Everything Changed

I present to you a fanfiction story, based from a dream I had.

            I groaned as I combed my long, black hair.  I was sick and tired of school, but I had to go.  Every.  Single.  Stinkin’.  Day.  Including today.  It was way too early for anyone to be up, including me.  It was nearly six-thirty.  Too early.

            I wove my hair into a braid and sat on my bed listening to the tree branches tapping against my window.  Then I remembered that there were no trees near my window.  Of course I began to freak out.  I was a sixteen year old girl, home alone, unarmed, in my second story bedroom, without my cell phone.  I felt my heart stop and surprisingly, so did the tapping.  I thought that was that, but as soon as I relaxed, the tapping began again.  Slowly, cautiously, I walked toward my bookshelves and reached for the heaviest dictionary I owned before tiptoeing toward my window and moving the curtain.

            Outside my window was a young boy, about ten years of age, peering in, green eyes twinkling and a wide, pearly white smile on his face.  When he saw me, his smile grew even wider and he waved frantically.  I took a startled step backward, dropping the curtain as I stepped back.  Then, just as quickly as I had stepped back, I stepped forward and peered out my window once more.  I felt the large dictionary fall from my hand.  The boy had nothing to stand on.  He was levitating right outside my window.  His smile grew a tad fainter when he saw I wasn’t opening the window and he tapped it again, mouthing the words, ‘let me in.’

            Nervously, I opened it a crack.  “Who are you?”

            He laughed merrily, as if it was the funniest joke he had heard, “Don’t you know?”

            I shook my head, wondering if I was supposed to know him.

            “I’m Peter!  Peter Pan!  Can I come in?”

            “He’s just a fictional character!”  I protested, sure I had lost my mind.

            “Evidently he’s not.”  The boy threw his head back and laughed.

            “Yes he is.  I just read about him in a book.”

            He gasped.  “You can read?  Oh, I wish I could read!  Come and read to me and the lost boys!”

            I shook my head.  “You’re crazy!  What do you take me for?  An idiot?  I have a 4.0 GPA and plenty of common sense to go with it.”

            “What’s a GPA?”

            I began to wonder if he was telling the truth.  I’d always loved Peter Pan.  “Are you really Peter?”

            The boy nodded.  “Yes and I want you to come with me!  Please, please, come with me!”

            “But I can’t fly!”  I protested sadly.

            “Of course you can’t right now.  Let me in and I’ll put the fairy dust on you.  Then you just think happy thoughts and you can fly!”

            I opened my window all the way and the boy graced in.  “Oh thank you so much!”  He reached in a little pouch held to his waist with a woven grass belt and brought out a fist.  He opened his fist and acted as though he was blowing a kiss to me.  Shimmering dust flew from his hand in tiny particles and settled over me like a glimmering film.  A little bit of it went up my nose and I sneezed it out onto my carpet.

            “Now think lovely thoughts….”  He whispered in a sing-song voice.

            I did think lovely thoughts.  In my mind.  To be a child again.  To be able to fly.  No school.  A million dollars.  To go to Neverland.  To have money for as many books as I want.

            “Out loud!”

            “Food!  Christmas!  No school!  Puppies!”  I shouted at the top of my lungs, jumping upward each time I did so…but to no avail.  I didn’t rise and soar through the air the way Peter did just above my head.  “Why isn’t it working?”  I looked up at him with sorrow in my eyes.

            “You need happier, lovelier thoughts!”

            “More sleep!  A mathless world!  Christmas!”  As if Christmas was the magic word, I rose into the air and promptly bumped my head on the ceiling.”

            Pan’s face lit up.  “Now you can come with me!”

~

            I’d never felt so free before in my life than I did in the moments I spent gliding alongside Peter Pan, and I never have since.  He didn’t seem to notice how much bigger I was than he, he only cared about the funny stories I told him of my classmates and my pets.  After a while, I didn’t even notice his youth.  I just felt at home with him.

            When we finally came to Neverland, I was amazed.  When people read Peter Pan and read about Neverland, they think it sounds great.  But it’s not as great as it sounds.  It’s even better.  It’s so small and so large all at the same time.  It’s small enough to take a trip around the perimeter in one day, but large enough that you could live there for 2,000 years and never explore the entirety.  It’s lush and green, while at the same time being dry and barren.  It’s a paradox in itself.  A beautiful, beautiful paradox.  I never wanted to leave.

            The lost boys were so sweet.  They weren’t, of course, the same lost boys from the book.  Those had gone home with Wendy, John and Michael.  But they were just as lovable I thought they would be, and I spent the next two weeks…maybe months, telling them stories, reading to them, exploring with them.  I was the oldest, but no one ever noticed and I had no problem being their mother.

            We had some adventures…but never with Hook.  Not until I’d been there for what felt like forever.

            “We’re going to visit Hook!”  Peter announced one day, after third breakfast.

            One of the lost boys, named Charlie, gasped.  “Captain Hook?  But, Peter, he’s dangerous!”

            “Ho hum!”  Peter scoffed, “Captain Hook?  Dangerous?  Ha!  He’s nothing but a codfish!  A despicable codfish.”

