Preface
Time passed slowly in the hangman’s tree.
Peter Pan had taken one of the many broken clocks that had littered the Jolly Roger and had set Tinker Bell with the painstaking task of mending the blasted device. Though, shortly after the infernal ticking began to drone on inside the hollowed-out tree, Pan could see why the pirate had hated the sound with the burning passion he did. Countless times he considered stabbing the thing with his dagger and putting himself out of his misery but he knew, deep down, that every passing sound brought him closer to Wendy and his Lost Boys.
Returning to London hadn’t been a game he wanted to play. He had wanted to stay on the island and celebrate their victory; celebrate driving the pirates out of Neverland for good and for besting the dreaded Captain Hook. Wendy had wanted to go back, though he couldn’t figure out what for. He suspected it had something to do with her brothers, John and Michael. They had been the ones who had sobbed about missing their mother.
When the Lost Boys had pipped up, stating that they were also missing their mother, Peter knew it was a game. None of the Lost Boys even knew of their mothers – besides, Wendy was their mother. That had been why he had brought her to Neverland, after all.
Pan had decided that a week’s banishment would suffice, after all it had worked for Tinker Bell when she had tried to have Wendy killed. But he hadn’t realized how long a week was, especially without the Lost Boys milling about and keeping him company. The pixie wasn’t enough company, especially given the moods she continually fell in to. One minute, Tink was being the pixie that he trusted and enjoyed spending time with, and the next she was overrun with jealousy, upset with him when he brought up bringing Wendy and the Lost Boys back home.
Had she not been able to fix one of Hook’s clocks, he probably would have banished her for a week too.
He twirled his dagger between his fingers in an attempt to distract himself from the incessant ticking that echoed throughout the hollowed tree. With a huff, he pushed himself out of his high-backed chair and paced the length of the area, stopping only to turn on his heel and fling the dagger at the bearskin that had been draped over the back of the chair like a tapestry. The weight of the dagger pulled the head of the bear until it drooped forward and threatened to take the whole skin down with it.
“Tinker Bell,” he hollered at the top of his voice, the empty space in the tree allowing for his voice to carry more than it would before. “Oh, Tinker Bell!”
Pan counted the ticks of the clock in his head until he got to ten and huffed when the blasted pixie still didn’t show. He needed the pixie on this trip. He needed the pixie dust to bring his Wendy and the Lost Boys home. Crossing his arms over his chest and tapping his foot impatiently on the floor, Pan thought of another way to be able to get the dust to London and nearly snapped his fingers when the thought dawned on him; Tootles and his marbles. The clumsy oaf could never keep the bag on his person and Pan was willing to wager anything that the Lost Boy had misplaced the pouch somewhere in the hangman’s tree.
The nook the Boys slept in wasn’t the same wreck that Pan had been used to. Since Wendy had been in the tree, she had cleaned up – as any mother would – to ensure that their living space was truly livable. This made Pan’s search for the velvet pouch that much easier; Wendy had graciously placed it beneath Tootles’ pillow and Pan let out a joyous cry.
Opening the bag, Pan grinned wildly at the dust that littered the small marbles the clumsy Lost Boy chose to keep before closing his fist tightly around the soft material. He was off his feet and in the air in seconds, soaring out of the hollow trunk and bursting through the clouds, his thoughts solely focused on getting his Wendy back.
He blinked and the once bright sky over Neverland, dotted lovingly with fluffy white clouds, was replaced by the dark, midnight sky over London. Pan could smell the rain in the air, feel the dampness that clung to his skin as he descended, doing his best to avoid the dark and heavy clouds that hung close to the tops of the buildings. Veering to the side, Pan circled Big Ben, remembering when he had taken Wendy and her brothers with him and played along the long hands of the biggest clock in both this world and the next.
The path to Wendy’s nursery window had been committed to memory long ago to the point that it was practically engrained along his brain. He would be able to make his way to Wendy’s nursery even without Tink’s constant light. He flew amongst the houses quickly, dipping and dodging the buildings when they came too close, and doing his best to remain in the shadows.
Within minutes, Pan gingerly lowered himself to the roof next to the nursery window, trying his best to ignore the erratic beating of his heart within the confides of his chest. He could feel the slightest tremor in his hands and tried to shake the feeling free, growing increasingly more uncomfortable with the foreign emotions that plagued his mind and manipulated his body on their own accord. At least if Tink had accompanied him, he would have had someone to divert his attention to.
He made a mental note to admonish the pixie when he returned; she should have known that, in spite of her banishment, he had needed her in that moment.
It took a few moments of increscent shaking to truly rid his fingers from the tremor that had otherwise captivated them and he moved to open the large window to the nursery, knowing that Wendy always instructed her mother to leave it unlatched in anticipation of his visits. The window didn’t budge at first and fear creeped up the back of his neck, threatening to choke him – what if this was a part of the game? What if they were purposefully locking him out? - before giving way with the second, much more forceful shove and a groan that threatened to wake Wendy, John, Michael, and the Lost Boys.
