“Mama, don’t leave!” he screamed.
“What do you mean, my dear? We have the Midsummer Night’s Ball at the Brown’s mansion tonight.”
Michael let out a whimper and clutched Giles with desperation. “I have a bad feeling about tonight. Don’t go, Mummy; stay.”
“Oh, you must have had a quick dream when you were falling asleep, like when you dream of tripping down the stairs! A little nightmare. Don’t worry. Liza and John and Wendy and Nana will be here to protect you. Everyone is here to keep you safe, especially Wendy.”
Michael gave a quiet sob, his eyes clouding over with something unseen. “Please, please stay. I don’t like tonight. It’s dark! I’ll never see you again!”
Mrs. Darling looked at her youngest with adoration. “Oh, Michael, what a thing to say! John must have been whispering things in your ear! There’s nothing to be afraid of, my dear. The window is locked up tight, and Liza will be awake until we return.”
Michael continued to cry. “Something bad is waiting in the dark, Mummy!”
“Oh, sweet boy! What a dream you must have had.” Mrs. Darling looked over with concern at her youngest son. Her face alarmed Wendy—the last thing she wanted was for her mother to stay or for her father to come into the room. The thought of his face telling her to never see Booth again made her stomach turn.
“Mother, we will be fine. Michael can sleep with me tonight.”
Michael sat up in his bed, rubbing his red eyes. “Really, Wendy? Really?”
She nodded. He bounced across the room and buried himself in Wendy’s bed, his warm and pudgy body curling against her chest.
“I still wish they would stay, Wendy.”
“I know, little one.”
Wendy’s mother gave her children one last, loving gaze.
“It’s settled then. Be good tonight, children. If you need anything, call Liza up from the servants’ quarters. We shan’t be later than midnight. Don’t forget to say your prayers.” She shut the door behind her, praying to herself and dimming the lanterns as she walked: “Holy Father, watch over my children tonight. Keep them safe from all harm and danger and the evil foe. Let the stars above guard their sleeping forms, and the Holy Virgin grant her mercy from afar.”
With the door to the nursery shut tight, the room was plunged into quite twilight. Michael gave a whimper but soon fell asleep nestled up against Wendy’s hip. John, too, eventually made his way from the rocking chair over to his bed, Nana at his heels. He collapsed into bed, Nana plopping herself next to him with a happy sigh. He wrapped one arm around the giant dog, turned down his lantern, and fell asleep, soon filling the room with his loud snoring. Wendy, however, lay wide awake, her eyes focused on the ceiling, her mind churning, weighing love and family and loyalty. She watched as the loudly ticking clock hit nine, and then ten.
At ten on the dot, Liza poked her head in and looked in on the children, as she always did when their parents were gone. Wendy knew that she would now don her nightgown and retire for good to the cozy servants’ quarters. She heard the loud click of Liza locking the nursery door from the outside, securing the children inside. When her parents returned, they would check the door, and finding it still locked, retire to bed. No use in waking sleeping children. At the sound of Liza’s footsteps fading in the distance, Wendy let herself breathe out for the first time in what seemed like hours. Moving ever so gently, she pulled herself away from Michael’s sticky forehead and rested him against a pillow where her form had been. He didn’t stir, a happy sleep smile stretching across his face. Wendy crouched behind her bed and looked over at John’s bed. He didn’t move.
She tiptoed over to the wardrobe, the mirrors reflecting back a flushed girl with terrified eyes that burned like coals. She pulled out a fitted black ankle-length coat and quickly buttoned it up over her blue nightgown. The wool pressed snug against her chin, the buttons tangling in her ponytail. She crossed to the window, stopping at the bookcase to grab Booth’s note, and looked back at the quiet nursery before hopping up on the window ledge. Wendy Darling had never done something like this, but she had known Booth’s lips on hers. She had failed him once already today, and she wasn’t about to repeat the pattern, her father be damned.
