"I don't think I like this place at all." Queen Mab said nervously, half hiding in Toodle's collar.

"That's the way he meant you to feel." The Storyteller replied.  "The last time I saw this place the corners were still raw, and the writing still fresh.  Imagine being hauled down the stairs by someone like him, screaming for your Mother, and seeing these words!  I don't think he understood that the children couldn't read, though."

"What did the writing say?" Nibs asked.

The Storyteller shook her head, setting teeth in her lip "It's been a long time since first I read them.  But I know that they said things they hadn't any right to say."

"It must have taken an awfully long time to do all this..." Wendy said softly, trailing her hands over the wall as she went and imagining she could read it.  "Just how long was Murhedd free?"

"Long enough." she said.  "Just how long does it take a boy and a beast to build their own tomb?  If you ever find the answer, that is something I'd like to know.  I think it would take as many years as I've seen to do this on his own."

"Then how did he do it?  Who helped him?" Curly asked.

The Storyteller looked back at them with an apologetic shrug.  "I don't know."

Below her, the glow of her fairy light failed to reflect back at her from the stair, and the Storyteller opened her mouth to shout a warning, but it was too late.  Wendy had stepped down, and with a high shriek disappeared from view through the hole in the fallen through step.

"WENDY!"

Nibs jumped the stair and squatted down on the next, peering into the darkness while the other boys clustered on the stair above.  They could see nothing.

"WENDY!  ARE YOU ALLRIGHT?" Nibs shouted.  His voice didn't even echo back.

When she spoke, her voice was trembling "I-I think so!" Wendy called back. "I flew before I hit the ground, but-but Nibs, I don't think there's anything down here!"

Her voice sounded wrong, very faint and without the tremulous repeat far away sounds always have.  Curly put his hand down into the gap.

"Then there's nothing to worry about, Wendy!  Just fly back to us!"

"No, I mean there's NOTHING DOWN HERE!" Wendy voice had gone higher, with the shrill roughness that always comes when little girls are really and truly afraid of something; perhaps a fear of the dark and what skulked in it, or even worse, what didn't.  "I don't think there are any walls!  I can't even see the stair!" she called.

Looking up a moment for an idea, Nibs grabbed Queen Mab off the shoulder of Toodles and thrust her down into hole.  The fairy queen shouted obscenities at him and pounded on his fingers with her little fists.  In her kicking she nearly lost one of her silver shoes down the hole.

"I beg your pardon?!  Let her go!"  Partlet said indignantly.

"In a minute!  Wendy!  Can you see Mab's light?"

A pause.  "Yes!"

"Fly towards her!"

A brief moment passed when all that could be heard was Queen Mab threatening to cut select pieces off of Nibs and sew them back on in the wrong places.  But soon Wendy's pink dress became visible in the darkness, and a moment later, she was close enough to touch.  The boys reached down to help pulled her from the stair and set her down carefully on the stone.  Mab hexed an itch on Nibs' nose and flitted to hide behind Captain Partlet's neck, where she was appropriately fussed over.

"Are you allright?" Curly asked.  The girl startled, and immediately set to calm herself and mend her posture.

"I-I think so."  Wendy said.  "What's down there?"

The Storyteller frowned.  "Nightmare Things.  That's where they go, when the day comes for them.  I don't suggest ever poking your nose around down there."

Wendy nodded with wide eyes.  The Lost boys hopped the missing step, and the trek continued.
 

As it had for the twins, the stairs abruptly ended and led into sloping tunnels that twisted and turned, and lost all sense of direction.  It seemed dimmer here.  There were times when Wendy had to put her hands out to discern the walls.

"Why is it getting darker?" she asked.

"It shouldn't be.  Rupert?  Are you giving all the light you can?" The Storyteller asked.  A pause.  She turned around on her crossbar and looked back at them with a frown.  "Rupert?"

There was no answer.  All present looked about themselves and squinted nervously for that fairy light, but the tiny little maid in her grey uniform was gone from them completely.

"How did we miss that?" Nibs muttered, scratching his neck.

The Storyteller sighed. "She's a maid, it's her job to go unnoticed, but not to disappear!  Rupert!"

Still, no one answered.

Queen Mab tightened her hold on Partlet's feathers and looked about uneasily.  "Allright, now I KNOW I don't like this place."

In a shrill echo, a noise wormed it's way up the corridor to them, breaking over them as liquidly as ocean over stones and continuing on it's way.  Toodles grabbed ahold of Wendy's skirt.  It was a scream from below, a hysterical, theatrical call that ended in a wet noise, followed by a whuffing giggle, a slap, and a whine.

"Yes, I would definitely say he knows we're here." The Storyteller said flatly.
 

It's not always so bad a thing to find yourself in the company of fairies.  It is, however, a terrible, bad, AWFUL thing to find yourself in the company of fairies who stuff you in a sack and fly off with your body swinging carelessly below them.  It seemed quite a long ways they took her from the tunnel where she'd been abducted, and Rupert had enough time to herself to calm down, worry about what sorts of awful stains this bag was putting on her uniform (palace maids only got one!) and to notice the sack in which she swung smelled far too much like cellar mold.