The nursery was without the usual soft, gentle glow of the nightlight that Wendy’s mother kept plugged in near the door and the lack of his shadow slightly unnerved him. It cast the room in a darkness that left him on edge, imaging that every wayward sound could be a pirate lurking here and there, waiting to get the jump on him.
Pan allowed just his toes to brush against the ground as he moved further into the nursery, waiting, desperately, for his eyes to adjust to the lack of light. He had been hearing the infernal ticking of the blasted clock for long enough that it seemed to continue to tick away in the deep recesses of his brain. Pan counted thirty antagonizing long ticks before the darkness gave up its secrets and the fear that had moved him about like a puppet cut the ties.
“Wendy,” he called, his voice just barely above a whisper, as he moved about the nursery with much more surety. He knew the outline of her bed; it had four tall posts that connected at the top and an almost sheer fabric that draped down, shielding her bed away from prying eyes.
His fingers had curled around the thin fabric when he heard a voice at his back, jumping into the air and trying to swallow down the fear that had returned. A light flicked on near the rocking chair that he had often witnessed Wendy sit in when she was recounting his tales, and that of Cinderella, to her brothers. Pan dropped his hand to his hip where he always kept his trusty dagger and winced outwardly when his fingers brushed against the fabric of his tights; the dagger was still embedded in the nose of the blasted bearskin he kept poised atop his chair in the hangman’s tree.
“I’ve always wondered if you would come back,” the voice said again.
Peter Pan stood a little taller and placed his hands on his hips, rising about a foot in the air when he turned to look towards the chair. “Who are you? Where is Wendy?” he asked in his stable voice, his eyes falling to the white-haired older woman who barely filled the rocking chair in its entirety.
A smile cracked open her wrinkled face and Pan couldn’t help but scrunch his face in disgust. “Peter, it’s me. I’m Wendy,” she breathed in the same whisper-like tone.
Confusion brought Pan’s eyebrows together low over his eyes. “You’re lying. This is all a part of their game,” he finally said after a few moments worth of silence. “Where is Wendy? Where are the Lost Boys and Michael and John?”
“I had to grow up, Peter. We all did, John and Michael, the Lost Boys included,” she explained. “Tootles went to school and is currently a circuit judge. Nibs got a job at the bank with my father before going to work for an accounting firm. He works in an office now. Slightly met a lovely lady after completing school who turned out to be from a noble house and now he’s a Lord. Curly works in an office as well, though his office deals with insurance fraud. The twins had tried working with Curly, but decided that they wanted to get more into the private investigation component of insurance fraud. And Michael works at the bank, he took over my father’s position.”
Peter felt as if the room was spinning and he was the only thing standing still. He felt a wave of nausea wash over him and he stumbled slightly before he was able to keep his balance with the help of a nearby wall.
The woman who claimed to be Wendy looked longingly towards one of the two beds he had known her brothers to occupy. “John always loved pirates. That was his favourite part of Neverland.” She paused for a moment, raising her hand to rest against her chest. “When we came back, he wanted to keep fighting. He enlisted into the army once he came of age and took the first opportunity offered to him to deploy. We were notified of his passing two years later.”
Something he had only felt once before, when Wendy and the Lost Boys had decided to leave, rattled around in his chest and he found himself grabbing fistfuls of his shirt to try to relieve himself of some of the pain. When it didn’t help in the slightest, Pan slid down the length of the wall, letting his knees dig into his chest as he crumpled.
“You’re lying,” he stated weakly, unable to say think of anything else to say. “You’re lying.”
He heard the wooden rocking chair creak and groan, though he couldn’t bring himself to look up to see what had happened. It was only when he felt her bony, wrinkled hand rest on his knee that he was able to determine where the sound came from, and even still he was too busy battling the rivalling thoughts in his head to focus on much else.
“I thought you would have come back to the nursery sooner.”
“It’s only been a week,” Peter said incredulously, his head buried deep in his hands.
The hand on his knee started moving back and forth, soothingly. “What are you talking about, Peter? We’ve been back for decades.”
“This was a stupid game,” he said dejectedly, his voice fading in volume until it was nothing more than a whisper. “I shouldn’t have let you play.”
He could hear and feel Wendy move until she had her back pressed against the wall beside him and the hand that had once rested on his knee, moving back and forth in a soothing rhythm he assumed mothers would use on their children, stopped to allow her to pull him against her side. Pan had expected the familiar scent of the only girl he had ever brought back to Neverland; a mix of fruits and florals that he had never otherwise experienced before. Instead, she smelt foreign – old. The odd scent tickled his nose and nearly sent him into a coughing fit.
