Summary: The fate of the Darling women proves inescapable, even to those who do not have daughters. Three orphans of the Neverland Orphanage are swept away by Peter Pan, despite a Darling's best efforts to prevent just that. This story means to tell of the three orphans' adventures in the Neverland, and the adventures of those who preceded them. This story is based on the book by JM Barrie, not any of the movies.
Disclaimer: While the characters of the Neverland Orphanage are of my own creation, Peter, Smee, Wendy, John, Michael, Wendy's daughter & Wendy's granddaughter are all belonging to JM Barrie. Michael & John's descendants are of my own imagination, too.
Chapter One: The Four-to-Twelves
"I won't go to bed! I won't; I won't!" Sylvia leapt from one bed to another, making rounds of the girl's dormitory of the Neverland Orphanage. The other girls squealed with laughter as Sylvia bounced on their beds, their shrieks echoed by the protesting screams of the aging mattresses. "I won't," she cried, joyously, each time she sprang into the air, brandishing a wooden sword; "I won't," she roared, hoarsely, each time she landed, wobbling on the unsteady ground of the next quaking bed; "I won't," she howled, wildly, in the face of the attendants that swooped and dove for her, grasping only the breath of wind she left in her wake. The other girls delighted at the stumbling attendants and jumped up on their own beds, swinging their pillows overhead and joining in Sylvia's riotous chorus: "We won't; we won't; we won't!"
"Well, if you won't go to bed," came a voice that cut through the battlecries, "then you won't need a bedtime story, will you?"
"Oh!" cried the girls, collapsing mid-jump to flop onto their beds, disheveled and desperate. "We will; we will!" They arranged themselves in the manner of quiet, patient little girls, despite their red faces and mussed hair, and turned their bright eyes to Miss Allison, who stood in the doorway, smiling faintly.
Sylvia alone remained upright, staring at Allison with narrowed eyes. Her wooden sword was lowered to her side and she bounced in place on her own bed. She was chewing at her bottom lip and seemed to be thinking carefully.
"What sort of story?" Sylvia asked. The girls gave a collective huff, turning their heads quickly to glare at Sylvia before whipping back to Miss Allison with apologetic smiles. Allison's smile grew bolder and she regarded Sylvia with something like admiration.
However, all she said was: "A good sort." Then, a pause. And: "Provided you go to bed, of course."
Sylvia resumed chewing at her lip, making no move to lie down. Gradually, however, her bouncing slowed to an idle rocking, and though she continued to watch Miss Allison warily, Sylvia sheathed the wooden sword in the torn waistband of her pajamas and sat down on her bed. She nodded at Allison, who inclined her head in return and advanced into the center of the room as if taking the stage from Sylvia. All together, the other girls sighed in relief and looked expectantly at Allison. The two attendants, who had been creeping over to Sylvia's bed in order to catch her if she tried to leap off again, visibly relaxed and seated themselves on a windowsill to hear the story.
Allison smiled at the attendants – Holly, young and freckled and giggly, and Anne, grey-headed and iron-willed – and surveyed the rest of her eager audience fondly. On the eleven beds arranged in the room reclined eleven girls between the ages of four and twelve in eleven identical sets of standard issue blue pajamas. Although Miss Allison did a fairly good job of treating all of the girls at Neverland with equal affection, the four-to-twelves were her favorite children and she loved her visits to the third-story – where they resided – more than all the others. She found babies to be as delightful and sweet as anyone else, but their limited communication skills and yet-to-develop imaginations bored her. They were nice for a time, she thought, but she itched for them to grow up a bit and get to a fun age. The teens she found slightly too grown up, burying their sharpened minds under layers of awkwardness and insecurities. A shame, she thought, that the potential brilliant imaginations were wrapped so tightly in timidity. And then came work and "the real world," to where the playthings and dreams could not follow. But the four-to-twelves were not hindered by such problems and Allison cherished them for it.
There was pretty Melissa, six-years-old, golden-haired and rosy-cheeked, pearly-toothed and honey-voiced – the dream come true of every childless couple that came to Neverland. However, Melissa had yet to find parents that could cope with what Allison called an excellent gift for storytelling, but most prospective parents called "compulsive lying." Melissa took the repeated rejections in stride, inventing stories about the couples that came and went: the Hardwicks, she revealed to the other girls in a low whisper, were in fact a pair of vampires wishing to recruit Melissa into their legion of the undead. The Graysons bathed in parsnip soup ("for reasons unknown," Melissa said mysteriously); the Cartwrights had a son who was born with the wings of a bat and lived alone in the attic; the Evanses did not believe in holidays.
