بخش 16

CHAPTER 30

SOMEHOW

PETER, WITH TINK STILL unhappily concealed under his shirt, stumbled from the alley into a cobblestone street swarming with activity. In the center of the street, barrels and crates were being hauled by horse-drawn wagons, as well as handcarts pushed and pulled by grunting, cursing men. Hurrying this way and that were sailors of many hues, in many garbs, talking and shouting in many languages. Everybody seemed to be in a hurry; everybody seemed to be in everybody else’s way.

On both sides of the street, next to gutters running with stinking brown water, were shops selling clocks, sextants, canvas trousers, weatherproof coats, hammocks, rope, lanterns—all manner of goods for ships and those who sailed them. Scattered among the shops were public houses, from which came the sounds of shouting, singing, laughter, and fighting. Directly across the street from Peter, a sailor in a red flannel shirt emerged from a pub, stood for a moment, wavering back and forth, and then pitched face-forward into the gutter. Nobody took notice; the din and flow of humanity went on around him unabated.

An official-looking man strode past, wearing a blue jacket with brass buttons.

“Excuse me, sir,” Peter said, stepping up to him, “can you tell me where I might find Lord—”

“Out of the way!” said the man, barely looking down as he gave Peter a shove that sent him stumbling into another man, who shoved him into yet another man, who cuffed him on the ear and pushed him away so hard that he fell into the street and had to scuttle backward like a crab to avoid being trampled by a horse pulling a wagon.

Peter leaped to his feet and pressed his wet back against a building, his heart pounding. Tink’s bells sounded angrily from under his shirt.

“We can’t fly away,” he whispered. “People don’t fly in London.”

But we can fly, she said.

“But not here. I don’t want them to see me,” Peter whispered. A chill swept through his body, and he shivered violently. He was wet and filthy, and his feet were bare. Suddenly he became acutely aware of how cold and hungry and tired he was. Especially cold.

And night was falling.

Despair seeped into Peter’s soul. He longed to be back on the island with the Lost Boys. For a moment he wanted only to sink to the ground, curl into a ball, and cry. What prevented him from doing so was the thought of Molly, and the memory of the time she had leaped from a ship in the middle of the ocean to save his life. If he were in trouble, she would not lie on the ground sniveling; she would find a way to help him. Now she was in trouble, somewhere in this indifferent, confusing, and cruel city. And somehow he had to find her.

Somehow. CHAPTER 31

A TINY HEART BEATING

TWO MILES AWAY, in her grand home on Kensington Palace Gardens, Molly paced in her room, as she had done for much of a lonely, restless afternoon. She paused every few minutes to look out the window—for what, she didn’t know.

Each time she looked, the scene was the same: the street, the gloom, Mr. Cadigan standing guard. Nothing changed. Yet still Molly was drawn back to the window, time and again.

She sat on her bed, then stood again, then sat, then lay down for perhaps the dozenth time, knowing that rest would not come.

All at once she felt a burning at the base of her neck. She quickly unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blue-and-white dress and felt for the locket that hung around her neck.

It was warm.

Molly ran to her window. A hard rain poured down. She looked down onto the broad street in front of the house, but the rain fell too heavily to allow her to see across to the mansion on the other side. Despite herself, she dared to hope that she would see her father’s coach arriving, or even her father himself already at the front door.

But there was only Mr. Cadigan, at his post.

Staring out her window, she pulled the locket out from under her dress. It pulsed twice, like a tiny heart beating.