Then there’s Peter and the mermaid. I’ve held on tightly to that since it happened—pored over it, studied where he touched her body versus mine—and I’ll be relieved to not have to think of it anymore. Though I do wonder briefly, for a moment, if it’s something that I should think about, that maybe, as far as concerns go, it’s a valid one—? It seems as though there’s a tiny bit of sense in that thinking, but I don’t want sense; you don’t come here for sense, do you? So I let it go, watch that shell-shaped clutch purse clatter to the ground and bounce around my ankles, and I feel so light all of a sudden, so quietly reassured of Peter’s affections for me, I have no idea why it’s taken me this long to lay all this down.
I laugh at the silliness of myself because a kiss is a kiss, do you know what I mean? And quietly, I know in myself, that were the other to have tried to kiss me any moment up until now, I’d have let him. But I don’t want to let him anymore, even though I maybe do.
Which leads me to by far the prettiest bag I’m holding. It’s all sterling silver, solid. More of a clutch than a bag, I suppose. The front is covered in repoussé flowers, and the back of the case has something engraved on it that I dare not read. It all hangs on a silver chain link I’m gripping too tightly, and I know without opening it that it’s his hands on me, how he tugged his jacket tight around me. I would bask in this moment all the time, lie under it like it’s a sun I’m bathing in, but I know now that having feelings for a pirate isn’t a good idea. He isn’t who I thought he was, and I’m not what he wants, so I drop it. I hate how it feels on the way down—the letting go feels more like a ripping—but once it hits the ground, the great weight lifts from me, the one where I was worried that I was starting to love him.
What a silly thought! I can be so stupid sometimes. Peter’s right.
There’s just one bag left in my hand now. It’s the one I’m holding on to tightest. Small, leather. A pouch. The kind that looks unassuming but might have jewels in it or gold.
I peek inside it, not because I don’t know what’s inside but because I do.
The snow on our noses when we almost kissed and the breeze that felt like more than a breeze. I close my eyes, let myself remember it one last time before I pack it away forever—breathe it in, smell the crispness of the air, remember how he smells like leather and rum and tobacco and promises and fa—
o. I shake my head at myself. It doesn’t smell like that. It can’t. It couldn’t. He couldn’t. Even though a small voice inside me somewhere (who sounds older and wiser than I) tells me that I shouldn’t, I use my free hand to pry the pouch from my other one. It clatters and falls heavily, and I instantly want to pick it back up, but I fight the urge and kick it away instead.
And then, right as I’m about to leave, I spot it. Under a pile of the shoulder bags. A backpack. Ugly, cheap, scratchy material. It must have fallen off by itself. I didn’t want to remember it, but in light of it all, I feel I perhaps should—remember him how he deserves to be remembered…how he wants me to remember him. So I pick it up and put it back on. Make myself remember Hook in that bar, with those girls, his hands as eager as his mouth to tell me stay away from him, nothing about his words softened now by any of the lovelier things I’d clung to before. I stare at myself in the mirror. From the side, the leather pouch calls to me, and I ignore it, then I clip the backpack around my chest and walk away.
I squint up in the light of about eight suns when I walk out.
Peter frowns at me. “Took long enough.”
I flash him a light smile. “Just being spectacularly thorough.”
Peter bats those dangerously green eyes at me. “You are spectacular, girl. Come.” He takes my hand. “There’s a place I want to show you.”
“Where is it?”
“Somewhere.” He shrugs.
“What is it?”
He leans in close to me and says with a smile, “It’s where all the big things come from.”
Then he grabs me by the waist and tosses me into the air, grinning as he zooms after me, takes my hand, and pulls me higher, higher into the sky.
I stare over at him with a fresh kind of fondness. It’s easier now. Now that the bags I was holding are hidden away and also now that we’re up in the sky. Peter Pan is something else in the sky. He ripples his finger through the air like water, dives through clouds like a dolphin, all the while being lit up from behind like a Greek god of sorts.
He beams at me. “Never taken anyone else here before.”
“Never!” I’m delighted. “Not even Calla?”
He pauses to think.
“Maybe her,” he says, then shrugs and keeps flying. “But I made her close her eyes.” I purse my lips, fractionally less thrilled till he zips over to me, nose to nose. “But you get to keep your eyes open.”
I roll them. “How lucky.”
He smooshes his nose into mine and gives me a smile, and I get butterflies so big they could fly me into a whole different sky, but then Peter grabs my hand and starts bringing me down.
“Almost there.” He looks back at me. “You’re going to love it, Wendy.”
That stings for a second, but then I spot something from afar that I cannot possibly be seeing.
I stop dead in the tracks of the sky.
I squint. “Is that—”
Peter hovers in front of me, hands on his hips, proud and tall like he built this place himself.
“A dinosaur,” he announces, then he grabs my hand, flying us down towards it.
A brontosaurus, to be exact. Blue. On the greenest grass I’ve ever seen, that’s covered in—
I look at Peter.
“Are those mushrooms?”
He holds both my hands as our feet touch the ground.
“Giant ones.” He nods.
I look around us. Flowers as tall as trees. Trees as tall as skyscrapers. Eagles overhead the size of a light aircraft.
“Is everything giant here?” I ask him as a lady beetle the size of a cat crawls by us.
Peter gives me a big grin. “Welcome to La Vie En Grande.”
“This place is amazing,” I tell him as I stare up at the sky. He’s lying next to me; we’re on a huge lily pad, the size of a pontoon.
“Do you think?” Peter asks, rolling onto his stomach, looking down at me.
I give him a look. “Are you crazy?”
Underneath us swim koi fish the size of orcas and blue whales their regular size, because Peter said the ones on Earth are the giant kind; they just escaped one day to our world, and we shouldn’t like them to be any bigger or else who knows what might happen.
“I love it,” I tell him sincerely.
And then all the fish beneath us scatter, and a shadow spreads in the water about the size of a lorry.
“Peter,” I say as I sit up slowly, tucking my legs under myself. “Something’s here.”
He looks around, unaffected. “Oh!” He sits up. “That’s just my kraken.”
I stare over at him. “Your what?”
He shrugs, dangling his feet in the water. “My kraken,” he says, looking back over his shoulder at me before he slips into the water, and I let out a little scream as I scramble after him.
“Peter!” I call for him, reaching into the water. Nothing for a long few seconds, then he pops up on the other side of the lily pad, elbows resting up on it.
“I’d stay away from the edge if I were you.” He gives me a look. “The kraken likes me, but he doesn’t like you.”
I scurry back into the centre, and Peter lets out a little laugh as he climbs back onto the leaf, lying back down on his stomach, warm under the sun.
He has a beautiful back. So brown, so broad, sprinkled freckles on it from all the suns here, a gift of a tiny constellation all mapped out on him.