by Zoe Barton
“No, wait! I’ll jump!” Mermaids, I told myself firmly, and with a deep breath, I placed both hands on the windowsill and shoved myself off.
I floated. Seeing that I wasn’t going to fall made me so happy that I started to rise—past my window, above the roof.
“Wow.” Everything looked different from this height. All the trees seemed so much shorter, and in the dark, our driveway looked like just a gray stripe that cut our grassy front lawn in half.
“Let’s go then,” Peter said, flying ahead. I followed eagerly, scissoring my legs so I could catch up.
“You don’t need to kick,” Peter said, laughing, as we flew over my driveway. “You’re not swimming.”
My face grew hot, and I stopped kicking. I wobbled slowly through the air while Peter zoomed down the street. Afraid of being left behind, I started kicking again, but I still didn’t go fast enough. Peter was already several houses ahead of me before he noticed I wasn’t right behind him.
“None of the other Wendy girls were this slow,” he said, perching on the top of a street lamp to wait.
“That’s why I keep kicking,” I explained. “I don’t know any other way to go faster.”
“Why are you wobbling around so much?”
“I think it’s my backpack,” I said, embarrassed. “It keeps throwing me off balance.”
Tink zigzagged around Peter’s head, chittering impatiently.
Peter translated. “Tink says, at this rate, spring will be over by the time we get to Neverland. Look. Use your arms like this.”
I spread my arms wide, like Peter had done. I flew straight and much, much faster, zipping past the Neverlanders easily.
The wind in my hair felt cold and delicious. “Awesome!”
Peter flew up beside me. “You have small strings streaming from your feet,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Oh, right—my shoelaces.” I had really been hurrying.
Afraid of losing my sneakers somewhere in the clouds, I landed on a roof with clay tiles and moonlight reflecting off the TV satellite dish. “This will just take a minute,” I said, tying my shoes and double-knotting them as fast as I could.
“What are these funny things?”
I looked up from my feet.
Peter was walking a power line like a tightrope.
I gasped. “Be careful! Electricity can kill you.”
That was a mistake. Telling Peter something is dangerous only makes him want to do it more.
“A new foe!” Peter cried, jumping up and drawing his golden sword eagerly.
I zoomed off the roof and flew between Peter and the power lines before he could take a swing at them.
“You can’t fight it, Peter!” I said. Even Tink started chirping nervously, tugging at the leaves on Peter’s shirt to hold him back.
“Don’t worry, Wendy girl. I’ll protect you.” Peter pointed his sword at the power lines. “Have at thee, villain!”
I thought quickly. “I mean, it wouldn’t be right for you to attack. You see, the electricity is already imprisoned.”
That made Peter pause. “Imprisoned?”
I nodded solemnly, secretly very relieved. “Kept captive in those wires. It would be beneath your honor to attack it.”
Peter liked this idea. He raised his chin and sheathed his sword with a flourish, looking very noble. “Come on, then.”
He zoomed straight up, the little fairy flying in front of him. With a sigh of relief, I spread my arms and rushed after them.
Below us, the streets glinted silver in the moonlight. The leafless trees swayed a little in the wind, and Christmas lights glittered on every block. Most of the houses were as small as my palm. As we rose higher in the dark blue sky, I noticed a bigger building with a familiar playground. “Hey, there’s my school!”
“Look!” Peter said, pointing at a flock of geese flying just beside us. I don’t think the birds were used to sharing the skies with kids and fairies. Hearing Peter, they scattered, honking in distress, and Tink let out a bell-like trill, a lot like a giggle.
Even higher, the streets started to look like a web of dark lines. I could only tell where the cars were by the white ovals their headlights made on the road. Peter led us higher still.
Soon, we were flying over the town. It was only a cluster of little lights below us. “That’s exactly how it looks from a plane,” I called to Peter, but then I remembered that my parents were somewhere down there, probably still at the party at Mom’s firm. It occurred to me that Mom might not like me leaving without permission, but since that wasn’t a very happy thought, I pushed it out of my mind.