Haughty Hattie was nine and the second prettiest (first by a long shot if you asked her) and not nearly as well-liked as Melissa because she couldn't tell stories and was jealous of a six-year-old, something that both the younger and older girls found inexplicably silly. But they tolerated Hattie because her elaborate fantasies of her own grandeur – fancying herself beautiful Rapunzel or some other pretty princess – were often convincing enough to entertain them all for an afternoon. The shier girls clung to Hattie and followed her closely, agreeing with her every snooty sentiment. This unfortunately only made things worse for Hattie and the shy ones.
Shiest of the shy was twelve-year-old Penny, who only appeared about eight-years-old and whose age was underestimated even by those who knew her best: Allison and the other girls. She was short and skinny and squinted when asked to read off the blackboard during lessons. More than one couple of parents had expressed interest in adopting Penny, but the girl's shyness tended to leave her paralyzed in the presence of strangers. She would collapse into a seat, her hands clasped tight between her knees and her legs twisted in an awkward, pigeon-toed position, and there freeze. Her eyes remained glued to the floor in front of her and she answered any questions or attempts at conversation with only silence. Prospective parents rarely had the patience to try and get past Penny's introversion during their meetings.
Penny was what Allison called a dreamer. What was often taken for a vacancy in Penny's mind was actually a kind of overactivity: while Penny stared at the small area of floor before her, she was filling the space with countless daydream companions who would attempt to make her feel more comfortable in front of the strangers. During lessons, Penny would appear fixated on the blackboard, but when called upon, would blink once or twice as if clearing her eyes and look toward the front of the room with a drowsy expression. She would stare for hours at any given thing – the wheel of the fruit wagon on the street, the distorted reflection of the room in a doorknob, an icicle hanging from the roof of Neverland in the winter – and not notice anything going on around her, but Allison knew that things were unfolding and blooming in Penny's mind. The girls knew it, too, because when they would prompt her with just the right amount of pleading – enough to not embarrass her too greatly – she could tell them about the most fantastic dreams they had ever heard of, the dreams they had always been dreaming themselves but had lacked the eyes with which to see until Penny opened them.
Then there were the adventurers, with whom Allison felt a special kinship. The girls who explored the basement, looking for monsters or treasure; those who saw in every old woman the capacity to be a powerful sorceress; those who looked for mystery and magic in every mundane London day. "Troublemakers" some would call the children that climbed into sewers to hunt for alligators. But, as Allison knew, and as the two biggest troublemakers Neverland had to offer would insist, sometimes trouble just makes itself.
Sylvia and Olivia were the eight-year-olds, affectionately referred to as "the twins" (or "Double Trouble," if the occasion called for it). The title was a joke of the Neverlanders as the twins looked nothing alike: round-cheeked, fair-haired, blue-eyed Olivia was the inverse of scrawny, long-limbed Sylvia, her dark eyes and the wild black curls that refused all attempts of straightening and sleeking. But the two had been inseparable since they had arrived at Neverland, three months apart in the year they both turned six. The day they had established themselves as Double Trouble was only referred to as The Kitchen Incident and still made Anne's lips press into a hard, thin line when mentioned, though it made Allison turn red-faced with suppressed laughter. The girls had embraced the nickname readily, considering themselves twins by choice and therefore the truest kind. They cited the similarity of their names as proof of their certain twinship. The twins were troublemakers of what Allison thought a most delightful sort, offering as evidence the curious, intelligent sparkle in their otherwise different eyes. The aforementioned eyes were currently trained on Allison, along with the eyes of the other girls, silently demanding a story.
Allison pulled a folding chair from one corner of the room into the center and sat down. The girls called it her "Storytelling Chair" and through the course of a bedtime tale, the simple metal and wooden seat was known to take on any number of forms: now, the throne of a wise queen, and later, the broad, leathery back of an elephant carrying an Indian princess through the jungle. The chair had been Tarzan's treehouse, the crow's nest of a ship on the high seas, and, as in one of the girls' favorite stories, Marooner's Rock, from which Tiger Lily was to be swallowed by the tide, only to be rescued by the brave Peter Pan.
It would be a Peter Pan story tonight, Allison thought. Peter Pan stories were the favorites of this lot and Sylvia's energetic display would have put all the girls in a mood to never grow up. But it wasn't just Sylvia who would put the desire for a story of the Neverland in the minds of the girls; it happened that stories about Peter Pan were Allison Darling's specialty.
