The Neverland Wars Read online

  Gwen had a moment of doubt, contemplating Jay's doodle.

  Closing up her book, she set it gingerly on her desk. She would come back home and return to all of this later. Homecoming was still weeks away, and Ms. Whitman's math class wasn't going anywhere.

  Hollyhock had flitted into the room after her. A particularly curious fairy, she had wanted to investigate Gwen’s bedroom. She was delightedly going through all the book titles she could neither read nor recognize. Hollyhock was about to inspect the stuffed animals and tiny Christmas lights over Gwen’s bed, but Tootles hissed, so she scurried away from the feline.

  Tootles was mewing up a storm now, as if screeching at Gwen not to leave. The tabby cat was running all around the room, constantly underfoot as Gwen made her way back to the bathroom. “Sorry, Tootles,” she whispered. “Take care of Mom and Dad.”

  She closed the bathroom door behind her to keep Tootles from following after her. Hollyhock just barely made it back with her before the door shut, leaving a fast dissolving trail of fairy dust raining down on Tootles.

  Peter and Rosemary were hanging right outside of the window. The window screen had fallen down into Mrs. Hoffman’s rosebushes a story below. Gwen stepped up to the cold window, clutching her satchel bag at her side and holding a fistful of her blue dress with her other hand. Gwen was a wild mess, her bed-head entirely uncombed and her pajamas visible even under the blue dress. For a brief moment, she questioned whether she was prepared for the consequences of her decision, but she banished those thoughts. As soon as she did, she found that she was floating once again.

  Rosemary pirouetted in the air and giggled as her sister flew out the window to join them. The October night air felt warmer as soon as Gwen gave herself over to it, and the chill vanished as she hovered magically through the air. As she floated, it never occurred to her that the fairy dust might give out and cause her to crash down. Gwen had given herself over to the promise and power of Peter’s magic, and there was no doubt left in her mind as the young man smiled and announced, “To Neverland.”

  The night became warmer the farther into it they flew. Gwen’s dress fluttered at her legs and her polka-dotted pajama bottoms blew in the breeze she created. Zipping alongside her sister, following after Peter, she began laughing with hysterical joy. She could have pulled hair ties from out of her purse, but the feel of her hair flying around her was too much fun. She grabbed Rosemary’s hand, not to keep track of her little sister as she had so many times before, but to communicate her joy. The experience of flying was too beautifully strange for Gwen to endure on her own. She had to hold onto someone, to feel another warm hand telling her that this moment was as real as it felt.

  They flew over rooftops and housetops, already estranged from suburbia as they blew past its yellow streetlights and manicured lawns. The dark shingles and sleeping cars had been part of her world yesterday, but not tonight. As soon as she felt herself flying, Gwen’s heart abandoned any qualms it might have had about disowning the world. It had been kind to her, but it had never made her feel as though she belonged in it.

  She followed after Peter, amazed that he never looked back, until she realized she wasn’t looking back either. Hollyhock danced through the air, going twice as fast as any of them, but zigzagging all around. She bounced on the air, full of glee.

  “Where are we going?” Gwen asked. “Or, I mean, which way are we going to get there?” As far as she could tell, they were just aimlessly flying.

  “Round the moon and down the way the stars go,” Peter answered.

  “I thought it was second star to the right or something,” Gwen responded, trying to remember how the story went, while at the same time questioning the authenticity of a book about childhood written by an adult.

  “They’re watching that pathway,” Peter announced. “We can’t risk them catching us there.”

  Gwen was acutely aware that this was not how she expected Peter Pan to talk, to look, or to act. After all, this boy was not a child but a teenager, and Gwen could hardly expect to believe he was the infamous Peter Pan that the adults of her world loathed. She didn’t think she was being rude, only direct, when she asked, “Who are you?”

  “Who are you?” he echoed.

  “I asked first.”

  “But you care more, so you’ll answer first.”

  Peter flew on, Gwen at his side and Rosemary trailing behind with Hollyhock. He said nothing more, totally content to let the conversation die on that note. Hoping to prompt something more from him, Gwen gave in. “I’m Gwendolyn Lucinda Hoffman. Who are you?”

