Straight On Till Morning

by Liz Braswell

  Tinker Bell saw her frowning and smiled.

  Chanting Peninsula, she jingled. Get it?

  “Oh! Yes! Not ‘Enchanted’! The whole peninsula…chants. That’s amazing! But what is it that makes the sounds, specifically?”

  Tinker Bell shrugged, no longer interested in the question or the subject. She pulled Wendy’s sleeve and pointed down: directly beneath them was the recognizable forest of Never Land, and there, just beyond it, was…a blank wall.

  Clouds, gray and white and eggshell and beige and every not-quite-color in between drifted over each other in unhealthy layers. Fingers of mist spun out almost purposefully, ensnaring a tree or a rock and then using that anchor to crawl along farther. Yet in other places the mist stretched thin and snapped away from wherever it was before, revealing seemingly untouched foliage and landscape beneath it. Wendy wasn’t sure what she expected—dead land? Changed, unfamiliar objects?—but was nevertheless surprised the magical fog moved on without altering anything in its wake. It didn’t look harmless.

  Inside the mist itself, however, something seemed not quite right. There were hints of pale brown or orange, with ochre…some surface that reflected light not from the sun that was now twinkling over Never Land; a different star perhaps, dun-colored and morose. Wendy shivered. The pirates were frightening, the crystal guardian was murderous, and the mermaids were surprisingly hostile, but this…this was a hint of the completely unknowable. And far, far more terrifying.

  Tinker Bell pointed down and began to descend, spiraling like a drill.

  “But why?” Wendy asked, coming somewhat clumsily after her, skirts flying up into her face as she desperately tried to hold them against her thighs. “Can’t we just skim low under the fog, and search for Peter that way?”

  One does not simply fly into the Land of the First.

  “I don’t suppose it should have been that easy,” Wendy said with a sigh. She landed fairly elegantly and slowly—she thought—touching her tippy-toes down to the ground first the way Tinker Bell did. The two girls reluctantly regarded the strange, unwholesome smog before them as it coiled around itself like the intertwined bodies of mythic serpents. Jörmungandr or perhaps Ouroboros.

  Though Wendy could not have possibly known it, the fairy and the human had the exact same expression on their faces: wonder, distrust, false bravery.

  Tinker Bell tentatively reached a tiny, bauble-decorated toe into the mist—and then quickly pulled it out.

  “I don’t want to suggest anything untoward,” Wendy said after a full moment’s hesitation, “but, since you said one shouldn’t fly here, well, if you don’t think it’s beneath you, perhaps you wouldn’t object to sitting—riding rather, on my shoulder? That way we will be on equal footing, together, with whatever comes at us. Also you wouldn’t be lost, or stepped on, or…”

  But the fairy was already zooming up to her neck. She perched daintily on the crook of Wendy’s shoulder and held on to a lock of brown hair—but less like reins and more for balance and possible security. She did not tug.

  “Very well then,” Wendy said, lifting her chin and trying to muster bravado and dignity appropriate to the moment—and to disguise how tickled she was at the closeness of the fairy, despite their circumstances. She could just feel the tiniest weight on her skin and the occasional brief heat of a speck of fairy dust.

  Together, they entered the mists.

  The first thing that struck Wendy was how it felt nothing at all like she had expected. The clouds were neither damp, nor moist, nor cold. They were hot, and somehow drier than the land around them. Yet they didn’t smell of smoke or smog or anything burning.

  Strange noises streamed past her ear: whispers she couldn’t quite make out, the distant echo of something very large pounding off in the distance. A rhythmic beat whose direction she couldn’t put her finger on.

  Then the flat yellow, white, and gray entirely surrounded her, masking the world. There was no distance or perspective. She closed her eyes and tried to put her feet in the same direction she had been heading. There was nothing else to do. And since nothing was touching her, there was no immediate threat to worry about.