Wendy began cooing words that Pan couldn’t make sense of, at least not now. He found his face scrunching up in confusion as she spoke about responsibilities and needing to ensure that her brothers were taken care of. At that, Pan scoffed. She could have stayed in the hangman’s tree with me and the Lost Boys and sent her brothers back with Tink if they were missing their mother so bad.
Pan shifted away from Wendy then, not liking the way her scent brought a scratchy feeling to the back of his throat, becoming quite cross at the way disregarded his needs and the needs of the Lost Boys.
A new foreign feeling rose in Peter Pan then. It started in the pit of his belly and, for a split second, he thought it might have been fear – it was something he had experience with, though he often would laugh instead, in hopes of diminishing the creeping feeling. After a few seconds, heat rose in his chest and nearly catapulted Pan off the floor when it felt as if there was fire in his veins, the smoke threatening to consume him.
“You’re wrong!” The words left his mouth like bile; rapidly and without warning. But instead of feeling weird that he had just shouted at Wendy, the feeling beneath his skin seemed to settle and simmer to a consistent boil. “You belonged in Neverland with me!”
“Peter, I couldn’t--”
Pan whirled on her, throwing his body into the air and hovering just in front of her face, the heat creeping up the back of his neck and no doubt turning his face red. “I banished you because you were playing a stupid game that I didn’t want to play, now I realize I should have banished you for being selfish and only thinking about yourself!” he heaved at her. “You didn’t think about me when you left, you only thought about your stupid brothers and your mother!”
“I couldn’t stay in Neverland with you, Peter. I wanted to grow up.”
The words had the same effect as if the mermaids in the lagoon had suddenly dumped the frigid waters on him and, without even knowing it, he found his feet firmly on the ground. He could hear the sizzling embers, having been drowned, and taste the bitterness of the smoke on his tongue as he found himself momentarily missing the feeling of his blood boiling in his veins. Peter Pan found himself staring at a much older version of the girl he had gleefully soared through the skies with and nearly stumbled backwards when she, slowly, pushed herself to her feet and towered over him.
“I wanted a family of my own. Peter, I’ve been married now, for a long time. I’m old. I’ve had children who have grown up and had children of their own.” She gestured with an outstretched hand to the bed Pan had once watched her sleep in. “That’s my granddaughter, Margaret, sleeping in the bed.”
He didn’t know the meaning of the words she said: married, granddaughter. The confusion must have shown across his face because Wendy took a step to the side and pulled back the sheer fabric that hid her bed from him earlier, revealing a lump beneath the blankets. Pan allowed his gaze to trail the length of the bed until it came upon dark hair sprawled out against the stark white pillowcase.
Peter Pan felt as if the ground beneath his feet was giving out, a feeling that even flight wouldn’t subdue. A pain unlike anything he had ever felt before blossomed outward from his chest and he found himself frantically pulling at his clothes to see if a sword had been embedded anywhere to cause such a pain. When his search became fruitless, he glanced up at the woman claiming to be his Wendy and furiously wiped at his eyes, wondering why water gathered there and silently willing the weird sensation to go away.
“Why are you crying?” he heard her ask softly, though he backed up even further when she tried to close the distance between the two, her hand outstretched towards his face. “Peter, you must have known that I had to grow up.”
He had had enough of the strange feelings that manipulated his body. Pan found himself shaking his head at Wendy, though he hadn’t a clue why. This wasn’t the girl he had remembered, with pretty yellow hair that she would keep gathered together with a blue ribbon, or the blue eyes that rivaled the waters surrounding the island. She didn’t smile at him the same way his Wendy used to in a way that made butterflies erupt in the pit of his belly – though he would deny the feeling with the same fervor as if he were battling Captain Hook. The woman that stood before him was frail and weak, something that his Wendy was not. Her hair was white and wispy, cut at a length that stopped just below her ears, and while her eyes were blue, they didn’t shine when he looked into them. Pan didn’t feel at ease in her presence, something he had longed for during the week’s long banishment, and that seemed to sting more than even the sharpest blade pressing into his flesh.
Floating towards the window, Pan ducked out of the nursery and ignored the old woman calling his name from the open window. He continued upwards until he nearly smacked face-first into the illuminated clock face of Big Ben and, with a heavy sign, found himself dropping onto one of the cold metal hands and glancing out at the city as it slept.
Tink would know what to do if she was here, he found himself thinking dejectedly, shifting his position to sit atop the hand with his legs crossed in front of him.
Pan knew that the pixie hated Wendy with every fiber of her being, and that she had been more than happy when Wendy had wanted to return to London. He had never seen the small being move as fast as she had to ensure that the Jolly Roger was coated with enough pixie dust to make the voyage. She had been the one to tell him that Wendy’s desire to stay in London with her brothers and the Lost Boys was a game, and she was also the one to return to Neverland with him, praising him for his choice to banish Wendy for choosing to play such a stupid game.
