“Oh, Peter.” Wendy’s eyes filled with tears.
“It had already been a strange night. The sea next to our town was violent and angry, and a full harvest moon rose over Wick, its orange light bathing the town red. I fell into the river and was pulled under. My body was dragged down deep, deep into a crag that lay under the river, deeper than a river should be. It was bottomless, like the ocean. I sank down, lower and lower, as the water grew dark around me. I passed deep into what seemed like an endless current, and then I remember seeing blue and lavender lights swirling under the water, the same lights you passed through when we came here through the portal. The next thing I knew I was swimming upward, and I came out of the sea just beyond the beach of Pan Island. I swam to shore, instantly fell asleep, and I woke a day later to a beautiful Neverland morning—and quite a bad sunburn!”
Wendy giggled. Peter turned and faced her. “I’ve never looked back. I am not that child, and that was never my life. I never speak of it, because it has no relevance to who I am now.” Peter looked down at her, his emerald eyes shining as he took in her face. “Everything I have ever wanted is here. Especially now.”
Wendy looked at the darkening green walls of glass; the directness of Peter’s gaze made her uneasy. “Thank you for telling me.”
Peter flew to the top of the lantern and poked his head out through the open star. “Ooooh. It’s starting.” He flew down and stood beside her, shyly taking her hand. “Wendy, I wanted to take you here to show you something extraordinary. Something you would never see in that other world. Darling, you haven’t seen anything yet of Neverland. I will show you every treasure, every secret pocket of this land. There are so many beautiful things here.”
He reached out and brushed her cheek with the edge of his finger. “Such beauty. Now, sit . . . here.” He settled Wendy down on a stack of blankets that was piled on the floor. “Just wait. And while we wait . . .”
He reached deep into the pocket of his long coat, patterned with autumn leaves and cobwebs, and his hand emerged holding an exquisite set of pan pipes, etched with golden vines. With a coy smile, he began playing a melody that seemed to weave its way right through her skin—low and lilting and penetrating, the music was a soft caress of notes that she felt in every part of her. The strange trill of the pipes, like reeds weeping in rain, filled the lantern up with its forlorn sound. She felt as if she were floating above herself. Her headache subsided, and any thoughts of doubt or guilt disappeared into the wholeness of the music, Peter rendering her into nothingness with just his gaze.
As Peter continued playing, the room filled with light. Wendy gasped as the sea-glass floor of the lantern lit up with a thousand tiny stars. The light from below projected around the glass, and she was suddenly swimming in fragments of blue-green light, each one the shape of a tiny star. She reached up her hand and let the lights play over her splayed fingers. “What magic . . .”
Peter stopped playing and laughed. “It’s not magic. Look.” Wendy opened the tiny door and looked out over the ocean. Below the lantern, for perhaps just the length and width of a mile, the sea glowed with stars. Peter leaned over her, his arm around her waist. “They are starfish, and this time of year they illuminate their limbs in hopes of attracting a mate. It happens every night around this time for a couple of weeks; then once they have found their mates, they disappear back into the sea, back into the night.”
The ocean surface swayed over the starfish, but their light pulsed on, steady and bright, their stars hopeful of the perfect mate, their light beaming up through the waves that battered around them. Wendy raised her eyes to Peter, his eyes looking out over the water, so happy and so lovely, and it was then that she knew she would lose herself here, to him, to this place. He looked back at her.
“Wendy . . .” He clasped her against him, and then they were floating up into the lantern, the light of a thousand stars all around them, the green glass around them dancing with reflections.