the chance, kill her.
She couldn’t turn her attention away long enough for a glance at Tinker Bell. She heard encouraging jingles now and then and knew the fairy was doing the best she could, maybe one thysolit for every dozen or two of her own. Eventually exhaustion wore even the terror whisper-thin.
She lost her fear of falling and dying.
The stars wheeled overhead in a way that made little sense. The moon (moons) never rose. Nothing Wendy had ever done in her life, not the most menial, boring household task, had ever lasted this long. Or required such continual strength: acid burned in her muscles as she lifted her arm, hit, dropped her arm, lifted, hit, and dropped.…
She barely noticed when there were only a dozen thysolits left. She had begun to sink slowly groundward, losing whatever it was that kept her afloat with the fairy dust.
“I…can’t…fly…Tinker Bell.…”
The little fairy grabbed her by the hand—while kicking a bee hard in its mandibles. Her touch helped but didn’t stop the fall. So she guided Wendy’s descent into the little boat, where the human girl crumpled into a ball. Tinker Bell defended her there, valiantly trying to drive off the last few bees.
One final thought occurred to Wendy before she passed out: They don’t talk about this in adventures.
That being a hero is just work…and boring work…endless work…nothing more…
But what of the family Wendy left behind? Does time pass in the real world as it does in Never Land? As it does in the Land of the First? How exactly are the two worlds (three worlds) connected? If it’s teatime in Never Land, what hour is it on the east coast of the Americas? What does Wendy’s father mean when he says, “It’s gin-and-tonic time somewhere in this great, bloody world,” and what exactly are cocktails? Does Wendy’s family miss her?
We shall indulge the reader with the answer to exactly two of these questions, even as we indulge the author in a bit of fourth wall breakage.
In the empty, somewhat dark house of the Darlings, it was raining outside. John and Michael burst through the door with the endless energy and boundless enthusiasm of two young men, the elder of whom had just aced a botany exam and the younger of whom had toast and treacle for lunch as a special treat from the headmaster. Also there were puddles: Michael was soaking. John was trim and dry from the top of his ridiculous hat down to his spats, for he had a large umbrella given to him at Christmastime that he took with him everywhere and called Bella.
(“Bella the umbrella, isn’t that just perfect?” And maybe it was, the first twelve times. After that, even Wendy began to grow cross.)
“Wendy, we’re home!” John called.
“Where’s the tea? I can’t smell tea,” Michael said a little plaintively.
“You can’t smell tea being made.”
“I can smell the steam, it’s all warm and moist and lovely,” Michael snapped. “And I can hear the whistle. And if she or the cook has made buns, I can smell those, too.”
“Neither hearing a whistle nor smelling buns has anything to do with smelling tea,” John pointed out with the wise air of someone much older—and more often than not a pain in the thorax.
“I guess we shall have to make it ourselves,” Michael said, completely ignoring his brother’s freely given wisdom, as he often did. He poked cautiously at the stove and looked around for the box of matches. Lack of Wendy and how-to knowledge were only temporary impediments to teatime, not permanent ones.
“But where could she be?” John asked, now sounding plaintive himself.
Old Nana finally made it into the kitchen by this point. She had been slumbering in front of the fire in one of the upstairs rooms, happily dreaming of lying in front of a fire. She chuffed, demanding the sort of greeting an elder doyenne of the household deserved.
“Nana.” Michael hugged her, and the dog didn’t mind his wet and muddy paws—the same as Michael never minded hers back when she, too, was of puddle-jumping age. “Have you seen Wendy?”
Nana sighed. If the two boys had been a little more observant of her large, expressive brown eyes, they would have realized she was saying something to the extent of, Oh, here we go again. You’re not going to bother even trying to understand what I’m about to say, but I will try to tell you anyway, because that is what good dogs do.
She walked over to the kitchen