  After some period of time she couldn’t quite keep track of, the whispers quieted. She opened her eyes. Like tears after a good cry, the mists quickly dried and disappeared—or perhaps they rose up, joining the uncolored sky to make a complete dome of gray and beige around everything.

  They stood in what appeared to be very much a desert.

  Wendy, of course, had never seen one in real life but had read enough adventure novels and explorer’s narratives to recognize one when she saw it. Sadly, the ground was not quite as dramatic as the sands of Egypt were described; not an endless ocean of dunes and ripples, solid waves and particulate shores. There was sand, but it was gritty white here and streaked with yellow there, broken up with a band of gray beyond that, and red, red, red where the far-off ruby cliffs seemed to dissolve under their own weight into the floor of the planet.

  There were also rocks strewn about everywhere untidily. Tiny rocks like pebbles, large rocks like you might build a wall out of, but in all the wrong shapes and colors. Perfectly black rounded rocks scattered randomly among the rest for no good reason. Countless flat, flaking red rocks that made more sense in the red-tinged landscape.

  Keeping close to the ground were strange little plants. And though Wendy generally didn’t like imposing subjective opinions on defenseless inanimate objects, they were quite ugly. Thorny, narrow-twigged, bunched up tight, and miserly with leaves of dull colors. Some of them looked dead but apparently weren’t. There wasn’t a single “normal” cactus among them. No barrels with spikes, no tall ones with rounded branches like letters from another language.

  Disappointing.

  And then there were tall strange boulders that stood by themselves, spires or pinnacles dotting the landscape like bowling pins set up by a giant toddler. They were higher than buildings but narrow, their bodies striped with layers of red and white and tan like half-sucked peppermint canes a hundred years old and yellowed with age.

  A dead wind blew so dry it burned Wendy’s nostrils. Sand got in her eyes and it wasn’t even normal sand, the pretty round and faceted jewels of a good English beach. It was more like dust, tiny slippery flakes that soon found their way into every crease and crevice of her clothes and person.

  As for the rest of the land, from her squinted eyes Wendy saw…farther than she ever had. Her brain hurt trying to make some sort of sense of the images it received. At home even outside the city there were always houses blocking the view, and trees, and hills; every couple of miles something like a hedge cut off one’s view of the rest of the world. Here she could see for what appeared to be fifty miles in every direction, maybe a hundred, with no real end but for the ability of her eyes.

  She felt dizzy, utterly exposed under such a huge, bright, dead sky and endless flat desert, with its weird chess-like rock figures, its unmeasurable walls of red rock and distant plateaus. There was nothing else; she herself was nothing.

  She didn’t even have her shadow.

  Wendy collapsed to her knees, overcome by it all.

  Careful! Tinker Bell exhorted, buzzing up off her shoulder for a moment before remembering not to fly. You’re going to get all sticky and mucky.

  “Mucky?” Wendy asked huskily. “Are you joking? Tinker Bell, are you feeling all right? Is the heat getting to you?”

  Heat? It’s cold and nasty and wet with all the mud bubbling up everywhere!

  “Mud?” Wendy looked around. “All I see is desert, miles and miles of empty desert. What do you see?”

  The fairy shifted uncomfortably on her shoulder. I just told you. Mud. A whole world of it. A giant flat. Dead. World. Mud bubbling up. Nothing.

  “I wonder which one of us is right,” Wendy murmured. “Do you think it’s some sort of trap, some way of disguising themselves? Of keeping us from finding them and Peter? An illusion…like fairy glamour?�
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  They are the most powerful beings in Never Land. They are Never Land, Tinker Bell jingled darkly. No need for illusion.

  “How does this place usually appear? Have you seen it before?”

  Those who return never say. And no.

  “Well.” Wendy bit her lip. Even words spoken aloud here sounded thin and dead and useless. “If it’s real at all, at least what I can see, from where I stand, there is no sign of Peter anywhere. Or anything living. You?”

  Nothing. Mud.

