done.  The Queen climbed out from her dry spot onto the Captain's back, arranged herself, and ordered the captain to walk her up and down the stone so she could look at the carvings.  He was happy to do so, and left muddy footprints in the margins as he went.

"Hmm...." The queen was a picturesque image of pondering from her perch (indeed, in manner classes she had been shown the most effective postures to denote that one is thinking, and that one shouldn't be disturbed).  "What do YOU make of these, Captain?"

That meant, of course, she had no idea what they were, and wasn't allowed to admit it.  The captain cocked his head and looked down at the markings with one eye that glistened with Mab's light.

"I think that ones a duck, your majesty." he said, pointing to a pictograph that was little more than a knot of lines and dots.

"Oh, yes, with the little beak and that?" she said, leaning over to look closer.  It didn't look anything like a duck to either of the twins, but they didn't think they were allowed to say anything about it.  The captain pointed to a different one with his toe.

"That ones a bunny."

"Uh huh.  Oh, look!  A kitten!"

It looked nothing like a kitten. The captain waddled further across the little images until he reached the edge.  There was one over there that actually did look something like a nasty old tree, but there was a little metal ring inset below it that he didn't understand.  He stuck his beak in the hole, fished it out, and pulled.  It was followed by several inches of metal chain.  At the Queen's curiosity he waddled backwards down the sloped slab with the ring in his beak until the end of the chain popped out of the hole with a grating sound.  The slab began to rumble.  Mab let go a shriek and threw her arms around the Captain's neck to keep herself from falling.

The slab shuddered and rolled upward on a set of hidden rollers.  In the space it vacated there was nothing but darkness, and a good three feet's worth of it before it stuck its head against the mud walls of the valley and couldn't move anymore.  The slab creaked, whined, and held still.

"Well!" the queen puffed, though she was obviously shaking.  "Captain, take me down to look inside."

"I most certainly will not!" He said indignantly, defying her orders for the first time.  "We have no idea whats down there!  It's my duty to keep you safe as well, your majesty, and I won't have you putting yourself in danger when there are perfectly good deputies at hand!"

The queen looked like she didn't know whether to smack him or kiss him.  She decided on neither, and simply sat down and huffed.

The twins would normally have been all for exploring, but it was, after all, extraordinarily dark in there, and without the moon or Queen Mab's light it would get even darker.  The captain looked at them.

"Well?  What are you waiting for?"

They couldn't really refuse, being deputies and all.  The Twin's grabbed each others hands and tenetivly stepped down into the darkness.
 

".......Wendy?  Mother Wendy?  Slightly, she's waking up!"

The girl blinked against the light and made an undignified little noise.  A head with panda ears was bent down over her face, a little closer than was really comfortable, even at the best of times.  She put a hand over her eyes and tried to stop the room from spinning.

"Wendy, are you alive?" Toodles poked her. "What happened to you?"

The girl was a little too muddled to answer, but she did prop herself up on her elbows and cast a bleary look about the room.  Everything that could be toppled had been toppled, and the soot and ash from the fireplace was smeared about over everything.  Curly lay tangled in the bedclothes there in the corner, dusted with ash and face smeared with a crust of blood from his nose.  Slightly was trying to untie the knots from about his legs.

"What...whats going on?  What happened to Curly?" she asked shakily.  Then she blinked as the initial amnesia of sleep finally left her.  Something else was missing from the room.  "Where's Michael?"

The two Lost Boys looked at each other; they hadn't even thought to check for Michael.  They stood and turned their heads as though they would see him sitting on the bed or on a shelf.  Michael wasn't there.

Curly groaned and twitched on the floor there, then blinked and sat up, wincing at a rib he thought surely had been cracked.  Jason had kicked him after knocking him down.  Hard.  He'd only managed to get one swing in at the other boy.  Then Jason had leaned down and grinned, and something cold hit his face around his eyes, cold like peppermint.  Then....then....

A hand touched his shoulder and Curly shouted and swung at the body before he even thought about it.  Slightly yelped and ducked the blow, and caught Curly around the waist as he fell past to keep him from cracking his skull against the wall.  Curly squirmed and swung.

"Lemme go!  I'll kill you, you....you...!"

"Curly, it's me!  Slightly!  Stop it!" he heard.  It took a long moment to register, then he grimaced, regrouped, and stopped trying to claw at the legs that were, notably, not wearing red velvet breeches.  Slightly let go of his waist.

Toodles had gotten Wendy up on her feet, and she immediately tried to examine the growing bruise on Curly's stomach and wipe the blood off his face.  He pushed her off and scowled, feeling incredibly touchy after having his tail pounded by a balding stranger.  Fortunately the awkwardness of her attempted fussing did not last long.  Slightly spotted something on the hearth and squinted at it.

"Whats that?" he asked, and pointed.  All heads swiveled towards the fireplace, but only Wendy got any meaning from what they saw.  Letters were smeared over the stones in crusted messes of charcoal and the blood from Curly's nose.  It said, quite simply:

MURHEDD IS BACK