by Jen Calonita
Jen Calonita is the author of the award-winning Secrets of My Hollywood Life and Fairy Tale Reform School series. She lives in New York with her husband, two boys, and two Chihuahuas named Captain Jack Sparrow and Ben Kenobi. A huge Disney fan, Jen dreams of moving the whole family into Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World. Visit her online at www.jencalonitaonline.com and Twitter @jencalonita.
Keep reading for a sneak peek at Straight On Till Morning by Liz Braswell!
Somewhere in Never Land…
“Wait, did we look over by the Troll Bridge?”
“…We did?”
“What about the Tonal Spring?”
“And the beaches around the Shimmering Sea?”
The asker of these questions was a slender young man of indeterminate age—though perhaps if an observer looked him dead in the face she would notice the last pockets of baby fat plumping his cheeks just above the cheekbones. His eyes and mouth and even nose wiggled and puckered with every word and thought in between, like a toddler telling a very important story to his mother. His hair was mussed up and red, his eyebrows a thicker, darker red.
And were his ears just a touch pointed, at the tips?
The one who answered his questions certainly had pointed ears, though the same observer might be hard-pressed to make out any ears—or actual answers—at all. The boy spoke to what appeared to be little more than a golden light that bobbed and sparkled and tinkled like bells. In fact, the whole scene resembled a mesmerist quizzing a pendulum held from a long golden chain, glittering in the sunlight, whose vague swings returned meanings known only to the occultist himself.
But upon looking more closely, one would see that inside the golden bauble was a tiny woman with very pointed ears, a serious face, a green dress, and sparkling wings. Her body was like a series of energetic globes, from her golden hair in its messy bun to her hips to the round silver bells that decorated her shoes. Throughout the conversation every part of her was as animated as her friend’s face.
“Really? We looked in all those places? Huh. Well, what about…here!”
The boy spun suddenly and grabbed the side of a tree, as if to physically move it out of the way. Really, he was just looking behind it. But there was nothing hiding there aside from some brightly colored lichen, a camouflage moss, and a few grazing unicorn beetles.
From this sudden motion and burst of energy to dead exhaustion; the boy slumped, strangely drained by disappointment and exertion. He slid down to the base of the tree, causing at least two of the shining white beetles to flee into higher branches.
The bauble of light glittered aggressively up and down. It jingled angrily.
“I can’t anymore, Tink. I’m beat. I just…I just don’t feel like it.”
The fairy—for that is what she was—zoomed closer, concerned. And it was when her light shone its brightest on his countenance that the most unusual detail of an already fey and wondrous scene became apparent. For no matter how intensely she glowed, no matter how perfectly yellow and dazzling the sun in the sky shone, neither source of light managed to produce a shadow off the boy.
The bauble jingled in tones of hope.
“I don’t know. We’ve looked everywhere. Twice. Tink, I just don’t know where it could be!”
The bauble swayed quietly, pensively. Almost as if the fairy within was in that rarest state of all for fairies: deep thought.
Possibly bothered by something.
But the boy, even in his diminished state, still kept his attention permanently fixed on himself. He did not notice.
She jingled once, tentatively.
“Naw, I don’t feel like flying. Not right now. I think I’ll just rest here for a while. You go on without me. I could use a nap. Then I’ll feel better. I just know it.”
The fairy jingled worriedly around his face.
“Just…go look without me.” He swatted her away like a gnat, sleep already overtaking his body once the decision had been made. “Don’t feel like flying…anymore.…”
He yawned a giant, repulsive yawn, and was soon snoring.
The fairy regarded him silently. She hung in a cool shadow of the generous tree, spun gently by a summery breeze.
They were at the edge of the Quiescent Jungle, which was the friendliest forest in Never Land. The leaves of the trees spanned every shade of golden green, and the creatures who lived there were all harmless and mostly furry. The air smelled like ripening blackberries—although it was not quite the right season—and a whisper of cool moistness hinted at a delightfully icy stream somewhere nearby.
