Forever Neverland Read online

  Peter stared down at the still figure before him. As he had expected, she was breathtakingly beautiful. But she was not the very young girl of his imagination. She had grown, as he had. There was a beguiling shimmer to her hair and a certain alluring curve of her chin and mouth that only women possessed.

  He bent very close and listened. Nothing.

  He waited.

  Still, nothing.

  Then, ever so faintly, he felt her breath upon his cheek.

  “She’s not dead.” He rose and quickly turned to Tinkerbell, who was so stricken that she had gone from her normal pinkish color to a nearly translucent white. “Tink, she needs your dust.”

  Tink nodded and immediately left the room in a shower of shimmering glitter.

  “Where is she going?” John asked. He had Wendy’s hand in his own and was squeezing tight.

  “To get something to drink.”

  Tinkerbell returned in virtually no time, carrying an un-opened bottle of soda by its lid. Peter quickly took it from her and popped off the cap. Tinkerbell hovered over the rim of the bottle, throwing fists full of pixie dust into the liquid.

  The soda began to glow, at first slightly, and then as brightly as a torch.

  “That’s good.” Peter took the soda bottle and leaned over Wendy. “Prop her up, John. Help me get this down her throat.”

  John moved beside him, holding Wendy up under the arms as Peter placed one hand behind her head, tilting it back. Her lips parted and Peter placed the soda bottle to her mouth, tilting it slightly.

  At first, nothing happened and Michael and John wondered, silently, whether Peter was getting any of the magic potion into her mouth. But then Wendy’s eyelids fluttered and she coughed.

  Michael rushed forward as Peter gently withdrew the bottle.

  “Wendy, sis, Wendy!” He pushed past Peter, for the moment, not thinking of nor caring for anything but his sister.

  There are many different degrees of fear. There is the general anxiety one experiences before, say, an exam or a visit to the dentist. Then, next on the ladder of fear is the uneasiness one feels before a storm or when a friend is late arriving for a date or doesn’t call on time. And then there is the fear that Michael was suffering, the third, the last and the greatest degree of fear one can ever know.

  It is the fear that you will never again look into the eyes of someone you love and see them looking back at you.

  Michael was overtaken with that fear right now as he shoved his way in between the two boys and looked into his sister’s gray eyes. “Wendy?” he questioned softly.

  She blinked and sat up a little straighter of her own volition.

  “Michael?” she replied.

  He smiled at her and stole her hand away from John. “You’re okay,” he said, his voice filled with relief.

  “Well. . . yes,” she said slowly. “Why wouldn’t I be?” Her gaze traveled from him to her brother John. “John, what are you doing here? What’s-”

  She looked to Peter then, and fell silent.

  During the quiet that followed, what Wendy’s brothers assumed was Wendy very slowly coming to recognize the boy who was Peter Pan, was actually Wendy recognizing Peter right away and trying, with all her might, not to leap up off of the bed and kill him on the spot.

  Her gaze narrowed, the gray in her eyes turning stormy.

  It was Peter’s turn to blink now.

  “You,” Wendy hissed. It sounded like nothing so much as an accusation – which is what it was.

  Peter backed up, his green eyes wide.

  “W-Wendy?” he asked, looking more uncertain than John or Michael or even Tinkerbell had ever seen him look.

  “You,” Wendy repeated, as she slowly righted herself and then swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “Of all the people – of all the times. . . . ” Her tone was a menacing indictment, her gray eyes fairly shooting sparks at the young man.

  Wendy stood and John and Michael, being the brothers that they were and, hence, knowing their sister all too well, backed up instinctively, giving her plenty of room.

  “Uh, Wendy, you okay?” Peter asked as he, too, backed up.

  Wendy advanced on him. “Five years, Peter Pan. Five years go by and you’re nowhere to be found. No one would believe us, did you know that?” She took another step forward and he mirrored her movement with another step back. “No one, Peter. Not even our mother. And you wouldn’t come when we called. So, why would they believe us?” Wendy threw up her arms as if to motion to the world around them.

  Peter held up his hands placatingly, his eyes wide, as he backed up another step. “Take it easy, Wendy. We don’t have time for this right now.”

