The other side of never, p.1
The Other Side of Never, page 1
Table of Contents
Cover
Also Available from Titan Books
Title Page
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Copyright
Introduction
Marie O’Regan & Paul Kane
Foreword
Jen Williams
A Visit to Kensington Gardens
Lavie Tidhar
Manic Pixie Girl
A. C. Wise
Fear of the Pan-Child
Robert Shearman
And On ’til Morning
Laura Mauro
The Other Side of Never
Edward Cox
The Lost Boys Monologues
Kirsty Logan
A School for Peters
Claire North
Chasing Shadows
Cavan Scott
Saturday Morning
Anna Smith Spark
The Land Between Her Eyelashes
Rio Youers
Boy
Guy Adams
Never Was Born His Equal
Premee Mohamed
The Shadow Stitcher
A. K. Benedict
A House the Size of Me
Alison Littlewood
Silver Hook
Gama Ray Martinez
The Reeds Remember
Juliet Marillier
No Such Place
Paul Finch
Far From Home
Muriel Gray
About the Authors
About the Editors
Acknowledgements
Also Available from Titan Books
Also available from Titan Books
A Universe of Wishes: A We Need Diverse Books Anthology
Cursed: An Anthology
Dark Cities: All-New Masterpieces of Urban Terror
Dark Detectives: An Anthology of Supernatural Mysteries
Dead Letters: An Anthology of the Undelivered, the Missing, the Returned…
Dead Man’s Hand: An Anthology of the Weird West
Escape Pod: The Science Fiction Anthology
Exit Wounds
Hex Life
Infinite Stars
Infinite Stars: Dark Frontiers
Invisible Blood
Daggers Drawn
New Fears: New Horror Stories by Masters of the Genre
New Fears 2: Brand New Horror Stories by Masters of the Macabre
Out of the Ruins: The Apocalyptic Anthology
Phantoms: Haunting Tales from the Masters of the Genre
Rogues
Vampires Never Get Old
Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse
Wastelands 2: More Stories of the Apocalypse
Wastelands: The New Apocalypse
Wonderland: An Anthology
When Things Get Dark
Isolation: The Horror Anthology
Multiverses: An Anthology of Alternate Realities
Twice Cursed
At Midnight
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The Other Side of Never
Print edition ISBN: 9781803361789
E-book edition ISBN: 9781803361796
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
www.titanbooks.com
First edition: May 2023
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organisations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.
INTRODUCTION copyright © Marie O’Regan & Paul Kane 2023.
FOREWORD copyright © Jen Williams 2023.
A VISIT TO KENSINGTON GARDENS copyright © Lavie Tidhar 2023.
MANIC PIXIE GIRL copyright © A. C. Wise 2023.
FEAR OF THE PAN-CHILD copyright © Robert Shearman 2023.
AND ON ’TIL MORNING copyright © Laura Mauro 2023.
THE OTHER SIDE OF NEVER copyright © Edward Cox 2023.
THE LOST BOYS MONOLOGUES copyright © Kirsty Logan 2023.
A SCHOOL FOR PETERS copyright © Claire North 2023.
CHASING SHADOWS copyright © Cavan Scott 2023.
SATURDAY MORNING copyright © Anna Smith Spark 2023.
THE LAND BETWEEN HER EYELASHES copyright © Rio Youers 2023.
BOY © Guy Adams 2023.
NEVER WAS BORN HIS EQUAL copyright © Premee Mohamed 2023.
THE SHADOW STITCHER copyright © A. K. Benedict 2023.
A HOUSE THE SIZE OF ME copyright © Alison Littlewood 2023.
SILVER HOOK copyright © Gama Ray Martinez 2023.
THE REEDS REMEMBER copyright Juliet Marillier 2023.
NO SUCH PLACE copyright © Paul Finch 2023.
FAR FROM HOME copyright © Muriel Gray 2023.
The authors assert the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Introduction
MARIE O’REGAN & PAUL KANE
Even before we had finished working on the anthology Wonderland, we were thinking about which popular mythos to tackle afterwards – giving it that same, darker spin.
Just as we are both fans of the Alice tales, looking back on our childhoods provided a clue about what to turn our attentions to next. The original book Peter and Wendy – which began life as a play in 1904 – has always been as much a part of our lives as eating and sleeping, just like it has for so many generations. It has already inspired such a huge amount of work, from other plays (like the musical Neverland and also The Terrible Tragedy of Peter Pan) to radio (Dirk Maggs’s 1995 production for the BBC, for instance), from TV shows (including ABC’s popular series Once Upon a Time, which featured Colin O’Donoghue regularly as Hook), comics (Peter Pan – The Graphic Novel by Stephen White, Cheshire Crossing by Andy Weir) and books (Hook’s Revenge Series by Heidi Schulz, Peter Darling by Austin Chant, Son of Neverland by Cal Barnes) to films, of course: most recently, the movies Pan, Wendy and Come Away.
