by Liz Braswell
She looked around at the trees and the foliage, the sky and the ground. Things she had brushed by in quick descriptive phrases to the boys—desert island, tropical plants, venomous but beautiful insects—were solid in more detail than she could ever imagine, down to the tiny veins on the leaves. Apparently Never Land got “worked on” when she wasn’t even talking to the boys…they imagined things on their own. Or at least Michael did. To a little child, the idea of No Grown-Ups Allowed, to the point of the death, might seem reasonable. Funny, even.
Time passed for the three siblings in London…but it didn’t in Never Land. Michael’s whims and fancies remained the same here while he grew up in London. And these whims seen through older eyes were not harmless. They were diabolical.
“Never Land isn’t just a simple place of childhood dreams—because childhood dreams are actually never simple. Oh, I do wish I could write that down in my little notebook.”
Her face suddenly constricted into a cartoonish expression of terror as she recalled a younger John, furious at the Shesbow twin who had tweaked his cheek and giggled at his hat and glasses. “Girls shouldn’t be allowed to talk at all,” he had growled at her. “To boys, anyhow.”
How had the rest of the conversation gone? Had he made an exception for his sister? Had Wendy laughed and remonstrated him?
More to the point, was there some sort of horrible punishment zone for girls in Never Land devised by the fiendishly clever—but undeveloped—mind of a preadolescent John?
Luna was watching with giant unblinking yellow eyes as Wendy worked out all these things, far more patient than anyone Wendy had ever known.
“We must be on our guard,” she said, kissing the wolf on her nose. “This place is tricky. Far trickier than I ever dreamed. The dangers I expect are not the only dangers. Who knows what other horrors my little brothers dreamed up? Then again, if Never Land were as simple as my own childish fantasies, it would be no fun at all. Toffee trees and mazes easily solvable by a simple application of left left right left. Where’s the challenge in that? I am sixteen now, whether or not I am an adult. I should expect more!”
Wendy dusted off her dress. The sun had moved slightly in the sky; ideas and creatures might be eternal in Never Land, but still night came. Time still existed. Decisions had to be made. Luna pranced back and forth in front of her, yellow eyes gleaming with excitement. Ready to go.
But where to?
The Mermaid Lagoon. Obviously.
Peter Pan often visited the mermaids in her stories. Maybe she would find him there, or get help from the friendly locals. But also…
Mermaids!
And they would be very helpful in a maritime war waged against apocalyptic pirates.
And maybe along the way Wendy could look for fairies. They were powerful little denizens of Never Land, weren’t they? Surely they could use some magic or something against Hook.
(Plus: fairies!)
And…what about the Lost Boys, by Hangman’s Tree? Maybe she should find them first. They would know where Peter was. And they would be terribly useful—how many stories she had written about their battles with the pirates! And how lovely it would be to have a visit, too. All of those clever things Wendy had invented for them, like the slides down to the hideout from hollow trees…How marvelous to see it in person, to understand how Never Land had worked out the details. Maybe Peter would even be there already!
She gulped a little at the thought.
Or…maybe the Lost Boys later.
Really, the best thing was to round up an army to defend Never Land, wasn’t it? She could find Peter and apologize to him—and bring him up to speed on Hook’s nefarious plot—later.
“Yes, mermaids first. And then maybe fairies. I wonder where we should go to find them?”
And her question was answered, in true Never Land fashion, as a fairy dove headfirst into Wendy’s chest.
Captain Hook paced back and forth in his cabin predatorily—but not at all like a wolf. More like a military commander with a motive and possibly a bad back. The angry movements and swishing clothes made the captain’s quarters seem even tighter than they already were; he filled the space with his plumes, red jacket, and frustration. There was room for nothing else besides his rage. When he was interrupted—rarely—the interrupting pirate stayed outside, unable or unwilling to come in.
“Talk, bloody talk, and this will all be over!” Hook swore at his prisoner. “Just tell me where Peter Pan is. Once I have him you can go!”
Pan’s shadow writhed and shrank before the captain, but didn’t answer.
