Wendy Darling

by Colleen Oakes

  Tink looked down at the ground.

  “He fought valiantly, but I heard his cries as it ripped him apart.”

  Tink shook her head and turned away, grabbing a bottle of wine from the seat next to her. Wendy felt her eyes swell with tears for this pathetic girl who had seen so much death.

  “Then Peter came. He came with his sword, and he fought the darkness, and he won. He found me, picked me up, and took me here. He saved my life. He was just a boy then, and we grew up together, bound forever, closer than siblings, closer than you could ever dream.”

  Wendy shivered at the word, imagining Peter and Tink, tangled up in each other, the hungry eyes of the jungle all around them. Tink turned back to Wendy, a smile upon her face.

  “But things change. I hope you can forgive what I’ve done to you. I can be . . . jealous of Peter, but who am I to stand in his way? If his desire is for someone else, then I must give him what he wants.”

  She reached for Wendy’s glass, sloshing out a dark red wine into her cup. Then she poured her own glass.

  “We’ll drink tonight, to new friends.” Her eyes clouded over. “To Wendy-bird. May she fly forever.”

  Wendy grasped the cup, her eyes on Tink. An uncomfortable chill was spreading through her chest. She looked up, and Peter’s eyes were on them both, a confused smile on his face. He leapt off the alcove and landed hard beside Tink.

  “Tink. What are you doing here?”

  She turned to him with a desperate smile.

  “I’m doing what you asked,” she whined. “I’m making friends with Wendy.”

  Peter gently ran his hand under her chin, turning her face up toward him. “Good. I’m glad. I would really like for you both to be friends.”

  Tink looked from side to side, nervously.

  “Peter, you should go celebrate with the boys. We are just making lady talk here, nothing that would interest you.”

  Peter nodded before stretching out, making himself at home on the chair beside Wendy.

  “I’ll stay, I think. What exactly are you two talking about?”

  Wendy looked over at Tink.

  “Tink was just telling me about the day you saved her life.”

  Peter looked hard at Tink before taking Wendy’s hand in his own. The fairy turned away, but not before Wendy saw a star-filled tear drop down her cheek. Wendy shook her hand loose from Peter, though she missed its warmth immediately.

  “Actually, I was just thinking that I might head to bed for the night. It’s been a very long—” She was interrupted when a Lost Boy tumbled across her lap in a misguided attempt at a hug. It was Thomas, his dirty blond curls draping over her legs. Michael followed behind him. Peter looked annoyed.

  “Boys, get off her.”

  Wendy helped Thomas to his feet. He giggled and with a blush held his hands behind his back.

  “Michael and I have something for you!”

  Wendy turned her head and smiled.

  “Oh? It’s not a lizard, is it? Because I already got one of those tonight.”

  Thomas shook his head.

  “Nope. Here!” He produced a stunning flower, a huge lavender bloom, adorned with spiky yellow fringe on the tips of its fluttery petals. The petals opened and closed of their own accord, teasingly showing a glimpse of a deep scarlet center.

  “Oh, boys, it’s beautiful!”

  Thomas reached over her. “It needs a drink!”

  Before Wendy could stop him, Thomas plopped the flower into her wine glass.

  “Thomas! That’s not the same as water.” At their disappointed faces, she shrugged. “I suppose it’s fine.”

  She leaned over and gave Thomas a peck on the cheek. He blushed and moved aside. Wendy went to give Michael a kiss as well, and he pulled away from her.

  “Yuck, Wendy, I’m too big for that now!”

  Wendy felt a tiny pang in her heart at his words but ruffled his hair. Then, in a swirl of dust and feet, the boys were gone. Wendy turned back to Peter and Tink, hoping that the tension between them had dissipated, but instead she found Peter, wide-eyed and shocked, staring at the table. She had never seen true shock play across his face and was taken aback by how young he looked in that moment, just like a little boy. He opened his mouth and, in a voice that seemed to cut through all of Pan Island, bellowed.

  “TINK!!!”

  Tink leaned in quickly toward Wendy, her mouth trembling in fear.

  “Pull the veil,” she whispered.

