Neverland falling, p.1
Neverland Falling, page 1
Neverland Falling
A RETELLING OF PETER PAN, PART I
THE CLASSICAL KINGDOMS COLLECTION
BOOK EIGHT
BRITTANY FICHTER
Contents
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Dedication
Prologue
1. Happy
2. Impossible
3. Chances
4. Our Dog
5. Ablaze
6. Plans
7. Peter
8. Games
9. Different
10. Wendy
11. Adventure
12. Talk
13. Can’t
14. The Dog Stays
15. Pirates
16. Friends
17. Lost Girl
18. Please
19. Waiting
20. Found
21. Arms
22. With Roses
23. The Closest I Could Get
24. The Neverstar
25. Shadows
26. Moon Flower
27. Wrong
28. Dangerous Games
29. A Boy
30. Fool Enough
31. Falling
32. Blind
33. Who Are We?
34. Listen
35. Worth It
36. Broken
37. Someone
38. Either Way
39. One More
Epilogue
About the Author
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Kim,
You and Bob were the family waiting for us (unbeknownst to us) when we moved to Little Rock and hardly knew a single soul. I still remember meeting you on that first Sunday, when you invited us to your house and expected (rather than hoped) we would come. We still miss you a million and plan to take you up on that spare bedroom offer whenever we can make it back.
Prologue
But I don’t want you and Father to go out tonight.” John stuck his bottom lip out and folded his arms across his chest.
“No go.” Little Michael shook his head at his mother sadly, his big blue eyes shining with tears that Wendy knew would be falling very soon if they didn’t get him distracted.
“You will all be just fine.” Their mother laughed as she leaned down toward Michael’s outstretched arms. “Wendy will be with you.”
Wendy folded her hands in front of her and nodded, hoping her brothers would be satisfied.
“And Gerty,” her mother continued. “Along with all your father’s hired men in the barn. I’m sure if they heard you sneeze too loudly, they’d come and see what was the matter.”
“We don’t know them,” John scoffed. “Father only hired them two weeks ago. They don’t care one way or the other.”
“Oh, but I met them this afternoon,” Wendy said brightly as she tidied up the nursery. “And they were all very lovely.”
“You brought Father tea,” John scoffed. “That hardly counts as a meeting.”
Wendy pursed her lips at her younger brother. John could be unusually cheeky for being only eight years. Of course, this only made Michael begin to really cry.
“You going away!” he wailed into his mother’s neck.
“Come now,” Wendy grunted slightly as she tried to pry her youngest brother off her mother. “We’ll have a grand time. I’ll even tell you stories. I heard a new one today.”
“Stories?” Michael turned, his toddler eyes brightening even as tears ran down his face.
“And what kind of stories will you be telling, exactly?”
They all turned to the door, where a tall man filled the frame.
“Peter Pan stories, of course, Father.” Wendy smiled brightly. “They always make Michael smile.” She kissed his round little cheek. “Don’t they?”
“Aren’t you getting a bit old for that, love?” Her father turned to the large mirror, which hung above the fireplace, to straighten his collar. “Thirteen is old enough to be thinking of other things than the drunken ramblings of the village vagabond.”
“They’re not for me,” Wendy protested. “They’re for the boys! And I like Amos. He tells good stories. And he’s not always drunk.” Just most of the time.
Her mother gave her a knowing smile and a kiss on the head. “Of course, love. All for the boys. Now, before they make this any harder, I want you to know that Gerty is seeing to the putting away of dinner, and you should have nothing to worry about but stuffing the boys into their beds and sitting on them so they can’t escape.”
“Don’t sit on me,” Michael giggled as he wriggled in Wendy’s arms.
“Goodbye, Mother.” Wendy hugged her mother with her one free arm. “Have fun at the party.”
“Oh, it’ll be a load of nonsense,” her father scoffed, still examining his clothes in the mirror.
“Then why are you going?” John asked. Wendy knew what he was really asking. Why are you leaving us? As if her parents left them every night, rather than once or twice a year.
“Not enough grain farmers, too many buyers.” Their father made a face at his reflection. “The evening will be ruined completely if the guild goes cheap this year and forgets the rum. Wendy, I’m afraid you could put the lot of them to shame with your figures and estimates. I’d say half the county doesn’t have as much sense in them combined as you do in one hand.”
Wendy’s mother rolled her eyes and smiled as she kissed Wendy on the head. “Now remember, just call for Gerty if you need anything. Or worse comes to worst, get Silas.”
“Silas is back?” Despite her confidence in her ability to take care of her brothers, Wendy relaxed slightly.