  “Peter Pan,” he announced. His voice was full of pride, as if he never got tired of answering the question he had been so reluctant to address.

  “I thought Peter Pan was a boy who never grew up.”

  “You thought Peter Pan was real, not just a character from a book?” Peter responded, awkwardly continuing in the third person.

  “Well, no, I did think he was fictional—”

  “Then I guess you don’t always think right.”

  Peter zipped ahead, trying to leave her in the dust. “Peter, wait!” Gwen called, even though she realized he wasn’t really going to abandon them.

  “No. Keep up,” he replied.

  “How is it that you’re so much older than in the stories?” Gwen asked. “I thought people didn’t age in Neverland.”

  There was honest curiosity, and even a smidge of concern, in her voice, which must have been why Peter decided to dignify the question with a response. “Am I in Neverland tonight?”

  It seemed like a trick question to Gwen. “No… I suppose not.”

  “That catches up with you.”

  Gwen had never considered this. How often did Peter Pan rendezvous back to the real world he’d abandoned? If he was constantly fetching children away from their drab futures as adults, Gwen could see how decades of travel between worlds would wear on him.

  It was silly to doubt that he was Peter Pan. There was no denying the puckishness of his nature, nor the childishly handsome grace he carried himself with. He flew, utterly carefree, like a firefly meandering through the evening.

  As they flew up to the moon, Gwen caught sight of his eyes, seeing the ivy-green color of his irises and their golden centers. His long hair was shoddily cut and windblown. When he looked Gwen in the eyes, she felt as if she were staring into a mirror, that she had found someone who reflected an aspect of herself she had hardly even been aware of.

  Rosemary was giggling delightedly as she shot past them, ever closer to the moon, with Hollyhock bounding along in leaping strides. The moon seemed to grow to an impossible size, and Gwen lost track of how far they were from the buildings below them. The silvery, white light of the moon engulfed them. They seemed to be flying impossibly close to it, but Gwen was aware of how probable it was that they were doing the impossible.

  “Are we really going to Neverland?” she whispered, finally allowing herself to believe it. She had left her house under the guise of going for Rosemary’s sake, but now she questioned what impulse had really guided her. Rosemary danced through the air, content and lighthearted. Her little sister didn’t need protecting or watching after, not in the sense that Gwen could possibly hope to provide for her.

  Peter smiled, each tooth like a star. His smile seemed to radiate light. She knew how silly her question must have sounded, but he seemed happy to answer it. “We’re halfway there.”

  It would have been hard for Gwen to explain what happened then but, fortunately, no one would ever call on her to explain it. Where she was going, everybody else had already experienced it.

  The stars began to blow out, one by one, falling away from their static places in the heavens. Each and every one of them became shooting stars, dipping down or zipping away. Gwen couldn’t tell which way was up anymore, so it was impossible to say which direction the twinkling stars were going. The only pinpricks of light that hung in the air now were the little granules of dust Hollyh
ock left behind before she landed on Peter’s shoulder, tucking herself securely into his ivy-vine sash. The moon became all encompassing, and Gwen realized that she was being pulled toward it. She was no longer swimming through the sky, but rather being drawn through the darkness to that sole source of otherworldly light.

  The world, what was left of it, sped away, and Gwen screamed with glee as she felt herself being whisked away in one direction after another, faster and faster. Soon, there was nothing left but the glow of the moon, and even that was illusionary. As Gwen’s eyes adjusted to it, she realized she was drifting through the air in pristine daylight.

  They were above the clouds, which possessed the same bright glow as the moon they’d been chasing just moments ago. Gwen took a big breath before diving through them, as if she thought she was about to submerge herself underwater. Following Peter and Rosemary, Gwen drifted down and emerged on the other side. The haze of the white cumulus cloud dispersed, revealing a paradisiacal island below it.