  “What?” Wendy asked, bewildered, but the fairy was already moving. In the blink of an eye, Tink was rushing toward the open doorway of the Table. She pulled back the brown shroud from her shoulders as she ran, and Wendy watched in awe as with each step, each foot of her wings unfurled behind her, translucent webbing pulsing with life, sparking silver dust raining down from the tips. Then a blast of heat shot through the room, and Tink was gone, hurtling herself off the platform into the open air. Peter thundered down right behind her, and before they disappeared from sight, Wendy saw him catch her heel, angrily cursing her name. Then they were both gone, lost to the night. Wendy blinked.

  “Peter?”

  She turned at the sudden silence. The Table was silent, all the Lost Boys staring at her with somber expressions.

  “What . . .”

  She raised her eyes and looked up toward the Generals. John was staring down at her, his face flushed with anger. With a raised eyebrow, he gestured to the table in front of her. Wendy turned her head. The flower that Thomas had given her was withered and black, its inky petals scattered below where it sat perched in Wendy’s wine glass. A faint smell of sulfur filled the air, and Wendy watched in horror as the flower curled in on itself, shuddered, and then disintegrated into black soot. The poison had done its job. Wendy grabbed at her throat. Michael tugged her hand.

  “Wendy, you didn’t drink that, did you?” Her throat constricted at the thought, and suddenly she was light-headed.

  “No, no, Michael, I didn’t drink it.”

  Michael reached for the cup to peer inside of it.

  “Stop!”

  Abbott pushed past him and grabbed the cup with some loose leaves, careful not to touch the base, which was beginning to leak.

  “I’ll get rid of this.” He looked over at Wendy, his lanky build towering over her. “Go back to your hut.” Then he shook his head and made a disgusted sound. “Women.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  TWO HOURS PASSED, and Wendy was hanging her feet off the edge of her balcony when Peter came for her. Trying to ignore the beginnings of a headache that seemed to emanate out from the middle of her brain, she kicked her feet out over the drop from her hut, watching a black and white bird flit about the leaves below, catching large ants and gargling them down its enormous throat. Wendy noticed a shape swimming up out of the dark leaves below, becoming clearer and clearer, flying with impressive precision and speed. Peter. She smiled.

  He flew up past her feet, landing behind her in a whoosh of air that sent her white nightgown swirling around her. He yanked her to her feet. Wendy crossed her arms in front of her chest and peered at him. “Tink?” Peter shook his head. “She’s fine. She’s . . .” He shook his head again and reached for her hand. “Honestly, the last thing I want to talk about tonight is Tink—is that all right? I’m sorry for what she did to you, and I swear on my life that nothing like this will ever happen again. I promise. I’m so angry at her.” He leaned in and pushed his nose up against her hair, clutching her desperately. “I can’t imagine anything happening to you.”

  Wendy smiled shyly, loving the feel of his warm breath on her face. “Well then, you can thank Thomas later. He saved my life by giving me that flower.” She almost killed me. The thought kept bouncing around her head.

  “I will. I’ll make Thomas a General for it.”

  “Well, you don’t have to go that far.”

  They both laughed nervously. Peter pulled away from her, and it was as if she knew what he was going to say befo
re he said it. “Wendy, will you come somewhere with me tonight?”

  Without a word, she put her hand into his. His green eyes stared at her, unabashedly worshipful. Wendy felt the blush rising up her cheeks, but something else rose with it—a strange twinge of betrayal, a tiny needle in her heart, and the quickest of sharp regret. What was wrong with her? There probably wasn’t a girl in the world who wouldn’t be burning alive with the way he looked at her now. Peter took her hand and spun her around and then covered her eyes with a blindfold. “Do you trust me?” There it was again, the pinprick of guilt in her chest, but when she felt the brush of his lips on her cheek, she could do nothing but nod.

  Then there was the wind on her face, and she knew they were flying, lifting up and out of her hut and into Pan Island’s canopy of branches. Seconds passed, and then the air was clean and warm, and she knew that they had left the branches of Pan Island and were now flying up and above the island, heading to . . . somewhere. She laid her head on Peter’s shoulder and felt the whipping air on her cheeks, the strong muscles of his arms that held her, content and excited.