But, as with our previous undertaking, we wanted to do something just a little different. Grown-up tales inspired by the legend of a boy who never grew up. Once again, we assembled a group of spectacular writers to help us with that mission, providing stories that are definitely not for children. And thankfully, each and every one of them has risen to the challenge.
In here you’ll find the supernatural, in Laura Mauro’s and Muriel Gray’s stories in particular, while A. K. Benedict and Cavan Scott take the idea of shadows and run with that. Robert Shearman focuses on a fear of the subject matter in hand, just as A. C. Wise, Kirsty Logan and Guy Adams put a very modern spin on the material. Edward Cox is deep in dystopian territory and Lavie Tidhar gives us a thoughtful piece to ponder over, both revolving around that all important question of “what if”? Rio Youers and Gama Ray Martinez use a certain famous hook as their jumping-off points in very different ways; Anna Smith Spark and Claire North give us, in turn, historical and social commentary; Juliet Marillier provides a throughline from Classical mythology to the original adventure; and there are also tales that deal with the “lost” in various ways – just look at Premee Mohamed’s, Alison Littlewood’s and Paul Finch’s contributions to find examples of that.
A stunning range of interpretations, by a stellar line-up of writers. All of them providing a glimpse of more thought-provoking or ominous alternatives…
The Other Side of Never.
Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane
Derbyshire, September 2022
Foreword
JEN WILLIAMS
When I was at art college, I spent a lot of time in the campus library, browsing all sorts of art books for inspiration purposes (or, more often, procrastination purposes). On one of these slow days, rain pelting against the windows, I came across Paula Rego’s Peter Pan illustrations. Rego is celebrated for her dark, uncompromising and even uncomfortable art, and her Pan pictures pull no punches (try saying that three times quickly after a flagon of pirate grog). If you’ve never seen them, I encourage you to seek them out: you could hardly find a Peter further from the animated one many of us grew up with – except perhaps within the pages of this excellent anthology.
The image that particularly stuck with me was Rego’s buff, split-tailed mermaid, her muscular arms holding Wendy under the water, a fairy-tale sky crammed with stars wheeling overhead. It’s a shocking image, but on a deeper level I wasn’t entirely surprised by it. J. M. Barrie’s story is a timeless classic intertwined with the nursery, with story time, with faeries and adventure, but I think we instinctively know there is more to Neverland than that. We know darkness is just under the surface, like a crocodile waiting in the sapphire waters of the lagoon. After all, we know what it really means to “never grow up”.
These stories, expertly gathered by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane, explore every facet of Neverland and the Peter Pan mythos. From the catastrophic fallout of losing your shadow to Lost children of all varieties; from the dark origins of Peter himself to the frankly terrifying spectre of lads who refuse to grow up – the short stories collected in The Other Side of Never offer the same creeping delights as Paula Rego’s alarming illustrations. Terror and magic, murder and monsters… We know there are teeth waiting for us under the water, but the pixie dust is just too tempting. So I invite you to step into these pages and discover all the surprises Neverland unleashed has to offer. You already know the way.
Jen Williams
London, January 2023
A Visit to Kensington Gardens
LAVIE TIDHAR
Pitter patter Peter pipers pans across the tended green. Here’s a statue, here is Peter, here are parakeets preening green.
“The parakeets,” a man in faded jeans says nervously, addressing a group of young adults, “are said to originate from a pair that escaped the set of The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, in 1951.” He twists a silver wedding ring nervously. The students look bored. “The statue to Pan is also a Pokéstop,” the man adds, helplessly.
Pitter patter, Peter pipers, here across the changeless green. Here’s a statue, made by Frampton, all in bronze – it looks nothing like him.
No one pays any attention to the little boy in green. Demon-baby riding goat, that’s how Rackham drew him once. How he loved to torture fairies! Pull their wings, collect the dust! How he loved to sail his nest-boat, all across the Serpentine. Then the fairies lost their fear and found him friendly, baby Peter playing pipes. How he loved to watch their dances! How he loved to love his life.
Long-term memory is fleeting, Peter lives in here and now. Fairies die, and when they do he forgets them, but sometimes he remembers little bits of his life.
There was a girl, he is almost sure of that. She was going to be his wife. He isn’t sure what “wife” is, but he knew he wanted one and there was Maimie, but she went back to her mother. Years later he would still find little gifts and letters from her hidden in the shrubbery. He tore the letters and the goat faded away in the end, but still. They always left him in the end. They always grew up.
The man is still talking. He is balding on top. He says, “For your mid-term assignment, I’d like you to write your paper on Peter’s relationship with either Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies or with Mole and Rat’s visit to Pan’s Island in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.”
The students look confused. One girl raises her hand. “How many words?” she says.
“Two thousand,” the man says, “and please—” with a long-suffering sigh “—don’t forget to cite your sources and use a bibliography. Remember, Wikipedia is not an appropriate source for academic citation.”