  The stunning blue waters lapped against the sunny sand of the shore, and a multitude of greens wove together in a seemingly limitless jungle. The shape of the island was hard to comprehend as they rapidly approached it. They came at it from a direction known in Neverland as weast, which meant they soared to the jungle passing between Cannibal’s Cove and the Mermaid’s Lagoon. Shooting over the peninsula that divided the two landmarks, Peter guided the girls through a bright new day in Neverland.

  They stayed above the tree line until they reached the grove, and Rosemary knew the final stretch well enough to lead them there. Rosemary hit the ground running with utter joy and ample laughter. Gwen slowed and stopped to watch her sister land, but she was seized by a sudden self-conscious thought. She didn’t know how to land. She had hardly figured out how to fly, and now she was supposed to know how to gracefully stop? She felt as though she was on a bike with too much momentum to simply slam on the brakes. The more she panicked about it, the more her form faltered. Soon, it wasn’t a matter of trying to land, but of recovering from her crash.

  Her flying gave out, and Gwen thudded down to the soft bed of uncut grass, turning her fall into a somersault as she did so. The recovery would have been seamless, if not for the startled yell that she let out. With her big mouth open, it was soon full of grass and dirt. Rosemary laughed at her older sister, but Gwen could not object. She found herself smiling, even as she spit the grass out of her mouth.

  Gwen was speechless as she finally touched down in Neverland, an impossible place she had long ago stopped believing in. Even the colors were brighter. The air was permeated with summery warmth. There was no doubt in her mind that she had just stumbled out of a bleak October reality and into a magnificent, eternal summer.

  Summer! When was the last time that word had carried such an all-encompassing sense of promise and adventure? When she was little, summer had been synonymous with freedom. She’d lived through so many eternal summers, but those eternities had long since slipped away. As a child, how could she have comprehended at the start of any given summer that it would eventually end? Long into her childhood, she had suffered a beautiful object-impermanence in regard to the calendar and seasons. In the moment that school let out and summer swept children away on the wings of fantasy, it was an endless thing. Gwen had never questioned how the immortality of summer had escaped her as she aged, but now, for the first time since that indeterminate point in her youth, she felt the infinity of summer swallowing her again.

  Surrounded by towering trees that seemed all at once exotic and Seussian, Gwen marveled at the way they stretched up toward the sky, their leaves like paint splatters of green against the blue canvass. While gazing up at them, Gwen caught sight of an intricate system of colored ropes that ran between the trees. She didn’t understand what this was until Peter came swooping down. He pulled a slingshot out of his back pocket and swept up a rock from off the ground. While still in motion, he shot the rock off with remarkable precision, and Gwen watched in awe as it triggered a Rube Goldberg contraption amid the trees.

  She couldn’t quite follow the motion when it started, but the initial impact of the rock struck against a brassy bell. It echoed like a gong as the colored ropes unraveled, revealing themselves to be, not ropes, but tightly wound cloths. One after another, they were released and allowed to unfurl down to the ground. In electric blues, ecstatic oranges, and enduring reds, they fell to the floor of the grove. Still more sheets unfurled, engulfing and surrounding a small section of the grove they had landed in. Bubblegum pink, lime green, sunshine yellow, and the brightest shades of crimson and turquoise.

  What was more, the initial brassy bell had released a cascade of smaller silver bells as well, and Gwen watched a massive oak tree as strings of tiny, glittering bells plummeted down, jingling like Christmas.

  Gwen felt secure inside of an adventure, a rare sensation that she duly appreciated. There was safety in this moment, engulfed in this labyrinth of a cloth fort, but she could not imagine what the future might hold from one moment to the next.

  The bells had heralded Peter’s arrival, and a stream of children erupted from the Earth to welcome him home. Some came from camouflaged hammocks high in the trees, others bubbled up out of tree stumps, and still others from indeterminate places under layers of morning glory vines. From Gwen’s perspective, they seemed to pour out of nowhere.

  “Peter! Peter!” they all cried, overjoyed to see him again, skipping and prancing below him, waiting for him to land among them as they laughed.

