Stars (Wendy Darling #1)(23)
Michael nodded. Peter then circled around until he was face to face with John. “And John, how would you like to go somewhere where you aren’t in charge of a five-year-old boy, but an army?”
John looked intrigued. “Yes, sir.”
“Yes, Peter.”
“Yes, Peter,” John corrected himself.
Finally, Peter leveled his gaze on Wendy. “And you?” Wendy was lost for a moment, looking back the way they had come. What was Booth doing right now? Was he still waiting for her? Did it even matter? If Peter was telling the truth, then Booth wouldn’t even notice her absence, and yet . . . Then Peter was in front of her, his green eyes looking into hers with a ferocious intensity, and her thoughts about Booth disappeared. “Do you want to go somewhere where your parents’ opinions and rules don’t matter?” He leaned in toward her and then brought his lips to her ear, so close they brushed her cheek. “Do you want to go somewhere where you can have anything you desire?”
Peter’s warm breath washed over her, smelling like leaves and honey, and then she was gone, caught up in him, caught up in the night, in the wind that whistled around them.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Take us there.”
“I will.” Peter raised his face to the night, to where the passage had climbed earlier, now a small white light twinkling in the last corner of the sky. “Open,” he whispered quietly.
He began pulling the children upward, upward, until they were flying through cold and wet clouds, upward as a hard rain pelted their faces, upward through thick fog, so thick that if it weren’t for Peter’s warm hand and John’s cold one, Wendy would have been drifting alone in a sea of gray. Upward they climbed, past the cloud cover and the strange, thin air around it, crackling with energy and a strangely magnetic current that made Wendy’s arm hair stand on edge. The temperature began steadily dropping. Frost formed on her lips and eyelashes. Higher and higher they climbed, until the air was too thin to breathe and there was nothing to fill her lungs with, nothing at all, and then her chest began painfully seizing as she struggled for air. She heard John gasping below her and tried to yell to Peter that he couldn’t breathe, that she couldn’t breathe, but there was no voice, no air, only the burning in her lungs.
“Almost there!” Peter yelled.
Wendy felt her throat close up, and her lungs felt like they were bursting against her chest, beating against her ribs, desperate to breathe. She felt John jerking his hand violently in hers, choosing between breathing and falling. Black stars exploded in her vision, and she tried to pull her hand out of Peter’s to grab at her throat, to grab anything that would make her breathe; even if she fell, it would be better than this because she would have air . . . and then it was over. The night sky exploded into a thousand fractured lights before them, bursting open like a doorway. The protective sky itself curled and tucked around the children, as lavender and blue light began leaking out of the hole in the stars. It reflected upon itself like a puddle of glass that then began to swirl clockwise, a whirling star made up of hazy colors. Out of the star poured air, sweet, glorious warm and wet air, delicious and life-giving, and Wendy gulped it into her lungs greedily, each breath making her feel more alive. John and Michael were doing the same.
“You made it!” Peter grinned. “It’s difficult the first time. The air gets thin when you’re this high. It can be unpleasant. ”
Wendy looked up at him accusingly, her politeness worn away by the lack of air. “Unpleasant? We have almost died twice tonight! Are you sure that this is safe?”
His eyes narrowed before he gave a scoff. “You have never been in any real danger. I would never put you in harm’s way, Wendy Darling. Neverland is the safest place in the world. No one ever wants to leave Neverland!” He shook his head with a laugh. “You beautiful, proper girl! You’ll understand when we get there.”
Wendy flushed at his compliment, ducking her head. Peter turned now to the doorway opening up before them, the buzzing spiral in the sky that churned and winked its treasures. Looking through the doorway was like looking into a cosmic hallway. Inside the room were three other wavy windows, shuddering and changing shape in the drifting light: one window was a world where the stars moved and shifted, one featured a pink and orange sky that radiated with light and life, and the last one had two bright moons that blazed like the sun. Peter pulled them up to the last window: a world with a faultless blue sky, a blue that burned the eyes.
“Open,” Peter whispered, for the second time. The window with the blue sky blinked and grew larger. The center of swirling light expanded and swallowed Peter’s window, the light reaching outward, growing into the same tunnel formation that Wendy had seen in the nursery. There was a moment of silence as the Darling children looked down the tunnel into another world, into this Neverland.
“Well,” John muttered, “we’ve come this far. We might as well go on.”
Peter let out a delightfully deep laugh and flew into the tunnel, pulling the Darling children with him. Wendy gave one momentary glance back, taking in the gray cloudy skies of London, but soon the window faded and all she could see were swirling lights. She faced forward, tumbling through a vortex, tumbling down, Peter’s hand strongly wrapped around her own, and before she knew it, it was daytime and all three children were floating in a cloudless blue sky, bright and clean as pool water. A thousand feet below them, a gigantic green island rose out of the water. The warm, wet air of the island enveloped them. A question pressed against her heart at the sight of it. What is . . . Peter let himself explode into a greedy and consuming laughter.