When that creature went into the water I thought I heard someone call my name, and there was a melody, the loveliest melody I’ve ever heard, singing to me, beckoning me.
I think there are things about this place that are not what they seem.
Abbie
***
Dear Diary,
I have not written in so very long. The number of days is not possible for me to measure. Time is very different here. Something has happened. I had a dream last night, a terrible dream. Mother was calling out to me, “Abigail I miss you so much! Please, Abigail, please come home.” I don't know if it was real, but it felt real. I don't know how long I have been here. Time is not kept by a clock in this place. It is kept by the number of times I have gone to swim in the sea and by the number of new children finding their way here.
I don't want to go back.
Oh, Mother...
Abbie
***
Dear Diary,
I went to find the sprite today. I cannot sleep, these nightmares come so often. I found her in her usual hiding place, and I told her I needed to go home. The longer I stay, the more my memories seem like a dream. They are cloudy on the edges, and I can’t remember Mother's eyes. I just know she is looking for me. I only wish to show her that I am okay so that she will not be troubled and then I will return.
Abbie
***
Diary,
I have found my mother. She is lying cold in the ground. My father cursed at me and called me a ghost when I came to the doorstep. He was much older than I remember. His hair was gray through and through, and his back was stooped and crooked. My house was in shambles, the paint peeling and the garden unattended. Have I been gone so long? It’s not possible.
Abbie
***
Diary,
Fifteen years! I was gone fifteen years! How can it be possible? I am still the same in appearance as when I left! How can this be? I can’t find the sprite. I called for her. I clapped my hands. She is not here. I am here.
I need to find a way back.
Abbie
***
Diary,
There have been no entries because there is nothing to say. I am lost. Every day, every night I wait for the sprite to return. She is gone! She has abandoned me!
I have tried to make a life for myself, but I cannot be satisfied! I am lost! Cleaning the rooms of children only adds to my misery. They speak of fairies when I rock them to sleep. They smell of the wind, of jasmine, and I know they have been to that place.
I can do nothing now except try to be... happy. No. I can never be happy. I must find a way to be content.
Abbie
***
Diary,
Something has happened. I met a young man. A wonderful young man and we are to be married! Maybe I can find a way in this world after all.
Oh, how charming he is. How is it that I should be so lucky?
Abbie
***
Diary,
This is my last entry as Miss Abigail Houton. Very soon, I will be wed and everything will change. There is some sadness in that. I don't know why.
Perhaps it is time to leave the past behind. Oh, it is hard to accept that. I long for Neverland in a way that seems impossible to imagine. I often wonder if it was even real. The memories of that place have become so clouded in my mind. But I suppose I've grown up since that time. Yes, I have done that, and although many things are changed now, I am no longer alone. That is something to be thankful for.
Abbie
***
Diary,
Wonderful news, I am going to be a mother! I never, in all of my wanderings, thought this would be the way my life would unfold! The child is to be born this December. What kind of mother will I be? Oh, I am bursting with excitement! Oh, how happy we will be!
Abbie
***
Diary,
This is not what I expected. He is not pleased about the news that we will be bringing a child into this world. This wretched world! He says we cannot be married and that he cannot stay. I have taken more years than were given in my adventures, and now I am being punished. How can he run away? Why would he make me believe we could be a family when he didn’t believe it? How could he be so cruel? And now I hear that he already has a wife and children! A daughter and two sons! He is a liar, and I have been deceived! Oh, how I wish I had never come back to this place. Am I meant to be left to wallow in this horrid sadness forever? I am cursed!
Abigail
***
Dear Diary,
It has been years since I last wrote in these pages. Peter, my son, is now a young boy of eight, almost nine years. I don't know where his father has gone off to. The boy is smart, very smart, and he knows that what I say is true. He must find a way back. I know now that I can never go back, and it makes me feel as if I am dying inside.
The sprite came for Peter, but the lovely thing told me without words what I already knew. I am a grown-up now, and Neverland is a place for children, or at the very least those who still keep that small bit of wonder within them.
It is her fault that that spark is gone from me! It’s all her fault! And now she would take Peter to enjoy that which should have been mine! I told her to go away from us. I almost crushed her in my hand! I should have.
Perhaps in my haste I didn't think it through. Peter should go. Yes, he should go to Neverland so that he will never have to endure the pain that comes with growing old in this unfair and cruel world. Perhaps that is best.
Abbie
***
When James came to the place where Abigail's entries ended, he always felt a crushing sadness. They had read each word a hundred times over, and each time their reaction was the same. James dabbed at his eyes. The tears never spilled over; he wouldn't allow it. Peter's reaction, although sorrowful, produced nothing by way of tears. He often wrinkled up his brow and bit his bottom lip, looking almost distressed and even confused.
One gloomy evening, after reading the last several entries for the hundredth time, Peter stood up.
“What’s wrong?” asked James.
“We have to go.”
James pulled out a small pocket watch Sister Maddie had given him during the holidays. He looked at the numbers and heard the hands moving.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock
“It's half past five,” James said. “Sister Maddie isn't expecting us until seven, if she’s expecting us at all.”