Only a fool would want to leave. Only a genius would choose to nap there.
But Tinker Bell was twitchy. She had a rather dark inkling of where the shadow could be, since they had effectively proven where it could not be.
And if her friend ever found out that she’d had this inkling all along, he would be very cross with her indeed.
She floated silently over to his face, her golden sparkles illuminating every lash, every freckle, every pore. He blew out through his careless lips, and his breath lifted up the ends of his long, shaggy bangs. She hovered above his pug nose. After debating and biting her own lip, she gave him the tiniest quick fairy kiss on it.
Then she steeled herself and zoomed into the sky like a bee bent on finding its way home after a day of foraging nectar.
But she was not going home.
She was going to look for Peter’s shadow in the scariest place of all.
She was going to London.
Yes, it’s a scene re-created so often it has become almost a caricature of a trope, but let’s go through the process once again anyway because it’s necessary, even to this story.
Low clouds do not blanket the sky, for that implies coziness and comfort. No, these clouds mask the sky, weigh on the sky, choke the sky. They are strengthened by smoke from below, the trickling-upward effluence of a hundred thousand chimneys that decorate the landscape like unhealthily angular flowers. The slate-and-clay-shingled, higgledy-piggledy rooftops seem to extend forever in an industrial upside-down version of the fairy-tale hills and dales in a children’s book with bright pictures and bad perspective. Everything—everything—is in shades of gray and black. A great gray river slinks through the city like a tired but friendly snake, hobbled by bridges far less impressive than their names imply.
(Don’t believe me? Look up London Bridge and gaze at its pictures. An utter disappointment.)
Of course there’s Big Ben, the giant clock with equally giant gunmetal and copper hands that an astounding number of fictional characters have wound up standing on at one time or another. Its bells, along with all the church bells of the city, toll the hour menacingly with the obvious mournful implication of time passing, death coming, soup’s getting cold.
On the cobbled streets below the towers and rooftops, weather has some impact and energy; the almost-rain and morning mist combine to make a wet, stinging atmosphere that has men swirling into greatcoats, nannies bundling up their charges, and mums shouting, “Come out of the garden, you’ll catch your death in the fog!” Also many, many umbrellas. So many black umbrellas with the usual spindly frames—like insects or skeletons or whatever—that watching them pass is almost torturously jejune.
There.
London.
End of one century, beginning of another.
Got it?
Good.
Halfway between where the umbrellas ended and where the sky should have started, maybe twenty and a half feet below the tallest chimney, was one particular casement window. Gazing out of it was a young woman in an unfashionable pale blue dress. Her hair was a popular shade of brown and her eyes an exquisitely normal blue for that time and place.
At first she looked up at the sky, but it was impossible to make out any shapes in the clouds because of their utter completion, filling the heavens from one end to the other in the same unbroken shade. So she looked down. But the dismal garden below soaked up the wet like a mo
ldy sponge; there were no puddles, no reflections. The tree was sodden.
Nothing in this stolidly real vista was alterable by even the strongest imagination: there was no foothold for pirates, fairies, golden carriages, knights, or even a hint of swashbuckling. Someone from the street had thrown a brown banana skin over the fence, and there it lay, out of place in the English yard, attesting to the banality of global commerce and how it didn’t bring with it sultans or magic horses—only bananas.
Wendy sighed and turned from the window. Afternoons were the hardest.
In the mornings she still saw her tutor, and there were chores and writing exercises. After elevenses was a good improving book recommended by the bookseller, the one with the handsome nephew.
By then Mrs. Darling had usually either gone to pay visits or was busily engaged in correspondence with her delicate blue pen at her elegant secretary. The gloom never seemed to affect her even if she did stay home all day; she was always gracefully and slowly attending to some task or other: her face; her toilette; her sewing; the little expense book she kept for the house; the pantry; their unpredictable cook, Mary. Wendy used to watch her mother engage in these endless circuits with delight, but that feeling was now tempered with confusion: how could someone remain so serene and glowing while working through the same indoor errands, rainy day in and day out?
