The Neverland Wars Read online

  “Well, that settles that,” he announced. “We’ll send it to forensics for examination to be sure, but there’s only one offender who fits this modus operandi. I want you to know there is a tremendous success rate for recovering the children he’s taken. Eventually, they make their way home. Most of them come back totally unharmed. It’s just a question of how long it takes them to break away from their captor.”

  Barely containing her tears, Mrs. Hoffman asked, “And how long is that, usually?”

  He solemnly answered. “It’s usually a matter of years, ma’am.”

  Gwen’s mother burst into tears, and her father went to sit down beside her on the couch. He wrapped his arms around her for her sake as much as his own. “Helen, Helen,” he coaxed, rocking his wife gently as she continued to cry.

  Gwen was still coping with the shock of this news, and the full tragedy of it had not yet sank in. Looking for answers that her parents would not give her, she focused on Kubowski, and the strange bag she clutched in her hand. It didn’t look like there was anything in it. When the light caught it, however, Gwen could see something gold and glittering within it. “What is that?” she asked, incredulous and distrusting.

  “This is the sister, Berchem?” Officer Kubowski didn’t even look her. Gwen felt invisible, overlooked in the middle of this disaster. Kubowski had the same strange star-atom patch on her uniform. She pulled the bag away, holding it where it would be harder for Gwen to see it.

  “What is it?” Gwen demanded.

  “She doesn’t know,” Officer Berchem responded, speaking over Gwen’s growing hysteria.

  Gwen had always imagined that disaster would be more glamorous. Time was supposed to rush by or suspend itself, or something. This conversation was not happening all at once, nor were these events unfolding as if in slow motion, and time was certainly not stopping.

  Because of this though, Gwen was having a hard time comprehending everything that was being said as it was being said. The words loitered in her mind, hitting her whenever dark, momentary silences lapsed over the adults.

  This was more than a momentary silence, however. Gwen slowly realized that everyone was staring at her. They looked to each other, but their eyes always fell with the same guilty heaviness on her.

  …the children he’s taken.

  As all expression drained from her face, her father was the only one coherent enough to ask, “Gwen?”

  “You know who took her!” Gwen accused, screaming and crying. “You know who did this!” She had no idea how they knew, but she was certain they did. They were behaving just the way adults always did when they were in the process of being caught with an ugly secret.

  They were such adults, to treat her like such a child.

  Officer Berchem shirked away from culpability. “We can’t confirm that it’s Pan’s work until forensics returns the evidence.”

  Gwen was suddenly compromised by a wave of dizziness. She felt her body fighting to deny what she had just heard; it seemed like the only way to survive the shock of it was to deny it. No one was offering an explanation, and she didn’t want one anymore. Bursting into a rush of new tears, she bolted for the staircase and fled to her room. She didn’t heed her parents’ calls, and they let her go. Gwen left them alone. They didn’t want her there anyway.

  When she got to her bedroom, she slammed the door shut and slumped down against it, as if that would keep reality from catching up to her. She sank down to the floor with the irrefutable feeling that she had just tumbled down a rabbit hole she would not be able to climb back out of.

  She gasped for breath between sobs. Never before had she feared that she would stop breathing as she cried. The silence and loneliness of her room gave her space to breathe, and she quieted down as she clutched herself.

  The tears did not slow down, but her breakdown became increasingly less dramatic. As she gained control of herself, she began to wish she could go back down and listen to the conversation without being ignored. She had nothing to say, but she didn’t want to be treated as a nonentity. She didn’t want to face those mysterious officers, but she did want to know what they knew.

  To satisfy this desire, Gwen willed herself up and went to the other side of the room where a closed heater vent was embedded in the floor beside her bookshelf. She grabbed her fluffy lion off her bed and took him with her as she opened the vent and lay down beside it to listen through the shaft.

  “But why us?” her mother cried. “Why Rosemary?”

  Apologetically, Berchem informed her, “She was most likely targeted because of your husband’s work.”

  “My work?” her father asked. “That’s impossible. How would they know?”

  “We’re not sure they do know, but there’s a growing trend for children who disappear to have parents who work in magical fields. Our department is getting better at systematically monitoring and following the chemical signature of magic. We think that Pan might have a more rudimentary means of this as well. Despite all precautions, magic is not done entirely in isolation. It follows you home, Mr. Hoffman, and it draws attention to your family.”

  “Oh God,” he replied. Her father’s voice sounded muffled, as if he were speaking into his hands.

  Kubowski spoke up. “Your older daughter, she would have been here for the invasion of ’08, yes?”

  “Gwen was eight at the time,” her mother answered. “Robert was escorted away from the house, but I sent Gwen to bed early… She said she could hear pipes.”

  “Your family was definitely targeted,” Berchem insisted. “You took all the right precautions and did everything you could, but you can’t anticipate everything.”

  The adults were all quiet until Gwen’s mother began crying again.

  “What line of work are you in, Mr. Hoffman?” Kubowski asked.

  “Is this on the record?”

  “It might help with the investigation.”

  Gwen clutched her stuffed lion a little harder and pressed her ear to the cold metal vent to hear better. What were they talking about? Her father was a financial advisor who worked at an office downtown. They talked softer now.

