Fairy music was unrivaled in its beauty, and as it began to sound from the very air inside of the Great Maple, the birds perched in the tree’s branches, stopped what they were doing and turned to listen.
The king smiled and began the dance. The queen followed.
But then, as one, the pair slowed to a stop, coming to hover, motionless and unsure above the dancing platform.
The fairy queen blinked and frowned. Nothing looked familiar. This wasn’t right. It felt like a dream. She remembered now. This place, that they’d thought was their home was but a dream. . . .
*****
Wendy winced as John pulled the make-shift tourniquet tight around her left arm. The Never Bird’s talon had dug deep, slicing clean to the bone, but Hook’s long, sharp blade had taken the beast’s claw in one clean swipe before it could do any further damage. Wendy tried to concentrate through the pain, but it was so very difficult. The salt on the wind plastered her shirt to her cut and sizzled in the open wound. It burned like fire.
“I can’t,” she whispered, shaking her head. Her body was so bruised and so sore and her arm felt as if it were being dipped to the shoulder in acid. She barely noticed the disarrayed, blurry pandemonium of Peter and Hook where they continued to fight off the determined, desperate advances of the skeletal monster who wanted Wendy dead.
“Yes you can,” John told her. “Nothing can keep a storyteller from telling a story, Wendy.” He gently cupped her face and peered into her stormy eyes. “I know that now, sis. And I’m so sorry for ever asking you to stop.” His expression was so pained that it drew Wendy out of her own agony and into his.
“I forgive you,” she told him.
John smiled a sad smile and nodded. “Then finish the story,” he whispered.
Wendy closed her eyes once more. “At the center of Neverland, where the giant tree that once housed the Lost Boys still stood, a single green leaf on a lone branch began to turn from green to gold.”
*****
The leaf curled on its stem, its emerald hue fading to one of yellow and then gold. Then red. Then brown. It fell from the tree on a new, cold wind, and in the emptiness that memory leaves behind when it stops being remembered, the other leaves followed suit.
*****
The mermaids were next, and though Wendy’s head throbbed where she had struck it against a boulder while dodging yet another of the Never Bird’s attacking appendages, one by one, she sent the inhabitants of Neverland’s island home – back to where they had been taken from so long ago.
In the end, all that remained of the pixies, the pirates, the Natives and the others were Wendy and her brothers, Tinkerbell, Captain James Hook, and Peter Pan.
The ending had to be done right. It was the most important part. She wanted to send Hook back to his time and place, but she also needed to give back to him everything that he’d lost when he’d been drawn into Neverland’s eternal fairy story.
She wanted Peter to return to his home and live the life he’d discovered in their world. But she wanted him to remain young at heart. For that was a man’s greatest defense against the adult world. And because he’d been forced to grow so quickly in Neverland, it was something he hadn’t possessed his first time around.
Wendy braced herself against the sheltering boulder she’d finally come to rest beside. John and Michael stood beside her, partially blocking her from the sight of the strangely wounded Never Bird, which had been hacked and chipped at by both Hook and Peter, alike.
Wendy closed her eyes and prepared to tell the final part of her story.
Her lips moved and her words whispered out across space and time as if they echoed off of the stars and the sea and were sung by the wind. And then the rock beside her gave way –
– and Wendy fell.
It was unexpected, to say the least. Everyone had been so focused on the Never Bird and the storm, a simple fall from a great height hadn’t taken precedence. They’d forgotten that the rocks had been knocked loose when the Never Bird had drawn itself, in a bedlam of unruliness, from the depths of its briny tomb.
She didn’t scream as she went over. Instead, she gazed up at the gray sky over Neverland and never stopped telling her story.
By the time she hit the sharp, craggy rocks far below and the first of the tidal waves washed some of her blood out to sea, Wendy had a mere few, short sentences remaining in the finishing of her tale.
As the world faded around her and her body grew cold, she whispered the final words to bring about the perfect ending.
And then she took one last breath and closed her eyes.
Epilogue
Wendy wasn’t normally a fan of mornings. They simply came too early for her tastes. But right now, the sun glinted off of the stainless steel hooks that held the curtains in place, and the shining metal objects entranced her.
Mornings aren’t so bad, she thought, distractedly.
“Wendy?”
Wendy blinked. Then she rolled over in her bed and smiled at Michael, who was standing in the doorway of her bedroom. “Good morning,” she said, softly.
Michael stepped hesitantly into the room and came to stand beside the bed. He looked from her face to her shoulders and then the rest of her blanket-covered body. “You’re okay? We saw you fall.”
Wendy nodded. “I’m okay.”
“Mom and dad don’t know, do they?” It wasn’t exactly a question. He’d noticed the same thing that she had.
When Wendy had finished telling her story, the world had simply blinked out. Her pain was gone, the cold was gone – everything was gone.
And then she was opening her eyes to find that she was back in her bed, where she’d been before Peter and Tinkerbell’s pixie dust had awoken her from that dark, deep sleep.
“I don’t think so,” Wendy replied. She turned to look toward the windows again. She could hear her parents mulling around downstairs. Her mother was making breakfast. Her father was commenting on something in the paper.