Let us now trace the path from Peter and Wendy to Allison Darling. It all started, of course, with Wendy, John, and Michael – but chiefly Wendy Darling, the darling mother. Soaring out the window with Tinker Bell and Peter Pan, disappearing to the Neverland and breaking the older Darlings' hearts. But they came back, of course, and Wendy returned once a year to be the darling mother for the spring cleaning. And once Wendy was too grownup to wear her dress from the Neverland, Peter Pan stopped coming to fetch her. And Wendy kept growing up and got married and after these many years, Peter finally returned to Wendy. Only, he had not come to take grownup Wendy back to the Neverland; he had instead come for Wendy's daughter, Jane, to be his mother for the spring cleaning, as long as her youth would last. And when Jane grew up, Peter came for her daughter, Margaret. And then came Margaret's daughter, Emily, who was also visited by Peter Pan.
Ah, here! Here is where Allison Darling became involved with the business of the darling mothers, started by Peter and Wendy. For Allison is not the great-granddaughter of Wendy Darling, as might be expected, but she is close. Wendy Darling was the oldest of three children, having two younger brothers that accompanied her to the Neverland. John was but a few years younger than Wendy and married soon after his sister to raise four well-behaved sons. Michael, though, was very young on his first trip to the Neverland and took his sweet time growing up once they had returned to London. While Wendy was becoming a grandmother, Michael had just recently found himself the father of three children not unlike he and his siblings: one daughter, the oldest, and two sons who were proper, but not nearly as stuffy as John's had turned out. And it was Michael's middle child, George Darling II, who would grow up to become the father of Allison Darling in the same year that Margaret became Emily's mother.
But now we must get back to the four-to-twelves, for they have been waiting very patiently for their story and Sylvia is beginning to sulk just a bit.
"What shall we hear tonight?" Allison asked, gazing at the half-circle of beds before her, a bright-eyed, eager girl waiting on each.
"The Neverland!"
"The Mermaid Lagoon!"
"Pirates!"
"Indians!"
"Tinker Bell and the poison!"
"Captain Hook and the pirates!"
"Tell about Nana the dog!"
"Pirates!"
"Peter Pan! Tell about Peter!"
There was a collective squeal from all the girls, except for two. Sylvia let out an exasperated moan – "Oh, him!" - and flopped back onto her bed, while Olivia in the next bed only giggled and turned her attention back to Allison. It had, of course, been Sylvia rallying for stories of the pirates. After a moment of lying defeated on her back, Sylvia rolled onto her side and turned her pouting face to Allison, who smiled before launching into the story the four-to-twelves knew so well, the story of Peter and Wendy.
Allison left the four-two-twelves, taking grinning Holly and stern-faced Anne, with wishes of sweet dreams and sound sleep. Anne turned down the lights as she left, letting moonlight flood through the window. The girls chorused "good night" as the door shut and took the last of the bright light with it. A few minutes passed as Allison and the attendants made their way upstairs to the older girls before the four-to-twelves burst into conversation.
"Oh, that Peter Pan!"
"So brave!"
"So daring!"
"So noble!"
The girls continued to take it in turns to lavish the character in breathless, devoted praise: so clever, so quick, and oh! those pearly first teeth!
"So charming!"
"So selfish! So conceited! So dull," Sylvia offered mockingly, in the same airy voice the other girls had used. The other girls giggled as Sylvia pretended to swoon, tottering weakly across her mattress while fanning herself with one hand and clutching the other to her breast.
Melissa jumped up and mimicked Sylvia, pressing the back of one hand to her forehead. "Oh, that Peter Pan," she moaned in a most convincing imitation of a lovesick admirer.
Olivia, laughing, sprang up on her bed as well. She gave a huge bound and stretched out her limbs so that, for a few airborne seconds, she appeared to be in flight. "Oh, the cleverness of me," she cried, assuming the role of Peter Pan and locking it in with a loud crow. Melissa and Sylvia dropped as if dead onto their beds, with the high-pitched sighs of swooning ladies. The other girls squealed and applauded, delighted by the play.
Sylvia was up again in a second, drawing the wooden sword from the waistband of her pajamas. Swinging the sword over her head in a grand gesture, she leapt from her bed onto Olivia's, raising the other hand to reveal all the fingers folded into a fist but for the one that remained raised and curved into a C-shape. With this "hook," Sylvia swiped at Olivia: Hook lunging to ensnare Peter Pan. Olivia hopped up onto the bedframe and gnashed her teeth at Sylvia, just as Peter Pan would have bared his pearly baby teeth to Captain Hook.