The hand beneath him dropped down, though Pan remained floating in place. While gears turned in the mechanism of the great clock behind him, so too did they in his head, putting things in place for the first time in a week.
That jealous pixie, he mused, the feeling of fire burning beneath his veins returning and lifting him further into the air. She lied to me to get rid of Wendy!
He felt as if the smoke that pooled in his belly was coming out of his nose with the way that the fog over the city of London seemed to choose that exact moment to thicken and blanket the streets below from view. Under any other circumstance he might have even laughed at the fact that he had seemingly turned into a dragon at a moment’s notice. Instead, he felt annoyed and dropped low to fly beneath the fog, his course charted back to the nursery to have another word with the woman who claimed to be his Wendy.
Pan had to keep close to the houses as the fog continued to drop lower and lower, seemingly with each passing second, and stopped outside of an open window a few streets away from the nursery window when a strange sound caught his attention. He lowered himself to the roof and crawled on all fours towards the open window, where soft light tried to escape. He had wanted to simply peak in from his spot atop the roof so he could continue on his way to the nursery but he couldn’t see much of the room and he quickly found himself floating down until he was crouched on the windowsill. The breathy and deep sounds continued to waft out into the night’s air, and Pan found himself leaning forward to brush aside the curtains that curtailed his view.
In the dim light of the room, Pan’s attention was first drawn to the small heaps of fabric that seemed to be tossed around the room with no regard for where they had fallen. His eyes followed the items like a trail of breadcrumbs before falling on the large, four-post bed in the center of the room that seemed to rock to-and-fro as if it were being moved by the gentle lapping of waves. Something was moving beneath the covers and regardless of how he shifted on the windowsill, he was unable to make out just what was happening.
He nearly took a tumble out the window when, suddenly, the covers were drawn back to reveal scantily clothed bodies pressed against each other. Pan found himself creeping forward slightly and was able to make out that the body beneath the large, brutish looking male was a petite female, clad in something strange and wiry that crossed over her chest and left twin mounds exposed to the night’s air. Her eyes, he could see, were closed tight and her mouth had dropped open to release the breathy sounds that had previously caught his attention. Pan tried to move to get a better look at the expression etched across the man’s face but thought better of it when they shifted, and he shrunk back towards the window to remain the ever-nosey fly on the wall.
The man leaned down to give the woman a thimble and Pan felt heat rise to his cheeks when he remembered that Wendy had tried to give him one before. But, perhaps, he had been mistaken. As he watched the man shift to lie back on the bed, the juvenile thought crossed his mind that maybe the whole act he had been witnessing was a thimble – it would explain Tink’s sudden jealousy.
Pan cocked his head to the side as he watched the woman get up on her knees and hover over the man’s body before sinking down onto something that stood erect near the man’s pelvis. Absentmindedly, he dropped his hand to his own groin and felt himself through his pants; what he had only ever used before to urinate was standing to attention the same way the man’s was in front of him. The feeling of his hand atop of his groin sent a strange, pleasurable sensation through his body, and a part of him could understand why the man groaned when the woman sat on him like that.
In spite of how much he liked the sensation of his hand on his groin, Pan let it fall away to watch the scene unfold before him; the woman moved up and down clumsily on the man before collapsing on his chest. The man had his hands wrapped around her body, his fingers digging into the flesh of her bottom and making her cry out before he shifted his hips and lifted her up. From this angle, Peter Pan could see where the man’s groin connected to the woman’s and the unknown feeling, the one mixed with that odd pleasurable sensation, grew again, even without his hand on his own groin.
His eyes moved on from the two barely-clad individuals still tumbling together in the sheets and fell upon a small bed off to the corner. Pan scrunched his nose at the memory that tried to flash in his mind, one that he had done his very best to bury deep in the darkest recesses of his mind, as he glanced at the bassinet with its ruffles and frills.
Could this have been what Wendy had wanted? he thought. When she had tried to give me a thimble, maybe this had been what she had been trying to ask for.
The woman cried out to someone named ‘God’ and Pan allowed himself to fall back, out of the window frame, to be swallowed by the thick fog that nearly kissed the street below. Pieces were beginning to come together in his head: Wendy had wanted to give him a thimble but Tink had stepped in, pulling her away by her hair, before he had been able to understand what she had actually wanted.
High above the houses, Pan ploughed through the fog as he tried to mull everything over. What the man and woman had been doing in the bed seemed simple enough, but Wendy was old, and the prospect of being that close to her, unclothed, brought a chill up the length of his spine for reasons he couldn’t quite understand. When he lowered himself to the nursery window and noticed that Wendy had left a thought he had tried not to give any consideration bounced to the forefront of his mind: the Wendy he had known and had come to retrieve was gone. His Wendy wasn’t his anymore.