When she had sat in that drawing room, she saw her future without Booth, a still room without love, her years wasted to the ticking of a quiet clock, tick-tock, tick-tock, as she wished for her youth. No. Within an hour, she would be entwined in his strong arms, and that was all that mattered. They would figure out a plan. They would tell her parents and hold fast to each other until a compromise was made. This was her life, not theirs. She chose Booth and her family. Her slim fingers trembling, she straightened herself in front of the window and reached for the latch.
“How exactly do you plan on getting down?” She spun around. John was standing behind her, his glasses sitting crooked on his long nose.
“Go back to bed, John,” she hissed. “This is none of your concern.”
“It is my concern when you fall to your death outside our window and I’m the only one left to care for Michael. You know how he taxes my nerves.”
Wendy shooed him back with her hand. “John, I am going. You can’t stop me. Please go back to sleep and don’t worry.”
“I can’t stop you? What if I scream for Liza right now? Or tell Papa that you tried to sneak out to see Booth in the middle of the night? What would happen then?” He tilted his head. “They would blame me for not stopping you, and that’s truly not in my best interest.” An honest curiosity crossed his face. “What do you see in him anyway? He’s poor. A bookseller’s son.”
Wendy shook her head. “I love him because he’s the book-seller’s son. Because he’s witty and kind and smart. Booth is even smarter than you, and you know that, which is why you’ve always been threatened by him. How could I ever expect you to understand? Your love is always conditional and only when it suits your needs. I pity you, John.”
The words were tumbling out of her mouth with a surprising cruelty, but Wendy felt relieved. John’s eyes narrowed with anger. “I’m leaving. You can yell for Liza if you wish.” She cinched her coat tight around her and reached for the latch again. Then, as if God’s breath had blown through the room, all the lanterns in the nursery were extinguished.
“Wendy?” John asked, his voice peaking at the curve of her name. “Did you do that?” She barely had time to open her mouth before the chaos began.
Suddenly there was a loud slam against the window, and Wendy tumbled backward off the sill. The sound rang like a shot through the room. Another slam followed, as if a carriage were being thrown against the glass. Wendy leapt backward, her arm reaching for John. His hand was clammy as she curled her fingers around his.
“Is that Booth?” he whispered hopefully. Another slam echoed out from the panes, which were flexing outward, the glass bending as if it were fabric blowing in the wind.
“What the devil?” John cursed. With a wicked snarl, Nana leapt up from his bed and crouched in front of the window, growling ferociously, her hair standing on end. As if pulled by an invisible hand, the curtains were yanked down from the window on their own accord, and the room filled with Wendy’s screams. She rushed back to her bed and picked up Michael, cradling him against her body. John stood paralyzed in the middle of the nursery, his body shaking as he watched the window pulse in and out again, his feet frozen to the floor. The slams continued as the glass began melting, its transparent rivulets running down from the top as if it were made of water. It puddled into a silver mess on the window seat and dripped onto the floor. The violent thudding continued, and with each crash, Michael shuddered against Wendy’s body, his face buried in her neck.
“What is it, Wendy? What is it?” She stayed silent, because not even in her wildest and most terrible imaginings could she guess at what this might be. Then, as quickly as they began, the crashes against the window stopped, and the remaining panes of glass melted to the floor. John ran for Wend
y and climbed behind her on the bed, putting her body between the window and himself, his thin arms wrapped around her neck. There was a moment of silence as the Darling children waited in terror. Then an earsplitting whine filled the nursery as Michael began screaming. The pooled glass rippled and then exploded outward, a thousand tiny rounded drops falling into the room. The curtains were whisked out the open window and sent spiraling up into the night sky, where the stars were shining so brightly that Wendy could barely look at them. Chilly London air rushed into the room as the children sobbed. With a whooshing sound, a potent darkness spiraled into the nursery, and then everything was silent, even Nana.
“Wendy, are we dead?” John whispered, a sob climbing up his throat.
“I don’t know,” she whispered back, her arms still firm around a trembling Michael. The children watched in silence as a tiny shadow floated toward them, like a black feather. It lingered over the children for a minute before suddenly zipping out the window and into the starry sky, which exploded into a fragmented whirling blue and purple spiral of light. All three children were struck silent by its beauty, and for reasons she couldn’t fully explain, Wendy stopped being afraid. Nana gave a groan and lay down on the floor, rolling over to show the window her belly.
