Straight On Till Morning (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,59
dust allow her to understand just Tinker Bell, or all fairies? What about all the creatures of Never Land? How long would it last? Did it change other parts of her? Was it poisonous? If she had been doused with fairy dust to fly, and imbibed fairy dust to hear fairy language, how much more of her was there to infuse with the substance? Would she become—she secretly hoped—fairy herself?
Magical translating dust aside, she also understood without anyone saying it that despite this apparent change in their relationship status, the fairy would still not stand for the usual Wendy-barrage of questions. They might be on better terms now, but they weren’t bosom companions.
Not yet, at least.
“All right then,” Wendy said, patting her dress down and dusting herself off—as best she could—while ordering in her head a careful list of questions she would dole out, slowly, over the course of her time with the fairy. “Where do we find these First?”
Tinker Bell shrugged.
“Oh,” Wendy said, perplexed. “But—when they said that thing, about him going to see the First, you looked like you knew of them. You looked, if you don’t mind me saying so, worried.”
I am worried.
“About what? Are they dangerous?”
Tinker Bell swayed this way and that on a whisper-soft breeze so faint she might have summoned it with her own wings.
The First are…the first. The first inhabitants of Never Land. The first spirits of the place. Ancient. They were here before mermaids and pirates and fairies and the dreams of men. They are Never Land. Whatever Never Land was when it was born. We are all…a result of them, and you.
Wendy frowned, considering this. The history of Never Land had never occurred to her as a discrete idea before. Never Land was Never Land, a place of infinite happiness and adventure, where anything you could imagine was possible. Did theories like geology, the true age of the Earth, and Mr. Darwin’s evolution hold for imaginary lands?
“Where do fairies come from?” she asked, thinking it was the simplest entry into a complicated subject.
The first laugh of a baby. A special baby. So they say. Tinker Bell smiled wryly. We are here, we appear, sometimes there are more of us. I awoke under a leaf, curled up like a drop of dew, complete. Tinker Bell!
But…also we come the usual way.
She made a face.
“But there is a connection between you and the imagination, the minds of human beings,” Wendy hazarded.
I guess so.
“When I tell a story about Never Land to my brothers, am I making it up? Or am I just repeating something, which my inner mind already knows—a story that has already actually happened, in Never Land?”
Who knows? I don’t.
Who cares? I don’t.
“But we’re talking about the nature of your existence! Your world’s existence. Doesn’t that make you wonder at all?”
I am. You are. Everything else is talk. Tinker Bell jingled, a little impatiently. What’s important is getting Peter’s shadow back and figuring out how Captain Hook plans to destroy Never Land.
“No, no, of course, you’re right,” Wendy said—but a little distractedly. She did not really agree. Details mattered to her. Which hand of Hook’s Peter actually cut off, for instance. How many masts the Jolly Roger had. The precise workings of an entire world, the rules by which it existed…Well, besides soothing her constantly tumbling mind, knowledge was power. The more she knew about Never Land, the safer she was—and the more successful their quest would be. “But—just—what do they look like? The First, I mean?”
They do not look like men or fairies or mermaids or pirates or animals or insects or fish or plants. They look like nothing—and everything at once.
Wendy sighed. “All right. I see. But if they’re so dangerous and unknowable, why do you think Peter went to see them?”
The fairy looked disgusted at yet another question. But then she thought about it.
Maybe he thought they could get him a new one.
“A new…shadow? Can the First do that?”
They are Never Land. Why did I give you the dust to hear if you won’t listen?
“All right, all right. But—would they do it?”
At this the fairy looked troubled.
They don’t talk or listen to reason…or they do things for their own unknowable reasons. Big things. Scary things.
“So they are opaque and random? Powerful and whimsical? Unknowable, inscrutable, and unpredictable, like an Old Testament sort of god?”
Tinker Bell looked at her for a long moment.
Sure.
“Lovely. I suppose we must go then and chase Peter Pan together to the demesne of these terrifying