*
The Found Girls tried to follow, but I remembered now. How to fly, how to maneuver between the trees, how to ride the whirls and gusts of the wind. I led them on a merry chase, laughing through tears as one by one they fell away, unable to follow where I was going.
Tinker Bell squirmed and fought until I gave a warning squeeze. I couldn’t kill her, but immortality wouldn’t protect her from the pain of crushed bones.
Soon we raced over another ocean, through salty, rumbling clouds. An island grew beneath us. I couldn’t tell if we were descending, or if the island was coming toward us. Maybe there was no difference.
I landed in a clearing made of granite, smoothed and polished to a cold, glass finish. Rose petals rained from the sky, melting into red-tinged rings when they touched the ground. Weeping willow trees surrounded us. Wind whispered through their branches.
I loosed my grip, and Tinker Bell shot up out of reach. “This is the Neverland. How—”
“It’s not, exactly.” I began to walk. “This is my Neverland. This is where I fled when Lillian died.”
With each step, the grief and nightmares came to life. A wet breeze carried the sharp smell of antiseptic. Through the willow branches, I glimpsed shadowy doctors rustling about, their fingers tipped with the needles they’d used to try to save Lillian.
“I never truly forgot you,” I said. “No matter how many doctors I talked to, how many medicines they gave me. No matter how I grew up. After Lillian made me a mother, you began to return in my dreams. You didn’t want me, of course, but I was terrified you’d take her. Night after night I woke up to reassure myself she was still in her crib. In her bed. Then, in the hospital, I woke to make sure she was still breathing. I still wake up in the night, but I’d forgotten why.”
“I don’t like this place. Take me back!”
“I don’t want to.” Here, I could forget. Here, I could fly. On this island, I was Peter Pan. I was key and compass and master and prisoner. “It took a long time to make my way back to the real world, last time.”
I hadn’t made it. Not entirely. My thoughts and memories were too heavy. I’d had to leave some behind. I’d smashed the remaining fragments together like ill-fitting puzzle pieces. “All those years I was afraid you’d take her. But at least if you’d stolen her, I had a chance of getting her back. So that’s the story I told myself.”
“I’ll let you be a Found Girl again. You’ll fly and dance and play and believe. You’ll be happy.”
I stopped walking. “I’m too old.”
“You don’t have to be.”
It struck me that Tinker Bell wasn’t angry anymore. Her rage would return soon enough, but right now there was no room for it. Right now, she was afraid.
“You can be one of my children. I’ll be your mother again.”
Had I been happy? I knew I hadn’t wanted to leave. I remembered sobbing and screaming after her the night she left me behind.
I also remembered the four girls we’d stolen that night, and the man who’d fought so desperately to stop us.
When he found me, his grief and anger hadn’t changed, but another emotion joined them—compassion. He’d driven me to the hospital, made sure I was cared for. He never threatened or tried to hurt me. He simply asked—begged—for me to tell him how to find his children.
I couldn’t help him. Just like I couldn’t help Lillian.
I remembered my screams the night Lillian’s breathing finally stopped. Listening to the howling wind, I realized I’d never stopped screaming.
I twisted around and hovered directly in front of Tinker Bell. “I wonder,” I said carelessly, “how long it will take them to forget you.”
She brightened with fury as I flew away. I plunged through the willow trees. Tinker Bell followed, but I knew this place. I’d fought its hazards. I tore through branches that reached to drag us down. I dodged the numbing claws. I flew higher, shielding my eyes against the sudden rainfall.
It wasn’t long until the ringing of bells fell behind and faded into silence.
*
Of course the Neverland had been make-believe in those days, but it was real now. . . .
—J. M. Barrie
*
The Found Girls were waiting in the darkness around the trailer. They scattered when they realized I’d returned alone. Those few who still bore active fairy dust flew away like birds. The rest scampered like rabbits.
I swooped toward Clover and knocked her down in a patch of grass toward the edge of the trailer park. She tried to fight, but I caught her wrist and pried the blade from her hand.
She fought and kicked and bit and cried. I wrapped my arms around her and held tight so she couldn’t hurt herself.
She tried to claw my arms. I adjusted my grip and waited. Minutes passed, or maybe hours, until time extinguished the last glimmer of our fairy dust.
“I want to fly,” she whispered furiously.
“I know.” Neither of us would ever fly again. “Your mother asked me to find you. Your parents miss you. Do you remember them?”
She shook harder and buried her face in my arm.
I looked over at the trailer. I knew where and who Peter was now, but I couldn’t come back. Not yet. There were too many parents like Gwen Akerman. Too many families that had never stopped screaming. Too many girls now lost and afraid, facing that terrible journey back.
Purpose took root in the stone inside me. I couldn’t make that journey for them, but I could be their compass. I could help them along the way.
For now, I simply held Clover in my arms. Two Found Girls, grieving together.
TEAM FAIRY
* * *
BY JIM C. HINES
Why do I write about fairies and fairy tales instead of robots? Let me put it this way. Fairies are a reflection and distillation of humanity, boiled down to one pure emotion at a time. Robots are a reflection and distillation of a toaster oven. All things considered, writing about Tinker Bell was an easy choice. Like the other female characters in Peter and Wendy, Barrie’s treatment of Tinker Bell has problems. She’s in turn self-centered, jealous, vain, vindictive, and homicidal. By the end of the book, Tinker Bell is dead and Peter has literally forgotten all about her. But we know she’s dodged death once already, because children believed in fairies. . . . Tinker Bell might be a common fairy, but she’s also a tinkerer, with the kind of mind that likes to figure out how things work. And now she knows how to beat death. This is where “Second to the Left” came from: a Tinker Bell with shades of the old fairy tales, powerful and worshipped. A character who could be an unapologetic villain. A character whose nature allows us to explore our own humanity, one raw emotion at a time.
THE BURIED GIANT