  They flew for a few minutes before she felt Peter begin his descent on the other side of the island. His flight slowed carefully, and she felt the sudden lack of wind on her skin, only the radiating heat of his hand around her waist. They landed on a hard floor that bucked and swayed underneath her feet. Wendy grinned underneath her blindfold as her feet struggled with the pitch of the ground.

  “Peter, where are we? I can’t stand straight.” She giggled foolishly. Almost drinking poison had made her giddy and reckless, and Peter was having that same effect on her.

  The ground rocked beneath her again, and she finally pulled back her blindfold and gasped. At first she wasn’t sure where she was, or what she was in. Tall panes of green-blue sea glass surrounded her on every side, square vertical panes that ran from floor to ceiling. The glass was etched with subtle lines and patterns—squares, crescents, and arrows. She brushed her fingers across the glass, feeling the raised design like hard bubbles underneath her fingers. Her mouth fell open at the beauty of the craftsmanship. She raised her head. The tall single panes of dark teal glass then tilted inward on an iron bar and ran up toward a pointed ceiling. Where the ceiling came to a point, the glass on every singular pane ended at different lengths, their smooth tips capped off by iron. The tip of the ceiling was a deliberate pattern that opened up to the sky above—a star made to gaze at the beauty of the stars, and large enough to fly through. So that’s how they had come in. There was a small door in one of the glass panes, marked only by a small black latch and otherwise invisible. After all this time in round huts, being inside of a physical structure was incredible, and Wendy found that she had missed hard architectural lines. She spun around, taking it all in. It was the most beautiful place she had ever been.

  “Why, Peter . . . it’s . . . it’s . . . we’re inside of . . . a lantern?”

  He put his hands on his hips and laughed. “That it is! You’re sharp, Wendy. This is a fairy lantern, one of the last, and the only one on Pan Island.”

  The ground moved slightly underneath her again, and she understood instantly: the lantern was hanging. Cautiously she crawled on her knees and pushed opened the latch on the door, letting it swing open in the wind. She poked her head out, the wind whipping her hair in all directions. Below her was only sea. Craning her neck, she looked up and saw that the lantern was attached on an outstretched branch that had curled itself out over the water, the farthest eastern point of Pan Island. The lantern gave another rock, and Wendy pulled the door shut again, not wanting to fall into the sea, so far below. She looked up again, taking in the stars that shone through the star-shaped portal.

  “Peter.” She turned, suddenly feeling very shy. “This is lovely, but we probably shouldn’t be here so late.” She gulped and added, “Alone.”

  Peter tucked a piece of her hair, curling from the humidity, behind her ear. “Why wouldn’t we want that? You are so innocent and good, Wendy. It’s made it so hard to be near you—I am drawn to you, you must know.”

  Wendy blushed. “I do know. I . . . feel similar.” She paused. “But I don’t feel like I know anything about you. I want to know you, Peter.” She touched a hand gently to his face before he turned away. “What question do you want to know? Ask me anything.” He seemed unsure of himself in this moment, disarmed by curiosity.

  Wendy thought for a moment. “Where did you come from? When did you get to Neverland. HOW did you get to Neverland?”

  Peter laughed. “That’s three questions.” He frowned quickly. “It was so long ago, I hardly remember myself. The details are spotty.”

  Wendy smiled reassuringly at him. “I’ll take anything. I feel you know everything about us, and yet, we know nothing about you.”

  He took a deep breath and looked up at the pointed ceiling. “I grew up on a farm in Wick. Wick was in Scotland.”

  Scotland. Wendy tried to remember if that was near the place she had lived, which was . . . which was . . .