  She heard her father sigh. “Economics. National debt department. My team works with the resources they ship in from Ireland to try to keep inflation from spiking.”

  “Ireland?” Berchem echoed.

  “Yeah. You’d be surprised how much naturally occurring anomalous resources there are at the ends of the rainbows over there.”

  “Magic,” her mother muttered.

  “Yes… It’s amazing people believe we can be eighteen trillion dollars in debt and prospering without it.”

  There was another moment of silence before Berchem announced, “I’m glad we can be honest with you about your daughter, Mr. Hoffman. So many parents can’t know what’s really happened; so many wouldn’t believe it if we told them where their children are going.”

  “Officer, I’ve spent twenty years processing magic for the economy,” her father announced, “and I still don’t believe Rosemary’s gone.”

  “Gwen? Gwen?”

  Her father knocked gently on the door again. He wasn’t expecting permission to enter, only waiting to see if she would object.

  Gwen couldn’t muster an objection though. Her drive to wallow in shock and misery overpowered her ability to do anything, including defend her isolation. Curled up on her bed, she didn’t budge as her father entered the room. She hadn’t even turned on the little Christmas lights over her bed. Gwen had simply collapsed on top of her covers and made a sobbing mess of her pillow.

  The police had already left. Gwen had heard the front door close behind them. She knew when they left that her parents would inevitably come up and deal with her. Once the adults were done talking about the technical and legal, then they would worry about talking to their daughter.

  She clutched her lion close, but as she squeezed him against her chest, she realized he was far flatter than he used to be. His cotton had compressed
after years of being squished against her for comfort. She wanted to hold him until he dissolved into her, but he was farther away than ever from her heart. There had been a time when the stuffed tiger toy could be crushed flat against her chest, closer to her heartbeat than anything else would ever come. Now, there was a layer of boobs between her tiger lion and her heartbeat.

  Maybe she could pretend to be asleep and her father—her lying, stupid father—would go away. Unfortunately, Mr. Hoffman knew his daughter too well to be convinced that she was sleeping now. He picked up the tissue box from her big, blue bookshelf and brought it over to her bedside table. Pulling her spinning office chair away from her desk as well, he sat in it beside her bed. After a moment, he announced, “I’m sorry you had to find out this way, Gwen.”

  “How did you want me to find out?” she demanded through her film of tears. “What was the best-case scenario for this?” Gwen was disgusted and confused. It was an unpleasant combination that left her afraid and combative. She was still struggling with the basic facts of what was happening. “Peter Pan took my little sister.”

  The words felt bizarre leaving her mouth. She waited for her father to correct her, to tell her that was every bit as nonsensical as raven trees and egg fruit. When her father nodded and told her, “Yep,” Gwen had never been more devastated to find out she was right.

  “Why did you lie to me?” Gwen asked, too upset to be as angry as she wanted to be. “Why did you tell me, all of those years, that magic wasn’t real? Why bother to spend years convincing me that all of this fairy-tale stuff was just make-believe?”

  “Think about the consequences of that,” her father suggested. “What would happen if all parents knew and told their children magic was out there—that it was an option? Think about how many more children would run off. Magic isn’t like money, status, weapons, or any other kind of power. Everyone has access to it. But you can’t just tell children they are capable of fantastic things that their parents can’t control. You have to wait until they’re old enough to appreciate how magic should be used.”

  Gwen finally sat up. She clutched her knees close to her chest, looking at her father with bloodshot eyes. “What do you mean—how it ‘should be used?’”

  “There’s only so much magic in this world, Gwen,” her father told her. “There wouldn’t be a problem if it was an unlimited resource, but scarcity drives conflict. We can’t have children consuming magic at the reckless, indulgent rates they are inclined to. We can’t afford to waste magic on fairies and wonderlands. There are too many more pertinent issues we need to channel it into.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, think about your smartphone.”

  “What about it?”

  “Those things have transformed communication. Social media has been an invaluable tool to the revolutions that have been happening in the Middle East, and the advent of cell phones gives rural Africa a means to modernize.”

  “But that’s not magic,” Gwen insisted. “That’s technology.”

  “Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology,” her father told her. “It usually takes about ten or twenty years for science to catch up to magic. Scientists are just starting to understand how cell phones are constructed. Until now, they’ve been relying on magic to carry the signals and power the devices. Think of magic as an assembler, something that takes all the necessary components and arranges them in the manner they need to be arranged. Once it has, people work to reverse engineer that technology, and eventually stop depending on magic to do the heavy lifting.”

  “No, Dad, my phone has a SIM card. It wirelessly communicates with—”

  “With satellites in space?” her father asked. “Gwen, does that sound reasonable in any way whatsoever?”

  Her father was the one who had initially explained the concept to her, and though his explanation had been logically self-congruent, Gwen had taken it, in part, on faith. She didn’t really understand much of what happened around her, but others seemed to, so she had gotten comfortable in the cursory understanding they’d given her. Now, her father seemed to be mocking her for ever having believed what he’d told her was true. “So that’s it? Nobody’s allowed to believe in fairies because our iPhones need to work?” She uncurled herself and crossed her legs. Gwen buried herself in this issue, distracting herself from its disastrous consequences by tying her attention up in the mechanics of it. For as angry and upset as she was, Gwen was curious too.