“No,” said Peter. “We have to go to Neverland.”
James sighed. While it was impossible for him to completely dismiss the things Abigail wrote in her journal, he struggled to think of how everything she said could be real. He had seen Peter lift off of the ground and hover like some ghostly apparition. Of that, he was sure, although the explanation of it evaded him. James mulled over Abigail's words. She was convinced Neverland was real and claimed to have spent many years there. He saw her drawings and heard her words echo in his head. James saw in Peter's eyes a determination that he knew could not be swayed.
“Peter, we must think about this.”
“What is there to think of, James?”
“Have you been listening at all, Peter? Do you not see the pain and heartache this so-called Neverland brought your mother?”
“Don't speak of it like it doesn't exist, James!” shouted Peter.
James stood and placed his hands on Peter's shoulders.
“No need to get all worked up,” he said, feeling Peter's rigid frame soften. “Can I ask you a question?”
Peter looked up at him. “Yes.”
“You enjoy our time together, right?” asked James. He understood now why the thought of Neverland evoked such an emotional response from him. It was threatening to take Peter away from him. Even if Neverland wasn’t a real place, it threatened to consume Peter as completely as it had consumed his mother.
“Yes,” said Peter. “Very much.”
“As do I,” said James. “
But you want to leave? You want to go to Neverland?”
“We will go together, brother,” said Peter.
“Will we? Why spend all this time looking for this place. What we have here is good enough, isn't it?”
Peter slumped down onto the floor. He hung his head and drew swirls and shapes in dirt of the floor.
“I suppose,” he said.
“Is that all? I thought we'd come farther than that.”
“It’s not as if I want to just up and leave you.”
“It seems as if that's exactly what you want to do.”
“And you don’t?” snapped Peter. “We can go together! We can be free from all of the things that hurt my mother. We never have to grow up. We never have to be stuffy and bitter like all of the grown-ups we’ve seen. They’re all angry. Every single one of them!”
“Everyone has to grow up, Peter. Even your mother had to grow up eventually.”
“How can you say that, after everything we've learned?” asked Peter. His voice was low, subdued, but colored with the unmistakable timbre of disappointment.
“All we have are stories, Peter.” James held up the diary and shook it forcefully. “Stories! Stories that no one believed then, and they don't believe them now!”
Peter jumped to his feet and tried to snatch the journal from James's hand. James held it above his head, out of Peter's reach.
“Give it to me!” screamed Peter.
“No!”
Peter squared his shoulders and shoved James as hard as he could. James stumbled and fell on to his back. Peter stood over him and violently ripped the journal from James's hand. A loud tearing sound sliced through the air.
“What have you done?!” shouted Peter.
He held in his hand the journal in two pieces. The back cover was torn clean off.
James didn't know why he’d tried to keep the journal out of Peter's reach. His emotions had gotten the better of him, and he regretted it at once.
“Peter, I'm so sorry,” he said, scrambling back to his feet and brushing the dirt from his clothes.
“James...” Peter held out the journal.
James took the book and its cover from Peter's hand. He was sure he could mend it. As he studied the tear to determine how he would go about fixing it, he saw that the fracture had revealed a page stuck with a resin to the back cover. James glanced at Peter, and it was clear he had seen it, too.
“There's something written here,” he said, his heart skipping a beat as he tried to steady his trembling hand.
“Read it!” said Peter excitedly. All tension between them disappeared.
“I can’t. It’s stuck to the back cover. Perhaps, if I can lift the corner just slightly, I can peel it back.”
James turned the rectangular cover over in his hands. The spot where the spine of the journal had detached was ragged, and several words were visible through the tear.
“It’s Abbie's handwriting,” he said. The anticipation was palpable, and Peter's breaths came slowly until they almost ceased.
James took hold of the corner and slid his nail under the edge, lifting the paper. A piece of parchment had been affixed to the last page of the journal, and both pages were then secured to the rear cover. He continued to work slowly and silently. Then, pop! The page was free, and a full paragraph of Abbie's handwriting was visible, coupled with a small drawing of six dots against a shaded background.
“Read it, James,” said Peter.
James read the hidden passage.
My Dearest Peter,
By the time you are old enough to read this, I will be gone. Do not fret about it. I am gone, and that cannot be changed. But you, my dear boy, can have everything your heart desires! You can have it, realized and set before you! You must understand that everything I told you about, all the stories of Neverland are true! You must believe, and you must go there before it’s too late for you!
The sprite can take you to Neverland, but you must signal her. When I was a girl, she instructed me to go out into the open and clap and dance and make merry! I believe that she is drawn to this. I also believe that she and her kind are the guardians of Neverland. They decide who will go and who will not. They are sly, these fairies. They lie. But they cannot resist the merriment of children. Do not let them deceive you. Do this, Peter. Call to her. Do what you must, and when she arrives, grab tight to her and tell her that you desire to be taken to Neverland right away. The place is hung in the sky for all to see. It is the second star to the right in the constellation Pegasus. Look for it, and you will see it. It dances like no other star in the sky. She will do it, Peter. She will take you, and you must go. This world is cold, and it will destroy the part of you that matters most—your innocence. I love you, Peter.
