by Jane Yolen
When she landed on the ground, she tripped over a large root and stubbed her toe.
“Ow!” she said.
“Shhh!” cautioned someone near her.
She looked up and saw two boys in matching ragged cutoffs and T-shirts staring at her. "Shhh! yourselves,” she said, wondering at the same time who they were.
But it hadn’t been those boys who spoke. A third boy, behind her, tapped her on the shoulder and whispered, “If you aren’t quiet, He will find us.”
She turned, ready to ask who He was. But the boy, dressed in green tights and a green shirt and a rather silly green hat, and smelling like fresh lavender, held a finger up to his lips. They were perfect lips. Like a movie star’s. Darla knew him at once.
“Peter,” she whispered. “Peter Pan.”
He swept the hat off and gave her a deep bow. “Wendy,” he countered.
“Well, Darla, actually,” she said.
“Wendy Darla,” he said. “Give us a thimble.”
She and her mom had read that part in the book already, where Peter got kiss and thimble mixed up, and she guessed what it was he really meant, but she wasn’t about to kiss him. She was much too young to be kissing boys. Especially boys she’d just met. And he had to be more a man than a boy, anyway, no matter how young he looked. The copy of Peter Pan she and her mother had been reading had belonged to her grandmother originally. Besides, Darla wasn’t sure she liked Peter. Of couse, she wasn’t sure she didn’t like him. It was a bit confusing. Darla hated things being confusing, like her parents’ divorce and her dad’s new young wife and their twins who were—and who weren’t exactly—her brothers.
“I don’t have a thimble,” she said, pretending not to understand.
“I have,” he said, smiling with persuasive boyish charm. “Can I give it to you?”
But she looked down at her feet in order not to answer, which was how she mostly responded to her dad these days, and that was that. At least for the moment. She didn’t want to think any further ahead, and neither, it seemed, did Peter.
He shrugged and took her hand, dragging her down a path that smelled of moldy old leaves. Darla was too surprised to protest. And besides, Peter was lots stronger than she was. The two boys followed. When they got to a large dark brown tree whose odor reminded Darla of her grandmother’s wardrobe, musty and ancient, Peter stopped. He let go of her hand and jumped up on one of the twisted roots that were looped over and around one another like woody snakes. Darla was suddenly reminded of her school principal when he towered above the students at assembly. He was a tall man but the dais he stood on made him seem even taller. When you sat in the front row, you could look up his nose. She could look up Peter’s nose now. Like her principal, he didn’t look so grand that way. Or so threatening.
“Here’s where we live,” Peter said, his hand in a large sweeping motion. Throwing his head back, he crowed like a rooster; he no longer seemed afraid of making noise. Then he said, “You’ll like it.”
“Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t,” Darla answered, talking to her feet again.
Peter’s perfect mouth made a small pout as if that weren’t the response he’d been expecting. Then he jumped down into a dark space between the roots. The other boys followed him. Not to be left behind, in case that rooster crow really had called something awful to them, Darla went after the boys into the dark place. She found what they had actually gone through was a door that was still slightly ajar.
The door opened on to a long, even darker passage that wound into the very center of the tree; the passage smelled damp, like bathing suits left still wet in a closet. Peter and the boys seemed to know the way without any need of light. But Darla was constantly afraid of stumbling and she was glad when someone reached out and held her hand.
Then one last turn and there was suddenly plenty of light from hundreds of little candles set in holders that were screwed right into the living heart of the wood. By the candlelight she saw it was Peter who had hold of her hand.
“Welcome to Neverland,” Peter said, as if this were supposed to be a big surprise.
Darla took her hand away from his. “It’s smaller than I thought it would be,” she said. This time she looked right at him.
Peter’s perfect mouth turned down again. “It’s big enough for us,” he said. Then as if a sudden thought had struck him, he smiled. “But too small for Him.” He put his back to Darla and shouted, “Let’s have a party. We’ve got us a new Wendy.”
