NEVERLAND SPILLED OUT UNDERNEATH THEM, a gigantic garden isle drenched with emerald valleys, jagged white cliffs, and a towering mountain spire that watched over the island like an impassive guardian. An unnaturally turquoise sea battered at the coasts. It was such an enchanting sight that it made Wendy’s chest ache. She took a deep breath of air that was very different than London’s thin, smoke-clogged offerings; here the air was heavy and warm, like the draping of a blanket. The smells of sweet flowers, a salty sea, and honey overtook her nostrils. Neverland smelled like life. Flying must be easier in this atmosphere, she thought, noticing that the wind wasn’t pushing up against her body the way it had before.
John was pulling ahead at the end of their chain excitedly, his top hat close to falling off.
“Peter! Say, how big is this island we’re seeing?”
Peter looked back at him, his red hair settling messily on his forehead. His skin flushed in the sun. He was home.
“It’s about five hundred miles by your London measurements! By my measurements, it takes about two hours to fly from end to end!”
Wendy looked down at the island, unable to control the hungry excitement bubbling up in her chest. Life in London was filled with gray skies and gray buildings, the clopping of horse hooves at all hours of the night, buildings upon alleys upon shops; this was untouched lushness, the wild. It was like nothing she had ever seen, more exciting than she had imagined possible! To think, only two hours ago, she had been lying in the nursery, covers tucked up to her chin. Wendy turned her head back to look at the doorway. In the few moments that they had been free from it, it was already churning in on itself, the lights dimming with each passing second. She watched silently as their way home became smaller and smaller until it simply folded into one small burst of lavender light, which then dissolved into a thousand tiny pieces in the sky. All that was left was the prick of shadow, no bigger than a marble. Peter nodded his head, and the light flew silently into his pocket.
“Well!” he declared with a boyish grin. “That wasn’t terribly complicated, was it?”
From the air, Wendy could make out that the island was entirely consumed with lush greenery. With the exception of the east side of the island, which was covered in a craggy white rock face that looked uninhabitable, the rest of the island was a verdant spread of a thousand different greens, like mosaics of flora and fauna, none of it familiar. A range of tree-covered mountains cut the middle of the island in half, a zipper of such immense size that Wendy found herself tempted to reach out for them. The lower peaks rose up to meet one towering peak, its very tip free of greenery; it was sharp and black, and it shimmered in the sunlight.
“Shadow Mountain!” Peter shouted down to her when he saw her looking at it. “The highest peak in Neverland, and one of the most dangerous places around. See that black tip?” Wendy nodded, spellbound. “It’s made of a flaky shale, as thin as a wafer! If you step on it, you’ll find yourself sliding down the sides with a terrible tinkling, and you’ll be impaled on a tree below.”
Mist trailed off the tip of Shadow Mountain, the white clouds wheeling down into the rolling hills of green like waves of fog, cascading down from one peak to the next. Wendy had never seen anything like it. Of course, she had seen mountains in picture books, and grainy photos of the impressive peaks of the Americas or Switzerland, but here was a real mountain, and its power, its immovable mass, caused something deep inside of her to tremble, as if she were kneeling before an indifferent god. Peter grinned.
“When Shadow Mountain blows smoke, the natives used to believe it was a sign of fertility, a time to fall in love, a time to make children.”
Wendy blushed. “The natives?”
Peter rolled his eyes. “The Pilvi Indians, a silly people, through and through.”
“Will we meet them?”