in action. She had grabbed the prow of the boat and flew hard, trying to drag it through the water faster. Wendy laughed not unkindly at the look of fierce determination on the fairy’s face and the tiny muscles popping out along her arms and base of her wings. A few sparkles of fairy dust sweated off.
The water grew shallow and spread into a silver delta, sculpting the soft sand into a thousand scales. The banks on either side became dunes. Once again Wendy was on a beach facing the sea.
Tinker Bell flew high up to get a better view, letting the boat go. It continued on, neither slower nor faster without her help.
“I wish you wouldn’t get your hopes up about Peter,” Wendy began carefully. “We still have no idea at all where he is, nor any way to find him. Hook should be our main concern now. We’ll have to—”
But Tinker Bell dove down and grabbed her hand violently. She pointed across the sand. The fairy’s eyes were the widest Wendy had ever seen, so wide they threatened to consume her face.
There, lying nonchalantly in the curve of a coconut tree, was Peter Pan.
“Oh,” Wendy said, her mouth making the perfect shape of the letter she spoke.
He was unmistakable. Slender, clad in bright leafy green. Soft shoes with pointed tips. Soft hat with a red feather sticking jauntily out the back. Swooping nose. Auburn hair and extremely distinctive eyebrows. Dagger dangling from a thin belt.
He let one hand trail languorously toward the ground and seemed to be conducting some sort of invisible orchestra with the other. His eyes were closed.
He was so Peter Pan it was ridiculous. He was realer than real. In brighter colors than Wendy ever imagined and far greater detail. Just like a dream but more.
“But how… ?”
They had been chasing his ghost all over Never Land and he wound up exactly where they were headed?
Tinker Bell was smiling devilishly.
Part of your magic. The stories. Part of his magic. Peter Pan.
Then she zoomed off to see him, abandoning Wendy and the boat.
Wendy struggled with a foot that was asleep and a boat that was tippy, only clumsily managing to disembark.
She started to haul the boat onto the beach—and then thought better of it. In Never Land one seemed to be stripped of everything: bags, modern possessions, decent clothing, ideas. Nothing material remained with anyone for long.
“Just look at what the Lost Boys wore and sat on, and what happened with Luna,” she murmured.
Found and then lost again. Even her own shadow.
If they needed transport someplace else, they would improvise. Wasn’t that what Peter always did in her stories?
Wendy pushed the boat back into the slow current and slapped it playfully on what would have been its flank.
“You go and help someone else now. You’re free—of me, at least.”
She watched it float away, so pretty and blue and gold like a toy, until it was safely far out in the sea.…
And pretended she wasn’t trying to delay meeting her hero.
With a sigh she turned and began to head for him (and Tink). She watched the prints her feet made in the sand and the trailing threads and tatters of her dress dancing around her freckled legs. Not the way she had imagined she would be dressed when she met Peter. Not that she really ever had imagined clothing in the adventures. Only the accessories: a stylish cap, a sharp sword. Everything else was ignored or assumed to be the usual; Wendy in a light blue dress, probably.
A shadow—her shadow!—danced over the sand to her feet, daintily touching them with her own toes. Wendy felt a surge of completeness, of warmth and solidity. Some exhaustion faded away.
She kicked her feet, spraying sand and shadow sand at her shade.
Her shadow sputtered in surprise.
“Oh, you’re back. Lovely to see you again,” Wendy said dryly.
The shadow pointed at Peter excitedly.
“Yes, I know. We found him. Ourselves. No thanks to you. You didn’t even come get us once you found him. Fat lot of good you are.”
And with that, Wendy ignored her shadow, walking with great dignity toward the palms where her friends were.
(I’m afraid, dear reader, you can’t see how the shadow reacted to this, for Wendy very steadfastly ignored her—literally refusing to see her. And since we are living this story in Wendy’s point of view, you shall have to resort to your own imagination to decide what the shadow did.)
Peter Pan sat up and looked at Wendy.
The time