The Piper's Price by Audrey Greathouse

Author:Audrey Greathouse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: childhood, growing up, fairies, fae, myths, folklore, peter pan, neverland, adaptation, fairy tale retelling
Publisher: Clean Teen Publishing, Inc.

To Tiger Lily’s surprise, Gwen walked in the door minutes before dawn.

“Hello there,” she announced, instinctively getting up to put the kettle back on the burner for more tea. “I thought you must have headed back to Neverland.”

“Foxglove did,” she answered, yawning. “Did officers come around last night?”

“That they did.” Tiger Lily caught her yawn and it lifted out of her lips like a roar. “I hardly got any sleep after they woke me up and did a brief search.”

Gwen brushed her hair back and tried not to appear as nervous as she felt when she asked, “What officers came by? I mean, what did they look like?”

“Oh, I don’t know… they looked like adults,” she responded, as if momentarily forgetting she, too, was an adult. “Only one of them was in uniform. The other must have been undercover. He didn’t say anything, just let his partner do the talking. He looked… really worried.”

Gwen’s gut knotted as she imagined her father here, talking to Tiger Lily in a fruitless attempt to find his daughter. She remembered the look on Dark Sun’s face when he had discussed his own daughter’s disappearance to a foreign world.

“I was worried about you,” Tiger Lily continued. “It was a good thing you didn’t come back home while they were here.”

“I stayed at a friend’s house.”

“Is that going to cause problems, if one of your friends knows you’re back?”

“No, he’s chill. He won’t mention it to anybody. He knows I’m kind of in trouble,” Gwen mumbled. “I didn’t get much sleep either…”

After their movie, she’d talked with Jay for another hour or so, a discussion of the movie segueing into a discussion of life, future, and the universe as best they could speculate on it as teenagers. At some point, she’d fallen asleep on the couch for a few hours, and woke up to her cell phone’s silent alarm vibrating in her pocket. She had unwound herself from the blanket and slipped off the couch, trying not to wake Jay as she did so. He was handsome awake, but gorgeous in his sleep. Somehow, it was better remembering his eyes’ vibrant blue color while they rolled around, dreaming under his eyelids. She had found her satchel—music box still tucked in it—and put her coat back on. Before she left, she had kissed the top of his head. He took a deep, sleeping breath and rolled over, sprawling more comfortably on the couch now that she was no longer on it with him. A peaceful smile spread over his face.

There was just enough of the night left to take to the sky and be invisible in the darkness as she flew back to the reservation. She landed along the deserted highway, walking the last mile to Tiger Lily’s trailer park. Vigilant though sleepy, she watched for any car or soul that might have been associated with the Anomalous Activity Department. No one was out at that unnatural hour of the morning.

“If it’s alright… I’m just going to go to bed.

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