The water-babies? Peter remembers them. Poor lost souls, drowned in the river. He used to pal with them from time to time. There was a young woman, too, a sort of mother to the little ghosts. Harriet, was that her name? She wore leaves in her hair and recited poetry. He had liked her. But she, too, faded away after a time.
The city, every time he comes back to it from the Neverlands, is the same but different. St Paul’s is always there, brooding, and the Tower with its poor ravens who can’t fly. The Thames and the Serpentine still sing to each other and gather the drowned into their watery depths. Once, Peter saw a lost whale come up the river. Later, its carcass washed up on the bank. He saw jumpers and those who were thrown. The rivers are Neverlands all of their own.
He thinks Barrie got it almost right, when he’d tried to tell him the story. A Neverland is always an island in a child’s mind. The Neverlands change like the city changes. He vaguely remembers a man with a hook, a ticking clock. Then the rail tracks came and the trains, then all kinds of things that beeped and chirped and glowed white-light with screens. It doesn’t matter to Peter. Peter loves now. The man with the students swipes his finger across the screen of his phone. “See?” he says. “A Pokéstop.”
The students lose interest. Tourists feed the parakeets. The green birds fly down and peck seeds. Mothers go past pushing prams. Peter looks at the babies with hatred. His knife is always nearby. When did he last pull it out? On Wendy’s baby girl. But he had been startled then, scared.
It’s always confusing when they grow up.
Is Wendy there? Will she come today? He looks around him with hope in his eyes. It isn’t yet Lock-Out Time so the fairies are not out yet. Humans wander through the park without a clue.
“Did any of you read The Wind in the Willows?” the man says, with that same defeated voice. Peter looks at the students. They are Betwixt-and-Between, not quite grown-up yet, not quite children. Will they see him? The same young woman from earlier raises her hand.
“Yes?” the man says.
“I think so?”
“You remember the chapter where Mole and Rat find an enchanted island where the god Pan lives?” the man says.
“Um, no?”
“No one ever does,” the man says. “And Mole and Rat themselves forget, after they’ve been there.”
He smiles hopefully, like he’s made a joke somehow, but no one laughs. The girl looks to where Peter’s hiding. Does she see him? She blinks. He waves, hope breaking in his heart. She looks away and hope dies. What did she see? Just bushes, grass, a squirrel squirrelling a bag of crisps? Or did she glimpse him, Peter; did she see the shadow of a child?
“The water-babies,” the girl says, “they were dead?”
The lecturer brightens, the other students look at the girl as if to say they just want to go off. The lecturer says, “Well, it’s an interpretation.”
“Everything is an interpretation,” the girl says. The lecturer gives her a hopeful smile. He glances to the side, where Peter is. Does he see Peter? He says, “Have you looked into the notion of the Edwardian enchanted summer and how it relates to inter-war depiction of fairylands yet?”
“Professor…” a boy groans, and the man catches himself, startles, says to the girl, “Perhaps we can discuss this later, if you’d like—”
Something passes between them, but it is not a thing Peter can understand. Perhaps the man wants the young woman for a mother, just like Peter, who left his, keeps seeking Maimie – or was it Wendy? Or was it Margaret, or Jane? Who is it now? Are there still Darlings in London? Well, there must be, or something like them, for the Neverlands, though always changing, are still there; and so is Peter, and the first of the night fairies flies by his ear and laughs delightedly, the evening starts to settle on the park and the students are restless and the man says, “Well, we made it here with the old map from the book, so… Feel free to look around, and we’ll continue this next week in class.”
“See you, Professor,” a couple of them mumble, then they scatter off, eager to find something else to do, children at their play, and Peter longs to play with them. The man and the young woman walk away, too, and Peter is left there by the statue, and momentarily at a loss, he waits. A girl will come, sooner or later, who could see him. And then he’ll take her for a wife and they’ll fly home; second to the right, and straight on till morning.
* * *
“Peter?” she says.
He turns to her. She lies in the bed. Her long white hair spread against the cold white pillow. The window open, the stars beyond. A double-decker bus goes past. Peter watches the people on the upper deck. A woman in a head scarf stares at her phone. Can no one see him?
“Oh, Wendy,” he says.
“It is time, dearest,” she says weakly.
“Darling,” he says, and she tries to smile. “Me, or my family?” she says. Their old joke together. Jane’s in Australia, they spoke to her on Zoom only that morning. John’s hunting flamingos in Cyprus. Michael ran off to America with a showgirl, worked as a stagehand at first, moved through the ranks, directed a couple of films for Monogram Pictures, Lost Boy with Lugosi in ’42, then Hooked with Karloff in ’43. Wounded in Normandy and honourably discharged. Married, divorced, and married again. Drowned off the Santa Monica pier in ’58. God damn it, Michael, Peter thinks. He misses him still, and every day.