Its lower body was cinched tight with a silken cord, only a little string of shadow sticking out the bottom of the knots—possibly its toe. The rest puffed up and out like a dark genie out of a bottle, though its arms were also stretched and tied. It squirmed and distended itself pitifully in an attempt to get free.
All of the usual sorts of torture had little effect on the thing: discarded implements were strewn around the floor as testament to their uselessness. Knives, pincers, hot brands, tacks through the nails, fingernails drawn across slate boards. He even had a drunk Smee play the concertina, but the terrible music had no effect on the shadow at all.
(It did, however, make the captain want to put his own ears out with his hook.)
The shadow had some presence in the real world; otherwise the cord wouldn’t have held at all. But the rules that governed it were tricky and, well, Hook wasn’t the most logical and thorough practitioner of the scientific method. He grew frustrated often and tantrums came quick.
The captain stewed, rage boiling up quietly behind his eyes and face again.
And then, in the silence of this latest lull, a quiet ticking began. Distant and weak.
Hook’s prodigious brows shot up to the top of his forehead.
He dashed out of the cabin, throwing papers and chairs aside, and ran to the railing—nearly knocking a pirate overboard along the way.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
He started to let out a sigh of relief. Just some of the rigging snapping against a mast, or…
Tock.
What passed for Hook’s heart almost stopped, clenched in an invisible icy fist.
He staggered away from the railing, hands over his ears so he couldn’t hear it anymore.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick.
Tock.
“No, no no no no no! Not now! It was all coming together!” he cried, rushing up and down the deck in a panic. “I was practically handed Peter’s shadow. And once I used it to get Peter, I could blow everything the boy loves to smithereens—while he watched! It’s the greatest revenge ever planned by any villain ever! And I was almost there!”
He ran back to the comforting darkness of his cabin and threw the door violently shut behind him.
“WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME HERE!” he screeched at the shadow. “I am running out of time! Can you hear that? It’s the vile croc, come for me! So talk, blast you!”
“Maybe it can’t talk,” Smee suggested from the corner of the room, where he had waited quietly until the captain’s fit had passed.
“Of course it can’t talk,” Hook swore, raising his eyebrows at his first mate’s predictable stupidity. “It’s a shadow. But it could make a sign, or write something.…I gave it the bloody slate, before I made those dismal noises! It didn’t even bother to try.”
“Maybe it can’t write. Maybe Peter Pan can’t write. Can he read?” Smee asked curiously. “Never seen the lad with a book or nothin’…”
“Why, that’s…” Hook paused, thinking. “Actually, that’s a very good point, Mr. Smee. The sadly ignorant Peter Pan probably can’t even write his own name—uneducated lout.”
“So maybe he’s not worth your time,” Mr. Smee hazarded. “Such a useless, adventurous, young, enthusiastic…er, I mean utterly uneducated boy. A right simpleton. Not much of a nemesis, right? Maybe you should just forget about h
im, like the crew’s been suggesting. Forget about all of Never Land. Just put it behind you. Let’s go out and find us a merchant vessel or pillage a seaside town. Right now. Like in the good old days.”
“I won’t let Peter get away! I won’t let him escape me this time!”
“But Cap’n. It’s a never-ending chase,” Mr. Smee pointed out as gently as a mother consoling a child chasing his own shadow. “Oh, sometimes it seems like you get the best of him, but he always gets the best of you in the end, and then he slips away. Maybe it’s time to…let it go, like? Move on? Wrap up that part of your life and enjoy what’s enjoyable now? The sea, the sun, the blood of your enemies…”
“But…but I want him,” Hook whispered, lips trembling. “He always gets away from me and it’s not fair. He took my hand. He took the best of me.”
“Nawww,” Mr. Smee said, patting him on the back. “Not the best of you. Your hook is so useful, ain’t it? And shiny. He didn’t take nothing away. He gave you a deadly weapon, and a boatload of memories, and a souvenir. Let the lad go. You’re the bigger man. You’re the only actual man, as it were. So maybe it’s time you—”
“WHERE IS PETER?” Hook roared suddenly, whirling on the shadow, leveling an accusing hook at it.
