When the suns became close to setting and the mermaids started to complain about how the rocks were getting too cold to lie on, Peter whispered to me that he was bored and we should go, and that was fine with me, because if I’m being entirely truthful, I wasn’t all that mad on how the shadows make the mermaids faces look.
You want creatures like mermaids to live in your mind on a pedestal, stay up there all lofty and gorgeous. I shouldn’t care to see how they may go in the darkness, though I suppose that could be said and true about all of us.
I asked him if we could please walk to the Never Wood, as I’d have liked to have gotten the lay of the land (you know how walking helps with that), but you should have seen the look Peter gave me when I did—you’d nearly have thought I asked him for a kidney—so we flew, of course. Because it’s what he wanted, and also it’s faster, which means it was probably the sensible choice.
Besides, flying comes with its benefits. I made so many mental notes of places I’ve to visit, s. Some I’d heard of from my grandmothers’ stories, like Skull Rock, the Old Valley, which is the grounds where Neverland’s First People live, Cannibal Cove, which is actually a separate island off the east coast, and then of course the Neverpeak Mountains. There are quite a few islands and atolls littered around the mainland of Neverland, and some look probably just how you’d imagine, but others are quite bizarre. There’s one that looks like an island’s grown on the back of a giant shell, there’s one of dense and heavy jungle, there’s one entirely shrouded by clouds, and that’s all I can see from here with my normal eyes, but Peter says there’s more and that I’ll see them in time.
But I did spot what looked to me like a castle I’ve never heard of. And there’s a handful of active volcanoes here, which is incredible, and I need to visit each of them. Obviously the geology of a volcano is fascinating for everyone, not just a hopeful geologist like myself, so I ask Peter a lot of questions about them. What kind of volcano is it? How active is it? How accessible is it? Is someone monitoring it? The volcano is where I channel all my mental energy. I don’t think for a second about whether I am culpable for the death of the man Jamison Hook killed, and I certainly don’t think about what it felt like with his stupid pirate hands on my waist or how serious his eyes are, and were I to be thinking about his eyes—which I’m not—it would only be because they’re rather like water in colour, and water is the ocean and the ocean is the thing I nearly drowned in yesterday, therefore, I’m not at all even thinking about his eyes, but the ocean. And/or drowning. I barely even like the ocean*. I don’t want to be a marine biologist, if you’ll recall, I want to be a geologist and thus I should really channel all this attention to the volcanos here—which Peter evidently knows nothing about. When I asked what kind the one near Zomertierra was he said “the hot kind,” but I try not to pass judgment because I doubt he’s had a formal education. It looks neither like a super nor a composite volcano, and I hope it’s not a cone, because that would be boring. Probably a shield volcano then, don’t you think? That would be lovely.
He did kill him without a thought though, as though it were reflex. And I have a suspicion that the death in question arose because of me and me alone. Were that man to have fallen on anyone else, I feel as though perhaps he’d still be alive, and that’s confusing and horrible and confronting, particularly because I must admit (rather reluctantly) that there is some level of (strange) comfort in knowing? that Jamison Hook would kill a man for or because of me. Why he did it, I don’t know. I suppose I might never know, which would be a little bit rotten, because I do like to know things, but then it snags on my mind what they’ve always said of his kind—how you can never trust a pirate.
How much truth is in that sentence, I wonder. And a little piece of panic seeds in my chest as I do because yesterday morning, if someone killed another person for me, in front of me, in the name of me, I’d have immediately flagged that person as bad and untrustworthy, and while I do regard Hook as bad because he’s evidently a murderer and probably a philanderer, I fear I might not entirely consider him the latter.
Which, all of that’s to say, if you were to ask me for directions from the village to the Never Wood to the part of it where Peter lives, I’m quite afraid I’d fall short. I did wonder a few times en route if perhaps Peter might have forgotten the way to his own home, as I know for certain that we went around in circles twice. Now, whether that was us being lost or Peter just enjoying making me feel confused, I can neither confirm nor deny, but I will tell you this much for certain:
From the air, looking down, his home is on the east part of the crescent, on the inner cove by the dock. The landscape is confusing, actually, and I suspect that it was Peter himself who named it the Never Wood merely for lack of a better term. It’s not not a wood, but it also isn’t only that. It’s quite a bit more.
It’s an all-encompassing wilderness—woods, forests, jungles, shores, bays. Mostly each part keeps to itself, but occasionally there’ll be an overlap, and it could be jarring. For example, there was a jaguar with emerald eyes lounging in the branch of the Never Tree, which struck me as odd because I’ve never seen a jaguar in an oak tree before. Although I suppose I haven’t seen many jaguars in general. An owl in a palm tree. A toucan in some clover. Lots of life bursting forth and tumbling out over onto one another, that’s what Neverland feels like.
The tree the boys live in itself is a wonder, and I realise the moment I step inside it that it must be spelled somehow, because it opens out into a maze of a room that backs onto what looks like an Indonesian jungle.
It’s all spiral stairs made of logs and twigs and nets that sprawl the length of the rooms and I suppose act as a kind of balcony. The roofs are thatched with palm fronds, and everything seems to be held together by sticks and rope and other things that should hold this together, but things are never what they seem here. You must remember that.
Scattered about also are these… I don’t know what to call them other than nests? All of them look incredibly inviting, but none more so than the nest at the very top, which is piled high with quilts and pillows, and of all the beds I can see, it’s overtly and obnoxiously the best one, so I know immediately that one belongs to Peter.
“Have you got her?” asks a young boy, racing out. He has dark brown hair and dark eyes.
“Yes, do you?” demands another with light brown hair and glasses without any glass in them.
They both look about eleven or twelve years old.
Another boy, bigger and broader than the first two—yet still ever so much less than Peter*—strolls out, arms folded. He has almost black hair and a cheeky face.
“She’s right there, gents.” He nods over at me. “You must look before asking your inane questions.”
“Boys!” Peter hollers as he balances on a roof beam. “I got one!”
I stare over at Peter, scowling a bit at being referred to as a “one,” before I look over at the other boys, giving them a collective, uncomfortable nod.