So Silver Bright by Lisa Mantchev

other with squeaks and bites.
    “Mind th’ vermin,” Nate said, lifting one booted foot as they gamboled past him.
    Three of the four fairies and Waschbär immediately sought out the nearest trees to relieve themselves. A bit more decorous, Peaseblossom emerged from a nearby thicket a moment later, twisting her little tunic about her hips and looking disconcerted.
    “I’d forgotten what it was like on the open road. I think the Lost Boys must have had an easier time of it than Wendy.”
    Bertie did her best not to laugh. “You’re going to wish we’d stayed at the Caravanserai when we’re sleeping on the ground tonight instead of in a feather bed.”
    “Don’t speak of the Caravanserai,” Mustardseed said with a groan. “I miss the food already.”
    “Aye, well, if ye want t’ eat anytime soon, we’d best get t’ it,” Nate observed with a glance at the sky. “Waschbär, ye see t’ th’ fire an’ I’ll tend t’ dinner.”
    “Will do!” The sneak-thief took a small hand ax into the trees. When he returned, he carried a stack of logs, each as long and as fat as his forearm. With his usual speed and dexterity, he scraped back the grass, clearing a place for a fire.
    The fairies sorted through the food supplies, tossing down flour and salt and the side of bacon. Bertie sliced off pieces of the smoked-and-salted pork while Nate committed the curious alchemy of baking ship’s biscuits, rubbing white fat into salted flour and transforming the crumbling mass into small rounds of dough. Peaseblossom had to search the entire caravan to find the necessary pans, but soon bacon frizzled in one skillet and biscuits in another. There was also dried fruit, a wheel of sharp cheese, and a stone jar of pink pickles the fairies thought might be either radishes or beets.
    It was full dark by the time they sat down to eat, but they did so by lantern light with good appetite and humor. The metal plates Peaseblossom had unearthed were so thin that when Bertie drew her fingernail about the edge of hers, it sang an odd melody, the vibration of which settled into the empty space at the back of her throat. Bone-tired and her belly full, she thought she could have fallen asleep in the grass quite happily.
    “It was a good meal and heartily enjoyed, more so for the company than the viands,” was Waschbär’s cheerful contribution as he lolled against a well-placed rock, a biscuit clasped in one paw and the ferrets balanced upon the other.
    Cobweb looked at him askance. “That didn’t stop you shoveling in those viands with remarkable speed! I lost track of how many biscuits you ate!”
    “If biscuits were stories,” Bertie said, fixing her gaze upon the fire, “I’d bake a pan of piping hot fables right this second.”
    “Do fables have jam filling?” Moth wanted to know. “Or chocolate?”
    “I think it’s allegories that have jam filling,” Mustardseed said. “And maybe parables.”
    Not thinking it possible, Bertie realized she still had room for dessert. “Is there any more cake?”
    Rummaging in the nearest hamper, Peaseblossom turned up the other half of the chocolate cake. “Here you go.”
    Bertie broke off a piece and offered it to Nate. Ducking his head, he surprised her by taking the bite not with his hand, but his mouth.
    “Ahem!” Peaseblossom said, clearing her throat so hard she dislodged a bit of dessert along with her disapproval.
    “Ye ought t’ see t’ that cough,” was Nate’s cavalier response. “Before it settles in yer lungs an’ th’ pneumonia takes ye.”
    “I don’t have pneumonia—”
    “Bronchitis, then.”
    “We have forks,” Peaseblossom said, the sternest governess there ever was, “should you require one.”
    “I’m fine wi’ her fingers, seein’ as my hands are completely preoccupied wi’ tendin’ th’ fire.”
    “I’ll say the same to you as I said to Ariel,” the fairy lectured the pirate. “You’ll mind your manners and be respectful, or you’ll