The twin could hear him pacing.  It wasn't so hard, as he struck the sides of the cabinets with his palm as he passed them on the way.  One...two....on three, the black twin heard the side of his own cabinet pounded, and four.  He had the awful suspicion that the fourth cabinet was the same one they themselves had inspected earlier, and really who was in it he didn't dare to guess, because he wouldn't like the answer.  The boy was humming at a fevered pitch and the twin didn't recognize the song, but the few words that fell out of his mouth at random intervals sounded like a lullaby.

"....don't cry-yyy..." he sang as he started back up the row.

The moment the door of the cabinet had closed, the twin had found himself is possession of his body again.  His pulse sped to an alarming rate and he wretched at his arms in their bindings, but whatever system of restraints the boy had devised inside the cabinet was well evolved.  His arms were pinned separate along the top corners, and his legs along the back, feet not-quite-touching the floor even when he strained them.  He could get no leverage to work himself loose.  Worst was a dirty metal crook jammed back over his neck; it didn't strangle him, not quite, but it didn't let him speak, either, and his breath made a low wheezing sound when he forced air past the barrier.

"..born to diiii-iiiieeee...."

The monster, who had previously been only a quiet background noise of rattling breath and shifting flesh, whuffed and whined almost pleadingly.  The pacing stopped.  Footsteps were heard moving quickly away, followed by a startled yelp and a wet crack.  The beast wailed (a sound that was flinch-worthy when magnified by the metal container) and started to whimper pathetically.

"Shut up!" the boy bellowed.  He seemed to only have two volumes, and this was the one he favored.

The monster whined.

"I said SHUT UP!" His voice had cracked on the third syllable (as well as something else, but if it was the same sort of crack as the last had been, the monster gave no shout of pain).

It was completely silent for a moment.  The twin wasn't sure he liked the silence anymore than the humming, and his pulse began to quicken as he mentally cursed the fact he couldn't see more than the barest sliver of light at the bottom of the cabinet door.  He had no idea what was going on out there when they weren't making noise.

It took long moments for him to realize that the silence was not entirely silent after all.  A plaintive, pathetic sniffling was rising under the quiet, something that elevated into muffled sobbing as moments ticked past.  It was a hoarse, unused sound, thick as chalk, and the twin was more confused than he had ever been.

A low, muffled moan he barely interpreted crept into the cabinet.

"Tzesrikan...!  She sent me away!"

The last word faded into a wail that stopped in a sob, and he could hear the monster shuffling on the stone.

It was quiet for a very long time.
 

The sky had gone from pink to blue in the slanted light of the early morning.  "What's keeping those blasted badgers!" General Tory snapped, turning his black eyed glare on Colonel Cobby.

Colonel Cobby shifted uncomfortably on her talons "I told the knights they had watch duty at the beach at the break of dawn, honest, sir!"

"Then why aren't they HERE?"

"Well the Sun Catcher Squadron is supposed to take their places on the island, maybe it's THEM who are late.  You know how hard it is to get Captain Popper out of bed in the morning!" she hypothesized.

"Never DID like that little merlin." Tory grumbled to himself.

As though he'd been listening for his cue, a familiar shape came darting over the beach on pointed wings.  "Top of the morning to you, General!  Colonel!" Popper shouted down with his ridiculous affected accent.  He landed on the sand next to the general and cocked his head towards the sea "There's a gaggle of boys out there, you know.  Nasty looking lot.  You want I should chase them off for you?"

"No.  They're waiting for someone." Tory grumbled.  "What's going on back in town?  Why aren't the badgers here yet!"

"Well, that's sort of the problem, old boy." he said too cheerfully. "The Badger Knights won't leave their posts.  They say there's some awful little fairy out on the eastern shore and they won't go near it till she's gone!"

Colonel Cobby snickered, and Tory shook his head "Those Knights haven't got an inch of nerve between them."

"Is it Queen Mab?" Cobby asked through her wing feathers.

Captain Popper cocked his head "Little lady in a silver dress?"

"That's the one!  She came through here earlier, she told the General he was a--"

"Colonel!" Tory shouted, puffing his feathers out in a fashion that WOULD have been menacing were he even a third the size of his great grey colonel.  She cracked up and fell back on her rump, getting sand in her feathers.