If Mom and Dad could stay out late at parties, then I could definitely go to Neverland to have a few adventures. They were going to be busy anyway. They probably wouldn’t even miss me, as long as I came back by Christmas.
With the thought of Neverland steady in my mind, the fizzy feeling in my stomach became a hurricane of bubbles, tickling me so much that I giggled out loud. I flew so fast that the wind chilled me inside my jacket.
We passed through the clouds, and then we flew higher again, where the sky was blacker and dotted with little stars. They seemed a lot closer than they looked from the ground, and even though I couldn’t prove it, I think they moved when I wasn’t watching, rearranging themselves into different patterns.
“Wanna race?” I called to Peter as I zoomed past him. Technically, since I was already ahead of him when I asked, I kind of cheated. But I don’t think Peter minded. He thrust his face against the wind with a wide grin, and the next time I looked, he was gaining on me steadily.
As soon as he was close enough, Peter shouted something. I didn’t understand what he said, but he sounded half exasperated and half amused. (It’s easy for me to recognize that tone. That’s usually how Mom talks to me.)
I slowed and waited for him. “What?”
“Where are you going, Wendy girl? You don’t even know the way,” he said with a stern look.
“Oh.” I looked at the big open sky. “How do you get to Neverland?”
Peter pointed ahead. “Second star on the right, and straight on to morning.”
Those didn’t sound like the most exact directions in the world. I wondered if I should have gone to the computer before we left and printed out a map, like Mom does before we go on a road trip. But then again, I had the feeling that the internet didn’t know the way to Neverland.
“I guess I’ll let you lead the way then,” I said with a grin. When Peter sped off ahead of me, Tink zipped past too, right behind Peter.
Then we flew, all in a line. And flew some more.
After about the millionth star, it felt a lot like flying in a plane—a little bit boring if you don’t have anything to do. I pulled my book out of my backpack and started doing a little research on Neverland.
The stars on that part of the Milky Way weren’t very close, not close enough to give off enough light to read. But Tink did. And luckily, I was flying right behind her, my book open and tilted to catch her glow.
Personally, I thought this was pretty smart. It worked out great . . . at least until Peter glanced over his shoulder to check if I was still following.
He saw what I was doing and laughed. “Well, no Wendy girl has done that before. Or any of the Lost Boys.”
Then Tink noticed me using her as a lamp. She didn’t think it was funny. She chattered at me angrily.
“Sorry, Tink!” I cried, stuffing my book in my bag next to Mom’s iPod. “I didn’t think that you would mind.”
She just hissed. Then, she began zigzagging around Peter, so her light threw strange shadows everywhere.
If I worked harder to win Tink over, maybe she wouldn’t get mad at me all the time, which would definitely make traveling more pleasant. In my reading, I’d learned that the fairy was a little vain, so I started with compliments.
“That’s a very nice dress,” I told her, pointing at the rose petals she wore.
Tink didn’t chime,
or turn toward me, or even stop zigzagging. I wasn’t sure if she’d heard me.
“Did you make it yourself?” I asked, a little louder. “The dress, I mean?”
Instead of answering, or even acknowledging me, the little fairy zoomed straight ahead, way out of earshot.
“Is she always like that?” I asked Peter, feeling a little hurt.
“She is to the Wendy girls,” Peter explained. “She hated the original Wendy, and I think she decided to hate the rest of you on principle.”
“Oh,” I said, disappointed. Then I straightened my shoulders and said, mostly to myself, “I’ll just have to work extra hard to win her over.”
“Right,” Peter said, his mouth quirking at the corners. He didn’t think it was possible, but he was humoring me—I get that a lot, too.
I couldn’t wait to prove him wrong.
It turned out that I didn’t really need Mom’s iPod to keep me entertained during the trip. After the book incident, Peter and Tink came up with plenty of stuff to do while we were traveling.
Soaring ahead of us, Tink plucked something from the air above her head and threw it to Peter.
