Forever Neverland(65)
But she didn’t give up. She wouldn’t give up!
“One day, Wendy’s brother realized that his sister had the power to make things happen with her words!” She hissed through clenched teeth. Her stomach churned angrily as the roar became a high-pitched whine that seared her insides and made her want to vomit.
But she curled her hands into fists and went on, ignoring the pain. “Neverland was using Peter and all of the other inhabitants in its world as characters in its own story! Wendy knew it had to be stopped – and now she knew how to stop it!”
The Never Bird couldn’t let her go on. This was where Wendy had to be silenced and she knew it just as well as Neverland did. So, she braced herself as the massive, undead creature raised its giant stone-bone leg and brought it down toward Wendy.
She watched it descend, knowing that there was no way she could move out of its path in time to keep from being squashed like a bug.
Something hard slammed into Wendy from the side, lifting her off of her feet and carrying her swiftly out of the way as the Never Bird’s foot crashed into the rock where she’d been standing a heart beat before.
The stone splintered beneath its weight, creating yet another fissure in the already ruptured and ruined crown of Skull Rock.
Wendy turned in Peter’s arms and tried to catch her breath. She found herself looking up into emerald green eyes that were once more clear and clean and free of the sparking red hatred that had tainted them earlier.
Fresh pixie dust coated his body; Tinkerbell must have given him a new dose.
“Finish the story,” he told her, his expression earnest.
Wendy nodded. They keep saving me.
“Neverland was already angry, so the storm came easy,” Wendy continued, knowing now exactly what she had to say. “For Neverland was as any being – born of conception, fleshed out with thought and deed, filled up with family and friends, and given purpose in existence,” she said as Peter set her down and held her gaze. He smiled the smallest of smiles, nodding once in reassurance before he turned away to fight the beast once more.
Wendy watched as he and Hook stood side by side, a wall of man and muscle between herself and the soul of Neverland.
“It didn’t want to die,” she said. And, as she always did when she told a story, she empathized with her characters. She felt Neverland’s fear. It was desperate and all-encompassing. She closed her eyes and shook her head. “But it had to.”
She took a deep breath and began: “In the north part of the island, in the clearing where the Natives lived, the tribe’s camp fires flickered and went out as each member of the clan lifted its face and recalled where they had come from, in that other place, so very long ago. . . ..”
*****
Not far away, on the mainland of Neverland, Tiger Lily’s tribe sat with their families in their teepees, every father telling tales of spirits and of the sky and the earth and of fire. And, one by one, the family members blinked and looked up from their fires as images of different forests and different teepees flashed before their eyes.
The Native camp began to grow dim as its fires extinguished one after another.
Until it went dark, altogether.
*****
Wendy dropped and rolled as the Never Bird’s massive bony tail swished past her in an attempt to knock her out and stop her words. She rolled to a stop, got her hands beneath her, and looked up. “Beyond Crocodile Creek and the Magic Dust Falls, in the Pixie Forest, every fairy in Neverland but one paused in its flight and suddenly pondered. Where had they come from? How had they gotten there?”
*****
The fairy king bowed gracefully before his queen and offered her his hand. She smiled a demure smile, befitting of pixie royalty, and returned the gesture with a curtsy. She accepted his hand and the two floated on wings of glittering starlight to the center of the hollowed-out maple that had been transformed, long ago, into the dazzling, shimmering ballroom it was now. They were safe there, from the storm, as magic guarded their sanctuary from the nature beyond.
Fairy music was unrivaled in its beauty, and as it began to sound from the very air inside of the Great Maple, the birds perched in the tree’s branches, stopped what they were doing and turned to listen.
The king smiled and began the dance. The queen followed.
But then, as one, the pair slowed to a stop, coming to hover, motionless and unsure above the dancing platform.
The fairy queen blinked and frowned. Nothing looked familiar. This wasn’t right. It felt like a dream. She remembered now. This place, that they’d thought was their home was but a dream. . . .
*****
Wendy winced as John pulled the make-shift tourniquet tight around her left arm. The Never Bird’s talon had dug deep, slicing clean to the bone, but Hook’s long, sharp blade had taken the beast’s claw in one clean swipe before it could do any further damage. Wendy tried to concentrate through the pain, but it was so very difficult. The salt on the wind plastered her shirt to her cut and sizzled in the open wound. It burned like fire.