            Charlie’s eyes grew wide, “But, Peter, what if he kills you?”

            “He can’t kill me!  But even if he did, to die would be an awfully big adventure.”

            “Oh, Peter, don’t say such things.”  I admonished him, stepping into my mother role easily.

            “But it’s true, Mother.  Now we must be off!”

~

            We landed aboard the Jolly Roger and instantly were surrounded by pirates.

            “Well, well, if it isn’t Peter Pan….”  Spat Hook.

            He was different than I had imagined him.  He was tall, thin, and had a trustworthy looking face.  His black hair brushed across his forehead, and he didn’t look much older than twenty-five.  He didn’t look like the villain portrayed in the book and movies.  He looked…kind.  It startled me as I looked at him, how kind he seemed.

            “Why yes, Mr. Codfish, it is I!  Peter Pan!  And I have come to vanquish you, once and for all.”

            I watched as they battled.  And as I watched, it seemed as though Hook was being careful not to hurt Pan.  Almost as though he cared for the young boy.  Almost as though this was a game for him.

            Peter flew high above Hook, his dagger in his hand, then, right before he flew downward, he crowed.  I hadn’t yet heard him crow…and it was a glorious sound.  But it brought about the most shocked look on Hook’s face.  He fell to his knees and raked his fingers through the air moaning.

            Peter landed and looked at Hook strangely.  “Are we scared of defeat, little codfish?”

            Hook muttered inaudibly.

            “What did you say?”

            “There’s a tale I heard long ago…and it’s coming true.”

            I wondered what he meant by that.  But as I watched him, I noticed that I had made a mistake.  He looked closer to eighteen than twenty.  And Pan suddenly looked about twelve.

            “Oooh!  A story!”  The lost boys instantly plopped down on the deck, rested their heads in their hands and peered up at Hook, ready, as always, for a story.

            “A fairy once told me that a girl who wasn’t a woman, but wasn’t a child, would come to Neverland…and the first time Peter crowed after she arrived…Peter would grow old…and I would grow young.”

            My eyes widened.  The change was happening faster.  Or maybe it only seemed that way because I knew it was happening.  Peter stared down at his body, shocked as his legs shot up like trees.

            “No!”  He cried out.  “No!”  His second ‘no’ was lower than his first.  “I want to always be a little boy and to have fun!”  His voice was deeper, deeper.  “I’m a little boy!  A little boy!”

            And he didn’t lie.  He was a little boy….  But the body he was in was a teenager’s.  His nostrils flared as he sank to his knees and began to cry and rock himself.  “No, no, no.”

            Hook’s tall, slender figure became shorter, chunkier.  He looked about twelve now.  “I have something I need to say.”  His voice was high and girly compared to the voice I’d heard him talking in just moments ago.

            Peter’s twenty year old body was racked with sobs.  I was sure it had to be torture going through puberty as fast as he had.  “It hurts.”  He moaned.

            “I created this land, Peter.”

            “No, no you didn’t!  I did!  I created Neverland!”

            “No you didn’t!”  Hook screamed.  “I created it from the dreams I had, from the dreams my brothers and sisters had.”

            “You lie!”  Peter shouted.  “Stop lying, stop it!”

            “I’m your father, Peter.  I’m your father.”

            It seemed so strange to hear a nine year old telling a thirty year old that he was his father.  But it explained the gentleness of the duel.  I felt like everything was falling apart, but it had to have been worse for Peter.  His whole life was being changed, destroyed.  Their ages were changing more rapidly.  As soon as the words had come from Hook’s lips, he was a small child, barely able to walk, and Peter was nearing fifty.  None of it made sense to me.  None of it.

            “We have to fly home.”  I told the lost boys.  “I don’t think we can stay here.”

            “No!”  Peter cried out, “Don’t leave me here alone.”

            With his sweet, beautiful, confused green eyes looking at me, I knew I couldn’t leave him.  My mothering instinct was too strong.  Which is why I couldn’t leave the little baby alone.  I picked Hook up in my arms, and gently unscrewed his hook.  I could tell by his eyes that he was in a baby’s body, but was still a man.  He just couldn’t make his mouth form words.  Then, before I’d realized it was happening…he vanished.

            “Oh, Peter, I’m so sorry.”  I stroked his graying hair.  “I never should have come.  I should have told you I was too old for Neverland.”

            Peter shook his head weakly.  “You told us stories.”

            “But stories aren’t everything.”

            “I’m going to die, Mother.”

            I bit my lip and felt tears on the corner of my eyes.  “I’m so sorry.”

            “It’s okay.”  He held up a knarled, old hand, “To die will be an awfully big adventure.”  And he went to his adventure.

            I didn’t know how to explain what had happened to the lost boys, so I simply took them home with me.  I didn’t understand what had happened or why it had happened, but it changed me.  In a way, it showed me how short life is…and how sometimes people wait ‘til the last minute to tell others important things.  I felt different every time I read Peter Pan now.  I saw Hook the way he was when I was in Neverland.  I saw Peter the way he was outside my window.  I saw everything differently.  Because everything was different now.  Everything had changed.