“Here!” Peter said, and tossed it to me.
I caught it and took a good look—it was a glowing sphere, smaller than the fairy but much, much brighter. It warmed my palm, and when I opened my hand a little wider, it twinkled merrily. “What is it?”
“A baby star,” Peter said, like this was obvious.
I wondered if it was a good idea to use a star as a landmark if they moved around like that, but I didn’t say so. “It’s not as big as they tell us in school.”
“Grown-ups. They don’t know anything,” Peter said scornfully. He zipped forward. “I’m ready!”
I threw the star to Tink, who passed it to Peter. He let it drop, almost all the way to the clouds, before he swooped down and snatched it up.
He was definitely showing off, but I was still pretty impressed.
The next time he threw it to me, I let it fall for a few seconds before I rushed down and caught it—but I stubbed my toe on the moon, which was soccer ball sized and half hidden in the clouds.
Tink made a high-pitched ring, kind of like a really annoying telephone, her arms wrapped around her middle. I was pretty sure she was laughing.
Tossing the star back to Peter, I hung my head, my face so hot that I was surprised that it didn’t glow as brightly as the fairy’s.
Peter watched me, frowning a little. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but I was afraid he would tell me that it served me right for being such a copycat.
But all he said was “Pretty good for a first try. Next time, dive with your hands first. You’ll be able to see where you’re going.”
That made me feel better.
I kept throwing the star to Tink, hoping she might get friendlier, but she never threw it to me. We had to stop when we reached a second star, a bigger one who turned snobbishly away when it saw us. As we went, the baby star bobbed a little in the air, like it was waving good-bye, before shooting home.
Then Peter demonstrated some midflight acrobatics. I’d been taking gymnastics for years, and being able to fly made everything so much easier. When he did three somersaults, I did three too.
“Not bad, Wendy girl,” Peter said with a small smirk. “But can you do this?”
He did four cartwheels in a row in a circle around me, even while I was flying.
Then I tried. I definitely counted four cartwheels, but unfortunately, I didn’t pay attention to where my feet were going. My ankle smacked into the little fairy, almost knocking her out of the sky.
“Oops!” I straightened up quickly as she chattered angrily at me, shaking one fist and smoothing her hair down with her other hand. “Sorry, Tink! I didn’t see you there.”
Peter didn’t seem to be bothered. “Bet you can’t do this.”
He did a cartwheel, a round-off, and a backflip, all in a row.
I grinned. I knew I could do it. Once, I’d even done it when I wasn’t flying. So, I did a cartwheel, a round-off, and two backflips.
That might have been a mistake too. Either Peter didn’t like me outdoing him, or he got sick of practicing acrobatics for some other reason.
Lying with his hands behind his head, like he was floating backward, Peter started telling me about his adventures—about feeding Captain Hook’s hand to the crocodile, and rescuing Princess Tiger Lily from the pirates, and bringing the Lost Boys a mother. . . .
Maybe it was the time of day, or the fact that I had reread some of his stories an hour or so before, but my eyelids began to droop. Before long, I fell asleep. This was a problem, because apparently, when you aren’t awake, you might stop flying. Peter had to fly down and catch me. I woke up dangling from his hands, my toes brushing the Milky Way below.
Tink pulled my hair. “Oww!” I said, swatting at her sleepily.
She dodged and chittered angrily.
“What did she say?” I asked.
“That you just wanted to hold my hand,” Peter said.
I snatched my hand back, starting to blush. “Tink, I already told you. I don’t like like Peter. It’s just—I’m usually asleep by now.”
The fairy chimed in a scornful way, but Peter showed me how to stretch out on a strong gust of wind, which would keep me moving in the right direction even while I was sleeping. I started to thank him, but then he said, “None of the other Wendy girls fell asleep listening to me talk.”
“Sorry,” I murmured. Silently wondering if maybe the other Wendy girls were just better at pretending to listen to Peter, I drifted off to sleep.
“Wendy girl, wake up!” A hand shook me roughly.