Instead of letting the thought threaten to drop him like a ton of bricks onto the walkway below, Pan pushed open the window and lowered himself inside. As his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting within, he noticed that Wendy had left the sheer curtains from her four-post bed drawn back, leaving the slumbering figure beneath the covers a silhouette in the dark.
I might be too late to have Wendy, he thought as he stepped further into the room and returned his hand to his groin to find that it was still hard. But I’m not too late to have her granddaughter.
Pan, recalling what he had witnessed through the window, moved towards the bed, disrobing as he went. While the woman had had a strange string of fabric around her chest and torso, the man had been completely bare, even down to his socks. He stumbled as he tried to pull off his slipper, his balance askew, and bumped into the nearby night table, disbarring the contents and allowing them to scatter to the floor at his feet. Ignoring the noise, and hoping that it hadn’t disrupted anyone else in the house, he reached behind him to pull his shirt over his head and discarded the fabric in a heap on the floor, atop the contents of the night table.
He had just pulled back the cover, ready to slide into the bed alongside – what had Wendy said her name was again? Maura? - Wendy’s granddaughter when Wendy’s voice called out, sharp and stern, “Peter! What on Earth are you doing?”
“Last week, you’d wanted to give me a thimble and I’d been stupid to let Tink stop you,” he paused to let his eyes meet hers in the darkness, ignoring the concern that shone in her pale blue eyes. “You’re too old for a thimble now so I thought I’d give one to your granddaughter.”
Wendy moved across the nursery with a speed that Pan had not expected and, before he could even blink, she had grasped his arm in a grip that didn’t match her age. Up close, the concern that he had seen but ignored earlier was much wilder, almost like Hook’s every time he heard a clock tick and thought that the crocodile had found him again. Pan felt his eyebrows furrow together, confusion written all over his face as he stared up at the woman that was trying to pry him out of the bed as if her life depended on it.
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you remember? Tink had grabbed you by your hair and had dragged you away when you had tried to give me a thimble.”
The wildness in Wendy’s eyes seemed to subside slightly, only to be replaced by something Pan was not familiar with. “Oh, Peter,” she said softly, the grip on his arm subsiding to something less strained. “This,” she gestured to his unclothed body, “is not a thimble.”
Pan glanced down at himself, the pleasurable feeling that had once coursed through his body with such vigor that he found himself anticipating its return with a wonton lust that he had never otherwise felt before, and felt the confusion on his face deepen. He didn’t understand.
“This is inappropriate, Peter. Margaret is only a child.”
Another word that he didn’t understand: inappropriate. Pan thought back to the way the man and woman had embraced each other, the sounds that had escaped their mouths and filled the silent, stale air. Should they have been clothed instead? Is that what made it inappropriate? Was Wendy jealous that he was choosing to give her granddaughter the thimble that she had wanted to give to him a week ago? Could that have been the issue, that it was inappropriate to try and give her granddaughter a thimble when she had been the one to want to do so?
The confusion was eating at him, so he asked the first question that came to mind, “Would you rather I give you a thimble, Wendy? Would that make it better?”
Wendy’s aging face cracked with a smile, one so deep and genuine that Pan almost couldn’t help the smile that broke across his face. She gave a small tug of his arm as she stood to her full height, finally dislodging him from the bed she used to occupy a week ago. Pan had expected her to answer his question but, instead, she gathered his fallen garments off the floor and helped him dress; first pulling his tunic over his head and pausing a moment to allow him to slot his arms through the holes before turning her attention to his trousers and holding them out for him. The fabric felt heavy on his skin, but he did as was requested, before fastening the string around his groin, ignoring the way the fabric forced him back down.
“Peter,” Wendy sighed. She opened her mouth and closed it the next second, a solemn look crossing her face. “Why did you think that was a thimble?”
Pan frowned. “I saw a man and a woman on my way here.”
Her face puckered into an expression that Pan had never seen cross someone’s features before. He wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing, but, by the way she cast her eyes downwards, he could only assume it was the latter. “A thimble is this,” she stated softly, before moving closer and placing her lips against his cheek. “What you were going to do, Peter, is something that a man and woman do when they love each other. It is not something a child does.”
Child. The word fell from her lips like a curse and it ripped through Peter Pan in a way that no steel blade ever had before. Not even the captain’s hook had ever pierced so fiercely. It tore at his insides before lodging itself inside of his heart to the point where every single beat caused a wave of pain to radiate throughout his body. Then it got ten-times worse when he glanced up and saw the look etched across Wendy’s face. It was something he couldn’t place, though he felt as if someone had reached inside his chest, grabbed a hold of his heart, and squeezed as hard as they could.
When he said ’oh’, it was as if the word had been perched on his lips only to be forced out when his lungs were constricted; airy and light and defeated.