The thing flung itself backward in fear but did nothing else.
It didn’t even shrug, which one would assume even an ignorant, badly behaved, etiquetteless shadow of an uncivilized simpleton could resort to.
Hook’s eyes narrowed.
“Maybe you don’t know exactly where he is. But you have some idea. You’re part of him. You even act like him. There is some sort of ley line or force that connects the two of you. If I set you free, you might even fly off yourself, in search of him, lonely in your bodiless state.”
The thing bobbed quickly and wretchedly up and down. It tipped its head toward the small porthole window. Let me go, it was obviously pleading.
“AHA!” Hook said triumphantly. “You do have some idea. The direction at least. Now that the two of you are both back in Never Land, you can somehow sense where he is. You couldn’t when you were trapped in London.”
“Almost like a compass,” Mr. Smee said whimsically, chuckling from deep within his large belly. “Always pointing north, in a manner o’ speakin’.”
“Always pointing—what?” Hook blinked. “Almost like a compass, you say?”
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“Now that, Mr. Smee, is an interesting idea.…”
Wendy stumbled backward. She wasn’t hit hard enough to fall down, but the tiny points of the fairy’s—feet? Fingers? Head? Stinger?—jabbed her right in the middle of her rib cage, knocking the wind out of her. It would probably leave a nasty bruise.
She warily regarded her attacker. The fairy—again, Wendy assumed—was an angry tinkling ball of light with the prettiest girl imaginable inside. Diminutive but…solid, with a scandalous lack of decorous dress. All she wore was a ragged green shift which barely covered her hips and thighs and breasts and was gathered dangerously over only one shoulder. This was both shocking and delightful; it made the tiny creature resemble statues of ancient nymphs and nereids Wendy had seen. Her hair was even done up in classical style, a goddess-like bun of hair so golden it glowed. Tiny pointed ears curved their way through the few dangling tresses. Her eyes were enormous and not even remotely human: they were far apart and glaring.
The crowning glory was, of course, a pair of delicate iridescent wings sprouting from her back. Their shape was somewhere between butterfly and dragonfly. They were clear as glass and thin as onion skin.
The fairy chimed and jingled angrily, shedding little sparkles of golden light that danced for a bit in the air before drifting down to the ground and fading. Wendy couldn’t tell where the girl’s lovely tinkling sound was coming from, exactly. At first she thought it was bells on the tiny shoes but close inspection revealed nothing. The chimes, like the dust, seemed to come from her very essence.
“Oh my, I’m so sorry,” Wendy breathed, apologizing for her…standing? Being? In the way of the beautiful little thing? “Are you all right?”
The tinkling grew more insistent. The fairy bobbed up and down in the air and balled her tiny hands into fists.
She aimed herself at Wendy’s chest again and struck her.
Prepared as she was for it this time, the pain was no worse than a bumblebee accidentally knocking into her and then buzzing drowsily off into the sunlight.
“Whatever is the matter?” Wendy asked patiently. “Have I done something wrong? Will you tell me?”
Luna barked once, forefeet planted firmly and defensively.
The fairy suddenly dipped down to the ground. The light emanating from her dimmed.
“What is it?”
The fairy stamped on the dirt and pointed at it.
“Am I trampling your flower?” Wendy asked, stepping back carefully and examining the prints where she had just stood. There were no crushed petals there, just some grass and sand. No dead insects, either.
The fairy gritted her teeth in frustration and flew back up to Wendy. She grabbed a lock of her hair and yanked, hoisting it over her shoulder like the heaviest rope on a ship.
“Ow! Hey! What is it? You merely have to tell me!” Wendy cried, stumbling farther into the clearing, trying to free her hair from the pixie’s grasp.
Apparently satisfied, the creature released her grip and dove back down to the ground…and walked. Slowly and carefully out over the ground, along…
“My shadow,” Wendy said slowly.
A sinking feeling came over her.
Her shadow crossed her arms knowingly.