  “ I was the youngest of seven children. We were very poor. A family like you Darlings would have scoffed at us, or perhaps taken pity on us. There was never enough to eat, only herring and bread on the good days. We would sometimes play at Vikings, or Norse Gods, but there was always the fear that tomorrow would bring an empty plate, and so we fished, all day, every day. No time for play, or dreaming, just an endless stretch of nothing and backbreaking work.” His voice grew angry with emotion, his eyes flashing navy. “There was nothing, nothing on that godforsaken island, just endless green and craggy rocks, a cold, angry sea, and bitter winters! My family lived in the long shadow of Old Man Wick, the castle on the sea, our Lord of the Manor, and we his pitiful serfs and slaves! The landowner was cruel, taxing us to death, helping himself to all we had, even though he had everything. And though we hated him, we dreamt of living there, in Old Man Wick, buried amongst such riches, such food, such wealth!

  “My father, a selfish coward, drank himself to death when I was very young. I barely remember him, a useless waste of expanding flesh, but I remember seeing him beat my older siblings, and in turn, they beat on me. My mother had no interest in being a mother. When she could bother to feed us, she would slap down some food, remind us of what she could have been if it hadn’t been for us wretches, and leave, a new baby always on her hip, one that she would later resent and stave. It was a paltry existence, but sometimes late at night I would untangle myself from my brothers and sisters and sneak out of our tiny cottage of mud and rock, just to gaze up at the stars, so bright there at the edge of the world. I knew I was bound for something different. Something better. I was meant to rule the stars, not gaze at them from under our poverty. Every night for years, I watched the sky, asking whoever was up there for something more.”

  He took a deep breath and turned away from Wendy so she could not see his face. “I was thirteen years old when my older brother pushed me into the River Wick, after I had the gall to suggest keeping the fish I had just caught.”

  “Oh, Peter.” Wendy’s eyes filled with tears.

  “It had already been a strange night. The sea next to our town was violent and angry, and a full harvest moon rose over Wick, its orange light bathing the town red. I fell into the river and was pulled under. My body was dragged down deep, deep into a crag that lay under the river, deeper than a river should be. It was bottomless, like the ocean. I sank down, lower and lower, as the water grew dark around me. I passed deep into what seemed like an endless current, and then I remember seeing blue and lavender lights swirling under the water, the same lights you passed through when we came here through the portal. The next thing I knew I was swimming upward, and I came out of the sea just beyond the beach of Pan Island. I swam to shore, instantly fell asleep, and I woke a day later to a beautiful Neverland morning—and quite a bad sunburn!”

  Wendy giggled. Peter turned and faced her. “I’ve never looked back. I am not that child, and that was
never my life. I never speak of it, because it has no relevance to who I am now.” Peter looked down at her, his emerald eyes shining as he took in her face. “Everything I have ever wanted is here. Especially now.”

  Wendy looked at the darkening green walls of glass; the directness of Peter’s gaze made her uneasy. “Thank you for telling me.”

  Peter flew to the top of the lantern and poked his head out through the open star. “Ooooh. It’s starting.” He flew down and stood beside her, shyly taking her hand. “Wendy, I wanted to take you here to show you something extraordinary. Something you would never see in that other world. Darling, you haven’t seen anything yet of Neverland. I will show you every treasure, every secret pocket of this land. There are so many beautiful things here.”

  He reached out and brushed her cheek with the edge of his finger. “Such beauty. Now, sit . . . here.” He settled Wendy down on a stack of blankets that was piled on the floor. “Just wait. And while we wait . . .”

  He reached deep into the pocket of his long coat, patterned with autumn leaves and cobwebs, and his hand emerged holding an exquisite set of pan pipes, etched with golden vines. With a coy smile, he began playing a melody that seemed to weave its way right through her skin—low and lilting and penetrating, the music was a soft caress of notes that she felt in every part of her. The strange trill of the pipes, like reeds weeping in rain, filled the lantern up with its forlorn sound. She felt as if she were floating above herself. Her headache subsided, and any thoughts of doubt or guilt disappeared into the wholeness of the music, Peter rendering her into nothingness with just his gaze.

  As Peter continued playing, the room filled with light. Wendy gasped as the sea-glass floor of the lantern lit up with a thousand tiny stars. The light from below projected around the glass, and she was suddenly swimming in fragments of blue-green light, each one the shape of a tiny star. She reached up her hand and let the lights play over her splayed fingers. “What magic . . .”