from that position at all.
“Goodbye—for a little while, at least,” she whispered. “You have your own adventures now. It’s my turn this time.”
Despite attempting to be a ladylike sister, Wendy knew just as well as the boys where the squeaky stairs were and how to hold on to the banister and silently swing to a more polite step. Mr. Darling was snoring; the house was otherwise silent, and she had a clear path to the back door.…
Except for Nana, who sat resolutely in front of it.
“Now, Nana,” Wendy whispered. “If you really loved me, you would let me go.”
Nana made a sound of doubt in the back of her throat.
“Nana. I am not going to Ireland. Michael and John don’t need either one of us anymore. You need a safe, warm, loving home and a good fire. I need…something else.”
Nana’s doggy eyebrows raised plaintively. She whimpered a question.
“Well, all right. I’ll tell you, so that if anything happens to me you may tell the authorities. I’m making my way to Never Land.”
Nana sighed, as if to say I wish I had never grabbed that shadow.
Then she slowly stepped aside and gestured at the door with her head: Well, there it is. Go on.
“Thank you for understanding,” Wendy said, kissing her on the head. “I’m grateful.”
She opened the door the smallest crack. “Able to slip through sideways…Wasted away with love and longing,” she whispered spitefully. “Stupid John and his stupid Ovid.”
She drifted down the walk carelessly for a moment, stunned by the night. The moon had come out, and though not dramatically full or a perfect crescent, its three quarters were bright enough to turn the fog and dew and all that had the power to shimmer a bright silver, and everything else—the metal of the streetlamps, the gates, the cracks in the cobbles—a velvety black.
After a moment Wendy recovered from the strange beauty and remembered why she was there. She padded into the street before she could rethink anything and pulled up her hood. “Why didn’t I do this earlier?” she marveled. Sneaking out when she wasn’t supposed to was its own kind of adventure, its own kind of magic. London was beautiful. It felt like she had the whole city to herself except for a stray cat or two.
Despite never venturing beyond the neighborhood much by herself, she had spent plenty of time with maps, studying them for someday adventures. And as all roads lead to Rome, so too do all the major thoroughfares wind up at the Thames. Names like Vauxhall and Victoria (and Horseferry) sprang from her brain as clearly as if there had been signs in the sky pointing the way.
Besides Lost Boys and pirates, Wendy had occasionally terrified her brothers with stories about Springheel Jack and the half-animal orphan children with catlike eyes who roamed the streets at night. As the minutes wore on she felt her initial bravery dissipate and terror slowly creep down her neck—along with the fog, which was also somehow finding its way under her coat, chilling her to her core.
“If I’m not careful I’m liable to catch a terrible head cold! Perhaps that’s really why people don’t adventure out in London at night,” she told herself sternly, chasing away thoughts of crazed, dagger-wielding murderers with a vision of ugly red runny noses and cod-liver oil.
But was it safer to walk down the middle of the street, far from shadowed corners where villains might lurk? Being exposed out in the open meant she would be more easily seen by police or other do-gooders who would try to escort her home.
“My mother is sick and requires this one particular tonic that can only be obtained from the chemist across town,” she practiced. “A nasty decoction of elderberries and slippery elm, but it does such wonders for your throat. No one else has it. And do you know how hard it is to call for a cab this time of night? In this part of town? That’s the crime, really.”
In less time than she imagined it would take, Wendy arrived at a promenade that overlooked the mighty Thames. She had never seen it from that particular angle before or at that time of night. On either bank, windows of all the more important buildings glowed with candles or gas lamps or even electric lights behind their icy panes, little tiny yellow auras that lifted her heart.
“I do wish I had done this before,” she breathed.
Maybe if she had, then things wouldn’t have come