  “It’s more than that, Gwen. Think about the economy.”

  “What about it?”

  “We’re more than eighteen trillion dollars in debt. Don’t you think it’s a little odd that a country so beyond bankruptcy continues to function and prosper as well as the United States?”

  “Well, yeah, but that’s because China’s bought most of our debt, and uh, two thirds of it is public debt, so…” Gwen felt incredibly uncomfortable, attempting to explain to her economist father that the economy wasn’t magic.

  “Gwen, there is no reason that we should be such a wealthy country, aside from the fact that we have some of the most inventive and entrepreneurial minds capturing magic and channeling it into the bureaucracy of our government. There are countless aspects of life that we depend on magic for, and it’s unreasonable to think that, given all the problems in the world, any of it should be spent fueling Santa Claus.”

  “Wait,” Gwen objected. “Santa Claus is real?” She had already had this conversation years ago, but now she and her father were on opposite sides of it. Her parents had already lied to her once about his existence; she didn’t know if she could trust anything they said on the matter. The stomach-turning shock felt no different. Once again, her parents were destroying her every notion of what life was.

  “No,” her father quickly answered. “Yours is the first generation to be completely without him. It’s part of the reason we’ve been able to push the information age forward as quickly as we have. Rather than shelling out magic to let one man monopolize that season, parents united in order to accomplish the same thing in a manner that wouldn’t drain any magic from out of the system.”

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” Gwen whispered, picking up her stuffed tiger lion again after flicking the switch for her lights..

  “No one ever said life was going to.”

  Gwen wanted to fight that assertion too. Adults had left her with the distinct impression that life would make sense. If not now, then when she grew up. Now, her father was explaining that life wasn’t any more sensible than it was fair.

  How could he be so calm now? He wanted to be strong for his daughter, but he just seemed cold to Gwen. “You have to understand.” He sighed. “We just wanted to protect you and Rosemary. That’s all any parent wants, to keep their children safe.”

  “Safe from what? What is there to be afraid of? Wouldn’t a Just-Say-No campaign have worked?”

  “It isn’t that easy, Gwen. When you’re a kid, some things have to be simplified for you. Your mother and I taught you not to get in cars with strangers because we couldn’t explain pedophiles to you when you were six. We told you to keep your windows closed because you didn’t need to know that Peter Pan was really out there.”

  “You didn’t trust me not to run away?” Gwen looked at him through wet eyes, feeling smaller than ever and in all the wrong ways.

  “You were in Rosemary’s shoes once, too, Gwen.”

  “Well, maybe if you had talked to her and given her a reason to stay here, she wouldn’t have left!” Gwen instantly regretted moving the blame onto her father, who was certainly wrestling that guilt already. What made it worse was that he did not let it show how her words affected him.

  “What could I have said that wouldn’t have inspired wanderlust in her? How could I brainwash her so well that her little heart would have the self-restraint to say ‘no’ to a world of fairies and flying? If she had to find out, she should have found out when she was old enough to understan
d that there are more important things in life than make-believe.” With that remark, her father leaned down and kissed Gwen’s head, making her feel even more treasured and even more guilty.

  “So that’s it?” Gwen asked, trying to piece together the larger picture and draw some sort of comfort out of it. “This is just one more thing grown-ups are all in on, like Santa Claus?” Gwen thought about her teachers, mall employees, her parents, and the newscasters who wrote, “Dear Virginia” letters and reported live-time updates for where Santa was last seen on Christmas Eve. She’d been fooled before, and it seemed she had not learned anything from the experience. Santa was just a distraction to keep their attention diverted from where magic was really happening.

  “Not all parents. This isn’t a massive conspiracy.” Gwen gave him a frustrated look, and he amended his words. “Okay, it’s a pretty big conspiracy. But not everybody is in on it. Just the people who need to be. There are plenty of people in this world who go through their whole lives without ever realizing the impact or reality of magic.” Mr. Hoffman ran his hand through his daughter’s hair. She was trying now, and trying desperately, to understand where her father was coming from.

  “How come you know? Who were those officers?” Gwen asked, sitting upright and scooting against the wall. She still clutched her lion, but with a little less desperation.

  “My career went deep into a strange science that demands an understanding of magic,” he answered. “Those officers were from an Anomalous Occurrences Unit. They’re the ones who track lost children and try to bring them home.”

  The ensuing silence choked a question out of Gwen. “Is Rosemary going to come back?”

  He didn’t look into her eyes. “Maybe not for a very long time.” He rested his hand on her foot, and Gwen felt she should have given him more of herself. She should have hugged him, but she felt as though she risked falling apart with every little motion.

  “I love you, Dad,” she said.

  “I love you, too, sweetheart.” He smiled at her, and Gwen felt awful, as if the words said more about their fear than their love in this moment. “Your mother does, too, and we’re all going to get through this together. Whatever happens, we all love each other. And that’s more important than magic.”