A Land of Never and Night
Peter Pan is just a story passed down from my batty ancestor Wendy about a boy who never wanted to grow up. And that’s all it is to me until I’m kidnapped by a man with a twinkle in his eye and a shadow that does his dirty work.
Peter Pan.
But he’s not a kid anymore. He says he wants to protect me from Captain Hook, that together we can save Neverland from endless night. All I have to do is tell him stories. Tale after tale. Night after night.
I do as he asks, and slowly, he becomes more than just a muddled myth from long ago. He’s a man, one who no longer accepts acorns when what he truly wants is a kiss.
I know it’s a delusion, one that might claim my life. Even so, I begin to put my faith in Peter and his Lost Boys.
But danger lurks around every corner of Neverland, and it’salwayscloser than you think.
A Land of Never and Night
Chapter
One
On these magic shores children at play are forever beaching their boats. We too have been there; though we shall land no more.
Every child in my family has heard the story. It’s been passed down for generations, and it will likely continue to be so. Pieces of it are missing, some lost to failed memory, and other bits sewn on, the story patched until it seems whole again.
I used to listen, rapt, as my mother recounted tales of a magical island and Lost Boys, mermaids and pirates. My eyes would grow wide with each new twist, each new revelation of what happened so long ago when my ancestor Wendy Darling flew away toward the second star on the right, then straight on till morning.
Some great-uncles and mischievous aunts would claim that they, too, were once spirited away by the boy with twinkling eyes and unending youth. But my mother said only Wendy, only thematriarch of our family, her bones long since dust, ever truly flew to Neverland.
So I’d snuggle down in my bed, pull the blankets up to my chin, and listen to the stories of what happens to boys who never grow up. How daring and brave they become. Their deeds writ large in my young mind.
I longed to be carried away, to see the shimmering lagoon and the sails of the Jolly Roger on the horizon. Would I sleep comfortably in the big bed with all the other Lost Boys, or would I have to stay in the little house they built from trees and cloudberry branches? Would I, too, get a sword and be called upon to do battle with the fearsome pirates who haunt the island’s waters? I would shiver at the thought, then promise my mother I’d be brave. I’d fight the pirates and frolic with the mermaids. The fairies and I would be fast friends, and all of Neverland would be laid out before me, a treasure map with more “x marks the spot”s than I could count.
A dream. All of it.
And like all the dreams of children, they faded. Until I was too old for Neverland. Until I realized my mother’s stories were just that. Stories. Creative little fables told to a child who was afraid of the dark. I was grateful for them, but I no longer needed them.
I packed them away, folding them up like my clothes and pushing them to the back of a drawer. I’d give them to Goodwill or let my cousins have them as hand-me-downs. The worn threads of grand tales might still fit children. But not me.
Not anymore.
I had grown up, done the one thing the charming boy in the story forbade. My time in that fantasy world was over, not that I’d everset foot there. Only in my mind, in the imagination of a Darling child left to run wild. But I would never swim in the mermaid’s grotto or hear the buzz of fairy wings.
It was too late.
I was too old.
For me, there was no Neverland …
Chapter
Two
She dreamt that the Neverland had come too near and that a strange boy had broken through from it.
Ifling the last composition notebook into the pile beside my desk and lean back, my spine aching from hunching over and reading what passes for freshman creative writing.
Such is the life of a teaching assistant. Rubbing my eyes, I check my phone for the time and sigh. I’ve missed the free food on the quad, an early-semester welcome from the Greek organizations looking to score points with the administration.
“Crap.” I stand and stretch, then consider entering grades now. But my stomach rumbles, and I figure that task can wait for the morning. I don’t have class until 9, so I can do it before then. Besides, I have to finish my own creative writing for my grad course, and I’ve barely even started the assignment.