“Hold Michael,” Wendy ordered John, who, for once, didn’t argue with her. He wrapped the trembling little boy against his thin chest and pulled the blankets around them both. Wendy rose and walked toward the window.
“Be careful!” John hissed. “Wendy!”
The blue nightgown swirled around her legs as Wendy approached the window, a curious ecstasy filling her chest as she reached her fingers out to touch the turbulent light. When her fingers met the translucent rays of color, the light gave a shudder, as if she had dipped her fingers in a pond. With her touch, the spiral began closing in on itself, and as it shrunk, Wendy began seeing familiar glimpses of the London streets below. There was a musical tinkling of notes, a most enchanting melody gracing her ears, and she watched in shock as a dark shape began coming up through the light. The figure moved fluidly, as if it were swimming up toward the nursery. The shape was undoubtedly human. A tiny sliver of dread blinked in her mind as the shape grew larger, and she ran back to the boys. She had barely made it to the bed when she saw a hand emerge from the tunnel of light. Wendy let out a scream and pressed herself in front of her brothers.
The hand opened slowly, as if feeling the air around it, and then, almost pulling itself out hand over hand, the figure rose upward. Two arms followed, then the shadow of a head, then a body. It was a boy. The boy, silhouetted in black against the swirling light, rose up out of the tunnel, his feet not touching the ground. The tunnel pulsed once more, lighting the entire nursery up as if it were dawn. The rocking horse threw its shadow over the terrified children as it was rocked wildly by an unseen hand. Nana held her submissive position, looking terrified as she declined confronting the unseen force that rose up in front of the window. The boy snapped his fingers twice. The tunnel quickly faded, pulling into itself until it was only the size of an apple. It floated over to his outstretched hand. The boy hovered in front of the window, gazing at the tiny swirling light for just a moment before stuffing it into his pocket.
At that, all the lanterns in the nursery lit back up, and when Wendy raised her head, the glass and the rest of the nursery had returned to its original form, down to the small wooden soldier that stood by itself in the middle of the nursery. Nana gave a whimper and closed her eyes.
The boy turned to look at them. Closing her eyes against this terrifying creature, Wendy pressed both boys against her tight, and John repeated the Lord’s Prayer over and over again in convulsing sobs. Wendy raised her trembling voice.
“Leave us, please! Please! Go back to whatever hell you came from! Please! We are just children here!”
Through the darkness, an unexpected sound rose up, a low chuckle that grew into the laugh of a maniacal child.
“Oh, my, have I frightened you?”
CHAPTER FOUR
WENDY DIDN’T LOOK UP, afraid to see the face that possessed that voice, that voice that rang with male confidence through the nursery. She felt air push over her hands, her body, and she knew without a doubt that the boy had moved much closer to them. The boy gave a sigh.
“I see I have frightened you. You have no reason to be afraid of me, I promise.”
Wendy pressed both boys’ heads down and with hesitancy raised her own, her wide hazel eyes taking in a sight that she could not believe. Floating over her bed was a boy who looked to be about sixteen years old. What struck Wendy first was not actually that he was floating—which was an unbelievable sight; it was that he was simply the most beautiful boy she had ever seen. His radiant winsomeness beamed out from his grin as he looked down at Nana with a pitying smirk. She snarled in his direction. The boy had blazing red hair, its color the same shade as a lick of flame, which flew out from all sides of his head, curly in some parts, straight in others. He had golden freckled skin, freshly sun-kissed, and peachy pink lips. He was muscular, with tan calves that appeared carved from stone, slender hips, strong forearms, and a strapping, confident chin.
