Straight On Till Morning (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,71
watch it all and weep.
“Yes, that’s why I’m here. But I don’t see what I or my world has to do with—”
Hook is the villain and star of so many of your tales. He was birthed from the tides of your world. And he will destroy ours.
“I didn’t mean to…They were just stories.…But you can stop him, can’t you?”
We cannot stop this, because of your world’s hold over ours. He is of your making.
“What do you want me to do?” Wendy cried desperately. “I’ll do it! Whatever you ask!”
Nothing. Silence.
Normally she was not a girl prone to perspiring—she never moved much faster than a brisk walk, and remained inside on the hottest days. Now she felt sweat break out across her brow and uncomfortably under her arms.
But it wasn’t from the desert heat.
“Should I leave now?” she asked.
Maybe she and the fairy should just go. Maybe the First were done with them. But it felt wrong to turn her back on these creatures, whatever they were, and walk away…rather like turning one’s back on a king or queen. Were they done with her?
“Please. I’m sorry. I was so stupid. Never Land is a learning experience,” she ventured, nervousness and sweat coalescing into words that just poured out of her mouth. “I came for adventure—perhaps wrongfully—and it’s far more complicated than the place I dreamed of. Pirates who don’t seem to want to be pirates, girls who have to hide their true selves to come here, monsters who only eat fairies, mermaids who will fight each other tooth and claw over an apple…And Hook. And I am responsible for his doomsday visions?”
Never Land is a reflection of your world.
Wendy jumped. She had no longer been expecting a response, much less one so calm.
Are things broken here? Save this world. Then go back to your own broken world and fix it. Perhaps we shall be mended as well.
“Me? Fix the entire world? I can’t even fix my own situation at home! That’s why I came here!”
Is escape to Never Land your only recourse for being made to grow up, for being sent away? For disagreeing with your parents? Is there nothing else you could do? For yourself? For others like you? For others unlike you?
This was not how Wendy expected the conversation to go. After her outburst, she expected irritation from the strange beings and maybe a boulder or two hurled at her for perceived insolence. Being squashed would have made more sense than these strange questions.
“I’m just…I’m no one. I can’t do anything. I can’t even disobey my father.”
Perhaps you should see if that really is true.
Go quickly. Time is running out for Never Land and for Peter.
There was a pause and a ripple in the atmosphere that Wendy realized meant a change in mood.
Goodbye, human not grown-up not child not hero not villain. Goodbye, pixie not pixie not human.
Wendy blinked and the monolith was gone. The others behind it in the landscape had also rearranged. There seemed to be fewer.
She let out a breath, not even realizing she had been holding it.
Tinker Bell decided that it was safe to flitter, and zoomed around like a nervous bee—keeping very close to her big friend.
“That was…very interesting. Educational.”
She finally found the right word.
“Terrifying.”
Tinker Bell nodded, swallowing.
“We really have to get out of here and find Peter and get Hook. Immediately. When even the gods of a world are worried about its destruction, well—it’s serious indeed. And I know you think it’s better to find Peter first and then deal with his shadow and the pirates, but perhaps we really should go after the pirates now? I think we’ll find them more easily at this point. What do you think? Tink?”
But the little fairy wasn’t paying attention. She tugged on Wendy’s hair and pointed back the way they had come.
Wendy looked, very reluctantly. Afraid of what would be there—or rather, what wouldn’t.
And she was right.
Never Land was entirely gone. The desert extended for a hundred miles in all directions, seamless and complete.
“No,” Wendy said softly.
Even though she had predicted it, even though now she could see the truth with her own eyes, she still fell down the long-familiar tunnel of childishness: wishing that what just happened hadn’t. Denying with her full being that the vase had tipped and smashed, that the terrible thing just said had come out of her own mouth, that the soufflé had fallen moments before she served it to Mother and Father.