Pan moved to push off the ground and found himself stuck. Happy thoughts, he tried to remind himself, in hopes of being able to take off and leave the nursery in his wake, but with Wendy seemingly looming over him, he found it increasingly difficult to think of anything happy. Beating Hook and banishing him from Neverland. Spending the day with Tink in the hangman’s tree. Raising havoc with the Lost Boys.
He could feel his feet leave the ground, though it was only barely. But, to Pan, it was enough to get him out of the nursery and away from the scornful look that refused to leave Wendy’s face. In a split second, Pan muttered a quick ‘goodbye’ and floated towards the window, ignoring everything that came out of Wendy’s mouth in his wake. Slippers in hand, he shifted to his right, though he tried to make it appear as if he was heading towards the second star to the right, and settled on the roof out of sight of Wendy should she try and glance out the nursery’s window.
For the first time since the fog had settled low over London, Pan found himself thankful for just how dense it was.
Pulling his legs towards his chest, Pan rested his head on his knees and wiped at the water that leaked out of his eyes steadily. He recalled Wendy referred to it as crying once, she had said so when he’d lost his shadow a few weeks ago and had felt hopeless that he would ever find it again. But this feeling was different. When he had been without his shadow, he still felt like Peter Pan. Without Wendy – knowing that she thought so little of him, a child – he felt...empty.
What I wouldn’t give for that clock, he thought after rubbing his leaking nose on the knee of his trousers. I wouldn’t have to hear her say child anymore like it was the most disgusting thing on the planet.
Pan had been so plagued by his thoughts and replaying Wendy’s words over and over again in his head that he had lost all track of time. He blinked warily as the early morning sun began to peak through the fog that had dissipated into a thin sheen over the city and had to hold his hand up to shield his eyes when they began to sting. Amidst the wayward feelings that came and went as quickly as the tide could shift moments before a storm blew in, a pang of panic plucked at the cords of his heart and he cursed out loud.
He couldn’t fly in daylight.
Fatigue began to set in and, in a rather frantic state, Pan glanced around the roof of Wendy’s home and almost crowed when he saw that there was a portion still shrouded from the sun’s awakening rays. Pan quickly rose to his feet and scampered to the back half of the house, careful to ensure he kept his footing. Without even looking he could feel the moment when he stepped over the line, crossing into the half of the house that was still captivated in a fading darkness; the magic thrummed in his veins again he could feel the power that he had become accustomed to return, even just if in the slightest bit.
He glanced around, ensuring that the neighbouring houses still seemed to be fast asleep, before lifting himself into the air and lowering himself into the back yard. No sooner had his feet touched the ground before a thought crossed his mind and he was reminded of the blasted animal that had previously stolen his shadow: the dog. He felt around on his hip for his dagger, prepared to defend himself against the beast, and cursed again when his fingers only brushed against the fabric of his trousers. I left the blasted dagger in the bear’s nose, he remembered with a shake of his head.
The sun continued its rise over the horizon and he found himself scrambling to take in his surroundings. There were overgrown bushes and a tree that looked as if it were at the brink of succumbing to its own weight, but no dog. His eyes finally fell over a worn down, abandoned, dog house near a metal peg in the ground overrun with weeds.
At least I don’t have to worry about that mangey mutt.
Pan crossed the length of the yard in a few purposeful strides before coming upon a series of wooden planks separating Wendy’s yard from the house next door. Had the sun not been rising so rapidly, he might have stopped to examine the planks, but he was running out of time. He was too exposed.
With his power dwindling with every passing second and the feeling of the magic in his veins disappearing just as quickly, Pan just managed to float himself up and over the top of the wooden plank before he felt the sun’s warm rays graze the exposed skin of his forearms. He just managed to hold in the shriek that threatened to escape his mouth, and that was due to the momentary refugee that the wooden planks provided as he settled into the grass, cradling his arm to his chest.
He hated that he hadn’t sought out Tinker Bell before making the trip to London. She would have made sure he hadn’t lost track of time. She would have ensured that, after discovering Wendy had grown up, he made it back to Neverland. Tink would never have allowed him to sit and mope about.
Glancing to his right in the new yard, Pan noticed some clothing hanging on a nearby line and all but sprinted towards them. He would have to play dress up so as to not draw the attention of any unwanted grown up his way while he waited for the sun to dip back below the horizon and allow the moon to resurface. Pan sifted through the women’s clothing, scrunching his nose as he noticed some small lacy items, before grabbing a pair of pants and a large shirt with a hood large enough to conceal his ears from onlookers and shield his skin away from the sun’s harmful rays. The pants were much too large for his frame and he found himself knotting the strings several times before they stopped threatening to fall from his hips.
Pan passed in front of the glass door at the rear of the house, glancing at the way his whole body seemed to be swallowed whole by the two garments, before he hoisted himself up and over the wooden planks. His slippers met a new material and he glanced about, content that he did not have another wall of wooden planks to scale.