“Yes, thank the Maker.” Wendy’s father finally turned away from the mirror and began tossing the boys in bed, which made them laugh. “Don’t know what I’d do without him. None of these young ones know how to give an honest day’s work without me riding them from morning till night.”
“He’s been here, what, seven years now?” her mother asked thoughtfully. “That reminds me. I was wondering today if we ought to pay him more after all this time.”
“Oh, eight years at least. But Wendy Girl.” Her father took her hands and pulled her toward him. “I’m serious when I say you need to call for Silas if something happens. I’ve asked him to sit down in the parlor in case you all need something before we’re back.”
“We’ll be fine, Father.” Wendy kissed her father’s nose. “I’ll be old enough to be married in four or five years. Might as well know how to look after myself by now.”
“Yes.” Her father frowned and studied her for a moment. “That’s what I’m afraid of.” Then he took a deep breath and shook his head. “All right, you hooligans. Time for bed, and I mean it this time. If Wendy tells me either of you made a single peep, you’re going to get a thrashing when I get home.”
After much crying and carrying on by the boys, and more than just a little bit of begging on her mother’s part and slightly more bellowing on her father’s, Wendy finally watched her father’s big horse pull their old cart out of the drive. As soon as they were gone, she turned to her brothers.
“So, who’s ready for a story?”
Ten minutes later, the boys were on their beds, covers drawn up around them, unable to move their eyes from Wendy as she acted out the story she told.
“Peter decided it was high time he searched out the island’s legendary haunted cave,” she said, pulling little Michael into her lap.
“It…it wasn’t actually haunted. Was it?” John whispered.
Wendy nodded. “It was. But Peter wasn’t afraid. He was brave, and he thought it was high time those spirits learned to mind their manners.”
“What he do?” Michael whispered, big brown eyes staring up into hers.
Wendy smiled down at him. “He told his shadow to go frighten them. You see, they were used to the other creatures from the island venturing in, and they took great delight in scaring them off and not allowing anyone else to enjoy the cave except themselves. But the moment they saw that shadow, they began to scream.”
“Serves them right.” John rolled his eyes.
“That’s what Peter thought, too. But as soon as he heard the screams, he called his shadow back. For he knew then that they weren’t spirits at all!”
“What were they?” John asked.
“Mermaids!” Wendy grinned. No matter how many times she surprised them with the ending to another story, she never tired of the way their eyes lit up at the end. It was like she was enjoying the story for the first time all over again. “You see, the cavern went all the way down the inside of the island, where it met the water beneath. And the mermaids would surface inside the cavern anytime, since there was no sun there, and they would sing haunting melodies to anyone they heard inside. Great fun, they thought it, until Peter frightened them half to death with his shadow.”
“That not nice.” Little Michael yawned as Wendy tucked him under his covers.
“No, not at all,” she said solemnly. “Which is why we always must be kind to others, even if we don’t know who they are.”
“I want to hear the one about the giant crocodile,” John cried as Wendy moved over to tuck him in.
“Perhaps tomorrow.” Wendy patted his covers. “When you aren’t so—”
A tapping on the south wind
Wendy’s heart was beating faster than it ever had in all her thirteen years, and she had the urge to dive under her covers and pull them over her head. But her brothers were watching, and she was the one in charge. Walking felt nearly impossible, as though her feet had been soldered to the ground. But somehow, she made it to the window and peeked out. She didn’t dare open it. She didn’t need to, though. A slight movement on the other side made her cry out and bolt down the stairs, pausing only at the bottom to call back up to the boys to stay in their beds. Michael began to cry, but Wendy knew she had to find Silas.
When she got to the parlor, however, Silas was nowhere to be found. His half-empty mug of cider still sat on Mother’s table, and the rug was askew, as though someone had run over it too fast to bother fixing it.
A bang behind Wendy made her jump. There was no one there, but the back door was open, slamming against the frame in the wind.
“Mister Silas?” Wendy called softly, her voice only half as loud as it should have been. It was probably nothing. And yet…
Where was Mister Silas?
“Gerty?” she called out as she crept closer to the open door. “Where is everyone?”
A cold wind had picked up since her parents had left, and even though her hair was pinned back for bed, it still blew up in her face and made the yard difficult to see. From what she could tell, though, there was no sign of either her father’s right-hand man or the maid.
The sound of boots crunching in the pebbles outside drew Wendy out, shivering, into the yard. Surely that was Silas. He must have gone out to check on something, one of the animals or perhaps a sick farmhand. And Gerty must be around somewhere. It was very likely she was just out at the cellar. Either one of them would be back in a moment…
Wendy’s thoughts trailed off when she saw the source of the footsteps she’d been following.
It wasn’t Silas.
