Straight On Till Morning (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,81
intend to do. And the First said that time was running out.” Wendy sighed and put her hand out without thinking to comfort the little fairy.
Without thinking, the little fairy climbed up onto it.
“I can’t even tell how much time has passed since we first entered the Land of the First. Do you have any idea?”
Tinker Bell looked thoughtful, then shrugged and shook her head, jingling meaninglessly.
“I wonder if time passes differently there. Like in fairy tales. No disrespect,” she added quickly. “Was the time we spent there like centuries out here? As if we were asleep, or under a fairy spell having the time of our lives, while time passed out here? No…that doesn’t feel right. I think it’s the reverse. And that makes more Never Land sense, really: time passing slower for the dwellers in the infinite beginnings of the world. Oh, I do like the sound of that, don’t you? I just came up with it. ‘Dwellers in the infinite beginnings of the world.’ I should write that down.”
She went to take out her journal before remembering that her parents still had it. Worse than that: she realized that her bag was gone. When had she lost it? When the mermaids tried to drown her? When she slept in the air on the way to the First? Clambering around the rocks in the desert? The river journey? She couldn’t even remember the last time she had seen it.
“Well, I suppose the pirates’ gold buttons and thimbles will not become useful later in the story, as originally suggested,” she said sadly. “Nothing in Never Land seems to stick around for very long. I must remember when packing up for my next adventure to choose a bigger, sturdier satchel. A solid waxed canvas one, maybe, that goes over my shoulders with tight straps, like a soldier’s.”
Tinker Bell pouted sympathetically but distractedly, still watching the rain.
“We’ll fly as soon as it calms down a bit,” Wendy promised. Glumly, she watched her friend’s shadow squeeze droplets out of her wings—and the emptiness of the space on the wall where Wendy’s own shadow should have been. She sighed and tried to think happier thoughts.
“This is a bit like a tiny version of the Lost Boys’ hideout, isn’t it? I really liked their home, actually—it could just do with a bit of a woman’s touch.”
Tinker Bell turned away from the rain and nodded vigorously. Like it was a subject she had thought about often.
“I used to dream of being a sort of a den mother to the Lost Boys, you know. Keeping the house neat, maybe sewing a rug and curtains, mending their rather disreputable clothes…Being useful and loved and happy, and surrounded by a passel of adoring children. But children grow up…or at least, they’re supposed to. In my world, like my brothers. And I think I’ve tried all that anyway and I’m a bit done.”
It was funny…she had finally come to Never Land—but for entirely different reasons now. Not because she was a girl who wanted to take care of others and find a place for herself; because she was a human who wanted adventure and quests and a reason for getting up in the morning and a purpose in life. To escape the role and future others wanted for her.
Could her life in London have been different in such a way that she wouldn’t want to flee to Never Land? She wasn’t as brave and strong-willed as those women who went to deepest Africa and the outback of Australia, leaving their families and taunting their detractors.
(Also, she didn’t have the money. The world opened up for everyone, girls especially, if there was money. Most of those adventurers were heiresses. Wendy basically ran the Darling household and knew firsthand the cost of clinging to respectable middle class. There was no money for jaunts to the Outer Hebrides, much less Africa.)
So what would make Wendy happy? That she could do—in London?
Tinker Bell was looking at her curiously. Time apparently passed outside Wendy’s head even as ideas and feelings ran around for what seemed like forever inside it. Like time in the realm of the First and Never Land.
“Sorry, lost in my thoughts. Don’t want to be a mother for the Lost Boys anymore, basically. But it would be fun to redecorate their hideout. Like your lovely little apartment. Oh, I just adored it!”
Tinker Bell smiled prettily, no modesty or self-deprecation at all.