The story I hereby let myself present to you, got inspired partially by the "A Twisted Neverland" fanfic by Musicalfreak86 and, to a much bigger extent, by the dream I once had. I'm fascinated by the idea of "tales of dead children" as proposed by Kevin Orlin Johnson, hence my attempt to come up with a story like that. The story was beta read by Moviemom44. The concept of Neverland doesn't belong to me. If you liked this story, go to my other Peter Pan fanfic, the "Dreamland" one.
"The Woods of the Lost Girls"
There is that one place in Neverland not everybody knows about. Though every child who wanders into Neverland is familiar with the existence of Pixie Hollow, the Neverwoods, the Indian camp and the bay where the mermaids splash, only a handful ever learn of the existence of the most mysterious part of Neverland. If you go deeper into the Neverwoods, ignoring the fun to be had if you stay in this part of it which is always sunny and where the cheerful voices of the Lost Boys resound, before your eyes there will appear the sight not many were given to see. By renouncing the superficiality of the ordinary joys of Neverland you will be rewarded with the rare opportunity to delve into the very heart of the island, discovering a secret only a few children have a chance to explore.
As you walk inland, across the paths made by the small feet of the inhabitants of this part of the island and past high trees with thick trunks covered in rough bark and long branches laden with dark emerald leaves, you will notice for yourself that the ancient trees with moss on their trunks are getting bigger and bigger and their foliage darker and darker, dimming the light. You will feel that the temperature is colder and the chirping of birds will no longer reach your ears. The cover of bluish moss growing on the trees will get thicker but you won't be ever able to see this until you touch them, trying to assure yourself this place really exists and is as real as the rest of Neverland, because the fog that floats everywhere is just as thick. Cold, thick and white as milk, the fog robs you of the ability to see and recognize the elements of your surroundings. But when your eyes adjust to the cold darkness, you will see in this primal forest numerous graves, their grey and crumbling headstones sticking out of the ground, scattered among the long blades of sickly looking, dark green but in some places brownish grass.
But the graveyard is the least of the island's dark secret.
For on each stone sits a little girl, resting as if the stone were a comfortable chair instead of a grave marker. They are the inhabitants of this part of Neverland, set far from the place of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.
Neverland is home to two tribes of lost children, one of boys and the other of girls. But while boys are encouraged to join the ranks of Peter Pan's faithful followers, the girls are sent alone and unaccompanied to their destination. Lost Boys and Lost Girls are separated from each other in every respect besides the fact of sharing the same island, a fact which is forgotten by them, as they rarely - very rarely - devote any thought to the existence in Neverland of two separate tribes of lost children. The boys don't think of the girls living in the woods and the girls don't think about the boys. There are many girls, as there is no Peter Pan here, in this small tribe, so there is no one to tell the girls to leave this place when they start to grow up. And in fact, they don't leave at all.
So there are many little girls sitting there on the crumbling old graves, much more of them than there ever were of the Lost Boys, and their unmoving eyes observe the children who arrive here to this place in their dreams. Occasionally, a child will come even in her daydreams, if the child who found her way in here is endowed with a particularly sinister imagination. Found – and sometimes staying here forever, joining this silent circle.
The Lost Girls aren't as playful as their male counterparts who are ruled by Peter Pan. Instead of the freedom so commonly associated with childhood, they symbolize inertia, passivity and silence, yin and not yang, hours spent on crocheting and staring through the window instead of playing outside in the sun and fresh air with other children. Rarely do they play among the old graves, unlike their male counterparts who follow the rule that an adventure hides behind every tree and every stone and all you need to do is look for them to find them in a moment. The girls just sit there and wait. They speak little and are patient. Very patient. They hunt the dreams of children, following them in their nightmares, just as the Lost Boys do, asking the children to come to Neverland and play with them, to have fun, oh, how much fun with mermaids and pirates and everything.
But not with this place, never with this place. Only the Lost Girls can have any sort of fun with this abandoned place in the heart of Neverland. You have to have the right mind for the Lost Boys of Neverland - and be a boy, of course - while little girls, those who have right minds for this place, so distant from the sun and joy of the island, of course, arrive in here, if anywhere. There are already many, many girls here, playing between the graves in the rare moments when they feel like playing. And when they don't, they indulge in their favorite recreation – looking for others little girls to come and play. You can see them in your dreams sometimes, if you are a girl and have the right mind for it, of course. Sometimes you rub your eyelids because it seems, just for a moment, you saw just out of the corner of your eye, a group of little girls, smiling sweetly at you, as if they were offering you a chance to go to their place and have fun for all eternity. Smiling maybe a bit too sweetly.
In the rare moments when the fog, milk white and smelling disgustingly of decay disperses, if you looked at the faded letters on the crumbling grave stones, you could read the names carved there. Names from the whole world. Names of little girls. Basma, 6 years old. Nyanath, 10. Birute, 2. Caroline, 9. Sara, not yet 2. Merete, 3. Agnieszka, 4.5. Girls from the whole world. They arrived in here from many different places and in many different ways. But now, as you look at them, sitting on the graves with their small hands on their laps as all good girls do and showing toothy, wide smiles (quite unnatural smiles; actually someone, if asked, could say that they resemble grinning skulls), they look quite the same – a silent gathering of little girls from the whole world, who now are of just one nationality – the Neverland one. Basma who died of hunger in the sands of Somali desert. Nyanath, a girl from Suddan who stepped on a land mine. Caroline who had a car accident. Bethany who had cancer. Doreen who died in a plague. Many little girls from the whole world – just like the Lost Boys. The only difference is that they are girls. And not as cheerful as the boys ruled by Peter Pan. They just sit there and sometimes play in the glade, shaded by the thick, dark foliage of the ancient trees that look like they've been growing there since the time when Neverland came into existence – if anyone knew when that was. And with this difference, they know the truth the boys don't – the boys are too busy with playing to think of it – that Neverland isn't the land of lost children but the land of dead ones. Sometimes, in a dream, you see the girls sitting on their own graves and smiling at you, as if asking without words whether you'd like to come and play with them. And sometimes indeed, after an accident or an illness or whatever, you go to them. In the end, you go to them and play with them in Neverland's graveyard for the rest of eternity.