I sniff, wiping my nose with the hem of the dress he bought me. I stare back up at John.
“I came for Peter, I think.” I frown. “Didn’t I?” I stare over at him, shake my head like it’s a kaleidoscope, like moving my brain around might help me to see. I press my hands into my temples and squint at nothing. “It feels so fuzzy now, but why else would I have come here?”
He nods, reeling his line in again. “I suppose that makes sense.”
“And it’s Peter.” I look up at him with a shrug. “That’s my fate, isn’t it? He’s my fate. Who I’m meant to—” I sigh and drum my fingers on my lips for a few seconds, working up the courage to say it. “Love?”
John pulls the line up from a cloud and scowls at the shimmering star he’s caught. He unhooks it and throws it back, tossing me an annoyed look. “Just a baby star.”
I watch it shimmer away, then look over at him, waiting for him to say something.
He stares out over the clouds and watches as a comet sails by. He tips his hat at it before he looks down at me. “In a way, he’s all your fate. You all come here for him.” He shrugs. “None of the ones before you remained with him though. That ought to count for something.”
“Well, how could they?” I give him a scowl. “They were mere children.”
He lifts his eyebrow. “And you are—”
“A woman,” I tell him, offended.
“Of course.” He nods. “My apologies.”
I shake my head, staring at my hands. “Jamison doesn’t want me.”
John tosses me an unsure glance. “Are you sure about that?”
“Quite.” I nod.
“Really?” His face falters. “Quite?”
I stand up quickly, decidedly. I brush rogue bits of cloud off my dress. “I should just put it away,” I say, moving back towards the shack.
“That doesn’t work how you think it might,” he calls to me, and I pause. “Who we love, how we love them—it shapes us.”
I fold my arms over my chest. “Well, I don’t know what shape I am anymore.”
He gives me a look like he thinks I’m silly. “You’re a fine shape.”
“Do you have any ancient wisdom?”
He gives me a look. “How old do you think I am?”
“Just tell me what to do,” I plead.
He sighs, scratching his chin. “Both of them make you happy. Both—” He gives me a knowing look. “Both make you sad. Both of them make you feel free but in different ways. Both hurt you but”—his face strains—“differently also.” He breathes out his nose and stares at the darkening sky.
I think I’ve been up here for hours.
Peter and I went diving for pearls this morning, but then a hurricane blew in, and Peter wanted to play in it. I said I needed to come up here anyway, and he didn’t say anything about it. I’ve come up so many times lately, he got me a cloud that floats me up and down on his command. You can access the shack through the mountain and a lot of stairs, but it’s about a day’s hike from the tree.
“One of them makes you peaceful,” he goes on. “Sometimes,” he adds as a caveat, then his eyes pinch. “The other makes you feel a peace, but it’s not real. It’s just a numbness.”
And I know which one he’s talking about, but I don’t even know if that matters because— “Only one of them wants me though.”
“So you say.” The old man sighs.
“So he says!” I tell him, indignant.
And then he does something that throws me off a little. He shrugs. “If you believe him, then you have your answer.”
I stare at him, frowning, admittedly unhappy with the conclusion but too proud to tell him why.
“I suppose I do.” I arch an eyebrow. “Fine.” I shrug as I turn on my heel. “Cumbersome, antiquated thing that is it, I’ll just take it off—”
“No!” he calls, hobbling after me, and I stop.
It’s rather rude to make an old person hobble after you, don’t you think? I think my grandmothers would be cross at me for it.
“No?” I turn back, my eyebrows arched.
The old man shakes his head. “Can’t.”
“I can’t?” I repeat, indignant.
He shrugs. “I’m closed.”
I cross my arms over my chest and give him a dubious look.
“Since when?”
Shrugs again. “Since now.”
My eyes go to slits. “Until?”
His face pulls as he thinks about it. “Morning.”
“And for what reason are you suddenly closed?” I ask him, tapping my foot impatiently, but it loses its effectiveness in the clouds. Cumulus. Very fluffy. Too fluffy for irritable feet.
He stares over at me. “Family emergency.”
And I’m seconds away from unleashing on this old man a tirade about unprofessionalism, about lying, about how he doesn’t have a family because he’s a man on a cloud, and then a thought sails into my mind, and I stare over at him.
Terribly blue eyes. Quite like…
“My grandmother had a brother,” I tell him.
He stares over at me for a few seconds before he nods once. “Yes, she did.”
“His name was John.”
He nods again. “Yes, it was.”
I take a step closer towards him. “No one’s seen him since the Second World War.”
His face goes rather solemn. “No, they haven’t.”
I’m standing. “They say he went missing somewhere over the Indian Ocean.”
His face flickers. “Somewhere over it, yes.”
“What happened?” I ask him, my voice quiet.
He knocks my chin playfully with his hand. “Another day.”
I sniff, nose in the air, indignant once again. “I shall be back in the morning.”
“All right then.” He sighs as he sits back down in his chair. “Bring me a cuppa, would you?”
I roll my eyes at him but am quietly delighted by the request.
“What kind?”
He looks offended by the question. “English breakfast.” Then he casts another line, muttering under his breath, “What kind? What other kind is there? British—the nerve of—”
I catch my cloud home, and I love my little cloud. Of all the things Peter’s given me—and there’s been a few things now (jewels, a crown, the water breathing thing, a map, a baby bird that I insisted we give back to its mother)—the cloud is by and large my favourite (aside, perhaps, from the bird).
Neverland is so beautiful from the sky, especially at dusk and dawn. When all the fires are lit and the lights start turning on and the fairy dust starts to twinkle, the entire island looks like a Christmas tree.
The cloud drops me off at the net balcony of the top floor of the tree house, where Peter and I sleep.
The boys aren’t home. That’s the first thing I notice.
It’s quiet. It’s never quiet here.
I wonder where they are? They know I like them to be home by dark. I peer around and nothing.
Nothing, and then—
I hear a moan.
Did I? Did I hear that, or am I imagining things?
I take a step deeper into the tree house.
And then I hear it again. Unmistakable and rather close by, a deep groan.