Nothing happened.

“Dad took me to Ali Baba’s harem for my birthday once. This is so much more embarrassing,” Tedros mumbled, stomping towards the entrance hole to leave—

Uma coughed behind him. Tedros swiveled to see the princess levitating three feet off the ground, her skin filling out from pasty white to its usual rich olive color. Uma stretched her smooth, lithe arms into the air with a yawn, smiled at the fairy glassily . . . and collapsed to the ground, asleep once more.

“Here you were worried about your fairy dust being too old, Tink,” Yuba chuckled, patting the fairy’s head.

The fairy still looked gloomy and spurted squeaky gibberish.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Tink. You can’t expect to have the same stamina as when you were sixteen. Besides, we didn’t need Uma to fly from here to Shazabah; we just needed your dust to unpetrify her. A few sound hours of sleep and she’ll be good as new. Now where were we,” the gnome mulled, turning back to the Evers. “Oh yes, rabbit makes nine, Uma makes ten, I make eleven, and Tinkerbell makes twelve, so that just leaves—”

“Tinkerbell?” Agatha blurted.

“The real Tinkerbell?” asked Tedros, staring at the fairy’s mottled face, potbelly, and ash-colored hair. “But she’s so . . . so . . .”

Agatha gave him a lethal look, but it was too late. Tinkerbell burst into sobs and hid under an ottoman.

“He didn’t mean it, Tink,” Yuba huffed and smacked Tedros in the backside with his staff.

“I don’t understand,” Agatha said, bewildered. “What is Tinkerbell doing here?”

“Really found yourselves some smarties, didn’t you, Yuba,” said a bald, skinny man in a green vest with elfish ears and delicate features, knitting a lime-green sock. “Still can’t see who we are.”

“Maybe we need to count your rings like a tree,” Tedros muttered, rubbing his behind.

“Go ahead, make all the old jokes you want, pretty boy,” the bald man fired. “As if you won’t get to our age yourself someday.”

“Well, it seems our two amateurs need introductions after all,” Yuba scolded, giving Tedros and Agatha furious scowls before shoving them into two of the rocking chairs. He turned back to his League. “Who wants to go first?”

“Don’t see why we should introduce ourselves,” the sock-knitting man crabbed. “Don’t see why we should let these two stay here at all.”

Yuba exhaled impatiently. “Because these two Evers are our only hope to—”

“What’s the point? You heard the boy. We’re on death’s door anyway,” the bald man pouted.

“Oh come now,” Yuba said, softening. “What’d you say when I came to fetch you from Neverland? Holed up in your tree house all alone, refusing to join the League, even when I told you your life was in terrible danger. But then I told you about these two young Evers and you lit up like a little boy. Told me you’d do anything to be around young people again . . . that they were the only ones who ever truly understood you, Peter . . .”