Neverland

8

I let out another squeal as Tink lashed out at me with her blade, it skimmed my arm and even though this was far from the first time I'd been cut I still wasn't getting used to the sting

"mercy! Mercy!" I squealed out, while making no attempt to hit her back, all my focus was on getting away from her and her pointy death stick

"the lost boys show no mercy, why should I?" Tink said coldly "grip your sword tightly so I can't be hit out of your hand but lose enough so it's not stiff"

I nodded and dodged another blow from her cruel sword, Tink didn't tell me when I was doing things right, only when I was doing things wrong

"try actually using your sword, it might help" she mused

"it's harder than it looks!" I huffed

Tink arched her eyebrow at me, "do you know how I learnt to sword fight?"

I managed to shake my head as she came at me again, poking my stomach lightly with the tip of her blade

"I watched, I watched the lost boys fight, I watched the pirates fight, I didn't have anyone to teach me, I learn these skills in real fights with real stakes, with my life on the line"

I huffed in response

"your feet play a very important role, move them fast, watch what your opponent's feet are doing, they tell you what they're going to do next" Tink said

I looked down at Tink's feet but was immediately taken aback by her sword swiping just inches away from my face causing me to yelp

"keep track of their feet but never take your eyes off of your opponent, keep eye contact with them, it's all a game, thousands of small games to win the big one, the prize is your life, you lose, you die" She said

Keeping eye contact with Tink was already hard, I didn't like looking into her cold eyes much, that was scary enough on its own but now she was also swinging her sword at me and I was supposed to also keep track of what her feet were doing?

This is impossible

"you're all bones, you don't have the advantage of strength but you do have speed and agility, you don't have to be the strongest to win a fight, just the smartest, find their weakness and push on it until they break" she said, her blade came at me with alarming speed and I dropped my sword to dive out of the way, "your weakness is that your scared of my sword and you also don't trust your own weapon, at the first chance of danger you abandon it and give up"

"Of course I'm sacred of your sword! Your swinging it around like a mad man!" I said a bit to enthusiastically

Tink arched her eyebrow, "get up, let's try this again"

***

Tink finally let me take a break, she made a point to tell me it wasn't because I was getting better but because it was sad to watch me for too long

We would be moving on to knife throwing and fighting with daggers,

"you ready?" Tink asked walking over to where I was sitting

"no" I said standing up

"great, let's go, grab a couple of daggers and follow me, you'll want to strap them to you cause were going by trees" she said

"where are we going?" I asked doing as she said

"the one and only boy king's personal training area, they have targets" she said

"what if he catches us?" I said

"well what do you think were training for?"

***

We arrived at the training area, there was no sign of any lost boys, there was no sign of anything, it was too quiet for my liking and I was very suspicious stepping out into the open area

It wasn't much, some targets, some weapons laying around on the ground in piles like that was supposed to make them neater and a few other bits and pieces spread out everywhere

"okay, line yourself up with the target and throw a dagger" Tink said flatly

I did as she instructed, the dagger flew through the air and hit the out rim, I looked over at Tink and she nodded

"not bad, try again"

I did as she asked but this time the dagger bounced of the target and fell to the ground

"okay, you aim is not bad but your technique it awful"

***

We didn't stay on throwing dagger for too long, I was nowhere near as bad as I was at sword fighting, once we were done we only had about half an hour of light left and Tink thought it was enough time to try hand to hand combat

And if you can believe it, I was actually pretty good at it

"so, you and I are the only girls on the whole island?" I asked as Tink circled me

"not exactly, there are the fairy's, the mermaids and the natives, they call themselves Hyter sprites, but they just look like people to me"

I nodded in deep thought and Tink took this opportunity to lung at me, I deflected her attack quickly and jumped at her myself, landing a punch to her stomach and kneeing her in the side, I swiped my leg around and pushed her knees in from the back making her fall to the ground

"your good at this" she huffed out

I shrugged and helped her up

"we should get going, it's pretty dark already" she said glancing at the sky, "the lost boy usually train in the morning but they run around the jungle a lot at night"

***

I laid on my back awake, Tink had gone to sleep ages ago and even though the day had left me tiered beyond comprehension I still couldn't rest my mind, surly I couldn't stay here forever

It was like some strange fever dream, time was still, and everything had this unsettling tint to it, the trees were tall and loomed over everything like long monsters in the night and yet the jungle was so quiet

This place wasn't home

Every noise made me jump, each bump in the night pushing me closer to the edge

Every now and then I could make out distance cheering and ruckus from the lost boys and I'd convinced myself it was getting closer

Call my paranoid but I felt like I was being watched

I've always believed the body knows when its being watched, I don't know of any science to back me up on this but it makes sense to me, like when I'm in class and I get an urge to look up from my work only to find someone looking at me

But this was different, this was heavier and dangerous

Tink had told me that the jungle was a dangerous place, but she also said that we were safe up here

But I couldn't think of a reason why anyone else wouldn't be able to climb up a simple tree

I could

I shuddered just thinking about it

There was something fundamentally wrong with this place