Hurry, Wendy! she told herself. Tell the bloody story before we’re all killed!
“But Peter Pan managed to escape one day,” she said. “Through the power of a promise, because everyone knows that promises are very powerful things!”
Hook slashed at the wing, slicing cleany through the hardened bone so that the entire tip end of it came away and crashed to the ground beside them. The impact shook their footing, as everything else did.
The Never Bird roared from beneath the stone and, in a display of volatile wrath, the top of the immense black skull-shaped rock beneath them erupted in a colossal spray of boulders, pebbles and sand, forcing everyone above to dive for cover.
Wendy hit the ground on her stomach and pressed her hands over her head to protect it. Then she felt Hook’s body shielding her own. Fear welled up inside of her, but not for herself. For him.
It was a new sensation for her and it was puzzling.
Concentrate! From beneath Hook’s strong form, Wendy continued her story. “And when he escaped,” she gasped out, inhaling sand when she took her next breath, “Peter Pan grew up. He discovered what life could be like as a man. And though some of the world made him sad, he realized that there was much in it to be admired. Friendship, wisdom, love –”
Hook grunted from some impact and was shoved roughly off of her and Wendy turned over and looked up.
There are a few moments in a person’s life that, no matter how much time has passed, will never, ever be forgotten. Likewise, there are some images that will forever remain imprinted on a person’s brain. Nothing will ever wipe them away or weather their clarity.
Some are good, like the elusive wave of a whale’s tail as it slaps the surface of the water in an unexpected glance across the Pacific ocean. And some are not so good.
This was one of the latter. For above Wendy, standing as tall as a mansion and as broad as one, too, was the petrified, yellowed skeleton of the mythical, magical Never Bird. Its bony, demonesque wings spanned the entire length of Skull Rock, its tail was winding and jagged like a dragon’s, and its beak was reminiscent of a pterodactyl’s, long and sharp and weathered by thousands of years of salt water and stone.
The hollow eye sockets of its skull seemed to pin Wendy to the spot, trapping her there on her back beneath it.
It was going to kill her.
She would die there on that rock in Neverland, never to return home, never to grow up, never to write a book and get published and marry a man with cornflower blue eyes and long black hair. Never….
It reared its immense head and then drove it downward, seemingly in slow motion.
“Noooo!”
“Wendy, get out of there!”
“Wendy!”
Everyone was screaming at her. Hook, Peter, both of her brothers – they all wanted her to move. But she was frozen in terror. She understood what it meant to be petrified in that moment. Well and truly petrified. She literally could not budge; her toes and fingers were numb, her limbs heavy as lead. She found herself wondering how much it would hurt to die by the Never Bird’s beak, even as her lips parted and her voice issued forth more words of a story she was no longer making up, but that was now telling itself.
“Neverland became frightened that it would forever lose its boy,” she whispered. “It formed a plan to kidnap the one thing that it knew could bring Peter back to it. The girl Peter trusted. The one he had brought into his world – Wendy Darling.”
Two streaks of black rushed past her on either side and Wendy closed her eyes to the sounds of men shouting and swords slashing and a demon-dead bird screaming in pain that it should not have been able to feel.
“The captain of the Jolly Roger was Neverland’s tool,” she continued, quickly, stubbornly. “He captured the Wendy Bird, the Story Teller, and brought her back to Neverland, and in recognition of its creator, Neverland’s sun rose on a new day – a day of hope. For, soon, Peter Pan would follow.”
“Wendy, get up!”
Wendy opened her eyes to see Peter leaning over her and grabbing her arm in a fierce, fast grip. He wrenched her to her feet and pulled her behind him as the Never Bird, half of its beak now missing, turned once more to gaze at her through dead, but angry eyes.
Wendy felt her own gaze narrow as a sudden streak of hard defiance burned through her veins, chasing away a bit of the fear that had been icing them over moments before. “But Neverland hadn’t expected the Story Teller to discover the truth about it. It hadn’t expected her to learn of her own power and what she could do with that power.”
The Never Bird roared in fury, belting out a sound so loud and horrible that everyone below it covered their ears. The reverberation of the terrible wail felt like needles in Wendy’s eardrums and, this time, she cried out against the pain.