“What happened?” Preston asked turning to Peter, who had just appeared, hovering behind him with his hands curiously behind his back. The stream had vanished and everything was back to normal. “What happened to those kids? Are they okay? Why did the fairies take them?” he asked desperately, watching after the light from the fairies, which grew smaller and smaller the further away it got.
“Those are the children who need the most help,” Peter explained. “They did not live as children should. They came Here from a Before where they were beaten and abused; they come frightened, they come without voices, without thoughts and it ’s the fairies’ job to take care of them. It ’s the fairies’ job to heal them so they can speak again, so they can come and play with us.”
“Why can’t they speak? What happens when they’re with the fairies?” Preston asked, wringing his hands nervously. This had been such a good place but even Here, even Here it seemed the horrors of the adult world could get through. “Why do they let this happen? Why doesn’t someone stop this?”
“Someone? Who?” Peter asked. “There’s nothing we can do. We don’t come from Before, we don’t control the Before and believe me if we did it would be a much better place…but we don’t and there is a natural order, an order that I cannot interrupt.”
“Did Starky come like that? He was sent to the gas chambers, did he go to the fairies? And me, I was poisoned, why didn’t I go there?” All of a sudden Preston realized even Here the adult world could get through. “Why do they let this happen? Why doesn’t someone stop this?”
“There’s a difference between dying violently by someone you don’t know and being abused regularly by someone you’re supposed to trust,” Peter replied gravely, his voice sounding almost like a grownup’s. “You and Starky were loved in the Before.”
“Who did this to them?” Preston demanded, angry.
“The pirates,” Peter replied.
“The pirates?” Preston asked, nervous. “There are pirates in the Before?”
“That’s where they come from. Except one, he says he was always Here, but he wasn’t, I saw him come, he’s lying.”
“The pirates,” Preston repeated. “So what’re you going to do with the other kids, the ones who came Here fine?” he asked. He’d had Peter to himself since he’d appeared in the woods and wondered how things would change. “Will the quiet kids ever get to play with us?”
Peter smiled, he tousled Preston’s hair, laughing, and it felt for a brief moment as if it were Before, when his Dad tucked him into bed, when his Mom picked him up from school. “I’ll show the new kids around just like I showed you around, I’ll talk to each and every one of them, they’ll all make friends. And when they’re ready, and for each one of them it’s different, but when they’re ready, the quiet kids will slip into our world, one by one, the fairies will drop them off once they’ve started to talk, and they’ll join in with the games as if none of that bad old stuff ever happened. That’s what happens to the quiet kids, it’s all okay in the end.” Peter nodded, hovering over Preston until he was just about at treetop level.
“All right,” he announced to all the new kids, who stopped their play to look up at him. “My name’s Peter and this is my tree house and we’re all going to live together. Now, if any of you would like a tour of the place, follow me.” Peter hovered closer to them. “Just think you can fly and you can, no strings attached, I promise,” he explained and several kids shot up after him. A few more took their time, but after only a minute a great line of children were flying after Peter, who’d gone a great distance in the air.
Some of the new kids stayed playing whatever games they’d been playing with the Lost Boys, though most of them followed their leader. Peter could be seen flying backwards, his hands behind his head as if he were simply lounging there, explaining the trees and the lights and Mermaid Lagoon.
Preston approached Starky, who was standing near the Ferris wheel, pointing up at it for the benefit of two new kids. “Hi,” he said, hands in his pockets as the other kids turned around, smiling warmly in return. “I’m Preston. I’m from Before.”
“Me too,” one of them said, and Starky smiled at them all.
“This here is Jake and the other is Connor. They just got Here,” Starky explained. “I was showing them around, you want to come?”
“Sure,” Preston replied.
“Come on, I want to show them the tree house,” Starky called, running, not flying, toward the trunk as first the two new boys and then Preston dashed after him.
LONDON . eNgLaND 1901
A message came to the house as Mrs. Darling waited for her children to return from the park. The message had come late as far as Mrs. Darling was concerned, and she had been pacing back and forth inside her darkened foyer with its Turkish carpets and red cloth lampshades, when a little boy handed her a note written in a messy, rushed script asking her to “Come to Saint Thomas’ Hospital—child injured.”
Mrs. Darling hired a coach to take her to the hospital, grabbing her bag and rushing right out into the street. She hadn’t considered her husband, figuring that whoever had left that message must also have had the wherewithal to find him. Nevertheless, when she arrived at the hospital it was only Netty and the boys waiting in a tiny entranceway. A secretary who wore a long, linen dress that appeared just a tad too dingy to be worn to work sat behind a large wooden desk, pushing the hair that had fallen out of her loose bun out of her eyes. It didn’t look as if her husband had been there and it was only Netty—Netty ringing her hands, Netty pacing back and forth, Netty shaking her head at herself as if she couldn’t believe she’d gotten herself into this predicament.
“What’s wrong with you?” Mrs. Darling asked once she arrived as John and Michael (she’d never truly consented to calling her youngest son Paul, the name did not seem to suit him) ran up to her. It took her a moment, but only a moment, to realize that Winifred wasn’t with them.
“It’s Winifred, Mrs. Darling, the two of them were playing on the bridge and I told them to stop, really I did, but they just wouldn’t listen and she fell right into the water. Hit her head, she hit her head,” Netty cried.
“What’s wrong with my daughter, where is she, why can’t I see her?” Mrs. Darling demanded of the secretary, ignoring Netty. As a woman who lived in Bloomsbury with an estate that averaged £1200 a year she acted as if this secretary, like her servants, should naturally drop everything for her. She strode toward the calm woman, who sat at her desk, eyes downcast as if she couldn’t see her.
“She’s in with the doctor, he’ll come out and speak to you when he’s ready,” the woman replied with a professional distance.
“Where is my husband? Netty, didn’t you have a message sent to his office?”
“I thought about it, Mrs. Darling, really I did,” the bumbling woman cried, twisting a stained white handkerchief between her red, blotchy hands. “But I forgot where he worked and I thought if you came here, you could find him.”
“Oh, you. . . .” Mrs. Darling steamed, annoyance masking her worry. She strode back to the secretary’s desk and snatched a piece of stationary. She then grabbed a fountain pen that had been lying near the edge of the table and wrote furiously. When she finished she handed the folded paper to Netty. “There you go, it will be the last thing you do for this family. Send word to my husband at the office, the address is there and if he doesn’t come within the hour, Netty, I’ll have the police sent after you.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Netty responded, hustling out the front door as if she hadn’t noticed at all that she’d been fired.
Mrs. Darling waited nearly the entire hour for her husband to come, but finally he strode in through the front doors, his broad chest out,