  Peter was still in the air, playing up his arrival with dramatic flourish and narcissistic pleasure. As he dove down, soaring within an arm’s reach of the ground, zesty red poppies sprang up, trailing after him. He landed at last, laughing. As he struck a victorious pose, he was swarmed by the giggling children. Gwen watched in awe, but her little sister wandered to her side.

  “How long has he been gone?” Gwen asked. From the looks of it, the children had not seen him in weeks.

  “Just since yesterday,” Rosemary said. “We only left to get you.”

  Two shirtless boys danced around him, making as much of a ruckus as they could. Two girls tugged on his arms, and a third nestled herself at his feet, wrapping herself around one of his legs. Hollyhock hovered, never straying far from Peter, but bouncing off each child’s head.

  “I have returned!” he triumphantly announced. “And I have brought Rosemary’s storyteller!”

  When he looked to Gwen, all wide eyes fell on her. The excitable faces of the children glowed with new enthusiasm as they surveyed her. In a second’s time, they had all run to her. Deserting Peter, they approached her with a slightly more skeptical delight.

  “It doesn’t look much like a storyteller,” the taller of the boys announced. Several of the children pointed and laughed at Gwen.

  “How would you know what a storyteller looks like?” a boy with buck teeth asked him.

  “What kind of stories does it tell, Sal?” a startlingly blond boy asked, leaning in much too close in order to stare at Gwen, unblinkingly, in the eye.

  “Why don’t you ask it, Newt?” Sal replied.

  Gwen looked at the short, blond boy and tried not to be intimidated by the sheer intensity of his vivid blue eyes. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Newt, and this is Sal.”

  “Newt’s not a name for a boy,” Gwen replied.

  “It’s short for Newton.”

  “Oh.”

  “And mine’s short for Salamander.”

  “What?”

  Taking Sal’s advice, the eldest of the girls, a pudgy-faced child, no older than twelve, asked, “Excuse me, but what kind of stories do you tell?”

  Rosemary piped up, eager to endorse her older sister. “The best stories, Bard! She tells fantastic stories about princesses and stars and race car drivers.”

  Sal and Newt exchanged glances before bursting into laughter. There was nothing inherently funny about this, but Gwen was fast learnin
g that laughter was an adequate response to anything in Neverland.

  “Then that settles it,” Peter proclaimed. “She shall tell us a story tonight—the best and most fantastic story.”

  Gwen felt she was being unfairly put on the spot. “I don’t know that—”

  The children cheered, but a pigtailed girl asked, “And if she doesn’t?”

  “If she doesn’t?” Peter echoed, as if it were a wholly irrational thought. “If she doesn’t tell the most fantastic story we’ve ever heard, we’ll tie her to a stake in the jungle and leave her!”

  “Or walk her off the cliffs!”

  “Or feed her to the lions!”

  “Or dump her in the lagoon!”

  The children were as happy to dream up punishments for Gwen as they were to meet her, and Gwen could not say she liked the way things were going. She shot Rosemary a mean glance, but her little sister did not seem to realize what she had committed her older sister to.

  A third, dark girl had been far from quiet, but had not yet spoken. She had a drum at her side, secured by a strap around her shoulder. She began beating on it, chanting in a gibberish that her comrades were happy to join in on. Clapping, stomping, and dancing, they formed an untouching conga line around Gwen. Utterly out of her element, Gwen looked to Peter, but all he said was, “A story, Gwen-Dollie, or it’s off the cliffs and into the cove!”

  As Peter pulled out a homemade flute and began playing a whimsical tune for the Lost Brigade to march to, Gwen leaned over and whispered to Rosemary. “They won’t really throw me off a cliff, will they?”

  Rosemary, stoically looking at her sister, informed Gwen, “You’d better just tell them a good story.”

  Gwen found it surprisingly difficult to navigate through the labyrinth of sheets that constructed their fort in the forest. She was also confused as to whether she was in a forest or a jungle. Huge oak trees were rooted deep in the Earth, alongside palms and peeling Eucalyptus trees. Paper-thin leaves clung to tree branches as often as pine needles spread out over clustered branches. The children seemed to use the words jungle and forest interchangeably, depending on their moods.