  “Hmm. Hold on then. We’ll walk a bit, and see if we see anything or anyone. Let’s just take a good look at where we started so we can remember.…”

  She forced herself back up on her feet and looked behind them. To her relief, the air—or reality—seemed to ripple; shreds of white and gray blew aside and the desert petered out. Glimpses of the dark green jungle peeped from beyond.

  “Well, good,” she said, turning back the way they were headed. “We can always return. We shall mark our place with those three rocks there, and—oh!”

  Not twenty feet from them, where there was nothing but scrub before, stood a giant monolith. A red-and-orange jagged-edged hoodoo reaching high into the sky. Its top was worn into three strange and slightly bulbous shapes. With just a little imagination Wendy could make out heads and maybe faces—blank, primordial ones.

  “Tinker Bell,” she whispered. “What do you see?”

  Mud welling up. Bubbling up into three ugly mud statues. Sweating and bleeding and oozing mud.

  Wendy was only a little relieved that she and her friend were both seeing different versions of what appeared to be the same thing. The stone effigy in front of her was terrifying in every way: in its size, silence, and sudden appearance.

  Why are you here?

  Nothing spoke. Nothing that looked like a head or a face moved. No sound emerged, and yet the words reverberated across the dead landscape, echoing and unmistakable. There could be no doubt where it came from.

  “If you please…” Wendy dropped into a small curtsy. “We’re here in search of our friend, Peter Pan. Have you seen him?”

  Silence.

  Terrible, dreadful silence. It, too, echoed, blanketing the desert with a deadly finality.

  Wendy waited and waited.

  The dry wind blew past her ear. She felt Tinker Bell grow tense, tiny fingernails digging into her skin. Not urging her to do anything. Just nervous.

  “I’m sorry,” she began again after a while. “Peter Pan. Have you seen him? He’s about my size, and wears green.…”

  Peter Pan was here. Now he is gone.

  “Ah. Do you know when he left? Or where he went to? Did you give him a new shadow?”

  One question too many.

  Despite the lack of change in the landscape, Wendy could feel its impatience.

  The problems of the boy are not our concern. We sent him away. Why are you here. You are not from Never Land. You are—older.

  “I beg your forgiveness if I am too old to be allowed here,” Wendy said, immediately lowering her head. “I shall leave as soon as I help my friend here find her friend, and help him get his shadow back, and defeat the pirates with whatever they are planning.”

  There was a strange un-noise, as if the air were shaking.

  Age is no rule of ours. It is a law created by you humans from the other side. We make no laws. We make no rules. We just are. It is humans who seek to name and regulate and shape this land to their ridiculous whims. Our world is crystallizing to the point of permanence, thanks to your ridiculous dreaming.

  “I…don’t understand.…”

  Once we and the world were one. We were the world. Then humans came. Their dreams were simple at first. But soon came the rules and the laws and the ideas and the suppositions and the feelings and the wishes and the decisions and the hopes. With each one another mountain hardened and another sea narrowed into a river. Now you have your Never Land. And because children’s dreams are the strongest, their dreams rule the world. Everywhere except for here, where we still rule. We, the First of this world.

  “Oh, but isn’t it all rather lovely?” Wendy asked. “Fairies and mermaids—despite their vicious tendencies—and dragons and flying and moonlit beaches? You have an amazing, beautiful world here. Never Land exists the way it does as a result of all that innocent childhood dreaming…all of their most magical and creative thoughts before they grow up and it slips away.…”

  INSOLENT!

  Wendy Darling you know

  You know you and your brothers are not the only ones who dream

  Wendy was forced to her knees by the strength of the words. She covered her ears despite not actually hearing anything.

  When she managed to look up again, the rock formation had changed. There was something about it that looked different, and it appeared to be looming over her more.

  Some children are so twisted by hate from others they can dream of nothing but hate.

  Some children dream of going through a day without being whipped or beaten.

  Some children dream of nothing more than a full meal. They smile in their sleep as their minds conjure something that would fill their bellies if it were only real.