A man in his fifth decade stumbled around the corner. His graying hair was mussed, and his clothes were dirty and rumpled, but not the way farm clothes should be. He stopped and leaned against the corner of the house and took a swig from the tankard he was clutching, sloshing its contents all over himself as he did.
He was one of her father’s newly hired men—Rehnald, she thought his name was. And when she’d met him that afternoon, he’d been all politeness and respect. But now, as he turned his blue-gray eyes on her, they brightened with a little too much interest.
Wendy felt her whole body ice over as he tried to straighten himself again, and his smile widened. She should run. Somehow she knew this. And yet, as he came closer, still smiling with each stumbling step, she couldn’t get herself to move. Or even scream. Or make any sort of sound she needed to make to keep herself and her brothers safe. All she could do was stare in horror as he inched his way closer.
Just as he stumbled within arm’s reach, a shadow darted out from the barn and knocked the man off his feet. Before he could even roll over to get up, yet another figure appeared and pinned him to the ground. Then, working in tandem with the first figure, it pulled a long bit of string out of its pocket and began to bind the man’s wrists as the shadowy figure held them together, its knee in the man’s back.
Rather than staring at the man now, Wendy couldn’t look away from the two figures working in tandem. And then the darker figure turned sideways and nearly disappeared. Wendy could hardly breathe.
The shadowy figure was just that…a shadow. There was no body to give it substance. The two figures were similar, though. Very similar. In fact, it almost appeared that the body that the shadow figure should have been attached to was busy tying their victim up. It was as if the young man—or boy, as he seemed to be when she squinted—had peeled off his shadow and set it to helping him. And now that he was done, he was putting it back on again…
But it couldn’t be.
Now that the drunk man was subdued, her savior stood still enough in the moonlight for Wendy to see him clearly. He looked to be about her age, maybe twelve or thirteen, and he had wild, untrimmed hair that looked like it might fall in his eyes if it didn’t stick out on every side so stubbornly. Long, skinny legs stuck out of poorly-fitted green trousers that reached just below his knees, and his shoes were made of leather wrapped around his feet. His shirt was made of the same rough material as his pants, though this was oversized rather than under. In the moonlight, his eyes blazed green, as though he was untamed inside as well as out.
And he was staring right back at her.
For an eternal moment, neither of them moved. Wendy felt just as frozen as she had when Rehnald was approaching her, but this fear was a different kind entirely. She wanted…needed to speak with him, to reach out and touch his arm to see if he was real. Because if he was, this would change everything.
Old Amos was known in the town for drinking too much, but his stories had enraptured children for decades. Wendy’s own parents had sat at his feet once while their parents went to market, and they’d also listened to him weave tales of Peter Pan and his Lost Boys and Neverland. Wendy had come under his spell when she was only three years, and though most of her friends had lost interest by now, his tales still secretly kept her in raptures. The world he spun, the Neverland he created, was full of magic and unlimited possibilities no girl in the Ashlandian countryside could ever dream of seeing in her lifetime.
Amos swore they were all true, and the town swore he was crazy. And though Wendy had been inclined to agree with the townspeople, on the most gracious terms, of course, the boy who was staring back at her now turned all of that on its head.
“Peter?” she heard herself whisper.
The boy’s head lifted, though whether it was from the name or the mere sound of her voice, she couldn’t tell. He took a half-step toward her, one of his hands slightly raised. She should feel fear. She knew this boy no more than she did Rehnald, and the fact that he could separate himself from his shadow should have warned her away even more. For some reason, though, she couldn’t find the sense to be afraid. Imitating him, she raised her own hand, though why she couldn’t say.
The sound of running boots broke the silence. The boy crouched and, without a second look, took off into the sky. Wendy’s mouth dropped as she watched him fly into the inky darkness above.
“Wendy!”
Wendy looked down in a daze to find Silas staring at her, breathing hard as though he’d been sprinting.
“What are you doing out here this time of night?” He looked down, and his eyes grew large as biscuits when he spotted Rehnald. “Please don’t tell me you did this.”
Wendy shook her head and tried her best to find her voice. “No. Um…I was looking for you. We…we heard a sound in the nursery, like someone rapping at the window. So I came down and…” She swallowed and looked back down at Rehnald, who was now singing a tavern song, despite his bonds. “He found me and started to walk toward me.”
“And how did he get like this?” Silas looked like he might pop a vein.
“Someone helped me.” As she spoke, Wendy felt her face heat with shame. Now that she was beginning to see it from Silas’s perspective, upon reflection, she’d been absolutely useless.
“Someone?”
“A boy.” Wendy chewed on the inside of her lip. “A stranger. He came to help me. I’ve never seen him before. Then he ran away as soon as he was done.”