Wendy still enjoyed it when Mrs. Darling included her in some of her “feminine rituals,” which usually involved the proper application of powders and creams, tips on how to polish her nails, or ideas for sprucing up an old bow. She loved it when they had enough extra house money to go for a fancy tea out at Saxelbrees, just the two of them. Wendy would admire her mother smiling and laughing beneath her many-times-renewed hat, and would think once again that she was the most beautiful mother in the world. She wondered when she herself would attain that delicate beauty, confidence, and perfection of manner.
But these outings were rare. And anyway, even the most appealing things lost their glamour when held up to the imaginary delights of Never Land.
Wendy turned to her bureau. Normally she tried resisting until the end of the day, as a sort of reward. Like the opera creams her mother secretly indulged in. Mrs. Darling smiled so blissfully while she chewed—she sometimes even popped one before dinner if it was an especially trying day!
Often, when tempted to peek into the drawer too early, Wendy could assuage her longing by pulling out the tiny notebook she always kept with her. It had a very slim blue pencil that perfectly fit down the spine, and was nearly full of her neat, enthusiastic words. Well-thumbed pages were titled with things like “Peter Pan and the Pirates and the Unexpected Zeppelin” or “Peter Pan and Tiger Lily versus the Cyclops of the Cerulean Sea.” And she had illustrated “Captain Hook Is Taught a Timely Lesson by Peter Pan” with a little picture of a clock she had carefully copied from the mantel, as well as the eyes and nostrils of a fierce crocodile—the rest of whose body she had no hope of depicting accurately, and thus chose to submerge.
But today the words looked bleak and worn, and the empty lines beyond them bleaker still.
Wendy couldn’t resist anymore. Not today. Not when everything was so particularly gray and dreadful and hopeless.
She slid open the creaky wooden drawer and picked up an inky-soft bundle that lay neatly folded within. It shook out like a spider’s web, softer than silk and without the little catchy bits that clung to rough fingers. Its outline deformed easily. Only when she laid it out on the floor completely flat could she coax the shadow into its proper shape: Peter Pan.
Four years ago Nana had torn it from the boy. For four years Wendy had kept it carefully safe in her top drawer, waiting for Peter to come back and claim it.
Michael and John gave up first.
In the beginning they had been even more exultant than she at the discovery; in Michael’s case, jumping and crying and generally bouncing off the walls. John had pushed his ridiculous glasses up on his nose and tried to speak in grown-up terms of actual evidence and irrefutable facts and the like.
But…
Weeks turned into months. Into a year. Into four years.
There was no more proof, no more evidence, no more sign of a visitor from Never Land. And though the boys kept stealing quick looks at the shadow, Michael soon began to remark that it was “kind of crummy” and “a bit faded” and John muttered darkly about manifestations of another realm and meteorological phenomena. Somehow, astonishingly, it became just another piece of bric-a-brac, a souvenir from an earlier time or an only slightly more exotic place, like the tiny mosaic mirror Mr. Darling had bought from a man who was traveling back to his home in Kashmir.
But every night since then, Wendy had gone to sleep burning for Never Land. She hoped, the way some questionable but trendy pamphlets suggested, that if she thought about what she desired most of all before she fell asleep, she would dream of it. She drifted off whispering, Peter, I have your shadow.…Peter…
She often woke with a strange golden feeling, like she had just touched the boundaries of Never Land—something about wolves and strange fruit and freedom—but then quickly forgot it; the feeling never stayed.
Wendy rubbed a thumb along the edge of the shadow and shuddered. If she wasn’t careful she would begin weeping.
What had she done wrong?
What was so repulsive about her that Peter Pan wouldn’t return—even for his own shadow?