  Wendy stopped. “Why are you here? Why now? After all we’ve been through!” Wendy spun, picked up the pillow from the bed, and threw it at him. He dodged it artfully.

  “I hate you, Peter Pan!” Wendy yelled at him. “Have you any idea what I’ve been through?” She cast around, peering at the room through storm-filled eyes. Her gaze landed on her youngest brother. “What Michael has been through?”

  “Wendy, I’m so sorry!” Peter’s expression was desperate. “I didn’t come because I - I didn’t know you needed me! I promise, I didn’t know!” He peered at her beseechingly. For some reason, it was imperative to him that Wendy believe him. “I wasn’t in Neverland, I swear it! I’ve been stuck here, just like you – ”

  “Stuck here?” Wendy interrupted, her tone somewhere between fury and confusion.

  Peter saw the confusion and glimpsed his opportunity. He lowered his hands, nodding slowly. Then he chanced a step toward her and, for once in his compulsive, instinctual life, he thought about what he was going to say before he said it. It might have had something to do with the beguiling, if dangerous tempest brewing in Wendy’s beautiful eyes. Or maybe it was the slight trembling in her full, pink lips. Whatever it was, Peter simply needed to make certain that she understood – and that she forgave him. Suddenly, even more than he’d ever wanted to defeat Captain James Hook, Peter Pan wanted to make Wendy Darling forgive him.

  “Wendy, when you and the Lost Boys came back from Neverland, I made a promise to make sure that Neverland’s children were okay before I went back.” He took another step forward and Wendy did not retreat. She narrowed her gaze at him, listening.

  “If I’d been in Neverland, I would have heard you and I swear I would have come, but I haven’t been able to return and I didn’t know why until Tinkerbell found you,” Peter explained hurriedly. “And them,” he added, gesturing toward Wendy’s brothers.

  Wendy looked from Peter to Tinkerbell, who nodded emphatically, then to Michael and John, who nodded once each. She frowned and looked back at Peter.

  “It’s you, Wendy. You’re the reason I’m still bound by my promise. You’re not okay. And you’re Neverland’s child too.”

  “And so are we,” Michael and John added simultaneously.

  “But. . . you mean -” She slowly sat back down on the edge of her bed and blinked a few times. “You mean that we’ve been in the same world all along and you were just.so close? All this time?” She looked stunned, then, in that moment. As if everything had suddenly hit her all at once. Which it had.

  Peter chewed on the inside of his cheek and took a shaky breath. “I’m sorry, Wendy. Believe me, I really am.”

  Still staring at the floor, Wendy softly murmured, “Why are you all in my room?”

  “You were dead, Wendy,” Michael told her.

  “No she wasn’t, Michael. Don’t tell her something like that. She was just unconscious,” said John.

  “Sleeping,” Peter corrected. “Deeply sleeping.”

  “Sleeping is different, Peter,” Michael insisted, his eyes narrowed. “You know she wasn’t sleeping. You know this was worse.”

  Peter nodded and held up his hands as if to stave off an oncoming argument. “Okay, okay. She wasn’t just sleeping.” He turned to Wendy and sighed. “I think you were dying, Wendy. And the
man responsible is on his way here right now.”

  She blinked. “What?” She looked at John and then at Michael again. “What?” She asked again. “What do you mean? Why? How?” Her expression became desperate – scared. She stood up. “What do you mean?” She repeated, her tone demanding.

  “I think it was that.” Peter pointed at the bottle that sat on Wendy’s night stand, beside the bed. “The medicine.”

  Wendy turned to gaze at the bottle. “Dr. Coffer’s medicine? But it’s just. . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Ever since you took it, Wendy,” Michael said, “you haven’t told me any stories. You haven’t written anything. It took away your words.”

  “Take away the words of a story teller,” Peter said solemnly, “and the story teller dies.” He nodded once. “That’s what was happening to you.”

  Chapter Eight

  Some people never dream. Or, they dream, but don’t recall their dreams upon awakening. But there are some who dream every night. And some of those dreamers remember their dreams. Some even know when they’re dreaming. These are the special few, the lucid, the magicians of the imagination.