Your mother,
Abigail
James looked into Peter's eyes. No words were necessary. He knew that Peter was lost to Neverland, whatever it turned out to be: a place, a dream, the rantings of a sad young woman who had lost all touch with reality. The passage was more or less a direct order that James knew Peter would follow unquestioningly.
Peter would follow his mother's ghost to the end of the world, through the veil of make believe and to the edge of nothingness. James knew now, as he'd always known, he would not follow.
CHAPTER 7
GAMBIT
James knew that Peter was still reeling from the message they’d found hidden in the back of Abigail Houton's diary. Her message to Peter was now as sacred to her son as the pages of the Bible were to Sister Maddie. He guarded the words and spent an ever-increasing amount of time secreting himself away, reading and re-reading its contents. What had once been a task enjoyed by both boys was now an obsession for Peter. It consumed every facet of his existence, and James often stumbled across him in some out-of-the-way place, his nose pressed into the folds of the journal, mumbling maniacally to himself.
If James were honest with himself, he would have admitted that the whole matter scared him. The image of Peter hovering above the floor of the hollow haunted him. How had he done it? Peter was one of the most accomplished pranksters he had ever met. Was it some cruel joke? Perhaps a way of convincing James to believe in him, to believe in Neverland? He didn't recall seeing a rope or a wire, but then again he had been so awestruck by what was happening, he hadn't bothered to look. The glowing dust Peter produced from the small bag could have been a distraction, a way to keep James’s attention elsewhere while the ruse was accomplished.
James had been to a magic show once when he was very young. Sister Maddie took him into town one summer’s day and, while she shopped in the open-air market, James had slipped away to join a group of people who were watching a street performer intently. The magician had a small table set in front of him, and on the table were three ceramic jars turned upside down. He showed the crowd a small red ball which he then placed under one jar. While talking loudly and even spinning around twice, he rearranged the jars quickly and then invited a woman from the crowd to guess which jar the ball was now under. She picked the middle jar, but James knew she was wrong. He saw that, as the man flailed about and told jokes, he had placed the ball in his sleeve. It was a trick.
James decided that before he helped Peter any further, he would go back to the hollow alone and make absolutely certain that Peter wasn’t also, among his plethora of talents, a magician.
One balmy afternoon, James went to look for Peter to make certain he was occupied before setting out for the hollow.
As was most often the case of late, James found Peter in the library. Peter had read every book available to him regarding the myths and legends of fairies, elves, and mer-folk. He’d read the Greek myths and studied the gods of old as if he were preparing for some mission. He would not be disturbed, often refusing to eat or sleep. Sister Maddie had worried herself to exhaustion, and the other Sisters seemed to be counting the days until Peter was old enough to leave St. Catherine’s.
Peter was sitting at the long wooden table und
er the great stained glass window. Piles of books on astronomy and history were stacked on every available surface. Peter held a copy of The Odyssey and was thumbing through the pages as James approached him.
“Are you going to put any of these back, or will you let Sister Angelica clean up your mess?” James asked.
“Oh, James, you are too concerned with silly things like cleaning up,” said Peter. He didn’t bother to look up.
He thought that Peter should get out of the library and take some fresh air, but now was not the time to suggest it. James had other matters to attend to.
“Will you be taking a break soon?” He tried his best not to sound suspicious.
“Why should I?” snapped Peter.
James stared at him.
“Sorry,” said Peter. “I just… I think I may be on to something, and if I stop now, I may never figure it out. I can’t take a break now, James.”
“What is it you’re looking for exactly?”
“The journal said that Neverland was in the constellation Pegasus. Surely others have gone there and returned to tell the tale.”
“Perhaps…,” said James doubtfully.
“Oh, go away!” Peter barked before ducking back behind his book and grumbling something under his breath.
“Suit yourself. I'm going down to the rectory to help clean out the gutters.”
The lie was convincing enough. He knew, if hard work was involved, Peter wouldn't come looking lest he be recruited to help.
James left Peter to his reading and set out for the hollow. As he walked the familiar route, he thought about how the past few months had unfolded. After he and Peter had discovered the secret message in his mother’s diary, Peter had distanced himself from James. He loved Peter like a brother, and in the beginning of their friendship, James was certain he could have steered Peter in the right direction. He understood what it was like to feel unwanted. James did have Sister Maddie, and perhaps the depth of his own loneliness was not quite comparable to what Peter was experiencing, but it was similar.
They had been inseparable for months and months while they poured over the diary, and as their time together became more sporadic and less enjoyable on account of Peter’s increasingly volatile temperament, he longed for the way things had been before. Lost in his thoughts, James realized that he was entering the clearing and the hollow was just ahead.
Six Points of Light:Hook's Origin Page 6
