Straight On Till Morning by Liz Braswell

Author:Liz Braswell [Braswell, Liz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Disney Book Group
Published: 2020-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

It was all predator. Sleek and slinky and black and lithe. Its paws had claws, long curled half-moons that easily ripped through the fairy’s dress and closed around her waist.

Without thinking, Wendy threw herself at it, grasping at the beast with her own hands, naked, pink, and clawless.

One would suppose that after her experiences in Never Land she might stop and think twice about engaging a strange creature, an unknown entity who might have had any number of unpredictable and magical attacks. But the thing’s closest approximation to any London beast was cat; an angry, starving alley cat. Fierce but not indomitable. Wendy had her share of experiences with those, ranging from pulling them off hapless songbirds to begging her parents to let her keep one.

And in fact, the twin mirrors on the front of its snub face could have been mistaken for cat’s eyes with a light shining into them.

“Down!” Wendy cried imperiously.

Her hands closed tightly around its middle—but it didn’t yowl as she expected. It dropped the fairy in shock…then sort of thinned out between Wendy’s fingers. The creature slid through them like oil, dripped to the ground, and reformed into a weaselly, mink-like critter.

“Ugh!” Wendy looked at her hands. But they were clean and all she had actually felt was the soft fur one would expect.

With barely a pause the creature found Tinker Bell and again leapt on her.

The little fairy was a bit stunned and shaken up by its first attack; she was still on the ground and stumbling.

She emitted exactly half a jingle-wail before it had body-slammed her, smashing her straight down into the ground.

“I said, get off!” Wendy cried. She grabbed the first stick she saw and—though usually opposed to violence toward animals—whacked the qqrimal as hard as she could on its side.

It rolled out of the way but kept its claws around Tinker Bell, the fairy close to its belly.

Then it jumped upright on its four paws and—laughed?

“You—you—” Wendy stammered, indignant.

It really was. The horrible thing was laughing at her, chuckling and warbling. It bent its head and licked Tinker Bell with an ugly gray forked tongue. It smacked its mouth.

Wendy brought the stick down as hard as she could on its head.

It easily leapt out of her reach, landing on the side of a tree. From this new perch it chuffed one more time back at Wendy before scuttling up like a lizard into its branches.

“No!” Wendy dropped her stick and grabbed the trunk of the tree. “Come back! Come down here this instant!”

She shook the tree as hard as she could, expecting disappointment. But the tree was a slender tropical thing whose body was far more lithe and pliable than its London counterparts. It swayed easily under her efforts, and its long leafy fronds clattered and clashed satisfyingly.

The creature fell and hit the ground with an equally satisfying whomp.

“Tink!” Wendy grabbed the creature’s tail to yank it off the fairy.

Only—its tail slid into nothing in her hands. Overpowered by the momentum she had created with nothing to balance it, Wendy fell back onto her bum.

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