Why it should bother her more that her uniform might be stained than the fact strange creatures had just stuffed her in a sack and made off with her is anyone's guess, but the HeadMistress at the palace had always attributed her behaviors to having slept in the cleaning closet as a child, with the leaky jugs of ammonia and lye; and for the sake of convenience, we shall blame the cleaning closet as well.  But whether or not this is really the case, Rupert was actually beginning to enjoy the ride when she was dropped unceremoniously onto the floor.

Rupert didn't have a chance to worm her way free.  She'd barely begun to search for the opening when the opening found itself for her, and the same pair of corded, brawny arms that had caught round her head in the passageway attempted the trick again.  This is a terribly undignified way to grab hold of anyone, and she should have bitten him soundly for it, but unfortunately his arms were as dirty as they were big and she had no desire to get them in her mouth.  Instead she kicked and whined and probably gave anyone in the room a fine flash of her 'dainty things' when she rolled up to try and kick him in the head (her arms didn't reach).  The man that was holding her dropped her on her belly with a whuff and she jumped up, dusted herself, and scowled at him.

There were six fairies all around her, and as usual, she was the smallest of them all.  The room in which she found herself was rough hewn and clumsy, and in desperate need of a dusting, but she had a feeling she hadn't been kidnapped just to clean their room.  They were not...healthy looking people.  The most notable thing about them was that not a single one of them still glowed, and due to their initial dullness she was almost tempted to call them as gnomes, but they were too long limbed for all that.  Every one of them looked old, and the impression wasn't helped by the dirt that had settled in the lines, and certainly not by ragged remains of their clothes that left far too little to the imagination.  Rupert looked around herself and stuffed her hands into her apron pockets uncomfortably.

"Umm....hi."

One of the fairies lowered his face to her, and giggled.

Rupert gulped.
 

Noises had come again from the room outside the box, and this time the Twin knew he definitely didn't like it.  He'd realized the Lost Boys had come for him not long after his captor had; there had been a silence in the sniffling, then a mumble, then a high an unfit squeal of laughter that didn't bear up to scrutiny.  A moment later he heard the side of one of the cabinets being pounded.

"Little Birdie!" he heard the boy shout, still pounding the metal.  "Oh, Little Birdie!   I can hear your friends in the hallway!" he sang.  He stopped hitting the cabinet, and there came the muffled thump of something scrabbling the other side.  "Oh, don't strain yourself Peter!" he taunted. "I might have to go behind and tighten your collar, and what a tragedy THAT would be!"

It was quite obvious from his tone that the boy didn't think so.  The scrabbling stopped.

His voice softened suddenly into a theatrical false tenderness that felt like syrup being poured into the ear. "See what happens when you LIE to Murhedd?" he dripped.  "If you'd told me the truth I never would have touched your friends, and they'd still be safe in their happy little home.  But now...now they know where you are, and they're coming after you.  And I can't have them wandering through my home unchecked, no, no more than I could have YOU doing it." He giggled.  "We'll have to put our guests in BOXES, won't we, darling, BOXES so they can't run away?  Boxes.  Yes."

The tone was nauseating.  It occurred to the Twin that there was a very good chance this boy "wasn't quite right in the head".  The Twin didn't know what that phrase meant but he'd heard Tinkerbell use it many a time, and it seemed to fit the situation.

"You know, it could have been so much easier." the boy continued softly.  His tone had dropped from his syrupy melodrama to something almost worse, because it sounded so very nearly sincere.  "You could have just told me she wasn't really a mother.  Told me she was making believe.  I wouldn't have bothered her then."  A pause.  "I really don't like hurting girls so much...."

The Twin heard the absent scratching of a fingernail on the cabinet door, a sniff, and sudden bright footsteps that were too broadly strided.

"Well then!" Murhedd said, his voice forced into a strange cheerful measure that sounded so wrong on him.  "I think it's time we make it known to our guests that their host will be with them shortly.  What do you think, Tzesrikan?  Should we flood the tunnels?  Burn them out?" Tzesrikan gave a snort, and Murhedd laughed.  "Of course it's all just prelude!  But I'm sure the games will be all the more fun if the weak ones are dead, don't you think?  And the dead ones have their own quiet pleasures."

It was a show being staged for the prisoners, and the Twin knew it.  No one could be this false and theatrical without an audience to play to.

"You know, I might actually have a better idea than to flood them." Murhedd said with an audible smirk.  "If we burn them or drown them, there might not be any to play with later!  And then where's the fun of them?"  There was a pause for effect, and he could hear the monster's skin rasping against itself as it shifted.  "I think it's time to make use of our fairy friend, don't you?  She must be getting awful bored and lonesome out there by herself."

Again there came a scrabbling on the inside of a cabinet, and a wheezing groan that sounded as choked as the Twin was.  Murhedd laughed.

"Oh, don't worry your pretty little head, Peter!  I'm not going to HURT her.  Much.  But fairy things get along very well with Nightmare Things, did you know that?  It takes a lot of magic, but strong fairies can make the nightmare things do whatever they want.  If I control the fairy, I control the nightmare things, see?"  He paused. "And if the Tinker-thing burns out, that's okay.  I only want to use her once."

The Twin heard Peter choke himself.  Murhedd laughed.