  If any of those people had been looking up at the city’s skyline that night, they would have known right away that they were dreaming. For, climbing over the sea of smoke stacks, church steeples, and radio antennae that made up the horizon like so much metal and steel was none other than a massive ship, its white sails billowing and luminescent against the glow of the full moon, its giant hull ploughing the low-lying clouds like a wooden whale.

  At the wheel of the ship stood a man with long black hair, a red brocade coat, and a shining silver hook for a right hand. This, alone, would have been enough to promise the dream would be remembered. For no one ever forgets something as beautifully wicked as a hook.

  They would have glimpsed the ship and its perfectly nefarious captain for an instant before it once more disappeared from sight, rising above the mist and fog to vanish into the night.

  What the dreamers would not recall, however, because the dreamers would not know it, is that the ship’s captain was called James Hook and, at that moment, a very real, very not-dreamed-up Hook, was navigating the skies over their city in search of someone he could now smell upon the wind and feel, as a vibration, in the metal on the end of his arm.

  “Smee!” He called, distractedly, his ocean-blue eyes searching the horizon for any sign of his query.

  “Yes, Cap’n!” Smee was at his side in a heartbeat.

  “What does the map tell us?”

  Smee unfolded the small piece of paper his captain had given him and gave it the once-over. “We’re above a canyon, Cap’n,” Smee said as he studied the design carefully. “Now - over a row of houses, it looks like. . . . What in – Cap’n!” Smee suddenly exclaimed, his eyes wide as golf balls. He pointed emphatically at a blood-red spot on the map that literally hadn’t been there a moment ago. “An ‘X’, Cap’n! An ‘X’!” He smiled broadly. “It would be markin’ the spot now, wouldn’t it, Cap’n ? This means there be treasure here, aye?”

  Hook glanced at the map and then gestured for Smee to take the wheel. His first mate grabbed hold with both hands and Hook took the map, stepping back. His gaze narrowed as his blue eyes raked the page, expertly scanning its details for hidden clues.

  As he watched, the dim outline of words began to appear on the worn, brown sheet of paper, fancy scrolling letters in the faintest of inks. Hook squinted and looked closer, trying to make out what they were. The world around him melted away into slow motion and nothingness as he concentrated on the map.

  In a soft whisper, he read, “Who speaks the breath that fills the sails. . . . ” He paused as more words appeared on another line. “Of words like men of seas, their tales. . . . ” Once more, he waited and another phrase became clear. “The pearl, the prize, the precious stone. . . . ” He watched , and then straightened as the last words solidified upon the page. “Bleeds like tears in storms unknown.”

  For a few moments more, he gazed at the map in his hands. And then he took a deep breath, in and out through his nose, and looked up. “Smee, head West twenty degrees.”

  “Aye, Cap’n.” Smee adjusted their course and the ship sliced through the clouds as it banked right.

  In a few seconds, a faint curl of black smoke could be made, rising on the horizon.

  “A fire, Cap’n.”

  Hook gazed at the curling black. It rose through the sea of clouds like a camp fire in the snow. It grew larger as the ship drew closer and Hook could see that it originated from some point below, on that unfamiliar land beneath the blanket of clouds. He sniffed the air. Now, he could scent the ash on the wind and recognized it as the smell of fire he’d detected in Neverland.

  “Smee, bring us below the clouds, but keep us out of sight.”

  “Aye, Cap’n.” Smee banked further right and called out a series of orders to the rest of the crew. The men scrambled on deck, dousing lanterns that hung from ropes and hooks in the masts.

  When he was done yelling his orders, he turned to his captain. “'Tis the bottom of the ship we’ll have to worry about, Cap’n. It’ll be black against the clouds. So, I’ll take ‘er down there -” He gestured to a break in the clouds, a hole that stretched half a mile in the distance. “An’ it’ll give us ‘nuff time to take a gander.”

  Hook nodded and returned his gaze to the billowing smoke. His heartbeat quickened. He could sense something approaching. Something significant. Something, perhaps, more important than anything that had ever happened to him in his very long life. He glanced at the red X, his sea blue eyes flashing, nearly glowing in the twilight.