"I feel like I'm missing out on a right good joke here!" Captain Popper said over Colonel Cobby's laughter.

"You are not!" the General puffed, getting quite red over the cere.  "Colonel Cobby, I insist you stop this at once!  COLONEL!"

The general was entirely unaware of this fact, but when he became excessively agitated at something, he had the habit of shifting from one foot to the other, and combined with his overall puffed appearance and diminutive size his anger did nothing to stop the Colonel's laughter.  If anything, it got worse.  Cobby rolled onto her back and kicked her taloned feet in the air.  Popper himself was having a hard time keeping a straight face at the moment, but he had the grace to cover his beak with his wing joints, eyes squinching nearly shut with the effort not to laugh.

"I will not tolerate this degree of insubordination!" he sputtered.  "Colonel, I order you to stop laughing at once!"

"I'm s-s-s-sorry, sir!" she stuttered between outbursts, and tried to roll onto her feet, but the look the General was giving her was just too much and she didn't make it any further than laying with her chin in the sand.

It was most fortunate for General Tory that Wendy chose this moment to come stumbling back out from the island, a silver queen, an avian captain, and a beetle mounted storyteller and her maid in tow.  The general immediately deflated himself and gave a quick bow to the ladies.  The colonel made it onto her feet.

"Your majesty.  Ladies." he said with a nod. "I trust you found what you are looking for?"

"Yes, thank you." Wendy said automatically, though her face looked worried.  She waved to the boys over the water, who perked up to alertness immediately (where previously they had been somewhere between either falling asleep or knocking the hats off each other's head for the boredom of it all).

"Well?!" Nibs shouted over to her.

"We have to go to Crooked Mountain!" she replied.  "I'll explain on the way!"

She turned and gave a little curtsey to the Storyteller and her maid.  "Thank you, you've been very helpful."

"That was the LEAST I could do." she answered curtly "But I plan on doing the MOST I can do." At Wendy's blank stare she elaborated. "I'm coming with you, and so is Rupert here." she gestured to her maid.  The poor little thing went white.

Captain Partlet snickered discreetly at a girl being named Rupert, something that earned him a smack on the back of the head from the Queen.

"But ma'am, you said yourself it's dangerous!"

The storyteller snorted "I'm seven hundred years old next spring!  I think I can decide whether or not something to to dangerous for me!  And besides," she lowered her voice "What happening is as much my fault as it is his.  I'm the only one left who knew Murhedd when he was free.  It's my duty to set things right."

Wendy bit her lip but nodded assent.  Her understanding of duty had changed a bit since coming to Neverland.

Captain Popper cocked his head. "See here now!  You ladies aren't going to do anything dangerous, are you?  Without anyone to look after you?"

"I'll be there!  I'm captain of Her Royal Majesty's Flying Brigade!"  Captain Partlet said indignantly.

"Yes, I'm fairly certain Captain Popper covered you when he said 'you ladies'." Tory answered dryly.

Captain Partlet puffed and looked to Mab for defense (she was, after all, the only one who outranked the General)  but before she could work up a good yell, Wendy stepped between them all.

"Excuse me, but we really don't have time for this!" she snapped.  "The longer you waste time bickering, the better chance there is that Murhedd has done something awful to Peter and Michael and the Twins!  So just come on, please!"

Several faces blinked at her, except for Colonel Cobby, who cheered silently.

"She is right, you know." the Storyteller said.  "If we're going down after them we'd better do it quick as we can.  There might be time yet to save the Twins and the youngest boy."

Wendy didn't miss that she offered no hope on the life of Peter, who no doubt had been below the ground since morning of the day before.  It was on that sickly note they turned to the sea and joined the Lost Boys for the flight to Crooked Mountain.
 

The moment Queen Mab and the adventurers were out of sight, the bushes lining the beach rustled, and two armored badgers came slinking out to their posts.  General Tory rubbed his head with a wing joint.  "Damn fine thing, that.  Bloody badgers."

They looked over their shoulders at him sheepishly while Colonel Cobby snickered.

"Knock that off, Cobby."

"Yes sir, General Tory."
 

