Stars (Wendy Darling #1)(20)
Peter rolled his eyes and laughed.
“You don’t need things from this world in Neverland. Everything you need will be provided for you.”
John turned his head. “What about books?”
“You don’t have need for magical stories in Neverland. There, you’ll create your own.” His eyes rested on Wendy. “There are very big adventures waiting for us.”
Swallowing the uncomfortable feeling churning its way up her chest, Wendy tucked her hair behind her ear.
“How do we get there?”
“Come up here, and I’ll show you.” Wendy and the boys climbed up on the windowsill, each of them clutching an earthly possession: Wendy with her note from Booth tucked into her nightgown, John with their father’s top hat (“Are you really bringing that?” she asked, to which he ignored her completely), and Michael with Giles. Peter swung his body up onto the ledge using the bookcase edge and then proceeded to linger inches above the ground in front of them.
“Well, Darling family, this is it—no turning back. Are you ready to have an adventure?”
Wendy nodded, unsure of what strange intoxication led her to do so. This was so dangerous! This was so exciting! The quieted flame in her mind whispered Booth’s name, and Wendy suddenly understood exactly why she was doing this. Just for a night, she could have a distracting adventure, just for a few hours, before she must decide between the family that she loved, and the boy that she loved. Yes, that was it. Just a tiny escape. Peter reached deep into his pocket and pulled out the swirling ball of lavender light. The children’s eyes went wide as they stared at it.
“Peter, what is that?” John whispered. They clustered around his hand. The light ebbed with each breath from Peter’s mouth. It seemed connected to his skin, to his being. Lavender lights reflected in his eyes as he gazed at it with adoration.
“This, my friends, is a celestial gate to every star cluster and constellation in the universe. It can take you wherever you desire to go.” He grinned and tossed it in the air, catching it lightly in his outstretched palm in front of Wendy’s face.
“I call it the doorway.” He looked proud of himself for explaining it with such clarity. A satisfied look crossed over his charming features. “And it belongs to me.”
Peter pursed his lips together and let out a low whistle, a series of notes that rose and fell. The doorway rose slowly out of his hand and circled in the light, growing larger and larger. Peter flung his hand out, and the doorway flew out the window, climbing up and up until it disappeared into the night sky.
“But Peter . . .” Michael whined.
“Just wait, my little friend. Just wait.”
Wendy held her breath as a great cracking sound erupted through the sky, as if God were crumbling the world in his large hands. A pair of tuxedoed men drunkenly staggered beneath the window, not even looking up as the world shook with such a great sound that the children covered their ears. The cracking sound eventually subsided into a low hum, and Wendy watched in wonder as the stars exploded into a thousand brilliant whirling shades of blue and purple, pulled into the whirlpool of the doorway’s vortex, constellations becoming streams of heavenly light. Peter took her hand lightly and raised it to the sky, her fingers tracing what seemed like ink. She pulled her hand back out of shyness, before realizing that her fingertips glowed.
“Pieces of star,” he murmured. Then he took her fingertips and ran them along his cheeks in two lines. When Wendy jerked her hands away, Peter looked as if he were a warrior, streaked with glowing white light.
“That’s the doorway. We’ll fly up to it, second star to the right and straight on till morning!” he crowed. Reaching down, he took Wendy’s hand in his own, and she began to float off the windowsill.
“John!” John reached out and took her hand and then reached down for Michael. Michael squealed with delight and grabbed John’s hand. All of the children were floating now, rising higher with each second. Wendy felt a rush of fear and delight, equally excited and terrified of what came next. Surely, this was still a dream, so what was the danger? Then she saw Peter’s eyes bearing down into her own, felt the sweat of his palm and the firm way he cradled her fingers within his own, and she knew it was not a dream, for her subconscious could never create someone so beautiful and complex and so completely free. She raised her head to look at him, this strangely childlike man, his eyes focused on the glowing vortex in the sky. She was struck by the sudden need to kiss his chin. She shook her head. Booth! What was wrong with her?
“Remember that you cannot let go of my hand, Wendy, and boys—you cannot let go of each other, or of Wendy. Do you understand? If you do, your parents will have to scrape you off the sidewalk.”
A tremor of fear ran through Wendy as she realized the implications of his warning. John’s hand tightened within her own.
“Now, I’ll ask you once more—are you ready for an adventure?” Intoxicated by the power of flight, all the children screamed their consent, and Peter launched them up off the windowsill and into the London night sky, leaving Nana howling and pacing back in the nursery.
Had they waited five more minutes, they would have seen their parents returning and breaking down the nursery door, convinced by some divine intuition that their children were not safe; they would have heard their frantic cries as they pulled back their bed sheets one by one, and they would have seen their panicked movements as they searched under every bed and inside every wardrobe, desperate to be angry with their children for worrying them so. Alas, it was not meant to be, for since the children were flying away through the night, they would never see their father fall to his knees in front of the window or hear their mother screaming at Liza. Adventure had beckoned, but in the same way, an unfathomable grief had arrived for the Darling parents.