They’d returned last night believing that their children were asleep; never knowing that they had gone. And now. . . . Life went on as usual.
“But,” Michael frowned, his fingers fiddling with the small strings that had frayed from Wendy’s quilt. “But it was real, wasn’t it? I mean – we went to Neverland. We were on the Jolly Roger and we fought the Never Bird?” His voice was so quiet, so hopeful and so lost all at once.
Wendy sat up and pulled her brother into her arms. As she did, she felt something dig into her hip bone. She pulled slightly away from her brother and glanced down at the small bump in the pocket of her jeans. With slim fingers, she dug into the pocket and pulled out a single intricately carved button. It was the button off of a red brocade coat.
“Yes, Michael,” she said, fiercely. “Yes. It was real. It was very, very real.” She looked up over his head and caught the glint of the sunlight against the curtain hooks once more. “Never let anyone tell you otherwise.”
*****
One year later….
Peter tugged hard at the thick line and was backed by his shipmates.
“Heave!” the captain bellowed. The men did as he said, hauling with all of their might. Soon, the seven hundred pound steel traps appeared at the ledge of the vessel and the deck hands scrambled to grasp them and pull them onboard.
The pots were full. It had been a very cold, very windy day, but a lucrative one. Peter shot a smile toward the captain, who nodded approvingly and gave a small salute, as he always did when his boys had done well.
Then Peter’s gaze was caught by something that flashed on the upper deck. A stream of sunlight shot through the dense, gray cold above and shafted to the rigging overhead.
A single, large cargo hook gleamed in the beam of light.
Down below, in the ship’s galley, Belle, the cook, tossed a hand full of special spices into the steaming, slowly roiling chowder on the stove. The spices shimmered before they hit the soup and disappeared. She smiled and closed her eye
s, inhaling deeply.
Satisfied with the scent, she turned and reached for a sauce pan hanging from the ceiling. And then she froze as a shaft of light streamed through the high window and gleamed off of the perfect metal hook that held the pot.
*****
Wendy Darling checked the window of her dorm room before sliding her key into the knob. If her room mate’s teddy bear had been staring out at her, she would have known to stay away. Her room mate had a boyfriend.
But there was no teddy bear, so Wendy opened the door and slipped inside, shutting and locking it once more behind her. Then she removed the back pack from her shoulder and dumped it on her bed. It bounced once and toppled to the ground, where it came unzipped and spilled its contents all over the floor. Wendy sighed, bent, and began putting the books back into the bag.
One of the books had slipped part way underneath her bed. She lifted the cover to get a better look and reached to grab the book. When she did, her fingers brushed something else.
Wendy leaned over until her cheek was inches from the wooden planks, and she gazed under the bed. A small leather-bound journal rested in the slight dust that had collected since last week’s room check.
Wendy frowned and reached for it.
When she pulled it out to look at it under the light, she froze. The book was old and weathered and familiar. And on the cover were the gold-gilded initials, J.H.
*****
Many millions of miles and exactly eleven impossibilities away, a young pirate captain stood at the prow of his ship, a telescope in his left hand. In his right, he held a small gray hooded jacket.
The ocean breeze played with his long black hair, brushing it against his cheek as he gazed out over the watery expanse and into the curved horizon. His stark blue eyes were like the very sea that his ship rode upon. As they searched the distance, the captain raised the jacket to his lips and inhaled.
With a helping breeze, he caught the faint hint of caramel and cocoa. His right hand, whole and perfect, gripped the material more tightly.
With the scent came an image of her face, and James Hook closed his eyes.
The End.
(Forever Neverland’s sequel, Beyond Neverland, will be out December, 2012)
Check out Heather’s upcoming paranormal romance series, The Lost Angels, beginning with Always Angel in October, 2011 and Avenger’s Angel in November, 2011….
Excerpt from Always Angel, the exclusive eBook introductory novella for the Lost Angels series by New York Times bestselling paranormal author, Heather Killough-Walden….
Always Angel, by Heather Killough-Walden
“Hesperos,” she whispered, nearly out of breath with the shock of him. Memory was a strange thing. Most people couldn’t recall what they’d had for lunch the day before, but they could remember events and people from decades past. It was that way for Angel now.
The man on her window ledge looked the same as he always had, just like she remembered. His clothing had changed. Instead of the armor of a soldier of ancient Athens, he now wore black jeans, black boots, and a black leather vest over a bare chest. But his appearance was as it had always been: Tall, strong, chiseled. Perfect.
Hesperos may not have been quite as otherworldly as Samuel Lambent. No one was, and for good reason. But Hesperos was a king.
And it showed.
Maybe he won’t recognize me, she thought desperately. Her mind was spinning end over end, her heart thumping painfully in her chest. Angel was far from defenseless, even when it came to battling things not quite human. However, Hesperos was special. If it came down to a struggle, she would lose.
The last time he had seen her, she’d been sporting long red hair and hazel eyes. She’d been wearing the robes of a Celt. On the outside, she had looked nothing like she did now. Maybe, if she was lucky, he wouldn’t see past her outer shell any more than a human male would.