He had flown over enough streets to recognize their purpose and ensured he stayed to the sidewalks as he stuffed his hands in his pockets and readjusted the hood so it hung low over his eyes as he scanned the street before him. Pan couldn’t find refuge in a house, he knew that much. Many of the buildings he passed showed headless and even armless people, clad in the strangest of clothing, while others showed endless amounts of treasure. Even as the morning stretched on, he noticed that there were too many people that seemed intrigued by these places.
His feet had begun to hurt by the time he stumbled upon his intended hiding place: Traveller’s Tavern. The windows were covered by glass the colour of emeralds that he couldn’t see through and there seemed to be very little foot traffic amongst the few stragglers that dared to be out this early in the morning.
The heavy wooden door threatened to best him in a contest of strength and he grunted, in spite of himself, when he finally managed to gain enough momentum to cause the blasted thing to swing open enough to squeeze his frame inside. Once inside, it was almost as if he had stepped back in time. The large room was dimly lit, presenting the idea that Pan had stepped back in time to before the sun had begun to awaken, and, upon completing an initial sweep, he noticed that there were only a handful of individuals sat at tables scattered throughout the room. He made move to step to his left, to find an unoccupied table and put his head down to try and conserve some energy, when a large male behind a tall counter, wiping a glass with a rag, caught his attention. Pan had to glance down at the man’s right hand to confirm that the individual didn’t have a metal hook instead to quell the seedling of panic that had threatened to take hold.
Pan tried to keep his eyes off of the Hook look-alike so as to not draw attention to himself and slunk around the corner to slip into a chair, keeping his back to the man in question. Almost simultaneously, a voice broke the silence, “Yer e a little young to be in here, aren’t ya boy?”
Hook’s menacing glare flashed in his mind before he glanced up to see a slim man two table over swirling an amber coloured liquid around in a short glass. The man’s features caught him off guard; he looked to be only a few years older than Pan, with bright blue eyes and short yellow hair. He wore a simple shirt with something on it that Pan have never seen before and there were a series of cords dangling from his neck, each with a piece of treasure at the lowest point.
Pan cleared his throat before throwing his voice, a game he had perfected in order to taunt Hook and his idiot of a first mate, Mister Smee. “What do you mean?”
Instead of responding, the man’s lips turned upwards in a smirk and he shook his head mere moments before tossing the glass back and downing the contents with a hiss. “I won’t rat ya out, so long as ya aren’t tryin’ to do anythin’ ya shouldn’t,” he said with a shrug. “It’s none of my business why yer here.”
He could feel his face contort in confusion as even more words were thrown at him that he was otherwise unaware of and the man two tables over chuckled. “This place is for grown-ups,” Pan finally stated, his mind slowly having put together the pieces that otherwise didn’t appear to want to fit in.
“Yeah. This ain’t Gambado, boy. This is a bar.”
This place smells like Hook and his pirates, he thought, ignoring the unknown words that had been thrown at him, again, and wrinkling his nose as the strange scent seemed to waft off the unknown stranger in waves as he spoke. Pan found himself glancing down at the empty glass on the table in front of the unnamed stranger and he wondered if this was the same thing that Hook and his crew kept down in the gally of the Jolly Roger.
Pan placed his forearms flat against the table in front of him and rested his chin atop the backs of his hands. He was exhausted, both physically and mentally. The unnamed male and his unknown terms only made it worse.
“What’s on yer mind?” the man finally asked, grabbing his empty glass and the jacket Pan hadn’t noticed slung over the back of the chair and sliding into the seat across from him with a groan. “Ya look like yer hidin’ somethin’.”
He wished he could banish the man that tapped his fingers against the side of his empty glass almost rhythmically the same way he had banished the pirates from Neverland and Tinker Bell from the hangman’s tree. Pan glanced up at the man from beneath his hood in time to see him divert his attention somewhere behind him, lifting the glass and motioning with a nod of his head, and found himself sighing. What was he supposed to say? That he was stuck in a foreign land, unable to fly, because the sun had drained him of all his strength and power and the one person he felt he could otherwise be safe with had grown old.
Pan may not have known much, but he knew enough not to trust a grown up. They couldn’t believe in anything they couldn’t see with their own eyes, and, even still, they often still questioned it.
Incoming footsteps drew his attention upwards just in time to catch the wicked grin that spread across the unknown man’s face. Part of him was tempted to lift his chin from the back of his hands in order to figure out what had warranted such a slimy smile but he wasn’t left in the dark very long. A slender arm reached into his peripheral vision and placed another small glass of amber coloured liquid on the table in front of him.
“Yer such a sweetheart,” the unknown male drawled as he reached for both the glass and her arm at the same time. “Why don’t I take care of ya later; return the favour?”