What about her was so lacking that no one from Never Land ever sought her out again?
She dropped the thing back into the drawer and slammed it closed, crushing a knuckle into her mouth to keep from sobbing.
Soon it would be time to prepare tea, and she didn’t want her mother commenting about unattractive red splotches on her cheeks or rings under her eyes.
In the afternoon her brothers came home, and things should have been better.
“John, Michael,” Wendy said with relief as their boyish humors and exuberance filled the otherwise silent house.
“Greetings, Sister,” John said, handing her his hat while pecking her on the cheek with a vaguely sarcastic air. He was bound for a real university someday, perhaps even Oxford, and had already begun effecting the irony and insouciance necessary for a sojourn there. Michael just kicked his boots off willy-nilly and threw his coat on a chair. Of course, other families had maids to deal with such situations, but aside from the Darlings’ general lack of excessive funds, Wendy enjoyed the routine.
At least, she used to.
Tsking mindlessly, she picked up Michael’s jacket and smoothed it out, hanging it up properly.
“Wendy, you’re a damn fool for not continuing your studies within the sphere of public education,” John announced, sounding like someone else.
“It’s heaps of fun, too,” Michael growled, a stormy look on his face. He was a less subtle wielder of sarcasm than his older brother.
“Well, Father said none of the daughters of his clients go—and they are all very respectable girls. And anyway, I have all the time and books I need,” she added, a little hollowly. It had seemed like the right choice to decline when her parents had—somewhat reluctantly—presented her with the option of attending one of the newfangled public schools. Why should she spend time cooped up in a crowded institution and be treated like a child when she could have a tutor and then putter about the house, dreaming and keeping things in order like an adult?
“It’s dumb. I hate it. School and its stupid rules,” Michael shouted. “‘If you don’t eat yer peas, you can’t have yer pudding!’ Stupid lunch matron.”
“Now, Michael, I’m sure they just want you to have a nutritious, healthy supper,” Wendy said, feeling the comfortable role of mother easily slide over her with its dulcet tones and indulgent smiles, banishing any uncertain feelings from the moment before.
“Are there any of those French biscuits left?” Michael asked hopefully. “The ones you made?”
“The ones I and Mother made? Perhap
s. I’ll set out some and serve you a nice cup of proper tea while you go upstairs and bathe. And then, if there’s time, I’ll tell you a story before bed.”
“Oh, Wendy and her stories,” John said with a smile and not quite a roll of his eyes. “I have too much reading to do. Like actual reading. Of actual history. Plus, Wendy Darling, I find your tales have a bit of a Freudian bent to them these days. Haven’t you noticed? It’s all fathers and sons and missing mothers.…”
“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said frostily. And indeed she didn’t. But his tone was nasty enough.
“I want three lumps in my tea! And milk!” Michael called over his shoulder as he stomped out of the room.
“Oh,” Wendy said, suddenly remembering. “Mother is supposed to come home from her dinner with Mrs. Cradgeapple early tonight—if you hurry, you may get to say good night to her before you turn in!”
“Oh. Yes. Mother,” John said thoughtfully. “Haven’t seen her in ages. Tall lady? About so high? Would absolutely love to catch up with the old hen.”
“John!” Wendy put her hands on her hips.
“Tootles, Sister. Off to read some more Swiss psychology. You know those Swiss. All chocolate and timepieces and subtext.” John made an elaborate bow and pretended to tip the hat that was no longer there.
Once he was gone, Nana, curled up comfortably in her early retirement by the fire, gave Wendy the sort of questioning look that only a really intelligent dog could.
“Yes, I see the muddy tracks they left on the floor,” Wendy sighed. “And no, I don’t know what to do about them. Boys! They grow up so fast.”
Now that was an interesting idea.
Never Land was full of children who never grew up—but what about a boy who grew up too fast? Literally. Like…hatching out of an egg as a baby and then attaining the height of a man by the end of the day.