He turned his face to her and smiled, and she felt her heart skip a beat. His lips curled backward to reveal small but blinding white teeth. The smile unnerved her—it was a cocky, cunning grin, the kind that John gave her when he had hid all her underthings or put a worm in her bed. Staring at him from under her raised hand, the boy’s eyes were what brought her back from the uneasy place that the smile had taken her. Wide set and brushed with impossibly long dark lashes, the boy’s bright green eyes, a shade that she had never seen before—like glittering emeralds!—fixed on hers. She lowered her hand and raised her chin into the light. She saw his eyes widen a bit at the sight of her, saw his lips part in confusion. He dropped out of the air, quickly, just for a moment, before flying (flying!) up toward the ceiling again.
“I . . . I’m sorry, I thought you were their mother.”
Wendy found it impossible not to stare at his face, his green eyes holding her captive as he fluttered around the room.
“No, I am not their mother. I am their sister. My name is Wendy.”
“Weendee.” The boy seemed to weigh this on his tongue for a moment before laughing. “Wendy. Yes. You are beautiful! How old are you, Wendy?”
“I’m sixteen.” Wendy tried to calm the heaving of her chest, searching for a clear breath, the fear from his arrival still pulsing through her body. “And your name?” she gasped.
“Peter. I’m Peter Pan.”
“And how old are you?”
“Guess.”
“Are you sixteen as well?”
“You could say that.”
Wendy could feel John pulling away from her, but she wasn’t ready, not yet. She pulled him back against her chest. Michael remained trembling against her lap. Wendy didn’t know how to phrase the question without sounding terribly rude, but she dared anyway.
“How did you . . . how are you . . .?”
“Flying?”
“Yes!”
With a wicked grin, he turned in a circle, like the Christmas ornaments that her mother hung every year. Then he took off, dashing from one corner of the room to another, sailing up and back down. With a sharp tug, Wendy felt John pull away from her and stand beside her.
“Say! How are you doing that?”
“Well, hello, young man!” Peter lazily circled back down and landed beside John, shaking his hand, his luminous eyes sizing up her brother. “And what might your name be?”
John blushed and stammered. “John. John Darling, sir.”
“Well, John Darling, how would you like to go on an adventure?”
John looked up at Peter with silent awe. The redheaded boy gave a curt laugh and swooped up toward the ceiling once again, this time flying backward, as though he were standing up. Wendy couldn’t stop staring with amazement, and to her dismay, she felt Michael uncurl from her
side and stand atop the bed.
“Hey, mister! You are flying!” He pointed at Peter. Peter flew down quickly and hovered above Michael for a moment before lazily floating down and sitting in front of him cross-legged.
“What is your name, little boy?”
Michael puffed up his chest. “I’m Michael!” He dangled his teddy bear by the leg up in front of Peter’s face. “And this is Giles!”
Peter tilted his head and looked for a long moment at Michael’s face before bursting out with a strange crow. “Welcome, Giles!”
The boys laughed, but Wendy stayed silent, still wondering if she was dreaming.
“So, the Darling family is Wendy, John, and Michael.”
“And our parents,” Wendy said softly.
“Oh, yes, parents.” Peter gave a soft laugh, as if they were something so ridiculous that he couldn’t even comprehend the thought. With a sigh, he settled onto the foot of Wendy’s bed, just inches away from her. Wendy blushed and sat back against the headboard, wary of having a boy on her bed. Peter tossed his beautiful red hair out of his eyes.
“So, Wendy, please tell me about where you live.”
“Where I live?” she stammered. “Well, we live in London . . .”
“We live in London, and we live here with our mother and father and Nana and Liza! Our parents are at a ball tonight!” Michael exclaimed, climbing up beside Peter.
The flying boy rested his hands on his chin. “How intriguing! And what do you do here in this . . . this London?”
Michael considered for a moment. “We go to school and Mass and sometimes we have friends over to play with us.”
Peter rubbed his chin. “Hmm. How interesting. And then your friends leave and you play no more? Does that make you sad?”
Michael nodded, a lock of his blond hair falling into his eyes. “It does, flying sir.”
John strode up beside them, his face betraying his jealousy that Peter was talking to his siblings and not to him. He pushed his glasses up. “We live just outside Kensington Gardens, which is on the west end of London. Our father is an accountant and an amateur astronomer, and our mother is a lady of society.”
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