Suddenly, from all comers of the room, boys came tumbling and stumbling and dancing, and pushing one another to get a look at her. They were shockingly noisy and all smelled like unwashed socks. One of them made fart noises with his mouth. She wondered if any of them had taken a bath recently. They were worse—Darla thought—than her Stemple cousins, who were so awful their parents never took them anywhere anymore, not out to a restaurant or the movies or anyplace at all.
“Stop it!” she said.
The boys stopped at once.
“I told you,” Peter said. “She’s a regular Wendy, all right. She’s even given me a thimble.”
Darla’s jaw dropped at the he. How could he?
She started to say “I did not!” but the boys were already cheering so loudly her protestations went unheard.
“Tink,” Peter called, and one of the candles detached itself from the heartwood to flutter around his head, “tell the Wendys we want a Welcome Feast.”
The Wendys? Darla bit her lip. What did Peter mean by that?
The little light flickered on and off. A kind of code, Darla thought. She assumed it was the fairy Tinker Bell, but she couldn’t really make out what this Tink looked like except for that flickering, fluttering presence. But as if understanding Peter’s request, the flicker took off toward a black comer and, shedding but a little light, flew right into the dark.
“Good old Tink,” Peter said, and he smiled at Darla with such practice, dimples appeared simultaneously on both sides of his mouth.
“What kind of food...” Darla began.
“Everything parents won’t let you have,” Peter answered. “Sticky buns and tipsy cake and Butterfingers and brownies and...”
The boys gathered around them, chanting the names as if they were the lyrics to some kind of song, adding, “...apple tarts and gingerbread and chocolate mousse and trifle and...”
“And stomachaches and sugar highs,” Darla said stubbornly. “My dad’s a nutritionist. I’m only allowed healthy food.”
Peter turned his practiced dimpled smile on her again. “Forget your father. You’re in Neverland now, and no one need ever go back home from here.”
At that Darla burst into tears, half in frustration and half in fear. She actually liked her dad, as well as loved him, despite the fact that he’d left her for his new wife, and despite the fact of the twins, who were actually adorable as long as she didn’t have to live with them. The thought that she’d been caught in Neverland with no way to return was so awful, she couldn’t help crying.
Peter shrugged and turned to the boys. “Girls!” he said with real disgust.
“All Wendys!” they shouted back at him.
Darla wiped her eyes, and spoke right to Peter. “My name is not Wendy,” she said dearly. “It’s Darla.”
Peter looked at her, and there was nothing nice or laughing or young about his eyes. They were dark and cold and very very old.
Darla shivered.
“Here you’re a Wendy,” he said.
And with that, the dark place where Tink had disappeared grew increasingly light, as a door opened and fifteen girls carrying trays piled high with cakes, cookies, biscuits, buns, and other kinds of goodies marched single file into the hall. They were led by a tall, slender, pretty girl with brown hair that fell straight to her shoulders.
The room suddenly smelled overpoweringly of that sickly sweetness of children’s birthday parties at school, when their mothers brought in sloppy cupcakes greasy with icing. Darla shu
ddered.
“Welcome Feast!” shouted the boy who was dosest to the door. He made a deep bow.
"Welcome Feast!” they all shouted, laughing and gathering around a great center table.
Only Darla seemed to notice that not one of the Wendys was smiling.
The Feast went on for ages, because each of the boys had to stand up and give a little speech. Of course, most of them only said, “Welcome, Wendy!” and “Glad to meet you!” before sitting down again. A few elaborated a little bit more. But Peter more than made up for it with a long, rambling talk about duty and dessert and how no one loved them out in the World Above as much as he did here in Neverland, and how the cakes proved that.
The boys cheered and clapped at each of Peter’s pronouncements, and threw buns and scones across the table at one another as a kind of punctuation. Tink circled Peter’s head continuously like a crown of stars, though she never really settled.
But the girls, standing behind the boys like banquet waitresses, did not applaud. Rather they shifted from foot to foot, looking alternately apprehensive and bored. One, no more than four years old, kept yawning behind a chubby hand.