The unknown male brought her arm towards his mouth and placed his lips along the back of her hand, disregarding the amber coloured liquid and, instead, placing his other hand on her waist as he gave a small tug. Pan watched as the woman lost her footing and stumbled forward, nearly winding up face first in his lap. It seemed as if she was able to steady herself at the last second with the hand that wasn’t otherwise held captive in his grasp, though it didn’t seem to matter; the unknown male had her legs on either side of his thigh and she was close enough for him to wrap his arm around her whole body.
Pan could see the way she arched her back to try and keep some sort of distance between the two of them but the unknown male didn’t seem to pick up on any of it – or, Pan supposed, he did and he was actively choosing to ignore it. The man reached up and took ahold of the woman’s chin, forcing her face in his direction mere moments before he molded his mouth over hers.
“Enough Mark!” a deep, booming voice called throughout the otherwise silent space. “Let her go or I’ll call the cops on your ass again!”
He let her go with a rumbling chuckle that shook his whole body. “Ye know where to find me, sweetheart,” Pan heard him breathe a little too loudly in the woman’s ear as he brought his open palm down on her butt, the resounding sound disrupting the silence again. The woman quickly left the pair to their own devices, though Pan noticed how Mark’s eyes followed her until, supposedly, she was no longer in his line of sight. “That one wants me bad.”
His face must have given away the confusion that swirled around in his brain after having watched the interaction because Mark began to explain that the woman that had just been there was what some would call a tease; someone who was asking for ’it’. Mark discussed her dress, the way her legs were on display and how she ensured she wore something low cut for everyone to see her breasts. He spoke about how she ‘flirted’ with him more than any other ‘bastard’ that came into the ‘bar’ and how she would purposefully bend at angles to give him the best show he could ever ask for.
Mark tossed back his drink in one go and hissed, slamming the glass back onto the tale with more force than Pan thought necessary. “Women are meant to meet the needs of men, boy. That’s it. If yer pecker stands at attention, its to give the lady a seat and she should be happy ye were ever interested in her.”
Pan cocked his head to the side. “Sex, boy,” Mark clarified. “Yer pecker, her pussy. Its yers for the takin’.”
“So a man and woman don’t need to be in love?”
The man in front of him let out such a booming laugh that the whole room seemed to shake in fear. “Fuck no,” he bit out, a look of disgust crossing over his face. “Can yer pecker stand at attention?”
Pan nodded, unsure of where Mark was going with this.
“Then ye can stick it into whatever lady catches yer fancy. Fuck bein’ in love and all that shit.” Mark pushed himself to his feet and grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair. As he slid his arms into the sleeves, Pan watched as a small, knowing smile seemed to grace his face while he shook his head. “Maybe ye aren’t such a child after all, boy.”
He could hear Mark’s receding footsteps over his shoulder for a few moments before the creaking of the heavy door that had nearly bested him took over and he couldn’t hear anything else from Mark. Pan was tempted to glance over his shoulder but found it too difficult to move. Instead, he was left with the last words Mark had said bouncing around in his head like a hyperactive pixie. Part of him had expected the words to leave even more confusion in their wake than anything else that had been said to him that day, but, instead, he found a sense of clarity. A sense of surety.
The moment the sun dipped below the horizon Pan intended to return to the nursery. He wouldn’t make the same mistake with Wendy’s granddaughter that he had with Wendy; the blasted pixie wasn’t around to stop him from giving her a thimble and making her his. He would banish the pixie for all eternity so long as it meant that he was able to keep Wendy’s granddaughter for his own and live forever in the hangman’s tree.
Pan would stop by the orphanage on their way back to Neverland and both he and Wendy’s granddaughter would gather a whole new group of Lost Boys to go on grand adventures. Maybe we’ll bring back girls, too. They can be the very first Lost Girls, outside of Wendy, Pan thought exuberantly, feeling happiness flit through his veins for the first time since he had stumbled upon the nursery and come across a very old Wendy. Once everything was settled and they were all happily living beneath the hangman’s tree, Pan would venture out to try and find Captain James Hook and his crew; their banishment had been long enough and Pan truly missed the games they used to play together.
The crocodile had long died – the blasted thing had disappeared shortly after Captain Hook had been banished – and Pan began thinking about another animal that could potentially terrorize the codfish captain the same way the other beast had.
A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. Maybe if I cut off his leg this time, I can feed it to the octopus that the mermaids in the lagoon have been complaining about. It will get the creature out of their hair and I won’t have to hear them complain about the ink getting everywhere, he thought happily.
And, for a fleeting moment, he could have sworn he felt himself rise in his chair the slightest bit.
Excitement blossomed in his chest like a musket wound. Pan pushed himself up quickly and he inwardly cringed when he knocked the chair back, the thing clattering to the ground at his feet. He grabbed the back of the chair quickly and righted it even faster before he all but scampered out of the bar, making quick work of the blasted door this time, and hurrying down the streets of London for another place to lay low and wait out the sun.