I opened my eyes sleepily and saw the stars above me, and I remembered that I was riding the back of the wind with Peter Pan. I sat up with a start. Someone had tucked a bit of cloud around me as I slept, and I knew it wasn’t Tink. I smiled, liking Peter a little more.
“Time for a rest stop?” I said, rubbing my eyes. The air smelled like saltwater.
Peter shook his head and stretched lazily, but when he looked ahead, he started to grin, almost in spite of himself. “It’s Neverland.”
Chapter 4.
Something Eats Mom’s iPod
“We get off here,” Peter said.
Even the air was different in Neverland. It had a taste, both familiar and exciting at once, like the first bite of ice cream on the first day of summer. When you breathed it in, you started to feel like you do on that day, with school months and months away. My toes and fingers tingled in a strange way, and anything felt possible.
We glided over the water toward Neverland. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but it was getting ready to. The sky glowed a little, and I could see the island rising up like a mountain out of the sea, practically covered in a lush forest. Beaches circled it like white ribbon. The cliffs above them shone gold in the predawn light.
“How beautiful!” I exclaimed. It was so warm that I peeled off my jacket and stuffed it into my backpack. A couple of dolphins surfaced close to shore, making chee-chee-chee noises with toothy grins, like they were welcoming us. Flamingos took flight as we passed.
“What are those lights?” I asked, pointing to a huge tree that stood alone, at the edge of a cliff. They winked on and off among the leaves—little white and blue and purplish flashes. “Are they fireflies?”
Tink screeched. Peter didn’t bother to translate, but I knew that she hadn’t said anything nice. I think she might have still been upset about me kicking her during those cartwheels.
“Those are fairies,” Peter said, sounding a little bored. Apparently, I wasn’t the only visitor who asked that question. “They’re just now waking up.”
We flew past another cove. The indigo water there was dotted with boulders. On each rock sat at least one figure with a glittering tail that curved toward the sea. The mermaids’ hair fell past their waists, in all different colors—blond and blue, black with shades of violet or
green, a coppery sort of red.
“Is that Mermaids’ Lagoon? How lovely! There are so many of them!” I counted. “Twenty, at least. Are they combing their hair?”
“They have to. Fish swim through it at night. You should see what a mess they are when they can’t find their combs. The tangles get as big and round as a Never bird nest.” Peter laughed at the thought.
The mermaids sang as they combed. In the dim light, it sounded low and eerie.
“Who’s that one sitting on the rock a little higher than the others?”
“That’s Maris, queen of the mermaids.”
When she saw us fly across their bay, her eyes narrowed.
We circled the lagoon. We flew so close that I could see the lime green highlights in the queen’s blond hair, and I waved. The mermaids watched Peter, all their heads turning at once.
I waved harder, thinking that they couldn’t see me. “Hello!”
Only one of the mermaids, the littlest one, waved back. The mermaid queen grabbed her arm and pulled her under the waves. The other mermaids followed them, their tails throwing up spray.
“Mermaids aren’t friendly,” Peter told me. “They’ll drag you under if you let them.”
“Well, I’m going to make friends with one,” I told Peter matter-of-factly.
Tink gave a gleeful chirp and then pressed her hands over her mouth, as if she was trying to keep herself from cheering.
Peter stared at me, eyes wide with horror. Actually, he looked exactly how I felt when he told me that he was going to fight the power lines.
“I’m serious,” he said. “I’ve rescued more than one Wendy girl from drowning.”
Underwater, the mermaids continued their eerie song, humming instead of singing, louder and louder. The water just below us continued to bubble, and as I watched, a giant wave started to grow—five feet, ten feet, twenty.
“Uh-oh,” I said, zipping out of the way right before it crashed. Peter dodged in time too, but Tink got soaked.
Sputtering, she fell through the air. Two mermaids—one with black hair and one with green—surfaced, arms outstretched, webbed fingers spread, ready to catch the tiny fairy. The mermaids’ lips curled up, showing a glimmer of teeth.