After a polite bite of an apple tart, which she couldn’t swallow but spit into her napkin, Darla didn’t even try to pretend. The little pie had been much too sweet, not tart at all. And even though Peter kept urging her between the welcomes to eat something, she just couldn’t. That small rebellion seemed to annoy him enormously and he stood up once again, this time on the tabletop, to rant on about how some people lacked gratitude, and how difficult it was to provide for so many, especially with Him about.
Peter never actually looked at Darla as he spoke, but she knew—and everyone else knew—that he meant she was the ungrateful one. That bothered her some, but not as much as it might have. She even found herself enjoying the fact that he was annoyed, and that realization almost made her smile.
When Peter ended with “No more Feasts for them with Bad Attitudes!” the boys leaped from their benches and overturned the big table, mashing the remaining food into the floor. Then they all disappeared, diving down a variety of bolt-holes, with Tink after them, leaving the girls alone in the big candlelit room.
“Now see what you’ve done,” said the oldest girl, the pretty one with the straight brown hair. Obviously the leader of the Wendys, she wore a simple dark dress—like a uniform, Darla thought, a school uniform that’s badly stained. “It’s going to take forever to get that stuff off the floor. Ages and ages. Mops and buckets. And nothing left for us to eat.”
The other girls agreed loudly.
“They made the mess,” Darla said sensibly. “Let them dean it up! That’s how it’s done at my house.”
There was a horrified silence. For a long moment none of the girls said a word, but their mouths opened and shut like fish on beaches. Finally the littlest one spoke.
“Peter won’t ’ike it.”
“Well, I don’t ’ike Peter!” Darla answered quickly. “He’s nothing but a long-winded bully.”
“But,” said the little Wendy, “you gave him a thimble.” She actually said “simble.”
“No,” Darla said. “Peter lied. I didn’t.”
The girls all seemed dumbstruck by that revelation. Without a word more, they began to clean the room, first righting the table and then laboriously picking up what they could with their fingers before resorting, at last, to the dreaded buckets and mops. Soon the place smelled like any institution after a cleaning, like a school bathroom or a hospital corridor, Lysol-fresh with an overcast of pine.
Shaking her head, Darla just watched them until the littlest Wendy handed her a mop.
Darla flung the mop to the floor. “I won’t do it,” she said. “It’s not fair.”
The oldest Wendy came over to her and put her hand on Darla’s shoulder. “Who ever told you that life is fair?” she asked. “Certainly not a navvy, nor an upstairs maid, nor a poor man trying to feed his family.”
“Nor my da,” put in one of the girls. She was pale skinned, sharp nosed, gap toothed, homely to a fault. “He alias said life was a crapshoot and all usn’s got was snake-eyes.”
“And not my father,” said another, a whey-faced, doughy-looking eight-year-old. “He used to always say that the world didn’t treat him right.”
“What I mean is that it’s not fair that they get to have the adventures and you get to clean the house,” Darla explained carefully.
“Who will dean it if we don’t?” Wendy asked. She picked up the mop and handed it back to Darla. “Not them. Not ever. So if we want it done, we do it. Fair is not the matter here.” She went back to her place in the line of girls mopping the floor.
With a sigh that was less a capitulation and more a show of solidarity with the Wendys, Darla picked up her own mop and followed.
When the room was set to rights again, the Wendys—with Darla following dose behind—tromped into the kitchen, a cheerless, windowless room they had obviously tried to make homey. There were little stick dollies stuck in every possible niche and hand-painted birch bark signs on the wall.
SMILE, one sign said, YOU ARE ON CANDIED CAMERA. And another: WENDYS ARE WONDERFUL. A third, in very childish script, read: WENDYS ARE WINERS. Darla wondered idly if that was meant to be WINNERS or WHINERS, but she decided not to ask.
Depressing as the kitchen was, it was redolent with bakery smells that seemed to dissipate the effect of a prison. Darla sighed, remembering her own kitchen at home, with the windows overlooking her mother’s herb garden and the rockery whore four kinds of heather flowered till the first snows of winter.
