a little house for you when you visited, a bit like your place now,” Wendy said dreamily, wrapping her arms around her knees. “There’s a fancy toy store downtown with the most cunning little furniture for dolls.…Tufted sofas and real Persian rugs the size of my hand. They even have tiny pewter dishes and the loveliest little porcelain claw-foot bathtub with a real miniature India-rubber stopper!”
Tinker Bell’s eyes widened farther with each item listed.
“I’ve never much played with dolls, but I always loved looking in the window of that shop. I could make tiny beeswax candles with cotton thread wicks to put in the tiny silver candelabra they sell—they’re almost like jewelry, they’re so tiny and sparkling and delicate! Imagine if they really worked. Well, I don’t suppose you need a candle at night when you’re getting ready for bed—you carry yours around with you all the time.”
Tinker Bell looked around at her glow and smiled smugly.
“Well, anyway, I’d have everything else all set up for you. You will come visit? When this is all over? And I return home?”
Despite the newfound (though mild) desire to return to London, the idea of the end of her adventure came down on Wendy hard, as solid as the dreaded end of a perfect summer day—or eventual end of life itself. She looked down at her ragged, dripping dress in wonder. She had been kidnapped, beaten around, almost drowned, nearly trapped in a desert for all eternity…and yet the thought of it all being over was terrifying.
The thought of never seeing Tinker Bell again…after they finally began to get to know each other…
The little fairy was frowning, but not angrily. It seemed like she was considering a thought that was so new and alien to her that she automatically distrusted it.
Me and Peter, you mean? Us come visit you? Come inside?
“You needn’t bring Peter, if it makes you uncomfortable. It’s funny, I came all the way to Never Land and haven’t even actually met the boy yet. And I’ve still had lots of adventures. But it could just be…you, you know. I would miss you so terribly. You could take an afternoon. We could have tea, like my mother does with ladies she likes. I confess I’ve never liked the idea of tea out with anyone besides Mother before. Because I don’t have any close friends—and because it’s really a little silly. Flower plates and talk of the weather and only one lump of sugar. I’m supposedly a young woman and I still think tea tastes awful without at least two…but I have to put on a good show for the boys. Act like an adult, you know, set an example.”
Tinker Bell was nodding, obviously a little perplexed as Wendy chattered on, too nervous about her heartfelt admission to do anything besides babble about inconsequential things afterwards. Belittling and dismissing her own deep feelings. As always.
The little fairy put a hand on her thumb and patted it.
I think I would like that. But we’ll see.
“All right, plans for the future, better to concentrate on the now, eh?” Wendy said, shaking her head free of silly thoughts of fairies coming to a London bedsit to visit an aging spinster. “Let’s keep an eye on the rain, and leave the moment it lets up.”
And the drops fell, and time passed, the two girls from different worlds sat in companionable silence.
The sun shone its absolute hardest. The sky it sailed in was a pure balmy blue, empty but for the occasional harmless puffy cloud and the impressive but subtextually unimportant albatross.
(This was Never Land. It was a giant white bird, distinguished from the smaller white birds—seagulls—only by size and call.)
The sea below stretched far and smooth in every direction, green as a precious gem. In London someone would point out how one can see the earth’s curvature at sea after only twelve miles, but this was Never Land and nobody cared. The horizon did curve gently, and little wispy clouds would flock to it at sunrise and sunset for a perfect viewing. That was what geometry and distances were for in Never Land.
A jolly pirate ship flew over the waves. Its sails puffed out like a giant wind child was blowing on them. Its skull-and-crossbones flag snapped merrily in the wind.
The whole scene practically screamed adventure and shenanigans, as in Never Land it should.
But something was wrong.
The crew on the deck was neither swabbing reluctantly nor singing lustily. There were no sea chanteys being belted out