"Proud and insolent youth, have at thee!" Sylvia thrust the wooden sword forward, sliding it neatly between Olivia's arm and her side, where it was caught and held. Olivia gave a gruesome gurgle and staggered from the bedframe, sinking to her knees on the mattress. She reached a hand out to Melissa on the next bed, who seemed to have assumed the role of Wendy and reached back. "Oh, what..." wheezed Olivia, dying from the fatal wound at Sylvia's feet. "Oh...what...of the cleverness...of...me?" This last word was eked out at barely a whisper before Olivia pitched forward and lay motionless, facedown on the mattress: Peter Pan slain by the sword of Captain Hook. Melissa fainted again while Sylvia raised her hooked finger high overhead in triumph and the scene ended to a tumultuous but mixed reaction from the four-to-twelves.
Most of the girls applauded the playacting, fond of the performances that Sylvia and Olivia enacted after nearly every bedtime story. But those who had fawned over Peter Pan just moments before the play threw in boos and grumbles, shaking their heads. Hattie took it upon herself to give a representative voice to the dissatisfied girls.
"How awful!" she cried in a shrill and scolding voice. "As if that rotten Hook could hurt brave Peter!"
"Aye, but he has, me bonnie lass," growled Sylvia, once again playing at Captain Hook. "Hasn't he, Pan?"
This last she inquired of Olivia, still prone at Sylvia's feet. Olivia had raised herself up onto her elbows when Hattie had spoken, but now she flopped back down and closed her eyes, croaking out the side of her mouth: "He has, indeed."
Melissa let out a squeal of laughter and tumbled back onto her bed, giving a few of the other girls the courage to giggle. Hattie glared once around the room before focusing back on Sylvia.
"Everyone knows that Peter killed rotten old Hook!"
There was a flurry of swinging braids as the other girls whipped their heads around to see how Sylvia would handle Hattie's challenge. She smiled at the other girls and shrugged with one shoulder. "Not Peter! The croc killed Hook, and he jumped right to the beast, anyway."
"Ahhh," the girls cooed, and turned back to Hattie expectantly, waiting for the next volley. She glowered at the girls for a moment, puffing out her cheeks and pouting as she stalled for a retort. Finally, she scoffed and murmured something indeterminate – Penny, whose bed was very close to Hattie's, later told the girls that it had sounded something like "Peter is too dashing to be killed by a common, filthy pirate, anyway" – rolling sulkily over so that her back was to Sylvia.
The girls snapped their heads back to Sylvia with indulgent smirks. She grinned and swept an imaginary hat off of her head, bowing deeply. Sheathing her wooden sword, she gathered herself up for a leap, bounding over two beds and springing up again to land directly on top of Hattie.
Hattie screamed piercingly, more startled and angry than hurt for Sylvia had been certain to plant her hands and feet around Hattie rather than on top of her. Neverthless, she shrieked and shoved at Sylvia, who backed off enough that Hattie could shoot up into a sitting position. But before she could shove Sylvia off the bed, Hattie found her arms pinned to her sides by a tight embrace that shocked her into silence. Sylvia squeezed her tightly, then pulled back to kiss her on both cheeks. All the while, Hattie's mouth remained open in the shape of the screams that had left her.
"You'll love me yet, Hattie-dear," Sylvia sweetly assured her petrified captive. She moved to tighten the embrace again, and suddenly Hattie shook off the shock and shoved Sylvia with all her might, sending her heels over head off the bed.
The other girls gasped and bit back giggles, peering down at the dark floor to discern Sylvia's shape amid the shadows. She sprang up, with a triumphant shout that elicited startled shrieks from the other girls, onto her own bed, having crept stealthily along the dark floor. The girls giggled at their own fear, Hattie, and Sylvia, the latter sweeping into another bow as she stood proudly upon her bed. Then she raised the wooden sword with both hands and plunged it down toward her chest, pinning it between her side and her arm. Choking and gurgling, she swayed on the mattress, finally stumbling over her own feet and landing in a heap on her bed.
Her final performance (of this night anyway) was met with a standing ovation, each girl springing to her feet upon her mattress to applaud the motionless Sylvia. Only Hattie remained in her bed, turned stonily away, until she cried out above the noise of the others: "Give it a rest, will you!" The girls all sighed at once and collapsed onto their beds, dissolving into giggles and "good nights" that slowly faded down to only two tired voices.
"Good night, Hattie-dear," Sylvia cooed dreamily.
There was a moment of tight silence in the moonlit room. Then, at last, a voice strained with reservation eked out: "Good night, Sylvia." The tight silence unwound and sleep filled the room of the four-to-twelves, so that not one of the girls could recall seeing the shadow of a small boy slip away from the window, pass over the moon, and disappear into the starry night sky.
Author's Note: i've only finished this first chapter & i've decided to post it up here before continuing so as to gauge the reaction. if it generates even a tiny bit of interest, i'll continue. if not, i will consent to dream it up in a tangled fashion & play pirate by myself. so, please review! positive or negative: i'll take it.