Forever Neverland(16)

He looked down at her more closely now, from where he stood beside the bed. She was still fully dressed in the clothes she’d worn to school that day, including her union   Jack sneakers and gray zip-up hoodie. Her thick brown hair spilled all around her like a warm russet waterfall. And her face was as pale as the moon.

“Wendy?” His voice choked this time as he called her name once more. Though he could see that she was still breathing, her breaths were so slow and shallow that Michael’s fingers trembled when he raised them to touch Wendy’s cheek.

Her skin was soft, but cold.

Michael leaned over her and grasped her shoulders, giving her a gentle shake. “Wendy, wake up!” He found himself pleading fervently. “Please, wake up!”



In Neverland, where there had been nothing but still and calm and quiet above the dark sea for so very many years, something was stirring. As if the sky was drawing the slightest breath and releasing it, a tiny ripple disturbed the surface of the black water. And then another.

The ripples grew in size and number until they smacked against the hull of the Jolly Roger in small, but audible waves. Then those waves grew as well.

On the deck, the rigging began to sway ever so slightly in its encasements, clanking at first softly and growing steadily in volume. The white sails that had been dropped long ago began to fill.

The Jolly Roger slowly tilted in the water, straightening itself as if awakening from a long nap. The rope holding the anchor, forgotten so far below, in the depths of Neverland’s haunted sea, pulled taut against the strain.

In the luxurious cabin below the aft deck, on a bed surrounded by windows that looked out to sea, Captain James Hook turned his head in his sleep. And in that sleep, he listened.

Wind whispered to him through the window latches. It grew to a low moan – a call from out there, on the sea. He turned again, frowning, the silver hook on the end of his right hand glinting in the moonlight. And when the wind finally became a howl and the latches on the windows broke open in a gust of roaring sea spray, scattering the ancient maps upon his desk. . . .

Captain James Hook opened his eyes.



“Peter!” John raced to the edge of the precipice, certain that he would find Peter plummeting to his death so far below, atop a motorcycle that could not fly.

However, what he saw instead was Peter, and his motorcycle, rising in a golden spray of pixie dust, streaking in a thunderous roar, across the chasm that separated the cliff from the houses below.

Stunned speechless, John could only reel back and watch as Peter rode the flying motorbike up and out of the gorge and then toward the house that John knew belonged to Wendy’s therapist, Dr. Alexander Coffer.

He had absolutely no idea what Peter was up to as the flying boy circled around the house again and again, revving the engine noisily. In fact, he had no idea what was going on right up until the very moment when Peter pulled something small and dark from an inside pocket of his leather jacket and tossed it with practiced precision down the chimney of Dr. Coffer’s living room.

“What was that, Tink?” John asked, absently.

“Oh, you’ll see,” came the pixie’s reply. She had once more regained her human form and stood beside John, her arms crossed over her chest, her hip out to one side. She was smiling, and it was not a very pleasant smile.

John didn’t like it.

“This doctor of hers wants Wendy to stop writing. And if she stops writing, John, she’ll forget about Neverland,” Tinkerbell said, softly, and then shot John a dirty look. “Like you did.” She turned back to the figure on the motorcycle in the distance. “Peter won’t let that happen.”

John digested her words, and their heaviness caused his stomach to sink.

She hadn’t exactly answered his question. But he got that answer, nevertheless, as Peter rocketed back across the chasm just in time to escape the gigantic explosion that erupted from Coffer’s fire place.

John cried out in surprise and reared back, his arms pin wheeling as he lost his balance and fell. On the ground, he feverishly scrambled backwards, scuttling on his hands and feet like a crab.

“What the bloody-”

His voice was drowned out in the roiling roar of rising fire and motorcycle engine. Peter flew the bike right over John’s head and looked down at the teenager as he passed. “Time to go, Johnny!”

Tinkerbell took the cue and rose gracefully from the ground, arcing through the air after Peter. John looked back at the Coffer house, now billowing smoke from every window. Disbelieving numbness was setting in too quickly. He couldn’t make himself stand up, much less think happy thoughts so that he could fly.