  Some dream that their parents are still alive, or at least that their ghosts come to visit.

  Some dream of still being able to play with their friends and go to school although they no longer can.

  This Never Land you see is the Never Land you and your brothers are used to. There are other parts of Never Land you never see, with no fairies or mermaids. Only dishes of food and clean water and kindness. Or beasts so horrible you would die upon viewing them.

  Silence filled the space in Wendy’s ears and mind when the First finished speaking. Her heart paused.

  Other…children’s dreams…

  “The qqrimal,” she murmured.

  But that wasn’t her fault. Was it? These other children weren’t part of her Never Land, her world—were they? They weren’t part of the London where she and John and Michael played in the nursery with Nana and cufflinks and perfume and Mr. and Mrs. Darling and tea and rain.

  But…of course they were.

  Wendy knew that.

  She just didn’t like to think about it.

  They were out there somewhere, at the edges or hidden in plain sight. Orphans, beggars, children with bruises, girls whose parents really did force them into arranged marriages—without even the choice of going to Ireland instead.

  Some of them may even have dreamed of a life where all they had to worry about was growing lonely and old in a large house, where there was food and heat every day.

  Why else would they have dreamed up a Peter Pan to rescue them?

  “I…I just never even thought about that before.”

  The First didn’t say anything.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t—I still don’t know how Never Land works. Or…my world, either, I suppose.”

  How much do you care about your world? Or this one? The mad pirate will destroy all of Never Land rather than simply quit it, once he has Peter Pan in his clutches to watch it all and weep.

  “Yes, that’s why I’m here. But I don’t see what I or my world has to do with—”

  Hook is the villain and star of so many of your tales. He was birthed from the tides of your world. And he will destroy ours.

  “I didn’t mean to…They were just stories.…But you can stop him, can’t you?”

  We cannot stop this, because of your world’s hold over ours. He is of your making.

  “What do you want me to do?” Wendy cried desperately. “I’ll do it! Whatever you ask!”

  Nothing. Silence.

  Normally she was not a girl prone to perspiring—she never moved much faster than a brisk walk, and remained inside on the hottest days. Now she felt sweat break out across her brow and uncomfortably under her arms.

  But it wasn’t from the desert heat.

  “Should I leave now?” she asked.


  Maybe she and the fairy should just go. Maybe the First were done with them. But it felt wrong to turn her back on these creatures, whatever they were, and walk away…rather like turning one’s back on a king or queen. Were they done with her?

  “Please. I’m sorry. I was so stupid. Never Land is a learning experience,” she ventured, nervousness and sweat coalescing into words that just poured out of her mouth. “I came for adventure—perhaps wrongfully—and it’s far more complicated than the place I dreamed of. Pirates who don’t seem to want to be pirates, girls who have to hide their true selves to come here, monsters who only eat fairies, mermaids who will fight each other tooth and claw over an apple…And Hook. And I am responsible for his doomsday visions?”

  Never Land is a reflection of your world.

  Wendy jumped. She had no longer been expecting a response, much less one so calm.

  Are things broken here? Save this world. Then go back to your own broken world and fix it. Perhaps we shall be mended as well.

  “Me? Fix the entire world? I can’t even fix my own situation at home! That’s why I came here!”

  Is escape to Never Land your only recourse for being made to grow up, for being sent away? For disagreeing with your parents? Is there nothing else you could do? For yourself? For others like you? For others unlike you?

  This was not how Wendy expected the conversation to go. After her outburst, she expected irritation from the strange beings and maybe a boulder or two hurled at her for perceived insolence. Being squashed would have made more sense than these strange questions.

  “I’m just…I’m no one. I can’t do anything. I can’t even disobey my father.”

  Perhaps you should see if that really is true.

  Go quickly. Time is running out for Never Land and for Peter.

  There was a pause and a ripple in the atmosphere that Wendy realized meant a change in mood.

  Goodbye, human not grown-up not child not hero not villain. Goodbye, pixie not pixie not human.