But even as she hoped it, she knew she was fooling herself. Hesperos was an incubus. The incubi, or “Nightmares,” as other supernatural creatures referred to them, were notorious for hunting beauty in its purest form. Outward appearance often meant little to them. They appreciated it, to be sure. But if a woman was not as lovely on the inside as she was on the outside, they quickly lost interest and went elsewhere.
Nightmares could easily tell what rested in a woman’s heart. Despite the fact that Angel had become very good at hiding her true nature over the decades, Hesperos was their Nightmare king. Two thousand years ago, he had managed the tiniest peek at her real form. And now? If anyone could see her, or at least glimpse her, as she truly was, it would be him. Well… him and Samuel Lambent, anyway.
Very slowly, Angel turned from the mirror, her fingers clasping the thin spaghetti strap of her slip where she’d been about to let it fall off her shoulder. It was her last remaining vestige of clothing. It was all that remained between herself and the literal lord and master of the sexiest men on the planet.
Hesperos watched her from where he stood on the ledge, framed by the light of the moon and her slowly swaying curtains. His raven black hair was shot through with streaks of blue beneath the illumination. He bore an intriguing black tattoo on the left side of his neck, and another across the swell of his right bicep. A third peeked from beneath the leather edge of his vest. To most people, they simply appeared to be tattoos, “manly” perhaps, intricate and well drawn. However, to Angel, they were symbols of his power, his status, and a reminder of the fact that he was king.
After a few moments, he stepped down from the ledge and the moonlight struck the steel of his eyes. It had always been his eyes that turned Angel’s head the most and weakened her to the point of danger. They were a mixture of green and gray that she had never seen before. They looked like jade shot through with metal, and their powers of perception were incredible.
Nothing escaped Hesperos.
That was perhaps what scared her the most.
She swallowed hard now and watched with a wariness she hadn’t felt in centuries as the incubus king moved from the window, his boots sounding loud in the hollow silence between them. It wasn’t that Hesperos was a bad man. He never hurt women – not that he would ever need to – and he never let his seed impregnate anyone as did the majority of the incubi. Compared to his minions, the Nightmare King was a teddy bear in those regards.
But he hadn’t gotten to be king by accident.
Hesperos possessed a great deal of power. In fact, Angel was a little surprised that he hadn’t yet attempted to subjugate her mind in order to make this easier for himself. It wasn’t that he necessarily needed to be able to control the minds of his victims to get what he wanted. Most women melted at a single glance from him. But he wasn’t stupid. He never left anything to chance. Another reason he was king.
The fact that he hadn’t tried to infiltrate her thoughts only fortified Angel’s fear that he knew damn well she was something more than human. He wouldn’t bother to try taking her over until he knew what he was dealing with. He was sizing up his prey. A good hunter did whatever was necessary to keep the claw and bite wounds to a minimum.
Hesperos continued to watch her as he moved through her room, a shark making slow circles around his dinner. His expression was a wickedly handsome mixture of curiosity, caution and determination. “Oh, little beauty,” he said, his voice raising goose bumps of anticipation across her skin. “What are you, I wonder?”
Angel said nothing, but her heart’s quick pace was surely giving her away. He doesn’t know, she told herself firmly. He doesn’t remember, so don’t tip him off. Be strong.
“You seem familiar to me,” he said.
Angel’s breath caught. She felt her eyes widen just a little. Stupid, she scolded herself. She was out of practice, it would seem. Hesperos was sure to notice slip ups like that.
The king stopped at the center of her room and cocked his head to one side, narrowing his gaze on her thoughtfully. In that moment, he reminded her of the calculating Greek soldier he�
��d once been as he’d gone slumming among the mortals out of sheer boredom. He’d been a veritable god of war, pulling back from the role only when he’d realized that if he’d wanted to, he could have slaughtered the entire human population. That wasn’t him. Hesperos wasn’t a killer.
But he looked like one now. Machiavellian. Cunning…. Bad.
Without speaking, the Nightmare King took a step toward her. Angel thought fast, steeling her nerves. She raised her chin, and with a slight twist of her wrist, she finally let the slip that she had been holding slide through her fingers. Hesperos’s metal green eyes watched the thin sheen of material drift to the floor and pool at her bare feet. For the slightest of moments, he paused, a small smile playing across his lips.
Then his gaze slid back up her long body, taking everything in. He took another step. “My, my,” he said, shaking his head as if at the wonder of her. “But you are a rare bird.” Several more boot-echoing steps and he had closed the distance between them. Despite her tall frame, the king stood half a foot taller than she did and towered over her as he crowded her with his imposing presence.
“You’re rather impressive, yourself,” she admitted softly, unable to help herself. He was getting to her. She may have been inhuman, but she was still a woman and Hesperos was very much a man.
“You know me,” he said. “You’ve spoken my name.” He smiled then, revealing straight, white teeth with canines that were ever so slightly longer than the norm. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.” As he spoke, he locked her gaze in his, capturing her attention in a nearly literal sense.
She found it impossible to look away as he raised his right hand and delicately brushed his fingers across the top of her collarbone. A hard shiver raced through her. “I hardly believe that’s possible,” she told him.
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