"So let me see if I got this." Nibs said, frowning a little.  "We're going to somehow open a stone door that's heavier than all of us, sneak down into the cave containing a forty foot monster and a murderous boy, and free a handful of prisoners we don't even know are alive or not?"

Wendy sighed.  "Basically, yes."

"Sounds like a good plan to me!" Curly said.  He looked like he wanted something to do with his hands, having dropped the torch once the sun came up.

 "Since when have we ever used a plan?"

"Slightly never."

The deadly side of the mountain was swift approaching and they could see the open wound the valley left in the briars.  The Storyteller broke away from the group and dove down towards the thick, followed by her little maid and soon by the others, too.  Wendy and the boys lighted in the mud by the door and Partlet on the branches of a thorn bush, ridden by the queen.  The Storyteller brought herself to hover in front of the door for a moment, looking it up and down.

"Well?  How do we get it open?" Wendy asked, coming to stand by the Storyteller.

"I'm not sure." she admitted.  "Murhedd designed it and he was the one who built it.  The last time we came here, all of us together opened it by magic.  I'm not strong enough to do it on my own, though."  She turned to look at the captain.  "You've opened the door once already, haven't you?  How did you do it?"

"I, ah, pulled out the ring.  It's over there." he pointed to a place in the mud with his beak.

That wasn't something they could very well duplicate, since the cord and ring were now out and they had no way to wind them back up.  That was probably a fail-safe, the Storyteller decided, working on a different mechanism in case the normal one broke down.  But for the life of them they couldn't figure out what secret there was to opening this door.

"What about the writing?" Mab asked finally, having yet to leave her perch on the Captain's back.  "Can you read it?  It might give us a hint."

"It doesn't." she said flatly.  "Why would Murhedd leave a hint?  It isn't likely he'd forget how to open his own door!"

But now the other's were curious.  "What DOES it say?" Wendy asked.

"It's a phonetic writing, it's sloppy, and it's senseless." she insisted, crossing her arms.  "It doesn't do any good."

"But what does it say?" Wendy asked again, more softly.

The Storyteller sighed.  "It says PER ME SI VA NE LA CITTA DOLENTE, PER ME SI VA NE L'ETTERNO DOLORE, PER ME SI VA TRA LA PERDUTA GENTE.  LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA, VOI CH'INTRATE."

Of course, neither Wendy nor the Lost Boys nor the Queen and her Captain knew what that meant.  Mab shook her head. "That seals it.  He's insane."

"He's not insane!" The Storyteller shot back.  "Er, well, he WASN'T, anyway."

"Why don't we just try knocking?" Toodles interrupted.  Everyone looked at him.

"I slightly thought the point was for this Murhedd fellow NOT to know we're here." Slightly said, scratching his neck.

"But when he comes up to answer the door, we can take him by surprise!  He won't be expecting us!" Toodles defended.

"He'd never hear it through the stone." The Storyteller said.  She paused, and rubbed her chin.  "Wait a minute, that might actually be an idea."

"What, knocking?" Curly asked.  "What good would it do?"

"A lot, if I've thought this right.  Look here, this last word on the bottom, CH'INTRATE.  The symbols don't look quite like the others, does they.  There's this little line that goes around them.  They're separate from the rest of the stone."

"So?"

"So?  CH'INTRATE!  The last line of the verse is "Who here enter!"

It was worth a shot, if anything.  Curly knelt down in the mud and rapped on the symbols.  The separated bit of stone retreated into the door.  He grinned and pushed the panel the rest of the way.

Something clicked and clattered inside, and the door complained as it opened once again, butting it's head against the mud wall and sticking half way.  The air that came up from the maw was the same dead, uncirculated air that had wandered the cavern for who knew how many years.

The Storyteller gestured to them to be quiet, and flew in first to guide the way.  Rupert whimpered but followed obediently, trailed next by Wendy, Nibs, Slightly, Curly, and in finality Toodles, who carried Captain Partlet under his arm and the Queen on his shoulder, so the Captain would not have to hop each stair at a time.  As the glow of the daylight world drifted further and further behind them, Toodles looked over his shoulder now and then to try and catch the final glimpse, until there was only wet refractions from the stairway's walls, then vague hints of possibilities, then nothing.

Somehow, that made the darkness so much worse.