“Not my shadow, of course,” Wendy said, biting her lip. “Peter Pan’s shadow.”
The fairy nodded twice, slowly and solidly—no misinterpretation possible.
Wendy sighed. The time of reckoning had come far sooner than she expected. She had hoped for a little more time in Never Land before her choices caught up with her. How did this fairy even know about it, really? Wendy thought she would only have to apologize to Peter. Not anyone else.
(Of course she also rather hoped that the imminent doom of Never Land would overshadow any mistakes or transgressions on her part.)
“I don’t have it. Anymore.”
The fairy’s eyes widened. She started to move, uncertainly—perhaps to pull Wendy’s hair again, perhaps to shrug: Why? Perhaps to make motions to get a fuller explanation…but Wendy’s guilty conscience was way ahead of her.
“I traded it to Captain Hook in return for my passage here,” she said calmly.
Her shadow did a sarcastic little curtsy, as if to say, Thank you. Now we’re getting somewhere.
The seconds stretched out to infinity as Wendy watched the fairy register what she had said. She could feel the tropical sun on her back, feel the breeze from the sea lift the little hairs off her forehead, smell Luna’s clean but doggy fur scent as she waited for a reaction.
When the fairy’s eyes had widened further than it seemed possible, she dove at Wendy again.
Here and there and everywhere at once—pinching, pulling, yanking hair, biting.
Wendy covered her face and flung herself around the clearing, trying to get away from the creature without hurting her. It was like being attacked by an angry swarm of bees or a dozen fairies at once.
“Oh! Stop! Please!”
Luna leapt up and bit at the air, snapping and growling and trying to grab the annoying flying thing that was hurting her friend.
As she slapped madly at the air around her, Wendy prayed that neither one of them actually injured the fairy.
Finally Luna’s muzzle smacked the creature hard on her tiny behind, and she went tumbling head over feet, straight into a tree. She slid down it, landing in a heap among the roots.
“Oh no, are you all right?” Wendy cried, immediately running over despite the myriad pinches and tiny cuts she had suffered from the attack. She knelt down and crad
led the stunned fairy carefully in her hands. The fairy sat up, swaying woozily. Then she leaned over and sank her teeth into Wendy’s thumb.
“Now stop that this instant,” Wendy said sternly, gripping her a little more tightly around the middle. “Let us try discussing this like adul—ah, like civilized people. I take it you are a friend of Peter’s?”
For yet again, this creature—this particular fairy—wasn’t one she had invented in her Never Land tales. And she didn’t imagine her brothers could have come up with anything like her.
The tiny girl pouted and frowned and crossed her arms sullenly. It was so adorable Wendy had to work very hard not to giggle.
“Well, I’m very sorry about what I did. I’m not proud of it. I messed up,” she admitted. “But look here. Your friend Peter left his shadow in my bedroom. Ages ago. Four years, in fact.”
The fairy blinked at this. Wendy couldn’t be sure how intelligent the fairy was; she took quite a bit of time to process this new information, and with surprise.
“Yes! Four years I’ve kept it safe, free from dust, awaiting Peter’s return. Of course, I had every intention of giving it back! I’m not a thief. But he…never returned.”
The fairy looked uncomfortable. Her eyes darted to the side and she squirmed a little in Wendy’s palm.
“For years I waited for him,” Wendy continued, trying not to sound too sorrowful. She was in the wrong, after all. “Every night I told stories about him, watched the night sky for him.…Then they moved me out of the nursery. Michael and John went to school. I was left all by myself, alone and waiting. And still he never came.
“I grew a bit despondent, I suppose. The boys didn’t want to hear my stories anymore. If it wasn’t for the shadow I would have begun to think I had imagined every last moment of Never Land. Life was just so dreary and dreich.…And then my parents bought me this stupid dog.…Not you, Luna,” she added before the wolf could even react. Luna wagged her tail happily. “And then they decided to send me away to Ireland. Ireland! They only want to see me settled down with some nice boy with a nice job at a nice office somewhere, or as a spinster governess in some remote location, and I don’t want either of those things. Not yet, anyway.”