  The Jolly Roger floated across the foggy ocean of sky and then, smoothly, sank through the hole in the clouds.

  *****

  “Come away with me, Wendy,” Peter said suddenly, whirling around from where he’d been standing by the window, gazing out into the darkness toward the end of the road, where he kept a lookout for a certain pair of headlights.

  When Peter had told her that Dr. Coffer was most likely on his way to the Darling mansion, everyone had rushed downstairs to check through all of the front windows in the living room. Now John sat nervously on the piano bench, his hands on his bouncing knees. Michael sat on the couch, his hands thrust tightly into his pockets. Wendy stood alone in front of the fire place, gazing into it distractedly. She held the prescription bottle of pills in her right hand. She was trying to figure out what to do.

  But when Peter spoke, she spun around to face him. He rushed forward to take her by her upper arms. She was too shocked by the sudden movement to pull away.

  “Come back with me to Neverland,” Peter insisted. “You’ll never be happy here; they’ll never believe you. Even this doctor will try to explain this all away; you know he will, Wendy.”

  Wendy gazed into Peter’s emerald eyes. They were the color of Neverland’s trees and grass. They were the color of boyhood and freedom. In that instant, somewhat uncomfortably, Wendy realized that Peter had become a singularly attractive young man.

  She swallowed and told herself not to follow through with the furious blush that she could feel rising to her cheeks. “No, Peter,” she shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere with you. Not again. How can you do this to me again?” With strength she didn’t know she possessed, Wendy jerked away from him.

  She began pacing back and forth in front of the fire place, her hands gesturing wildly, the bottle of pills rattling like a snake. “Five years go by and I hear not a word from you and now you’re back and you want to whisk me off to Neverland like nothing happened?” She whirled to point a finger at him, her gaze narrowing dangerously. “You’re the reason they all think I’m crazy!”

  She looked down at the pills in her hand and then back up at him. “You’re the reason they gave me these in the first place!” In an act that was the culmination and release of all of the pent-up fury that had been building within her over the past five yea
rs, Wendy threw the bottle of pills at Peter Pan.

  Though it would have been easy for him to do so, Peter did not dodge the bottle. Instead, he looked down and simply watched as it neared. He had to admit that Wendy had excellent aim. It was going to hit him square in the chest, between the zippers of his leather jacket, and with quite a bit of force.

  To everyone’s surprise, however, including Peter’s, the bottle began to shimmer as it arced through the air. Suddenly, it slowed, tipping end over end like a leisurely floating football. It flashed in and out of existence a few times, and then, inches from impacting with Peter’s chest, the bottle completely disappeared with a strange suction-like popping sound.

  “Wow. . . ” whispered Michael.

  “What happened?” asked John, eyes wide.

  “I don’t know,” Peter answered, honestly.

  Wendy threw up her hands in frustration. “Well, you really didn’t like those pills, did you, Peter?”

  Peter looked back up at Wendy and shrugged.

  Wendy blew out a sigh and ran a hand through her long brown hair. It shimmered enticingly around her face and Peter watched the firelight play against the long, silken strands.

  “I wonder which one of you is real,” she muttered then, glancing from where the pills had disappeared to Peter’s handsome face.

  Then Peter’s jaw set with determination. “Wendy, please,” he moved toward her again. “Think about it, will you? You don’t belong here.” He shook his head and gestured to the house around them, but Wendy knew that he was really gesturing at the entire world beyond. “They won’t even let you write, for crying out loud! You’re the story teller! How can you possibly stay here where they won’t let you tell your stories?”

  Wendy was silent for a moment. She regarded Peter with an unreadable expression. He waited for her to answer. But when she didn’t, he swallowed audibly and straightened. Wendy cocked her head to one side as if contemplating something.

  Then she walked over to the coat rack beside the door. “Stories, Peter,” she began softly as she pulled down her wool overcoat, “are dangerous sometimes. One can get lost in them.” She turned to face him as she slid her arms into each sleeve. “And never find their way out again.”