The girls all sat down—on the floor, on the table, in little bumpy, woody niches. There were only two chairs in the kitchen, a.tatty overstuffed chair whose gold brocaded covering had seen much better days, and a rocker. The rocker was taken by the oldest Wendy; the other chair remained empty...
At last, seeing that no one else was going to claim the stuffed chair, Darla sat down on it, and a collective gasp went up from the girls.
“ ’At’s Peter’s chair,” the littlest one finally volunteered.
“Well, Peter’s not here to sit in it,” Darla said. But she did not relax back against the cushion, just in case he should suddenly appear.
“I’m hungry, Wendy,” said one of the girls, who had two gold braids down to her waist. “Isn’t there anything left to eat?” She addressed the girl in the rocker.
“You are always hungry, Madja,” Wendy said. But she smiled, and it was a smile of such sweetness, Darla was immediately reminded of her mom, in the days before the divorce and her dad’s new wife.
“So you do have names, and not just Wendy,” Darla said.
They looked at her as if she were stupid.
“Of course we have names,” said the girl in the rocker. “I’m the only one truly named Wendy. But I’ve been here from the first. So that’s what Peter calls us all. That’s Madja,” she said, pointing to the girl with the braids. “And that’s Lizzy.” The youngest girl. “And that’s Martha, Pansy, Nina, Nancy, Heidi, Betsy, Maddy, JoAnne, Shula, Annie, Come, Barbara...” She went around the circle of girls.
Darla interrupted. “Then why doesn’t Peter—”
“Because he can’t be bothered remembering,” said Wendy. “And we can’t be bothered reminding him.”
“And it’s all right,” said Madja. “Really. He has so much else to worry about. Like—”
“Him!” They all breathed the word together quietly, as if saying it aloud would summon the horror to them.
“Him? You mean Hook, don’t you?” asked Darla. “Captain Hook.”
The look they gave her was compounded of anger and alarm. Little Lizzy put her hands over her mouth as if she had said the name herself.
“Well, isn’t it?”
“You are an extremely stupid girl,” said Wendy. “As well as a dangerous one.” Then she smiled again—that luminous smile—at all the other girls, excluding Darla, as if Wendy had
not just said something that was both rude and horrible. “Now, darlings, how many of you are as hungry as Madja?”
One by one, the hands went up, Lizzy’s first. Only Darla kept her hand down and her eyes down as well.
“Not hungry in the slightest?” Wendy asked, and everyone went silent.
Darla felt forced to look up and saw that Wendy’s eyes were staring at her, glittering strangely in the candlelight.
It was too much. Darla shivered and then, all of a sudden, she wanted to get back at Wendy, who seemed as much of a bully as Peter, only in a softer, sneakier way. But how to do it? And then she recalled how her mom said that telling a story in a very quiet voice always made a jury lean forward to concentrate that much more. Maybe, Darla thought, I could try that.
“I remember...” Darla began quietly. “...I remember a story my mom read to me about a Greek girl who was stolen away by the king of the underworld. He tricked her into eating six seeds and so she had to remain in the underworld six months of every year because of them.’
The girls had all gone quiet and were clearly listening. It works! Darla thought.
“Don’t be daft,” Wendy said, her voice loud with authority.
“But Wendy, I remember that story, too,” said the whey-faced girl, Nancy, in a kind of whisper, as if by speaking quietly she could later deny having said anything at all.
“And I,” put in Madja, in a similarly whispery voice.
“And the fairies,” said Lizzy. She was much too young to worry about loud or soft, so she spoke in her normal tone of voice. "If you eat anything in their hall, my mum alias said ... you never get to go home again. Not ever. I miss my mum.” Quite suddenly she began to cry.
“Now see what you’ve done,” said Wendy, standing and stamping her foot. Darla was shocked. She’d never seen anyone over four years old do such a thing. “They’ll all be blubbing now, remembering their folks, even the ones who’d been badly beaten at home or worse. And not a sticky bun left to comfort them with. You—girl—ought to be ashamed!”